Louay Alzaher
& Doug Lorimer
Tension ran high in southern Iraq on September 20 after British troops attacked the central police station in Basra, Iraq's second largest city, the previous day. The incident was sparked when British soldiers used armoured vehicles on September 19 to burst into the police station to free two undercover British soldiers, being held by Iraqi police.
According to the Iraqiya TV channel and the Saudi Arabia Watan newspaper, Basra police spokesperson Mahdi al Abaydi stated that on September 17 an Iraqi police patrol and elements of the Mahdi Army, belonging to Shiite cleric Moqtada al Sadr's movement, captured two British special forces soldiers dressed in traditional Iraqi clothing and possessing equipment for planting bombs in Basra city — after the two had killed and injured several police officers and Iraqi civilians.
That same day British troops had detained the local commander of the Mahdi Army, Sheikh Ahmed Fartosi, and two other members of the Sadr movement, according to a September 18 report by Associated Press and a Sadr movement media release. The reports noted that Basra city had witnessed clashes between British troops and members of the Mahdi Army militia.
On September 18, when British soldiers surrounded the police station after Iraqi police refused to release the two British soldiers, they found themselves besieged by Iraqi demonstrators. The angry protesters hurled stones and Molotov cocktails, setting fire to two British tanks, and forcing the British troops to withdraw.
In the early hours of September 19, British troops used six tanks, supported by helicopters, to break down the walls of the police station and crushed a number of police cars. The operation resulted in the two British soldiers being freed. One hundred and fifty other prisoners escaped in the confusion, police officials and witnesses told Iraqi reporters.
In a media statement issued on September 20, Brigadier John Lorimer, commander of the British occupation forces in Basra, argued that, "Under Iraqi law, as MNF (Multinational Force) soldiers", the two detained men "should have been handed over to the coalition authorities. The [British] consul-general and I asked repeatedly for this but it did not happen."
However, in an interview with CNN on September 22, Mohammed al Ubadi, head of the Basra Governing Council, said that two men freed by the British raid on the Basra central police station had
refused to identify themselves as British soldiers. They had been detained by the police because they were found with several weapons, had killed a civilian, and had assaulted an Iraqi police officer.
Ubadi told CNN that following a meeting held earlier that day between the 41 members of the Basra Governing Council and British government representatives regarding the British raid on the Basra central police station, the council had decided "to cut off our relations with the Multinational Forces until we receive a formal apology from the British government for this act. We also ask for the return of two detainees to Iraqi custody, compensation for the casualties that resulted, and compensation to the major crimes unit for the destruction of the facility."
Ubadi told CNN that "five Iraqi civilians were killed and 44 wounded as a result of the fighting that happened because of this raid".
He said the Basra Governing Council wanted the two detainees who had been released by the British Army's raid handed back to the Basra authorities and to be tried before a judge in a legitimate trial.
"The people of Basra", Ubadi said, "have always worked with the British military and if they wanted the release of these individuals they could have gone through official channels to get them released. We still don't know who they are and the major crimes unit detained them for a reason. They were suspicious characters and we still don't know who they are or what they were up to."
The September 22 London Guardian reported that in the southern Iraqi Shiite holy city of Najaf, a senior aide to Sadr, Sheikh Salah al Obeidi, told reporters: "The media and the British are not reflecting a true version of events, which is that the people of Basra, including members of the Mahdi Army, came to the support of the Iraqi police who were under attack by the British for trying to do their jobs.
"The real problem here is of Iraqi sovereignty. We may have it in name, but we won't see it in reality until the occupation forces leave. That is the only message that Moqtada is giving."
Obeidi said that a few days earlier thousands of Mahdi Army members had provided security for a million-strong Shiite pilgrimage to the holy city of Karbala, but this had not been reported by the Western media.
"We reached an agreement with the interior ministry to guard the roads", Sadr movement spokesperson Hashim al Hashimi in Baghdad told the September 22 Cairo-based Al Ahram Weekly. But confidence in the agreement was shaken when a member of the Mahdi Army was killed by US troops in Latifiya and another leading member was arrested in Basra, said Hashimi.
Following the withdrawal of the Mahdi Army guards from the procession, one pilgrim was killed and 12 wounded by bombs exploding on the road from Baghdad to Karbala on September 19.
University of Baghdad political science professor Jinan Ali told Al Ahram Weekly that the "so-called war against Shiites" attributed by Washington and its puppet Iraqi government to Abu Musa al Zarqawi's Al Qaeda in Iraq group "began after Moqtada al Sadr announced his opposition to drafting the constitution... Most of the Shiites targeted are Moqtada's followers intended to force them to cast a 'yes' vote in the coming referendum" on the US-backed constitution.
Interviewed by Radio Monte Carlo on September 19, Shiite Imam Jawad al Khalissi said the presence of occupation forces was behind the deterioration of the security situation in Iraq.
"Zarqawi and others who symbolise the violence that pours out, to the benefit of the occupation forces, are unknown characters, and we have no evidence that these characters actually exist, except through the US media", Khalissi said. "Whoever is behind the violence wants the occupation to continue. This is a tragic game to create clashes among the Iraqi people and to distract them from the real problem, which is the occupation, and push them towards civil war."
From Green Left Weekly, September 28, 2005.
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