An Iraqi judge has renewed arrest warrants for two British soldiers, so what is the UK going to do?
http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050923/OPINION01/509230358/1016/OPINION
**Basra versus the British **
Just because Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have largely pushed Iraq off the front page, no one should assume that the news is better. Indeed, not only are the familiar stories of chaos and rebel violence still bad and maybe getting worse (the American military death toll now exceeds 1,900), serious new problems are arising. Chief among them is a murky yet distressing incident in Basra, the principal city in the Shiite-dominated south. There, British forces used tanks Monday to storm an Iraqi police station to free two British soldiers. Basra’s provincial council voted unanimously Wednesday to cease cooperation with the British until its receives an apology and compensation for Iraqis killed or hurt during the raid. Although the mission of the liberated British soldiers remains unclear, as do the Iraqis’ reasons for arresting them, the tensions in Basra threaten to bring unrest to a region that had been relatively peaceful and to undermine the good relations that the British had enjoyed with local Iraqi authorities. The uproar also lays bare several disturbing realities.
One is that, in Basra, Shiite militias control local politics, police and military units. That highlights a critical conundrum for the American-led occupation authorities: They are making little progress in training an independent Iraqi army and police force capable of maintaining order and allowing U.S. and British forces to leave. Instead, the Americans and British ultimately may have to turn to local and religious militias, which have better motivated and more skillful fighters. But the grave danger will be that the militias, defenders of sectarian and regional interests, will become the instruments of civil conflict and not of national stability. Also unsettling was the declaration in London by Iraq’s prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, that the incident won’t affect British-Iraqi relations or cooperation. Under the circumstances, such confidence rings false and suggests a weak grasp on the situation in the country beyond the capital. It remains to be seen whether the anger in Basra can be contained and defused. But like so much else in Iraq, this episode is not evidence of a good plan coming together.