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Dum dee dum 
Quiet Britons outpace US in taming Iraq
Matthew Campbell, Basra
IRAQ’S policemen are going back to school. In a classroom in the southern city of Basra their British instructors recently pitched them a trick question: “When is torture acceptable?” Several hands shot up to reply, but for Stephen White, an assistant chief constable in Northern Ireland who has become the UK’s police chief in Iraq, the answer was disappointing. “It is acceptable if the person is guilty,” announced one of the trainees. The others nodded in agreement and suggested several other justifications for torture.
While the American effort further north is being hampered each day by guerrilla resistance, Britain’s civilising mission has found fertile terrain in the south, where a predominantly Shi’ite Muslim population was brutalised by Saddam Hussein.
The debate about torture, however, is an example of the difficulties of swiftly remoulding a country with few democratic traditions. “They (the Iraqi police) say, ‘We’re used to torturing people, it is effective’,” said White. “They say, ‘Why would you want us to stop?’ It is frustrating but there is no quick fix.”
White is a cheerful, silver-haired figure whose background in Northern Ireland seems a particularly fitting qualification for the job of “top cop” in Basra. He is part of an ambitious bit of nation building backed by an army of 9,500 British troops in the desert and marshes of southern Iraq.
Despite some “nasty incidents”, as British officers refer to the occasional attacks on their forces, the south is moving faster than Baghdad, 350 miles to the north, in laying the foundations for a peaceful transition to a sovereign Iraqi government next summer. It is not just a question of more favourable conditions in Basra.
The British are bringing decades of experience as a once mighty colonial power to bear on the task of pacifying the south; and the military has shown far greater sensitivity than its American counterpart to the needs of a proud and volatile people.
No detail seemed too insignificant for the attention of Basra’s British rulers last week. An officer from Pentonville prison in London had arrived to study ways of improving the “medieval” conditions in Basra’s jails and Sir Hilary Synnott, Britain’s chief civilian representative in southern Iraq, was talking tomatoes.
“Basra supplies 75% of Iraq’s winter tomatoes,” he explained, “and the crop would have been destroyed by cold weather two months ago had we not brought in plastic sheeting to sell on the open market. The factory that makes it here had closed down.”
Seldom does a day seem to pass in which this “sheikh of sheikhs”, as the locals call him, is not called upon to cut a ribbon inaugurating some new project. “I’ve opened schools, water filtration plants, pumping stations and a sewage plant,” he said.
He has presented shiny new vehicles to the police and lorry-loads of books to the local university. “We’re getting across to the Iraqi people the perception that things are getting better,” he said.
As a former high commissioner in Pakistan, Synnott is accustomed to such functions and there was not a word of complaint when he and a British brigadier had to wait under an awning on a Basra dock last Monday for the start of a river police graduation ceremony.
When a visiting defence ministry official expressed frustration at the delay and wondered “how long will we have to wait before we tell the Iraqis to get things going”, a Royal Navy lieutenant explained: “It is the Iraqis who are organising this, sir. It will start when they are ready.”
Soon enough the gathering was brought to attention. There were readings from the Koran. The head of the Iraqi river police thanked the seven-man Royal Navy team for its training. Then Synnott greeted the crowd in fluent Arabic before going on to explain why the role of the river police was so crucial in Basra.
They would help, he said, to intercept oil smugglers “who sell oil on the international market for personal gain and at the expense of the people of Iraq”. He smiled as a little girl handed him a bouquet of plastic flowers and then peered dutifully out at the mighty Shatt al-Arab waterway where some of the recruits were conducting a demonstration of towing skills that they had learnt from the navy.
British officials say they have the “consent” of the locals for their occupation of Basra and attribute this to the horrible history of a people bludgeoned by Saddam. “He murdered thousands of them,” said Synnott, referring to the mass executions of Shi’ites after their uprising at the end of the Gulf war in 1991.
At the same time, while praising efforts by the Americans, the British officers acknowledge that their bitter experience on the streets of Northern Ireland has prepared them better than other armies to deal with a difficult role in Iraq.
Having quickly restored basic services after the war, the British troops have generally managed to avoid antagonising the local population.
After the capture of Saddam by American forces on December 13, all British patrols in the city were cancelled in the knowledge that there would be celebratory shooting.
“We didn’t want misunderstandings and accidents,” said an officer in the Royal Regiment of Wales. “We have previously distributed leaflets explaining that firing in the air is dangerous, that what goes up must come down, but on this occasion we thought, well, why not let them blow off a bit of steam.”
The British are a model of restraint by comparison with American soldiers who have been taught to use overwhelming firepower against any potential threats. During a house-to-house search by British troops recently, five shots were fired by an Iraqi who thought that his home was about to be burgled.
“The lads would have been well within their rights to shoot him dead,” said Captain Shay Marsh. “Instead it was clear that he was simply afraid and, with any luck, now he will be impressed with the British Army and with the fact that we didn’t slot him.”
On patrol in a bustling Basra market on Tuesday, troops were greeted with waves and handshakes from locals and the only abuse seemed to come from a group of boisterous students on a rooftop, who shouted English swear words between bouts of hysterical laughter.
When it comes to shaping the new police force, White seems eager to avoid the tactics being encouraged in Baghdad. “Instead of the macho American kick-ass policing approach, we have to be understanding of what the public expects,” he said.
Memories of working in Belfast make him wary of the widespread arrests of suspected resistance sympathisers that are being conducted in Baghdad: “When you see a six-year-old son peering down the stairs at you (when you are making an arrest), you know you are recruiting the next generation.”
Not that he is blind to the threats in Basra. On November 19 he was almost killed in “bomb alley”, as he has come to call a dangerous street near his base, when two mortar shells in a bag attached to a mountain bike were detonated as his vehicle went by.
“It blew a hole the size of a fist in the window behind me,” he said. “I got out and gave cover.” His civilian bodyguard was badly wounded in the leg.
Hardened as he is to bloodshed — more than 300 of his colleagues were killed in Northern Ireland — he has been particularly moved by some of the tragedies witnessed in Basra. One was the death of a former Gurkha who had signed up as a security guard at the coalition’s headquarters. He was shot recently by an unknown assailant.
“They dragged him into the corridor,” said White. “They took his wallet out. He had a photo of the Himalayas. He died on the floor of our building. He was there to protect us.”
The first local police chief with whom White worked was also shot dead and interviews are being conducted for a replacement.
The task will be helped by 24 British policemen who arrived last week to help to train officers from the old Iraqi regime at an academy built on the ruins of a base once used by Saddam’s henchmen. This constituted a victory for White.
In November an American general had decreed that all police training in Iraq should be conducted by American and British military police and the Foreign Office had been reluctant to send White any reinforcements.
The coalition authority in Baghdad later ruled that Basra could go ahead with its civilian training programme.
“I’m very proud of it,” said White. “In Basra, civilian police will be doing the training. Everywhere else it will be done by military police. They can teach how to shoot, clean boots and use handcuffs, but in terms of reconstructing the Iraqi security forces in a way that is civilised, modern, democratic and acceptable, is it soldiers we should be using?” Whether or not time proves him right, Lieutenant Commander Tim Henry of the navy’s training team is confident about Basra’s future as a beacon of good governance in the new Iraq.
He and his men have enjoyed speeding up and down the Shatt al-Arab in their patrol craft and some of them, who are based at one of Saddam’s waterfront palaces, have caught the occasional bass in the river.
“I am planning to come back for a holiday in 10 years’ time with my family,” said Henry. “The river is glorious.”
Matthew Campbell, Basra
IRAQ’S policemen are going back to school. In a classroom in the southern city of Basra their British instructors recently pitched them a trick question: “When is torture acceptable?” Several hands shot up to reply, but for Stephen White, an assistant chief constable in Northern Ireland who has become the UK’s police chief in Iraq, the answer was disappointing. “It is acceptable if the person is guilty,” announced one of the trainees. The others nodded in agreement and suggested several other justifications for torture.
While the American effort further north is being hampered each day by guerrilla resistance, Britain’s civilising mission has found fertile terrain in the south, where a predominantly Shi’ite Muslim population was brutalised by Saddam Hussein.
The debate about torture, however, is an example of the difficulties of swiftly remoulding a country with few democratic traditions. “They (the Iraqi police) say, ‘We’re used to torturing people, it is effective’,” said White. “They say, ‘Why would you want us to stop?’ It is frustrating but there is no quick fix.”
White is a cheerful, silver-haired figure whose background in Northern Ireland seems a particularly fitting qualification for the job of “top cop” in Basra. He is part of an ambitious bit of nation building backed by an army of 9,500 British troops in the desert and marshes of southern Iraq.
Despite some “nasty incidents”, as British officers refer to the occasional attacks on their forces, the south is moving faster than Baghdad, 350 miles to the north, in laying the foundations for a peaceful transition to a sovereign Iraqi government next summer. It is not just a question of more favourable conditions in Basra.
The British are bringing decades of experience as a once mighty colonial power to bear on the task of pacifying the south; and the military has shown far greater sensitivity than its American counterpart to the needs of a proud and volatile people.
No detail seemed too insignificant for the attention of Basra’s British rulers last week. An officer from Pentonville prison in London had arrived to study ways of improving the “medieval” conditions in Basra’s jails and Sir Hilary Synnott, Britain’s chief civilian representative in southern Iraq, was talking tomatoes.
“Basra supplies 75% of Iraq’s winter tomatoes,” he explained, “and the crop would have been destroyed by cold weather two months ago had we not brought in plastic sheeting to sell on the open market. The factory that makes it here had closed down.”
Seldom does a day seem to pass in which this “sheikh of sheikhs”, as the locals call him, is not called upon to cut a ribbon inaugurating some new project. “I’ve opened schools, water filtration plants, pumping stations and a sewage plant,” he said.
He has presented shiny new vehicles to the police and lorry-loads of books to the local university. “We’re getting across to the Iraqi people the perception that things are getting better,” he said.
As a former high commissioner in Pakistan, Synnott is accustomed to such functions and there was not a word of complaint when he and a British brigadier had to wait under an awning on a Basra dock last Monday for the start of a river police graduation ceremony.
When a visiting defence ministry official expressed frustration at the delay and wondered “how long will we have to wait before we tell the Iraqis to get things going”, a Royal Navy lieutenant explained: “It is the Iraqis who are organising this, sir. It will start when they are ready.”
Soon enough the gathering was brought to attention. There were readings from the Koran. The head of the Iraqi river police thanked the seven-man Royal Navy team for its training. Then Synnott greeted the crowd in fluent Arabic before going on to explain why the role of the river police was so crucial in Basra.
They would help, he said, to intercept oil smugglers “who sell oil on the international market for personal gain and at the expense of the people of Iraq”. He smiled as a little girl handed him a bouquet of plastic flowers and then peered dutifully out at the mighty Shatt al-Arab waterway where some of the recruits were conducting a demonstration of towing skills that they had learnt from the navy.
British officials say they have the “consent” of the locals for their occupation of Basra and attribute this to the horrible history of a people bludgeoned by Saddam. “He murdered thousands of them,” said Synnott, referring to the mass executions of Shi’ites after their uprising at the end of the Gulf war in 1991.
At the same time, while praising efforts by the Americans, the British officers acknowledge that their bitter experience on the streets of Northern Ireland has prepared them better than other armies to deal with a difficult role in Iraq.
Having quickly restored basic services after the war, the British troops have generally managed to avoid antagonising the local population.
After the capture of Saddam by American forces on December 13, all British patrols in the city were cancelled in the knowledge that there would be celebratory shooting.
“We didn’t want misunderstandings and accidents,” said an officer in the Royal Regiment of Wales. “We have previously distributed leaflets explaining that firing in the air is dangerous, that what goes up must come down, but on this occasion we thought, well, why not let them blow off a bit of steam.”
The British are a model of restraint by comparison with American soldiers who have been taught to use overwhelming firepower against any potential threats. During a house-to-house search by British troops recently, five shots were fired by an Iraqi who thought that his home was about to be burgled.
“The lads would have been well within their rights to shoot him dead,” said Captain Shay Marsh. “Instead it was clear that he was simply afraid and, with any luck, now he will be impressed with the British Army and with the fact that we didn’t slot him.”
On patrol in a bustling Basra market on Tuesday, troops were greeted with waves and handshakes from locals and the only abuse seemed to come from a group of boisterous students on a rooftop, who shouted English swear words between bouts of hysterical laughter.
When it comes to shaping the new police force, White seems eager to avoid the tactics being encouraged in Baghdad. “Instead of the macho American kick-ass policing approach, we have to be understanding of what the public expects,” he said.
Memories of working in Belfast make him wary of the widespread arrests of suspected resistance sympathisers that are being conducted in Baghdad: “When you see a six-year-old son peering down the stairs at you (when you are making an arrest), you know you are recruiting the next generation.”
Not that he is blind to the threats in Basra. On November 19 he was almost killed in “bomb alley”, as he has come to call a dangerous street near his base, when two mortar shells in a bag attached to a mountain bike were detonated as his vehicle went by.
“It blew a hole the size of a fist in the window behind me,” he said. “I got out and gave cover.” His civilian bodyguard was badly wounded in the leg.
Hardened as he is to bloodshed — more than 300 of his colleagues were killed in Northern Ireland — he has been particularly moved by some of the tragedies witnessed in Basra. One was the death of a former Gurkha who had signed up as a security guard at the coalition’s headquarters. He was shot recently by an unknown assailant.
“They dragged him into the corridor,” said White. “They took his wallet out. He had a photo of the Himalayas. He died on the floor of our building. He was there to protect us.”
The first local police chief with whom White worked was also shot dead and interviews are being conducted for a replacement.
The task will be helped by 24 British policemen who arrived last week to help to train officers from the old Iraqi regime at an academy built on the ruins of a base once used by Saddam’s henchmen. This constituted a victory for White.
In November an American general had decreed that all police training in Iraq should be conducted by American and British military police and the Foreign Office had been reluctant to send White any reinforcements.
The coalition authority in Baghdad later ruled that Basra could go ahead with its civilian training programme.
“I’m very proud of it,” said White. “In Basra, civilian police will be doing the training. Everywhere else it will be done by military police. They can teach how to shoot, clean boots and use handcuffs, but in terms of reconstructing the Iraqi security forces in a way that is civilised, modern, democratic and acceptable, is it soldiers we should be using?” Whether or not time proves him right, Lieutenant Commander Tim Henry of the navy’s training team is confident about Basra’s future as a beacon of good governance in the new Iraq.
He and his men have enjoyed speeding up and down the Shatt al-Arab in their patrol craft and some of them, who are based at one of Saddam’s waterfront palaces, have caught the occasional bass in the river.
“I am planning to come back for a holiday in 10 years’ time with my family,” said Henry. “The river is glorious.”
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