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Visiting Iraq is a sobering experience but, as we get ready to leave after two editions of Today, one particularly sobering thought lingers: once UK forces pull out, as they say they will ‘sometime soon’, will any reporting from here be possible?
All of us would prefer to be here without the help of the military but, at the moment, that’s very difficult to envisage. In a land where some policemen are also members of the death squads which terrorise this city, where patrol cars are found carrying roadside bombs, where the long arm of the law may also be the strong arm of religious extremism or a criminal gang, the risks that local journalists run are terrifying. Without the military safety blanket, the risks to outsiders would be incalculable.
So we’re with the armed forces, and grateful for the protection they offer. But, at the same time, it’s hard to ignore the limits they impose. As journalists, we spend too much of our time glimpsing Basra through razor wire fences or the bullet-proof windows of a Land Rover. We get out of the fortified bases into the city and the villages beyond as often as we can, but each trip is immensely labour-intensive – and much more dangerous for the soldiers who accompany us than it is for us.
Maybe those who believe that the presence of British troops and diplomats here exacerbates the situation are right. They’re certainly a lightning rod. I’ve lost count of the number of mortars and rockets that have landed on the base where we’re staying in the past four nights – perhaps it’s forty or fifty – and each one runs the risk of falling short and landing instead on an Iraqi house much less able to withstand the impact than the brieze-block bungalows where we sleep. So, certainly, some daily acts of violence happen because the British are here. But, at the same time, we’ve heard stories of lives that have been saved by their presence. And however appalling the state of the Basra police, is it really possible to imagine that they’d be better without the efforts of ex-coppers from Northern Ireland, South Wales and every other corner of the UK to train and improve them?
It’s too early for any final accounting of the British mission here, but the army is certainly one very strong thread in the fabric of what little security remains in Basra. If we pull it out, will what’s left support a society where foreigners can come and go in peace?
In Baghdad, of course, ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ colleagues do manage to move around the city independently – but the level of protection they need means it’s a fiercely expensive business. And even an organisation as well-funded as the ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ couldn’t afford to do that everywhere.
Let’s be optimistic for a moment. Let’s assume that when the UK withdraws from this corner of southern Iraq the situation doesn’t get worse. Let’s assume that it even gets marginally better – that there are fewer death squads roaming the streets, that the police are less well-infiltrated by members of the violent militia. Even then, it will be far too dangerous to travel here independently. And while Baghdad – the centre of everything in this country – continues to grab the headlines and catch the eye, the risk is that this city of nearly two million people slips from view.
In one sense, no surprise: there are plenty of cities of that size around the world that we barely hear from. But, without in any sense wishing more suffering upon this place, it’s possible that some pretty awful things will happen here in the years ahead – and it would be tragic if we didn’t know about them.
CT
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