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April 9, 2003, The Scotsman RESISTANCE MELTS LIKE THE SNOWS IN SPRING Gethin Chamberlain AS THE crowd swarmed around the tanks, waving and cheering, a man pushed forward with a bunch of flowers in his hand, picked from one of the gardens at the side of the wide-open street in the heart of Basra. He stepped up to the tank and handed one pink bloom to each of the soldiers standing up in the turret, and one to the driver whose head was poking through the open hatch at the front. And, in that moment, it was clear, finally, that to all intents and purposes, the war in the south of Iraq really was over. In little more than two days, Basra had gone from being a formidable military target to just another of those many cities around the world where tanks and soldiers mingle with people trying to get on with their lives. There are still skirmishes to be fought, the last pockets of Fedayeen militia to be rooted out, weapons to be blown up, but any thoughts of an organised Iraqi fightback have disappeared as surely as the army that melted away. On the streets of Basra yesterday, British tanks and Warriors vied for space with buses and taxis, donkey carts and private cars. People tooted their horns as the soldiers drove past, and from the narrow side alleys cutting between densely packed houses in the poorer parts of the city, children poured out to watch this new and fascinating army driving by. Throughout the city, along the roads lined with palm trees and banked high with piles of fly-blown rubbish, people came out to wave and give the thumbs -up sign to the British troops. There were some indications of the brief fighting which had dominated the first day; buildings smashed and reduced to rubble, concrete floors hanging precariously, their supports blown away. But of the Fedayeen, the militia that had tried to stem the British advance with its rocket-propelled grenades and mortars, and AK47s, there was no sign. At every stop the tanks made, people pushed forward to tell the troops of more piles of weapons left abandoned, more palaces where the Fedayeen had stayed. "Children are playing with the bombs and the guns the Fedayeen have left behind," one man told a tank commander. Miming an explosion, throwing his arms wide open, he wanted the soldiers to blow up the weapons haul. "There are lots of bombs and guns in that building. The Fedayeen left them there," he said. Others in the crowd pointed out the two-storey house where the Fedayeen had been. The soldiers noted the location and passed its grid reference back over their radios. Later, it would be visited by D Company and found to contain a large haul of weapons, RPGs and mortars, more machinegun rounds, but no Fedayeen. Mounds of burning paperwork suggested they had not long left. From the shattered remains of the security-service building near the centre of town, tanks and armoured patrols foraged further and further into areas of the city still unvisited, clanking over the kerbstones and into the chaotic mass of vehicles thronging the streets. Their patrols took them through the slums, past waterways turned deep red by pollutants, past the shops opening their doors again for business now the shooting had stopped, through the areas renamed on the military maps after the names of Scottish rivers - Dee, Tweed, Earn and Spey. Another shanty town area had been codenamed Bronx. In the Kut-as-Sayyed area, they stopped again to talk to the people clustering round the tanks, the streets dusty, the city hot and humid, slightly overcast but already baking, flies everywhere and the smell of sulphur catching in the throat. "We will be happy when there are no more problems," one man said. The young boys, braver than the others, pressed forward against the tanks, asking the soldiers' names. A man who spoke good English, but who laughed when they asked his name, told them the British had to help the people now the old regime was gone. "The future is much better than we are now but we need you to protect our establishments and homes from the people who are stealing from us. We need protection," he said. "The Fedayeen have run away, but they are still around. We are not safe yet." People were afraid of the explosions which rocked the night, and the sudden bursts of gunfire that rattled around the city, he said. The water had run also run dry. In the Al Jummariya district, on the outer edge of one of the slums - the upper level of the lower class, as one soldier put it - they pressed around the tanks again, young boys in football shirts, one clutching a ball. "Football," a soldier said, and the small boys all cheered. From the narrow lanes, criss-crossed with telegraph lines and festooned with television aerials, more children ran out, mothers urging them on. Only once did anyone show signs of disapproval, a father appearing from out of a building and striding through the crowd, snatching his son by the arm and clipping him round the head as he dragged him away. As they moved along the dirty streets, the young boys raced alongside, desperate to keep up. The man with the flowers approached from the side of the road, and the tanks slowed to accept his gift. When they stopped again, it was in an area which seemed to house some of the city's middle class. Families were standing by the gates of their more substantial homes, their gardens green against the concrete uniformity of their homes. In the heart of another crowd, a man was pushing his way to the front. His English was good, and he was clearly an educated man. His name was Jamal Hussein, and he was no friend of the old regime, he said. He wanted to help the British, he said. "We are not resisting the British, the British Army is welcome," he told the soldiers. "But we are worried about what the future is because a new Iraqi government has not come yet. People want democracy, nobody wants the Baath Party. "If there are Fedayeen still here, they have thrown away their guns and surrendered because their leaders have run away and they are not fighting for a cause." There were maybe 3,000 Baath Party members in the city, he said, but they were staying in their houses; they were afraid. But there was concern that they might not yet be finished. "People will give information about the Baath Party because they don't want them to reorganise. If they can reorganise, the British Army will be in trouble," he said. He was worried, too, about the looting and lawlessness that had come to the city since the Iraqi regime in Basra crumbled. People were taking the law into their own hands, he said. "People are throwing stones at thieves; today we caught three thieves at the bank," he said. "We need the British Army to keep police around the banks and important buildings. They are coming to liberate us, not to let in thieves. That is one of the drawbacks of war. "Most people are uneducated. They think it is Saddam Hussein's property but it is not, it is people's property. They have destroyed the telephone exchange and there are other urgent things we need. If the British Army wants to be welcome, they have to help with these things." But the British Army knows it must get the city back on its feet, and quickly. They have learnt the lessons of Az Zubayr, the neighbouring town which gave them so much trouble until they managed to get in the humanitarian aid and switch back on the water. Within days, they found they were able to walk safely down streets where earlier they had faced attack. The man who led the British push into Basra, Lieutenant Colonel Mike Riddell -Webster, the commanding officer of the Black Watch, was pondering how quickly the situation had changed. A couple of days earlier, he had been co-ordinating what should have been just another raid into the city but, as the Scottish regiment pushed on further and the resistance began to crumble, he seized his chance. Calling up the rest of his battlegroup, which he had brought forward in case the opportunity arose to push on further, he gave the order to advance. Then, having gone all the way in, "we decided to push harder. We turned south and headed for the centre of town. The further south we went the more pleased to see us people seemed". But he also acknowledged things could have turned out differently. Tons of ammunition and weapons have already been recovered, and yesterday British troops were still finding many more hauls tucked away in schools and other buildings taken over by the militia. "Had the regular army stood and fought and used those weapons, it would have been much more difficult," he said. The army knows it will be in Basra for some time to come but, for now, as the Americans push further into Baghdad, they hope their war may soon be over.
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................................................................................................................. Copyright ©2004 Gethin Chamberlain. All rights reserved. |
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