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May 8, 2004, Scotsman ABUSE PHOTOGRAPHS DESTROY GOOD WORK OF BRITISH SOLDIERS Gethin Chamberlain Defence Correspondent "WHY haven't these men got water?" Sergeant Derek Armstrong was looking at the mass of bodies pressing against the bars of the prison cells in central Basra. The prisoners were crammed 25 or 30 to a cell, half-naked in the heat, the rank odour of their bodies spilling out into the small courtyard around which the cells were clustered. Sgt Armstrong and his men, from the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, had stopped to inspect the prison in Basra where 397 people were packed in by Iraqis recruited by the coalition forces. He was not impressed. He had just left the al-Maqal police station, where he ripped into the guards, demanding to know why the prisoners were living in filth. Sgt Armstrong was furious, and embarrassed. "Sort it out," he told the guards, "Just sort it out." This is the real face of the British army in Iraq, the side far removed from the pictures that appeared in the Mirror newspaper over the last week. But while, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the Mirror continues to insist its photographs are genuine, British forces are tarred with the same brush as the Americans - as bullies, and worse. No-one really doubts there are a few people in every army who will disgrace their uniform and the country they serve. Facing frequent attacks, sweltering in the heat of the Iraqi summer, seeing friends die, it seems inevitable that some will crack and take out their frustrations on people they have picked up on suspicion of involvement in those attacks. And yet the truth is that there is a deep-seated anger among most of the British forces serving in Iraq and those who have been out there that anyone could have let down their friends by behaving in such a manner. The truth is that a small number of examples of indiscipline, some of which it now appears were already known about, have been portrayed as the tip of an iceberg, the ugly face of an army out of control. Bad news like that travels fast. British forces once trusted or at least tolerated by the majority of the Shia population in southern Iraq have now found themselves portrayed on Arabic television stations and in Iraq's burgeoning free press as no better than the Americans whose reputation, justified or not, for shooting first and asking questions later has made their time in the country so difficult. Until the last week, the British genuinely believed they were making progress. True, they have faced an upsurge in violence in recent weeks, but much of that can be attributed to the knock-on effects of the United States' stand-off with supporters of the rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and other groups jockeying for power. The Argylls have been in southern Iraq since January. Spread out from the Al Faw peninsula in the south up to al-Amarah on the road from Basra to Baghdad, they have spent months training the new Iraqi police and civil defence corps. As the impact of images of British troops urinating on an Iraqi prisoner and beating him with rifles resonate around the Arab world, their job has just become much harder. But the results are encouraging. There are varying levels of success, but there is growing confidence they are heading in the right direction. Up in al-Amarah, the scene of some of the most violent attacks on British forces, B company of the Argylls is endeavouring to fast-track the police and civil defence corps from basic training to units capable of operating on their own in a couple of months. The company patrols the rural areas and the outskirts of the town. "They are seeing that the country has taken a step forwards," said Lieutenant Stuart Muirhead, a platoon commander. "The ICDC Iraqi police and civil defence corps is aware that they have to provide a stable Iraq and they are aware of the approach to take." According to Private Bryan Gallagher, 25, from Paisley, some of the local children have started picking up Scottish phrases. "We get mixed reactions but they are happy to see the CF coalition force ," he said. "When you're going through the towns they are saying 'ICDC good, British good'. One of the boys from Montrose has got them saying 'I bide in Aberdeen' and 'Och aye the noo'." All that good work has been undone. And when the British luck runs out, as it will, and soldiers are killed by Iraqis whose anger has been inflamed by those photographs, it will be hard to argue with those who say that the publication of those images was to blame.
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................................................................................................................. Copyright ©2004 Gethin Chamberlain. All rights reserved. |
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