IRAQ

Arab News via Rense: Brits Abandon Major Southern Iraq Base

-- On Friday, Aug. 25, the Washington Post published a startling story from its Baghdad bureau. I can do no better than to quote its opening paragraph: "British troops abandoned a major base in southern Iraq on Thursday and prepared to wage guerrilla warfare along the Iranian border to combat weapons smuggling, a move that anti-American cleric Moqtada Sadr called the first expulsion of US-led coalition forces from an Iraqi urban center. 'This is the first Iraqi city that has kicked out the occupier!' trumpeted a message from Sadr's office that played on car-mounted speakers in Amarah. 'We have to celebrate this occasion!'"

Details painted the larger picture. Local resentment had boiled into anger when British soldiers entered a mosque to make arrests. Insurgents, clearly loyal to Sadr, began shelling the British base, Camp Abu Naji, which had 1,200 soldiers and was on the border of Iran. In simple language, the British withdrew from the camp, which was looted when they left, so clearly the withdrawal was less than orderly. The decision may have been encouraged by the fact that "the 2nd Battalion of the Iraqi Army's 4th Brigade mutinied".