As Britain prepares to hand control of Basra to the Iraqi Army, its British-trained troops are to face their first real test hundreds of miles north in Baghdad. Two battalions of the Iraqi Army’s southern-based 10th Division have arrived in the capital to be deployed in the new “surge” plan.

After days of intensive training by the British Army near Basra, 1,500 soldiers from al-Amarah and al-Nasiriya will be integrated with Iraqi and US troops fanning out on to the streets.

They are a small element of the 80-90,000 troops, police, US soldiers and security guards who are to implement Operation Imposing Justice — the Baghdad security crackdown that will decide the fate of Nouri al-Maliki’s Government.

The southern battalions’ British mentors are upbeat about their readiness to fight, while conceding that the Iraqis required intensive training for shortcomings in basic military skills — such as shooting and planning operations.

“They are pretty well-prepared. We have trained them like fury, largely concentrating on weapons firing,” said Colonel Stephen Kilpatrick, who accompanied them to Baghdad. He conceded that British commanders were “quite concerned” that there may be a repeat of last August’s refusal by some southern troops to serve in Baghdad, and regarded this deployment as “a bit of a test”. However, he said that it may prove advantageous to have their first real test in a city where they do not have to worry so much about fighting relatives or fellow tribesmen.

In Basra, he said: “There are occasions when the Iraqi Army would be in a position to confront the militias but often don’t. A lot of them are from Basra so they consider it fighting on their own doorstep.”

Although sometimes the troops appeared reluctant to take the initiative “once they have made contact, I reckon they will come on in leaps and bounds . . . they are quite up for this,” he said. He identified the most common shortcomings among Iraqi soldiers as “weapons skills, fitness, basic tactics and leadership”, with some showing little sign of having handled their Kalashnikovs during the Baathist regime and in the early years of the post-Saddam era.

Their failings were ironed out by weeks of preparation for the Baghdad-bound troops, he said, including a five-day retraining programme in Basra concentrating on target shooting and weapons handling, with more training in Baghdad.

The 10,000 other 10th Division troops across the British-run south would undergo similar courses in coming months, he said, including being trained in live-fire exercises, running checkpoints, patrolling, searching houses, cars and people and planning operations at company level.

The two Basra battalions will be sent to very different areas, Colonel Kilpatrick said. One will go to the Shia-majority Sadr City, the heartland of the radical anticoalition cleric Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr, and the other to the Sunni Baghdad district of Salman Pak.

He said that they would start with basic operations such as “simple patrolling and conveying a presence in a particular area before eventually they are in a position to do more offensive operations.

“I am optimistic that they will give a good account of themselves, certainly after this training.”

One day in Iraq

— President al-Talabani was flown to Jordan after collapsing from exhaustion. Aides denied that he had undergone surgery after a heart attack. They said he was recovering and walking around his hospital room

— The Prime Minister, announced that the Cabinet had approved a draft law to clear the way for sharing oil revenues among Shia, Sunni and Kurdish communities

— The US military showed reporters a weapons cache including 150 copper discs used in armour-piercing bombs. American officials have claimed that such devices, which have killed more than 170 US soldiers, are smuggled in from Iran

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