A single shot rang out in the fetid summer heat of the Basra night. The British crew of a stationary Warrior saw the sniper's distant muzzle flash and returned a few rounds. It seemed an insignificant moment in last year's fighting and soon they turned their attention to the sounds of larger gunbattles of a continuing operation.

So the soldiers did not realise that one bullet had passed through the gap in their driver's turret — raised a few inches to give him relief from the heat — and killed him. Private Craig Barber lay dead in his tiny compartment, the engine idling, for 15 minutes before his commander gave the order to move. It was only then, puzzled by his failure to respond, that his comrades discovered he was dead.

Craig Barber was the last soldier to be killed on an operation performed by the Basra Palace battle group last year before its withdrawal from the city a few weeks later in September. His lonely moment of death and the desperate fight that followed it symbolised the abandoned state of the last British units in the city.

Four years earlier the British Army had gone into Basra with lofty aims: regime change, liberation and the neutralisation of phantom WMDs. By the time Private Barber was killed, Basra had become a dirty word. The British strategy to weaken militias by recruiting them into the city's police force had backfired, producing a partisan body allied to the insurgents.

The murder of Baha Musa, the Basra hotel receptionist beaten to death in British custody in 2003, had stained the Army's image. Severe cuts in troop levels undermined its ability to mount operations. Foreign Office diplomats had fled. The soldiers in Basra Palace fought on alone against an increasingly well-armed and numerically superior enemy.

Those who argue all's well that ends well say the situation is far better than envisaged a year ago. The al-Mahdi Army has been driven from a city now under government control. The gang killings and the oppression of civil liberties have diminished. But these occurred largely through US and Iraqi Army efforts. At a key moment in March, as Iraqi and US forces fought to clear Basra of al-Mahdi Army insurgents, it was revealed that the small British force still in the city's airport, though supplying artillery and air support, was sidelined as the result of a deal of “accommodation” between Britain and the insurgents. The vulnerable moment of withdrawal from the palace in 2007 had been safeguarded by the release of some leading insurgent prisoners and an understanding for British units to stay out of the city.

However pragmatic, revelation of the deal did little to improve Britain's reputation. Now that Nouri al-Maliki has called a final close on the British presence in Basra, it is a matter of time until the last troops leave.

For the soldiers who served there, the sense of having fought an unpopular war will be hard to remove.

“We didn't ask to come here,” a British captain told me in Basra the night Private Barber died. “We are making incredible efforts and sacrifices. Yet sometimes it feels like our country and Government act like they wish we weren't here at all.”

Voices of judgment

Everybody thought that, because of their former experience in Iraq, the British would have a successful stay. However, when the various political authorities failed to improve things, resistance to the British presence in Basra started increasing. After scandals of mistreatment of Iraqi citizens, people started thinking that the British were no different to the US forces.

We saw British officers in the streets asking what services people needed, but very little was achieved. The only good thing British forces have done was to help to bring down Saddam Hussein. Even that turned out to be not for the sake of Iraq but for the vital interests of Britain and the US.

Sajid Hameed al-Rikabi, teacher of political science, law faculty, Basra University

I think the point of departure was in 2006, when the Americans began their surge. It would have been very difficult for the British to sustain such a surge on the ground with the troops they had. Those kind of small forces made it almost impossible to. So I think at that point, the die was cast. The British did not surge, they did not increase patrols in Basra, so they have been losing influence, as well as the confidence of al-Maliki and the people of Basra for some time.

The British forces in Basra are too small to do anything in a significant or positive way. They have been hanging about at the airbase, doing very little other than occasionallly being mortared or attacked.

I think it’s getting very close to the time now where part of the rationale for withdrawing would be to sustain operations in Afghanistan. If they don’t, it could lead to a very bad situation for US-UK relations. It would create a lot of bitterness, regardless of presidential elections in the US.

Thomas Donnelly, military operations expert at the American Enterprise Institute, a US think thank

The British and the Americans had a responsibility to preserve the Iraqi people and money and supply all services. Even now, Basra has no services. I just had to take a woman from my family to a private hospital because public hospitals are in a bad condition. The streets are not good. Rationing is getting worse. The Shatt al-Arab waterway is metres away yet nobody put in a generator and a pump to supply even untreated water. The ports in Basra produce billions of Iraqi dinars monthly, but where do they go?

But their main mistake was not to protect people. I can’t see anything good that they have done in Basra.

Kadhim al-Ribat, general chief of the al-Gatarna tribe

The British approach in southern Iraq has been quite different from the American approach in the central parts of the country. The positive aspect is a greater degree of neutrality. By doing less in terms of intervention and manipulation of local politics, the British have allowed a relatively diverse political landscape to emerge, with the Fadila party in control in Basra and the Sadrists in Maysan. This is a contrast to Shia areas further north, where the Americans have consistently supported the efforts of one party, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.

But the negative aspect is that militia rule and the Iranian role in local politics was never rooted out. Basra was a special opportunity for the British in this regard, because the Fadila party is fervently anti-Iranian. In fact, policing the border against Iranian infiltration is probably one of the few tasks the British could have performed without being accused of undue meddling — but they failed to make this a No 1 priority.

Reidar Visser is Editor of the website www.historiae.org and the author of Basra, the Failed Gulf State

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