NOBODY in the British military was naive enough to believe, when their soldiers were patrolling Basra on foot in those first weeks after the invasion in 2003, that Iraq’s second city was guaranteed to retain its apparent welcome for its “liberators”.

The omens looked promising at the start. Local imams who had suffered under Saddam Hussein instructed their followers to give this new army a chance. Until then, people in Basra knew only how to fear anyone in uniform.

Of course there was resistance from those who profited from Saddam, and who swore to make life as uncomfortable as possible for their unwanted guests. Even so, despite the threat of snipers and ambush, those first tentative patrols were told to take off their helmets, pull on their berets and walk the wide, dusty avenues of this scruffy port city that run off in all directions alongside a maze of stagnant canals.

The men kept their rifles pointed at the ground and, just as they learnt from sometimes bitter experiences in Northern Ireland and the Balkans, they stopped for a chat with local shopkeepers when they could and allowed crowds of children, confident the troops would part with sweet rations before long, to scamper alongside them.

This was no stunt for the cameras. British commanders were convinced that their “softly softly” approach to peacekeeping was likely to reap more dividends than the more intimidating tactics their American allies were employing in Baghdad and troublesome towns further west. As US casualties rose, US commanders argued that theirs was the more dangerous mission, pacifying the heartland of Sunni insurgents. But their insistence on charging around in armoured vehicles only antagonised local families whom the Americans appeared to treat with contempt.

By comparison, Basra looked like a model city. It should be remembered that there were mistakes made down south as well. The British attempt to disarm everyone apart from those volunteering to join the new Iraqi police service ended in disaster in a lawless frontier town called al-Majir al-Kabir.

There, tribal leaders had refused to part with their guns on Saddam’s say-so and when British troops tried to enforce their edict it ended with the murder in June 2003 of six Royal Military Policemen trapped in a police station.

That remains one of the most grievous losses that the British Army has suffered, but it learnt to change its approach. It was more successful at persuading recruits to sign up for the police and army and encouraged gunmen to join them from established militias such as the Badr Brigade, whose leaders had spent most of the Saddam years in exile in Iran.

But city elders in Basra claimed that British commanders ignored their warnings that other militias, such as al-Mahdi Army, led by Hojatoleslam Moqtada al-Sadr, were fast becoming the established order.

As British troops pulled back to their barracks, leaving it to their local protégés to police their own city, there were complaints that the militias were infiltrating the fledgling security force.

The Mahdi used police stations as their own strongholds. These Shia gunmen used the uniforms as cover to dispense their own rough justice to their Sunni rivals and anyone else who thwarted their will.

In retrospect the British took too long to take on these renegades. Whitehall was keen to see Iraqis police themselves if there were to be any chance of withdrawing the 8,000 Britons.

The militias sensed there was a vacuum and filled it. Last September, two SAS men on an undercover mission to target these Mahdi death squads were arrested after they crashed through a checkpoint, and opened fire as they tried to escape. When diplomacy failed, a British rescue force demolished a prison wall and freed their men.

The already strained relations with Mohammed al-Walli, the provincial governor, worsened in February when British newspapers carried video of troops beating young Iraqi detainees after a riot in Amarah in 2004.

The irony of this weekend’s tragedy is that it came as political relations were improving and elements of the Iraqi police and army were beginning to prove their willingness to take on the militias, whom the new Prime Minister, Nouri al-Malaki, has vowed to eradicate.

The next few uneasy days will tell whether Basra is to suffer a new wave of bloodletting, but sanguine British commanders recognise that it is impossible to return to those days in May 2003 when this city was a success story.

KILLED IN ACTION

• Two British soldiers serving with 7th Armoured Brigade killed in March 2006 by a roadside bomb in al-Amarah in southern Iraq
• 10 killed in RAF Hercules shot down in January 2005 while flying from Baghdad
• Three soldiers of The Black Watch killed by a suicide bomber south of Baghdad in November 2004
• Three Royal Military Police soldiers killed in central Basra in August 2003
• Six Royal Military Police soldiers killed at al-Majar al-Kabir in June 2003
• Six Royal Navy personnel killed when two Sea Kings collided over the Gulf in March 2003
• Eight members of 3 Commando Brigade died when the helicopter in which they were travelling crashed south of the Kuwaiti border in March 2003

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