The bulk of Britain’s remaining troops in Iraq will leave by the summer, but their departure will have little more than a symbolic impact on the ground, with American forces already in place to take over the workload.

A handover ceremony tomorrow marks the beginning of the end of the British mission, with Major-General Andy Salmon, commander of coalition forces in southern Iraq, due to transfer his authority to an incoming US general. He and his staff will then fly home, followed by most of the rest of the 4,100 contingent.

Britain says that its job is done in Basra because a set of finite goals have been met, such as training the Iraqi Army, but much work remains for the incoming American troops who are already hard at work mentoring the Iraqi police and helping to secure Iraq’s porous southern border with Iran.

Brigadier Tom Beckett, deputy commander of British Forces in Basra, says that it is important to set fixed targets, noting that in Sierra Leone the military had been accused of “mission creep” by adding new tasks once old ones were achieved.

“As the British army we can do so much and we should set ourselves certain goals,” he said. “You can’t have it both ways. An awful lot of people have wanted us out for an awful long time. Now that we are going they can’t want us to stay.”

Britain took control of Basra and Iraq’s three other southern-most provinces after the March 2003 invasion, heading a coalition of militaries including troops from Australia, Denmark, Italy and the Netherlands.

Over time, other members of the “coalition of the willing” pulled out, leaving Britain as the last major foreign military presence in the country alongside the United States, which is also drawing down its numbers.

With more than 140,000 servicemen and women in Iraq, however, the US exit will take much longer and be far more of a test of the capabilities of the Iraqi Government and Iraqi Armed Forces than the small, British departure.

“We are not the first to go home. We are going home at the end,” said Brigadier Beckett. “The end is a two-year end period but we are going home at the end.”

US combat forces are due to pull out of city centres by June 30 to bases outside of town. President Obama has also pledged to reduce the overall US contingent to no more than 50,000 troops by August 2010, with the remainder due to leave by the end of the next year.

Iraqis, however, are sceptical whether foreign forces will truly exit their country so punctually, looking at Germany and Japan – where US troops retain a presence decades after the Second World War – as examples of their enduring shadow.

Tellingly, British military expertise will stay in Iraq after the July 31 deadline for most British forces to leave. Around 400 troops and officers will remain to help with training and also to fill staff positions at the coalition headquarters in Baghdad.

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