Lies about lies

It was never the case that the MoD was going to take the charge of lying without attempting a comeback and, sure enough, after Stephen Grey's piece in The Guardian that we looked at last week, Nick Gurr, the MoD's Director of Media and Communications, has tried his hand at a rebuttal on the MoD website.

Addressing the issues that the "MOD is restricting access to conflict zones" and that journalists have been "lied to and censored", Gurr deals with each in turn.

The points he makes on the access issue look eminently reasonable, stating the obvious – that air transport to theatre is limited and that there is an increasing demand for media access, which cannot be met. Gurr would have it that the MoD is doing its best, the number of media visits to operational theatres (Iraq and Afghanistan) having increased from 152 in the year to Oct 2007 to 246 in the year to May 2009. For Afghanistan during the same period they rose from 90 to 116 - an increase of more than 25 percent.

What Gurr does not say though is that much of the increase is through a programme of encouraging reporters from regional and local papers to follow their home regiments – ranks of very often inexperienced and compliant journalists, many of whom (not all) who lack specialist knowledge and thus are easy prey for the military propaganda machine.

An example of this comes with a recent piece from Harry Miller of the Surrey Comet, writing about a re-supply mission to a patrol base 2km west of the Musa Qala District Centre.

He travels with the 3 Scots in "some of the newly delivered Jackal armoured vehicles, used for reconnaissance, rapid assault, fire support and convoy protection." These, presumably, are the Jackal 2s, the virtues of which Miller extols, telling us that, "The new design of the vehicles has meant that Improvised Explosive Devices are having less of the desired effect and crews are much more likely to survive the impact with only minimal injuries."

Following on from Harding's piece on 1 June, expressing "safety concerns" about the Jackals, no self-respecting specialist defence correspondent would have written such an uncritical piece.

For the MoD to have got Miller to have written such a glowing testament – which could only have been repeating what he had been told – was, therefore, something of a coup, representing hard core propaganda from an unwitting journalist.

Yet, four days after the piece was published, Major Sean Burchall was killed – the most senior British Army officer to date in Afghanistan – in a Jackal. It may well have been a Jackal 2. Yet, while the MoD is happy to see "puffs" for the Jackal, when it comes to bad publicity for the machine, the MoD website is curiously silent.

Throughout the piece on Burchall's death, there is no mention of the Jackal, reference being made only to "armoured vehicles", a description which would not normally be applied to this equipment.

To favour relatively impressionable reporters, which then justifies restricting more frequent access by experienced journalists, and then to omit details of the Jackal in the press release, cannot be called lying or anything so obvious. But these are nonetheless classic examples of how the MoD seeks to manipulate the message to the public.

Gurr, however, claims that the MoD "wants the media to see first hand the efforts of our forces in Afghanistan", to which effect he argues that "our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines are our best advocates," on which basis it is "in our interests to get the media there to see it for themselves." We owe it to our forces to ensure their story is told, adds Gurr.

In fact, though, the MoD's prime concern is to get the media to report the "story" it wants them to report. Those journalists who are compliant find that the MoD cannot be too helpful. Those who question the official line find that all sorts of difficulties arise when they want access to theatre or want to talk to people on the ground.

If this is the subtle – and deniable – end of media control, the plain lie is also a tool of the trade. But, to be credible, the lie must be denied. Thus does Gurr aver, "We don't tell lies. We are not allowed to." Of course, this is a lie.

We have far too many examples of outright lies from the MoD to believe otherwise – from the denial that there was major fighting in al Amarah during the height on the Mahdi uprising in 2005, to the false expectations raised on the conduct of Operation Sinbad in late 2007 to the falsehoods perpetrated over the recovery of Musa Qala, pretending that it was an Afghan-led operation.

The strict definition of the lie, however, encompasses more than just the telling of an untruth. It takes in not only the act, but default or sufferance – the processes of allowing untruths to be perpetuated for want of interventions that would correct them.

These are the common fare of the MoD but its tenuous grasp of the meaning of truth leads it further down the path of deception than can be imagined. One classic – and frequently employed stratagem – is to keep quiet about operations which would be of interest to specialists, using its own staff or journalists to cover the events and then only to publish the details if they go to plan – whatever the plan was.

That was the strategy adopted with Operation Sond Chara (Operation Red Dagger), over Christmas last. No embeds were present through the whole operation and only a very carefully sanitised version was released to the public.

The same goes, of course, for the deaths of individual soldiers. Stephen Grey complained that there was less coverage of British deaths than they deserve because the MOD was not getting journalists to the front line. Gurr disagrees, declaring that his organisation produces detailed eulogies "for all our people who are killed in action." That might be the case but, as we have seen with Major Burchall, the releases published by the MoD rarely include any significant operational detail.

For all Gurr's protests, though, he himself is most revealing about the real agenda. "There is a good story to be told in Afghanistan about all the things our forces are achieving in the toughest part of the theatre," he writes. "We want this story told and we want journalists there to help tell it." The journalists are there to tell the "good" story, and it is Gurr's job to make that happen.

COMMENT THREAD

It's started

Already, the media is second-guessing the Iraq inquiry, with The Times leading the fray.

Of four questions posed by defence editor Michael Evans, however, only one relates to the occupation, confirming that the media is going to be obsessed with the run-up to the war, rather than the occupation. And even then, the single question directed at the occupation is so limited in scope that it indicates nothing more than the narrowness of the perspective. Thus does Evans ask:

Why was the size of the British force in Iraq progressively reduced even though the troops there were coming under daily attack by an increasingly well-armed and well-trained extremist militia?

During 2005, 2006 and 2007 there were never enough troops to protect the Iraqi citizens living in Basra, and control of the city began to fall into the hands of the Iranian-backed Shia hardliners. By September 2007, the 500 remaining troops based inside the city were under such pressure that there was little alternative but to withdraw them to the relative safety of the airbase northwest of the city, leaving Basra to the mercy of the extremists.

What debate was going on in Whitehall at this time? Who, if anyone, was arguing that more, not fewer, troops were needed to safeguard the lives of Iraqis living in Basra, let alone the British soldiers themselves? Was anyone warning that the withdrawal of the last troops inside Basra might lead to a take-over by the Shia extremists and that this would be interpreted — by the Americans and by historians — as a defeatist move by the British, one which did no favours for the reputation of the British Army?

The questions, superficially, look sound enough, but they miss the point. In common with most of his contemporaries, Evans focuses unduly on Basra. Yet, any careful analysis of the campaign will suggest that the rot started not in Basra but with the desertion of al Amarah in August 2006. Arguably, had the base at Abu Naji been held, and the training and support of the 12th Division continued, Iraqi forces backed by the British could eventually have recovered the city.

For the British to have retained their foothold in the Abu Naji, however, two things were needed: the Army had to restore tactical mobility and then had to acquire the capability to deal with the indirect fire which was making that base untenable. Both were essentially equipment issues, reflecting procurement failures and High Command decisions rather than a lack of troops.

In this context, it is germane to note that, when the Iraqi Army subsequently recovered al Amarah in the operation called "promise of peace", starting in May 2008, it was heavily supported by US troops, without which the operation would not have been possible. The total commitment of US troops to Maysan province, however, never exceeded 2,500 – a fraction of the number of troops available to the British.

This demonstrates that troop numbers, although an issue in the early stages of the occupation, was not the decisive factor. What mattered was the equipment, the tactics and the timing, particularly in respect of the political developments which enabled prime minister Maliki to take on the Mahdi Army and defeat it.

You can, of course read the full story in Ministry of Defeat, without waiting for the outcome of the inquiry. This is the book that the media and the military are determined to bury.

Our publicist, appointed by the publisher and highly experienced in marketing books, has never before known such resistance to a book. And before committing his time an effort to the book, he made his own enquiries, sending copies to "senior ministry persons" for comment.

One told us that the book should be "compulsory reading" for all students at Sandhurst. They should be invited to state their reasons why the book was wrong, our source said, but they would find it very difficult to do. Most Army officers, he said, would agree in private with the thesis of the book, but none would admit it publicly. "There is a major cover-up going on," he added.

Although some details may be wrong, the book tells the substantive and hitherto untold story of the Iraqi occupation. That it should be told by an outsider is intolerable to the media, which comprehensively called it wrong, just as Evans is doing now. The inquiry is faced with a difficult job as there are many vested interests keen to see it get the wrong answers.

It will be interesting to see whether they prevail.

COMMENT THREAD

Our secret society - Part 1

Increasing government control of information – and its control of the agenda – has been almost the defining developments of the New Labour era, characterised by the oft-repeated accusations of "spin" levied at our masters.

But "spin" is only the most visible and obvious part of a huge government machine, which employs a vast range of subtle – and some not so subtle – tools to keep control. All government departments use these tools, from agriculture (DEFRA), through environment to defence and beyond.

Whenever you start probing government activities, you will come across the machine. Mostly though, at the receiving end, you will only see only tiny pieces of the jigsaw – or feel the effects. Most often, when you bump up against the restraints, so subtle are they that very few even recognise them for that they are.

However, while they do indeed affect the whole range of government activities, they are perhaps most visible (or detectable) in the defence establishment – not least because it has a valid reason for keeping some of its activities secret. But this also reflects that, of all the departments, it is one of the best practised and most developed in the art of dissimulation.

Nevertheless, in following the defence agenda – and latterly in writing the book Ministry of Defeat - I have become more aware of some of the techniques used. In what is going to have to be a series of posts, therefore, we thought it might be useful to identify some of them, used – with or without variations - in all departments of state to maintain our "secret society". In this post, we will look at some of the mechanisms for controlling the media.

Taking it from the top, the most obvious way of controlling the flow of information is to say nothing. This is still a standard technique. Even to this day, it is massively effective, to whit the events in the city of al Amarah in Maysan province, Iraq, in May through August 2004.

Throughout that period, there were a series of intense battles going on, amounting to all-out war between the British and the Mahdi Army, yet the massive scale of the conflict went completely unreported at the time – unreported because the MoD simply said nothing about it.

However, the truth – as they say – will always out. With such events, someone will always know something, and there will always be leaks. These cannot be prevented, so they must be contained. And it is here that the machine works at its most effective, with an increasingly subtle range of strategies employed.

The first and most effective tool is outright denial, close-coupled with the age-old device called "lying". Thus, when the fighting did break out in al Amarah, and word began to leak out, the first response of the MoD was simply to deny that there was heavy fighting, dismissing the fragmented reports as "isolated incidents", and downplaying their importance.

Here, choice of words become vital, as part of the overall technique. An attack on a convoy, for instance, becomes described as a "security incident", it is always an "isolated incident" and the duration limited. Thus, whenever the news leaks out – and however bad it was – the then current situation will always be described as being "calm and stable" or in similar terms.

One of the great advantages the MoD and the military have here is the control over access. In the al Amarah affair, with the city being in hostile territory some 200 miles or so north of Basra, journalists were totally reliant on the military for the physical means of getting there. And those journalists who asked to be taken to al Amarah were simply told there were no transport resources, or even more bluntly, simply "no".

For those journalists who persevere, the "big stick" can be used – and it is used. The first is the Official Secrets Act. Information will be classified and the journo will simply be told they cannot publish it or they will be in breach.

More often though – where the OSA cannot really be justified - a system called the "D-advisory" is used, the system which replaces the D-Notice system. journalists (or their editors) are "requested" not to publish certain information. Most editors will abide by this and, even if they do not, they will check out the options and that will often delay publication past the danger period and reduce the impact.

If a journalist still perseveres, the military can then invoke the "green book" which is "produced in consultation with editors and press and broadcasting organisations", where they can be required to "submit their material for security checking and to undertake not to publish any operationally sensitive material". And, of course, all journos are required to sign the declaration illustrated above.

It is here that the MoD has the ultimate sanction, as any breach of this "voluntary" agreement means that the journalist concerned will lose accreditation, whence all facilities are withdrawn. We will discuss this further in later posts, but it is something of a blunt instrument which itself can make a story, as the journalist then has nothing to lose.

More generally, therefore, other more subtle layers of controls come into play. One of these is the "trade", of which there are many variations. The most straightforward is to trade delay for detail. A journo may have only a small part of the story so the deal is that, if publication is held up, a "full" briefing will be given and the journo is then free to publish, on the basis of what they have been told.

Sometimes, this will be further sweetened by a promise of exclusivity, or a head start over the competition, so that the journo can break an "exclusive" days before his rivals.

The trade, however, often extends to content as well as timing. The exclusion of embarrassing rather than operationally sensitive material can be traded for access to high level contacts. Omission of a paragraph about a cock-up, for instance, can be swapped for a juicy "insider" quote from a field commander – or higher – on an exclusive basis.

For a journalist that is prepared to resist such blandishments, however, there are other techniques. One is pre-emptive publishing. Other journos may be given carefully tailored details early, which are withheld from the offender, allowing the rivals to go ahead with a sanitised version of the story, thus spiking the "scoop".

These, though, are only the more obvious controls. There are many more, and we will look at some of those in the next post.

COMMENT THREAD

The abolition of "defeat"

Another landmark in the British defeat in southern Iraq was reached today when Major General Andy Salmon, of the Royal Marines, formally handed command in Basra to his US Army counterpart Major General Michael Oates.

With that, the Royal Marine flag was lowered for the last time at Basra Air Station, when the flag of the US 10th Mountain Division was raised to replace the Marines’ colours.

The symbolism of this has been entirely lost on the commentators, but it was elements of the 10th Mountain Division which assisted the Iraqi Army in the recovery of al Amarah last June in operation Promise of Peace, after it had been abandoned by the British Army in August 2006, thus leaving the Mahdi Army free rein to turn the city into the bomb-making centre for the rest of the Shi'a insurgency.

Despite this senior British generals are celebrating the "enormous success" of UK troops in Iraq, having coined yet another term for "retreat". Such is the language of propaganda that the earlier retreats from al Amarah and then central Basra became "tactical moves" while the retreat from Basra Palace became a "repositioning". But the spin doctors have excelled themselves today, describing the current humiliating hand-over to the Americans, as a "Change in coalition command structure in southern Iraq".

If only Lt-Gen Percival had been so agile with terminology in February 1942, he would perhaps have gained his knighthood instead of ignominy, and gone on to greater things.

Certainly, the Orwellian decay of the language does not allow for the use of the words "surrender" or "defeat". We have achieved a glorious "change in coalition command structure" and now our troops can be "repositioned" elsewhere, where they can repeat the process all over again. Now that the word "defeat” has been abolished, there can be no stopping them.

COMMENT THREAD

Lost before it started – Part 7

In this final part, where we have explored the reasons for the British failure in Iraq, we turn the tables and speculate on whether they, despite the handicaps, could have succeeded. Reviewing what actually did happen after the British had retreated to their final base at Basra airport, we believe they could.

That is the ultimate tragedy. Instead of attracting the contempt of the Iraqis and the disdain of the Americans – who will never really trust us again – we could truly have walked out of Iraq with our heads held high, without having to pretend we had achieved success. It was that close – and that far.

Could it have been different?

At the start of the occupation in May 2003, the decision to cut back troops levels to 11,000 was disastrous, but not fatal. However, with that, Blair's decision to throw his lot in with the Europeans - compensating, many believe, for his failure to deliver the UK into the embrace of the single currency - seriously hampered the ability of the Army to deal with the insurgency.

And, having pledged the nation's armed forces to the Europeans and Iraq, he offered troops to reinforce the campaign in Afghanistan. That made a tight situation worse.

Even then, defeat was not inevitable. Looking at the campaign in the round, the single most egregious failure was the decision to abandon al Amarah, walking out on a half-trained and poorly equipped 10th Division. That was a major strategic error. Yet that decision itself was not initiated by the politicians but by the military.

Strangely, at the time, there had been very little discussion or debate. Equally, there was virtually no evaluation of the strategic consequences. Then, the "retreat" was an administrative decision. The "road map" had already been revealed by Gen Houghton in March, over three months earlier.

But "repositioning" in order to concentrate on Basra was wrong. Al Amarah was the Mahdi Army's major armoury and it would have made more strategic sense to have cut off the supply of arms at source before dealing with the problem of Basra. It was a "downstream" solution, akin to mopping up a floor after the bath had flooded, without first turning off the taps.

Dealing with the indirect fire

Of course, to have maintained forces at Abu Naji would have required dealing with the indirect fire – one of the main reasons why the base was vacated. Here, the main problems were the lack of suitable equipment, in particular UAVs, helicopters and MRAPs, plus C-RAM for base defence. All three could have been provided. Most were eventually provided, but too late. This was not a problem of money. It was about timing – and commitment.

Even in 2006, at a very late hour, had Gen Dannatt been able to break free of the Army’s obsession with FRES, he could have negotiated a major MRAP package. In exchange for scrapping FRES or putting it on the back-burner, substantially larger numbers of Mastiffs could have been bought, together with other, smaller MRAP vehicles. When this happened anyway in October 2008, it was too late for Iraq – and may be too late for Afghanistan.

As to helicopters, the Army was again partly the author of its own misfortune. Many times, cheaper options than the Future Lynx were offered, and rejected. Had the Army been intent on acquiring tactical helicopters rapidly, it could have had them. It was occasionally able to borrow US Blackhawks and the Americans also provided medivac helicopters, but this was not a reliable foundation on which to carry out planning.

The Army was actually offered a new fleet of Blackhawks off-the-shelf. It turned them down. As for UAVs, the MoD already had in place a replacement programme for the Phoenix, called Watchkeeper, modified Israeli Hermes 450s – with deliveries scheduled for 2010. The modifications, incidentally, were part of the FRES programme. They included fitting extra communications systems fit in with the proposed "network" that was at the heart of the system.

Because of the urgency of providing the Army with a UAV capability, in May 2007 the programme was brought forward with the purchase of the basic Hermes system off-the-shelf, direct from Israel. What was done then could have been done earlier, but for the determination to incorporate FRES modifications. Similarly, with C-RAM being ordered by the MoD in 2007, and temporary measures taken to ensure its early deployment, it is not untoward to argue that this equipment too could have been procured earlier.

With suitable equipment, holding the base at Abu Naji could have been tenable, buying time further to train and equip the Iraqi Army 10th Division. That perhaps could have allowed the Army, with existing resources, to back the Iraqis in recovering the city that much earlier, possibly as early as February/March 2008.

A fatal error

Instead of holding the line in al Amarah, the Army committed its main strength to Basra. And there it made a fatal mistake. In September 2006, it launched Operation Sinbad – a last-ditch operation to recover the city. It was well-planned and executed, but the timing was wrong.

Very much later, the Chief of the Defence Staff, Jock Stirrup, complained that the action had been "watered down" and lacked support from the Iraqi politicians, particularly Maliki. That was always going to be the case.

The British had misread the political situation in Iraq and had acted prematurely. Maliki was still in the grip of Muqtada's party and to have openly confronted the Mahdi at that time would have been political suicide. He had not by then secured his political base, weakening the political grip of Muqtada and could not take the same robust line that he took in 2008. The British would have been well advised to have husbanded their resources until a more propitious moment.

There were, though, the dangerous and debilitating attacks on the bases in Basra, but what held for al Amarah could equally have applied to them – with the probability that, without Abu Naji having been abandoned, the pressure on Basra would not have been as strong. Nor indeed would the insurgency in Sadr City been as troublesome, possibly liberating US resources for the fray.

A change in approach

One there had been a change in the balance of political power in Baghdad, things were possible which had previously been impossible. Then, had the British maintained their presence in al Amarah, a joint British/Iraqi move could have been made on the city, cleaning it out as happened with Operation Promise of Peace. This would have made dealing with Basra an easier proposition.

Arguably, with a British presence remaining in Basra, and the indirect fire being dealt with by technology instead of the wasteful use of manpower, the situation would not have deteriorated so far.

Instead of Basra becoming the battlefield in Charge of the Knights and al Amarah being taken without a shot fired, the situation might have been reversed. The battle would have been at al Amarah.

By June 2008, Muqtada was a busted flush and with British support, again using existing resources, the 10th/14th Iraqi Divisions could have walked into the Sadr strongholds in Basra without a shot being fired. The British, instead of skulking in their base in Basra airport, would have been central to the action, with a wholly different outcome to the one that has come to pass.

The tragedy is that this could have been done with existing manpower resources. Through the recovery of first Basra and then al Amarah, the US did not commit more than 2,500 troops – less than the British had available. What they had and the British did not, was the right equipment – and the right mental attitude.

A lack of commitment

To have won would have required the same degree of commitment injected by President Bush, Robert Gates and Gen David Petraeus. Yet, the Army - Dannatt in particular and Jackson before him - was not prepared to sanction what was required to fight a war that he and the rest of the Army no longer believed was winnable.

That was the real problem. Wars are won and lost in the minds of men. Even without the political drag, this war would have been lost because the Army had decided it was not worth winning. More to the point, it had decided that the price it would have to pay in order to win was unacceptable.

In Iraq, therefore, the Army was defeated by its own leaders. Indisputably, the major fault lay with the politicians, in particular, one man – Tony Blair. But the Army was not without fault. Its equipment was wrong, its tactics were wrong and, in the final analysis, it lost faith in its mission and gave up.

Whether Service chiefs could have made a difference lies in the realm of speculation. The indications are that they did not try. They accepted defeat and, in so doing, made it inevitable.

COMMENT THREAD

Lost before it started – Part 6

In this part six, we look at the vexed question of under-resourcing. Throughout the Iraqi campaign, the mantras of "underfunding" and "over-stretch" were frequently in the media and came easily from the lips of opposition politicians. More "boots on the ground" and more money were the answers to all ills. However, as always, there are more to these issues than meets the eye.

Underfunding

In August 2007, L/Sgt Chris Casey, and L/Cpl Kirk Redpath were getting murdered. They were pointless and unnecessary deaths. They had been "top covers" in a Snatch escorting a convoy of large trucks out from Kuwait and had been hit by an IED. Two other soldiers were seriously injured. The insurgents had seen the vehicles going down and were waiting for their return.

After all this time, when the Army had been losing Bulldogs, Warriors and even Challengers to IEDs, it was still sending men to die in Snatches. Mastiffs were in theatre and the soldiers' platoon commander had asked for one. Despite Mr Blair's assurances that the armed forces were "extremely well equipped," none had been available. And, for all these soldiers' sacrifice, neither had many "hearts and minds" been won on the six-lane motorway out of Kuwait where the "size and profile" of the Snatch had so obviously and desperately been needed.

A day later, Col Bob Stewart - "former UN commander of British troops in Bosnia" – was on the Today programme. He ventured that the Army was taking the casualties because: "we cannot dominate the ground". The options, he said, were to "retake and dominate the ground, or abandon it."

However, Liam Fox, shadow defence secretary, said the Army was paying for the Government's mistake of not investing enough men, equipment or money into reconstruction at the time of the invasion. "It's tragic that our Armed Forces are paying the price of a lack of political care and planning," he said.

Six months later, L/Cpl Redpath's girlfriend, Sharon Hawkes, echoed this theme: "It was underfunding by the Government that killed him," she said. But she had been pre-empted by Lord Rees-Mogg, who observed:

Throughout the Iraq war, our Forces have been short of suitable armoured vehicles. For years, the Basra palace run had to be performed in vulnerable Snatch vehicles; these have only recently been replaced by the Warrior, which is itself vulnerable to roadside bombs. Unlike American vehicles, the Warrior is not air-conditioned and can get unbearably hot in the sun.

These problems, Rees-Mogg – together with hundreds of the commentariat - attributed to "underfunding", thus illustrating the shallowness of the public debate. The Army had been turning down immediate funding in order to pursue the Eldorado of its £16 billion fleet of medium-weight armoured vehicles, an issue that had almost completely escaped attention.

Even at a more prosaic level, Rees-Mogg was out of touch. Warriors had been available since before the occupation and the use of the Snatch had been a policy issue. There had been no funding issues. Not least, the cost of operating Warriors was £250 per track mile, in normal peacetime use.

Aside from the far better protection afforded by the Mastiff – which was also fitted with powerful and highly effective air conditioning – this vehicle was far cheaper to run. The operational savings alone would have justified their use. And, compared with buying a basic FRES utility vehicle at £8 million each, the Mastiff – and Ridgeback – comes out at less than one eighth the cost, with far more durability and real-world capability.

Significant savings had been demonstrated by US forces, primarily through reduced long-term medical care, rehabilitation, and death benefit payments arising from the lower casualty rate. Additionally, many damaged MRAPs could be repaired and returned to service while conventional vehicles would often have to be written off.

Vehicles with add-on armour were also suffering reduced servicability and shorter lives. MRAPs lasted considerably longer. These factors, together with the decrease in force replacement costs due to casualties and improvements in operational effectiveness, made the MRAP significantly less costly than legacy vehicles.

It would have been cheaper to have bought L/Sgt Casey and L/Cpl Redpath their own personal Mastiff and kept them alive. But the Generals wanted their toys.

Light aviation

The funding problem, of course, was far more complex than either politicians or media allowed for. Take, for instance, the need for airborne surveillance – for tasks as diverse as intelligence gathering and providing "top cover" for routine convoys.

One obvious answer, as part of a mixed package of capabilities, would have been the use of light aircraft. However, the British had no such capability. The Iraqi Air Force did – militarised two-seater, single-engined club trainers called the Sama 2000. Purchased for £363,000 each, their surveillance equipment was capable of detecting a man-sized target at two miles range from 2,000ft – or a hidden bomb.

They were occasionally used to support British forces in Maysan. Although the aircraft were limited in their capabilities, they carried exactly the same optical equipment as the giant, four-engined Nimrod MR4 maritime surveillance aircraft, one of which was so tragically to crash while on a mission in Afghanistan in September 2006.

A fleet of Nimrods was being operated out of Oman, flying up the Gulf and deep inland to provide support for ground operations. Costing £30,000 an hour to operate and flying sorties of twelve hours duration – more with air-to-air refuelling – three days-worth of flying set back the military budget £1 million. The Samas provided a “good enough” solution to the problem of providing low-level airborne surveillance.

But that was not the British way. While "good enough" was entirely acceptable as a military solution to Iraq, when it came to equipment, hugely expensive adapted maritime aircraft or £14 million Future Lynx helicopters delivered in 2014 or sometime never – with very similar camera equipment – were the preferred option. As so very often in British military thinking, the best was the enemy of the good.

This lack of flexibility and the determination to opt for the "best" long-term solution – even though it would not be available for many years - was to deprive the Army of crucial air support. Through the Second World War, it had enjoyed its own light reconnaissance capability with the single-engined Auster – another adapted club aircraft.

Operating in far more dangerous environments than Iraq, its losses were remarkably low. The type was used in Aden and Oman, supplemented by the more powerful DHC Beaver, which also provided welcome support in Northern Ireland where it was the Army’s primary surveillance platform.

In other Armies, light fixed-wing aviation also had a long history, with the Australian Army in the Vietnam War operating Pilatus Porter for reconnaissance, liaison and for communications relay, the latter function carried out in Iraq by the Nimrod.

The Porter was an interesting aircraft. With exceptional short-field performance, it is still in production and with an airframe cost of around £2 million and low operating costs (under £2,000 an hour), it or something similar could have provided a useful stopgap. However, a fixed-wing option was never considered. In the early 70s, the Army Air Corps had converted to an all-helicopter fleet, with a few exceptions.

Techology galore - but not yet

One of those exceptions, though, was the two-engined Britten Norman Defender surveillance aircraft. Four of these were purchased in 2003, at a cost of £4.5 million each. Some were deployed to Iraq but, despite extensive inquiries, no reports of their performance were ever released.

They cannot have been overly successful because in May 2007 the MoD announced the order of four highly sophisticated Beechcraft King Air 350 aircraft - designated the Shadow R - as replacements, costed at £14 million each. Not intended for service until 2010, these were far too late for Iraq.

Meanwhile, the RAF had been waiting for five R1 Sentinel surveillance aircraft. Ordered in 1999 at a cost of just over £1 billion, it was equipped with high performance radar based on the equipment used in the U-2 "spy-plane" of Cold War fame.

It could – without any trace of exaggeration – detect footprints in the desert sand from an altitude of 20,000 feet. Originally intended to be operational by 2005, the date was deferred to 2007 because of development problems, then to 2008 and finally to 2010, once again far too late for Iraq.

This was a disease affecting the whole military establishment. With no end of high-performance kit just over the horizon, the money had been committed yet the capabilities were not available. However, their very existence as projects blocked – both financially and intellectually – consideration of cheap stopgap solutions that were "good enough" to solve immediate problems.

Boots on the ground

In May 2007, "senior army officers" were worried that Gordon Brown – soon to become prime minister - was going to cut the number of troops in Iraq to such a low level that their effectiveness would be jeopardised and lives endangered.

One officer complained: "We are sitting ducks and have very little in the way of resources to react. If we mount an operation to deter a mortar attack it takes an entire battle group and ties up all our people." Any further reductions in numbers, said the officer, would leave British troops "hanging onto Basra by our finger tips".

This was the limit of the argument and the public perception. More attacks required more troops for defence or, at least, the retention of existing manpower, with an officer openly stating that it took a complete battle group – some 500 men – to "deter a mortar attack".

Between May and July, as efforts to counter the increasing mortar fire had failed, with attacks intensifying by the day, five men were killed by indirect fire and two on the fruitless task of deterring mortar attacks. Many more were injured. Thousands of man hours had been expended, and dozens of operations launched, to no avail.

Yet, in early July, USAF operators of a Predator UAV had observed insurgents fire two mortar bombs then load the tube into the trunk of their vehicle. They had launched a Hellfire from the Predator, hitting the front of the car and destroying it. This was the job for which the British needed an entire battle group.

The task that the British were attempting could have been accomplished by a small fleet of Predators UAV armed with Hellfire missiles. This would have required no more than a few dozen men who would never have been exposed to any personal risk. By contrast, the profligate use of manpower – and money - did not achieve results. It was not the only example, by any means.

A waste of resource

In May 2007 the MoD bought new fleet of "munitions disposal vehicles" replacing its existing fleet of very similar vehicles. At a cost of £415,000 each – a cool £7.5 million – these were 18 Swiss-built trucks called the "Tellar".

They were unarmoured vans. Like the Vector, they had a "cab forward" design, making them extremely vulnerable to IED attack. There was only concession to the fact that they going into war zones: they had "a level of riot protection" - mesh screens on the windows.

However, "Felix wagons", as they are called by troops, are always prime targets for insurgents. One common tactic is to set up decoy explosions and then mine the area where an vehicle might be expected to park when it arrived with its crew to investigate. Another was simply to ambush the vehicles en route.

The lack of protection had very significant manning implications. While the US was equipping its disposal officers with MRAPs – armoured, armed and self-supporting, with small groups of men - the British, forever complaining about "overstretch", had to keep available large numbers of mounted infantrymen to escort the unarmoured and unarmed bomb disposal vehicles. No wonder they were short of men.

Not the issues

Underfunding was not the issue. Waste was, and the obsession with buying absurdly expensive "toys" certainly was. Underfunding was too easy an excuse – as indeed was the manning issue.

Many will argue that, without more troops, the campaign could never have succeeded. Allan Mallinson, former soldier, writer and military historian, argues thus. He may be right. But he also argues that the strategy must be right. "Without a coherent strategy," he says, "even the best tactics are futile: casualties just mount." He then adds: "But there is no getting round it: strategy needs troops on the ground."

One can agree with that, but also suggest that the troops did not have to be British. In the successful operations to recover Basra and then al Amara, the bulk of the troops were Iraqi.

They had strong American support but the US Army committed just 2,500 troops to southern Iraq – less than the British fielded throughout the occupation. The fault lies in handing over to the Iraqis before they were ready – and indeed before Maliki had secured his political base and could commit them to the battle with the Mahdi Army.

The real answers

The real causes of failure ran much deeper but even now few understand or want to address them. To deal with the tactical situation, the British could not "dominate the ground" as Col Stewart counselled because, every time they left their bases, they were brought down by IEDs and the constant attacks. When they stayed in their bases, the insurgents killed troops there as well. When the British left their bases in an attempt to track down and destroy their attackers, they were also killed.

It had become a vicious circle, one that could have been broken had the Army applied its mind to the problem, but it chose not to. Better use of the cash available, better use of technology, better politics and more use of brainpower were the real answers. But it was easier to complain.

COMMENT THREAD

A price worth paying for our success

That is the view of Lieutenant-General John Cooper, expressed in The Times today, referring to the death of 179 troops in the abortive campaign in Iraq. Britain, he says, deserves its share of the credit for what has been achieved, and its achievements vindicate the losses suffered by its troops there.

There speaks a man of such monumental ignorance, or stupidity that one wonders how it is that he is let out on his own. That he has risen to the elevated rank of Lieutenant-General demonstrates with utmost clarity that very little has changed since the Boer War – and even before. Stupidity is no bar to holding high rank in the Army.

For sure, Gen Cooper is right when he says that, "When our mission ends in Basra, we will be leaving behind a city that is in far better nick than it was when we arrived in 2003. It's more stable and the people have faith in, and a vision for, the future." But, despite the brave – at times desperately so – actions of the troops on the ground, that happy situation has very little to do with the British Army.

Apart from anything else though, Cooper displays a myopic xenophobia – or the insularity of his breed – in ignoring the deaths of thousands of innocent Iraqis who lost their lives under the British occupation. Their deaths were as a direct result of the failure of the Army to honour its obligations under international law as an occupying power, "to restore and ensure as far as possible public order and safety".

There are many reasons why the Army failed, and some of them were entirely out of its control. Little blame thereby attaches to those on the ground who put their lives on the line trying to do the impossible. But for the likes of Cooper then to claim a "success" and thence to so airily to equate the loss of British life as a reasonable exchange – which is what he is doing – is utterly intolerable.

One is tempted to scream: "You failed, Dickhead! Admit it!", except that such mild words could hardly begin to convey the depth of the despair and frustration.

Amazingly, Cooper, in his cloistered, smug, self-referential little world believes that, "Our losses will be vindicated in the same way our losses in Northern Ireland were." He adds that, "Part of Service life is to make sacrifices. We accept it and live with it. We don't wring our hands but we never forget those we leave behind."

He has, already, forgotten the corpses of the Iraqis he leaves behind and of the 179 killed, 136 in action, one has to note that Gen Cooper was not the one making the sacrifices. It is all very well to applaud other people's sacrifice when, on their backs, you are making quite a comfortable living. Let's see now, the starting salary for a Lieutenant-General is rather more that £122,000 a year – plus a comfortable pension and perks. Not much sacrifice there!

The stupidity of the man is highlighted by the fact that he was in command of the Multinational Division Southeast, encompassing Basra, in 2006, before the "deal" was negotiated to allow the last 500 British troops in the city to leave in 2007 without being attacked. "In 2006 there was increasing violence and there was a fear that it was going to slip into civil war, although this proved unfounded. But it was a tough time," he says.

This proved unfounded?! There was a civil war going on. The militias were openly bearing arms in the streets and setting up military parades, the Mahdi Army – and its many splinter groups – were also taking on the Iraqi Army and the police. Basra was becoming a war zone, punctuated by a series of running battles.

Sectarian violence had continued unabated and the process of creating an Islamic independent state was continuing apace, with the murder of "westernised" women widely reported. The city was descending into anarchy. Even the attacks on the last British base were to recommence. It was not until Maliki launched Operation Charge of the Knights that the city was recovered.

Tucked up securely in their base, however, the British seemed – as always – to be oblivious to events. Gethin Chamberlain, then writing for The Sunday Telegraph observed that British forces were getting their information from local newspapers and from the Iraqi army, although one battalion was isolated inside the city and the other was in training outside.

To all those outside the foetid little world of the British High Command, there was definitely a sense of Basra being a powder keg waiting to blow. A final all-out battle was seen as inevitable. Despite this, the Chief of the Defence Staff, Jock Stirrup, chose the fifth anniversary of the invasion, on 20 March, to publish a "tribute to the sacrifice and achievements of the British forces". He then wrote:

More and more people in Basra are turning from violence on the streets to politics. Not all of them, and not as quickly as we would like. But those who continue to practise violence are being dealt with increasingly effectively by the Iraqi security forces.

The British commander was now Maj Gen Barney White-Spunner. He too thought the situation inside the city was getting better. "No one is saying it is ideal," he said, "But the indications are that the militias are losing some of their influence, and there are divisions appearing among them." The "divisions" were not among them – the 10th and 14th Divisions of the Iraqi Army had not yet fully deployed. Stirrup and White-Spunner both were in the land of the fairies.

After the failures of the Boer war Kipling wrote, "Its a difficult thing to admit it, but as a grown-up nation we should; we've had a hell of a beating, it will do us no end of good." What Cooper demonstrates though is that, in common with his superiors, he is in the land of the fairies. Despite his exalted rank, he has yet to grow up.

Such men are dangerous.

COMMENT THREAD

Lost before it started - Part 1

For nearly five years now, we have been following the serpentine twists and turns of defence politics, initially charting the UK's progress towards European defence integration, with a very strong interest in equipment and procurement matters, and then, inceasingly, the progress of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In a way we could not even have begun to imagine when we started, all these issues are intimately related. Drawing all the separate threads together, however, has been a complex and time-consuming affair. Only now that we have done so are we able to tell the story of how the first two led inexorably and inevitably to the defeat of the British Army in Iraq.

In a seven-part analysis - which we will post over this and the next six days - we will tell the story as it unfolded, starting with the political machinations which set off the process.

The beginning

The Army may have been defeated in Iraq. Yet the battle was actually lost in St Malo, France, and in Whitehall, specifically, in the portals of the MoD. It was lost before it had even started.

There were many reasons why the Army could have lost the counter-insurgency war, not least because of the tardy recognition of the fact of an organised Shi'a insurgency. But one of the main reasons was the Army's failure to re-equip, in order to deal with the weapons and tactics of the principal enemy in Iraq, the Mahdi Army. But, in seeking to re-equip, the Army had two more dangerous enemies: Tony Blair and its own High Command.

The shadow of Europe

Tony Blair did for the Army 1998, ten years before its final defeat in Basra. It was then that he met Jacques Chirac, then French President, in St Malo, France, for a summit on defence co-operation. It was there – and in Helsinki the following year – that Blair pledged to work towards building a European Rapid Reaction Force (ERRF).

This was to be a Europe-wide force of 15 Brigades or about 50,000-60,000 troops, capable of intervening rapidly in a crisis. It was to be deployable within 60 days at a distance of 2,500 miles and sustainable in the field for a year. In order to maintain such a force, with rotating replacements, the actual manpower requirement was closer to 180,000. In addition, there would need to be home-based supporting elements and logistic support.

The potential British contribution included up to 12,500 troops, 72 combat aircraft and 18 warships, with a full range of supporting capabilities. Blair was in effect committing the bulk of the UK's long-term deployable forces to the venture – considerably more than he was to commit to the occupation of Iraq.

The immediate effect was to usher in an obvious but undeclared – and frequently denied – policy of "Europe first" in procurement issues, all aimed at securing the harmonisation and "inter-operability" of European forces. Through that, billions of pounds was wasted on European-sourced equipment which could have been obtained better and more cheaply elsewhere.

This was to cast a shadow over the defence budget, focusing procurement on high value projects which soaked up funds and reduced the ability of the MoD to respond to changing circumstances. Its main political priority became to equip the British component of the ERRF.

The effect on the Army

For the Army, the effect was dramatic. The ERRF embodied what was called the "expeditionary" concept, but with a difference. Because of the requirement for speed of deployment over distance, it needed a highly mobile, air-portable armoured force. This was a capability which the British Army completely lacked.

However, the requirement for air-mobility created huge technical problems. Currently available military transport aircraft (the C-130 Hercules being taken as the standard) imposed severe restrictions on dimensions, particularly height. Crucially their lifting capabilities restricted vehicle weights to around 20 tons.

Yet those same vehicles, once deployed, might be expected to confront main battle tanks three times their weight, with far thicker armour, and defeat them. To square the circle, an entirely new military concept emerged. This was not a vehicle as such, but a system. Actually, it was even more than that. It was a "system of systems." In British military circles, it became known as the Future Rapid Effects System or FRES.

The Future Rapid Effects System

FRES was a break from the established principles of relying on armoured vehicles which themselves relied on a compromise between protection, mobility and firepower. It added a fourth dimension – "situational awareness", the new religion in military thinking. This would be achieved by flooding the battlefield with advanced electronic and other sensors, including those fitted to a new generation of vehicles.

They would all be linked together by a vast electronic communications network – the military equivalent of the internet. It would allow commanders right down to the level of a four-man patrol to have a perfect overview of the battlefield. Instantaneous communication with all other units would be possible, allowing sharing of information and enabling the co-ordination of actions. In theory, the enemy could then be detected at a distance.

At that point, the final element came into play – an array of precision-guided, stand-off weapons which could be used to neutralise hostile forces before they came close enough to inflict damage to the lightly protected vehicles deployed.

This became the Holy Grail, the search for which was shared by most other Western armies and by US forces which were working on their own version called the Future Combat System (FCS).

Such ventures were of course welcomed by the military-industrial complex. It saw in the various projects opportunities for lucrative development and production contracts. There was also another dividend anticipated. The technology was seen as a "force multiplier", allowing the "effects" to be achieved with a vastly smaller number of men. It reduced the cost of maintaining large standing armies and the difficulties most nations were experiencing in recruiting enough personnel for their largely volunteer forces.

A major restructuring

Absent entirely from the UK's Strategic Review of 1998, FRES was nevertheless enthusiastically embraced by the former Member of the European Parliament Geoff Hoon. In October 1999, he had been appointed Secretary of State for Defence. Despite that, no immediate progress was made. Attention was consumed by 11 September 2001 and the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the events afterwards. These culminated in the invasion of Afghanistan on 7 October 2001 and the invasion of Iraq on 20 March 2003.

In May 2004, though, even as British forces in Iraq were about to confront the Mahdi Army uprising, the European Union's General Affairs and External Relations Council was kick-starting the ERRF. It delivered what were known as the "Headline Goals 2010". These were subsequently endorsed by the European Council of 17 and 18 June 2004. They were both a "shopping list" of equipment required to fill capability gaps and a deadline set for the completion of the ERRF, the member states undertaking to be ready by 2010 to carry out "military rapid response operations".

In anticipation of meeting the UK commitment, there had already emerged in the Defence White Paper of July 2003 completely new plans for "a major restructuring of the Army". There would be a "shift in emphasis to light and medium weight forces" based around the Future Rapid Effects System (FRES) family of vehicles. Three brigades would be equipped.

This was the British element of the ERRF, introduced at the very time when the Army, only in the first months of its occupation of Iraq, needed to keep its options open. Instead, it was committing its intellectual, planning and financial resources to a "major restructuring" involving an entirely new and untried system. With such a huge commitment, restructuring to meet the demands of a counter-insurgency campaign was not only inconceivable. It was beyond the financial resources of the Army and its organisational capabilities.

COMMENT THREAD

Getting in first

One has to suppress a wry smile and at least admire the speed with which General Sir Mike Jackson has got his knife in first, before the many knives are directed at his broad but inadequate back.

The man is writing in The Sunday Telegraph today about the impending departure of British forces from Iraq, telling us the withdrawal "represents a most significant achievement after what will have been a very difficult and challenging six years."

He thus tells us that Britain’s Armed Forces "will leave Iraq with heads held high" and that they "should be proud of their efforts".

That is fair enough, applied on an individual and unit level, where the courage, tenacity, skill, dedication – and suffering – of our troops (and airmen and sailors) is to be applauded, unreservedly. They did what they could, and many did more than we had any right to expect of them.

However, we – and they – should not run away with the idea that the campaign was a success. At best, we could describe it as an "heroic failure". Our armed forces were under-resourced, undermanned and ill-equipped from the very start, given a job that they could not hope to achieve. And thus, predictably – but with no reflection on those at the cutting edge – they failed.

In the end, after abandoning the outer provinces, with their ignominious retreat from al Ahamrah, forced on them by the pitifully inadequate resources allocated to the Maysan Battle Groups – they were driven out of all but one of their bases in Basra, until they were hunkered down in the former Basra airport, out of the game.

It took Iraqi troops, with the support of the US – including its massive air power – to recover Basra from the Mahdi Army and it was not until June that they did likewise with al Amarah.

These points we have made before, but you will not hear Mike Jackson make them. To him, in his piece today, anything that went wrong was the fault of the Americans, or anyone else but Mike Jackson.

Initially, it was all the fault of the Iraqis, whose "expectations of immediate economic improvement were understandably but unrealistically high." Their frustration at not seeing this realised quickly turned to anger with the Coalition forces.

Then, this volatile situation was "much exacerbated by the security vacuum created by Washington's appalling decisions to disband the Iraqi security forces and to de-Baathify the public administration to a very low level; the latter marginalised the very people who were best placed to help."

These decisions, asserts Jackson, "may well have doubled the time it has taken to get to where we are now." Then there was the Iranian backing for Shi'a "militants", which was a further difficult complication. And there was also "the lack of a coherent reconstruction plan and the failure in Coalition capitals to understand fully the complexity of the situation."

All this may be true, and no one will disagree that the Americans made some appalling mistakes. But so did the British. Immediately after the invasion, they failed to recognise that a Shi'a insurgency was building up round them, initially attributing attacks to Saddam loyalists and the remnants of his forces. Instead of taking on the militias, they gave ground to them, made deals with them, and then eventually handed southern Iraq to them on a plate.

Much of that was entirely the responsibility of the politicians, and Tony Blair in particular, who lacked the courage, in the face of the growing unpopularity of the war, to commit the resources and the men to do the job properly. Instead, his "spin" machine went into high gear, painting a wholly false picture of a "success" that was belied by the fact that the security situation was getting worse, and worse and worse.

Writes Jackson, "the campaign became a long haul – we had to have the strategic endurance to see it through." But we didn't. We did not have the "strategic endurance", nor the political endurance, nor the political will. So it was fudged.

But nowhere do I see any evidence at all that Mike Jackson, who was professional head of the Army until August 2006, had a grip on the campaign, knew what was needed or sought to ensure that the Army was properly equipped for the campaign. It was, after all, Jackson who authorised the sending of Snatch Land Rovers to Iraq and it was he who kept them there, long after it was abundantly clear that they could not do the job required of them.

Thus, while the Americans may have made all the mistakes in the book, they learned from their experiences, adapted and then prevailed. That the British Army came out of the campaign with much the same equipment with which it started, and recognisably similar tactics, says a great deal. Despite the courage and dedication at the cutting face, the high command failed to adapt, failed to meld the Army into an effective counter-insurgency force, and failed ultimately to provide the leadership that the Army needed.

Interestingly, Jackson observes that the period in Iraq has "been a long, hard and controversial campaign, but I believe it has largely succeeded." He is right in all respects, but the success is not his, or that of the British Army. Our forces rose to the challenge, writes the man, but the leadership – both military and political – did not.

And even to the end, like his former political master, Jackson is "spinning". He writes of "the announcement that Britain is largely to close down its military role in Iraq by May 31, 2009," not acknowledging that the date is not one of our choice. It has been set not by Mr Brown, but the Iraqis. They have kicked us out.

Even then, that date might not be the final word. When Gordon Brown so confidently announced this last week, he forgot to tell the world that this was a provisional agreement, subject to ratification by the Iraqi parliament. Without its agreement, our mandate ceases at midnight on 31 December, after which we are required to leave.

But the Iraqi parliament has not agreed. Yesterday, it threw out the draft law which would have permitted the extension of our stay to 31 May – by a massive 80 votes to 68.

Another vote is due next week but there is a strong caucus in the parliament which want to see the back of the British. Not least is Nasser al-Issawi, an MP loyal to Muqtada Sadr. He has hailed the rejection of the draft as a "great national achievement", and said he hoped the foreign troops would be forced to leave when the UN mandate ends.

If the parliament finally rejects the law, it will be up to Nouri Maliki to save our blushes by exercising his executive powers and signing individual agreements directly with each of the foreign states with troops remaining, giving them – and us - a legal basis to remain. This would be a messy solution, but rather appropriate for a messy war.

Soon enough, much of that mess – or the reasons for it – will emerge. And General Mike Jackson will not come out so well from its evaluation. It was just as well he got in first. He needed to.

COMMENT THREAD

The final humiliation

Carried in The Independent yesterday and reinforced in The Times today is the final template for the final withdrawal of British forces from Iraq.

The Independent puts is bluntly, telling us that the departure is enforced, with Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, taking his revenge for what he regards as the British surrender of Basra to hardline Shia Muslim militias. By this means, British forces in Iraq are facing a humiliating end to their six-year mission in the country.

What brings this about is the expiry of the current UN mandate on 31 December, leaving Britain without a legal framework for its continued presence after that date. The Independent had it that "frantic diplomatic efforts" were under way to secure an extension.

The situation was described as "extremely serious" and it is this which is behind the government's announced last week that Britain's 4,100 troops in Iraq would begin withdrawing in March, and leave completely by the end of June - apart from 400 troops in training and mentoring roles.

At the time this story was published, the situation had not been clarified with a senior figure saying that it was "quite possible" that no agreement past the end of December would be ratified, in which case British troops would have to start pulling out immediately as they would have no legal basis for remaining.

In The Times, however, there is added detail. Still heralding Britain facing a "humiliating Iraq withdrawal", the story is there that British forces are now to be required to leave by the end of next July.

The worst of it is that Britain has been lumped in with five smaller contingents, including those of Romania, El Salvador and Estonia, and included in a "mini-agreement for the six entities", separate from the main agreement which has US forces leaving within three years. The other "entities" have been given until May to cease duties and then a period of two months’ grace to get out by July 31.

Britain had hoped for a separate deal, along the lines negotiated with the US but Fawzi Hariri, the Iraqi Industry Minister, says: "There was no way we could have done a security agreement to the same level of detail that we had with the Americans in such a short period." Thus we have been lumped in with Estonia and the rest.

The Times also rehearses the background, telling us that the Iraqi Prime Minister's discontent boiled over last spring. Having done a deal with armed groups to leave Basra Palace, their last sizeable outpost within Iraq's second city, in the summer of 2007, British forces remained largely confined to the airport.

General Sir Richard Dannatt, argued that Britain's troops were the main target of attacks, and that their withdrawal had led to a reduction in violence, but in the Iraqi Prime Minister's view, Basra was simply abandoned to warring militias. He launched a successful Iraqi military operation, supported by US forces and dubbed "Charge of the Knights", to seize the city in March, with British troops taking only a small and belated part.

The senior source said a bilateral agreement on the future status of British forces had "supposedly ... been about to happen for months and months", adding: "We should not forget how angry – and mistrustful of the British – Maliki is for allowing the Shia militias to take over in Basra. He regards the British as having entirely sold the pass. It is true that it suits him, for domestic political reasons, to be seen to be giving the British a hard time, but it happens to be something he feels very cross about."

In truth, Maliki has every right to be "cross". The British retreat actually started right at the beginning in May 2003 when the government decided to opt out of running a southern Iraq devoid of government, and progressively handed over the running of the region to the militias.

The turning point came in August 2006 when the Army quit al Amarah, leaving it to the Mahdi Army, under which control it has remained until last June, becoming the weapons "depot" which supplied the rest of the Shi'a insurgency in Iraq. It was only in June that 20,000 Iraqi troops, backed by 2,500 elite US troops, finally moved back in to impose, for the first time since the invasion, the writ of the Baghdad government.

The full story has yet to be told (although it is in the process of being written) but this final humiliating chapter sets the seal on what has in reality been a comprehensive defeat for the British Army. The blame, however, lies mainly with the government, from Blair through to Brown. Nevertheless, the Army brass does not exactly come out of this with any glory.

So far, though, the government has sought to "spin" this defeat as a victory – and its has partially got away with it, relying on the Army to support it, in the knowledge that it too will not want to walk away from Iraq admitting its own failures.

Too many people though know exactly what went on and this is too big even for New Labour to "spin". The truth will out, and it is not pretty. But it typifies the utter incompetence of a government more concerned with "spin" than soldier's lives or the welfare of the people whose land it had invaded.

As our troops finally march away, to their ships and aircraft, this will indeed be the final humiliation. This government must not be allowed to get away with pretending otherwise. But the Army also needs to come to terms with its own failures for, without learning the lessons that come with that, it is setting itself up for another, more serious failure in Afghanistan.

As Thomas Harding writes in a superb piece published a few days ago, "if we are to win out in the far more challenging arena of Afghanistan, then the Army had better change, and change soon."

COMMENT THREAD

History repeats itself

The news which emerged yesterday of the second Gurkha soldier to be killed within a month in Afghanistan has disturbing implications. Unlike his comrade-in-arms, Rifleman Yubraj Rai who died of a gunshot wound after a firefight south of Musa Qala on 4 November, this as yet unnamed Gurkha was riding in a Warrior MICV (pictured).

According to The Daily Mail (online edition) – which was the first to identify the vehicle involved - the Gurkha was killed "after a massive roadside bomb tore through his 25-ton Warrior fighting vehicle." A number of other soldiers onboard were, according to its report, "seriously injured".

It is the first time, says the paper, a soldier has been killed inside a Warrior in Afghanistan, "and proof that the Taliban are turning to bigger and deadlier bombs targeted at British troops."

The paper adds that, until recently the Warriors were largely considered "mine proof" but then it tells us that at least three Warriors have been damaged "beyond repair" in the last eight months "as the Taleban bomb makers set ever bigger charges in British soldiers' paths." In addition, there was an early attack in February of this year.

When the Warriors arrived in Afghanistan in mid-August 2007 (see this video report), we applauded the deployment of these fighting vehicles which, very quickly had a decisive effect on the conduct of ongoing operations.

But, in this current instance, the Warrior was not being used for the purpose for which it had been designed – as an armoured assault vehicle. Instead, as part of a company of Warriors, it had been based outside Musa Qala, in Forward Operating Base Edinburgh. Together with Mastiffs, the Daily Mail reports, the vehicles have been used "to ferry soldiers to and from the outposts, which ring the volatile town." As The Independent puts it, "they are often used as armoured buses to move soldiers to and from outposts … because they used to be considered 'mine-proof'".

Any such assumption is entirely unjustified. The Warrior is not and never has been "mine-proof". The Army, therefore, is misusing these vehicles (whether to are forced to, or not because of kit shortages is another matter), for a job for which they are not designed and for which the Mastiffs, working alongside them, are superb.

In all, there have now been 22 deaths of British soldiers in Warrior-related incidents in both Iraq and Afghanistan since the formal end of hostilities in May 2003. By no means all of these resulted from IED attacks but many did, including the horrific incident on 5 April 2007 outside Basra, which resulted in the death of Second Lieutenant Joanna Dyer, and three of her comrades.

As remarked at the time, the underbelly of the Warrior is relatively lightly armoured and, even though they have been fitted with enhanced armour (pictured), their flat-bottomed profile makes them difficult to protect and limits their resistance to IEDs.

What may be happening here, though – in a manner similar to the way the Jackal has been treated - is that the Taleban have been "trying out" the Warrior and, having already written off a number of these vehicles, have evidently worked out a way to destroy them.

We saw something of what appears to be a similar dynamic in Iraq. Initially, the insurgents concentrated their fire on the more vulnerable "Snatch" Land Rovers, firstly in al Amarah and, when the "Snatches" were taken off the streets there and replaced by Warriors, the attacks moved to Basra where these vehicles were still being used for routine patrols.

When the use there of "Snatches" was limited – and many of the patrols were conducted by Mastiffs, which were arriving in ever-greater numbers - we saw attention focusing on the more vulnerable Warriors. In the latter stages of 2006 and in early 2007 there were a number of serious attacks, details of which were suppressed because of the Army's concern for morale and the effect of a public (and Parliamentary) hue and cry.

Thus, when Sergeant Graham Hesketh was killed on 28 December 2006 as a result of an IED attack on a Warrior, followed by the death of Private Michael Tench in January of the following year, these were seen as isolated incidents and not for what they were – part of a sustained assault by the insurgents on this vehicle type.

It was not until April of that year with the death of Second Lieutenant Joanna Yorke Dyer that the Warrior came to public notice but even then, the incident was seen largely in isolation, with the media focus largely on the deaths of two women soldiers.

Even after that, the deaths from IED attacks on Warriors were to continue, the last known fatal attack recorded on 31 July 2007 when Corporal Steve Edwards was killed.

By that time, however, Mastiffs (pictured left) were being fielded in some numbers replacing both "Snatch" and Warrior and successfully resisting attacks on them. The Army pulled out of the last but one peripheral base, the Provincial Joint Co-ordination Centre (PJCC) in Basra, and – as rumour had it, only subsequently to be confirmed - British commanders struck a deal with leaders of Moqtada al-Sadr's 17,000-strong Mahdi Army to ensure the safe departure of troops from Basra Palace.

By early September the Army had retreated from Basra Palace and hunkered down in its new increasingly fortified base at the former Basra International Airport, leaving perimeter security largely to the Iraqi Army.

The limited sallies outside the wire were increasingly made in Mastiffs, which continued to resist attacks and, with no more Warrior deaths being reported, another publicity storm over inadequate equipment had been averted.

As for the situation in Afghanistan, the imminent arrival of additional Mastiffs and the Ridgeback may save the Army's bacon yet again, allowing the Warriors to be redeployed for their proper role – infantry assault. They will be safe enough in that role providing their routes to and from the battlefield are cleared by dedicated mine-clearance equipment. This the Canadians have found it necessary to do before their conventional armoured vehicles are allowed out of base. They have learnt the hard way exactly the lesson which the British forces seem intent on experiencing again in Afghanistan.

But still, the shadow of Army lethargy and MoD procurement delays hangs over the battlefield. Apart from the delay in buying the appropriate route clearing equipment such as the Buffalo - which will not be in theatre until at least 2010, when on 24 July 2006, Des Browne announced the order of 100 protected vehicles, which later turned out to be Mastiffs, he also announced the purchase of 100 additional Pinzgauer Vector vehicles (pictured right) for Afghanistan.

This, as we revealed later, had been forced on him by the Army, which had been lukewarm about the Mastiff and had effectively made its approval of the purchase conditional on the procurement of the additional Vectors. Thus, the bulk of the Mastiffs went to Iraq, while the Vectors provided the mainstay of additional "protected" vehicles for Afghanistan.

With these machines now so heavily compromised that the Army dare not use them in high-risk situations, this means that money spent on them has largely been wasted. Totalling nearly £50 million, that would have bought some 50 or so extra Mastiffs which could so easily have been ordered in July 2006.

For want of these extra machines, the Army on the ground has been forced to use the Warrior for a purpose for which it is entirely unsuited, with the result we have seen reported today. And still it seems, there are those who have not understood the lessons – a response which entirely typifies a certain cadre within the Army. History will have to repeat itself once more, before these dinosaurs are finally driven to extinction.

The problem is though that papers like The Sun, apparently lacking any corporate or institutional memory, are also reporting on this incident in terms of a "safe" tank, suggesting that the Warrior was "once thought bomb proof" – forgetting entirely the experience in Iraq.

Then we get The Guardian citing an unnamed "defence source" commenting that these latest attacks suggest the Taleban's bombs are more powerful and more sophisticated. "If a bomb is big enough, it will go through anything," this source is quoted as saying.

This will add sustenance the dinosaurs who claim that, since a "tank" can be blown up by the Taleban, it is impossible to protect lighter vehicles. In some quarters, therefore, this experience will be used as an argument against, rather than for more MRAP-type vehicles. There too, history repeats itself.

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The women of Basra

A propos the report by Sean Rayment which we examined in our previous post, The Times today offers an account of life in the newly liberated Basra, written by a female British journalist – on the spot in Basra.

That, in itself, is a measure of the success of the Iraqi Army operation. For a long time now, Basra has been off-limits to Western journalists and we have become used to reports by-lined from Baghdad, 340 miles away, relying on local stringers, telephone conversations and official press releases.

The journalist in question, Deborah Haynes (with additional reporting by Ali Hamdani), writes under the headline, "The men in black vanish and Basra comes to life", telling us that she is, "The first Western journalist to enter the city since Operation Charge of the Knights was launched a month ago".

She reports that young women are daring to wear jeans, soldiers listen to pop music on their mobile phones and bands are performing at wedding parties again. All across Iraq's second city life is improving, a month after Iraqi troops began a surprise crackdown on the black-clad gangs who were allowed to flourish under the British military. The gunmen's reign had enforced a strict set of religious codes.

This reinforces and builds on an AP story datelined 18 April which pictured (above left) women walking through the park in Basra. CD shops, we were told, sell love songs again, women hesitantly emerge from their homes without veils, and alcohol sellers are creeping out of hiding in this southern city where religious vigilantes have long enforced strict Islamic laws.

The changes in recent weeks, said the report, are signs that an Iraqi military crackdown against militiamen, particularly the Mahdi Army loyal to anti-US cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, has succeeded despite the troubles that plagued the offensive launched last month.

Separately, the MoD website recounts how British bomb disposal teams have been helping their Iraqi counterparts destroy hundreds of Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and other munitions recovered from Basra City during the recent Iraqi led surge into the city.

Once again, this is supported by media reports (and pictures – right: note the Dzik in the background) which attest to the extraordinary amount of material which was seized by Iraqi forces.

Too much good evidence is now coming through to suggest otherwise that there has been a significant advance in this troubled city, with British and US officials tentatively acknowledging that a "turning point" has been reached.

In a separate, later piece, The Times also reports that, today, Moqtada al-Sadr - who has not seen in public for almost a year – has ordered his followers to refrain from fighting the Iraqi security forces.

The message, delivered on his behalf at a Baghdad mosque during Friday prayers, must be considered a humiliating climb down, especially after the contemptuous response from Condoleezza Rice to Sadr's threat to launch an "open war" against the Iraqi government.

Sadr is now claiming that his threat had been directed at US and British troops alone, adding that "there will be no war between Sadrists and Iraqi brothers from any groups."

Meanwhile, as US and Iraqi forces pushed on with operations to combat rogue elements of the Maedi Army and other armed gangs in the Shia stronghold of Sadr City in east Baghdad, operations are continuing in Basra, but Iraqi soldiers and police, The Times says, "are no longer facing much resistance."

Mr Rayment, if he had any integrity, might like to revisit his copy this coming Sunday.

UPDATE: The Sadr "climb down" was covered on the main BBC television news this evening - about 20 seconds, before the programme went on to air a long report about German TV taking the Allo-Allo comedy series. We are so lucky to have such a concerned, responsible public service broadcaster.

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