Basra Refugees Angry by Kevin

The British troops outside Basra are not getting a hero’s welcome

The 42-year-old haulage contractor had been walking for three hours to escape the siege of Basra. He was intending to return with his fleet of lorries filled with water so that some of the city’s 1.4 million parched residents had something to drink. But he and thousands more tramping along this main road could not understand yesterday why such a formidable array of British tanks was parked on the edge of his city while gangs of Saddam loyalists slowly strangled Basra. British soldiers sitting on their Warrior vehicle looked stunned when a couple of packets of sweets that they had thrown to children were hurled back by their fathers.

Clenching his fists in frustration, Mr Jeri apologised for his outburst. “I have no love for Saddam, but tell me how are we better off today when there is no power, nor water. There are dead bodies lying in our streets and my children are scared to go to bed because of the shelling.”

A crush of several thousand people was trying to flee, many faint with heat and dehydration, but they were hemmed in by British sentries who were allowing them through in single file. The troops have no translators to explain that they are doing this to ensure that gunmen are not infiltrating the refugees. Yet neither has any provision been made at these roadblocks to ease the misery of those caught up in this siege.

Nor do they seem prepared to handle the influx of refugees:

A crush of several thousand people was trying to flee, many faint with heat and dehydration, but they were hemmed in by British sentries who were allowing them through in single file. The troops have no translators to explain that they are doing this to ensure that gunmen are not infiltrating the refugees. Yet neither has any provision been made at these roadblocks to ease the misery of those caught up in this siege.

For five days the numbers leaving have been growing and still these troops had no water tankers waiting for the women and children who walk miles in wilting heat before family and friends are allowed to pick them up in their vehicles. There are no doctors, nor food, and yesterday a team of Red Cross volunteers sat inside their air-conditioned four-wheel-drive vehicle.

This could be the worse result of Rumsfeld and Cheney’s rose-colored battle plan. They do not seem to have had any idea what to do if the Iraqi cities did not revolt, or, in the case of Basra, loyalist troops made revolt impossible. To the people in and around Basra, this has to look like a replay of 1991.

A week ago everyone here waved at any allied soldier they passed. Not any more. Twenty miles away, Ministry of Defence spin-doctors had invited TV crews to show them laying a water pipeline to Umm Qasr. No one in Basra knew that was going on: they have no power for television.

Those leaving the city felt abandoned. Hassan al-Jamoudi said: “There will be no people’s uprising because we are scared the British and Americans will not come to help us. You have shown no sign of wanting to fight so far.”

If that opinion is wide spread, the British and Americans will never be seen as liberators, merely occupiers. It is an ugly, complicated situation, and the desire to avoid civilian casualties is commendable. But it does not look like anyone prepared for the possibilities facing us now, and precious goodwill and lives are being lost while we try to figure out what to do.