A city transformed

Today’s New York Times details just how much progress has been made in Basra since Iraqi government forces launched a push to restore order in the city. It is hard to over-state the importance of the apparent success of this southern surge. Basra has 40 percent of the country’s oil reserves and stability there is a necessary condition for the country’s economic reconstruction. Equally, the internecine Shiite strife there threatened the political future of Iraq. 

The success of the surge in Basra does, though, highlight just how flawed British military strategy there has been. The British approach failed to prevent the descent of the city into lawlessness and in many ways enabled the rise of various extremist militias. The difference made by the deployment of 33,000 Iraqi troops shows show just how much good a British surge to compliment the one implemented by the US in 2007 could have done.