Basra readies itself for UK troop pullout

After four and a half inconclusive years of fighting, British forces are to pull out from their last base in the oil port of Basra and trust their Iraqi comrades to take their place.
When the 500 troops evacuate Saddam Hussein's former palace on the banks of the Shatt al-Arab waterway and withdraw to a desert airbase, they will leave behind a city in the grip of a brutal turf war between rival militia.
Nevertheless, Iraqi forces and war-weary local civilians are hopeful that the redeployment, which will leave just 5,000 British troops in the country to train and support Iraqi forces, will herald a new start for Basra.
"I believe the security apparatus will be able to control the situation if they withdraw completely," said Brigadier Ali Ibrahim of an Iraqi army border guards unit. "We want the British to leave so things will improve."
As he spoke, police and army units could be seen on most of downtown Basra's main roads, where shops and markets were open and busy, and hundreds of Shia pilgrims gathered to ride buses to the holy city of Karbala.
For police Lieutenant Colonel Karim al-Zaydi, there is no reason why this sense of calm cannot continue once the British leave town.
"We're expecting the British forces to withdraw any time now," he told AFP at the city's Hakkaniyah police station. The apparent optimism among Iraqis, however, stands in marked contrast to the pessimism of foreign observers. Many policy experts now speak candidly of a British defeat in southern Iraq, and warn of more chaos ahead.
Meanwhile US troops killed three suspected militants from a helicopter before ground forces found eight bodies in a makeshift prison they had allegedly been running north of Baghdad, the military said yesterday.
The alert was sounded on Saturday by seven Iraqis who managed to escape the prison in Khan Bani Sa'ad near the town of Taji, about 30km from Baghdad, and inform troops patrolling the area, a military statement said.