Petraeus Hid Maliki Resistance to US Troops in Basra [View All]

[babylonsister]

Petraeus Hid Maliki Resistance to US Troops in Basra
By Gareth Porter


WASHINGTON - In testimony before Congressional committees last week, Gen. David Petraeus portrayed Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s late March offensive in Basra as a poorly planned effort that departed from what U.S. officials had expected.

What Petraeus did not reveal is that al-Maliki was deliberately upsetting a Petraeus plan to put U.S. and British forces into Basra for a months-long operation to eliminate the Mahdi Army from the city.

Petraeus referred to a plan for an operation to be carried out in Basra that he and his staff had developed with the head of the Basra Operational Command, Gen. Mohan al-Furayji. But Petraeus carefully dodged a question from Sen. Hillary Clinton about what resources he was planning to deploy to Basra and over what length of time.

Clinton evidently suspected that the plan envisioned the deployment of U.S. troops on a large scale in the Shiite south, despite the fact that the Iraqi government is supposed to be responsible for security there. Petraeus responded vaguely that it was “a phased plan over the course of a number of months during which different actions were going to be pursued.”

Reports in the British press indicated, however, that the campaign plan was based on the assumption that British and U.S. troops would play the central role in an effort to roll up the Mahdi Army in Basra. The Independent reported Mar. 21 that Gen. Furayji had publicly declared there would be a “final battle” in Basra, probably during the summer, and that Britain had already promised to provide military forces for the campaign. It quoted “senior government sources” as saying that Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s earlier pledge to cut the number of British troops in the south from 4,100 to 2,500 would “almost certainly be postponed until at least the end of the year”.

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http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/18/8370/