[continued from previous message] 
  
 the U.S. official said, he was unable to meet with any local Iraqis 
 outside the airport base or to travel beyond the secured route between 
 the base and the palace. About 200 Americans are in and around the 
 city, including those assigned to the embassy office, some civilian 
 support personnel and contract security guards. 
  
 Basra's "security nightmare" has already had devastating effects on 
 Iraq's economy, said Juan Cole, a Middle East specialist at the 
 University of Michigan. Home to two-thirds of Iraq's oil resources, 
 Basra is the country's sole dependable outlet for exporting oil, with a 
 capacity of 1.8 million barrels a day. Much of Basra's violence is 
 "over who gets what cut from Iraq's economic resources," a U.S. Army 
 strategist in Iraq said. 
  
 Militias and criminal gangs are financed in part by stolen oil smuggled 
 outside the country, even as Iraq lacks enough energy to provide 
 electricity to many of its people. Both the oil industry and the port 
 facilities -- providing Iraq's only maritime access -- have made Basra 
 "a significant prize for local political actors," the ICG said. 
  
 The current U.S. security operation to "clear, hold and build" in 
 Baghdad and its surroundings is almost a replica of Operation Sinbad, 
 which British and Iraqi forces conducted in Basra from September 2006 
 to March of this year with a mission of "clear, hold and civil 
 reconstruction." Although Operation Sinbad initially succeeded in 
 lowering crime and political assassinations, attacks rose in the spring 
 and British forces withdrew into their compounds. 
  
 In the early years of Iraq's occupation, British officials often 
 disdained the U.S. use of armored patrols and heavily protected troops. 
 The British approach of lightly armed foot patrols -- copied from 
 counterinsurgency operations in Northern Ireland -- sought to avoid 
 antagonizing the local population and encourage cooperation. A 2005 
 report by the defense committee of the House of Commons commended the 
 British army's performance and urged the Ministry of Defense to "use 
 its influence" to get the Americans to take a less aggressive approach. 
  
 In a recent BBC interview, Air Chief Marshal Jock Stirrup, chief of the 
 British defense staff, insisted that Basra has been a success. But he 
 acknowledged that judgment depended on "what your interpretation of the 
 mission was in the first place," adding: "I'm afraid people had, in 
 many instances, unrealistic aspirations." 
  
 The mission, he said, was simply to "get the place and the people to a 
 state where Iraqis could run this part of the country, if they chose 
 to." 
  
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 From - Thu Aug  9 13:02:30 2007 
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  * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)