The Truth About the British in Basra

Those who gain power write the history, newspapers bolster the beliefs of those who chose to read them and we all see the world as we wish to see it.

I am motivated to write this as a long time civilian servant of the British Army. I need to reflect on events as reported upon in Iraq. I hear and see with sadness the abuse our soldiers are receive as a result of doing their duty. They serve the British Government’s decision to commit them to Southern Iraq. Recent events in Basra seem reminiscent of Northern Ireland.

There, originally the British Army was committed to protect the Catholic Northern Irish from abuse by their protestant, fellow citizens of the Province of Ulster. In the end they found themselves in a bitter bloody but ultimately successful hearts and minds campaign to overcome the IRA’s claim to represent the interests of Catholic Republican Northern Ireland. In doing this they became an object of some opprobrium to extremist Ulster Protestants.

Hindu and Muslim Indians, Palestinians and Israelis, Turkish and Greek Cypriots, Catholic and Protestant Ulsterman and Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim Bosnians and now Shi-ite and Sunni Muslims: It always has been the British Army's lot to fight in “Small Wars”: first as a colonial power, then as a de-colonising ex power and now as part of an evolving global police force. in these bloody events they have seen themselves rightly as the even handed disinterested harbinger of peaceful co-existence. I know them. They are extremely good at this but that is from my perspective. To the various categories of inhabitants of India, Palestine, Cyprus, the Former Yugoslavia and now Iraq the British Army is anything but even handed. It cleary works far too effectively to serve the interests of the otherside which is clearly their own and they do not know, or speak ,the truth.

Such beliefs, including my own, are palpable to those who hold them. The urbane suave well educated Serb of whom I previously wrote hated British even handedness. It clearly stood in the way of the only sensible sane solution which was clearly the total extermination of every Catholics and Muslims in the Balkans.

In the face of his unflinching unabashed certainty and my own in the integrity and honesty of the British Army in doing its duty one must realise that whatever the history books say, or what the newspapers report or what we feel with certainty is the truth whither we be Catholic, Prod, Sunni, Shi-ite or Brit we all lie to ourselves in our own interest.

The only sane response is that of the trained disciplined actions, if not beliefs, of the British Army i.e. to act to forgive and forget the culpability we perceive in others in case that when faced with the judgment of eternity we might be wrong.

How do we now justify the reason behind the British conquest that led to the acquistion of Hong Kong - the right of free trading Englishmen to sell opium to the Chinese. The truth is always in the eye of the beholder.