The withdrawal of troops from Iraq begins

Basra was still 'difficult and dangerous', Tony Blair acknowledged to a crowded House of Commons. But it was time for the troops to come home. Though thousands of British soldiers would stay into 2008, the Iraqis would 'write the next chapter' in Basra's history, he said.

In fact, the Iraqis have been writing Basra's history for decades. They wrote it when they rose against the British in 1920; they wrote it during the Iran-Iraq war of the Eighties, when 1m died on battlefields around the city; and they wrote it when tens of thousands were gunned down as Saddam repressed the Shia revolt in 1991.

The British military have not been much of a success there. In 2003, the year of the invasion, the drive from Baghdad to Basra was, for foreigners, a little risky but eminently feasible. You could even stop and eat in roadside cafes on the way. By 2005, it was impossible. Access was by helicopter, into bases where squaddies crouched in bunkers hammered by mortars.

In 2007, the toll of civilian casualties continued to rise, though less rapidly than before. Attacks on American troops, partly as a result of 'the surge' of reinforcements, partly due to pragmatic alliances with erstwhile foes, have dropped. But there is an overwhelming sense that people are just waiting for them to leave. So the real civil war can begin.

Though Blair put a brave face on it, it was difficult to see the pull-out of British troops in very positive terms. The Iraqis will indeed write the next chapter. As they have written all the others. Anyway, the troops were needed elsewhere: in Afghanistan.

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