Ali Baba by Maxfield Parish (1909)
Posted on 08/25/2006 5:50:03 PM PDT by blam
Jubilant Iraqi looters strip military base after British forces pull out
By Oliver Poole in Baghdad
(Filed: 26/08/2006)
Thousands of jubilant Iraqis looted the British military base in Amarah yesterday, only a day after the Army pulled out of the camp.
Everything from doors and window frames to corrugated roofing and metal pipes was pillaged from Camp Abu Naji, previously Britain's only permanent base in Maysan province.
Witnesses said that thieves filled up lorries with their gains. When one was asked what he was doing, he answered: "This is war loot."
The British decision to hand over the camp to Iraqi authorities was based on an assessment that local security forces would be able to maintain order.
But there were reports that three companies of Iraqi troops stationed in the base either joined the looting or proved unable to prevent it. The camp had been intended to become an Iraqi police training centre.
Major Charles Burbridge, the British military spokesman in Basra, said the scale of the looting had been a "disappointment" but attributed it to the average Iraqi being "extremely impoverished".
The mob apparently believed that there was an "Aladdin's cave" of valuable equipment inside the camp. In fact, the British removed 8,000 tons of material before their departure and only the buildings were left.
Another British base, Camp Smitty in Muthanna province, was also looted when the Army pulled out last month. This seems to have encouraged rumours that British facilities were filled with valuable items, notably air-conditioning units and water filtration kits.
The Queen's Royal Hussars had departed Camp Abu Naji on Thursday, taking up new positions in the desert and marshes near the border with Iran. The British stressed that the redeployment was a tactical move, not a withdrawal.
But this was not how Iraqis viewed it. As news spread through Amarah that the British had gone, locals rushed on to the streets shouting "God is great" and drivers sounded their horns in celebration.
Hundreds gathered around the local offices of Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shia cleric whose followers had fired 281 mortar rounds and rockets at the camp, to offer their congratulations. A loudspeaker repeatedly broadcast the triumphant message: "This is the first Iraqi city that has kicked out the occupiers."
First indications of what would follow came a few hours later as a crowd gathered outside Camp Abu Naji. Iraqi soldiers positioned inside the base dispersed them with shots into the air.
But the following morning a mob of between 2,000 and 5,000 returned, hundreds of them armed with machineguns and rocket-propelled grenades. After sporadic fighting the Iraqi troops retreated to a corner of the camp as the base was stripped.
By nightfall, said Lt Rifaat Taha Yaseen, of the Iraqi army's 10th Division, "everything" had been taken.
A memorial to the 22 British soldiers killed in Maysan since the invasion of March 2003 had already been removed and is to be re-erected at the British military camp in Basra airport.
The capacity of Iraqi security forces to secure the country is the central plank of the British exit strategy. That they seem unable to secure even their own bases does not augur well.
Heck, that happens in LA all the time.
A loudspeaker repeatedly broadcast the triumphant message: "This is the first Iraqi city that has kicked out the occupiers."
I smell "freedom"... oh brother, what a waste...
Remember in the Movie ,Patton when the Arabs were stripping the dead soldiers, and another scene where Patton ordered a guard on a graveyard to keep Arabs from digging up graves to steal their clothing?/
It seems some things never change.
Thousands ?
Reports I hear was a little over 100
No...one fifth of the whole country!
It's a quagmire...Vietnam...civil war!
These utterly stupid people...
When exiting, the British should have just blown the place up.
Just like the "palestinians" when the Israelis abandoned Gaza. The palis looted or destroyed everything. Seems like these people are all the same. No wonder there is very little change over there.
i know. it's laughable. i spent a year over in afghanistan and what i saw there in terms of the senseless reasoning astounded me daily. for instance, they carpool to work standing up in the trunk space of toyota corollas. i'm talking 6 or 7 hajis, standing up, holding on to each other as the driver careens down the road at 60mph in pothole-infested roads and other crazy drivers. oh i could go on and on.
BTTT
I;ve said it before and I've said it again: the Middle East needs more friendly despots, not more democracy.
"I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
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