Tail between legs

Sukant Chandan, at Al Ahram Weekly 13 - 19 September 2007 (Tail between legs), wrote:

"It was the events of 19 September 2005 which firmly put to rest any notion that the British were playing fair with the Iraqi people. Two SAS men in Arab clothes and head dress were arrested by Iraqi police at a checkpoint after refusing to stop and opening fire from their civilian car which was packed with explosives. They were arrested by Iraqi police and detained which led to British tanks smashing down the prison wall where the SAS men were being held and releasing them, but not before incensed Iraqis attacked the British army with petrol bombs and stones. A British soldier was captured on film fleeing from his tank in flames from a petrol bomb and being pelted by rocks from the crowd, an image which symbolises maybe more than any other the British experience in Basra. The world could see that the British had failed in Iraq. Anthony Cordesman, a specialist on the Middle East and military affairs at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, wrote recently that 'the British decisively lost the south - which produces over 90 per cent of government revenues and 70 per cent of Iraq's proven oil reserves - more than two years ago.'...

"British Captain Ken Masters, who was commander of the Royal Military Police Special Investigations Branch, charged with investigating allegations of maltreatment of Iraqi civilians by British soldiers, was found hanged in his room in Basra on 15 October 2005. Masters had examined almost every single serious allegation of abuse of Iraqi civilians by British troops including the cases of the fusiliers convicted of abusing prisoners at Camp Breadbasket and a paratrooper who had been charged in connection with the death of Moussa. Masters was also thought to have been involved in the investigation into the events of 19 September..."

- Tail between legs

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