Drawdown but no cut and run

By Paul Reynolds
World affairs correspondent, BBC News website

Moving to overwatch: British patrol over Basra

By announcing that British troops in Iraq are likely to be reduced to 2,500 next year, the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is seeking to calm public opinion at home - while at the same time reassuring his American and Iraqi allies that he is not cutting and running.

He laid out a plan under which Iraqi troops and police would take over security across the whole of southern Iraq, leaving British forces to train and stand by to help if needed.

He rejected calls from the Liberal Democrat opposition for an immediate and complete withdrawal.

"There will be no artificial timetable for a final withdrawal," he said.

The statement can be interpreted, however, as laying the groundwork for such a withdrawal.

The most encouraging development from the British point of view is that the recent regrouping onto the airport base has reduced the exposure of the troops to attack. Mr Brown said that attacks on British troops had gone down from 87 in July to five in the last month

A greater period of calm for the British contingent has allowed Mr Brown to lay out a timetable for a drawdown

In addition, the British troops' main adversary, the Mehdi army, has declared a ceasefire. And the Mehdi army leader, the cleric Moqtada Sadr, has also made a reconciliation with his fellow Shia rival Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, head of the Supreme Islamic Council of Iraq.

All that has allowed a greater period of calm for the British contingent, allowing Mr Brown to lay out a timetable for a drawdown though not for a complete withdrawal.

Mr Brown's statement is in line with one made by his predecessor Tony Blair to the House of Commons on 21 February this year. In that statement, Mr Blair suggested that - once British troops had left the Basra palace base - their numbers could be reduced "possibly to below 5,000".

Wider context

The wider picture in Iraq remains precarious. The Bush administration's view, expressed by the US commander in Iraq General David Petraeus at congressional hearings in September, is that things are improving after the deployment of extra US troops in the "surge".

This view is supported by some observers, among them Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution in Washington. He said on 1 October: "It is way, way too soon to talk of stability in Iraq, and the lack of political progress there makes our long-term prospects for even partial success modest at best. However, at least on the battlefields, we have clearly been headed in the right direction."

Others, however, are more cautious and interpret a reduction in violence differently. According to this view, the drop in civilian casualties is the result of the separation of Sunni and Shia populations.

And a further interpretation is that both groups are preparing for a potential civil war, or at least a prolonged confrontation, with new alliances (such as that of the Sunnis with the US against al Qaeda) being formed with that in mind.

Iran

And Mr Brown did not neglect to mention the potentially serious confrontation with Iran. He called on Iran and Syria to end "their support for terrorists and armed groups operating in Iraq".

Earlier, asked if he would support military action against Iran over its nuclear activities, he told a news conference that he did not rule out anything.

The British government might be hoping that Iraq is calming down. Iran remains a crisis in waiting.

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