KEY POINTS:
Britain, having changed its leader, is some distance ahead of the United States in the long, sorry retreat from Iraq. British forces have withdrawn to just two bases in Iraq, Basra Palace and the city's airport. It has only 5500 soldiers left in the country and intends next
to pull all its remaining forces back to the airport before formally handing Basra province back to Iraqi control on a date yet to be decided but expected to be within months.
That, at least, is the plan. Iraq's various insurgent forces probably have other ideas. Even as the British troops handed over the Basra police command centre to Iraqi police last week, a militia loyal to the Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr was reported to have taken control. Witnesses said the police left when Sadr's militia arrived.
Is this a glimpse of the endgame in Iraq? President Bush refuses to believe so; US forces were reported to be planning to fill any void in southern Iraq left by the British withdrawal. But Mr Bush has no better ideas. The extra troops thrown into battle since January have not made a noticeable impression on the insurgency and the Iraqi Government has lost even the President's confidence that it will be capable of taking over.
The British Government, under new Prime Minister Gordon Brown, is listening to military commanders who have advised they can achieve nothing more in Iraq. The US may receive similar advice in the crucial report to be made this month by General David Petraeus, though American military leaders seem more divided over the outlook and General Petraeus is thought likely to produce the report his Commander in Chief would like to see.
Iraq is panning out much as predicted from the moment Mr Bush began to round up a posse against Saddam Hussein. The only question remains whether it becomes a single Shiite state or whether the Sunni minority and the Kurds in the north can secure some sort of autonomy. Much may depend on which Shiite faction emerges as the most powerful, and both Iran and Saudi Arabia will be concerned at the implications for power in the region.
Moqtada al-Sadr looked a likely candidate even before his move on Basra last week. He is young, the son of Iraq's Grand Ayatollah murdered in 1999 by Saddam Hussein, and has an enthusiastic following. Of all factions he seems to have the largest fighting force, the 160,000-strong Mehdi Army, and rules a sprawling section of Baghdad called Sadr City.
His first act since the reported takeover in Basra has been to suspend all armed actions for six months because 52 people were killed in gun battles between the Mehdi Army and the rival Shiite Badr Organisation in the southern city of Kerbala. Sadr blames rogue elements in his own forces and called the six-month suspension to remove them. Hopeful signs of responsibility and restraint are rare in Iraq and this may be one.
Whatever shape the post-occupation regime may take, the occupying forces are unlikely to make much difference to it. The question then becomes, what purpose is served by remaining. The occupation, its control largely confined to a few blocks of Baghdad in any case, may be serving mainly as a focus for recruitment to the very faction it least wants to see entrenched in power, the Sunni al Qaeda in Iraq.
It is in the interests of al Qaeda that the US forces remain and the way to ensure they remain is to commit regular atrocities on the scale of that wreaked on a religious minority in northern Iraq last month.
The violence will not end with the occupation and may worsen in the contest for power but if events in Basra are any guide the end is nearer and there seems no good reason to prolong the inevitable.
