This is driven by poll ratings, not by conditions in Iraq

[Horse with no Name]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2018562,00.html
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Tony Blair has always said that there would be no "artificial timetable" for pulling British troops from Iraq. Their departure would depend on conditions. His announcement yesterday of a minor reduction in troop levels this year reveals what those conditions are: the state of his poll ratings and the degree of movement he is allowed by George Bush.

The prime minister is desperately trying to get a last surge from a British public that has long been disillusioned with the war, while not embarrassing an American president who is slumping at home even as he surges in Baghdad. Withdrawing less than a quarter of the British contingent in Iraq is Blair's attempt at balance. It will satisfy nobody, least of all the British military who would like to have wrapped up the entire Basra adventure this year or last. Now it will be up to Gordon Brown to show whether he has the courage or the survival instinct, in a few months' time, to make 2008 the year of the full pull-out. Defeating David Cameron may depend upon it.

Tony Blair pointed out yesterday afternoon that there is no Sunni insurgency in Basra, no al-Qaida, and very little Shia v Sunni violence. The last point applies because the Sunni community is too small to fight back, and up to two-thirds of them have been forced to flee. Basra's Christians are also escaping while they can. So, then, who is the enemy? The prime minister did not go into detail in yesterday's announcement, although everyone knows that it consists of a cocktail of different Shia Islamist militias, armed tribes and criminal gangs. Dealing with them cannot be the task of an army, either foreign or Iraqi. It is a job for police.

The task is made harder in Basra by the fact that the two main militias, the Badr organisation and the Mahdi army, are linked to different Islamist political parties that are vying for supremacy. The governor of Basra and the chairman of the provincial council have ties to one side, and the police chief to the other, while the police force beneath him is packed with men from both. They are engaged in a kind of civic civil war, a local struggle over who controls revenues, both legal and illegal - the most lucrative of which is the siphoning-off of Basra's oil.