During those years, many resentful Basrawis say, the British were involved in a war that was deeply unpopular back home, and therefore had no stomach for sustaining the casualties necessary to restore order.

“I have been very frustrated at the British,” said Brig. Gen. Edan Jaber, a police commander in Basra. He said the British “gave a high priority to their own security” and “were not forceful with the cases they faced in the street.”

It is a common criticism. “The Americans go in with huge force and hit hard, not like the British,” one Iraqi soldier complained. “Our people need a powerful force, not a weak one. We had just left Saddam Hussein behind. How could anyone be soft after that?”

THE BRITISH OFFICERS

The British reject such arguments, saying they faced a very different problem from the one facing the Americans 300 miles north. Here, mafia-style Shiite gangs rose in an overwhelmingly Shiite town; up north, Sunni and Shiite factions waged civil war in divided cities like Baghdad and Baquba.

Before the British withdrew from the city center, they were already arguing that their continued presence made the situation here worse because they had become a “magnet” for attacks.

“There’s no doubt that for some parts of the community, we are as much part of the problem as the solution,” Lt. Col. Patrick Sanders, the British commander of the Fourth Battalion of the Rifles Regiment said last July. “We need to leave. There is no question about it. The only way that you can solve the problems of Basra is with an Iraqi solution.”

Only minutes before, a Mahdi Army mortar attack had forced him and his men to drop to the ground at the riverside Basra Palace headquarters, a site they would soon evacuate.