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09/23/2005:

"Iraqis: "This Government has No Authority""

The Iraqi official was visibly flustered and embarrassed when questioned in Baghdad about the storming of the police station in Basra by British troops.

"It is a very unfortunate development that the British forces should try to release their soldiers the way it happened," said Haydar al-Abadi, the Prime Minister's press secretary.

He defended the way the local police had acted. He said: "For two guys to collect information in civilian clothes, in the current tense security situation, I believe that the reaction of the Iraqi security is totally understandable."

It was not a good day for the Iraqi government. It wanted to publicise the capture of the northern city of Tal Afar by the Iraqi army backed by US forces at the weekend. Instead it had to answer question after question about why Iraqi sovereignty had been treated with such contempt at the other end of the country.

At the weekend an Iraqi minister said to me in frustration: "We must try to eliminate the grey areas where our authority conflicts with the coalition. We must try to reach some understanding about what to do when our jurisdictions clash."

Ordinary Iraqis were drawing their own conclusion about what had happened in Basra. Abdul Hamid, a goldsmith, said over the phone from the city: "People here have seen that our government has no authority inIraq. The British did not respect them when they smashed into the jail, so why should we respect our own leaders?"
counterpunch.org