Iraq is on a knife-edge. You feel it when the pilot of the Puma helicopter suddenly banks and automatically fires decoys in response to the threat of an attack from the ground. You sense it on the faces of young British squaddies preparing for another night patrol. You certainly hear it when you talk to British military commanders in Basra and Baghdad.
"Everything up to now has been about preparing for this government," says Lt Gen Sir Rob Fry, the most senior British officer in Iraq, referring to the prime minister designate Nuri al-Maliki’s expected decision today to present a cabinet to the Iraqi parliament. "The next three to six months will be crucial, absolutely vital."
British soldiers have huge responsibilities here in Basra – political and diplomatic as well as military. Yet, says Lt Gen Fry, "all military force does is hold the ring". He describes the foreign military presence in Iraq as "a midwife".
The analogy is apt. British commanders are desperately hoping that Mr Maliki’s promised government of "national unity" will fill the increasingly dangerous vacuum being exploited by Shia militia – some egged on by Iran – in the south, and elsewhere by Sunni insurgents and al-Qaida fighters now believed by British intelligence to number up to 1,000, far more than the estimates a year ago.
The Guardian accompanied Gen Sir Mike Jackson, head of the army, to Basra after one of the worst weeks for British forces there. Five people were killed – including the first woman to die in combat in Iraq – when their Lynx helicopter was shot down. A few days later, two soldiers from the 2nd Battalion Royal Anglian Regiment were killed while patrolling in an armoured Land Rover.
Teenage soldiers from the First Battalion Light Infantry told us how they fought off a crowd of up to 300 Iraqis celebrating the Lynx crash using batons and shields initially before responding to their petrol bombs and mortars with live fire.
Meanwhile the street patrols go on as before. "We are everywhere in the city every day," Lt Col Johnny Bowron, commander of 1 Light Infantry,says. "It’s pretty awful at the moment."
British military commanders draw a sharp distinction between the Baghdad insurgents and the militia posing an increasingly dangerous threat to their troops around Basra. "In the south-east we do not have an insurgency [but] armed groups chasing political and economic power", says Maj Gen John Cooper, commander of British forces in southern Iraq. Lt Gen Fry, based in Baghdad, reinforces that assessment. "The problems in the south are not about trying to overthrow the government but about competing for economic power and wealth," he says.
They point the finger at the Badr brigades, the military wing of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri), which has close links with Iran and has two provincial governorships in this region, and rogue elements of the Mahdi army, the militia of the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
The militia is thriving, British officials say, at a time of growing corruption and criminality of local politicians over whom weak or non-existent central governments have had no control since the invasion. British officers are frustrated by the lack of economic progress, fuelling insecurity particularly among the poor and leaving them a receptive audience for the Mahdi militia’s offers of food and healthcare.
The problems facing this region of Iraq are compounded by the influence of its neighbour. "Iran sees itself very much as a regional power," says the senior British military intelligence official in Basra. The view is that Iran wants to provoke a war of attrition to hasten British and US withdrawal from Iraq without causing chaos.
The Iranians "certainly don’t want the US here or a nation in turmoil," says Lt Gen Fry. The suspicion is that Iran, or at least its revolutionary guards, or Hizbullah elements, are behind the increasing use of improvised explosive devices, IEDs, roadside bombs which are causing more and more casualties, not only in Basra, but across Iraq. There are now up to 80 daily attacks causing 600 casualties every week, according to British military officials.
As important to the British as a functioning central government is the building of a national Iraqi army. British instructors are training cadets at a military academy, with the target of an Iraqi security force of 325,000 soldiers and police by December. The ability of national institutions to stand on their own feet will alone trigger cuts in the 8,000 UK troops, military commanders said this week. Cuts would be driven by conditions, not a predetermined timetable, says Gen Jackson.
As far as Britain is concerned, this appears to be a defining moment in Iraq. "There is all to play for," says one senior British officer. "We’re running out of time," warns another.