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British withdrawals from southern Iraq are likely to have an adverse impact on the US mission in Iraq in a variety of ways. They can further reduce the impact of the ongoing US “surge” in Baghdad, endanger key US lines of communication, and, ultimately, complicate this country’s own withdrawal from Iraq.

The situation in the vast areas of southern Iraq in which the British have operated is, in reality, considerably more ominous than that portrayed by British and American officials in the immediate wake of the withdrawal announcement. That region is a very much troubled one where most localities are dominated by Shi’a militias (even rival militias), governance is tenuous (to the extent governance linked to authorities in Baghdad exists at all beyond the symbolic in many areas), security forces, in most cases, are more loyal to militias (often local, semi-autonomous militia elements) than governmental authority (such as the mayor of Basra), criminality (including large-scale oil and fuel smuggling) is endemic, and assassinations of the relatively few Sunni Arabs still present that far south is ongoing.

Levels of overall violence are significantly lower in the far south simply because of the area’s relatively homogenous Shi’a population and its distance from Sunni Arab insurgent strongholds to the north, not substantial advances in governance or the deployment of security forces loyal to formal civil authority. As British forces gradually depart, southern Iraq will likely slide even deeper into misgovernment, disorder, militia domination, and organized crime. Indeed, last August, when British forces tried to turn over a major base to Iraqi security forces, it was thoroughly pillaged by armed looters.

The US surge in Baghdad (an iffy proposition to begin with) also may well be affected adversely by a diminished British presence in the south. For example, Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army has a large presence in the south (near-control in some neighborhoods and localities). To the extent Sadr’s organization and its Mahdi Army are pressured in Baghdad, with the British presence thinning in the south, many of its leaders and cadres can take refuge there with even greater impunity, beyond the effective reach of US forces and what passes for a government in Baghdad for the duration of the surge. Indeed, if squeezed especially hard in Baghdad, the Madhi Army could even retaliate in the south by attacking US re-supply convoys passing through this unstable area.

The US supply line from Kuwait already has been a source of some trouble, but has not yet come under especially serious threat. That could change as the British leave. Indeed, if attacks and other interference in the passage of these vital convoys occur, some US forces desperately needed farther north might have to be redirected to guard convoys and protect the main road through an increasingly chaotic south.

All potential problems related to re-supply aside, when US forces eventually pull out of Iraq, it could prove more challenging to move large numbers of US military and contract personnel, plus millions of tons of weapons systems, equipment and supplies through this volatile region (an otherwise preferred route linked to sprawling facilities in Kuwait). Finally, the inevitable damage to additional bases and airfields in the south to be abandoned by the British probably will complicate still further the issue of using them to assist in the ultimate withdrawal of our own forces via this important southern route.