North makes clear that ordinary British soldiers showed courage and grit under fire, but they lacked proper equipment, their government was intent on bugging out, and their commanders did not believe victory was possible. When the British Army abandoned its base at Al Amarah, they made to deal with the Mahdi Army to release Mahdist prisoners in exchange for being allowed to retreat unmolested. The insurgents then looted the base and turned it into a huge bomb factory. Basra became a chaotic hell, ruled over by militias, criminal gangs, and Islamist fanatics. The situation was only retrieved by the American surge, and by Operation Charge of the Knights, in which US and Iraqi forces finally swept into Basra and routed the Mahdi Army.
At the time, I resented the comparisons of the sophisticated British method contrasted with our loud, blundering, violent failed efforts to fight insurgents in the Baghdad region. It seemed unfair given the different threats, and over time it was clear that the quiet in the south was not from British success but from cutting deals with the enemy for relative quiet in exchange for British passivity.
