More troops needed to restore order in Iraq

There too few coalition troops in Iraq to bring order to the country, the British number two in the humanitarian effort said today.

There was a “corrosive fear of lack of security” in parts of the country, according to Oxfam’s Alex Renton.

“It (the coalition) has got to get enough people on the ground to restore people’s sense of a civil framework,” Mr Renton, in Iraq, told the BBC1 programme Breakfast with Frost.

“There are not enough soldiers or policemen in Iraq at the moment to do that.”

Britain's Major General Tim Cross, deputy head of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, called that a “very fair summary”.

“There are those who I think are overplaying the problems there,” he told the programme.

“There is no doubt that bringing back to life a nation is not easy and we have had lots of difficulties, and we will have more in the days ahead.

“I think the problem of security in Baghdad is one that has caught everybody’s eye and there is no doubt there is a lot of work that needs to be done.

“But I left two or three days ago, I am going back later on this week, and thinks are definitely getting better. They are getting better – better than in other areas.

“But overall, I think we are making good progress.”

Major General Cross was critical of those calling for a crackdown in Baghdad.

He said: “People have said we should be shooting more looters. Well, we are not in the business of shooting children who are moving around in houses looking for food or whatever.

“We are in the business of shooting people who carry weapons and shoot at us - but actually that has been relatively few and far between.

“What we are in the business of doing now is arresting looters, and that has been happening increasingly over the last couple of weeks and I think that is beginning to make a difference.”

He conceded that the task of bringing peace to Iraq after Saddam Hussein’s fall had been underestimated.

“The whole regime over 30 years had really made such a huge impression on people in Iraq that I for one had underestimated that,” he said.

“I was surprised how people would just not move without some form of authority.”

But Major General Cross warned that some reports were seriously overplaying the problems facing coalition forces.

“One hears comments from people over there who I sense are sometimes almost disappointed that things were not worse when we first went in,” he said.

“The coalition fought a magnificent campaign.

“The humanitarian crisis was not there, the reconstruction crisis was not there.

“Of course people are in difficulties. It would be nonsense to suggest otherwise.”

On conditions in Iraq’s hospitals, he said: “In relative terms we are not as badly off as we might have feared. There are shortages, of course there are.

“But actually the shortages are not as bad as we anticipated and most of the hospitals do not need vast quantities of drugs.

“What they need is new equipment, modern equipment. Saddam sat on this country for 30 years, starved them of infrastructure and the hospitals are a depressing sight.”

He denied that coalition commanders had set a target of mid-June for the restoration of essential services.

“The services in most cases – not in all cases but in most cases – are now back up to what they were before the campaign started,” he said.

“To bring them up to the sort of levels you and I would want to exist in is going to take years – in many cases two to five years.”