More than 4100 British soldiers, desperately needed in Afghanistan, are bunkered down behind fortifications at Basra's airport five miles from the city.Of these, fewer than 300 are currently playing a direct role in training the Iraqi army or giving tactical guidance to their units on the streets. The vast bulk of the UK force is simply there to protect the perimeter of its own besieged base. Any fewer than 4000, and the security of the installation would be at serious risk.
Since troops pulled back from their vulnerable forward operating bases inside the city last September, the airport has been mortared or hit by salvos of rockets on 101 occasions. At least three servicemen have died and many more have been wounded.
Defending the occupants of the camp means patrolling far enough out to keep insurgents beyond easy "indirect fire" range as well as manning sandbagged bunkers to prevent direct suicide truck bomb attacks.
As of April 30 this year, 94 UK personnel were embedded with the Iraqi 14th Division and 73 co-located with the Basra Operations Command. There is also a six-strong liaison team at Basra Palace, the headquarters complex taken over by Iraq's fledgling military on the banks of the Shatt al-Arab waterway.
If there is any military justification for British soldiers to remain in Iraq, it is that they sit astride the main US supply route on the highway from Kuwait north to Baghdad.
Beyond that static guard role, they lack the offensive power to intervene decisively in any internal power struggle and can barely guarantee their own security.
Despite claims about progress in training Baghdad's new army. Of the 197,000 local soldiers qualified by US or British instructors, at least 27,000 have deserted. That figure represents more men than Britain has in all of its infantry battalions combined.
In the meantime, US Marines have had to intervene in southern Afghanistan because Britain's Army is so overstretched it cannot scrape up an extra battlegroup of 650 fighting soldiers.