This Europe: Lying idle off Italy's coast, the pride and joy of the Iraqi navy

We knew that western intelligence had its failings but ask any resident of the Ligurian port of La Spezia and you will find that the enemy really does reside within – out in the port, there he is, or rather they are: two Iraqi warships.

As diplomats have rewritten resolutions and generals launch air strikes, the pride of the Iraqi navy has quietly been bobbing away on the still waters of the Italian Riviera.

Every morning, a dozen sailors dutifully hoist the Iraqi flag aboard the Moussa Ben Noussair and the Tarek Ben Ziad. Then they rev the engines of the two Esmeralda-class corvettes and swivel their 76mm cannons menacingly along the horizon.

But the cannons are not loaded and the drill has been going on every day for the past 19 years. The two corvettes were part of an order placed by Iraq with Fincantieri, the Italian state shipbuilder, in 1980. The order was worth $960m (£430m) and included the two Esmeralda-class corvettes; four Wadi-class corvettes, loaded with helicopters, missile and rocket-launchers and anti-submarine torpedoes; four Lupo-class frigates armed with short-range missiles, and a supply ship. But war and sanctions intervened.

The routine of the dozen men who keep the engines turning and hoist the flag every day never changes, except in October every year when Baghdad sends out a new crew. When the sailors are allowed on land – a humanitarian gesture more than anything, because the quarters are cramped – they are escorted by agents from Sios, the Italian secret service. And they may not diverge from a strict itinerary set for them by the Italians.

"It would have completely transformed the quality and capacity of [Iraq's] fleet," said Jim McCoy, a naval analyst at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London. But as the order was completed, war broke out between Iran and Iraq. The Italian leader at the time, the socialist Bettino Craxi, froze military deliveries to Iraq. At the end of the conflict in 1988, Saddam Hussein refused to take the vessels unless he received a discount to compensate Iraq for the delay. The courts did not deliver a ruling before Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1988; then came a new freeze on deliveries, this time imposed by the United Nations.

Fincantieri – which was paying to keep the ships in working order – handed the problem over to the Italian government which, in turn, decided to get rid of the vessels.

The Italian navy took four frigates and four corvettes were flogged to Malaysia. The supply ship sailed for Iraq in 1984 but could not reach its base at Basra because the Shatt al-Arab waterway was closed. Iraq was allowed to keep the two corvettes but, amid fears of the alleged Iraqi "supergun", they were never allowed to leave port. "It will be very difficult for these ships to ever arrive in Iraq," said Marco Maria Ferranti, a spokesman for Fincantieri.

It is still not clear what will become of the Ligurian Esmeraldas. They may yet be sold to another country.