How internal dissent was stifled before Basra 'revolt'

The biggest surprise of the Anglo-American invasion so far is that despite the headlong advance of US troops towards Baghdad, nearly all Iraqis remain under Saddam Hussein's control.

Last night there were reports emerging from British forces circling Basra that a popular uprising was under way, which had drawn mortar fire from Iraqi troops based in the city.

Yet as American tanks advance through the desert, like ships through an empty sea, the Allies have yet to persuade most Iraqis that Saddam Hussein's government is finished. No town larger than tiny Umm Qasr has definitely fallen and even there, Iraqi dock workers are frightened of unloading Allied ships docking because they fear they will be punished by Saddam Hussein if he returns.

"In the months leading up to the invasion the political planning by the US was almost non-existent," said a leading member of the Iraqi opposition yesterday. The attack was to be a purely military affair. Iraqis, even those long-opposed to the Iraqi leader, were neither expected nor asked to play a role.

It is all very different from the great uprisings of the Shia Muslims and Kurds in 1991 when the rebels captured 14 of the 18 Iraqi provinces. These were never likely to be repeated on the same scale this time because of counter-measures taken by Baghdad. But Washington also feared that a popular rebellion would complicate the CIA's plans to win over senior Iraqi army officers and make it more difficult for the US to rule the country after the fall of President Saddam.

It is not that the opposition – the most important elements of which are the Kurds, the Shia Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Iraqi National Congress of Ahmed Chalabi – are uninformed about what on what goes on in Iraq. Their agents, equipped with satellite phones, are everywhere. An hour after the BBC had announced that Umm Qasr and Basra had fallen in the first days of the campaign an opposition leader said: "It is quite untrue. There is still heavy fighting in both places."

Saddam Hussein has thus far retained control because he learnt from experience.

The 1991 uprising began among angry soldiers streaming back after defeat in Kuwait. So far the Iraqi army is still intact. The Shias, more than half the population, also remember the terrible retribution when their previous rebellion failed.

Soon after George Bush began to signal that he was contemplating war with Iraq, more than a year ago, Baghdad set up special security committees to control every village, town and city. Houses of those suspected of disloyalty were marked on maps held in local security headquarters. People were told to stay in at home in case of war and were forbidden to leave the places they came from.

The CIA, as it did in Afghanistan in 2001, spent large sums of money in Iraq, but most of it seems to have been in acquiring agents. According to one unconfirmed report, an Iraqi army officer was immediately executed after being caught in the past few days with a concealed satellite telephone when the enormous Khalid military base outside Kirkuk was subjected to a devastating air raid.

America also underestim-ated the anger felt by Iraqis, even by those bitterly opposed to the government, that the invasion was purely an Anglo-American venture, without the mandate of the UN and without even the pretence of Iraqi participation. The Iraqi National Congress in particular had pressed for the creation of a provisional government. "There is a big difference in the mind of an Iraqi officer between surrendering to the Americans and the representative of an Iraqi provisional government," said one INC member.

The atmosphere may now be changing. Yesterday a British spokesman in Kuwait claimed that an uprising of unknown size had started within Basra. The US is also sending increasing numbers of troops into the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq and may use the 70,000 peshmerga to open a northern front.

All this has great significance for Iraq after Saddam Hussein. If the Kurds and the other parties play an important role in overthrowing the President, they will be difficult to ignore after his fall. The US plan for an invasion and occupation of Iraq, largely on the model of a 19th-century colonial conquest, is starting to melt away.