Iraq: Five years later

Five years on the fight is still raging in Iraq - but this response is a charm offensive.

This is British troops just north of their base at Basra Airport still trying to win hearts and minds.

Britain has been accused of abandoning Iraq's second city after sustained attacks last year - but a meeting with a tribal elder gives the RAF Regiment's Flight Lieutenant Jules Weekes a chance to re-engage.

The project is boosting the local economy, providing badly needed jobs and a glimmer of hope for Iraq's young.

SOUNDBITE: Mohammed, builder saying (Arabic):

"Projects like this are really important because the children will be able to go to school and give them a better future and we're very happy about it."

Engaging with what the military calls 'key leaders,' or influential locals, can produce dividends in more ways than one.

SOUNDBITE: Flight Lieutenant Jules Weekes, RAF Regiment saying (English):

"They are generally happy to see us. They are asking obviously for more ways in which we can help them and their communities and then in addition to that we ask them what their security situation is like and whether they have had any interaction with militant or Islamic groups."

As President Bush marked the fifth anniversary of the war with a swagger, a British military spokesman was more reserved.

Major Tom Holloway said even if troops were still in Basra in another five years, it would not amount to failure.

SOUNDBITE: Major Tom Holloway, British military spokesman Basra saying (English):

"If we are here in another five years our posture will be entirely different I mean you just have to look at campaigns in the Balkans where our posture throughout our Balkan operations changed from one end to the other. In Northern Ireland the same detail. So, military operations are constantly under review to match the situations on the ground."

The trouble is here Saddam Hussein may be gone but little else has changed.

These people are Marsh Arabs. They survived on the reservoirs and marshes that provided their livelihoods and their water. Saddam Hussein decided to blow up the dams which retained that water and destroyed not only the community but their livelihoods too. International money paying for the construction of the school behind me but there are 700 people in this village and they still don't have a clean water supply.

Five years to the day after invading Iraq, Coalition forces still have a fight on their hands - battling grinding poverty as well as a bloody insurgency - and a lack of basic needs.

Stuart McDill, Reuters, Basra.

raging - characterized by violent and forceful activity or movement; very intense;
sus·tain tr.v. sus·tained, sus·tain·ing, sus·tains - to keep in existence; maintain.

glim·mer n. a dim or intermittent flicker or flash of light.
swag·ger v. swag·gered, swag·ger·ing, swag·gers

v.intr. To walk or conduct oneself with an insolent or arrogant air; strut.
live·li·hood n. Means of support; subsistence.
grindv. ground (ground), grind·ing, grinds

v.tr. to crush, pulverize, or reduce to powder by friction, especially by rubbing between two hard surfaces: grind wheat into flour.