Imperialism Follow

You’re probably best known as a writer for Casualty and the musical drama Blackpool. Occupation is a long way from that. What made you decide to write a drama about British troops in Iraq?

When you step out on the streets of Baghdad you notice immediately that all is not right in Iraq.

The end of the British occupation of southern Iraq was accompanied with the usual pomp and circumstance.

The faultlines in Iraq are deepening as the country marks six years of occupation.

One of the central planks of the US strategy to pacify Iraq has begun to unravel – just as it prepares to draw down its troops from the country.

The British occupation forces in southern Iraq passed military command of the region to the US Army this week.

With the elections in Iraq behind them, warmongers in Britain and the US have been quick to declare once again, "mission accomplished". Iraq, they say, should become a model for democracy across the Middle East.

In the end all it took was a well-aimed shoe. US president George Bush faced his final humiliation when an Iraqi journalist pelted him with his size 10s during the president’s "farewell trip" to the country he destroyed.

The Iraqi parliament has approved the Status of Forces Agreement that sets a date for the withdrawal of US combat troops from the country by 31 December 2011.

Iraqi supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr, the rebel Shia cleric, demonstrated in their tens of thousands in Baghdad on Friday of last week.

It is being hailed as an honourable end to a disreputable war, the Status of Forces Agreement signed by the Iraqi cabinet last weekend sets out a timetable for the withdrawal of US combat troops from cities by June 2009, and the whole country by December 2011.

Thousands of Iraqi workers took to the streets of Basra on 27 October in a protest at massive cuts in salaries demanded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).