Basra was no stranger to war. Britain first captured the city from the Ottoman Empire in 1914. The Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s turned it into a frontline city. The US bombed it during the 1991 Gulf War and then routinely throughout the 1990s. After the 1991 conflict, Basrans rose up against Saddam Hussein, expecting American support that never arrived. The uprising was crushed. Years of sanctions, bombing, and Ba'athist repression followed. By the time residents learned of the planned 2003 invasion in late 2002, they began forming militias and building fortifications -- preparing not for liberation but for yet another assault on a city that had endured decades of violence from multiple directions.

Coalition forces met unexpected resistance. After initial combat, American troops moved north toward Baghdad, leaving the British to besiege Basra -- a task considered suited to their experience from Northern Ireland and earlier deployments in Iraq. On 21 March, most of the city's electrical infrastructure was destroyed. Water and electricity became scarce immediately. Al Jazeera reported that Anglo-American forces blocked the city's drinking water supply and prevented the Red Cross from restoring access. A Center for Economic and Social Rights report later stated that the blockade deprived one million residents of safe drinking water for nearly two weeks. UNICEF warned that 100,000 children in Basra were at risk of severe fever and death from a single water treatment plant going offline. The siege ground on while humanitarian aid sat nearby but could not be distributed.

The British 7th Armoured Brigade -- the legendary "Desert Rats" -- fought their way toward Basra through a series of escalating engagements. On 27 March, the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards destroyed 14 Iraqi tanks in what became the largest British armored engagement since World War II. The 3 Commando Brigade's reconnaissance force twice raided the suburb of Abu al-Khasib, and on 30 March, Operation James secured the area after marines and Challenger II tanks fought through sporadic resistance, destroying dug-in Iraqi T-55s. On the morning of 6 April, British reconnaissance forces probed northern Basra and found Iraqi defenses crumbling. At 11:00 AM, British troops moved into the city in force. They destroyed Ba'ath Party headquarters and fought Fedayeen fighters through fortified houses and pillboxes. At the College of Literature, the brigade battled over 300 militia for three hours before breaking the back of organized resistance. Three British soldiers -- Piper Christopher Muzvuru, Private Kelan Turrington, and Lance Corporal Ian Malone -- were killed. By the evening of 7 April, Basra had fallen.

The battle's weapons left scars that outlasted the fighting. Britain initially denied using cluster munitions near civilians. On 28 May, Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram acknowledged that over 2,000 cluster bomb projectiles had been fired on Basra -- mostly L20A1 artillery shells, each containing 49 smaller explosives. Roughly 102,900 individual grenades were fired; about 2,050 failed to detonate. Human Rights Watch documented the cost: thirteen-year-old Abbas Kadhim was throwing out garbage when cluster submunitions struck his neighborhood, leaving fragments lodged near his heart. Carpenter Iyad Jassim Ibrahim, 26, died in surgery from shrapnel wounds sustained while sleeping in his home. Both US and UK forces also used depleted uranium munitions. A 2012 study found that the birth defect rate in Basra in 2003 was 17 times higher than the rate recorded in 1994. Childhood leukemia rates increased substantially. The UK Ministry of Defence eventually identified 51 locations in Basra Province where it had used depleted uranium rounds.

Nine days into the occupation, Basra's library was set ablaze. Librarian Alia Muhammad Baker had already moved 70 percent of its collection to safety. On 20 April, Basra residents gathered for a Shia religious festival banned for over 20 years under Ba'athist rule. By August, mass demonstrations filled the streets, sometimes turning to riots, and British soldiers responded with rubber bullets. In September 2003, a Basran named Baha Mousa died in British custody; investigation revealed that soldiers had used illegal interrogation techniques on multiple detainees. The Red Cross, itself targeted by bombings, withdrew from Basra in October 2003. On 2 September 2007, the last 550 British soldiers in the city departed under cover of darkness to avoid ambush. The battle was over. Its consequences were not. Unexploded ordnance, contaminated scrap metal, and a generation of children born into a poisoned environment remained behind in Iraq's second-largest city.