Why Are British Troops at Basra Airport?

"Basra is half empty. There are no vehicles and no one is going to work. People are afraid to go out," said a military official in the city, (Reuters).

Why are 4100 British troops sitting in Basra airport when the city and its immediate surroundings, as well as the main road from Basra to the north, are engulfed in fighting?

The Times reports that the government troops who launched the Basra offensive against the Mahdi army militias that control the entire zone of former British command, is a government force that has been the focus of US military training. But the British government has stated repeatedly, as have British military commanders at the airport encampment, that their presence there is precisely to train government Iraqi troops and to provide military assistance in heavy fighting.

This is heavy fighting; these are government Iraqi troops who have been trained by the Americans.

Reports have surfaced repeatedly that there are barely enough British soldiers in the base to protect themselves. They are not offering assistance to Iraqi troops; they are not training the Iraqi troops that are fighting in their own sector. They are not carrying out their own, self-declared mission, or that of the British government.

Brown and Browne need to explain to us all convincingly why over 4000 British troops are in harm's way, or they should leave.