British officers in southern Iraq are trying to persuade Baath Party membersto help them with their inquiries, reports Jack Fairweather.
The man stood before a plank of wood made into a makeshift counter to sell his wares outside his bungalow as the British soldiers approached.
"I have boiled sweets from the British and the finest Iraqi chocolate," he said, though something about his appearance suggested he was no ordinary shopkeeper.
Dressed in a loose-fitting anorak, mauve trousers and grey suede shoes he eyed the soldiers nervously over his sunglasses.
"Do you know anything about the local Baath Party members?" asked the British intelligence officer gruffly who had spotted the man the night before and labelled him as a suspicious character.
"No sir, there are no Baath Party members here," said the man. Around him stretched a compound of immaculate housing complexes outside Basra, untouched by looting from militia groups and in stark contrast to the surrounding villages made up of mud bricked houses, before which still stood the hand-painted sign "say yes yes yes to our leader Saddam Hussein".
"Do you know," said the intelligence officer, "that unless Baath Party members start working with us, we'll take it that they are working against us and we'll have them shot?"
As the translator found the right phrases to put the message across, the officer explained, "I didn't really mean that. I'm actually here to offer him and his family safe passage but with these sorts of punters its best to play hard." "I see," said the Iraqi, taking deep drags on his cigarette, "now I think about it I do seem to remember something."
Far from sitting out the siege of Basra British forces have begun "turning" Baath Party members against the regime in order to find out the location of the Iraqi army and militia units before an advance into the city.
They have found a number of willing party members who have already begun infiltrating the military groups hidden in schools and hospitals to avoid the allied artillery and aerial bombardments.
The aim is, in the words, of one senior British officer, "to pick them off one by one. We have the time, but for the regime in Basra clearly the clock is ticking". "All we want is peace," said the man in the compound, who refused to take money for his dangerous mission into the city.
"My son was in an Iraqi jail for 20 years before he was released because people had said he stole the furniture from the house of officer during the Iran-Iraq war. I joined the party because I had to. Many of us are members without even realising it."
"I will go to Basra for you because I have no faith in the regime. But I am very scared of the other people here finding out. I go fishing sometimes by a nearby lake, maybe you meet me there. I will leave a hand-written report underneath a stone," said the man.
"Someone will come to meet you wearing local dress," said the officer. "Bloody hell," he added, "I think I'm going to add 007 to my call-sign. This is all very Cold War."
Elsewhere in the compound, however, the consequences of the collapse of the regime were becoming apparent.
One man who would not give his name for fear of reprisals was packing up his truck with all his household furniture and readying his children to leave.
"I am not a Baath Party member but I have already heard people saying that I am because I have a decent house and job. We are leaving for Basra because we terrified that the Ali Babas will come and steal everything we have."
He strapped down a gaudy coloured rug and a gilt embossed armchair from the 1970s, like many of his family's possession seeming to bespeak happier times before Saddam came to power.
"I pleaded with the Americans in 1991 not to leave when they came here, but they did and everything I had was destroyed. I pray that this time the British will stay."