From The New York Times, 6/13/06:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/13/world/middleeast/13basra.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin
Oil, Politics and Bloodshed Corrupt an Iraqi City
By SABRINA TAVERNISE and QAIS MIZHER
BASRA, Iraq --
Politics, once seen as a solution to the problems of a society broken
by years of brutal single-party rule, has paralyzed the heart of
Iraq's south.
After a roadside bomb destroyed a British vehicle last month in Basra,
wounding two, Iraqis poured gasoline on the flames from above.
This once-quiet city of riverside promenades was among the most
receptive to the American invasion.
Now, three years later, it is being pulled apart by Shiite political
parties that want to control the region and its biggest prize, oil.
But in today's Iraq, politics and power flow from the guns of
militias, and negotiating has been a bloody process.
"We're into political porridge, that's what's changed," said Brig.
James Everard, commander of the British forces in Basra.
"It's mafia-type politics down here."
Police reports from the past five months read like war chronicles:
Eight oil company employees murdered.
Twenty caches of Russian rockets discovered, including a pile in the
back of an ambulance.
A tank of stolen oil found in a fake mosque.
Shootouts reported between a politician's militia and the police, and
between police officers.
Now, after two years of relative calm, Basra has a soaring murder rate
(the 85 killings in May were nearly triple the number in January), a
tattered oil industry and a terrified population.
"I cannot talk with you," said Sajid Saad Hassan, a professor at Basra
University's agriculture college.
"I haven't joined a party and no militia is protecting me."
The story of Basra's descent traces the arc of the war itself.
People here, mostly Shiites whom Saddam Hussein oppressed, embraced
the invasion.
But for the next three years, Baghdad put its resources into fighting
insurgents in central and western Iraq, leaving the quiet Shiite south
to find its own way.
But the rules have fallen away along with the end of Mr. Hussein's
rule, leaving a broken landscape of empty state institutions.
"So much of the state melted after Saddam fell," an American official
said.
A primordial soup of political parties, their militias and tribes
filled the void.
They formed morals patrols at the university, commanded entire units
of the flimsy police force, and moved into positions of power in the
company that controls the vast oil-processing and transportation
network.
Now, with provincial elections still many months away, a bloody power
grab has ensued.
It is a battle being waged from inside Basra's institutions and will
be particularly difficult for the prime minister, Nuri Kamal
al-Maliki, to stop.
Indeed, three days after he vowed to crack down with an "iron fist"
and imposed a state of emergency, a bomb killed 27 in a market here.
In the shadowy world of Shiite politics, the fight is over power.
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Bush's "democracy" in action. Everything Republicans touch turns to
*****.
Harry
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