the once and future Basra

Even more on the retreat:

…recent months have been marred by a significant upswing in violence, including death-squad killings, clashes between rival Shia militias and attacks on foreign troops.

Three Shia movements are struggling for control of Basra: the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the Islamic al-Fadhila party and supporters of prominent cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Al-Sadr's representatives in the Dawa party were crucial to the ascension of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to the post of prime minister - though there are growing signs that the Iraqi leader may be willing to bow to intense US pressure and forego his alliance with the controversial Shia cleric. SCIRI offices in the city have been torched as clashes continue.

Al-Fadhila broke away from al-Maliki's United Iraqi Alliance bloc in May 2006 after failing to secure the oil and trade ministries in the incoming government.

With control of crucial oil export facilities up for grabs, it is unsurprising that the factions paid no heed to the prime minister when he sought to fashion an agreement between them in December.

Control of the south is likely to fall to a new Shia-controlled state comprised of Basra and the neighboring Dhi Qar and Maysan governates within a future federal structure.

As Jim Henley says, this was the story Steven Vincent was stumbling towards when he was assassinated back in 2005. Remember those stories put about by British sources to the effect that he’d been shagging his translator and had been targeted in an honour killing? Jim adds:

the best case is that Basra comes to resemble a Shiite Egypt, with a vampiric overclass perpetuating its power by doling out boodle and beatings, only without the vibrant cultural life. The New Basra: All the crime of a port city with none of the fun…

I suppose looking at this over the longer term, we’ve been staging a fighting retreat for at least a year: first out of Maysan, then concentrating on basra airport – and then when you’re concentrated on the airport, the only way to go is up and out. Which in turn raises the question of exactly when the UK government knew the situation was hopeless.

Comments

[Lisa Ramaci-Vincent]

thank you so much for referencing my husband steven in this post; it means so much to me to know he has not been forgotten, and that there are still people who think of him and what happened to him in the context of the war. most of all, it is the occasional acknowledgement that he was right, that everything he said about basra has come to pass, that is even more meaningful. steven told me a few weeks before his murder that he had astonishing information he could not even talk about, much less write down, saying that when he got home and was safe he would finally be able to "rip the lid off the snake's nest basra has become". there is no way to be certain of what it was he had found out, but i would not be at all surprised to learn it was the information disclosed above, or something very similar. but of course we'll never know...