Basra racked by fighting among Shia

BY TIMOTHY M. PHELPS | Newsday Washington Bureau Chief

May 28, 2006

WASHINGTON - Basra, Iraq's second largest city, has erupted in violence in recent weeks, threatening the stability of the country's oil exports.

Eight different Shia militias are vying for control in Basra, most of them connected with Iran, which many in the city blame for the violence, according to an Iraqi source in Basra in close contact with the local government.

An Interior Ministry official said recently that, on average, one person is being assassinated every hour in the city of over 2 million people. Despite frequent assertions by U.S. military officers and journalists that Basra is "relatively calm," such killings have been common for more than two years, but never before at this rate.

"The situation there [in Basra] is very serious," an American diplomat in Baghdad said recently in a telephone interview. "There has been rocketing and shelling of our offices there." He said local employees had been attacked and American personnel had been threatened. "There are a lot of people in Basra who have been suffering seriously from security problems," he said.

What makes the violence in Basra different from that in central Iraq is that it is mostly unrelated to the Sunni insurgency. Sunnis are a small minority in Basra. And it is taking place literally on top of Iraq's largest oil reserves, just a few miles from the Iranian border. It also is near the country's only port.

The Virtue ("Fathila" in Arabic) party controls a majority on the provincial council and the New South Oil Co. that manages the southern oil. The party was bitterly disappointed last week that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki named an independent as oil minister, a portfolio previously in Virtue's hands. Virtue has been accused of rampant corruption in the smuggling of oil.

Reuters news agency reported Friday that Virtue leaders had vowed to block oil exports until they regained control of the ministry. If they do so, it is not clear whether there is an Iraqi authority or force in the country capable of stopping them.

Southern Iraq is patrolled by the British Army, but the British have a largely hands-off attitude toward Basra. That has allowed militias to proliferate. An Iraqi from Basra said recently that British soldiers are seldom seen in the city.

Oil is currently Iraq's only major export, and most of that is coming from Basra.

Virtue, which is strong mainly in Basra, pulled out of the governing Shia alliance in Baghdad after it lost the Oil Ministry, weakening Al-Maliki's majority in parliament.

Sunni mosques in Basra were ordered closed on Friday in protest of the killing of a Sunni religious leader, Wafiq al-Hamdani, who was gunned down earlier in the day as he walked to his mosque. Like most of those assassinated in Basra, he was presumed to be a victim of one of the Shia militias, most of which are connected to political parties.

Sunnis have been a particular target of the Shia militias. On May 13, gunmen attacked a Sunni family at home and killed the father, five sons and another relative, police said. The same day police found the bodies of a translator for British forces and an engineer. Professionals such as engineers and university professors have been singled out for execution by the Basra militias for several years, as have any Iraqis working for the British or U.S. governments.

But there has been considerable intra-Shia violence in Basra as well. On May 15, between eight and 11 policemen were killed in a rampage by a large Shia tribe over the killing of their leader. Members of the tribe, the Garamsha, are heavily involved in kidnappings and carjackings for profit (as opposed to politics), according to law enforcement sources in Basra.

The Iraqi newspaper Al-Zaman (Destiny) reported this month that much of the fighting is related to oil smuggling, but that Iran also has played a heavy hand in it. The Iranians, who have considerable control of the Basra area through agents who infiltrate the police, were unhappy that the United States this past week cancelled talks with them in Baghdad about Iraq, and are trying to make trouble for the United States, the paper indicated.