Radical roots take hold in southern Iraq

BY TIMOTHY M. PHELPS | STAFF CORRESPONDENT

September 21, 2005

BASRA, Iraq - While the United States battles Sunni extremists in northern Iraq, different but potentially more enduring Islamic radicals - many with close ties to Iran - have been allowed to take root in the South.

This was painfully evident Monday, when the British Army attacked the Iraqi police force they had trained for two years, only to find the police had handed two British soldiers over to the most hardline Shia militia.

Shia radicals have imposed their intolerant views on what used to be the Persian Gulf's freest city, where Kuwaitis were known to flock on the weekends to escape their puritanical society just 100 miles away. Instead, Basra has become like Tehran, where morals are enforced not by family but by religious militias.

This is no aberration, but quite possibly the future of Iraq.

Powerful religious parties

The religious parties in control here are mostly regional variations of those now running the central government in Baghdad. The Shia-sponsored assassinations, politically or religiously motivated, that have been going on here for more than a year are beginning to happen in Baghdad as well. "This is our greatest fear, that the religious people will take over Iraq," said one secular Iraqi diplomat.

Agents of Iran - quite possibly the U.S. government's next adversary in the Middle East - have thoroughly infiltrated both the local security police in Basra and the elite paramilitary brigades sent in by the Interior Ministry in Baghdad, according to sources with access to U.S. intelligence. They are also heavily involved in the militias of some of the governing political parties.

What is happening in Basra, until recently little noticed in the international press, is described by one U.S. diplomat as "our dirty little secret."

U.S. knew of possibility

The U.S. government was warned about this by Persian Gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. They argued before the Iraq war that the secular Hussein, though reprehensible, was an effective barrier to Islamic fundamentalism, and that his removal would "open the floodgates." Now, the United States must contend in Iraq with both Sunni and Shia fundamentalism, bitterly opposing forces in agreement on one thing: their antipathy toward the West.

But the Bush administration's zeal for establishing a base for democracy in the Middle East carried the day, one administration official said, "snuffing out" concerns about Islamic ideology.

"What we are seeing in Basra is not just Islam, but an extraordinary version of Islam which looks at Israel and the U.S. as the source of Islamic impotence," the official said. "We could have won this battle if we had been able to provide electricity and services in the first 6 or 12 months."

In April of last year, just as the money and machinery for large-scale reconstruction were becoming available in the South, a militia controlled by a young Shia cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, rebelled against the U.S. and British occupation. While U.S. news reports focused on his short-lived fighting with U.S. troops in the holy city of Najaf, British troops and diplomats came under attack in Basra for the rest of the year.

There was also a previously unreported attempt last year on the life of the top U.S. diplomat in Basra, Richard Olson, which officials believe was organized by al-Sadr.

While Basra was relatively quiet for the first half of the year, once again the British are finding themselves battling al-Sadr's militia, the "Mahdi's Army." Frustrated by several roadside bombs that killed British soldiers - and four U.S. civilian security men this month - the British on Sunday arrested several Basra leaders of the Mahdi Army. When two British soldiers working undercover got into a shootout with Mahdi Army members, Iraqi police arrested them and then promptly handed them over to the Mahdi Army as apparent hostages - to be bartered for the militia men in British custody. The British assault Monday against the central police station and a nearby house freed the soldiers, but left angry Iraqi officials in Basra and Baghdad asking who was in charge of their country.

A bad omen

The fact that Shia militias appear to be behind some of these continuing attacks is a bad omen for the future of Iraq. The Shia are the very people who benefited most from the coalition invasion. Under Hussein, the Sunni minority ruled Iraq with ruthless contempt. Since January's elections, the Shias have been in firm control.

Most foreign reconstruction companies have stayed out of the South, and services have not improved for many Iraqis here, creating bitterness toward the United States and Britain.

Perhaps more important for the future of the country, it has helped fuel a drive for regional autonomy in the South that many fear could lead to the fragmentation, or even the disintegration, of Iraq.

Adamant that Basra get the benefit of the oil that lies almost within its precincts, a wide spectrum of political movements here is advocating a southern region with considerable autonomy from the central government in Baghdad, 300 miles to the north, and the right to control much of the oil money.