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2 Basra tears itself
apart By Babak Rahimi
Basra, the second-largest and the richest
city in Iraq, is at the brink of a major economic
and political meltdown. Unless Baghdad succeeds in
reaching a compromise over the country's
governmental apparatus (especially over the issue
of federalism), the southern city may become the
greatest threat to the future of post-Ba'athist
Iraq.
Such a threat lies mainly in a
struggle for power between Shi'ite militias and
tribal forces who compete for control over oil
resources, territorial
domination and public capital (hospitals and
schools), which are all leading to an erosion of
security in a city that is the source of Iraq's
economic life.
Although much of this
turmoil is a reflection of the unstable nature of
the transitional process, the current situation in
Basra may represent a future scenario for Iraq
that is made up of political factionalism and is
devoid of a functional government. [1]
At
the center of Basra's meltdown lies the ongoing
conflict between different Shi'ite factions,
mainly vying for control over Basra's energy
industry and oil smuggling. Domination over local
governance through confrontation, and at times
violence, has become the routine method of
conducting politics in a city that appears to be
breaking apart into territories governed by
different militias. Such political conflict,
however, also includes competing visions of
post-Ba'athist Iraq, as each Shi'ite militia
advocates a particular ideological agenda
(regionalist, nationalist and sectarian), while
seeking popular support from various segments of
the Shi'ite community in Basra and other southern
cities.
The Fadhila Party The
Fadhila (Virtue) Party is a case in point. An
offshoot of the original Sadrist movement in the
mid-1990s, when Muqtada al-Sadr's father,
ayatollah Sadeq al-Sadr, led a nativist Shi'ite
movement to oppose clerical traditional
authorities in Najaf and the Ba'athist regime in
Baghdad, Fadhila emerged as a major Shi'ite party
in Basra in 2003.
With its own militia and
support from the city's professional class
sympathetic to the Sadrist millenarian ideology,
the party managed to win local elections and
gained the allegiance of smaller Shi'ite parties,
such as Wifaq and Harakat al-Da'wa, for the
control of the provincial council in January 2005.
On the level of religious ideology,
Fadhila is a millenarian nativist movement and the
party has many supporters among Basra regionalists
who envisage an autonomous Basra province that
includes Maysan and Dhi Qar governorates.
Ayatollah Muhammad Yaqubi, a student of
Sadeq al-Sadr and the head of Fadhila, who is
based in Karbala, opposes Muqtada and sees him as
a rogue cleric who is taking advantage of his
father's legacy to gain power. Yaqubi also opposes
Iranian influence in Shi'ite Iraq - even the
authority of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, an
Iranian-born cleric based in Najaf.
Since
2003, Yaqubi has tried to form a strong alliance
with Grand Ayatollah Kadhim Haeri, based in the
Iranian city of Qom, who is regarded by some
Sadrists as the successor to the late ayatollah
Sadeq al-Sadr, the main rival of Sistani
throughout the 1990s. [2] The move can be
recognized to highlight Fadhila's attempt to
strengthen native Iraqi clerics to counterbalance
Iranian influence in the province.
In
January 2005, Fadhila moved up the political
ladder in the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) in the
interim government, but only to face major
obstacles from the Nuri al-Maliki-led government
in 2006. Under Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the party was
in charge of the Oil Ministry, but when Maliki's
government came to power the Fadhila minister was
replaced by Hussein al-Shahristani, a prominent
Shi'ite politician and scientist with no ties to
the militia politics in Basra.
When
Fadhila withdrew from the unity government in May
2006, the party began to concentrate on local
politics as a way to maintain control over the oil
industry and trafficking. It was at this juncture
that conflict with other rival Shi'ite groups,
including tribal forces, began to escalate.
Fadhila challenges legitimacy of the
SIIC Realizing the influence of the Supreme
Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI,
now the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, or SIIC),
which was also present in the city council and the
police force, Fadhila sought ways to challenge the
legitimacy of the rival group.
As
journalist Juan Cole described, the governor of
Basra and member of Fadhila, Muhammad Misbah
al-Wa'ili, accused the chief of police of allowing
the continuation of political assassinations. [3]
The accusation was made in a way to discredit the
Badr Corps, the SCIRI's militia, which had
maintained influence in the city's police force
through the Interior Ministry.
Tensions
between local groups and the SCIRI grew when a
major tribesman was assassinated in May 2006. The
Karamishah Marsh Arabs attacked the SCIRI's
headquarters, accusing the Badr Corps of carrying
out the assassination. Immediately after the
event, followers of the SCIRI and militia groups
linked to the Badr Corps, namely Tha'r Allah
(Revenge of God), formed demonstrations against
the governor. [4]
With the rise in tension
between Shi'ite militias and tribal rivals, Maliki
quickly stepped in later in May to establish
security by declaring a month-long state of
emergency in the city. At present, frictions in
the Basra government continue to grow, especially
between Fadhila and the SIIC, as nativist
political parties (such as Harakat al-Dawa) accuse
the Badr militiamen of being agents of Tehran and
advancing Iranian interests in Basra.
Fadhila and Muqtada compete for
Basra With the re-emergence of Muqtada on
the political scene in spring 2006, Fadhila faced
another Shi'ite contender. Although conflict
between the two groups dates to spring 2003,
Muqtada failed to establish a strong base in
Basra. After the 2004 uprising against the United
States that led to the destruction of Najaf, the
Sadrists lost even more support in the city,
especially among the professional class, who saw
Muqtada as an uneducated, unruly cleric.
When Muqtada began to rise as a major
political figure in the UIA in 2005 and Basra
began to experience greater economic hardship
because of corruption in the oil industry, many
younger Iraqis from the poorer parts of the city,
in such places as the northern district of
al-Hayani-e, started to support Muqtada. [5]
Fadhila-Muqtada relations are as complex
as Shi'ite Iraqi politics. Although the two
parties rely on the legacy of Sadeq al-Sadr to
legitimize their prestige, they both compete for
greater influence in southern politics - in the
case of Fadhila, this is limited to Basra. They
also share a nationalist interest, however, to
curtail the influence of SIIC leader Abdul Aziz
al-Hakim, who envisages a nine-province federal
state, in which Basra would be the capital of the
Shi'ite-dominated southern region.
Fadhila, however, rejects Muqtada's
tendency for a tightly centralized government
based in Baghdad (or Sadr City). Fadhila believes
that Basra should become an autonomous regional
power with the oil revenues under the control of
the city, while distributing the wealth to the
other parts of the country. [6] Competing visions
of a future Iraqi government are the fundamental
elements of the Fadhila-Muqtada conflict.
There are also accusations of corruption
and mayhem, however, which the two parties use to
discredit each other. Fadhila's control over the
oil industry has been a major problem for the
Basra-based party. Wa'ili, the governor, functions
as the head of Iraq's Southern Oil Co, which
administrates the province's oil industry. He is
also well connected to wealthy oil traders. [7]
Muqtada accuses Wa'ili and his party of
involvement in oil trafficking that creates
shortages of oil for the country, especially in
Baghdad and the Sunni provinces in western Iraq.
Accordingly, members of the Mahdi Army are accused
of infiltrating the police
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