Basra’s meltdown

The ongoing crisis in Basra province remains one of Iraq’s best kept secrets, with military operations in the north of the country diverting attention elsewhere. Basra’s prolonged energy crisis, power blackouts, drug epidemic, rubbish mismanagement and political misconduct have the province teetering on the brink.

Making matters worse, provincial mayor and Islamic Supreme Council (ISCI) member Majid Al-Nasrawi fled from Basra last week. He escaped surreptitiously to Iran in an effort to dodge allegations of corruption levelled at him. His assistant is reported to have followed suit only days after Nasrawi resigned.

The vacuum created by the governor’s flight was filled instantly by warring tribal gangs. No official force or authority dared to interrupt them as they traded fire for hours.

Read: Accused of corruption, Iraqi official flees to Iran

The rule of the Wild West has replaced law and order. However, although Basra is without a mayor, it is not without authority, Ammar Jassim, from Basra’s Rebellion Movement (BRM), told MEMO.

“Basra is the prize Iran has long set its sights on,” he explained. “A scramble will now ensue between the ISCI camp — to which Nasrawi belonged — and the Badr Organisation camp, the party whose members were groomed and given sanctuary in Tehran during the Iran-Iraq war.” According to the BRM official, Badr will now “turn up the heat” to seize what writer Reidar Visser aptly labels the reluctant seat of “Shiastan” and, from there, “they [Badr members] can springboard themselves into Kuwait.”

Such reluctance was displayed last week after the local authorities forcibly expelled 400 families from their homes in the village of Zayn Al-Qut, close to the district of Siba. Local media stated that the order came in response to a telegram sent by the Islamic Republic of Iran, urging the Iraqi state to clear the area from which Iran claims rockets were fired into Abadan.

Villagers spoke of different motives. In a news package published by Rafidain TV, residents argued that they were being punished for refusing the government permission to build a military training base explicitly for the use of Iranian fighters.

Also read: Iraq hands over remains of Iranian war dead to Tehran

The ideology of pan-Shiism as broadcast throughout the region may have been internalised by Basra’s political parties for point scoring purposes, but ordinary people are not convinced. Many Basrawi place the sovereign and national rights of their people above Iran’s demands for extraterritorial privileges.

An outpouring of fury has been forthcoming from youth activists over the past two months. “Patience is wearing thin,” said Jassim. “The Iraqi people are being failed by a system and people who ought to serve them, but are instead depriving them of their most basic needs.”

In a video leaked two week ago, one man bellowed in fury, “Members of the provincial council are preoccupied exchanging payoffs worth 250 million dinars, while Basra’s poor wander the streets!”

As temperatures rise above 50°C, residents subsist on an average of one hour of electricity every 4 hours, and water once every three days. “Tempers flare in the summer season,” Saif Mehdi pointed out. “This, coupled with unemployment and boredom, forces people to rise up.” He is from north Basra and is a regular at protests. Unresolved service failures and reliance on overpriced generators, he said, are old problems that acquire new meaning during Iraq’s hot-tempered summers. “Many of Iraq’s youth feel neglected by a system that has proven faulty over the course of the past 13 years. Many of us hope one day to see the establishment of a civil state and the elimination of the sectarian quotas that have torn Iraq’s people into divided sects.”

The youth remain hopeful, but new and greater challenges may still stand in the way of rescuing resource-rich Basra from meltdown. No longer can the crisis be deferred and, as elections loom nearer, Basra will experiences new waves of political infighting and tribal warfare.

The consistency of government failures has left few in Basra able to trust the political class to provide the services they so badly need. As the blistering summer heat continues to rise, frustrations are unlikely to disappear.

The map of a ‘new Iraq’: Hostages and displacement

Civilians who fled the conflicted or Daesh blocked areas reached out to Iraqi army controlled Zencili neighborhood of Mosul and were transported from this area with armored vehicles as operation to liberate Iraq’s Mosul from Daesh continues on 12 June, 2017 [Yunus Keleş/Anadolu Agency]

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