By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, August 12, 2003; Page A01

BASRA, Iraq, Aug. 11 -- Sabah Khairallah drove his rickety white Toyota Crown to a gas station in downtown Basra at 8 a.m. The line, two cars wide, already stretched a mile. Ten hours later, as dusk broke the summer heat, he was still waiting.

He had left shuttered his shop, which sold nets to fishermen plying the Shatt al Arab that flows through Basra. The night before, he recounted, he had spent another sleepless night in a sweltering apartment without electricity, buffeted by a humid wind blowing off the Persian Gulf. At one point, in desperation, he started his car, turned on its air conditioner and put his son inside to sleep.

One month, said the gaunt, unshaven and angry Khairallah. That's how long he gave the British forces occupying Basra to bring electricity, water and fuel. After that, more riots would ensue. "But not with rocks," he said, nodding his head. "With guns."

An uneasy calm returned to Basra today after two days of unrest -- some of the worst in Iraq since U.S.-led forces overthrew the government of Saddam Hussein on April 9. But no one in this weary southern city -- neither the British officials blamed for its plight, nor residents whose mounting frustration mirrors the spiraling temperatures -- seemed to think that the worst was behind them.

In interviews, residents of Iraq's second-largest city almost uniformly expressed anger and incredulity at the shortages of gasoline and electricity and the skyrocketing black-market prices that have accompanied them. British officials in Basra, openly frustrated themselves, questioned the priorities of the U.S.-led reconstruction. And many feared that remnants of Hussein's government or militant Shiite Muslim groups were prepared to capitalize on the disenchantment.

"There's no question in my mind that people's expectations were raised very high and they felt we had led them to expect dramatic improvements when Saddam was toppled," said Iain Pickard, a spokesman for the British-led occupation in Basra. "We've not managed to meet those expectations. Until we got here, we didn't appreciate the scale of the task."

Over the weekend, hundreds of people flooded into Basra's streets, taking British soldiers by surprise. Gangs of youths, some shirtless, barricaded roads with burning tires and threw rocks and chunks of concrete at the troops and vehicles thought to be owned by aid organizations and foreigners, in particular Kuwaitis, who are resented for their wealth and widely believed on the streets here to be smuggling oil out of the country.

British troops wearing riot gear fired shots into the air to disperse crowds. Two people were killed Sunday, witnesses and officials said, but some residents said the toll was higher.

British forces began releasing their own fuel reserves to alleviate the shortages, said Maj. Garry Pinchen, a spokesman. Troops today escorted fuel shipments to the city's 10 gas stations, where soldiers rationed gasoline at 25 liters (about 6 1/2 gallons) per car. After long droughts of electricity, power was restored to three hours on, three hours off.

"We have to solve one problem at a time," Pinchen said.

In a country devastated by war, more than a decade of sanctions and years of often willful neglect, Basra's problems are especially acute. British officials blame the loss of electricity -- at one point it was available 20 hours a day -- on looting, an increase in demand because of the hot weather and a breakdown in one of two major power stations. That, in turn, has slowed oil refining and delivery of fuel to gas stations. Backup generators are old and inefficient. Smuggling of fuel has made matters worse, they said.

The oil pipeline from Basra to Nasriyah was recently sabotaged, and silt has blocked half the main canal that brings drinking water to Basra. That has intensified residents' complaints that water, when available, is salty.

Pickard acknowledged that there was "an understandable degree of frustration" and complained that British officials' priorities in Basra -- power, water and fuel -- are not shared to the same degree by U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad.

"It seems so bureaucratic. It's so difficult to get things going," he said from a building that had been looted of everything but its windows before the British moved in. "We have not had a great deal of say. We don't feel we've been able to influence the reconstruction program."

He pointed to a U.S.-funded project to renovate 200 schools in the region. While admirable, Pickard said, "painting schools isn't going to stop people from rioting."

But U.S. officials in Baghdad say that restoring basic public services -- particularly electricity, water and fuel -- remains a top priority of the reconstruction effort. They said they have been importing large quantities of fuel from neighboring countries to compensate for reduced output at Iraqi refineries and are bringing in generators for hospitals, water treatment plants and oil facilities.

But like the British in Basra, the officials said their efforts have been plagued by continued sabotage and looting of Iraq's power and oil infrastructure.

At the Canary Restaurant, where customers lunched on chicken and the dates for which Basra is famous, owner Ali Fahd expressed sentiments heard often in the Shiite Muslim city. Residents welcomed the end of Hussein's repression, which was especially fierce in the south after the 1991 uprising that he crushed. For weeks after his overthrow, the city remained peaceful and patient, he said. But now conditions are, if anything, worse. The only thing plentiful, he said, are imported cans of Pepsi-Cola stacked in pyramids along the streets.

"People have waited all this time and they've found nothing. Nothing has gotten better," he said. Asked whether it wuld, Fahd paused, wiped his sweaty brow and said, finally: "I swear to God, I don't think it will improve."

Along Basra's Kuwait Street, the main commercial thoroughfare, Yassin Faris sat at a desk whose metal trim was almost too hot to touch. When the bombs fell and British troops besieged the city in March, he said, his was a voice of patience.

"I was always defending the Americans and the British. 'You should wait, you should be patient.' But it's slow, it's very slow," he said. When his two sons and three daughters complain now, he said, he has little to say.

In the middle-class neighborhood of Jamaiat, electricity had returned to the house of Alaa Qassem this afternoon. It had been a difficult week, she said. Her neighbor next door, Aseel, had told her how she had taken her sick mother to the roof every time the electricity went out, along with bedding and pillows. The night before, she made three trips.

Her neighbor across the street, Maysun, was eight months pregnant and had a small son. In a fit of desperation, she had tried to sell her jewelry and television set, hoping to move to a $20-a-night hotel until she gave birth. She was unable to raise the money, Qassem said, and instead put her son in a water-filled bathtub to cool off and spent the day crying.

"I said to her, 'God help you,' " Qassem recalled. "I cannot do anything for you."

Qassem said she had no nostalgia for Hussein's government. Her 18-year-old brother, Qusay, was executed in 1980 on suspicion of subversion, she said. Word of his demise came in a death certificate delivered to the family in 1983. Her father had fled to Iran.

With her $250-a-month salary from a Norwegian aid group, she now supports a brother, his wife and their two children. But prices have spiraled. A cylinder of butane that once cost 30 cents now goes for $4. The cost of a block of ice -- often the only means of refrigeration -- has jumped 16-fold to about $5.

"It's a filthy life. We cannot do anything. We can only complain to God," she said. "When the war happened, we dreamed of a different life. Today, I don't have any more dreams. Just dreams of electricity and water."

A few minutes later, the electricity went out again in their house. The air conditioner went silent. The ceiling fan swung slowly to a halt. And the room was left lit only by the glow of a setting sun.

Her sister-in-law Wasen smiled wryly. "The generosity has ended," she said.

Correspondent Rajiv Chandrasekaran in Baghdad contributed to this report.