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Basra's Wary Rebirth
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"I love life."
More Conf idence In Maliki's Rule
Once Iraq's most vibrant city, Basra attracted traders and seamen from across the Arab world, Asia and Africa. It was dubbed the Venice of the Middle East because of its network of canals.
Now most of those carry sewage.
The city was shelled repeatedly during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. The following decade, President Saddam Hussein brutally crushed two Shiite rebellions here. His government then purposely neglected the city, allowing it to collapse into a state of desert decay.
In 2003, some of the heaviest fighting of the U.S.-led invasion unfolded on the city's outskirts. The British soldiers who then took control were greeted by thousands of Basrans, many of them with flowers.
But religious hard-liners flourished despite the British administration, infiltrating every nook of society, including mosques and universities. Shiite militias with such names as Vengeance of God and Soldiers of Heaven mingled with the larger and better-known Mahdi Army of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Assassinations and kidnappings gripped the city.
"People called them the Taliban," said Abdul Sattar Thabid al-Beythani, dean of the College of Fine Arts, referring to Afghanistan's puritanical former rulers.
Other politically connected militias smuggled oil and controlled the ports. Three months after the British handed over control of Basra in December, Iraqi forces, backed by U.S. and British airpower, launched their crackdown. It was intended to return Basra, the chokepoint of Iraq's oil, to the central government's authority. The fighting stopped after Sadr ordered his fighters to stand down.
Today an Iraqi army battalion occupies the Sadrist headquarters at the Ministry of Youth and Sports, pocked with bullet holes like a giant slab of Swiss cheese. The office and mosque of the Iranian-backed Vengeance of God militia has been reduced to rubble.
Where Mahdi Army fighters once manned checkpoints across the city, Iraqi soldiers and policemen check vehicles behind blast walls on virtually every stretch of road. Iraqi army Humvees patrol militia strongholds.
In a traffic circle, Sadr's face has been scratched out on a billboard, the same treatment given to Hussein murals in the weeks after the invasion. Fresh graffiti in many neighborhoods praise Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq's Shiite prime minister who sent in the troops despite U.S. warnings that they were ill-prepared.
"It shows the government is tough," said Ayad al-Kanaan, 43, a tribal leader and local council member. "Now, there is more confidence in Maliki's government and in Iraq's army."
