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Anger in Basra

June 16, 2008 4:29 PM

Kadhim Twari Sa’adoon emerged from a mosque in Hiyaniyah, one of the poorest slums in Basra, wearing his best white dishdash and tribal headdress, and saw me and my cameraman waiting, microphone at the ready.  Suddenly he started shouting with much anger, and a crowd started to push forward.  Hiyaniyah was, until three months ago, completely under control of Moqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi Army.  People were killed in the streets, women didn’t go outside unless they were covered from head to toe in black and “coalition forces” – the British soldiers stationed at Basra airport - classed it as a non-permissive environment.  In other words a no-go area.

Since Iraqi troops moved in to Basra in March they have managed to drive the militias out or underground.  Now people walk freely around the city, there is no curfew, restaurants and coffee shops are open until late, and some women are again venturing out without wearing the veil.

It was not this that Kadhim was shouting about, however.  Nor were we the targets.  It was the sewage.  He took my arm and led me 50 yards down the newly-paved road to the edge of a pool of green water with a nauseating smell that I had been trying to suppress for the past hour.  “This,” he shouted.  “This is what they give us.”

Two days previously a private Iraqi contractor had come to fix the street which had a burst sewage line and a long row of potholes.  Despite the protests of the locals, the contractor merely dumped a truckload of gravel onto the broken pipes, covered up the whole street with tarmac, and left.  The following day the sewage started welling up and pooling on top of the new tarmac. 

“It is smelly, it is getting the children sick, there is typhoid…”  Kadhim was furious.  And he was right to be angry.  The militias may have been forced out for the time being.  But if the Iraqi government cannot provide a minimal level of services it will quickly lose the support of the locals, and the militias will filter back into the neighborhoods.

Basra has always had problems with water and sewage.  Like New Orleans, parts of the city lie below the level of the salt water in the Shatt al Arab waterway, so keeping fresh water flowing in and waste water flowing out requires an elaborate system of pumps which keep failing because of the unreliable electricity supplies.  Basra is a microcosm of much that is wrong with Iraq – no potable water, no working sewage system, a shortage of electricity and a local government that is doing little to improve peoples’ lives.

It was nice to walk around Basra and not hear any gunfire.  The last time I felt unthreatened on the streets in Basra was 2004.  But the angry shouts of Kadhim were warning enough that the city’s problems – like those of Iraq at large - are far from over.

June 16, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (0)

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