Bugger Basra
Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Friendly Fire from the mighty Today in Iraq drew my attention to this article in a comment on another post. I recommend you read it all because it's difficult to know which depressing fact to choose for my customary paragraph-sized taster:

Nation Review Online: Baffled in Basra
For every step responsible Basrans move forward - a gradually improving security situation, glimmers of economic development, some political leaders who are beginning to understand they must provide benefits for their constituents - irresponsible, ignorant, and frequently violent elements drag the city backwards. A race, or competition, exists between the forces of enlightened synergy and progress and traumatized entropy and decay. Basra teeters between the two, its future up in the air. And with Basra, so goes the rest of Iraq.

Or how about this from a different piece by the same author, Steven Vincent, on June 9:

Beneath the surface, though, this is not the easy-going municipality of 1.5 million people I recall. For one thing, I can no longer wander the streets, take a cab, or dine in restaurants for fear of being spotted as a foreigner: Kidnapping, by criminal gangs or terrorists, remains a lucrative business. Instead, for safety’s sake, I’m tied to my hotel, dependent on expensive drivers, unable to go anywhere without Iraqi escort. "You really shouldn’t be here at all," a British-embassy official warned me.

As the ever-perceptive David from Kitty Killer commented on Basra and the British forces' involvement there:

...our experiment in freedom and democracy is allowing a mini-Iran-come-Sicily to flourish

Here comes my now familiar rant. It'll be a cliche soon at this rate. Apart from a handful of stories, which I pointed out at the time, here, here and here there is virtually no mention in the British press of what's going on down there - a nascent, violent, theocracy and general lawlessness - and how the British either can't or won't help the situation. Daily reports of the carnage in and around Baghdad still feature heavily in the UK media but there's little or no word - other than news of the very occasional British casualty and the odd surfacing of tales of abuse of Iraqis by UK troops - from what the Observer described as "relatively stable" Basra.

If Basra is "relatively stable" then why aren't more British reporters filing stories from there? Or would reporting on how the British are failing in Basra lay newspapers and television networks (particularly the post-Hutton craven BBC) open to accusations from the Government of not backing our boys? The gutter press can ignore Iraq all together, the broadsheets and TV can report (from behind the wire of the Green Zone in Baghdad) on the Grand Guignol in the US-controlled north and we can all get on with the denial in believing everything to be tickety-boo in Basra.

Basra airport might be open to commercial flights but they're still having to corkscrew on their descent and ascent for fear of a missile attack. Rory Carroll wrote a somewhat glib piece about the city in the Guardian on June 4, but he talked more about how dangerous the place is for Western tourists than the Eastern residents.

According to the under-reported UN report, Iraq Living Conditions Survey 2004, three out of four household is in the Basra governate "suffer unsafe drinking water". 85% of the water is from tank trucks which are not regarded as a safe source.

The report says 63% of rural areas and 47% of urban areas are without adequate sanitation. The UN's UNDP 2003 report found that 93% of Iraqi households had access to adequate sanitation in that year. Of the children in Basra between the ages of six months and five years, the 2004 report found 8.4% were generally malnourished (underweight for their age), 18.2% were chronically malnourished (underheight or "stunted" for their age) and 7% were acutely malnourished (underweight for their height). The UN states that malnutriton rates have doubled since the war.

It may have changed since the 2004 report was commissioned, and one would fervently hope so, but nobody's telling if it has. The Government aren't usually backwards in coming forwards with a good news story. I know good news doesn't generally sell but even a cynic like me (and I'm not the only one) would be pleased to hear that levels nutrition, sanitation, clean drinking water and security were climbing. Isn't it in New Labour's interest to show the likes of me that they're trying to repair the damage they've caused?

Where exactly are the great and the good? Take Chair Blair. Two months after September 11, she spoke out against the "repression and cruelty of the joyless Taleban regime" and its oppression of women. She said:

The women in Afghanistan are as entitled as the women in any country are to have the same hopes and aspirations for ourselves and for our daughters - a good education and career outside the home if they want one, the right to healthcare and, of course, most importantly, a right for their voices to be heard.

Nearly four years later and has she no words for the women of Basra unable to leave their homes without their hejabs for harrassment "or worse"? I suppose it's difficult to speak out against a theocracy when your husband helped to install it.

Steven Vincent again:

"How can this be? We should be rich!" Saad, a former translator for the British army exclaimed to me. "Where is the money going, why is nothing happening? Tell your readers," he added in a distraught tone, "that we are willing to work to make Basra beautiful again - but we need their help, we need the world's help."

In the end it all comes down again to where you stood on the war and whether you've moved on or not. In the eyes of the British media at least, we've liberated Basra just enough for it to be a done deal. Its people may have to live in fear of a corrupt police force, fundamentalist clerics and their thugs but while us in the West can gloat at Saddam Hussein in his undercrackers it's mission accomplished.

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4 Comments:

On June 22, 2005 12:50 AM, Blogger snooo said...

It really does bother me that a region which is supposedly under British occupation has little in the way of British media covering it, inless an election happens or a Brit gets killed/caught torturing some poor sap. Its like Officer Bar Brady is standing infront of a fiasco, telling us to move along.  


On June 22, 2005 10:27 AM, Blogger Alex said...

I've been worried for some time that the POLADs (Political Advisers) to the army are encouraging the southern provinces in the British zone to integrate, rather as some of the Shia politicians talk about a state called "Sumer". But frankly, I'm beginning to think they SHOULD be encouraging them, because I can't see any other way to extricate the army from Iraq without restaging the Retreat from Kabul/the evacuation of Aden/Dunkirk depending on the chosen means of transport.  


On June 22, 2005 3:14 PM, Blogger Justin said...

I see what your saying Alex, but that leaves us with the vexed question of whether we should abandon a formerly highly educated and (largely secular) population to the depradations of a Shia theocracy. Particularly when anecdotal evidence suggests that that theocracy wouldn't be their without fatwas and vote rigging. (Which I suppose gives rise to wider questions of the varying degrees of democracy you can expect to impose on a country.)

It seems to proves my point that the British have done half a job and little more. If you prove to be right, then what was the guff about bringing freedom to Iraq we got from our leaders all about? Unless they're equating stability with freedom and people stop bombing oil terminals.

Also, how would this Shia canton square with the Sunni population further north?  


On June 23, 2005 12:01 PM, Blogger dearieme said...

The British media don't say much about Basra because it wouldn't give them the opportunity to do what they really want to i.e. bang on about W. God, they are frivolous sods.  


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