A Loss of Faith in City of Shiites

It wasn’t supposed to be this way in Iraq’s largest Shiite Muslim-dominated city.

Less than a week before the first national election since longtime oppressor Saddam Hussein was toppled, the mood of Basrans is generally downbeat, and their simmering frustration with the city’s interim rulers could result in a surprise at the polls.

Allegations of widespread corruption, political power plays and an inability to improve the quality of life have damaged the popularity and electoral prospects of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, the powerful Shiite religious party that in effect rules Basra province.

The party is scrambling to recover lost prestige in time for Sunday’s vote, when provincial council elections will be held alongside national parliamentary balloting.

“If you don’t offer anything for two years, the people are going to lose faith.... Bush and Bremer were better than these [SCIRI] guys,” said Sajid Rikaby, assistant dean of the Basra University law school, referring to the U.S. president and L. Paul Bremer III, the former U.S. civilian administrator of Iraq. “The leaders of the party have integrity. But the local people just aren’t qualified.”

While Hussein was in power, wars, economic sanctions and deliberate neglect reduced Iraq’s second-largest city, the capital of an oil-rich province, to a massive slum. Nearly two years after the ouster of Hussein, this southern city of nearly 2 million people continues to bear the scars of its last three unhappy decades.

Garbage piles and rubble dot the entire city, even the upscale neighborhood of Abbaseya and the campus of Basra University. Bridges that were damaged in the 1991 Persian Gulf War still stand gaping and unused. A brief winter rain leaves lakes of standing water, thanks to a barely functional sewer system. An estimated 15% of the city is without water or sewage services.

“The proper thing to do in Basra is to replace every sewer line and every water line,” said Tom Rhodes, regional coordinator for the U.S. Agency for International Development, which is spending almost $20 million on water treatment improvements in the city.

The lack of optimism in Basra mingles with fear of a looming insurgent campaign that could peak in the final days before the election. After months of comparative calm, violence has surged in recent weeks, fuelling fears that Sunni Muslim Arabs, who prospered under Hussein and fear losing sway to the Shiite majority, have come south to strike at Iraq’s relatively unprotected Shiite underbelly.

Perhaps the most optimistic people in town are opposition politicians, who look forward to chipping away at SCIRI’s domination of Basran politics.

“It’s a chance for others to take the initiative,” said Ahmed Khatheyer, local head of the Communist Party. “The citizens are ready for change.”

SCIRI, a partner in the U.S.-appointed interim government and a core member of the powerhouse United Iraqi Alliance electoral slate, has held unchallenged primacy in Basra since Hussein was ousted in April 2003.

The provincial governor is a former fighter in the Badr Brigade, SCIRI’s militia. Badr fighters are estimated to compose more than half of Basra’s police and security forces. To the outrage of non-Alliance politicians, the head of the local electoral commission is the brother of the local SCIRI chief.

SCIRI candidates would be untouchable in Sunday’s election “if they had done anything for the people,” Khatheyer said.

Local SCIRI officials acknowledge that the slow pace of reconstruction has fueled public dissatisfaction, but they lay the blame on the provincial government’s limited powers and on interference, inefficiency and corruption among bureaucrats in Baghdad.

“We can’t solve the problems without authority,” said Salah Battat, head of SCIRI’s Basra office. “The relationship between the central government and the local governments is still confused.... We changed and Baghdad stayed the same.”

The soft-spoken Battat rejects widespread complaints of corruption, graft and nepotism directed at local SCIRI officials.

“We entered with a shirt and pants and will leave with a shirt and pants. Nothing extra went into our pockets,” he said.

SCIRI’s grip on local politics is particularly galling for Sunni politicians in Basra, who say that the province’s 25% Sunni population has been frozen out of all levels of the government and security forces.

“They closed the door in our faces,” said Khalaf Eissa, an official with the Iraqi Islamic Party, which withdrew from the elections last month, demanding that the vote be postponed.

Eissa complained that out of 400 employees of the local electoral commission, only one is a Sunni. Anger among marginalized Sunnis in Basra, Eissa said, was probably responsible for the recent wave of insurgent violence.

In the last month, the once-quiet city has suffered a string of attacks, including coordinated suicide car bombings on a police station and the electoral commission offices.

Eissa acknowledged that the attacks were probably committed by a combination of insurgents fleeing their former stronghold of Fallouja after November’s U.S.-led assault and local Sunni citizens angered by a series of raids on homes and mosques in their neighborhoods.

“It was a response to Fallouja, a response to the raids and provocations,” he said.

But even a massive election-day defeat for SCIRI in provincial elections wouldn’t necessarily end the party’s influence in Basra. Many politicians warn that the Badr Brigade fighters put on police and national guard uniforms but retained their old loyalties. “Anytime there’s an armed group around, it’s going to have an effect on the elections,” said Mansour Tamimi, a local tribal leader and member of the provincial council who believes that the British forces that ostensibly control the area erred by allowing the Badr Brigade to keep their weapons and join the security forces en masse.

“We want a security force that serves the country, not a political party,” he said.

Provincial Gov. Hassan Rashid, himself a onetime Badr fighter who spent time in exile in Iran, dismisses fears that his former militia could become a destabilizing force if SCIRI’s grip on Basra were jeopardized.

“We don’t have any weapons,” he said, “only Kalashnikovs and other light weapons.”