Welcome to Basrastan

[SocalDinar]

Welcome to Basrastan

Iraq’s oil-rich southern province is pulling away from Baghdad's central government. And it's not alone.

•  
• July 1, 2015

 

BASRA, Iraq — This port city in southern Iraq is not an easy place to love. Once the handsome backstop of the Persian Gulf, its famous canals are now choked with trash and reek of sewage in the brutal summer sun.

Its fine 19th-century mansions have given way to sagging low-rise apartment blocks, many of which lean menacingly over potholed roads. Even the Shatt al-Arab, the muddy waterway on whose back the city’s fortunes were built, has changed beyond all recognition. Ships sunk or scuttled over the course of recent wars obstruct the strait, while local fishing trawlers have mostly ditched their nets in favor of smuggling oil and various illicit goods from nearby Iran.

The fall from grace of Iraq’s second city is all the more startling due to the vital role it plays in the country’s economy. The central government derives around 97 percent of its revenue from oil, and roughly 90 percent of that oil is extracted from the massive fields that ring Basra’s dingy outer neighborhoods. As exports have boomed — recently hitting a new high of 3.145 million barrels per day — aggrieved residents feel their city ought to have reaped the rewards of the area’s natural riches.

“Iraq’s economy is Basra’s oil,” said Ali Abbasi, who owns a hardware store that is steps from the corniche that runs along the riverbank. “Is it reasonable that they take it all, but give us no electricity? They use our port, so why don’t they give us paved roads?”

For decades, Saddam Hussein’s cadre of Baathists kept a tight lid on any dissent in the predominantly Shiite south. They siphoned off the region’s resources while brutally suppressing periodic uprisings. But freed now from the shackles of dictatorship and fed up with recent governments’ inability to address their needs, some Basrawis are looking to distance themselves from Baghdad.

“The best easy way to break up this endless conflict is through regions,” said Ramadan al-Badran, a Californian-Iraqi businessman and one of three locals spearheading a campaign for federalism. “Baghdad’s shown it can’t deal with the power, so give it back to the people.”

 

Basra is just one of the many entities in Iraq keen to rework its relationship with Baghdad.

Basra is just one of the many entities in Iraq keen to rework its relationship with Baghdad. The Kurds and some Sunni leaders in the country’s north are looking to win greater autonomy, while many Shiite militias also seem unlikely to willingly surrender their newfound independence. The United States too has flirted with supporting a less centralized Iraq: Congress considered a bill that would allow for Washington to arm Sunni and Kurdish fighters without funneling weapons through Baghdad, while Defense Secretary Ashton Carter publicly worried about a future where “a multisectarian Iraq turns out not to be possible.”

The Islamic State’s surge through northern and western Iraq has also galvanized Badran and his allies, who insist that Iraq as a unitary state administered from Baghdad is finished.

“Iraq is a dead end. So either we keep going down, or we push ahead with a federal model,” Badran said.

 

http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/07/01/welcome-to-basrastan-iraq-basra-secession-oil-shiite-south/

[Jim1cor13]

Thanks Socal. Many surrounding Iraq want that territory, so yes, in a way they are getting

pushed into a hole, one bigger than the one they are in sad to say. I do hope they can

find their way, without all the interference from those who pretend to be their friends.

[rockfl9]

Hmmm.  The Islamic Democracy is unraveling!