Basra betrayed: When the British leave, will the Mahdi Army replace them?

Kim Sengupta and Raymond Whitaker, Independent

...The Iranian influence is the subject of much hushed talk in Basra. Among the first Sunnis, and a few Shias, to be killed after the official end of the war were those who had fought for Saddam Hussein's forces against Iran, with air force officers who had carried out bombing raids being particular targets. Similar executions, on a larger scale, were replicated later in Baghdad. Mazin Younis, who grew up in southern Iraq, is chairman of the Iraqi League, a pressure group based in Britain. "The British did nothing much to confront Iranian influence until they started blaming them for the bombs killing their troops. They also did nothing to confront the Shia militias. The main Sunni mosque in Basra, al-Kabir, was repeatedly attacked, and then we had the killing of Imam Yusuf. I do not see that their withdrawal will make any difference." (...) Much of what went on in Basra remained unpublicised, because the militias intimidated and assassinated journalists. Most of the victims were Iraqis, but among those killed was Steven Vincent, an American reporter who was taken away with his female translator, Nour Alkhal, by men in police uniforms...

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