After Diyala, Basra Calls for Help

Basra on the Gulf © All Iraqis Forum

If Iraq’s and Basra’s infamous poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab had been alive, he would have written the best of his poems, maybe better than the “Rain of the Hymn.”

Basra, Iraq’s second largest city was one of the most important and famous port cities in the region. It was an attractive city where people from different spots on the world used to come and spend a great time there.

I haven’t been to Basrah before, but my information about the port city comes from my father who lived there for five years in the 1960s. He always talks about how great it was, a city with clean streets and squares, high rise buildings, telecommunication, fancy cars, and statues and monuments. Schools and Universities were the shining stars in the city, producing graduates whose country was proud of. Muslims, Christians and Sabians lived in harmony for decades enjoying the prosperity their city possessed at the time until Iraq’s dictator came to power and started an eight-devastating war with neighboring Iran.

Basra was one of the main fronts in the battles during the first Gulf war. The city suffered the bloodshed and the Iranian attacks including the occupation of al-Faw peninsula for two years, until it was liberated later by the Iraqi army in 1988.

Basra’s people were some of the bravest Iraqis who revolted against Saddam in 1991, but with his brutal power Saddam crushed the revolutionaries and buried them alive along with their parents, wives, and children.

Today, Basrah is in its worst shape. The secular, intellectual and metropolitan city is taken over by the al-Fadhila and the Mahdi Army militiamen who are doing whatever they can to destroy the city’s modernized face by turning it into a Shiite version of Talabanic Afghanistan.

The Christian Science Monitor’s Sam Dagher visited Basra recently and wrote what he saw there. Disturbing actions committed by the militias summed up what is going on there, especially with the British Troops leaving, without finishing their job in protecting the city from terrorists they “vowed” to eliminate.

One of the things Dagher reported in Basrah was a clear sign that Basra is falling in the hands of extremists. “The billboard in Umm al-Broom Square was meant to advertise a cellphone service. Instead, it has become a message to those who dare to resist the rising tide of fundamentalist Islam in Iraq's second largest city. The female model's face is now covered with black paint.”

Graffiti scrawled below reads, "No! No to unveiled women."

I guess Iranians were smart enough to take revenge from Iraqis. They were waiting and preparing for this day where instead of Statues of poets in intellectuals, they made sure the militias they support put posters of their filthy clerics who know nothing about modern and liberal life, except it’s a “bad” thing. Dagher writes, “Posters of the leader of Iran's 1979 social and religious revolt, Ayatollah Khomeini, who at the time imposed similar limits on his society, are plastered everywhere in Basra.”

I don’t know whom should people go to in order to eliminate Iran’s poison. If their government is a big friend and ally to this Satanic Country, what can they do? If their government does not support the modern and secular life we enjoyed before?

Let’s count the disasters that are happening in Basra these days according to Dagher and see if the government will do something to stop them:

1- "There is pressure from parties backed by Iran to sideline liberal, secular, and leftist forces," says a labor union leader and a former communist, who, like most people interviewed for this story, did not want to be named for fear of retaliation. "Personal freedoms are being squashed … the fabric of Iraqi society has been ruined."

2- Public parties are banned.

3- Selling musical CDs is forbidden in shops.

4- Those who sell or consume alcohol face recrimination, even death.

5- Artists and performers are severely restricted and even labeled as heretics.

6- A famous city landmark, a replica of the Lion of Babylon statue that stood here for decades was blown up by militants in July. [Doesn’t that remind you with something Taliban did?]

7- Signs ordering women to cover up appear throughout the city. One woman, an Iraqi female activist from Basra, says the notices even threaten death. One banner, she says, said unveiled women could be murdered and no one could remove their bodies from the street.

8- Off-campus picnics and gatherings by Basra University students have been banned since March 2005, when militiamen viciously beat up a group of mixed-gender picnickers.

9- A student at the College of Fine Arts recounted how militiamen led by a turbaned cleric recently descended on their campus threatening to "finish off the dean with two bullets in the head" if the department was not shut down. "They called us immoral gypsies," he says.

10- Journalists and writers, too, say they have to think twice before publishing anything critical. [Freedom of writing!]

11- One Christian woman in Basra says that she has witnessed an exodus of families from traditionally Christian areas like Braiha, Maaqal, and Jumhouriyah over the past two years.

12- Sunnis in Basra have not been as fortunate. Many have been killed or forcefully pushed out from inside the city as part of the sectarian war that has swept the whole country. Most are now concentrated in areas south of Basra.

These criminals are chocking people with their rifles and brutal and bloody actions. Please spread the word. Do whatever you can to help. Let’s make our voice heard. No to Taliban, No to Iran, No to Oppression, No to Radical Muslims, and YES to modernity, Back to Secularism and Liberalism.

To read Sam Dagher’s article, please click HERE.

To Sam Dagher and the Christian Science Monitor: Thank you for bringing us the right picture. Thank you for letting the world know what exactly is going on in one of the “calmest” cities in Iraq. Keep up the great job!

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