Militias Compete like "Mafia Families" over Oil Rackets and Public (while

[rodeodance]

our troops die (or UK).

http://www.iraqslogger.com/index.php/post/3889/Basras_Struggle_for_Power_and_Wealth

Basra's Struggle for Power and Wealth

Militias Compete like "Mafia Families" over Oil Rackets and Public Resources
Posted 10 hr. 4 min. ago


The concrete walls that surround the Fadhila party's compound in Sharish, north of Basra city centre, resemble the barricades around the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad.

Last spring, fierce clashes erupted between Fadhila and the Mahdi Army, a paramilitary group loyal to radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Several people were killed on both sides and offices and buildings belonging to the two parties were destroyed.

Mediators from tribes and other political parties managed to end the fighting but as Abu Ali al-Baaj, a mid-level Mahdi Army commander, put it, "The tensions were not buried for good.”

The reason for the battle was simple -- as the governing party in Basra, Fadhila had replaced the head of the local electricity deparment, who happened to be a Sadr supporter.

Behind the façade of democratic institutions such as councils and the police force, Iraq’s second-largest city with about 2.6 million inhabitants, has fallen into the grip of competing militias who are as suspicious of one another as rival mafia families. .........