Southern Iraq is relatively secure. But the British have not taken advantage of the four years of occupation to develop this bleak region. Now that they are pulling out, the Shiite Mahdi militia are standing by to take over.The British are beginning to leave Basra. But to what?
When Hussein Ali Kassim left a friend's house a few nights ago in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, the midnight scene was quite unlike what one might expect to see in war-torn Baghdad: Drivers were out and about and fruit sellers plied their sweets beneath street corner lamp posts. There were neither car bombs bursting nor the kind of strictly enforced night-time curfews common in Baghdad. "The security situation in Basra is good," says Kassim, a local pharmacist. "It's still worse than before the war, but it's improving every month."