Word: basra
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Government officials insist the Saddam River project, a 350-mile canal linking Baghdad with the Shatt al-Arab waterway south of Basra, is intended only to add 1.5 million acres to Iraq's arable land. Arif al-Delaimi, chief engineer on the project, says the southern portion of the canal was completed in the 1980s and the marshes have been drying up ever since. Instead of driving the inhabitants out, he says, the government has been resettling them around artificial lakes. But Andrew Whitley, executive director of Middle East Watch says, "The land under the water is of little agricultural...
...allied action was prompted by evidence that 70 Iraqi combat aircraft were being used to attack Shi'ite villages and rebel camps in the swamps and islands in the Basra region, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers empty into the gulf. That violates a U.N. resolution, passed after the Gulf War, prohibiting Saddam's "repression" of his own people. A similar protection zone has been in effect in northern Kurdish regions since April...
Military checkpoints dot Route 6 from Baghdad to the southern city of Basra, evidence that tension persists between the Iraqi army and the rebellious Shi'ite population. At one checkpoint, passersby can see men being searched by soldiers. On a tour of Basra conducted by the local military governor, a general who reportedly commanded the troops that crushed the Shi'ite uprising after the war, foreigners are escorted by a truckload of armed soldiers with a roof-mounted machine gun and grenade launchers -- though the general insists all is peaceful in the city...
Unlike Baghdad, where much has been rebuilt, Basra has undergone little repair. Many bridges lie in ruins, and sewage-pumping systems wrecked during the war have not been repaired. Streets in the city's slums are flooded with filth, and barefoot children often play in the foul roads; disease is spreading...
...Basra nightclub, young Shi'ites dance or sit in dark corners until the lights suddenly come up. A military officer trailed by about eight armed soldiers strides onto the floor. As the soldiers hold their rifles at the ready, the officer rounds up several of the Shi'ite men in the club, checks their documents and arrests them. A Foreign Ministry minder tells foreign journalists that the men defected from the army. But as always when something happens that the government does not want people to see, the minder will not allow a photographer to take pictures...