Word: basra
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...many Iraqis in the south, the exile militia groups brought with them forbidding religious strictures. "These guys with beards and Kalashnikovs showed up saying they'd come to protect the campus," says a student leader at a Basra university. "The problem is, they never left." Militants frequently "investigate" youths accused of un-Islamic behavior, such as couples holding hands or girls wearing makeup. "They're watching us, and they're the ones who control the streets, while the police, who are with them, stand by," says a student leader who did not wish to be identified. "From the beginning...
...parties do not dispute that the visits occur. And a steady flow of weapons continues to arrive from Iran through the porous southern border. "They use the legal checkpoints to move personnel, and the weapons travel through the marshes and areas to our north," says a British officer in Basra. Top diplomats and intelligence officials know that some Iranian officers are providing assistance to Shi'ite insurgents, but it's dwarfed by the amount of money and matériel flowing in from Iraq's Arab neighbors to Sunni insurgents...
DIED. STEVEN VINCENT, 49, freelance journalist reporting on the rise of Shi'ite fundamentalism and corruption among police and politicians in Basra, Iraq; after being abducted on a busy street and shot repeatedly, as was his interpreter, who survived; in Basra. Vincent was the first American journalist to be murdered since the war began...
Khailanym showed the audience, approximately 100 people, a slideshow presentation of Basra University—from its dilapidated laboratories and overcrowded classrooms to its empty-shelved and unelectrified library...
Some students have had enough. At Basra University, there have been several huge demonstrations calling for the expulsion of religious and political groups from campus. In Baghdad, friends of Masar Sarhan al-Rubaiyi are worried that the sectarian riots sparked by his death will overshadow a more positive legacy: in April 2003, as looters ransacked government offices and universities across the city, al-Rubaiyi and a few friends grabbed some weapons and headed for his college, determined to save it from the pillagers. They arrived late but fought their way through the mobs and managed to save most...