Word: basra
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Crocker assured Congress that we are making progress. The Iraqi government retook the port of Basra that week, Iraq's main export terminal. And now that the government is in full control of Iraq's oil infrastructure things will get better...
What Crocker didn't talk about was Iran - and its plans for Iraq's oil. Months before retaking Basra, the Iraqi government started talks with Iran about running an oil pipeline to Abadan, Iran's main export terminal. Iran also has said that it will have a say in Iraq's mega field Majnun, which may contain 30 billion barrels of oil - a rival to Saudi Arabia's larger field. I suspect, though, if he'd been asked about Iran, Crocker would have said it is simply one more reason we should stay in Iraq, to keep Iran...
Crocker could be right. We have no idea what is on the mind of the populist Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. If Sadr were allowed control of the Basra oil terminal, would he shut down Iraq's oil exports? Shell Kuwaiti fields...
...significant shift politically for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who had aligned himself with the Sadrists for a time. But since March, Maliki has kept up attacks on Sadr's militiamen in Baghdad and southern Iraq. Early setbacks such as Iraq army defections and battlefield defeats in Basra have so far not seemed to dim Maliki's determination to continue the fight. With reporting by Mazin Ezzat
...museum official, archaeologists are taking advantage of those gains. "After the events of 2003, there was no security. When stability returned to some of the provinces, we resumed excavations," said the official, who added that 11 sites were excavated in 2007 across southern Iraq, in areas like Diwaniya, Basra, and Babil. "This year we have plans to excavate again in the town of al-Hathar, just outside Mosul [in northern Iraq], but the security situation there is still bad," the official said...