Word: basra
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DAHUK NINEVEH ARBIL SULAYMANIYAH TA'MIM NAJAF WASIT DIYALA MUTHANNA SALAHADDIN ANBAR QADISYAH KARBALA BABIL MAYSAN DHIQAR BASRA Kirkuk Mosul Arbil Nasiriyah Baqubah Najaf Sulaymaniyah Karbala Hillah Samarra Diwaniyah Fallujah Ramadi Tikrit Tall 'Afar Kut Samawah Faisaliya Basra Amarah...
...trouble has been following him around for more than three years. In the spring of 2003, when it became clear that the U.S.-led coalition would invade Iraq, he and his family--his mother Haseeba, three brothers, their wives and six children--sold his late father's house near Basra and moved to his mother's ancestral home in a quiet, dusty town west of Baghdad: Fallujah. "We were sure that there would be no fighting there. The Americans would not attack it, and the Iraqi army would not bother to defend it," he recalls, "because there's nothing important...
...asked me, with a knowing smirk, whether our Shi'ite staff members had supported the Iranian team. When I said no, he was surprised. Many Sunnis believe that Shi'ite sympathies--and not just in sporting matters--lie with Iraq's ancient enemy to the east. "In Najaf and Basra, the Shi'ites were praying for Iran to win," he said disdainfully. "What do you expect from these people?" When I asked him if he had supported the two teams from Sunni-majority countries in the tournament, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia, he changed the subject...
...hopes to bring order back to Basra, al-Maliki may well have to turn to the very coalition troops he was lambasting last week...
...real test of his resolve will come in the Shi'ite heartland city of Basra. Before he spoke out on Haditha, the Prime Minister's anger was directed at the city's warring Shi'ite gangs. Promising to use "an iron fist" against them, al-Maliki declared a state of emergency in the city. But it will take more than rhetoric to bring the gangs to heel. They too are connected to Shi'ite parties and militias, and the local security forces that are expected to enforce the emergency are infiltrated by partisans...