Word: basra
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...British media made a great deal of the contrasts between the British and American areas of control. While American soldiers were dealing with a nascent insurgency in Baghdad, forced to wear full body armor (when available) and shelter behind high blast walls, their British counterparts were patrolling Basra in soft caps and smilingly accepting cups of tea from roadside vendors. This bonhomie was claimed to be the result of that superior understanding of Iraqi culture. Never mind that managing mostly Shi'ite Basra was a picnic compared to running the much more heterogeneous and volatile Baghdad...
...Insurgents have kidnapped 36 reporters since April 2004, when abductions surged, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Most were released, but RAI correspondent Enzo Baldoni, an Italian, was killed in August 2004. Steven Vincent, an American freelancer, was killed in Basra in August 2005. The number of Iraqi journalists killed or kidnapped is much higher. ?Baghdad has become a deathtrap for journalism,? said Aidan White, General Secretary for the International Federation of Journalists. ?No journalist is safe once they take to the streets...
...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...