Word: basra
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Provincial balloting in southern Iraq on Jan. 31 will probably reveal how much life remains in the Sadrist movement. If candidates tied to the movement fail to make a decent showing in cities such as Basra, Amarah, Najaf and Karbala, the Sadrists' only official political power will be in the Iraqi parliament, where they hold 28 of 275 seats...
...Still, Iraqis who despise the U.S. leader for waging war on their country will no doubt applaud al-Zaidi's rapid-fire gesture. On Monday, demonstrators rallied in support of the Shi'ite journalist in Baghdad's Sadr City slum and also in the southern Shi'ite bastions of Basra and Najaf. Already jokes are going around that shoe companies are now offering the assailant a lifetime supply of footwear. He may have missed his mark, but he certainly made a point...
...media this week, its backers must garner an additional 139,200 signatures to meet the required 10% of the province's voting population in order to call a referendum. The central government is then obliged to hold the vote within 15 days. "If we get 51% of the votes, Basra will become a region," al-Fadel says...
...even with the backing of Basra's influential tribal sheikhs and the Fadila Party, winning a majority won't be easy in the face of concerted opposition from Maliki's Dawa Party and his sometime ally-sometime foe Sadr. Less certain is the reaction from the Supreme Council, which has long favored a semi-autonomous nine-province "super region" in the south (which it would have a fair shot at governing) rather than a smaller one in Basra, governed by Fadila. "We are not participating in this because we are busy with other things," says parliamentarian Redha Taki, the head...
...Fadel insists that a federal region of Basra will not contradict the notion of a strong, central government and that the district's wealth will be shared. "We don't want a defense ministry, or interior or finance ministries, a currency or diplomatic relations," he says. "We just want services for the area; water, sewage, health, education. The central government has failed to provide these." The prime minister cannot "create a state based on his ideas - the state is based on the constitution," al-Fadel adds. "The ideas of one man are no longer the foundation for creating a state...