The political fight for Basra

Before you read this, there are very good SOFA pre­view arti­cles, I will try to sum­ma­rize in the com­ing days.

We have two minor devel­op­ments today regard­ing SOFA, 1) Sadrists suc­cess­fully man­aged to post­pone the  SOFA-discussion in the par­lia­ment for the sec­ond time. 2) One of the major Shi­ite par­ties Al-Fadhila announced offi­cially the rejec­tion of SOFA in its cur­rent form.

Need to notice that Al-Fadhila Party kept post­pon­ing the announce­ment of their real posi­tion from the secu­rity agree­ment wait­ing for the “day after”. The party expected this new polit­i­cal fight on Basra and will try to bar­gain his posi­tion from SOFA on this issue.

As for the new fight on Basra, reported on Al-Hayat today that there are three agen­das for Basra. I will count these three agen­das and will add some “add-ons” to Al-Hayat report:

1– There are the so called “Sup­port Coun­cils”, started by Maliki with the help of his own tribe and crit­i­cized by other Shi­ites polit­i­cal blocs.

Maliki acti­vated these Coun­cils today with SOFA-support demon­stra­tions try­ing to hit two birds with one stone: 1) To show that he has some­thing to say about Basra. 2) To counter Sadrists demon­stra­tions against SOFA.

2– Basra’s Regional Fed­er­a­tion (con­tains one province — Basra). This sce­nario is sug­gested by MP Wa’il Abdul Latif, who is the brain behind Al-Fadhila Party (although Latif claims that he is an inde­pen­dent MP).

3– Al-Hakim’s never dying dream of the “Regional Fed­er­a­tion of the South” (con­tains nine provinces). About a year ago Al-Hakim kept this project under a low pro­file. Alarmed by Al-Fadhila’s efforts to col­lect sig­na­tures demand “Basra Fed­er­a­tion”, Al-Hakim acti­vated his old dream once again, as reported today on Al-Sharq Al-Awsat today.

Add to this Iran’s inter­ests in the South­ern provinces, I am sure that in the com­ing months, this polit­i­cal quarell over Basra will lead to vio­lence operations.