Iraqi troops take on Shia militia in Basra clash

Iraqi troops take on Shia militia in Basra clash

BBC News

Last Updated: Tuesday, 25 March 2008, 15:59 GMT


Basra's gun rule risks Iraq future

By Paul Wood
BBC Middle East correspondent

Mehdi Army militiamen in Basra in September 2005

The Mehdi Army is one of Basra's most powerful militias

An Iraqi businessman recently sent a container of goods through Basra port. The cost was $500 in transport - and $3,000 in bribes.

The story is related by Patrick Cockburn, biographer of the radical Shia cleric, Moqtada Sadr, whose Mehdi Army militia is the main target of the big security operation in Basra.

Cockburn says, quite correctly, that a lot of the coalition's success in reducing violence in Iraq in recent months has to do with a ceasefire by the Mehdi Army.

There are now worrying signs that action against the militia in Basra and arrest raids in Baghdad are jeopardising the ceasefire.

The Iraqi government felt it had to act in Basra because much of the country's oil exports flow out through there as well as being the route in for many of Iraq's imported goods.

Choked by corruption

That economic lifeline is being choked by corruption and by the violence which accompanies it as rival criminal and political militias fight over the spoils.

Moqtada Sadr

Moqtada Sadr believes his followers will deliver him power

One militia, which has links to the Basra governor, controls the port. Other factions, but chiefly the Mehdi Army, regularly skirmish with them.

Everyday life, too, is dominated by the rule of the gun in Basra.

Some 100 women have been murdered by religious extremists over the past year for wearing make-up or Western style dress.

Local people associate most attacks like these with members of the Mehdi Army. The police are little help as they are heavily infiltrated by the militants.

The fact that the police are so compromised in Basra is one reason why thousands of Iraqi army troops have been sent down from Baghdad to take part in the operation.

Tuesday's fighting in Basra can be seen as the government trying to impose law and order - but also as part of the power struggle within the Shia community.

Moqtada Sadr believes his hundreds of thousands of followers, many of them armed, will eventually deliver power into his hands.

Mehdi Army militiamen in Basra in September 2007

The Mehdi Army has vowed to step up attacks on "occupation forces"

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki and his allies are determined to stop him.

In Basra, the British troops are staying out of this fight, saying the Iraqi army is demonstrating it is capable of acting on its own.

Further north in Baghdad, the Americans tend to act in support of the local security forces.

In reply, the Mehdi Army has promised to step up attacks on the "occupation forces".

The Americans are congratulating themselves at the moment on the success of the surge in averting a Sunni-Shia civil war - and over the thousands of former Sunni insurgents who have changed sides to help the coalition fight al-Qaeda.

But the lesson of Tuesday's events is that intra-Shia violence could be just as dangerous to hopes of peace as sectarian hatreds or the insurgency.










Los Angeles Times - Home


latimes.com Babylon & Beyond blog
IRAQ: Verbal wars of Shiite clergy

Cleric

Before clashes erupted in the southern port of Basra early today, there were many hints that tensions between Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr's Mahdi Army militia and the Iraqi government could explode and imperil Sadr's seven-month cease-fire.

If today's strife turns into a broader conflagration, people might look back at the war of words in sermons last Friday in Shiite mosques as a hint of what was to come.

Last Friday, in the Shiite holy city of Kufa, Sadrist cleric Sheik Abd Al Hadi Al Mohammedawi compared Iraq’s government to late dictator Saddam Hussein. According to the Sadrist newspaper Ishraqat al Sadr, Mohammedawi told worshippers: “Today, the political parties are using the same old Saddamist methods. They have changed from the olive uniforms to the turbans.”

Mohammedawi warned that the government was making a colossal mistake in carrying out raids against Sadr supporters. “They do not realize that the Sadr movement is a volcano throughout Iraq. If it explodes it will crush all of the rotten heads until there are no tyrants on the face of the earth… but this is not our desire,” the paper quoted Mohammedawi as saying.

In turn, Sheik Jaladdin Sagheer, from the rival Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), took a swipe at the Mahdi Army last Friday in his own sermon, according to the Al Sharqiya satellite channel. Sagheer asked in his Baghdad sermon why the Sadrist movement had so many outlaws and was leveling accusations against others -- a reference to both SIIC and Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's Dawa party, the two main Shiite bodies in the government. Four days later, government security forces were battling the Mahdi Army in Basra, while Sadrists shut down neighborhoods in Baghdad with civil disobedience.

— Ned Parker in Baghdad




Times Online

From Times Online

March 25, 2008
Iraqi troops take on Shia militia in Basra clash

Iraqi police takes a defensive position in Basra, Iraq

( Nabil al-Jurani/AP)

Iraqi police launch their operation in Basra, in what is seen as a crucial test of their ability to provide security



Iraqi police take defensive positions in Basra, Iraq

( Nabil al-Jurani/AP)

The operation is believed to be the largest in Basra City since British troops withdrew in December



Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki holds a meeting with Iraqi military and police officials in Basra

( Iraqi Government Office/Reuters)

Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister (centre), holds talks with military leaders in Basra as he oversees the operation



Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki shaking hands with a military officer

(AFP/Getty Images)

The Prime Minister (right) met senior military officers as he arrived in the city yesterday, placing his reputation on the line as the operation began



David Byers, and agencies in Basra

Thousands of Iraqi troops have carried out their first military strike against Shia insurgents in Basra since British troops withdrew from the city centre, in a critical test for the newly-trained army.

At least 22 have so far been killed and another 58 injured, many of which were believed to be civilians, as fierce clashes took place between security forces and militants loyal to the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr after a dawn military offensive in the southern city.

Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, staked his reputation on today's operation against the militants and travelled to the city to oversee it.

However fears immediately grew of a nation-wide deterioration in security as a result, with the cleric's followers announcing a nation-wide campaign of civil disobedience.



"The Prime Minister (Mr al-Maliki) came down to Basra from Baghdad yesterday along with a delegation. He is overseeing the operation. He is at an Iraqi military base," Major Tom Holloway, a British military spokesman, told the AFP news agency.

Major Holloway, whose troops are now based only in Basra Airport, said the operation was taking place to re-impose order on the city. British troops withdrew from the city centre in December, declaring that the Iraqi Army was now equipped to guarantee order.

"We can be encouraged that the Iraqi security forces have the confidence to conduct these missions without coalition support," he added, speaking to the BBC.

The battle took place amid signs that a ceasefire imposed by the leader of Al-Sadr, leader of the Mahdi Army, was under severe strain, leading to fears that Basra could soon slide into total lawlessness.

The truce had been credited as one of the key factors in a steep drop in violence throughout the country over the past several months, but factional clashes in Basra have recently been increasing, with a bitter turf war breaking out between the Mahdi Army, the Badr organisation allied to the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC) of powerful politician Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, and the smaller Shia party, Fadhila, ahead of provincial elections in October.

Colonel Karim al-Zaidi, a spokesman for the Iraq military, said security forces concentrated heavily in Basra’s centre encountered stiff resistance from Mahdi Army gunmen.

Witnesses said that fighting involved mortars, machine guns and assault weapons and escalated rapidly as soon as security forces entered the Al-Tamiyah neighbourhood, a bastion of al-Sadr's militia, at around 5am. The fighting quickly spread to five other Mahdi Army neighbourhoods.

Television pictures showed Iraqi troops running through the streets firing weapons and taking cover as ambulances raced past. Thick palls of smoke were seen rising above the city’s skyline.

The streets were empty aside from the security forces, emergency vehicles and people in cars fleeing the fighting. Shops and markets were closed.

As the clampdown took place, the Mahdi Army appeared to ramp up a threat to nation-wide security, saying that it was calling a nation-wide campaign of civil disobedience. This began in Bagdad, where hundreds of protesters carrying pictures of al-Sadr staged a sit-down protest at a square. The Iraqi Army claimed that armed Mahdi Army members threatened shopkeepers with death if they opened their stores, in an attempt to grind the city to a halt.

“A group of people with arms this morning threatened civilians, shopkeepers, students and employees not to go about with their daily work in order to enforce their strike in some areas of Baghdad,” it said in a statement. “Such kind of action is against the law and Iraqi forces will deal with them forcefully." Amid fears of a nation-wide escalation, Iraqi police imposed curfews in three Shia cities, of Kut, Nasiriyah and Samawa.

The rapidly unfolding developments took place as a fresh political row erupted over Iraq at home, with Conservatives demanding that Gordon Brown hold a public inquiry into the war.

William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, said that any lessons learnt from such an inquiry could help in Afghanistan.

"Now is the right time, because five years have passed since the beginning of the war and in fact many of the key decisions will have been made before that, so you are now going back six years or possibly more," he said on GMTV.

"I think unless we start an inquiry now, the memories will have faded, the files will have gone astray, the emails will have been erased. There does come a point where you do have to get on with it."

The Prime Minister reiterated last week that there would be an inquiry into the conflict, but not yet.

Mr Hague's remarks come as the Liberal Democrats demand an apology from every MP who backed the decision to go to war with Iraq.

A new website seeks to draw fresh attention to the Labour and Conservative MPs who backed the deployment of troops just over five years ago.







Times Online

From The Times

March 20, 2008
British in Basra: the hero guests who outstayed their welcome

Iraqi youths throw stones at British soldiers as clashes broke out in the southern city of Basra in 2003

Deborah Haynes in Al-Faw, Basra



British troops from talk to children whilst on patrol in the centre of Basra city

Deborah Haynes in Al-Faw, Basra



Iraqi youths throw stones at British soldiers as clashes broke out in the southern city of Basra

Deborah Haynes in Al-Faw, Basra





The Iraqi general studies a map with a British officer at a border control post metres from the coastal point in southern Iraq where hundreds of British Marines stormed ashore at the start of the war five years ago.

The two commanders, once on opposing sides, now discuss plans for a joint raid against smugglers of weapons, cars, oil and even sheep, as part of a limited British effort to build up Iraqi security forces.

The harmonious scene is in stark contrast to the situation up the road in Iraq's second city of Basra, where Iraqi police and soldiers operate alone. British forces are no longer welcome, having handed over control of security and pulled back to their airport base.

The near-daily thump of rocket fire on the camp serves as a constant reminder of the problems here, despite British commanders' insistence that violence is in decline and the Iraqis are able to manage on their own.

The Marines who pushed up through al-Faw Peninsula, right past the border control post on the night of March 20, 2003, to secure Iraq's oil infrastructure could never have predicted that five years later the British military would still be here. The people of Basra have also readjusted expectations. While applauding the end of Saddam Hussein, many are unhappy with the rise of rival Shia militias and the inability of their new political leaders to provide security.

In addition, unemployment is high and, while the availability of electricity and water has improved, there is still a long way to go. Also, Iraq's multibillion-pound oil resources remain largely untapped — foreign oil giants are too fearful of the violence to venture into the country and invest.

The insecurity has cast serious doubts over plans to reduce Britain's military presence in Iraq to 2,500 troops by the spring. Next week Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, will announce that another full brigade will be sent to Basra in May to replace the existing 4,100 troops.

There had been expectations that a smaller force would be sent for the next troop rotation. The Desert Rats — 7th Armoured Brigade — will now deploy in May and June for a six-month tour.

One battlegroup of about 500 soldiers in Basra had been told that it might be sent home two months early, but is now committed to serving a full six-month tour until June.

Lieutenant-Colonel Gary Deakin, commanding officer of the Duke of Lancaster's battle group, said: “What was clear right from the word go was that it would depend on the situation.”

The British military, which was responsible for Iraq's four southern provinces after the invasion, has cut its presence over the past year while the US has deployed an extra 30,000 troops into Baghdad and the surrounding belts to tackle violence there.

Deeming the Iraqi Army, police and local political leaders to be ready, Britain has also gradually handed control of security to the Iraqis in Muthanna, Dhiqar, Maysan and finally Basra, a symbolic shift that took place in December.

British troops are now given the task largely of trying to protect themselves at the airport as well as continuing to train Iraq's police, military and border and coastal guards. There are concerns, however, about the continuing effectiveness of such a mission if troop numbers dwindle further.

“I think the key challenge is at what force levels do you achieve what you need to achieve to make your ship sail forwards or just keep it sitting in the water,” said Colonel Deakin, who on Tuesday was planning the counter-smuggling operation with Brigadier-General Abdul Hade, operational planner for guarding Iraq's wet border.

He added: “Right now the ship is going forwards. We are rowing forwards in the right direction. If you take out a couple of oarsmen maybe the tide would flow against you.”

Throwing pressure on Gordon Brown to resist further troop cuts, Hoshiyar Zebari, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, this week accused the military of doing nothing.

“The militia, the organised crime, is making havoc in the city,” he told Channel 4. Asked if Britain needed to re-engage rather than pull troops out, he said: “In my view they do.”

The majority of Britain's forces are holed up at the airport base, where nerves are frayed by the constant threat of rockets, although the number of attacks is vastly reduced from its peak last summer. The 175th British personnel to die since 2003 was killed by a rocket two weeks ago.

Many soldiers say that they would rather be involved in the more hands-on action that British troops are experiencing in southern Afghanistan.

“I have already got the medal for here. I would rather be doing an infantry job out there,” said Lance Bombadier Ben James, 23.

The calculation that any movement by British forces inside Basra city would create a violent militia backlash means that no troops have been in the city since September. This also prevents officials from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development from getting out and seeing first-hand the impact of reconstruction efforts.

John Moss, head of programmes for Basra's provincial reconstruction team, said: “As long as southern Iraq remains off limits to non-Iraqis then it's going to be extremely difficult for them to grow their economy.”







Times Online

From The Times

March 18, 2008
Short of kit, short of support: how the Army failed in Basra
At first the British patrolled in berets. Then chaos grew from order

Anthony Loyd

In those final long, hot, dog-end summer weeks of fighting in Basra last year, the British battle group marooned in the palace found themselves with a shortening list of reasons to die. Some were killed in efforts simply to resupply themselves, guarding logistics convoys attempting to run the murder mile through the city from the airport.

“Losing blokes just to resupply ourselves is a different kind of loss,” a corporal from the beleaguered 4 Rifles garrison told me at the palace in August. “Sometimes it feels like you lost them just to bring in a loaf of bread or a toilet roll.”

His commanding officer was equally succinct. “Last time we did it the convoy encountered 25 IEDs [roadside bombs],” he said of the most recent resupply effort. “We were fixed. We didn’t have the initiative. The JAM [Jaish Al Mahdi] see the trucks form up, they know the routes in, they know the routes out. It’s a f***ing nightmare.”

Among the 11 dead and 43 wounded that the 550-strong unit suffered that summer, the worst casualty rate in the shortest period of time inflicted on any British force in Iraq, other soldiers were killed on night operations that included the phrase “preserving national reputation” in their orders.

The last Foreign and Commonwealth Office diplomat had fled the palace months before, leaving 4 Rifles with the invidious task of hanging on there until Iraqi security forces were judged ready to take over control of the city. They were a close unit who fought hard, alone and hacked it pretty well. Aside from their esprit de corps, one thing the soldiers were not dying for was a worthwhile cause that was part of a coherent strategy to win.

That era of hope was already long gone. By the time the last rifleman was withdrawn safely from the palace to the airport, the city they left behind was in a very different state from the one imagined when victorious British troops had entered Basra in 2003.

Gang leaders from the three dominant militias of Basra had penetrated every level of local governance, devolving it from the control of Baghdad. The local police were utterly corrupt. Swaths of the city were no-go areas for either coalition or Iraqi army units. Human rights were abysmal, democracy a non-starter. Where did it all go wrong?

Britain’s military involvement in Iraq was shadowed by doubt from the very start.

Commanders were so dubious as to the legality and wisdom of invading Iraq that Lord Boyce, then Chief of Defence Staff, insisted that the Attorney-General at the time, Lord Goldsmith, provide in writing unequivocal written assurance that the invasion was lawful.

Admiral Sir Alan West, the First Sea Lord, was so unconvinced of it that he sought private legal advice.

General Sir Michael Jackson, head of the Army, noted his misgivings with a reported remark that he had no intention of ending up in a Hague cell next to Slobodan Milosevic.

Despite these concerns, and worries over an exit strategy, British forces completed their invasion in a timely and professional manner, seizing Basra and achieving their other southern objectives on schedule.

For a time, as British soldiers patrolled the city in soft hats and berets apparently enjoying the goodwill of locals, it seemed that the Army could indeed hark back to its experience in Northern Ireland and Malaya to justify its reputation as a skilled counter-insurgency force. The legend soon fell apart.

The American-driven dismemberment of the Iraqi security forces and Baathist apparatus had a knock-on effect upon reconstruction efforts in the south, albeit more slowly than in Baghdad and the Sunni triangle. Chaos gradually grew from order and support for coalition forces was eroded by the collapse of civic amenities.

Under-resourced and with weakening political support at home, British forces in Basra made the first of several mistakes in response to the situation when they attempted to incorporate the city’s burgeoning Shia militias into the local police force. Rather than undermine the strength of the militias, they created and trained a law-enforcement body that was utterly partisan.

The power of the militias increased daily as death squads in police uniform assassinated political rivals and enforced strict Islamic codes. By 2005 Basrawi women were being forced to don the veil. Shops selling alcohol or music were being closed down. In one infamous incident Mahdi Army militiamen, abetted by policemen, shot two male university students and beat dozens of others merely for picnicking in a Basra park with women colleagues. One of the women was filmed being stripped half-naked as a warning. The British, their troop levels already in descent, were unwilling and unable to intervene.

Meanwhile, the Army revealed internal problems that deeply undermined its reputation.

Baha Musa, a Basra hotel receptionist, was killed while in British detention in September 2003. His body had 93 injuries concurrent with protracted beating and asphyxiation. His death suggested that some British units deployed to Iraq had little clue as to what sort of values they were supposed to export with them or lacked the discipline and training to prevent themselves from conducting atrocities.

“This was not a case of misjudgment in the heat of battle or the heat of the moment,” General Sir Richard Dannatt, Chief of General Staff, remarked at the conclusion last year of a court martial of men alleged to be involved in Mr Musa’s death. “Nobody who knows anything about the facts has ever suggested that it was.”

No one has been convicted for the killing. One man, Corporal Payne, was convicted on the lesser charge of inhuman treatment of persons protected by the Geneva Conventions.

Investigators were accused by some officers of launching a witch-hunt while many of those allegedly involved in Mr Musa’s killing preferred to close ranks and keep silent.

Whatever the military’s failings, there was little attempt by the British Government to capitalise on the Army’s strengths in southern Iraq.

British soldiers were still dying in thinly armoured “Snatch” Land Rovers last autumn, nearly two years after the Americans had armoured all their Humvees. There was no will to commit more troops to the situation and “Iraq” had already become something of a dirty word in Britain.

In the meantime, America had committed thousands more soldiers to a surge in Baghdad, a successful gambit that went hand in hand with the rewriting of the US Army’s counter-insurgency doctrine by their dynamic commander, General David Petraeus.

The British Army was never resourced or enabled to match these doctrinal and practical advances. A mini-surge by the British, called Operation Sinbad, did temporarily check the ascent of the al-Mahdi Army in Basra last spring. It laid some of the ground for a handover to Iraqi units, but without reinforcements its successes were quickly reversed and the violence increased once more.

Painfully aware that the Army was now more of an antagonistic influence on Basra than a palliative one, and that it was clearly unable to fight simultaneous campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, there was little other option but for the British to draw up their plans to pull back from Basra Palace to a final overwatch position at the airport.

By the time this penultimate chapter occurred, a generation of British soldiers had emerged from the Iraq experience battle-hardened and cynical. They are aware that the demands placed upon them were seldom matched by support from the Government, which had committed them to an unpopular and ultimately futile war. The sense of vestigial anger within the Army will unlikely be appeased in Afghanistan, where they face a different set of challenges but labour under a similar set of shortfalls, directed by a political strategy that remains at best opaque.

However history finally records the British Army’s involvement in Iraq, the question “What was it all for?” seems certain to haunt the dreams of thousands of veterans for years to come.

Word for word

“[British troops] will stay there as long as it takes to provide the necessary security to people in and around Basrah.”

Geoff Hoon, Downing Street lobby briefing, April 7, 2003







click here to go to the IC Publications home page

25/03/2008 15:20 BAGHDAD, March 25 (AFP)

Mahdi Army: the most powerful militia in Iraq

The feared Mahdi Army militia led by firebrand anti-US Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who threatened all-out civil revolt on Tuesday, is the armed wing of the most formidable Iraqi Shiite group.

Mahdi Army fighters were locked in running battles with Iraqi security forces in the southern port city of Basra that left seven dead amid a heavy crackdown against the rival militias who hold sway in the crucial oil hub.

Sadr warned in a statement he would launch protests, a nationwide strike and "general civil disobedience" if attacks against his militia are not halted.

The US military once regarded the Mahdi Army and its fiery black-turbaned leader as the greatest threat to Iraq's stability as the nation continues to grapple with a bloody insurgency and sectarian warfare.

But US military commanders say a Sadr truce has been instrumental in bringing about a significant decline in the level of violence, although US and Iraqi forces continue raids and arrests of his militiamen.

The 60,000-strong milita is formed namely of impoverished young men, with new recruits signing up regularly, many of them at mosques, and the group's arsenal consists mainly of assault rifles, rocket launchers and machine guns.

In 2004, Sadr's men twice challenged US forces with armed rebellions and although they took a beating, the nationalist cleric emerged as a figure to be reckoned with.

But last month, Sadr ordered the militia to prolong for six months a ceasefire originally introduced in August aimed at halting attacks on US forces and rival armed groups.

Senior group members said the truce, announced after allegations Sadr's gunmen were involved in bloody clashes in the shrine city of Karbala, aimed to rein in wayward factions operating beyond the cleric's writ.

"The attempt is to reorganise the militia but not to dismantle it. It is also an effort to root out the rogue elements," one aide said.

Sadr, known as a "sayyid" or descendant of the Prophet Mohammed, is believed to have the power to command war or peace in Iraq but has had a long absence from the public eye.

In the past year a number of senior Mahdi leaders have allegedly broken away from the main group and the US military claims many are running their own independent cells and carrying out sectarian attacks against the Sunnis.

Since Basra province was handed over to Iraqi control by British forces in December, it has become the theatre of a bitter turf war between the Mahdi Army and its Shiite foes.

These include the Badr organisation allied to the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council (SIIC) of powerful politician Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, and the smaller Shiite party, Fadhila.

The Mahdi Army, created after the 2003 US-led invasion, became the most active and feared armed Shiite group, blamed by Washington for death-squad killings of thousands of Sunnis.

It is named after Al-Mahdi Al-Montazar (the Awaited Mahdi) -- the revered 12th imam who disappeared in 907.

Initially underestimated by US and Iraqi officials, the son of revered Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr also wields massive influence in the corridors of power.

Since he returned to Iraq's turbulent political scene in May last year after disappearing from public view for seven months, Sadr has been working hard to bolster his nationalist credentials.

After throwing his weight behind Shiite politician Nuri al-Maliki in 2006, ensuring he became prime minister, Sadr ordered his six ministers to pull out of the cabinet last April.

In September it pulled out of the ruling Shiite dominated coalition, further upsetting Iraq's already fractured political landscape. However, it retains 32 MPs in the 275-seat parliament.

The cabinet walkout was in protest at the government's refusal to set a timetable for a US troop withdrawal -- something favoured by a majority of Iraqis and especially Sadr's supporters.

The cleric is idolised by millions of Shiites, especially in the shrine city of Najaf where he has his headquarters and the Baghdad slums of Sadr City.

"(Sadr) has become the authentic spokesman for a significant portion of traditionally disenfranchised Iraqis who, far from benefiting from the former regime's ouster, remained marginalised from the emerging political order," the International Crisis Group said.

burs/hkb/txw









Herald Sun

AUSTRALIA



Cleric's bastion attacked

FIERCE fighting erupted early yesterday between Iraq's security forces and the Mehdi Army of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in Basra.

An Iraqi military official said Iraqi forces had launched an attack to "cleanse" the southern city of armed groups.

In a hail of gunfire and mortar blasts, security forces entered Al-Tamiyah neighbourhood, a bastion of the Mehdi Army at 5am.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was in Basra to oversee the sweep in Iraq's second largest city.

"Basra city is experiencing a brutal campaign from internal and external groups targeting its security and stability by killing scientific, social and spiritual personalities as well as innocent men and women," Mr Maliki said.

"This is accompanied by the smuggling of oil, weapons and drugs. The outlaws are finding support from within the state and outside.

This is why Basra has become a city where civilians cannot even secure their lives and property," he said.

The fighting came as a report said Iraq was more stable than Afghanistan with less violence.

The report published yesterday by British-based Jane's Information Group ranked Afghanistan as the third most-unstable area after the Gaza Strip and West Bank, and Somalia. Iraq was at No. 22.

Jane's judged the US to be only the 22nd most stable of 235 countries or territories -- just below Australia and Portugal -- due to international drug trafficking and the proliferation of small arms within US society.

-AFP