Word: basra
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...long-term stability. But seven months after the fall of Baghdad, a wave of revenge killings is sweeping Iraq. An investigation by TIME found that at least a dozen former intelligence officials have been killed in shootings in Baghdad since Oct. 1; several others have been wounded. In Basra, some 25 to 30 Baath Party members have been shot at point-blank range since mid-October. A U.S. intelligence official in Iraq says many of his colleagues are wary of revealing the true scale of the violence, in part because they have little ability to stop it and in part...
...sitting with his cousin Shahab Ahmed Hamid, catching a cool breeze on the front porch of the office of their Baghdad transportation company. Three men appeared in an old government truck. According to Hamid, the men initially said they wanted to discuss a business deal in Basra. But they soon pulled out pistols, hustled al-Falahi into a waiting black BMW and drove off. Two days later, police recovered the body of al-Falahi, with a single bullet through his forehead, from a roadside gutter in northern Baghdad...
...failed to prepare adequately for the timely import and distribution of half a million tons of fertilizer, according to a former U.S. Department of Agriculture adviser to the CPA. Now, ramshackle vehicles that are supposed to be rushing the fertilizer from Jordan and the southern port city of Basra are stalling on Iraq's rutted, cratered roads. What's at stake is more than just another failed growing season's crops, which include maize, wheat and barley. Agriculture is Iraq's second largest economic sector and largest employer. If farmers have no work, that might fuel recruitment into the ranks...
...dock of Abu Fulus port, 20 miles south of Basra, Bassem Saghair deftly works the controls of a crane as he unloads air-conditioning units from the hold of the Hussaini. The ship is one of a dozen crowding the waterfront that have sailed from Dubai up the Shatt al-Arab River laden with consumer goods. Saghair, 15, quit school for this job, which pays $360 a month, double the highest salary any Iraqi official earns from U.S.-occupation authorities. "Life is not bad," says Saghair, with a shy smile spreading under the beginnings of a mustache...
...used during Saddam Hussein's regime, but with U.N. sanctions against Iraq lifted and all import and customs controls unenforced, the port has become an unofficial entry point for used cars, electronics, clothes and food. There are no government officials here and no British soldiers from the garrison in Basra. Merchants walk up and down the dock, shouting purchase orders into satellite phones as young men in jeans with AK-47s guard against pirates who prowl the river in motorboats. As in the American frontier a century ago, fortunes are being made almost overnight in Iraq, and with the same...