Friday 5 March: Basra - militia at the mosque and booming business at the car market

We're investigating a story about illegal militia filling a security vacuum in Basra. British forces have handed over daily tasks to the Iraqi police but local people accuse them of being ill-equipped, unresponsive and incompetent.

Properly attired, Jill McGivering canvasses local views in Basra (Photograph by Paul Grant)

We've heard that in some areas militia groups, run by local political and religious organisations, are enforcing law and order instead according to their own codes. To find out more, we're going to a prominent Shia mosque for Friday prayers conducted by Saeed Ali, a senior cleric close to Shia leader Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

Our driver has brought me a black nylon all-encompassing abaya to wear. Giggling, he helps me fold and pin my voluminous headscarf under it. Even one strand of hair showing, he warns, would make me look like a murderer.

The nylon is sweaty and rapidly becomes unbearably hot as the midday temperatures soar into the 90s. I'm grateful that, for me, this is a once only.

We arrive at about 1130. Around the mosque, hawkers are selling sweetmeats and cold drinks. A group of men has gathered too, armed with a range of weapons, mostly antiquated AK-47s.

Some are pot bellied and middle-aged, others are teenagers who pose with their guns Rambo-style. They stalk the streets and set up a basic roadblock. Some armed men keep watch from the roof of the mosque while others frisk worshippers at the entrance.

Victim support

We talk to Satar Jabar al-Khazawi, 31, an unshaven man who says he was a soldier in Saddam Hussein's army. He says they now control the area inside an 8km-radius from the mosque, including the imam's house, the local hospital and schools.

It is a force of about 60 men, he says, mostly unpaid volunteers, organised into shifts.

If the British soldiers come, we hide the guns - if they find them, they take them, but we just buy more Satar Jabar al-Khazawi, Local militia

"We set up checkpoints and investigate people," he says. "Men, of course, but even the women and children too. Just a few days ago we caught a 14-year-old boy with a letter which had a demand for information about certain areas where they could plant bombs. So we arrested him."

I ask about reports that if local people are the victims of crime, like burglaries, they turn to the militia, rather than the Iraqi police.

"Yes, that's right," he says. "Recently one of the houses round here was burgled. The people came to us for help and we went with them to track down the thieves and arrest them."

All his brothers are part of the force too, he says. Their guns are illegal. They were looted from the army after the fall of Saddam Hussein and sold on the black market.

"If the British soldiers come, we hide the guns," he says. "If they find them, they take them. But we just buy more."

Bomb blame

When the prayers start, I'm ushered into a side room. As a woman, I'm not allowed to witness the prayers. My male colleagues tell me about 1,000 men have gathered.

Local militias say they are providing much-needed security (Photograph by Paul Grant)

In his sermon, Saeed Ali condemns the bombings in Karbala and Baghdad this week and repeats a message from Ayatollah Sistani that the coalition forces are to blame because they failed to provide security.

The mosques, he says, should be given the power to protect themselves.

After the prayers, the armed men crowd round us. They all complain that the coalition forces are being unreasonable in trying to exclude them from the peace-keeping process. It's chaos here, one says. So why don't they give us official permission to help?

Profits and problems

In the late afternoon, we visit one of Basra's biggest car markets, a vast lot with many hundreds of cars and trucks parked bumper to bumper. Some are properly defined sales yards but around them is a free-for-all where private owners buy and sell directly to each other.

The market is swarming with men, from stout men in traditional headgear to ragged boys with buckets, washing down dusty cars and running errands.

In a small compound sits a sales office, set back on a rough cement porch with two chairs and a stool. Inside it is air-conditioned with shabby sofas and carpet on the floor and tattered car advertisements pinned to the walls alongside verses from the Koran.

Prices have plummeted and cars are no longer only for the rich (Photograph by Paul Grant)

Hamid Naji Abdul Hardi sits behind a wooden desk, dressed in a yellow T-shirt and jeans. His office boy fetches us cans of cold drinks. He says his business started three years ago and nowadays, it is very good.

"In some ways it was better under Saddam," he says. "We could sell a car and the buyers could go register it easily with the traffic police.

"Now that's difficult. The police systems have been disrupted and many of the cars turn out to be stolen or have forged papers which causes a headache for everyone."

He sells between eight and 15 cars a week, he tells me. Japanese cars like Toyotas are the most popular, imported through Kuwait, Syria, the United Arab Emirates. Basra - so close to Iraq's largest port, Umm Qasr - has become the car-dealing centre of Iraq.

Before, most people could not afford to buy cars or only old ones, like Russian models. But the cost of an imported car is about a quarter of what is was under Saddam Hussein and there are no customs duties or taxes.

Reflections

Salesman Khalid al-Sadun, a dark skinned man in traditional Arabic robes, takes me to see the stock, keeping up a relentless sales patter.

Business is booming, he says. "People have more money to spend and the cars are so much cheaper now too. This one would have been $5,000 under Saddam. Now you could have it for $2,000."

As we leave, the sun is setting, orange and glorious, reflected a thousand times across the car mirrors and metalwork.

Our translator adds his own thoughts as we drive away. Remember there is no insurance, he says.

So there is no protection if someone steals your car or for a dealer trying to take cars from here to Baghdad. Car-jacking is now one of the most commonly mentioned crimes here.

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