Basra Celebrates Ramadan with Security
Produced by Nabeel Kamal
BASRA, IRAQ– Basra is one of the oldest cities in the Middle East, and it was well known as the city of knowledge and the city of poems, and that city was invaded several times and each time after a short while its residents returned to normal life.
It was invaded by the British Military in the 1920s, and after that the people in Basra worked on returning life to the city, and now life has returned again to Basra after the many problems since the year 2003, the militias started to take over the place and some of the biggest problems occurred at the Basra University when one of the Iraqi militias attacked the students and prevented them from taking any trips outside the university considering these trips as something forbidden due to the rules of Islam, and since then problems in Basra began to be found everywhere. The markets were closed for a long time and citizens were afraid to go out to the markets after the problems that were happening in the streets. Many people were killed because of the attacks against the British forces, and most shops were closed because of the unstable security situation in Basra.
The southern Iraqi tribes interfered to fix the situation in Basra, and there was a small improvement in the situation, but security and stability collapsed again in 2006 after the bombing of the Imam Al-Askariya Shrine. There were a great many demonstrations all over Basra and the markets were closed again
Since 2003 the Basra was will known better in life then Baghdad the life at the night is lot better then Baghdad, in Baghdad the life ends at six or seven at night. In Basra the residents would only go home around 11:00PM and for the people in Baghdad it was a dream to stay out in the street till 11:00.
It should be mentioned that in the last three weeks violence has returned to Basra, and more than 300 Iraqis were killed during these last three weeks because of the battles between Iraqi security forces and the militias.
archival reference: https://web.archive.org/web/20130706001218/http://aliveinbaghdad.org/2008/01/28/basra-celebrates-ramadan-with-security/
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