The rise of "criminal mafias" in Southern Iraq

When Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack wrote their New York Times piece last week that said the situation in Iraq was getting better, they based their findings on knowledge gathered only from selected Sunni areas, even though a majority of the country is Shiite.  But in a Shiite-dominated part of the country, one they did not discuss, the security situation is rapidly deteriorating.

A tragic reality is unfolding in the southern Iraqi city of Basra that is turning what was a success story into an anarchic nightmare for coalition forces:

As British forces pull back from Basra in southern Iraq,Shiite militias there have escalated a violent battle against eachother for political supremacy and control over oil resources, deepeningconcerns among some U.S. officials in Baghdad  that elements of Iraq's Shiite-dominated national government will turn on one another once U.S. troops begin to draw down.

Threemajor Shiite political groups are locked in a bloody conflict that hasleft the city in the hands of militias and criminal gangs, whosecontrol extends to municipal offices and neighborhood streets. The cityis plagued by "the systematic misuse of official institutions,political assassinations, tribal vendettas, neighborhood vigilantismand enforcement of social mores, together with the rise of criminalmafias that increasingly intermingle with political actors," a recentreport by the International Crisis Group said.

This is extremely serious because Basra is the second largest city in Iraq.  It is not a mixed area, unlike Baghdad where Sunnis and Shiites go at it.  In Basra there are just Shiites.  It's a civil war within a civil war.