IRAQ - Sadr-Fadhila War.

Hundreds Sadrists in Basra on April 17 crowded into a huge tent erected in front of the governor's office for the start of a three-day sit-in to demand his resignation. "This governor [Muhammad al-Wa'ili] is a hypocrite. We want him to come out!" the angry mob shouted. "We demand the Basra governor resign", read a banner hung from the tent. Wa'ili is part of al-Fadhila al-Islamiya, now at war with the Sadrists.

The sit-in came a day after thousands paraded from a mosque in Basra's centre to Wa'ili's office, defying orders from officials in Baghdad. Basra's residents had long complained of poor city services: garbage pickup, water and electricity. But demands for Wa'ili's removal were political in view of the Fadhila-Sadrist war. Equally odd is the fact that Iran's theocracy backs Sadr as well as Fadhila, SCIRI, Da'wa and others.

A Neo-Salafi 'Caliphate' In Ba'quba: Forced to move from Anbar Province to the mixed Sunni-Shi'ite Province of Diyala, 50 km north-east of Baghdad, the Neo-Salafi caliphate known as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) has turned the latter's capital into what a local calls a "dead city" where armed men roam the streets and al-Qaeda reigns. Ba'quba, on Diyala River, now is being ruled by a Taliban-style regime.

In 2002 the estimated population of Ba'quba was 280,000. The city has been inhabited continuously since pre-Islamic times and is the trade centre for Iraq's commercial orange groves. The city became a hot spot of insurgency early on in the occupation. It has been torn apart in fighting between US forces and Sunni insurgents, including bloody battles between Neo-Salafi forces and Shi'ite militias, which has since 2006 forced most residents to flee. By early 2007, Ba'quba had become a Qaeda stronghold. As a result, more than half the people in the city have fled.

However, Shi'ite and Sunni tribes in Diyala has turned against the ISI. US and Iraqi forces are arming these tribes in their war against the Neo-Salafis, much in the same way as the Sunni tribes of Anbar have been doing in recent month. But until the Neo-Salafis are defeated, the ISI will continue its Taliban-style rule. Among atrocities being committed by the ISI and other al-Qaeda-affiliated group, their males are forcing young local girls into marrying them; those who refuse are being raped then killed. Yet the tribal-Neo-Salafi war is still being concentrated in rural parts of Diyala, with Ba'quba remaining largely under ISI control.

Inter Press Service (IPS) on April 18 quoted "an unemployed university professor who arrived in Damascus" the previous week as saying: "Life in Baquba nowadays is unbearable. There is no security at all. Violence is increasing day after day because there is no control from the government and no real existence of coalition forces there. Terrorists and other fighters rule the city. Baquba is a city of terror... We have all become used to seeing dead bodies in the streets. I've seen too many. When we see them, nobody touches the body because if you do you are killed by gunmen. They watch for who touches the body, and kill that person right then or later. I think well over half of our city has left, and those who remain never leave their homes. Those who are left sit in their homes and wait for their death. They may take their fate from a terrorist entering their house, or a car bomb, or a shooting".

IPS quoted Iraqi refugees in Damascus as saying the Ba'quba General Hospital was in a state of collapse. It quoted a "30-year-old doctor from the hospital, [who] fled Baquba a month ago and now lives in the al-Qudsiya neighborhood on the outskirts of Damascus with tens of thousands of other Iraqi refugees, as saying: "I left Baquba because of the terrorists and the Iraqi Army. The conditions at my hospital were very, very bad. We had no supplies, and the Iraqi forces occupied the hospital and used it as an observation post and used the roof as a sniper platform". He said al-Qaeda was largely in control of the city, and that US forces were doing little to stop them. But his main complaint, according to IPS, was about the Iraqi forces. He said: "The Iraqi forces determine who enters the hospital or not, and this causes a big problem for the doctors. They take many innocent people from the hospital. Our morgue can holds 12 corpses, but it is always overfilled".

Shibad said before the invasion and occupation of Iraq, Diyala had 600 doctors. The last he knew, he said, there were only 124, and the number was decreasing each month. IPS said one of the US military bases in Ba'quba was referred to as Camp Boom by the US soldiers stationed there "because it takes so many hits from armed groups". Another US Forward Operating Base (FOB) called FOB Scunion is separated from the larger Camp Freedom by a highway known as "RPG [rocket propelled grenade] Alley" because of the many attacks against coalition forces there.

IPS quoted an Iraqi refugee who had just fled to Syria as saying: "Americans only control one kilometer of road, which is the main road where the governor's office and court building are in central Baquba, and they rarely run patrols in the city because they are attacked every time. Every day we see attacks against the Americans. This is because the coalition forces created their own enemies by being so rough on the people of Baquba...".

The refugee said control of Ba'quba was shared between Iraqi insurgent groups and "the other group is al-Qaeda". Either way, he said, men carrying guns controlled most of Ba'quba.

Despite its small size, Diyala has seen the sixth-largest number of US troops killed in Iraq among Iraq's 18 provinces. IPS said at least 144 US troops had been killed there, 44 of them this year. The refugees, who had fled from different areas of Ba'quba, told IPS separately the city has almost completely shut down. No markets were open and those who remained lived on locally grown vegetables and fruit. One refugee said: "There is nothing transported from Baghdad because there is no way to travel there due to the unofficial checkpoints controlled by militias. If you pass through one and you are the wrong sect of Islam, you are killed immediately. People have stopped going to Baghdad. We are cut off".

Another refugee said gasoline was too expensive for most people, and inflation was "out of control". In any case, gasoline was rarely available since "tankers can no longer reach the city from Baghdad".

IPS quoted one of the refugees as saying: "There is no money at the banks because bringing the money from Baghdad to Baquba is too dangerous. The government cannot control it, and the money will be stolen by so many different groups of people. Our city has become a dead city".