Basra Could Boil Over Again

The house's 15-year-old air cooler was not working at all Sunday. Nor were the ceiling fans. The electricity was off for all but an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening. So Jasen, 28, lay on the roof, trying to rest in the heat, listening to the anger in the streets of the lower-middle-class Jumhooriya neighborhood.

There was a lot more shooting than usual. "It was terrible yesterday," her sister-in-law, Raba Alwan, said Monday. "We were on the roof and couldn't sleep at all."

The eastern wind blasts into Basra like hot air in a convection oven, with temperatures well above 120 degrees over the last four days. At night, the air barely seems to cool down.

On Sunday, residents protested in Basra for a second day, with small crowds rioting in some areas over gasoline shortages and power blackouts caused by infrastructure problems, sabotage and smuggling. By Monday, electricity supplies had improved, and gasoline stations had worked all night to deliver fuel. A convoy of dozens of tankers headed south toward the city in the afternoon carrying more. And the protesters stayed home.

Healing the wounds suffered by the U.S.-led occupation administration, however, will probably take much longer.

Basra, whose majority Shiite Muslim population suffered repression under Saddam Hussein, has been one of Iraq's quietest cities since the war. But some here see the last four days as a turning point, the moment when the British forces that rule this region of the country lost the residents' confidence and goodwill. Some people warn that unless the improvements are permanent, Basra may turn against the coalition forces.

"It was just the beginning of the anger. It could get a lot worse," said Karim Mnati, 43, a clerk in the city's electricity department, also from the Jumhooriya neighborhood. "The people of Basra can tolerate this, but not for long. Maybe this is the start

By Monday, the electricity was working: three hours on, three hours off, a regimen most people here find tolerable. Under the former government, there were electricity shortages, with power also provided in three-hour cycles.