"I was told that I would benefit financially beyond my wildest dreams and if I refused, I would be doomed," he said. "Many of the big fish have escaped to neighboring countries or provinces. They are waiting for the end of the operations so they can return."
The political and criminal lines blurred even with kidnappings and assassinations.
A doctor in Basra's health directorate said criminals used Shiite militia affiliations for cover when they targeted his colleagues.
"People said they belonged to the Mahdi Army, but it wasn't true. They just used the name. Most killings and kidnappings were just for money," the doctor said.
Sometimes the violence had a distinct sectarian flavor.
Khalid Sarayfai, a Sunni Arab, remembers when officers from the intelligence directorate, dominated by the Shiite Badr group, detained his brother in 2005. His body was found a few hours later beside a bridge in a suburb west of Basra. Sarayfai said he went to the police for help, but was turned away.
"They told us, 'There is a power higher than us. We cannot meddle,' " he recalled.
Even people sympathetic to militias such as the Mahdi Army have grown weary.
Sheik Abu Walid lives above an auto-parts shop in the Jumhuriya neighborhood, on a street with a billboard of Sadr. But he acknowledges that something had gone awfully wrong with the Mahdi Army. Like many, he blames the excesses on infiltrators wanting to sabotage the militia.
"There are many people who infiltrated the Mahdi Army and the Sadrists and they were doing these bad things," Abu Walid said.
He recalls watching, terrified, outside his home as gunmen pushed a man into a car and drove off. "We heard that if a girl didn't wear a veil she would be killed. A Muslim woman should wear the hijab, but there are many Christians who don't want to wear it. And that is their right. Only God can judge women, not man."
For others, there is relief. At Basra's university, male and female students mix freely, after three years of threats from the militias that had run the campus, some thought to have links with the Sadrists, Thar Allah and even the Fadila party. Cellphones ring out pop tunes from Arab singers and bands such as the Backstreet Boys.
Business major Haidar, 23, is growing his hair out.
"I liked having long hair. I thought it was beautiful," he said, amid the cacophony of students, dressed in jeans and T-shirts at the outdoor snack bar. But after March 2005, when Mahdi Army supporters beat students having a co-ed picnic and killed one of them, things changed and he snipped his hair.
