Security for Basra handover in December

KARBALA, Iraq, Oct. 30 (UPI) -- Iraq’s prime minister says security for the country’s oil capital, Basra, which is seeing an increase in violence, will be handed over to Iraqi security forces.

“The Iraqi forces will receive the security mission in Basra city from the British forces in mid-December,” Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said during a ceremony marking the security file handover from U.S. to Iraqi forces in Karbala.

Karbala is the eighth of Iraq’s 18 provinces to take over its own security detail.

In Basra, however, matters are much more complicated.

At the top is the province’s role in Iraq’s oil sector. Nearly all of the 1.6 million barrels of Iraq’s daily oil exports flow to market from Basra. The proceeds of the sales fund more than 90 percent of the federal budget.

Basra is arguably Iraq’s most important city.

It’s also where militias and gangs angle for control of the lucrative oil and fuels black market. And political parties, all Shiite, are trying to fill the power vacuum left by the British troops’ dwindling presence.

The militias of the parties -- the Badr Corps of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, which is part of the government coalition and backed by the United States; the Sadr Movement’s Mahdi Army; and the Fadhila Party’s armed forces -- have jockeyed for control using bullets in the past.

The trend appears to be re-emerging. A leading member of the Basra electoral commission was assassinated over the weekend, and a car carrying members of the Sunni Islamic Party was attacked, with one killed.