Basra protest cleric killed – Car bomb kills 5 in Tikrit

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BASRA, Nov 18, (Agencies): Hundreds of Basra residents mourned a Muslim cleric on Sunday who police said was killed outside his home after he suggested that protesters should take up arms over poor public services in the city.

Wissam al-Ghrawi was a prominent figure in demonstrations demanding clean water and reliable electricity in the southern Iraqi city. Basra province generates more than 90 percent of Iraq’s oil exports but suffers from contaminated drinking water and regular blackouts. Basra police say al-Ghrawi was shot and killed in front of his house in the city center by unknown assailants late Saturday. He was filmed at a protest on Friday saying clerics would issue a fatwa within days on taking up arms.

The video was shared widely on Iraqi social media. Associates and relatives of al-Ghrawi paraded his coffin around parts of the city on Sunday, demanding the police identify the killers and bring them to justice. “Why was Sheikh Wissam al-Ghrawi killed? Because he asked for clean water? Because he asked for jobs for the unemployed? Is this the price he paid for defending his country?” said civic activist Mohanad al- Ghrawi, a distant relative of the deceased cleric.

Al-Ghrawi is at least the second activist to be killed in what appeared to be a targeted assassination since protests swept Basra last summer. One of the organizers, Soad al-Ali, was killed by a gunman in September, after protesters began directing their ire toward Iran, which they saw as exerting undue infl uence over national politics.

Demonstrators set fire to the Iranian consulate and attacked the headquarters of the various Iran-backed militias and parties that operate with impunity in the city. Most of the city’s official government buildings were torched, as well. Police said al-Ali’s killing was over a personal matter. Suspicions again turned toward the militias, collectively known as the Popular Mobilization Forces, on Sunday. “We say here, once again, to the Basra security and police — have you done your job to stop these militias that kill the youth and intellectuals?” said Mohanad al-Ghrawi.

The PMF were integral to Iraq’s war against the Islamic State group earlier this decade and paid salaries to hundreds of thousands of fighters, many of whom were drawn from Iraq’s impoverished southern provinces. But with the war declared won late last year, attention has turned to Iraq’s high unemployment and decaying infrastructure.

Demonstrations erupted in the south last summer after regular blackouts appeared to grow worse and, in Basra, murky water began flowing out of taps. Health authorities said tens of thousands of residents were hospitalized in the summer months for stomach illnesses.

Meanwhile, a car bomb blast killed at least five people and wounded 16 others in the Iraqi city of Tikrit on Sunday, police and medical sources said.

The blast set nearly a dozen vehicles on fire, the police sources said. Security forces have closed most of the city streets and deployed in case of any other incidents. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the explosion. Such attacks have been rare in Tikrit, about 100 miles north of Baghdad, since Islamic State were defeated in Iraq in 2017. Islamic State militants have switched from controlling territory to insurgency tactics such as bombings and attacks on security forces since their military defeat.

Analysts and security sources warn these attacks are likely to increase in traditional Sunni militant strongholds in the north and west of the country, although security in Baghdad has improved. Iraq’s government said this week that about 2,000 Iraqi Islamic State fighters based across the border in eastern Syria were seeking to come back to Iraq, and that security forces were preparing to prevent militant incursions. A bloody, age-old custom used by Iraq’s powerful tribes to mete out justice has come under fire, with authorities classifying it as a “terrorist act” punishable by death. For centuries, Iraqi clans have used their own system to resolve disputes, with tribal dignitaries bringing together opposing sides to mediate in de facto “hearings”.

If one side failed to attend such a meeting, the rival clan would fire on the absentee’s home or that of fellow tribesmen, a practice known as the “degga ashairiya” or “tribal warning”. But in an age when Iraq’s vast rural areas and built-up cities alike are flooded with weapons outside state control, the “degga” may be deadlier than ever. A recent dispute between two young men in a teashop in the capital’s eastern district of Sadr City escalated to near-fatal proportions, leaving a 40-year-old policeman with a broken hip and severely damaged abdomen. His cousin Abu Tayba said the policeman was “wounded in a stray bullet during a ‘degga’ on a nearby home.” “Weeks after the incident, he’s still in the hospital, hovering between life and death,” Tayba told AFP.

Even in Baghdad, disputes often involve machine guns and rocketpropelled grenades, the city’s military command warned a top Iraqi court recently. That body, the country’s Superior Magistrate Council, issued a decision last week classifying “deggas” as “terrorist acts” — and therefore warranting the death penalty — because of their impact on public safety. A few days later, it announced it would take legal action against three people accused of targeting a home in Al-Adhamiyah, north of Baghdad, with the deadly custom. In Iraq, a country of 39 million people, clan origin and family name can carry weight in securing a job, finding romance, and gathering political support.

They can also interfere in the work of the state, as tribal structures in some areas can be more powerful than government institutions. Last year, Iraq’s tribes and the ministries of interior and justice pledged to work closer together to impose the law, but “deggas” seem to have hindered such cooperation. Raed al-Fraiji, the head of a tribal council in the southern province of Basra, told AFP the warnings have become commonplace.

“This happens every day. Yesterday it happened twice. The day before, three times,” he said. “Two months ago, a domestic dispute between a husband and wife turned into an armed attack on the husband’s home. The exchange of fire killed one person and wounded three.”

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