Guns, drugs and passports, Basra market offers all

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/news.asp?ArticleID=102696

If you're loo-king for a Kalashnikov rifle, bathroom tiles, ampheta-mines, an Iraqi passport or a new pair of shoes, there's a place in southern Iraq th-at can meet all your shopping needs.

Basra's Old Market, a noisy, stinking outdoor emporium of sto-len goods, sits happily between the city's main police station and a mosque, unworried and untouched by any authority.

One end of the market is a dumping ground for everything that was ripped from Basra's public buildings in the looting frenzy that followed the city's fall in the US-led invasion which ousted Saddam Hussain in April.

The best of it is long gone. Now salesmen sit forlornly next to piles of wooden doorframes, broken computers, odd pieces of office furniture and stacks of ceramic tiles chiselled from the walls and floors of bathrooms.

Next are car accessories, wing mirrors, hub caps and bits of engines extracted from parked, stolen or broken down cars.

"Ali Baba, all Ali Baba," muttered Hussam, using Iraq's generic term for thieves. A student, Hussam says he is appalled by the lawlessness in post-war Basra that has allowed petty theft to flourish.

But then again, his uncle's car needs a new fan belt, and he won't find one cheaper anywhere else. "They steal from us and we buy from them," he said, eyeing a grubby stallholder with distaste. "That is how our economy works now. There is no government, no law to stop them. So what can we do?"

<snip>

Wow. Sounds like we've really turned Iraq into a... Never mind.

[La_Serpiente]

1. Free market economies

I guess Bush has no problem especially with the guns that are probably used to shoot American soldiers.

[J B]

2. Into Mogadishu.

We've turned Basra into Mogadishu..

[madrchsod]

3. this was mentioned in a

guardian article about the tribe that shot down the chinook copter. the chief of the tribe mentioned that there were newer missles in the south that were for sale.