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After a short hiatus due to snail mail from Basra involving wrong addresses and the usual off-line world confusions I give you the forth letter written by our illustrious 'Man in Basra'. The following has been written partially as a response to this article in New York Times about continuous riots over critical fuel shortages in Basra.

Riots aren't that bad. There's 1 1/2 million people here, we are controlling the situation with around 300 soldiers actually on the streets, including fuel escorts, petrol stations guards etc.  So let's get some perspective - nothing like Northern Ireland where they are professional rioters.  Not to say it can't get worse, but let's not get carried away.
 
It's riot season.  This used to happen under the old regime this time of year as well, but a) it wasn't reported, and b) it was smaller because they used to shoot people.  But the lack of electricity and other utilities that is the underlying problem was the same. It's over 135 degrees outdoors, there's no electricity for fridges and air conditioning in many areas, so people are pissed off. And it's very humid when the wind blows from the south.  Every revolt in Iraqi history, including Ba'ath one, takes place at this time of year.
 
Our enemies, ex-Ba'athists and others are working hard to stir the situation up with false rumours, provocation etc.  This is not spontaneous.
 
The article highlights the fact that the fuel price are too low and this is a situation we inherited from the old regime. Whole Basra economy is based upon it and so it is very difficult to change in such a short time. Also, it is not in our mandate, we just provide security, currently means keeping fuel flowing. CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) are supposed to sort out bigger questions, such as pricing of fuel. 
 
The root cause of the problem at the moment is ex-Ba'athists and Fedayeen sabotaging the power to the refinery, so it has fuel but can't either reprocess it or pump it into tankers.  Iraq always produced huge quantities of crude, but didn't spend the money on refineries - they export to their neighbours and bought refined fuel back in. So there are only a few refineries in the whole country, which makes it rather difficult to create a self-sustaining oil industry by yesterday.

In the next letter I will try to give you the promised description of Basra society.