basra

Western journalists entering the city in the wake of British forces reported thousands of looters carrying on in plain view of British troops... Mutlaq Kitab Hamud, a fifty-two-year-old cloth merchant with a shop in al-Ashar market, described the chaos of the first two days after British forces entered the city.

'I was in my shop because I was trying to protect it. The first day that the British came to central Basra, their forces stopped at the Ashar River. They were stopped on the other side of the river before noon. Their tanks were just waiting there. Then an hour or so after noon, they crossed the river and went through the streets of the center. At that time, there were two or three hundred people waiting in groups behind them. It was a big mob. Some of them had acetylene torches and welding masks, and they headed straight for the Rafidain Bank [a branch of one of Iraq's largest banking groups]. The British tanks were standing right in front, but they didn't do a thing to stop the criminals. They were even encouraging them, saying "Go in Ali Baba, go in."

Five days after the British came, some looters came to the warehouse at midday. They had no guns, but they threatened us-they said they would beat us up, and if we opposed them they would return at night with guns. There were four British tanks on Sa'ad Square, so we went to the British to ask them to help us. We said there are looters inside the building, threatening us. We even had to lie to tell them that they had guns, so that maybe the British would come. But they didn't. So we returned to the building and saw that the looters were taking some stuff, and we eventually managed to chase them off... At 9:30 p.m., some other looters came by, in a stolen sanitation company car, and demanded fuel. They had a gun with them, so we were afraid... All the time, four British tanks were just sitting in the street.