Steven Vincent

ulation and its leaders have chosen that it should be so. They knew that if the US brought in democracy, then the Shia majority, suppressed by Saddam Hussein, would be in power. But the calm concealed the nastiness of the south’s problems. The violence with which Saddam suppressed Shias meant that the south was always going to want to express its version of Islam forcefully once he was gone.

The effects are very visible. Basra used to be a byword for tolerance. But across the south, women are now generally veiled and cloaked. Alcohol sellers have shut down. Pictures of clerics are everywhere.