A boy in Baghdad plays with a toy gun which is a replica of the rifles used by US forces in Iraq. (AFP)

Basra (Iraq), June 30: With the August 15 deadline for writing a new constitution bearing down, a cadre of powerful, mostly secular Shia politicians is pushing for the creation of an autonomous region in the oil-rich south of Iraq, posing a direct challenge to the nation’s central authority.

The politicians argue that the long-impoverished south has never got its fair share of the country’s oil money, even though the bulk of Iraqi oil reserves lie near Basra, at the head of the Persian Gulf. They also say they cannot trust anyone holding power in Baghdad because of the decades of harsh oppression under the Sunni government of Saddam Hussein.

“We want to destroy the central system that connects the entire country to the capital,” said Bakr al-Yasseen, a former foe of Hussein who spent years in exile in Syria. He is one of the chief organisers of the autonomy campaign, which is supported by Ahmad Chalabi, the one-time Pentagon favourite and scion of a prominent Shia family from the south, among others.

Yasseen, who has ties to Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi President and a Kurd, is demanding for the south the same broad powers that the Kurds now have, including an independent parliament, ministries and regional military force.

The Kurds have long demanded a strong measure of autonomy in a future Iraqi state. But the issue of an autonomous south is new, and complicates the already heated discussions on federalism in the new constitution. The religious Shia parties and the Sunnis have generally opposed Kurdish autonomy, but the emergence of a southern drive for greater regional independence could lend important support to the Kurds’ quest.

Here in Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, banners have appeared on the streets in recent weeks calling for an autonomous region similar to Iraqi Kurdistan.

Academics and local politicians are holding meetings at night to try to define their demands. Some are talking on the phone to members of the constitutional committee in Baghdad on an almost daily basis.

While religious Shia parties now dominate the national government, many people here fear that the parties may not adequately defend the rights of the south and worry about the rise of another authoritarian government, perhaps a conservative Islamic one.

“There’s no democracy in Iraq,” Yasseen said, expressing the deep suspicions of moderate and secular Shias. “Anyone who says there’s democracy has a little Saddam in his head. He wants to become a Saddam.”

Chalabi and Sheik Abdul Kareem al-Muhammadawi, a prominent member of the National Assembly, are planning to propose a regional vote on the question of southern autonomy in October, at the same time as a national referendum on the constitution.

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