Basra

Iraq recently completed the second round of bidding on its oil fields, which will hopefully usher in the return of international petroleum companies to Iraq that will bring in much needed investment and know how. This round went much better than the first with deals for seven of the ten fields up for auction.

Since April 2009 monthly death counts for Iraq have fluctuated up and down. October was no different as it was higher than the previous month. Iraq’s ministries for example, reported 410 deaths in October, compared to 203 in September and 456 in August.

Despite the recent October 2009 Baghdad bombing, and the previous one in August, attacks in Iraq are at their lowest level since the 2003 invasion. The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction recorded drops in weekly attacks in eleven of Iraq’s eighteen provinces from May to October 2009.

One of the major problems with the Iraqi government is its inability to spend its budget effectively. The country’s eighteen provinces do much worse than the central government in Baghdad. The new Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction’s quarterly report to Congress has the latest numbers on how Iraq’s governorates have done up to October 13, 2009.

Basra in southern Iraq and Irbil in Kurdistan are responding to the drought in different ways. Basra wants to be declared a disaster area and is calling for immediate relief, while Irbil is thinking more long-term and trying to create a water policy.

One of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s main appeals today in Iraq is his secular stance, something he is running on for the 2010 elections. Despite his Dawa Party’s Islamist roots, Maliki has largely discarded that past history to run on things like security, services, and Iraqi nationalism.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki recently went on a short tour of southern Iraq to drum up support in anticipation of the January 2010 parliamentary elections. First he went to Basra, Iraq’s second largest city, on September 10, 2009. He then went to neighboring Dhi Qar province on September 14.

At the beginning of September 2008 the Iraqi Oil Ministry signed a preliminary deal with Royal Dutch Shell to exploit natural gas in the Basra area. It was only the second agreement signed between Iraq and a foreign company to exploit its natural resources since the U.S. invasion in 2003.

The latest report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on the number of Iraqi refugees and internally displaced that have returned is now available. Like the last report, 2009 has continued to see a number of Iraqis come back, but varying by month. In June, 2009 14,750 displaced and 3,490 refugees for a total of 18,410 Iraqis made the trip back.

More information is now available on the ruling coalitions that took power after the 2009 provincial elections. Here’s a rundown of governors and heads of councils, (and where possible their deputies), the parties that are now in control of the fourteen provinces that held balloting in January 2009, and the election results. After each is a short note about the motivations behind the coalitions. At the end is a comparison with the 2005 balloting.