April 10 — The crowd gathered outside the house of Muzahim Mustafa Kanan al Tamimi, the sheikh the British are appointing to take over civil administration of Basra. He’s better known as Gen. Al Tamimi, a former brigadier in Saddam’s army who more recently taught at the military school. When the shouting began, we thought at first the crowd was just chanting slogans against Saddam Hussein’s Baathists, but they were also chanting against Sheikh Muzahim. “No no Baathists, no Muzahim.”
SHEIK MUZAHIM’S SUPPORTERS inside the house, including some 42 tribal leaders, said the crowd were all members of a rival tribe, the al Sadouni. That’s a strongly Baathist tribe, whose leader, Sadeq al Sadouni, was the top Baathist official in Basra. But were they really Sadouni? It was hard to tell. Said the sheik’s cousin, Sheik Mansour Kanan, “To take a metaphorical example, when a person dies the family start fighting over his property.” It was, he noted, “because of the coming of the death of our dictator.”
