Iraqis complain that, were it not for sanctions, foreign ships would be overflowing from cramped Umm Qasr to the port of Basra, 80 kilometres up the Shatt al-Arab waterway from the Gulf.

ECONOMIST: The Gulf

It certainly does not lay claim, as dreamers of a unified Greater Kurdistan do, to a fantastical spur of land that would jut across south-eastern Turkey and northern Syria to reach the Mediterranean, plus another tongue of territory stretching south-eastwards to let Kurds dip their toes in the Persian Gulf beyond Basra.

ECONOMIST: Iraqi Kurdistan

The residents of Basra, an important center of Iraq's Shiite population, staged an uprising after the Gulf War of 1991.

CNN: UK: Iraq to feel backlash in Basra