SLIDING his 12-year-old Toyota into the traffic by the canal that runs like a filthy vein through the centre of Basra, Bahaa declares proudly that he voted 555.

This comes as no surprise: 555 is the ballot sheet number of the religious Shia coalition whose writ has become holy law in much of southern Iraq.

A few miles later Bahaa admits the truth within the safety of his battered taxi as it bumps past heaps of rotting rubbish. “I didn’t vote for them, but I am afraid to tell the truth. I don’t want an Islamic party to rule this country, but if anyone asks, we answer that we voted 555.”

His fear is reflected everywhere. The Baath Party has gone and the Islamic parties are in charge. The main concern is the seeming impotence of the British-led multinational contingent in the face of a campaign by fanatical Shia militias to Islamise southern Iraq through fatwas, intimidation, beatings and summary executions of anyone resisting their efforts to impose virtual Sharia.

Alcohol sellers have been killed or their shops blown up, musicians are banned from playing and CD sellers must replace Western music with the speeches of Ayatollahs.

Christian families, who pleaded with The Times for anonymity, tell how relatives have fled Basra fearing for the safety of daughters abused in public for not wearing veils. Journalists highlighting the south’s slide into rule by militia have been intimidated and killed.

“The British are nice and we can deal with them, but they have left Basra to be controlled by the Islamic parties and this is wrong,” sighed Amjad Ali, a 25-year-old driver. “There is no one here to protect the ordinary people. Even the police follow the Islamic parties.”

Those parties were foremost in calling for the resignation of Basra’s police chief when he publicly admitted that his force was riddled with militias.

That is not to say that everything is bleak in Basra. Life is safer in the Shia south and Kurdish north than in the notorious Sunni Triangle around Baghdad, a dichotomy that frustrates coalition diplomats seeking to counter the violent image of Iraq. Last week Major-General Rick Lynch, a US military spokesman, said that 85 per cent of insurgent attacks occur in only four provinces, albeit those with 40 per cent of Iraq ’s population.

But on visits to four southern provinces in recent weeks — Basra, Muthanna, Maysan and Dhiqar — Times reporters encountered complaints about deep-seated problems obscured by the violence further north.

The most obvious are those about electricity, water, corruption and crime, and incomprehension at the lack of reconstruction in a region where there is little or no insurgency.

“People here are angry,” said Muhammad Hussein, 24, a policeman from alNasiriyah. “The situation is not as we hoped it would be after the toppling of Saddam’s regime because there is no reconstruction as we were promised.”

Coalition officials say that power stations are being refurbished and built — including one £68 million Japanese generating plant in Samawa — and supply would now meet the level of demand immediately after the war. But a rise in ownership of air conditioners, electrical goods and cars has left the south still suffering blackouts.

Although coalition officials concede that police ignore intimidation, they hail the Iraqi army and navy as successes. Basra airport has reopened and the marshes are regenerating after being drained by Saddam.

But the prevailing mood is of gloom and fear. Karar, 37, a devout working-class Shia said: “I didn’t want to vote for the Islamic parties but they told me that if I don’t vote for them we will be banned from practising our ceremonies. It is just like what Saddam did before.”

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