The people of Basra have revolted before - and been slaughtered for it

The people of Basra know what it means to rise up against Saddam Hussein, and the terrible cost it can bring, because they tried it at the end of the Gulf War in 1991, only to be betrayed by George Bush Snr and then brutally crushed by President Saddam's Republican Guard.

Whatever their emotions last night as they seemingly began their new rebellion, affection or trust for the invading British and American forces are not likely to be among them. Journalists who have visited the impoverished, deeply disillusioned city, once one of the most cultured in the Middle East, report that the population loathes Saddam and the United States in equal measure. The reason lies in the devastating sequence of events after the ceasefire signed by the Iraqis and the Americans on 28 February 1991. The rank-and-file soldiers returning ­ thirsty, scared and exhausted ­ from Kuwait spontaneously turned on their commanders and then on Baath party headquarters in towns and cities across Shia-dominated southern Iraq.

The uprising reached Basra on 1 March, when a tank gunner fired a round through a portrait of Saddam Hussein to applause from his comrades. Soon, the rebels had taken over the Baath party building, released the inmates of a secret underground prison reserved for political opponents of the regime, and hunted down Baathist officials all over town. At the Teaching Hospital, a band of 50 rebels pulled three wounded security officials out of their beds and shot them.

That seemed to be what President Bush wanted when, in mid-February, he called on the Iraqi people to overthrow the regime. But as the rebellion spread to other Shia-majority cities ­ Karbala, Najaf and Kufa ­ the Americans seemingly panicked.

They had imagined a palace coup in Baghdad, not a grassroots popular revolt that might lead to the sectarian dismemberment of Iraq and who knows what else. Whether Washington gave a green light to President Saddam or not ­ and there are furious ideologically driven debates on this point ­ the Republican Guard was soon on its way south and left free to do its worst by American warplanes circling overhead to enforce the new no-fly zone beneath the 32nd parallel.

Under the terms of the ceasefire, the Iraqis could not use fixed-wing aircraft but helicopters, including gunships, were permitted for "administrative purposes".

The helicopters fired indiscriminately at mosques, schools and homes. Civilians suspected of involvement in the uprising were lined up and shot, execution-style. Some were forced to swallow petrol, then set alight as they were killed.

Others were tied to tanks and used by government forces as human shields, or lashed against rocks and drowned in the Shatt-al-Arab waterway. The man who oversaw the carnage was Saddam's cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid ­ Chemical Ali ­ who had gassed thousands of Kurdish civilians in Halabja in 1988. He had ordered that many of those bodies should be bulldozed into the ground; others were simply dumped on the main road to Baghdad and left to be torn apart by wild dogs.

Historians now estimate the civilian death toll from the southern uprising in 1991 at between 30,000 and 60,000. In Basra, people have been so traumatised they have hardly dared speak of it.

Now, with a water shortage threatening to cause a humanitarian catastrophe, the people of Basra are trying all over again.