Karbala time in southern Iraq

[Paul Eggert]

On April 22 at about 0700 GMT the BBC News World Service reported that
Shias in several southern Iraqi cities have changed their clocks to be
"Karbala time".  According to the story these Iraqis are 1 hour behind
Baghdad, presumably because they are ignoring daylight-saving time.  I
heard the report on a radio station in Los Angeles, but haven't been
able to find a copy at the BBC web site news.bbc.co.uk.  Possibly the
story was tape-delayed.

This reminds me of the article in the Economist in June 2000, which
said that Kurds were ignoring DST in northern Iraq.  Rives McDow's
excellent contacts at the time disagreed with this claim.  Quite
possibly a similar situation is occurring in southern Iraq right now.