Just past midnight, a chain-smoking Hussein al-Rashid, head of a local oil services company, received the phone call he had been waiting for all day. “We’ve got your guys,” the voice over the phone told Mr. Rashid. “And we want $200,000.” The man on the phone wasn’t an Islamist militant and the kidnapping of three of Mr. Rashid’s employees didn’t occur anywhere near the front lines of fighting between Islamic State and government forces. Rather, the men were taken hostage in Basra, Iraq’s third-largest city and the heart of its oil industry in the country’s predominantly Shiite south. Until last year, Basra was a secure haven in a country torn apart by war. But the armed thugs now in control of its streets and the crime wave sweeping the city illustrate how the conflict with Islamic State is rippling beyond the […]