Al Basrah is a city in Iraq. It is on the Shatt al-Arab river (where the Tigris and Euphrates become one river draining into the Persian Gulf) and on the Iraq-Iran border, northwest of the Iranian city of Abadan.

Albie derives his nickname from this city, and his real name is too hard to pronounce for Mac McCullum. The city has an airstrip where Albie worked as a black marketeer in the air control tower as a front for his business.

In Armageddon, Albie and Mac stayed in a flat at a forsaken corner of Al Basrah where the landlord did not care about the tenants' loyalty to the Global Community as long as the rent envelope was full and waiting on the first of every month. When Albie was trying to find another black marketer, Mainyu Mazda, who operates in Abadan, Abadan now resembled what was once the seedy part of the town. There was row after row of bars, fortune-telling places, night clubs, and brothels. The smell of hashish was ubiquitous, and cocaine and heroin deals were conducted out in the open. Albie noted that Al Basrah was no better.

The Global Community only bothered to do occasional crackdowns every week to maintain appearances, but once the plagues decimated their ranks, they used their resources to focus on crimes against the Global Community and Nicolae Carpathia. Like the Global Community elsewhere in the world, they had a zero-tolerance policy for those without the mark of loyalty. They also sent to jail some of those who were caught skipping one of their three daily instances of worshiping the image of Carpathia.