IRAQ: The Lights Have Gone Out, Who Cares

[laststeamtrain]

IRAQ:
The Lights Have Gone Out, Who Cares

Ahmed Ali and Dahr Jamail*

BAQUBA, Feb 15 (IPS) - Lack of electricity in Baquba has shattered businesses, and the lives of families. Months of power failures has darkened morale everywhere.
In Diyala province, just north of Baghdad, a generation has grown up in dark. The province, and its capital Baquba 40 km north of Baghdad has lived with intermittent electricity supply since the times of the sanctions under Saddam Hussein in the 1990s. Came the U.S. in 2003, and everyone thought it would get better.

"I felt happy when the U.S. invaded Iraq because I thought the electricity problem will be solved, and we would have it all the time like other countries," Abdul-Kareem Hasan, a trader in Baquba told IPS.

But promises of reconstruction by western contractors proved empty, and there is now less electricity than during the sanctions.

In some cities, homes get electricity just an hour or two a day. Sometimes, there is no electricity for a week. People struggle to get alternative source of electricity.

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The winter has been hard without electricity. "We use wood fire to warm up the houses," resident Safa al-Hamdani said. "Electric heaters have become useless. So now we use a metal container, say 50cm by 20cm and burn wood in it. We have abandoned the world of modern technology."

"I dream of waking up and having a hot shower," said a local resident. "But I am now exhausted complaining about lack of electricity. I'm sure nobody can bear living in Iraq. It's a country in the stone ages."

The worst of the suffering comes in summer, when temperatures can reach 55 C.

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http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41217

[ConcernedCanuk]

1. USA spreading it's version of "democracy" - working real good ain't it?

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USA would be better off taking care of it's own 300 million citizens, instead of wreaking havoc on a small nation of 25 million, or it USED to be 25 million before the slaughter started . .

Saddam was an angel compared to the PNAC war-machine.

Depleted Uranium spread around with the USA's war-machine will be killing those Iraqis for generations.

Mission Accomplished.