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A Different Kind of Power Struggle in Iraq
By Alexandra Zavis
The Los Angeles Times
Monday 24 March 2008
Most residents get only a few hours of
electricity a day. In a reversal of the old days, the problem is stickiest in
Baghdad.
Baghdad - Khitam Radi remembers how excited she was the day her husband
took her out to buy their first washing machine.
It was soon after Saddam Hussein's fall. Foreign soldiers, journalists and
officials were snapping up her artist husband's paintings as souvenirs. The
newlyweds had everything to hope for.
Now, there are days when she hates that machine. With no electricity most of
the time to pump water to their apartment, Radi has to wait in line to fill
her jerrycans at a communal faucet, haul the water up four flights of stairs
and wash her family's clothes by hand.
"I feel like someone is torturing me," she said. "The Americans
promised to make our lives better.... But after five years, nothing has changed."
Violence may have dropped in Iraq, but the absence of reliable electricity
remains one of the bitterest disappointments of the last five years.
The United States has devoted $4.9 billion to improve the power supply since
U.S.-led forces invaded in 2003. But most Iraqis can count on only a few hours
of electricity a day, especially when demand peaks in the summer and winter.
U.S. and Iraqi officials say progress has been made but warn it will take years
to bring Iraq's dilapidated system up to Western standards, an effort made even
more challenging by surging demand for electricity in the last five years.
The country's electricity woes long predate this war. The system was heavily
damaged during Iraq's eight-year conflict with Iran in the 1980s and during
the 1991 Persian Gulf War. It continued to deteriorate the next dozen years
under the United Nations embargo, when spare parts were hard to come by.
By 2003, the World Bank estimated that it would cost $20 billion to rehabilitate
the electricity network, and the price tag continues to go up. The Iraqi government's
current estimate is $27 billion.
U.S. officials never intended to do more than jump-start the process, said
Col. Mike Moon, who heads the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' electricity sector
in Iraq.
The U.S. investment has added just over 2,200 megawatts to Iraq's generating
capacity, which now stands at about 5,500 megawatts.
Five years ago, that would have been enough to cover the country's electricity
needs, but demand has increased 125% because Iraqis are buying more energy-intensive
devices, said Terrence Barnich, a senior advisor with the U.S. government's
Iraq Transition Assistance Office.
Since the fall of Hussein's regime, Iraq has been flooded with cheap electrical
imports from China, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Already, stacks of fans,
water-based air coolers and refrigerators are displayed in front of stores in
anticipation of summer, when temperatures can approach 120 degrees.
Adding generating capacity has helped, but the amount of power produced on
any given day rarely reaches peak potential. For a start, keeping the turbines
spinning requires fuel. Iraq has the world's second-largest proven oil reserves,
but its refining capabilities are limited and its power plants are beset by
fuel shortages. Oil and electricity installations are also constantly attacked,
creating disruptions that can destabilize the entire network.
Nearly 1,200 electricity employees have been kidnapped or killed or have fled
the country since 2003, Electricity Minister Karim Waheed told reporters in
August.
"We cannot ask our employees to work in certain parts of Iraq due to the
insecurity," he said. "I mean, they are workers. They are not army
soldiers."
Despite those setbacks, electricity production averaged 4,380 megawatts a day
in the last quarter of 2007, enough to meet nearly half of the national demand,
according to a report by the U.S. special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.
But how much electricity is available to consumers varies greatly. Priority
is given to essential services such as hospitals, police stations, fire stations
and water treatment and sewage plants. So nearby homes and businesses enjoy
a near-continuous supply of power.
Government offices and universities are in the next category. "Then there
is everybody else," Moon said. "They are the first ones to lose power."
The pain of frequent outages is felt most acutely in Baghdad, which received
16 to 24 hours of power a day before 2003.
Hussein diverted electricity from the provinces to keep the capital fully powered,
but the current government is striving for a more equitable distribution across
the country. That means that Baghdad receives less power while the rest of the
country typically receives more.
Baghdad also suffers disproportionately from the effects of the violence. Most
of Iraq's power is generated in the north and south of the country, and the
towers supporting the lines that bring electricity to the capital are frequent
targets.
To make matters worse, some parts of the country are taking more than their
share of electricity before it reaches Baghdad. With no central means to control
the flow of electricity from far-flung power stations, officials in Baghdad
must get on the phone with their provincial counterparts and ask them to flip
a switch to redirect power to the capital. Often they refuse, Waheed said.
In some cases, this is a result of a sense of entitlement on the part of provinces
that were starved of power under Hussein.
But employees at local control stations are also at the mercy of armed gangs
who force them to keep power flowing to their areas, Waheed said. He singled
out the cities of Basra, Mosul and Baqubah as among the worst culprits.
As temperatures rise after an unusually cold winter, pressure is easing on
the national grid and Baghdad residents are enjoying 10 to 14 hours of power
a day. But the supply is unpredictable.
When the lights suddenly come on, Radi jumps up from the table where she has
been chatting with a visitor and starts stuffing clothes into the washing machine
in hopes of getting a load done before losing power again. She then switches
on the TV so her two toddlers can watch cartoons, and she can relax. But the
certainty that they will soon be sweating through the summer keeps the family
from fully enjoying this respite.
Most families supplement their meager electricity supply with power from a
generator. Few can afford the fuel to run their own, but in most neighborhoods
an entrepreneur will sell them a few extra hours of power from a shared generator
for about $50 a month. But even that's too expensive for Radi's family.
She says she doesn't even bother putting food into the refrigerator anymore;
it would just spoil. Instead, she buys blocks of ice, which she breaks into
chips to fill a cooler. On hot summer nights, she and her family curl up on
the roof to catch the evening breeze. But even there, it is sometimes too stifling
to sleep.
"I feel sick just thinking about it," Radi said.
To help meet the summer demand, Waheed has been negotiating deals to buy electricity
from Iran and Turkey, and diesel to keep his plants running.
Taking advantage of the improved security, the ministry's crews have been making
much-needed repairs to the lines that bring power to the capital.
For the first time in five years, Moon said, "I think it could be a very
bearable summer."
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alexandra.zavis@latimes.com
Times staff writer Usama Redha in Baghdad contributed to this report.
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