Stifling Baghdad
Despairs
As Water Cut Adds
To Misery
By Oliver Poole in Baghdad
The Telegraph - UK
6-25-5
Lubna Ali was resigned to the daily electricity
shortages that cut off the lights, shut down the
air conditioning and left her family sweltering
in the summer heat.
She coped with her terror of the bombs, drive-by
shootings and kidnappings by deciding, at the start
of this year, to venture no further than her garden
gate.
But the final straw for the 42-year-old housewife
from the middle-class New Baghdad district in the
Iraqi capital came when a rebel attack on a water
plant cut off supplies to two million people.
With the temperature above 50C, this brought Mrs
Ali "the true knowledge of despair".
"I didn't think it could get worse - and then
it did," she said, her kitchen filled with
dirty plates and the lavatories unflushed. "The
children are crying. All we want is to pour some
water on our bodies.
"I now wish we could go back to Saddam's time.
We suffered then, but not like the suffering nowadays.
There is no water or electricity. I can't sleep
because of the heat. How are we to live these lives
of misery?"
At a conference in Brussels this week, the Iraqi
government briefed representatives from more than
80 countries and organisations on its programmes
to rebuild the county, and listed its achievements.
In Baghdad, meanwhile, crowds of thirsty people
waited for hours at emergency water pipes to fill
jerry cans and buckets, while women washed clothes
in the dirty waters of the Euphrates.
The citizens of this city do not give up easily.
The shock, fear and chaos that came with the American
takeover was soon replaced by black humour and stoicism.
Outsiders are invariably astounded at how - after
yet another bombing - street vendors can reopen
their stalls, even as the bloodstains are being
hosed from the pavements.
But the mood in the city is increasingly one of
desperation. While residents wait in vain for promised
reconstruction projects to materialise, the government
cannot even agree on the make-up of the committee
to draw up a new constitution, let alone its contents.
Sovereignty was returned to the Iraqi people from
the occupying administration a year ago. But electricity
output in the capital has decreased in the past
five months - averaging only 854 megawatts per day
now, compared with 2,500 megawatts before the war.
The rationing system for sugar and baby milk collapsed
at the beginning of the year, forcing many to go
without.
Sadr City, the vast slum in the capital's west,
is in the grip of a hepatitis outbreak. Forty per
cent of Baghdad's homes have reported sewage on
the streets. Fresh water had finally returned to
most of the city by last night - but for only two
hours a day.
And then there are the suicide bombers. After a
brief lull earlier this month, when the Iraqi army
launched Operation Lightning to root out insurgents
in the city and made more than 1,000 arrests, they
resumed their deadly work as usual last week.
Shortly after dawn on Thursday, four bombs exploded
in Karada, a district known for its teashops and
clothing stores, killing 15 people, only hours after
three other blasts had torn through the Shula neighbourhood.
At one bomb scene, the mangled chassis of a car
hung from a tree and the blue tiles were stripped
from an adjacent mosque. Masked Iraqi police moved
in, bringing central Baghdad traffic to a standstill
for 90 minutes.
Standing beside a pool of blood, Abu Radhi, an architect,
said: "This city was once the most beautiful
in the Middle East. People would stroll by the river
at dusk and the restaurants were filled with laughter.
Now our life is this."
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005.
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