Half of Baghdad Without Power for Ten Days

The Karkh side of Baghdad [West Baghdad] where nearly half of the city’s six million people live, has been without electricity for more than ten days.

The Tigris River divides Baghdad into two parts – the Karkh and Rasafa [East Baghdad]. Today, the supply of electricity to the city is far below what it was before the 2003-U.S. invasion.

Nationwide, electricity generation rates are also lower, with major cities and towns often suffering outages of over 20-hours.

As the output from major power plants have declined, the authorities have almost done nothing to provide alternatives. Some residents in Karkh accused the government of “negligence.” The authorities, they said, blame even the problems they create themselves on a lack of security.

Abdulkareem Radhi, the owner of a workshop, said that power shortages were one of the reasons for the city’s rampant unemployment.

“My workshop relies totally on electricity. No electricity, no wages,” he said.

Another man, Rijab Abdullah, said military operations by Iraqi and U.S. troops cause tremendous infrastructure damage in the areas they target.

“These military operations should be coordinated with the Ministry of Electricity,” he said.

Some residents mock official excuses that the outages are the result of violence and insecurity.

“In the past five years, the Ministry of Electricity has exerted no effort to provide a solution,” said Abduwahid Abdulhussein. Among the options, he said, the authorities could have built small, gas-driven power plants to serve different quarters of Baghdad.

Over the past five years, allocations to the Ministry of Electricity from the treasury and donors are estimated in the billions of dollars.

It’s hard to sell the official rhetoric regarding the outages to the public.

A man named Rasheed Zamel said, “according to statements from the ministries of the interior and defense, thousands of gunmen have been killed or detained during the latest military operations. We wonder then, who is it destroying the national grid if so many are being killed and captured?” said