Faced with their fifth summer without a regular supply of electricity, Baghdad residents have come up with some novel ways to cool off.
Decades of corruption, neglect and war have left Iraq's electricity grid on the verge of collapse. Iraq is generating enough power to meet only half the nationwide demand, and most Baghdad residents are down to an hour or two of electricity a day. The shortfalls are the worst since U.S.-led forces ousted Saddam Hussein in 2003, Electricity Ministry spokesman Aziz Shimari said.
The unreliable electricity supply is a source of constant frustration to Iraqis, who cite it as one of the biggest failings of the U.S.-led invasion. The constant blackouts become unbearable during the summer, when the mercury climbs to between 110 and 120 degrees.
First, in our defense, we assumed that if we didn't destroy the electric grid in the invasion, it would suffice for post-war Iraq. Iraq's pre-war supply was inadequate. We ended Baghdad's privileged supply status and spread the pain which previously had fallen upon the Shia regions.
Second, we didn't realize how shaky the system was in March 2003. It was so fragile that minimal destruction by insurgents could bring down parts of the grid or halt generation of electricity.
Third, demand is up after freeing the Iraqis, so we have to do more than just restore the pre-war grid.
That said, we've had four years to get this right and we've failed. This is inexcusable. What we have provided, with new shiny power plants, has been wasted with poor Iraqi maintenance under their care.
Perhaps the many ways Iraqis have resorted to get electricity at the local level with privately owned generators should have been the way to go from the beginning while the state rebuilt the national grid. If we had sold generators cheaply to neighborhoods we could have decentralized the production of electricity and made enemy attacks less burdensome.
In the search for mistakes in this war, most charges are just the results of the fog of war. This is a genuine mistake and one we still haven't corrected.
