Iraqis Suffer Through Summer Without Electricity

The summer of 2007 will be the fifth since the fall of Baghdad and the end of the rule of Saddam Hussein and the Bath Party in Iraq. After decades of wars and brutal economic sanctions culminating with the 2003 invasion and occupation by American and British forces, the Iraqi people continue to suffer and die from the day to day hardships of being denied basic services the rest of the developed and developing world take for granted.

In a country possessing such an abundance of cheap and easily accessible oil and considering the fact it is now globally a seller’s market, Iraq should be a land of milk and honey.

Instead the Iraqi people continue to struggle against a needless and brutal occupation in what has become a near hell on earth as their occupiers continue the stranglehold on the basic necessities of life in their efforts to kill off or break the will and resolve of the resistance and subdue these tenacious people along with their inherent rights to the abundance of hydrocarbons that lie beneath the desert sands of Iraq.

Iraq was a war of choice, not necessity.
~Senator Barbara Boxer

It is a part of the bigger dream of reconstruction that collapsed. On all measurable levels, the infrastructure is worse than under the former regime of Saddam Hussein, even when it was crippled by the harshest economic sanctions in modern history.

Iraqis lack security, jobs, potable water, and these days when it really pinches, electricity.

“Electricity is life,” said 45-year-old Zahra Aziz, a schoolteacher and mother of four, using a hand-fan in an attempt to cool herself. “Modern life depends on power, and we do not have that here. Having no electricity means having no water, no light, no air conditioning, and in other words, no life.”

Most people IPS spoke to in Baghdad said they get one hour of electricity in 24 hours.

“June is a very hot month, and this permanent electricity failure is just another way of giving Iraqis slow death,” Umayma Salim, a doctor who quit her work at a hospital in Baghdad due to security threats told IPS.

“We are getting all kinds of diseases – sunstrokes among those work outdoors to provide their children food, and psychological effects on all people.

Posted by GWHunta
Small town, working class from Michigan's Upper Peninsula. 1990 went to work for the MDOC; the very forefront of the U.S. Prison / Industrial Complex. Learned there, the hard way, that if I wasn't one of them; "they" would be pit against me. ...

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