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Iraqi
Insurgents Target Water and Electricity, But Spare the Cell Phone |
Posted:
01.29.07
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Throughout Iraq, insurgents have attacked water and electricity
plants to spread chaos and disrupt progress, but they have allowed
the communications sector to rebuild -- primarily because they
rely on mobile phones to plan their attacks.
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American and Iraqi companies are working around the clock to
supply large cities with electricity and clean water, hoping that
better conditions will alleviate the anger that is fueling violence.
The new Iraqi government also hopes that small projects will provide
jobs and keep young men from joining the fighting.
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Turning the
lights back on |
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Efforts to provide Baghdad,
once replete with electricity, with enough energy for even basic
services face continuous setbacks.
"All the transfer lines are in hot spots and are targeted
by terrorist attacks," Saadi Mehdi Ali, the Electricity Ministry's
inspector general, told the New York Times.
 As
of December 2006, seven out of the nine transfer lines serving
Baghdad were down, largely due to coordinated insurgent attacks.
Electricity is available for only part of the day.
"It was better in Baghdad [before the war], because Saddam's
government made a conscious decision to provide more power to
Baghdad then to any other part of Iraq," said Rajiv Chandrasekaran,
the Washington Post former bureau chief in Baghdad.
"The post-war change was felt most acutely in Baghdad, because
it went from getting 22 hours a day to getting, at times, four
to six hours a day."
As the violence destroys new power plants and electric lines,
more American funding is diverted from rebuilding to security.
According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office and State
Department statistics, security costs in the past year represented
16 percent to 33 percent of overall infrastructure project costs.
The irony, Chandrasekaran said, is that providing and maintaining
secure power sources in highly volatile regions would help mitigate
violence, but the power plants are being disrupted before their
value can be realized.
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Getting water
to cities and farmers |
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Water infrastructure development
has achieved mixed results. Although some successful water and sanitation
projects have been completed, potable (drinkable) water is relatively
scarce and less than 10 percent of Iraqi homes are serviced by sewage
systems, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
"The U.S. effort has focused initially on building potable
water capacity, since clean drinking water is the primary factor
in reducing primary waterborne diseases like cholera and typhoid,"
said Lt. Col. Joseph Fraundorfer, deputy chief of water for the
Corps.
 Much
like the other sectors, the state of water resources is much worse
in the south than in the north.
Years of improper environmental management, including a massive
draining of marshlands in southern Iraq by Saddam's government
and the construction of dams in southern Turkey, which cut the
Euphrates River water supply almost in half, have rendered water
undrinkable without treatment in many parts of the south.
"The water is so dirty when it gets down to Basra [from
the north] that they didn't even drink the municipally supplied
water," said Jane Gleason who works with USAID's Agriculture
Reconstruction and Development Program for Iraq.
That was the case until late 2004, when USAID and Bechtel Corp.
finished rehabilitating Basra's 14 water treatment plants, the
canal system, and the main water reservoir, providing fresh water
to a city accustomed to salty, unusable water.
Gleason's team fixed irrigation systems and provide fresh water
to farmers in the region by September 2006.
"We reckon [our project] affected about half a million people,"
she said.
Small-scale projects like Gleason's agricultural and irrigation
system are likely the model for future water, transportation and
electricity infrastructure development in Iraq.
"Small and medium-sized potable water rehabilitation projects
executed by direct contracting to repair and rehabilitate neglected
facilities using Iraqi labor have been the most successful,"
said Fraundorfer.
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Mobile phones
spared |
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One of the success stories in infrastructure is the communications
sector, with Iraqis accessing domestic mobile phone service for
the first time in the country's history.
 Under
Saddam there were no mobile phone providers in Iraq and, according
to the State Department, just 1.2 million people out of the total
population of 26 million subscribed to landline phone service.
But during the looting and violence after U.S. entry into Iraq
in 2003, an estimated half of the landline infrastructure was
damaged, so the need for mobile technology was immediate.
Unlike the electricity and transportation sectors, the cellular
tower infrastructure has been largely safe from violence, in part
because the insurgents rely on mobile phones to coordinate attacks.
"Everybody needs a mobile phone, whether you are a terrorist,
whether you are a government official, or whether you are a member
of the public," Dr. Siyamend Othman, CEO of Iraq's National
Communications and Media Commission, told the Washington Post.
--
-- By Jon Brand, Online NewsHour
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Joplin was able to rise from the ashes because of help from everyone. And I am eternally grateful to anyone who made that possible.
