Power Shortages Spark Anger in Iraq

BA G H D A D, Iraq, Aug. 11 -- Few people in Iraq were happier to see the Americans come and Saddam Hussein go than Iraqi Airways pilot Adnan Amin.

Amin hasn't been able to fly since his country was cut off from the world in 1989. But as he walks the five floors up to his apartment each day, he is thinking not about democracy, but electricity.

The Amin family kitchen is cluttered with plastic bottles filled with water. In one of the two stainless steel sinks sits a portable camping stove — its burner is on high and a battered kettle rumbles as it spits steam.

The temperature outside is 115 degrees Fahrenheit.

The Amins live a perfectly modern life: refrigerator, air conditioner, television. But nothing works, not even the building's water pump. Because, as is usual here in Baghdad these days, the electricity isn't working.

On a good day, the Amins will have power for eight hours, but never all at once. And they never know when. Amin says the electricity supply in Baghdad today is far worse than it was before the war.

"Iraq without electricity — you can't live here," says Amin. "It's very, very hot. No air conditioning. No water. We can't live. So I need electricity more than democracy."

Employed But Idle

Khalid Ayub Majid owns a small metal lathing shop in central Baghdad. It is a scene worthy of Dickens. The grimy shop is open to the street, and the workers sit at their machines wiping the sweat onto their oil-stained T-shirts. Some are fanning themselves, trying to stir the heavy hot air.

The seven men who work in the shop are among the luckiest in Iraq. They have jobs. With Saddam's centralized, state-controlled economy in tatters and so much of government infrastructure bombed and looted, it is estimated that unemployment in this country is 70 percent.

But the men here at the lathe shop are idle. Without power, their lathes cannot run. They wait, just in case the power comes back. While they wait, there is no work. No pay.

Majid says he knows who to blame. "Every sane person," he says, "knows that if America wants to fix the electricity they can do it."