Things are getting worse by the day

“Electricity shut offs drive us crazy in this hot summer,” one of my friends wrote me recently, “Even we can’t read at night because of long hours of electricity cuts and because the outside generators can’t withstand running these long hours and we have to turn these generators off for some time to cool them!”. He continues, “Two years of occupation…for God sake where is the rebuilding, where the hell are these billions donated to Iraq? Even not 1% improvement in services and electricity! They say again and again the terrorists are to blame and I would accept this, but why they do not protect these facilities? Do the American camps have cuts of electricity? No, no, and nobody will allow this to happen...but poor Iraqis, nobody would be sorry for them if they burn with the hell of summer, small kids and old men they get dehydrated because no electricity, no cold water, etc. Have you heard about the tea that is mixed with iron particles? It is real in our life. People have to make sure their tea is not mixed with iron by use of magnets.” He concluded his email with, “Things are getting worse day by day. Iraq has become a country not for its people, every day thoughts jump into the mind that sooner or later we have to leave this country, searching for another. And there is a saying, “your home is where you sleep safe,” but this is not true in Iraq anymore.” He sent me that email three days ago. Yesterday the Iraqi government announced that it may decrease subsidies for fuel and electricity, despite a severe shortage of both in the country, according to the electricity minister who warned Iraqis to prepare for more blackouts this summer. Ongoing fuel, electricity and drinking water shortages persist, and only 37% of Iraqis have a working sewage system. As so many of my Iraqi friends continue to say, “This is the freedom and democracy that America has brought us.”

"Things are getting worse by the day.”
by Dahr Jamail
Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches