Security isn't going to mean much for long if the US doesn't get cracking on the power problem in Iraq:

"I have had no electricity for a week, and I cannot afford to buy it from neighborhood generators," said Hamdiyah Subeih, a 42-year-old homemaker from Baghdad's Shiite Baladiyat district. "I would rather live in Saddam Hussein's hell than the paradise of these new leaders."

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is feeling the discontent as well from the most powerful political centers in the majority Shiite community.

Stinging criticism late last week from Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, leader of parliament's largest Shiite bloc, was a stark break with the past. And a threat by Muqtada al-Sadr, the maverick Shiite cleric who once supported al-Maliki, not to renew an expiring six-month cease-fire he imposed on his feared militia could upend recent security progress.

In admonishing tones, al-Hakim called on the government and parliament not to be "entirely focused on political rivalries at the expense of the everyday problems faced by Iraqis." He also demanded that lawmakers quickly adopt key legislation divvying up the country's oil wealth and setting the rules for provincial elections to be held later this year.

It would seem not much has changed in Iraq after all, unless the body count is your only metric. Pissed off citizens. Factionalism. No central government.

 Iraqi power plants are only producing half the number of megawatts Iraqis need to get by daily. A government solution? Rationing citizens to an amount of amperes that will not even run an iron.

Of course, wingnuts would point out that 5,000 megawatts is alot of megawatts and therefore the Iraqis should quit bitching and learn to deal. After all, how many really poor people have TVs with satellite decoders? And who needs heating oil in Baghdad anyway?

I can tell you this from direct experience: they need heat in Baghdad. It's fucking freezing at night during the winter. Ask a soldier about their blanket when they went to Iraq, it's one of those things that changes the quality of your life while there. I still have mine. But blankets alone are not enough.

But the most alarming thing about the power problem is that growing Shi'a factionalism, fed by discontent with government inefficiency and corruption could be a prime factor in renewed hostilities. I hope no one missed that little part about Al-Sadr up there. February, if my math is right, is the end of the ceasefire.

tags: iraq  electricity  power  shortage  ceasefire  alsadr  

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