As a daily drumbeat of violence continues to reverberate across Iraq, people here continue to struggle to find some sense of normality, a task made increasingly difficult due to ongoing violence and the lack of both water and electricity.
According to a March 2011 report by the UN’s Inter-Agency Information and Analysis Unit, one in five Iraqi households use an unsafe source of drinking water, and another 16 per cent report daily supply problems.
The situation is even worse in rural areas, where only 43 per cent have access to safe drinking water, and water available for agriculture is usually scarce and of very poor quality. These facts have led more Iraqis than ever to leave rural communities in search of water and work in the cities, further compounding already existing problems there.
Street side electricity generators are now a common sight around Iraq’s capital city, where the average home receives between four and eight hours of electricity each day. Some areas, such as Sadr City, receive an average of less than five hours a day, with some portions of the area receiving a mere hour to two a day - and sometimes none at all.
Nabil Toufiq is a generator operator who serves 220 homes for 12 hours each day. “We buy our diesel on the black market, not from the government,” he told Al Jazeera. “We expect this business to continue forever because government corruption prevents them from fixing our problems.”
Turn off one of the main thoroughfares through the area and one quickly finds dirt roads with sewage streaming down the gutters. While water-borne diseases and diarrhoea are common across Baghdad, they are rampant in Sadr City, where the lack of potable water, coupled with raw sewage flowing through many of the streets, make the spread of disease inevitable.
According to the UNDP, Iraq has a poverty rate of 23 per cent, which means roughly six million Iraqis are plagued by poverty and hunger, despite the recent increase in Iraq’s oil exports. Iraq’s Ministry of Planning has also announced that the country needed some $6.8bn to reduce the level of poverty in the country.
Gheda Karam sells dates and fruits. Her husband was paralysed during the Iraq-Iran war, and the benefits they get from the government for his disability are not enough.
“My family is suffering too much,” she told Al Jazeera. “Even yesterday we did not eat dinner. We are 20 of us in an old house, and I’m the only one with work.”
But nowhere is the lack of economic growth more evident than in Baghdad. According to the Central Bank of Iraq, unemployment and “under-employment” are both at 46 per cent, although many in Iraq feel this is a generously low estimate.
Iraq continues to have a cash economy; meaning there are no credit cards, almost no checking accounts, no transfer of electronic funds, and only a few ATMs.
Iraq lacks a functioning postal service, has no public transportation, nor a national airline - and most goods sold in Iraq are imported.
Iraq is ranked the eighth most corrupt country in the world, according to Transparency International. That means Iraq is tied with Haiti, and just barely less corrupt than Afghanistan.
Recent spates of coordinated bombings that have killed more than 100 Iraqis and wounded more than 200 in the past few weeks are evidence of Iraq’s current security situation.
As Prime Minister Nour al-Maliki said recently, there can be no security without political stability. Despite most of the daily violence in Iraq having long since fallen from the headlines, reports are constant and blood continues to flow.
Dahr Jamail, Al Jazeera - Read More
