BAGHDAD, 27 June 2003 — Most of Baghdad’s five million residents yesterday spent a fourth sweltering day without electricity following a spate of suspected sabotage strikes on fuel pipelines feeding the capital’s power plants. “Baghdad needs 2,400 megawatts ... but is getting only 600 megawatts at the moment,” the head of the power distribution plant in the capital, Nafae Abdessada Ali, told AFP.
Before the latest attacks, the supply to Baghdad did not exceed 1,200 megawatts, which has now been halved, said Ali, noting that demand usually soars by 30 percent at this time of year when temperatures rise to the mid-40s Centigrade (112 degrees Fahrenheit).
“Work is under way at the main electricity plants supplying the capital’s power grid, namely in Al-Mussaieb (20 kilometers south of Baghdad) and Beiji (225 kilometers north of the capital),” an official at the Iraqi electricity authority told AFP.
“Power cuts will therefore continue in Baghdad for at least eight to 10 hours a day,” he said, urging US-led coalition forces to provide protection for employees of his authority.
A driver working for the power authority was killed in an apparent grenade attack yesterday. Two US armored vehicles were escorting the power company vehicle at the time of the attack on the main highway between Baghdad airport and the city center although there were no immediate reports of US casualties, military spokesmen said.
An electricity official said that the head of a power station in western Baghdad was shot dead Wednesday by unknown gunmen. The killers fired three times at Haifa Aziz Dawud, a 45-year-old mother of four who ran Al-Kharkh power station, before fleeing, the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The top US civil administrator in Iraq, Paul Bremer, has blamed remnants of the banned Baath Party for sabotaging US efforts to rebuild the country and causing the power cuts in Baghdad, most of which has been without electricity since early Monday.
With four suspected sabotage strikes on fuel pipelines in the past two weeks, Bremer said Wednesday that security would be boosted to protect energy infrastructure deemed vital to rebuilding efforts.
Meanwhile, an American who spent two months working on a US-led reconstruction team in Iraq accused Washington yesterday of failing to prepare for the post-conflict situation.
Timothy Carney, a former US ambassador who until recently had been overseeing Iraq’s Industry Ministry, said most of the focus was placed on the military campaign and very little on the security and political problems that could ensue.
“What we didn’t understand was the lack of resources and priority that would be assigned to our efforts,” Carney told BBC Radio in Washington.
“Those military officers simply did not understand or give enough priority to the transition from their military mission to the political military mission,” added Carney, who had been working with the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) in Iraq.
Asked whether the White House had thought through the post-conflict situation, he answered: “Clearly not. I’m not aware of any discussion of post-conflict Iraq taking place before November or December of last year.”
The United States and Britain, whose troops toppled Saddam Hussein in their invasion of Iraq, have come under fire since then with aid workers accusing them of leaving the country in a state of anarchy.
The security problems were highlighted this week when six British soldiers were shot dead on Tuesday.
The US military has suffered several losses since the war, many at the hands of Iraqis who oppose the presence of foreign troops.
Carney said “billions of dollars” were needed to fund the reconstruction effort and he said neither the US military nor officials were prepared for the task at hand. “There is a lack of ... doctrine on how to do such political military missions and that has caused many of the problems,” he said, adding: “There was a great gap in our knowledge of what Iraq was like.”
Speaking to the BBC from Iraq, Britain’s International Development Secretary Valerie Amos said restoring security was the top priority but that efforts were being hampered. “Without getting the security environment right it’s going to very difficult indeed to deal with all the other issues.
The people in Iraq want their basic services to be up and running but we are being sabotaged the whole time. There are forces here that don’t want the coalition effort to succeed,” she said.
