Iraq: Beyond the US Occupation/Withdrawal --- The Failure of Power (Myers)

In the week that President Obama made his headline announcement restating that US combat forces would withdraw from Iraq, Iraqi officials have claimed that casualties are at their highest in two years --- a figure disputed by the US military --- and Reuters reveals, "Tired of war, thousands of Iraqis want to go to U.S." Jeremy Scahill undoes some of the rhetoric of withdrawal with the revelation that the number of private contractors supporting the military effort is increasing. And in The New York Times, Stephen Lee Myers reviews another important legacy, in symbolism and in real effects, of the 2003 war and American occupation:

Ikbal Ali, a bureaucrat in a beaded head scarf, accompanied by a phalanx of police officers, quickly found what she was out looking for in the summer swelter: electricity thieves. Six black cables stretched from a power pole to a row of auto-repair shops, siphoning what few hours of power Iraq’s straining system provides.

Video & Analysis: Obama “Iraq Withdrawal” Speech Covers Up Shift on Afghanistan

“Take them all down,” Ms. Ali ordered, sending a worker up in a crane’s bucket to disentangle the connections. A shop owner, Haitham Farhan, responded mockingly, using the words now uttered across Iraq as a curse, “Maku kahraba” ---  “There is no electricity.”

From the beginning of the war more than seven years ago, the state of electricity has been one of the most closely watched benchmarks of Iraq’s progress, and of the American effort to transform a dictatorship into a democracy.

And yet, as the American combat mission — Operation Iraqi Freedom, in the Pentagon’s argot — officially ends this month, Iraq’s government still struggles to provide one of the most basic services.

Ms. Ali’s campaign against electricity theft — a belated bandage on a broken body — makes starkly clear the mixed legacy that America leaves behind as Iraq begins to truly govern itself, for better and worse.

Iraq now has elections, a functioning, if imperfect, army and an oil industry on the cusp of a potential boom. Yet Baghdad, the capital, had five hours of electricity a day in July.

The chronic power shortages are the result of myriad factors, including war, drought and corruption, but ultimately they reflect a dysfunctional government that remains deadlocked and unresponsive to popular will. That has generated disillusionment and dissent, including protests this summer that, while violent in two cases, were a different measure of Iraq’s new freedoms.

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[Catherine]

As Obama Talks Peace, Many Iraqis Are Unsure
By ANTHONY SHADID
The morning after President Obama spoke of bringing the war in Iraq to “a responsible end,” insurgents planted their black flag on Tuesday at a checkpoint they overran by killing the five policemen who staffed it. It was the second time in a week ............

“Wherever the Americans go, the situation is going to stay the same as it was,” said Abdel-Karim Abdel-Jabbar, a 51-year-old resident of the Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiya, where insurgents overran another checkpoint last week, burning the bodies of their victims and planting the same black banner. “If anything, it’s going to deteriorate.

“The peace Obama’s talking about is the peace of the Green Zone,” he added.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/04/world/middleeast/04iraq.html?_r=1&ref=middleeast" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/04/world/middlee...

[Catherine]

My Baghdad field trip
Riyadh Mohammed

We were spending our day with a general, who narrated his achievements before Western and Iraqi reporters. “We were honored by the killing of the heads of terrorism Abu Omar al Baghdadi and Abu Ayoub al Masri,” he said.

He went on: “We managed to make the Iraqi youth sport teams: Shiite and Sunnis agree to play together.”

I couldn’t stop myself from thinking: “What a great achievement! Iraqi neighborhoods’ teams will play together!”

That is what is left to us after seven years of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. It is considered an achievement that Iraqis play sports together.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2010/07/iraq-my-day-in-baghdad.html" rel="nofollow">http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2...