Doug Lorimer
In several key areas such as electricity supply, employment and health care, Iraqis are now worse off than before the US-led invasion last year.
"According to the Pentagon, in early June the population of seven of Iraq's 18 governates received less than eight hours electricity a day", the June 27 British Independent reported. "Baghdad, with a quarter of Iraq's population, receives 11 hours of electricity a day. The situation has been better in the south, where Basra has had round-the-clock electricity for parts of the year."
On June 29, the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of the US Congress, reported that since the US-led invasion "electrical service in the country as a whole has not shown marked improvement" and "has worsened in some governates". The GAO reported that in May 2003, seven of Iraq's 18 governates had 16 or more hours of electricity per day, but as of late May 2004, only one region in northern Iraq was at that level.
Responsibility for repairing Iraq's electricity generation and supply system was part of a multi-billion-dollar reconstruction contract awarded to the giant San Francisco-based Bechtel construction corporation.
The Daura power plant, Baghdad's largest, which should supply one-third of the city's generating capacity, was producing only 10% as recently as December. Helmut Doll, the German site manager for Babcok Power, a subcontractor for Siemens, which supplied some of the original generators at Daura, told Newsweek last November: "Bechtel only came and took photos. We can't judge Bechtel's work progress because they're not here."
Corporate profit
While the equipment necessary to repair the Daura plant had been imported — from Germany, France and Russia — before the US invasion, Bechtel's priority was a months-long independent examination of all of Iraq's power plants with an eye towards total reconstruction — using US-made equipment.
"Frankly, if we had just given the Iraqis some baling wire and a little bit of space to keep things running, it would have been better. But instead we've let big US companies go in with plans for major overhauls", retired US Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner, author of a 2002 study of the likely effect US bombing would have on Iraq's electricity system, told the April 20 New York Village Voice.
Iraqi joblessness doubled from 30% before the invasion to 60% by the middle of 2003. Before it was transformed into the US embassy on June 28, the US-dominated Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) claimed that unemployment was down to 25-30%. However, a
report released on June 23 by the US-based Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC), estimated the combined rate of unemployment and underemployment in Iraq at 50% of the labour force. The unemployment rate among young Iraqi men is running at an estimated 70%.
The catastrophically high levels of unemployment estimated by the EPIC report are supported by a May 26 UN humanitarian information unit (IRIN) report that "60% percent of Iraqi families depend completely on the monthly food ration" distributed by the UN's World Food Program. "Markets are full of food products", the IRIN report noted, "but unemployment currently stands at an estimated 50% or more, and most families say they cannot afford to buy even the most basic items."
According to the IRIN report, even with the food ration, "a million children under the age of five are estimated to be chronically malnourished".
A major cause of continuing high unemployment has been the CPA's refusal to award reconstruction contracts to the largely state-owned infrastructure firms in Iraq. Before it dissolved, the CPA reported that only 15,000 Iraqis, out of a potential workforce of 7 million, were employed on reconstruction projects.
The CPA's refusal to provide work to Iraq's state-run companies was part of a privatisation strategy — economic "shock therapy" as the EPIC report calls it — imposed by CPA head Paul Bremer.
Underpaid workers
Even privately-owned Iraqi firms have only been awarded contracts of US$50,000 or less. The CPA awarded the overwhelming majority of reconstruction contracts to Western, mostly US-owned corporations, which have brought in their own highly-paid technicians rather than hiring Iraqi engineers.
Working alongside the US managers and technicians are tens of thousands of foreign workers from countries such as India, Pakistan and the Philippines. "Many toil for wages that are one-tenth — or less — of what US workers might demand, saving millions of taxpayer dollars", the July 1 Washington Post reported.
Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton, the company that has been awarded the lion's share of reconstruction contracts, as well as a multi-billion-dollar contract to provide support services for US occupation troops, employs 30,000 foreign workers in Iraq.
Dharmapalan Ajayakumar, a kitchen worker from India, told the Post he earned $7 a day working in US military kitchens in Iraq. He said he was tricked into working in Iraq by a recruiting agent hired by a subcontractor for KBR.
After 13 years of crippling UN-imposed economic sanctions, Iraq's health-care system — previously one of the best in the Middle East — virtually collapsed in the wake of last year's US invasion. Despite promises of at least $1 billion in US funding, Iraq's hospitals continue to suffer from Bechtel's failure to restore Iraq's electricity and clean water supplies to their pre-invasion levels.
"Before Saddam Hussein and after Saddam Hussein we have got shortages, but now the situation is worse and I think it's going to be worse in every aspect", Dr Fatin Abdelamer, a pediatrician at Baghdad's Specialist Clinic, told ABC Radio National's July 12 AM program. "I think the medication before war was a little bit better and the electricity and water supply was better, but now it is worse."
The Iraqi health ministry spent a reported $20 million on health services in 2002 — around S0.68 per person. Its budget for this year is $900 million — around $40 per person. But many physicians see little improvement.
"Getting better? The situation is getting worse every day", Dr Ahmad Farooq, a urologist at Baghdad's large Medical City Centre told Aljazeera on July 5. "It's true, salaries have risen, but I don't know where the rest of the money has gone." While spending was haphazard before the US invasion, "we still had some new equipment and staff coming in. Now, we see nothing being spent in the hospitals; we lack basic equipment."
While hospitals have been starved of funds for repairs, new equipment and medical supplies, the March 5 Philadelphia Inquirer reported that $1.7 million was spent repainting the health ministry headquarters and fitting it out with new furniture. "The building teemed with well-dressed bureaucrats, many of whom, doctors say, have little to do, even as hospitals suffer dire nursing shortages", the Inquirer reported.
The failure to improve services is having catastrophic consequences. One in 10 infants will die before they are a year old, according to the health ministry, while nearly 8% of the survivors will perish before they reach five years of age.
"We are short of every medicine. This rarely occurred before the invasion", Dr Qasim al Nuwesri of Baghdad's Chuwader Hospital, told Dahr Jamail, the US NewStandard website's Baghdad correspondent. "It is forbidden, but sometimes we have to reuse [intravenous kits], even the needles, because we have no choice."
Deadly shortages
In a July 5 article, Jamail reported that doctors at Baghdad's hospitals complained about power shortages — "one hospital says they only get eight hours per day of electricity and don't have enough fuel to run their generators all the time; one patient already died on the table because of a power outage". They also described shortages of clean water (Nuwesri said his hospital only received 15% of the clean water necessary per day); "outdated and non-functional equipment (one hospital only has two working X-Ray machines, one of which is from the 1970s)" and inadequate blood screening.
"We are getting less medical supplies now than we were during the sanctions", Dr Namin Rashid, the chief resident doctor at Yarmouk Hospital, told Jamail. Rashid said his hospital was getting only half the supplies it received prior to the US-led invasion.
"We are short of everything here", Dr Sarmad Raheem, an orthopaedic surgeon at Al Kerkh General Hospital, told Jamail. Raheem is also the hospital's assistant manager, and said that Al Kerkh was suffering from a shortage of basic antibiotics and medications such as hydrocortisone and painkillers. "We even have to send our patients to the market to buy plates and screws they need for their own operations."
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, July 21, 2004.
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