New York Times: “In the most palpable of ways, the American promise of a new Iraq is floundering on the inability of the American occupiers to provide basic services, particularly electricity, in Baghdad, a city with five million residents, about the size of metropolitan Houston, and the country’s economic heart. On the priority list of places where power must be restored here in the capital, business and industry are last, after hospitals, water and sewage treatment plants and residential areas. The logic to the list is that homes account for 80 percent of electricity demand in the city, while business and industry consume 4 to 8 percent, said Dr. Karim W. Hassan, the interim head of the national electricity commission. But businesspeople here warn that the the slow pace of power restoration to industry and commerce could devastate what’s left of an economy already weakened by 12 years of sanctions.... Looting has continued, though maybe in a more organized form. Mr. Atif of the distribution system said thieves with cranes cut overhead lines at night to pilfer the copper and the insulation material, which they sell as scrap to neighboring countries.”
