Iraq’s capital, Baghdad, home to more than six million people, hardly gets one hour of non-interrupted electricity supplies every 24 hours.
The city has plunged into darkness with the country’s national grid still unable to increase supplies despite billions of dollars in investments.
Seven years after the 2003-U.S. invasion, power production in the country is still below levels reached under former leader Saddam Hussein.
Prior to his downfall, Baghdad used to have up to 18 hours of electricity supplies a day
The last two years saw an upsurge in insecurity due to an unprecedented hike in assassinations whether in Baghdad or other major Iraqi cities.
These assassinations, which have so far claimed more than 2,000 lives among the country’s security forces, are carried out in two major ways.
In the first, the assassins rely on silencer guns which are either imported or produced locally. In the second, the assassins rely on stick explosive charges most of which are imported.
The problem with these assassinations is two-fold. First, the assassins select their victims very carefully and make sure they have a role to play in the country’s armed forces and security ranks. Second, they have turned into an unstoppable contagious disease.
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There are no Wikileaks reports to reveal the secrets behind these terrifying killings. But one can say with certainty that both U.S. and Iraqi government claims of having succeeded to reinstate relative calm in the country are false and hollow.
Blaming them on al-Qaeda branch in Iraq, the so-called the Iraqi Islamic state, is the worst conspiracy theory-hatched scenario one can imagine. If the assassinations are truly of al-Qaeda making, then we the Iraqis and the whole world with us should lament not only our future but the future of our children.
Such an allegation, if true, it will mean that al-Qaeda is unbeatable and that the U.S. has cut and run in Iraq and that our shaky government will soon be overthrown with the terror group’s operatives taking over.
Who other than the world’s mightiest intelligence agencies is capable of carrying out such highly coordinated and well-targeted assassinations? How come that the mighty U.S. armed forces could not put an end to them?
The ongoing assassinations leave more than one question mark about whatever the U.S. and Iraqi government officials say in regard to conditions in Iraq.