- Lubna Ali was resigned to the daily electricity shortages
that cut off the lights, shut down the air conditioning and left her family
sweltering in the summer heat.
-
- She coped with her terror of the bombs, drive-by shootings
and kidnappings by deciding, at the start of this year, to venture no further
than her garden gate.
-
- But the final straw for the 42-year-old housewife from
the middle-class New Baghdad district in the Iraqi capital came when a
rebel attack on a water plant cut off supplies to two million people.
-
- With the temperature above 50C, this brought Mrs Ali
"the true knowledge of despair".
-
- "I didn't think it could get worse - and then it
did," she said, her kitchen filled with dirty plates and the lavatories
unflushed. "The children are crying. All we want is to pour some water
on our bodies.
-
- "I now wish we could go back to Saddam's time. We
suffered then, but not like the suffering nowadays. There is no water or
electricity. I can't sleep because of the heat. How are we to live these
lives of misery?"
-
- At a conference in Brussels this week, the Iraqi government
briefed representatives from more than 80 countries and organisations on
its programmes to rebuild the county, and listed its achievements.
-
- In Baghdad, meanwhile, crowds of thirsty people waited
for hours at emergency water pipes to fill jerry cans and buckets, while
women washed clothes in the dirty waters of the Euphrates.
-
- The citizens of this city do not give up easily. The
shock, fear and chaos that came with the American takeover was soon replaced
by black humour and stoicism. Outsiders are invariably astounded at how
- after yet another bombing - street vendors can reopen their stalls, even
as the bloodstains are being hosed from the pavements.
-
- But the mood in the city is increasingly one of desperation.
While residents wait in vain for promised reconstruction projects to materialise,
the government cannot even agree on the make-up of the committee to draw
up a new constitution, let alone its contents.
-
- Sovereignty was returned to the Iraqi people from the
occupying administration a year ago. But electricity output in the capital
has decreased in the past five months - averaging only 854 megawatts per
day now, compared with 2,500 megawatts before the war. The rationing system
for sugar and baby milk collapsed at the beginning of the year, forcing
many to go without.
-
- Sadr City, the vast slum in the capital's west, is in
the grip of a hepatitis outbreak. Forty per cent of Baghdad's homes have
reported sewage on the streets. Fresh water had finally returned to most
of the city by last night - but for only two hours a day.
-
- And then there are the suicide bombers. After a brief
lull earlier this month, when the Iraqi army launched Operation Lightning
to root out insurgents in the city and made more than 1,000 arrests, they
resumed their deadly work as usual last week.
-
- Shortly after dawn on Thursday, four bombs exploded in
Karada, a district known for its teashops and clothing stores, killing
15 people, only hours after three other blasts had torn through the Shula
neighbourhood.
-
- At one bomb scene, the mangled chassis of a car hung
from a tree and the blue tiles were stripped from an adjacent mosque. Masked
Iraqi police moved in, bringing central Baghdad traffic to a standstill
for 90 minutes.
-
- Standing beside a pool of blood, Abu Radhi, an architect,
said: "This city was once the most beautiful in the Middle East. People
would stroll by the river at dusk and the restaurants were filled with
laughter. Now our life is this."
-
- © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005.
-
- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/200
5/06/25/wirq25.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/06/25/ixworld.html
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