Power Grid in Iraq Far From Fixed

When his lights and television go dark, as they regularly do, Khalid Qasim Ali flips a switch in his living room to bring back the power. This electricity is not state-supplied. Instead, it comes from a generator three blocks away that is connected to Ali’s home by a wire strung in the air.

All told, 107 families in Baghdad’s working-class neighborhood of Topchi are hooked up to the generator. The arrangement gives them power during the long blackouts that are routine in Iraq. It also darkens the skies over Topchi with a tangled skein of unsightly, dangerous cables. Like everyone else, Ali is billed by the ampere. He pays the generator’s owner around $10 a month.

“We should enjoy electricity without using a generator because Iraq is a wealthy country,” said Ali, a 65-year-old retired truck driver. “Regretfully, the Americans did nothing since they came.”
Washington Post