Water taps run dry in Baghdad

Iraqis suffer in brutal heat. It was 117 degrees in the capital Thursday, down from 120 the day before. With the power out or crackling through the decrepit system just a few hours each day, even those who can afford air conditioning do not have the power to run it. Many Baghdad residents have banded together to use power from neighborhood generators, but the cost of fuel (and therefore electricity) is skyrocketing. Diesel fuel was going for nearly $4 a gallon on Thursday.

Washington has been pushing al-Maliki’s government to pass key laws, including measures to share national oil revenues and incorporate some ousted Baathists into mainstream politics. But the Sunni ministers’ resignation from the Cabinet — not the parliament — foreshadows even greater difficulty in building consensus when lawmakers return after a monthlong summer recess on Sept. 4.

Much of the Iraqi capital was without running water Thursday and had been for at least 24 hours, compounding the urban misery in a war zone and the blistering heat at the height of the Baghdad summer.

Residents and city officials said large sections in the west of the capital had been virtually dry for six days because the already strained electricity grid cannot provide sufficient power to run water purification and pumping stations.

Baghdad routinely suffers from periodic water outages, but this one is described by residents as one of the most extended and widespread in recent memory. The problem highlights the larger difficulties in a capital beset by violence, crumbling infrastructure, rampant crime and too little electricity to keep cool in the sweltering weather more than four years after the U.S.-led invasion.

Posted by Dilated_Rebel
Born and raised very humbly in a “small town” in southern California, I was a product of different worlds. Literally, part of my family descends from Mexico the rest from Portugal and Uruguay. This mixture had kept me from supporting any racist psyche found...