Why the lights are out in Iraq
Power supply woes stem from corruption rooted in sectarian government formula
In the Baghdad suburb of Sadr City, glossy election campaign posters are plastered alongside jungles of sagging electrical wires lining the alleyway to Abu Ammar’s home.
But his mind is far from Iraq’s October 10 federal election. The 56-year-old retired soldier’s social welfare payments barely cover the cost of food and medicine, let alone electricity. Despite chronic outages from the national grid, Abu Ammar can’t afford a generator.
When the lights go off, he has no choice but to steal power from a neighbour’s line. He doesn’t have the right political connections to get electricity otherwise, he says, a frail figure seated in a spartan living room.
In Iraq, electricity is a potent symbol of endemic corruption, rooted in the country’s sectarian power-sharing system that allows political elites to use patronage networks to consolidate power.
It’s perpetuated after each election cycle: Once results are tallied, politicians jockey for appointments in a flurry of negotiations based on the number of seats won. Ministry portfolios and state institutions are divided between them into spheres of control.
Neighbourhoods nationwide face daily outages — up to 14 hours during peak summer in the impoverished southern provinces, where temperatures can reach 52 degrees Celsius.
Shady contracts
Contractors said intimidation is standard operating procedure in the electricity ministry. One official from a major multinational company said he was ordered to subcontract to a local company exclusively as a package of deals worth billions was being negotiated with the government. “It was made clear to me: ‘Either you join us, or you will get nothing in the end’,” he said.
To secure the funds for payoff, sometimes more expensive materials are invoiced than what is actually bought. One official estimated “billions” have been lost to these schemes since 2003, but accurate figures are not available.
Officials who question why contract prices are inflated receive warnings, including one who objected to a power plant in northern Salahaddin province that was overvalued by $600 million. He got a call when it became clear he would not sign off on the deal, he said.
Be careful, he was told.
Future is bleak
Demand is set to double by 2030, with Iraq’s population growing by 1 million per year. The International Energy Agency estimates that by not developing its electricity sector, Iraq has lost $120 billion between 2014-2020 in jobs and industrial growth due to unmet demand.
A hidden cost of Iraq’s power woes: Sleeplessness.
Uday Ebrahim Ali, a generator repairman, is routinely wakened for urgent fixes in Basra’s Zubair neighborhood. His clients beg him: They have children struggling to sleep in the suffocating heat. “Can I ignore them? I can’t,” he says.
In the summer of 2018, poor electricity service prompted protests in Basra that left at least 15 dead. A year later, mass protests paralyzed Baghdad and Iraq’s south, as tens of thousands decried the rampant corruption that has plagued service delivery.
Independent candidates drawn from the protest movement in Basra are now making electricity a priority.