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Profile: Iraq's Infrastructure Continues To Suffer
Morning Edition: November 7, 2002
 Lack of Water, Sewer System Take Toll in Iraq
BOB EDWARDS, host:
Twelve years after economic sanctions were imposed to punish Saddam Hussein for invading Kuwait, Iraq's infrastructure is crumbling. The UN oil-for-food program, allowing oil sales in exchange for humanitarian goods, has helped prop up the system and raise the standard of living for Iraq's citizens. Those trying to hold the country's infrastructure together say any new American assault would kill Iraq's fragile economic recovery. NPR's Anne Garrels reports.
ANNE GARRELS reporting:
In Baghdad's seedy northern suburb of Al-Konsah(ph), a ragtag band hired for a wedding wends its way through open sewage troughs.
SOUNDBITE OF BAND MUSIC
GARRELS: Barefoot children tag along through the fetid filth. The sagging of the country's infrastructure is all too clear. Taha Yassine(ph), head of the nearest treatment plant, explains through an official interpreter there isn't any sewage network here, and with Baghdad's population increasing, its services fall further and further behind.
Mr. TAHA YASSINE: (Through Translator) Not enough pipes. All of this--about 16 neighborhoods among this area is out of the sewage department because of the sanction and there is no more pipe.
GARRELS: The water isn't working very well, either. In the broiling summer, when temperatures top 110, people cut into the pipes of a local pumping station to try and increase their supply. The runoff from the free-flowing sewage leaks into the water. Saddam Hussein has successfully persuaded many Iraqis it is UN sanctions, not his policies, that have impoverished the country and deprived ordinary people of live-saving equipment.
Ms. SELWA EL-SHARBITI(ph): This is my big sister. She is also a headmistress of Scendri Schools(ph), and she died because of the disease of--the war.
GARRELS: Fifty-eight-year-old Selwa El-Sharbiti, principal of the El-Adamia Girls' School(ph), reaches for a photograph of her sister, a cancer victim. She blames the US for her death because the UN will not permit the importation of radiation machines, arguing they have military applications.
With equipment that's been approved by the UN and paid for with oil sales, Iraq's managed to rebuild much that was destroyed in the American bombing of 1991. The electricity system has been largely restored. Blackouts are less common and emergency services, such as hospitals, are able to operate without life-threatening power cuts. But the deteriorating water system is still a major concern.
SOUNDBITE OF SHOVELING
GARRELS: At a local water plant, an elderly man in a dusty robe separates sand from pebbles with a large metal sieve in order to get filtration material. `This is no good,' he mumbles, referring to this primitive method of working.
SOUNDBITE OF INSIDE OF WATER PLANT
GARRELS: Inside the plant, four of the purification tanks are out of service and a vital sediment filtration machine has given up the ghost.
Mr. KASI MOHAMMED ALI (Engineer): (Foreign language spoken)
GARRELS: Senior engineer Kasi Mohammed Ali(ph) says the UN Sanctions Committee has held up the purchase of a new one. Consequently, the amount of drinking water available to the public is half what they need.
In rural Iraq, the water systems are far worse. Many villages have no access to running water and often depend on brackish wells. All this contributes to gastrointestinal problems and continued high infant mortality rates. Aid workers say hard-won progress over the past few years would be the first casualty of any war, and an exhausted population fears the country would once again be plunged back into hunger and desperation. Margaret Hassan heads the CARE office in Baghdad.
Ms. MARGARET HASSAN (CARE): This country have a cushion in '91. That cushion has been gradually eroded throughout these 12 years until they don't have any cushion anymore. According to the United Nations Development Program this country ranked 67 in the world ranking of development. It is now 127.
GARRELS: And she warns there could be a backlash if the precarious gains are destroyed. In five to 10 years, young people who have grown up knowing only war and sanctions and who feel they have less value in the world than others, will be adults and this, she says, will be the generation the West will have to face. Anne Garrels, NPR News, Baghdad.
EDWARDS: The time is 19 minutes past the hour.
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