Iraqis Despair at Struggle of Their Daily Lives

BAGHDAD – Reuters
Price spikes have turned onions into a luxury. There is barely any electricity, and the Iraqi telephone networks are so bad that a call-in show with the prime minister had to be canceled.

“There we were, happy to have Iyad Allawi on air after months of working on an interview,” Radio Dijla chief executive Ahmad al-Rikaby told Reuters. “We called it off because both landlines and cell-phones simply did not work.”

An aura of resignation has settled over Iraqis as services deteriorate despite promises of improvement. Not even U.S.-backed government officials expect an upturn any time soon.
Hopes have been dashed that the Iraqna cell-phone system, a subsidiary of Egypt‘s Orascom that is responsible for the cellphone network in Baghdad and central Iraq, could compensate for a landline network yet to recover from the 2003 bombardment.

Disenchantment has turned into outright hostility.

“Every day we receive complaints and sad stories from doctors, the sick or injured who could not communicate in emergencies and bought phones that don’t work,” an editorial in the respected al-Mada newspaper said.

“We hear nothing except complaints and curses.”
Iraqna officials declined to comment. Iraqi telecom officials say the company is finding it difficult to keep the cell-phone network running in Iraq‘s hostile security environment.





EXIT IRAQ
Faced with constant violence and with everyday life turning into a struggle, many Iraqis who can afford to leave have done so, to countries such as Jordan and Lebanon. People with less money have fled to Syria, which is less picky about the financial position of Iraqis it lets in.

Villa after villa in the affluent neighborhoods of Mansour and Arasat are empty, their windows shuttered, their once pretty gardens overgrown with weeds.
Those who remain have to deal with a lack of fuel and electricity and rising prices that make most things beyond the reach of ordinary people.

Prices have been driven up by power and electricity crises, and insurgents and criminals controlling key sections of the transport network, especially around Baghdad. Sabotage attacks and violence have crippled refineries and badly disrupted imported fuel flows. Costs of trucking from Jordan have risen at least four times.

Mismanagement has also played a part in the crisis, and daily newspapers are full of stories alleging that Iraqi security forces charged with protecting fuel tankers and petrol stations are profiteering on the black market.

“We do not have a fuel crisis as much as we have a crisis of honesty,” said Oil Minister Thamir al-Ghadhban, who has experience in keeping the oil industry going through a quarter of a century of wars and a crushing embargo that drove the economy into collapse.

But even Ghadhban has not seen anything like this crisis. Gasoline costs 50 cents a liter from hawkers compared with theless than one cent subsided price at state-owned pumps Gasoline costs 50 cents a liter from hawkers compared with theless than one cent subsided price at state-owned pumps.




A cylinder of liquefied gas for cooking now costs 5,000-10,0000 dinars ($3.50-7) compared with 2,000 dinars two or three months ago and 500 dinars during Saddam Hussein’s rule. The price of tomatoes is up three to four times, the price of onions is two or three times as high, and rations distributed by the government have been short on rice and sugar.

These prices are high in a country where a teacher with five-years’ experience makes 250,000 dinars a month after huge postwar salary increases that also helped raise inflation.

“We have simply stopped buying food beyond rations. Our homes are freezing because kerosene is expensive and often not even available,” said Raqia, a poor housewife.

“Before we used to curse Saddam Hussein when the electricity went out for a couple of hours a day or so. Now we are lucky if we get that much.”