Iraqi Drinking Water
Despite the fact that Iraq and U.S. officials have made water projects among their top priorities, the percentage of Iraqis without access to decent water supplies has risen from 50 percent to 70 percent since the start of the U.S.-led war, according to an analysis by Oxfam International last summer. The portion of Iraqis lacking decent sanitation was even worse -- 80 percent.
Now, though, some U.S. officials think they're about to make progress.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, using more than $1 billion in reconstruction funds, is building massive water treatment plants in urban areas, including one in the slums of Baghdad's Sadr City.
Construction crews over the last three years, working there under heavy guard, have constructed a treatment plant that will produce an additional 25 million gallons of drinking water daily, enough for nearly 200,000 people. Miles of new water lines are also being installed, allowing 2 million of Sadr City's residents to tap directly into the new plant and existing water supplies.
In Nasiriyah, a $277 million water treatment facility is to be handed over to Iraqis in December. It is billed as the largest facility of its kind in Iraq and is designed to provide clean drinking water for an estimated half-million people in southern Iraq.
As many as 1,500 water treatment and sewage projects have been completed, with 150 more in progress, according to the corps of engineers.
Given the record of US reconstruction projects in Iraq, I'm not too hopeful the situation is going to improve. Hell, they say they've completed 1,500 projects while watching the situation grow steadily worse, with only 10% of that number now in progress.
However, if we ignore the fact that the Bush administration's policy of giving contracts to incompetent cronies generally dooms any and all reconstruction projects before they start, the idea of using the relative security the current lull has afforded them to try and get some rebuilding done is a very good one.
Granted, the original point of the surge was to create breathing space for the Iraqi government to come to some sort of power-sharing arrangement, but that wasn't going anywhere, and the current strategy of arming local groups to self-police is at cross purposes to it. The Iraqis are the only ones who can decide how the power will be shared and the US is stuck as observer, how ever much they like to pretend otherwise.
But while the US can't force the Iraqis into peaceful coexistence, they can affect the quality of life by actually accomplishing the reconstruction they've been promising since they blew everything up to begin with. Bring some actual, tangible, benefits to the Iraqis, and they may be less inclined to plant land-mines along your patrol routes.
Probably too late to make much difference, but unlike slaughtering their allies, rebuilding, at least, isn't going to hurt their chances.
