Iraq: Fuel Crisis Freezes Life
BAQUBA - It’s turning out to be about the hardest winter Abu Muslih has known. Too often it’s a choice between buying food and medicines, and buying kerosene to keep his children warm.
“I see them feeling cold, so I go out to buy kerosene at any price,” Muslih, a 49-year-old city employee told IPS. “My salary cannot pay for kerosene. So I use my savings, or try to avoid other necessities.”
This is a problem in home after home in this city of about 300,000 located 40 km north of Baghdad, in the violence and unemployment ridden Diyala province.
“When we can, we burn wood to keep our houses warm,” says city resident Abu Nasem. It is hardly the best choice. “Since there are no fireplaces in our houses, wood fire can be harmful and dangerous.”
And there is fuel needed to cook with. “Iraqis mainly use gas cookers, and the price of a container may reach 35 dollars,” resident Jafar Nadem told IPS. “This kind of price is very high in relation to the income of any family. Large families may use three or four containers a month.” Prices are high, and supply low. Kerosene shortages last all winter now; shortage of other fuel, all year. The occupation and the conditions it has created have much to do with the shortages.
“Many of the refineries have come under the control of the Mehdi militia (of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr),” Mohammed al-Neemy, an employee at a petrol station in Baquba told IPS. Normally, he said, each petrol station needs a couple of 36,000-litre tankers daily. But these days all of the city gets on average a tanker a day - and not all of that gets to the petrol stations.
“Petrol station owners sell it in the black market before it reaches the city,” an employee in an oil company who spoke on condition of anonymity told IPS. “These owners have become millionaires in the years of occupation.”
Petrol is sold on the black market in 15-litre cans. “I buy a 15-litre can for anything from 20 to 28 dollars a day,” resident Hussein Fadhly told IPS. “The prices differ from time to time.”
Fadhly estimates that only 10 percent of the cars in the city remain on the streets. “Most petrol stations are closed,” he said. “People now leave their cars at home and go to work by bus or taxi.” If they can find them.
“It has become impractical for taxi drivers to buy petrol at such high prices because we find that we earn less than the cost of petrol,” 47-year-old taxi driver Kadhim Zgair told IPS.
“I’ve been a taxi driver for more than 25 years, but now I cannot earn my family’s living,” said taxi driver Radef Omran. Naeem Taban, another taxi driver, said “I have stopped going to the petrol station. The majority of the drivers are now jobless.”
People have begun to use animal-drawn carts to move people and goods, and sometimes even as ambulances. Many feel nostalgic about the days of Saddam Hussein when petrol was in abundance, at just a few pennies a litre.
The little petrol that arrives finds many uses besides transport. “It is used for generators when electricity shuts down,” resident Ibrahim Ali said. And scarcity has made that use too minimal.
Petrol scarcity has a knock-on effect on most businesses. “Transport costs have increased terribly, and it has become unaffordable to transport goods from one province to another,” grocer Hatem Nijris told IPS. “This has affected the price of goods for the consumer.”
Some areas of Baghdad, and other cities under the control of the Mehdi Army militia are not suffering as much from the fuel crisis because the militia distributes fuel at lower prices.
Ahmed, our correspondent in Iraq’s Diyala province, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who has reported extensively from Iraq and the Middle East
© 2008 Inter Press Service
And the missing oil from this fancy new pipeline is going where? To the real terrorists! Some things should be brought to light. What is up with the land of black honey being so scarce of this richly sweet commodity. Who is terrorizing who? I am so ashamed of being an american with folks like buttwater and bushco (gods messenger) princely protecting their plushy parakeets from pussied pervayors pensions and all others who might only lay an eye on the idea of them not being so godlike deserving the highest crown of the earth to rule over all others. I.E these guys suck and midwestern pride is still in denial, keeping us all enslaved. Recession anyone? Follow the money, who got it last, stole it all. Don’t these terrorized kids look like your own?
The caption under the picture says it all, “Children watch as US ARMY soldiers from GHOSTRIDER COMPANY, 3RD SQUADRON, 2ND STRYKER CALAVRY REGIMENT, unseen, search their home during OPERATION PHANTOM PHOENIX….”
It’s just like out of a starwars movie, the US is now the death star.
I can hear Bush Inc. laughing from here: “Fat lot of good all that oil they have is doing them…”
Oil stolen. Mission Accomplished.
It’s not just Iraq. Most pacific islands cook via the same method and since LP gas has become so expensive, the islanders can no longer afford it.
Result? Massive tree cutting and Massive smoke from every street as they burn up the atmosphere trying to create Charcoal for distribution into plastic bags (the accelerant burned to start the fire.)
The smoke is so bad, everyone is coughing. It is a crisis. I may not survive it.
Thanks, you self-centered oil companies. Never have greedy industry individuals been more despised than the oil company CEO’s including many members of this administration.
Never, has the world seen such evil in high places. We need to get the DNA of bush, cheney, rice, dumbsfield right now, so that when the war crimes tribunals start up, we can still catch them even though they’ve had plastic face surgery.
You did a heckuva job Bushie!
Had the Iraqis submitted completely to the occupation, they would have faced a steamrolling of their traditions, cultural, academic, economic, and would have a McDonalds and an “American Way” school in every village, in exchange for US control of their oil.
How sad to see those poor little suffering girls. If there is a hell I hope I don’t end up there because it’s going to be really crowded with the bastards that are responsible for all this inhumanity.
Animal drawn wagons! The bastards have actually set them back to the stone age!
jungleboy January 10th, 2008 1:05 pm
They don’t look like my kids, they look much sadder.
We aren’t just stealing their oil. We’re stealing their childhoods and they’re going to grow up hating and fighting us. With good reason.
They ARE your kids too! We are all responsible. Kids are kids. It takes the whole (town)world to raise them.
President Bush must pay for what he has done.
It’s correct title is Resident bush. It resides, illegaly at that, in the White House and POSES as an elected leader.
The Mehdi army and all responsible for the gas and other necessities being inequitably shared among all of these Iraqis need to stop doing this. It’s bad enough the U.S. et al’s invasion and the whole rest is against all of Iraq, without the Mehdi and others being further unjust towards suffering people.
The necessities should be available to everyone at the same prices; while maybe more expensive when distribution is dangerous on the roads, but not much more expensive. $20-28 for a 1.5L (liter) canister of fuel is unbelievable.
1.5L is approximately 0.4 U.S. gallons.
But it is the U.S. et al’s fault to begin with and throughout, while they clearly don’t care about Iraqis being unjust towards other Iraqis. So Iraqis need to see to as much justice as they can for any and all other Iraqis; not to make matters worse. Unity, so solidarity.
It’s incredible how totally silent the UN, UNSC anyway, is with this; even if it’s a usual way of this “legal” body. The UNSC mostly or only is useful to the ruling elites, who, whenever they disagree with resolutions, can have controlled UNSC members, such as the govt of the U.S., place vetos, while we know that the UNSC is always (and criminally) compliant about this.
It’s criminal compliance because it’s totally against the UN Charter; no veto striking against the Charter therefore can be permitted. The right or privilege of veto should not be allowed to have more or even equal respect with the Charter.
It’s already very bad that Cheney-Bush have made executive privilege effective power; while allowing vetos greater (or even equal) priority than the Charter would be to allow someone trying, including criminally, and as Bush et al have been doing (and U.S. … much longer), to become or potentially gain a quasi-dictatorship over much of the world here. That’s totally against the UN Charter even when considering only the national scope, so certainly internationally; must be.
It’s criminally negligent of the UNSC allowing vetos that undermine the Charter and seriously so; no minor deviation. But that’s the least of what it is, imo; believing it’s not only negligence, but more, from some of the guilty parties. I expect there are some with greater crimes and more knowledge and/or control influence.
But, the U.S. having the control it does of the Iraqi govt should be able to see to these stricken Iraqis getting the fuels and other necessities people can’t afford. It should also be possible to put security against businesses selling black market and charging skyrocket prices. That’s malignant parasitic opportunism that’s too selfish and harmful to society.
There’s no mercy at all in these people, Bush et al.
Saddam Hussein would’ve had Iraq functional within a year or so if he had won against the U.S. et al invasion.
It is the Texas model = Most billionairs and highest child poverty with the least on funding spent on public health and other social benefits. I think the plan is going national here as well.
The ‘Plan’ is pretty-much the same — and for Everywhere.
[I surely-hope that ‘middle-class’-Americans enjoy it as much when it filters-down to them, as they still obviously-do when/whilst it is being employed against-Others…]
Mike Corbeil,
You write:
‘ The Mehdi army and all responsible for the gas and other necessities being inequitably shared among all of these Iraqis need to stop doing this. It’s bad enough the U.S. et al’s invasion and the whole rest is against all of Iraq, without the Mehdi and others being further unjust towards suffering people. ‘
The irony is that the Mehdi army and other fundamentalist militias came in with the US and UK armies, who were clueless about the complexities of the region and especially Iraq as a country it seems. ‘Speak arabic and on our side, they must be OK’,seems to have been the rule of the game.
These are those running the Health Ministry, who go round the hospitals ripping off life support from patients, ripping drips from their arms and taking them off to be tortured and beheaded. Those who had secret prison under the Ministry of the Interior building. These are the liberators’ thugs, murderers and torturers. And those of the ‘prime minister’ they imposed, Nuri al Maliki.
And yes, Saddam had every six land highway bridge except a couple, rebuilt in ten months, after 1991 and although parts were not allowed to be imported, somehow services kept going with some order, although inadequate. Trouble is, the Middle East is not Manhatten. Wonderful, ancient, impossibly complex - and needs one of their own to keep it stable. Another world, and not our world, except to visit. certainly not to try and run. What a mess.
Best j.
Just how long is the US planning to kick the crap out of Iraq? They gonna pound away on that poor country forever? How long is this gonna go on, anyway? It’s sickening. The world is just watching one country waling on another. It’s grotesque.
sLiMsHaDy:
“It’s correct title is Resident bush.”
Good One. Like Resident Evil.
he also POSES as being a leader, unless that’s like the goat that leads the lambs to slaughter?
The Evil that is ours.
We own it lock stock and barrel.
The Chimp is a messenger of death.
We let them get away with it.
The futility and illusion of changing a bankrupt and corrupt broken system
At least these people are fighting with whatever we will give them.
Keep the sacrifices high so we can honor their deaths with more slaughter.
The War Machine is grinding to a halt.
The Cor-’pirate’ system of GREED is imploding from the weight of its own corruption.
GREED is evil.
Stand back.
Divest yourself from its Torture and Pain.
Stop worshiping its religion of violence.
SHUT IT DOWN!
UPDATE
REBOOT!