Despite U.S. Assurances, Iraqis Are Increasingly Skeptical That Conditions Will Improve

By Anna Badkhen, Truthdig. Posted May 20, 2008.

“Under Saddam Hussein that’s what they used to tell us too,” says a woman who lives in a town that gets only four hours of power a day. “And nothing.”

BAGHDAD — The war is over on Sixth Street, where Sahar al-Jawari’s family lives in a modest brick house. Dust has filled the shrapnel holes in concrete fences, stagnant water has pooled in the crater left by a roadside bomb, and the ash and the few charred chunks of the Iraqi police car that the bomb blew up are barely visible on the sidewalk.

But Jawari, 33, has little faith that her life is about to improve. Every night the wind carries the sounds of gunshots and occasional explosions from other parts of Baghdad, where the war still goes on. Every day is a struggle to get by in a city that gets only four hours of power and running water a day. Jawari is divorced and unemployed, but Iraq’s weak government gives her no financial aid. Nor does it make her deadbeat ex-husband pay child support to help raise her 12-year-old daughter, Roula.

“We have no money, no electricity, no water, no security, no future, nothing,” Jawari says. “Maybe in 50 years it will get better.”

Many Iraqis in this part of southwestern Baghdad say the same thing. They have little hope for help from a government that has been unable to deliver even the most basic services, and little faith in the Iraqi security forces, tainted by their past association with sectarian militias and infamous for defecting under fire.

And although American forces have effectively established security in the streets here, every time residents go outside, bomb craters, bullet holes and buildings damaged by explosions remind them of the sectarian violence that raged here less than a year ago.

Sahar and Roula live with Sahar’s mother, Salimah, and her two nieces, Basmah, 16, and Thohara, 14. The girls’ mother, Jawari’s sister, died of kidney disease 12 years ago: Because of the United Nations’ sanctions and mismanagement by the dictatorial government of Saddam Hussein, Baghdad’s hospitals did not have the proper medicine to treat her, and the family could not afford to send her abroad for surgery. The girls’ father, an engineer, died last year of a heart attack.

“He could not bear what we are suffering in Iraq,” Jawari says.

Despite U.S. Assurances, Iraqis Are Increasingly Skeptical That Conditions Will Improve