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"BAGHDAD -- Khitam Radi remembers how excited she was the day her husband took her out to buy their first washing machine.
It was soon after Saddam Hussein's fall. Foreign soldiers, journalists and officials were snapping up her artist husband's paintings as souvenirs. The newlyweds had everything to hope for.
Now, there are days when she hates that machine. With no electricity most of the time to pump water to their apartment, Radi has to wait in line to fill her jerrycans at a communal faucet, haul the water up four flights of stairs and wash her family's clothes by hand.
"I feel like someone is torturing me," she said. "The Americans promised to make our lives better. . . . But after five years, nothing has changed."
Violence may have dropped in Iraq, but the absence of reliable electricity remains one of the bitterest disappointments of the last five years.
The United States has devoted $4.9 billion to improve the power supply since U.S.-led forces invaded in 2003. But most Iraqis can count on only a few hours of electricity a day, especially when demand peaks in the summer and winter."
A different kind of power struggle in Iraq - Los Angeles Times
It was soon after Saddam Hussein's fall. Foreign soldiers, journalists and officials were snapping up her artist husband's paintings as souvenirs. The newlyweds had everything to hope for.
Now, there are days when she hates that machine. With no electricity most of the time to pump water to their apartment, Radi has to wait in line to fill her jerrycans at a communal faucet, haul the water up four flights of stairs and wash her family's clothes by hand.
"I feel like someone is torturing me," she said. "The Americans promised to make our lives better. . . . But after five years, nothing has changed."
Violence may have dropped in Iraq, but the absence of reliable electricity remains one of the bitterest disappointments of the last five years.
The United States has devoted $4.9 billion to improve the power supply since U.S.-led forces invaded in 2003. But most Iraqis can count on only a few hours of electricity a day, especially when demand peaks in the summer and winter."
A different kind of power struggle in Iraq - Los Angeles Times
