There is a really fantastic article in The American Interest about life in Mosul under ISIS. It is long but well worth the read. There are a number of things that jumped out at me, but one of them was on the status of power and utilities in the city:
Eight months of ISIS so far, as I sit to write, have taken their toll on every aspect of the city. Electricity and running water are available for two to four hours a week, but no one knows which hours in any given week.
During my first deployment to Iraq in 2003, whenever we would ask our platoon sergeant when we’d be going home, he would point to the Al Dora power plant in the distance, with its four smokestacks poking the sky like needles, and say “When all four smokestacks are pumping smoke, we’ll go home.”
Since the war in Iraq began utilities have been intermittent at best – even in Baghdad. It’s easy to sweep that aside as insignificant whining, like the ISIS soldier does in the article, but unless you have experienced the Iraqi heat in the summer, it’s hard to overstate the importance of having reliable electricity and running water.
The excerpt from the Mosul article about the power coming on at seemingly random times reminds me of so many moments at different places in Baghdad, where we would lounge in our own sweat, trying our best not to move to minimize our discomfort. If we were lucky, the power might come on at a random time which would be met with cheers and instant movement, bringing everyone back to life as the air conditioning kicked in. It’s a kind of happiness that you really don’t want to experience, because it’s only good because things were normally so bad.
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Carrying the Gun 