15 of the 17 high voltage lines running into Baghdad are inoperative due to sabotage. "When we fix a line, the insurgents attack it the next day"Iraq's electricity Minister, Aziz al-Shimari reveals that many provinces (mainly in the Shiite southeast and the Kurdish north) have disconnected their power plants from the national grid due to a fight over scarce resources -- a sign of disconnectedness that threatens to "lock-in" Iraq's collapse. The situation's details:
- Four nationwide blackouts in Iraq in two days (August 3/4, 2007)
- Insufficient production. The grid is only meeting only half of demand.
- Local disaster. Baghdad power is less than two hours a day. Karbala has been without power for three days. Water production is being severely impacted (pumping and filtration) -- drought.
All signs are that global guerrilla infrastructure disruption is in the process completely hollowing out the Iraqi state. With this underlying situation in place, the chances of any meaningful improvement (as opposed to symptom abatement) is nearing absolute zero. Further, even the most minor destabilizing events will run non-linear with amplifying factors like this in place.
It's important to note that the indication this current crises was recognized back in 2004 (see Iraq: Electricity Disruption, June 2004 for more). So was the shift in warfare (to open source organization and systems disruption). Unfortunately, to this day, the US military continues to focus on body-counts to measure success or failure (number of al Qaeda dead, number of bodies found dead in Baghdad, etc.) rather than systemic factors -- which is akin to a focus on noise rather than signal.
Question: can a similar drive to disrupt global energy system (see "Al Qaeda's Black Swans," February 2006 for more) create a similar level of hoarding and resource competition in the developed world?