From: "John Beamish" 


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/19/world/middleeast/19electricity.html?_r=1&ei=5
007&en=8ff05c6562960005&ex=1370318400&oref=slogin&partner=USERLAND&pagewanted=a
ll


BAGHDAD, Dec. 18 ƒ ” Over the past six months, Baghdad has been all but
isolated electrically, Iraqi officials say, as insurgents have effectively
won their battle to bring down critical high-voltage lines and cut off the
capital from the major power plants to the north, south and west.

The battle has been waged in the remotest parts of the open desert, where
the great towers that support thousands of miles of exposed lines are
frequently felled with explosive charges in increasingly determined and
sophisticated attacks, generally at night. Crews that arrive to repair the
damage are often attacked and sometimes killed, ensuring that the
government falls further and further behind as it attempts to repair the
lines.

And in a measure of the deep disunity and dysfunction of this nation, when
the repair crews and security forces are slow to respond, skilled looters
often arrive with heavy trucks that pull down more of the towers to steal
as much of the valuable aluminum conducting material in the lines as
possible. The aluminum is melted into ingots and sold.

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