[Peace-discuss] Cockburn on Basra

[David Green]

The causes of the protests are self-evident: Iraq is ruled by a
kleptomaniac political class that operates the Iraqi state apparatus as a
looting machine. Other countries are corrupt, notably those rich in oil or
other natural resources, and the politically well connected become hugely
wealthy. However big the rake-off, something is usually built at the end of
the day.

In Iraq it does not happen that way, and among the angriest victims of 15
years of wholesale theft are the two million inhabitants of Basra. Once
glorified as the Venice of the Gulf, its canals have turned into open
sewers and its water supplies are so polluted as to be actually poisonous.

Protests erupted earlier this year because of the lack of electricity,
water, jobs and every other government service. The injustice was all the
more flagrant because the oil companies around Basra are exporting more
crude than ever before. In August this totalled four million barrels a day,
earning the government in Baghdad some $7.7bn over the course of the month.

Few things epitomise the failure of the Iraqi state so starkly as the fact
that, despite its vast oil wealth, Basra is now threatened by a cholera
outbreak, according to local health officials. Basra hospitals have already
treated 17,500 people for chronic diarrhoea and stomach ailments over the
past two weeks, after they became ill from drinking polluted water. Salt
water is mixing with fresh water, making it brackish and reducing the
effectiveness of the chlorine that would otherwise kill the bacteria. There
is plenty of bacteria around because the water system has not been updated
for 30 years and sewage from broken pipes is mixing with drinking water.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/09/11/why-the-world-should-care-about-what-happens-in-basra/
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