Iraq's electricity problems--which, at best, are as bad as ever--show many of the problems the US and Iraqi governments have had in developing an effective counterinsurgency strategy. To put it in the simplest possible terms, you can't defeat an insurgency by spreading your efforts thin across the entire country. You need to focus on a particular area, or "enclave," re-establish security and governance, and move on to the next region.
Unfortunately, Iraq's electricity grid undermines any such enclave strategy. Economic development creates a dependency on electricity. The Ba'athist regime under Saddam Hussein built a centralized electricity grid, in part as a instrument of political control; now, that centralization works against the government that replaced the Ba'athists.
Insurgent groups know that they can easily disrupt the highly centralized electricity distribution network, undermining the "civil affairs" side of counterinsurgency, with very little effort. Average Iraqis know that, whatever the government may say, a small group of militants can bring normal life in Iraq to a halt.
Even without a civil war to complicate matters, re-building a nation's power grid is a huge undertaking. Unfortunately, political violence isn't the only complication. Iraqi leaders undoubtedly see the centralized power grid as a tool they might use someday. US firms that receive reconstruction contracts (Bechtel, Halliburton, et al.)would rather have the economy of scale that a centralized grid provides. No one in the Iraqi government, the US government, and the foreign reconstruction firms is eager to assume responsibility for the risky, painful process of decentralization. If decentralization were to succeed, some parts of Iraq would receive visibly better electricity service than others, raising the question of whether any sectarian or ethnic groups that dominate these regions are receiving preferential treatment.
Unless someone is willing to assume leadership for the electricity crisis, it will continue to deepen. No one will step forward if the necessary political and economic resources aren't available. There also needs to be a real plan, not merely a statement of intent. Obviously, Iraqis will look to the US government for help; to date, American officials have had very little to provide. A typical response came during a 2005 press briefing with Robert Zoellick, a Deputy Secretary of State:
QUESTION: Just to follow up on the electricity, isn’t there also a concern about the electricity being centralized in Iraq? Is there an effort to try to decentralize that (inaudible)? DEPUTY SECRETARY ZOELLICK: Well, one of the aspects and, you know, I didn’t mention to Carol is that in many countries you have a system that is not designed to be attacked or is not assuming you’re going to have insurgents around. I mean this was a very centralized system in terms of the fuel lines as well as the overall electricity grids. So, there are also some efforts to see the role of some particular Iraqi security forces that might help with some key infrastructure aspects. You don’t really have to defend 2000 kilometers to be able to sort of deal with many of the attacks, at least from what I’ve seen. But, as you referenced, one of the main points I mentioned about private generation capacity, we’ve already seen some of that happen. The wonderful thing as you start to open up market possibilities, people do start to figure out a way to make these things happen, but you’ve got to create a pricing structure that also does that. Pricing of the raw material, the fuels, ability to import it as opposed to have government controls, and also the pricing of that fuel versus other fuels. So, those are some of the items that I want to try to see what the incoming Iraqi government, how they think about them.
Sadly, this statement sounds less like a genuine endorsement of the "micropower" movement, and more like just another way of saying, "The free market will handle the problem." Unfortunately, any budding Iraqi electricity entrepreneurs are likely to be shot dead by the insurgents, who want the power to stay off.
Yet again, we return to the enclave strategy that is the fulcrum on which any counterinsurgency strategy turns. The electricity grid undermines any efforts to build emclaves; without enclaves, many efforts to fix the electricity problems can't succeed.
We need to get out and let them kill each other. We lack the brutality to do what is needed. But one of the factions will.
Posted by: TCO | 08/05/2007 at 21:31
This is a bad war, and should never have started
Posted by: Electrician | 12/14/2009 at 17:18