Editor's note: Photojournalist Kael Alford spent 10 months covering the invasion of Iraq and its immediate aftermath in 2003-2004. She returned this summer to see what has and hasn’t changed as the U.S. prepared to withdraw its troops. 

By Kael Alford

For many Sunnis in Iraq, including a man I’ll call “the Sheik” to protect his identity, the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq is no cause for celebration. Rather it is fueling apprehension about basic security and the minority sect’s economic future.

Kael Alford / Panos Pictures

The Sheik has breakfast while his eldest son and heir Zaindon, 9, sleeps on the couch in their temporary Baghdad apartment. One day Zaindon will take responsibility for mediating conflicts and providing community leadership back in Anbar province.

I met the Sheik in 2003 not long after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, when I broke curfew and slipped past the scary Iraqi security forces at the Palestine hotel and, with a driver assigned to me by the Foreign Ministry, ventured out for a glimpse at village life outside Baghdad. A writer I was working with had previously met the Sheik, who invited me to join them. Outside his village, near Ramadi in Anbar province, we encountered another ring of security – this time a checkpoint manned by Baath party regulars in their drab green uniforms. But here, even Saddam Hussein’s power had limits, outranked by an older code of tribal affiliations and family networks, and they let us through.

In my early visits to the village I got glimpses of an idyllic life that residents enjoyed, so far not marred by the invasion -- feasts of fresh foods, wading in the Euphrates River with the Sheik’s family – but that soon changed.

Kael Alford / Panos Pictures

A photo of Zaindon in the clothing worn traditionally by a Shiek or tribal elder is shown on a cell phone. One day Zaidun will be a community leader following in his father's footsteps.

Village elders had initially given U.S. troops safe passage through their area. That attitude changed within months as civilian deaths and raids on local homes by U.S. troops fueled resentment. By the end of 2003, neutrality had changed to open hostility, and roadside bombs and ambushes on the main road through Anbar earned it the name the “Highway of Death” because it was the scene of so many attacks against U.S. troops.

I visited the area repeatedly to report on the uprising and checked in regularly with the Sheik. While his neighbors and members of his tribe were debating – and in some cases battling -- the U.S. occupation, he was focused elsewhere. The Sheik is a practical man and had many mouths to feed, so he decided to work with the Americans, figuring his construction business could benefit from some of the projects they were planning – building schools and roads or repairing basic infrastructure.

The Sheik made trips to the “Green Zone” to seek reconstruction jobs, but didn’t have any success. He said the contracts were going to American companies, stoking further frustration in Anbar.  When I left Iraq at the end of 2004, the Sheik was still without work.

When I returned in June, I found the Sheik and his family in a rented Baghdad apartment, very comfortable by Iraqi standards but nothing like the vaulted ceilings and marble floors of the family home in Anbar, with its vast garden and palm trees.

Within a half hour of my arrival, the food started coming – roasted chicken, salads, bread -- only this time it arrived in plastic bags from a nearby restaurant rather than on platters from the kitchen, because the army of women in the family who used to prepare the meals were back in the village.

Kael Alford / Panos Pictures

Zaindon, 9, climbs through a window between the laundry room and his bedroom in the family's temporary Baghdad apartment while his younger sisters and a cousin watch. The children typically play indoors for safety reasons while their father has business in the busy capital. At home in Anbar, they had plenty of room to play safely outdoors.

The Sheik told me had finally landed some reconstruction contracts related to a water treatment plant outside of Ramadi, but he moved his family to Baghdad because most of his business was in the capital and it wasn’t safe for them in Anbar.

But he said he was concerned that his business contracts would be terminated after the American withdrawal, when the fractured and corrupt Iraqi government will take complete control of infrastructure projects and contract procurement.

“I was given a chance to apply for an American visa, but I can’t leave Iraq” he said. “Too many people depend on me here.”

Among them is the Sheik’s heir, 9-year-old Zaindon. It will be his responsibility to carry on the family name and traditions – not just a patriarchal euphemism in this culture. One day Zaindon will be a community leader responsible for helping to settle disputes in the village. The Sheik would like his son to learn English so he can study abroad.

“My dream is to open a university in Iraq,” he said, explaining that providing better educational opportunities for young engineers is critical so that the next generation of talented people can stay and help the country to rebuild.

But he was concerned with the deterioration of the security situation in his village and elsewhere in Anbar.

Kael Alford / Panos Pictures

The Shiek's wife cuts melon while her two oldest daughters Yehmameh, 7 left, and Tiba, 9, watch.

When what was initially a mostly home-grown Iraqi insurgency became dominated by groups affiliated with militant Islam, many of them made up of foreigners, local leaders in Anbar eventually took security into their own hands. With the backing of U.S. forces, they formed “Awakening” councils – essentially Sunni militias capable of taking on the al-Qaida-inspired groups that had grown powerful in Western Iraq.

The Sheik said most of the radicals arrested early on were released without prosecution, because there was rarely enough evidence for trials and people were too frightened to testify. That's led to a resurgence of the radicals and put pressure on the Awakening councils from two sides – from the radical groups and also from the central government, which is increasing arrests of Sunnis in the region under expanded de-Baathification purges.

“Al-Qaida is distributing fliers again,” said the Sheik, “and although there is no way for them to reorganize like before, they are still active, only using quieter techniques, like sticky bombs that target specific vehicles and silencers on their weapons.” 

Kael Alford / Panos Pictures

The Shiek walks the grounds surrounding his estate along the banks of the Euphrates River in Anbar Province, May 2003.

At the time of my visit, the situation was growing worse. We cancelled a trip to see the water treatment plant his company was working on when we got news that at least seven policemen had been killed in a drive-by shooting at a checkpoint west of Ramadi. Three were relatives from the Shiek’s village and he was occupied paying his respects to the families.

And that incident was hardly isolated. A cursory Internet search for attacks targeting Iraqi police in Anbar province leads to websites of radical Islamist groups like Ansar Al-Mujahadeen, which posts videos, photos and detailed descriptions of operations carried out against Iraqi security forces in English.

In light of the increasing insecurity and purges of Sunnis from government posts, Sunni dominated provinces are reconsidering their relationship to Iraq’s central government. The Awakening councils that reined in al-Qaida in western Iraq that were once on the American payroll are now paid by the central government, but members have been complaining of irregularities and bad treatment under the Shiite-dominated government. They have no official position in Iraq’s formal security structures and weak political representation, leaving them in limbo and even vulnerable to recruitment by Al-Qaida. Governing councils in the Sunni provinces of Salahuddin, where Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit is located, and Diyala have voted for increased autonomy from the central government, sparking demonstrations by Shiites in the latter province and feeding concerns that the tenuous Iraqi state could splinter along political and sectarian lines.

But perhaps the most unsettling development in Anbar province is the resurrection and persistence of local radical Islamist groups that now target Iraqi security forces and Iraqi civilians as readily as they did American forces while they were in the country. These groups were unheard of in Iraq before the war.

Like many Iraqis in western Iraq, the Sheik is convinced that Iran is supporting the radical Islamist groups in Anbar, citing the weapons they use and their choice of targets, including local Sunni shrines.

As the Sheik sees it, that may be a long-term impact of the U.S.-led war and subsequent withdrawal that Washington never anticipated.

“The Iraqi advisers misinformed the Americans when they first came” bringing Iraq closer to the interests of Iran and empowering Al-Qaida, he said. Now, “It’s only the politicians with loyalty to Iran who don’t want the Americans to stay.”

More from the series:

Introduction: As U.S. withdraws, the people speak
Corruption in high places costs widow everything
Patchwork electrical grid a symbol of country's disconnects
A new day for culture and consumer goods
For women, freedoms under fire
Suspicious minds in a squatters' camp
Colonel helped with the ‘Surge,’ then his past came calling

Follow @msnbc_pictures

Editor's note: Photojournalist Kael Alford spent 10 months covering the invasion of Iraq and its immediate aftermath in 2003-2004. She returned this summer to see what has and hasn’t changed as the U.S. prepared to withdraw its troops. 

By Kael Alford

When I first met Yanar Mohammed in 2003, she was holding a megaphone and leading a women’s rally in Baghdad’s Firdos Square, standing in the shadow of a pedestal where a statue of Saddam Hussein had stood until U.S. tanks dragged it to the ground a few weeks earlier.  With a head of uncovered dark curls and a raised fist, she led chants demanding improved security and equal civil rights for women.

Eight years later, Mohammed is perhaps the most widely quoted activist on women’s rights in Iraq. A resident of both Iraq and Canada, she travels internationally, speaks at universities and conferences and has received prestigious awards for her service. And yet her message remains little known outside Iraq.

Kael Alford / Panos Pictures

Yanar Mohammed rallies protestors in Tahrir Square in Baghdad, July 2011, calling for governmental reforms. She has been an activist since 2003 after the U.S. led invasion.

One of her main talking points is this: Iraq is a more dangerous place for women than it was before the U.S. invasion and it is getting worse. Reports by international human rights groups support her observations. According to the 2011 Iraq summary report by Human Rights Watch: “The deterioration of security has promoted a rise in tribal customs and religiously-inflected political extremism, which have had a deleterious effect on women's rights, both inside and outside the home.”

Today, in a country where women have served in Parliament since the 1960s – longer than in any other Middle Eastern country – they are increasingly targeted by militant Islamic elements for participating in government, holding jobs or violating conservative Islamic traditions, such as appearing in public without head coverings. Even secular women now wear scarves in hopes of avoiding dangerous attention.

Iraq also has seen a rise in the tribal tradition of honor killings, where women who have a love affair outside of accepted cultural or religious boundaries are slain by members of their own family. Often these women, fleeing for their lives, seek out the Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), which Mohammed founded in the wake of the U.S. invasion.
 
When I tracked down Yanar this summer, she said the situation remains dire. She is the chief editor of the newspaper “Al Mousawat,” or ”Equality,” that devotes a full page to reporting violent crimes against women, along with phone numbers for OWFI offering safety in underground shelters for women looking for an escape from violence. She also helps operate a radio station that uses  female university students as deejays. 

Mohammed is still leading protests over the lot of women in Iraq, but is now surrounded by a new group of mainly young women.

When I visited the OWFI compound, not far from Firdos Square, on a Friday in July, about two dozen people -- mostly women but a few young men -- were buzzing about preparing signs, making jokes and chatting about strategy for the morning’s protest.

There was nervous energy in the air before the group ventured out to Iraq’s version of the “Arab Spring,” a weekly demonstration in Baghdad’s own Tahrir (“Freedom”) Square. Two weeks earlier state security officers who had been lurking on the fringes of the protests had moved in to teach the women a lesson.

“We heard them among themselves saying, ‘These are the whores, let’s go and get them,’” recalled Mohammed. “…We were beaten, our bodies were groped, we were humiliated … sexually harassed, and their message was to tell us that we are females who do not have the right to come in the arena of political struggle. We should feel ashamed and go back to our homes.”

Mohammed’s young protégés fled the square for various safe houses around the city, many of them bloody, bruised and shaken. Human Rights Watch interviewed the women afterwards and issued a report about the incident.

Despite the obvious risks, the protesters were ready to return to the streets.

“They tried to make us escape in humiliation, but the women are quiet fierce,” Mohammed said. “They gave them a good fight and today they’re back again.”

One of the younger women was 20-year-old Aya al Lamie, a thin, energetic woman in a long sleeved black T-shirt, jeans and oversized faux-diamond studded sunglasses. Head thrown back and long, dark, uncovered hair streaming down her back, she seemed to float on nervous energy as she led the women gathered in the antechamber of Mohammed’s office in anti-government chants. Mohammed stood back beneath large glossy color photographs of earlier protests, looking like a proud mother.

Kael Alford / Panos Pictures

Women's-rights activist Aya Al Lami leads chants from the front of a bus headed to Tahrir square for a weekly Friday demonstration against Iraqi government policies, July 2011. The protestors, mostly women, were sexually harassed and groped by plain clothes security forces the previous week. Undaunted, most of the women are returning for another protest.

After a few minutes of singing and anxious strategizing, the 30 or so protestors piled out of the offices behind Lami and boarded the bus that would take them to the square. I climbed aboard too.

As we approached the square, the protestors grew quiet and began peering out the windows to assess the situation. The protest seemed smaller this week. Perhaps the rash of criticism from international observers would keep the security personnel at bay.

Kael Alford / Panos Pictures

Protestors arrive in Tahrir Square in Baghdad on a minibus, July 2011. Protests in Iraq have been dealt with harshly by the Maliki government since February but protests have continued every Friday, with varying turnout.

The protestors entered the square, passing several Iraqi soldiers in uniform who checked their bags for weapons. The square was alive with several hundred people of all ages and types. An older women in a long black abaya posed solemnly for photographs, pictures of her missing relatives in hand.  Boisterous young men in western clothes would who fit seamlessly into the protests in Egypt, Tunisia or Libya, climbed onto a wall overlooking the square. People chanted and shouted, protesting corruption, judicial impunity, state torture and limitations on free speech.
Aside from a Human Rights Watch observer, I appeared to be the only American in the crowd.

Mohammed and her followers pulled out the megaphone and began stirring things up.  I was struck by how little has changed. Eight years ago, I made a photograph of her just like this, standing next to a red and white banner, megaphone in hand, fist in the air. It was like a flashback to an OWFI organization in 2003.

I recalled Janar’s words during our interview earlier that morning. “(After the invasion) we had a lot of worries,” she said. “There were abductions of women and we were protesting against them. … Now we have a dictatorship again and this dictatorship is exercising to take us back to Saddam’s times.”

Lamie, her young protégé, the took the megaphone,  a wide smile on her face and pumping her hand rhythmically in the air. 

I didn’t want any run-in with state security, and Sami, my driver, had been circling the square in his battered Mercedes, begging me to get in.  It was my last day in Iraq and I had more appointments, so I left the women mid-protest, hoping all would go smoothly.  I later learned that their bus was stopped as they left -- not in the square where the lone Human Rights observer was watching,  but on a side street a few blocks away. The bus driver was questioned and some of the men were taken to an abandoned building for interrogation. One of the women on the bus called the Human Rights Watch observer, who soon arrived on the scene to ask why the women are being detained. Shortly after that, the bus and protesters were allowed to leave.

But that was not the end of it. In November, four months after my trip and one month before President Barack Obama’s promise to complete the withdrawal of U.S. troops before the Christmas holidays, I found this story about Lamie, Yanar's young protege, on the OWFI website:

20 Year old OWFI activist Aya Al Lamie Kidnapped from Tahrir Square and tortured
Although the numbers of demonstrators became much less in the Iraqi Tahrir square, Aya Al Lamie insisted to join [sic] the demonstrators every Friday of the last months. She insisted to put a woman's face on the Tahrir demonstrations and cooperated with all the organized groups in the square.

On Friday 30-9-2011 afternoon, towards the end of the demonstration, a group of security men dressed in civilian clothing surrounded her, carried and threw her into the trunk of a car which they parked next to the square, in what looked like sectarian mob kidnappings, under the eyes of the police and the army - which had become common practice in the last months in Tahrir.
20 year old Aya was taken to a security facility in Jadiriyah-Baghdad where she was beaten by a mob of torturers using sticks and whipping her back and arms by cables.

She was released at 5:00 pm after being told:" This was a first warning!"

A pattern is emerging in Iraq related to the treatment of demonstrators, journalists and social critics. This September, Hadi Al-Mahdi, a journalist well-known for his public criticism of the government on a popular radio show, was shot in the head in his apartment. Al-Mahdi had been helping to organize a large protest on the first Friday after Ramadan. He’d been abducted from a demonstration earlier this year, beaten and threatened with torture. It makes me fear for Aya and Yanar's bnd of brave, outspoken women.

Kael Alford / Panos Pictures

Anti-American banners decorate Tahrir square in Baghdad during anti-government protests, July 2011. The abuses of the Iraqi government are often considered partly as a consequence of American intervention in Iraq.

More from the series:

Introduction: As U.S. withdraws last troops, the people speak
Suspicious minds in a squatters' camp
Colonel helped with the ‘Surge,’ then his past came calling
Patchwork electrical grid a symbol of country's disconnects
A new day for culture and consumer goods

Editor's note: Photojournalist Kael Alford spent 10 months covering the invasion of Iraq and its immediate aftermath in 2003-2004. She returned this summer to see what has and hasn’t changed as the U.S. prepared to withdraw its troops. 

By Kael Alford

Former Iraqi National Police Col. Ihsan Ali Ibrahim has the bearing of a man accustomed to giving orders. Even wearing his long white dishdasha and playing with his children, he’s got the presence of the most popular boy on the playground, the guy everyone wanted to please. Which is why he’s so uncomfortable in his new role as a recluse.  

Kael Alford / Panos Pictures

Col. Ihsan Ali Ibrahim sits at home with his young son and daughter, June 2011. Since his dismissal from the Iraqi National Police, he fears straying too far from home in case he is recognized by the members of Al-Qaeda or other armed groups that he helped to combat during his time on the force.

“I keep myself here in the house. I can’t do anything outside,” he says.

A career soldier and once one of the most feared law enforcement officials in the toughest neighborhoods of Baghdad, Ibrahim is now a man with nowhere to hide. Even in his own town of Dujail, he’s not really safe. He says his brother and brother-in-law were both killed by al-Qaida-affiliated groups here. His brother’s wife now lives under his roof according to Iraqi custom. 

During his career including the time he worked in tandem with US troops during the surge, he made enemies. Serving as law enforcement in Iraq is one of the most dangerous jobs. Revenge for grievances is status quo, the code of the street that challenges formal institutions. While American troops can leave, Iraqi law enforcement officials stay and expose themselves to continuous threats. “I worked against many kinds of criminals and gangs or other militias … so of course, I have to avoid them, because if I see them anywhere, maybe they’ll kill me,” he says. “Now I’m without guards or guns, protection or anything.” Now that Ibrahim can no longer work in law enforcement, he says he'd consider leaving the country for a life somewhere else. But with the American military apparatus gone, he has no one to ask for help.

Photo courtesy Ihsan Ali Ibrahim

Colonel Ihsan Ali Ibrahim, seen here in a Nov. 2009 photo, is a career soldier who served in the Iraqi National Police in West Rasheed from 2004 - 2011.He was dismissed in March of this year under accusations of ties to the Ba'ath Party.

His life is limited to the new two-story house he built just before he lost his job. He also feels safe nearby on the family farm full of date groves, vineyards and wandering chickens. But he can’t risk going much farther afield.

As the U.S. withdrawal progresses, the intensity of Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki’s far-reaching campaign to purge Iraq’s government and security services of any traces of Ba’ath party affiliation has been increasing. Talented and experienced people are barred from public service, leaving them few other options. The tendency may reflect Maliki’s anxious grip on control in a country with a history of coup attempts from within. But it’s also an indication that Iraq’s sectarian and political rifts in Iraq are far from bridged. Wikileaks documents released in February this year contained U.S. diplomatic cables that indicated a systematic effort by Maliki’s government to stack the security services with Shiites, regardless of their qualifications.

Some observers have noted that Maliki’s purges border on paranoia, with citizens who obviously pose no threat being dismissed from their jobs or arrested.

Ibrahim’s fortunes have mirrored the recent convulsive history of the military and security services in Iraq, including the recent, ham-fisted “de-Ba’athification” efforts.

As a child, he started out on the wrong side of the law in Dujail -- a predominately Shiite city south of Baghdad, famous for its palm groves and an assassination attempt on Saddam Hussein by gunmen who hid in the lush orchards and attacked the former president’s motorcade in 1982.

In one of Saddam’s most violent acts of retribution, he sent his security guards to round up more than 600 men, women and children from Dujail, many of whom were executed. Others were imprisoned and tortured. The Dujail massacre was the primary crime for which Saddam was tried and hanged by an Iraqi court in 2006. After the purges, anyone from Dujail was blacklisted from holding official positions in Iraqi government.

Ibrahim hid that he was from Dujail and enlisted in the Saddam Fedayeen, the elite paramilitary organization of Saddam’s Baath Party, after graduating from military college in 1989. After two years of training with the Fedayeen, his commanders discovered he was from Dujail and had been arrested as a boy. He was immediately dismissed and imprisoned again.

After serving time, he was permitted to join the regular Iraqi Army as a major.

Fast-forward to the U.S. invasion. Ibrahim was fired from his Army post, this time at the behest of Paul Bremer, the U.S. administrator to Iraq, who dismissed the entire Iraqi military in the early days of the occupation. When Iraqi forces were reorganized in 2004 as the country appeared to be spiraling into civil war,  Ibrahim was recruited to join a new elite paramilitary unit, the Iraqi National Police, charged with countering terrorism.

In 2007, U.S. military units began partnering with the INP on joint patrols to tackle sectarian violence in Baghdad’s West Rasheed district. The sector alongside the Tigris River was one of the most violent districts in the capital, with both Al-Qaida affiliated fighters and Shiite militias using it as a corridor to reach Baghdad from the south, leaving civilian carnage in their wake.

Photo courtesy Ihsan Ali Ibrahim

Iraqi Col. Ihsan Ali Ibrahim, center, is seen with U.S. Gen. Raymond Odierno when he was U.S. Joint Forces Commander in Iraq.

Taking part in the U.S. strategy known as the surge, Ibrahim finally got a chance to prove himself, helping to clear the sector of insurgents and make the streets livable again.

“We collected illegal weapons from the area, searching houses and bringing displaced people back,” he recalls with obvious pride. “We even closed and blocked the streets so people could enjoy themselves in the amusement park. This made us happy.”

Slowly, as patrols cleared the neighborhoods of insurgents, secured the markets and erected blast walls to protect civilians, residents who had fled the violence began to return.

But when U.S. forces ended combat operations in Iraq in 2009 and withdrew to their bases, Ibrahim’s past found him again.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki began a fresh round of “De-Baathification,” gutting Iraqi institutions of qualified people for any actual or imagined connections to the now defunct Baath Party of Saddam.

On March 29, Ibrahim received a perfunctory letter of dismissal from the Ministry of Interior.

Ibrahim was baffled and crushed. He said he never even made it out of training for the Fedayeen 10 years earlier before being imprisoned for disloyalty to Saddam’s regime. Given his loyal service with the national police, he finds it hard to believe that he would be seen as a threat.

“If they really wanted to fire us, why did they … let us join in the beginning?” he asked. “All this fighting, risk and sacrificing for nothing?“

Ibrahim has sent formal appeals to the prime minister’s office and the national police commander. He says he was told by an official in Maliki’s office that he’d need to pay a $30,000 bribe to have his dismissal reconsidered.

Like a museum to a bygone era, enlarged glossy photos of Col. Ibrahim in his blue fatigues, presiding over neat rows of caches of mortars, RPGs and Kalashnikov rifles, line the pink and yellow walls of a spare bedroom in his home. Framed letters of praise from American commanders serve as testament to his competence.

One letter from Lt. Col. Matthew Elledge of the 1^st Battalion, 22^nd Infantry, 4^th Division names “Col. Ihsan” as part of the team that detained over 900 insurgents and discovered and destroyed over 800 weapons and ammunition caches. The letter reads:

“The aggressiveness of the Brigade is only shadowed by their compassion for the citizens of West Rashid (cq). …  “As the Coalition Force commander of this area, I leave with the greatest confidence that W. Rashid will be the shining light for all Baghdad to follow in their efforts to take back their neighborhoods and provide a peaceful coexistence for all Iraqis.”

Kael Alford / Panos Pictures

Col. Ihsan Ali Ibrahim spends time with his son in a spare bedroom he uses as an office and museum to his accomplishments, June 2011.

The day before our interview, a bombing had rocked a West Rasheed market, the first major attack in the area in months. Ibrahim heard about it from some former colleagues, who called him to say civilians in the area were asking for his help. 

“It really hurt a lot because they’re all my friends, you know, my people,” he says. “…Terrorists don’t recognize that this is innocent blood of kids or women or anyone else.”

Seated on a plastic chair beneath vines heavy with grapes, Ibrahim says the attack adds a fresh sting to the steady pain of forced inaction.

“I lost all those people precious to me, and now I lost my job,” he says. “What else can I do, be a farmer?”

More from the series:

Introduction: As U.S. withdraws, the people speak
For 'the Sheik,' U.S. pullout is cause for alarm
Patchwork electrical grid a symbol of country's disconnects
A new day for culture and consumer goods
For women, freedoms under fire
Suspicious minds in a squatters' camp
Colonel helped with the ‘Surge,’ then his past came calling

Related stories:
Analysis: Welcome to Shia-stan
Troops come home to families’ delight
Koppel: Is the U.S. really leaving Iraq?
Engel: A look at the US bases, Iraqi troops and other legacies of the US presence

Photojournalist Kael Alford spent 10 months covering the invasion of Iraq and its immediate aftermath in 2003-2004. She returned this summer to see what has and hasn’t changed as the U.S. prepared to withdraw its troops.

By Kael Alford

If there is one issue that symbolizes the difficulties and political turmoil that have beset Iraq over the last decade, it is the country’s electrical system.

Kael Alford / Panos Pictures

A generator in Sadr City, Baghdad, July 2011.

While the nation of 29 million people is rich in oil, which generates revenue of nearly $2 billion a week, the government has not been able to translate that river of cash into a steady flow of electrical current from its power plants to homes and businesses. According to the Iraqi government’s figures, the grid currently meets 50 percent of demand or less, depending on the region. 

USAID and other international organizations have invested billions of dollars to try to improve the battered system, and progress has been made. But as an October 2009 USAID report noted, such efforts are hampered by the continuing “looting of cables, destruction of high-tension towers and sabotage of fuel lines. … Decades of operation without regular maintenance have resulted in increased breakdown and a need for significant rehabilitation.”

The dire state of the official grid has given rise to a perilous patchwork by the private sector to keep the lights and other appliances on.

Kael Alford / Panos Pictures

Cables reach to a generator on the outskirts of Baghdad, July 2011.

On a typically sweaty July afternoon in Baghdad, as temperatures hovered around 113 degrees, I met a 40-year-old freelance electrician named Majid, who was making the rounds at private residences in the Karrada district.  He was installing a second-hand air conditioner for a woman whose “swamp cooler,”  which functions by blowing air across a reservoir of water, wasn’t working because the city water had been cut for two days.  Majid had been an electrician in Saddam’s elite Republican Guard, and was wearing U.S. military issue boots with thick rubber soles to guard against getting electrocuted while he worked. His only other protection was a pair of pliers with plastic handles. Regardless of these precautions, he said he’s been shocked many times. He said these days Iraqis were all doing their own maintenance work on the city wiring in their neighborhoods and he was one of the best-employed men around.

Kael Alford / Panos Pictures

Majid, a 40-year-old freelance electrician, works on the makeshift neighborhood wiring while a young local resident holds his ladder this summer.

He waxed nostalgic about the electricity supply under Saddam, which was already inadequate. “Then there were only 2 hours in the day and 2 hours at night without power, and we were complaining! We even had one day when there was electricity all day.”  With a half-joking expression he says that people used to complain about Saddam Hussein, “but these days we say, ‘God be Merciful. Let those days come back again!’”

He works from 9 in the morning until 9 or 10 at night and doesn’t ask anyone for a fixed price. He says he’ll accept whatever his neighbors can pay.  “The whole neighborhood depends on me and I’m getting tired,” he said.

In addition to freelance electricians, each neighborhood in Iraq hosts a private generator to augment the official electrical supply. Cables erupt from crude concrete or aluminum buildings containing the thrumming generators and converge and tangle in chaotic knots before finally plunging into homes and businesses. It’s the same in big cities, small towns and even some squatters' camps, all over the country.

The uninsulated cables often stretch and sag, particularly in the summer, triggering fires when they touch one another.

Experts say it’s no secret what the problems are: The Iraqi electrical grid is unstable, hampered by war-torn infrastructure that forces implementation of blackouts to prevent it from crashing entirely; demand that has steadily increased since the 2003 U.S. invasion; and incompetence and massive corruption at the highest levels of the government.

Kael Alford / Panos Pictures

Electric cables to private generators hang above a street in the Karrada neighborhood of Baghdad, July 2011.

In August, Iraqis learned that Minister of Electricity Ra’as Shalal al-Ani had tendered $1.7 billion in contracts to a shell Canadian company and a German company that had gone bankrupt, prompting Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to request his resignation and leading to a corruption investigation.

And that may be only the beginning. An International Crisis Group report released in September said that in 2011 the Integrity Commission and the Board of Supreme Audit, two oversight bodies in Iraq, identified hundreds of such shell companies abroad linked to senior government officials in the Defense Ministry and Maliki’s office.

More from the series:

Introduction: As U.S. withdraws, the people speak
For 'the Sheik,' U.S. pullout is cause for alarm
Patchwork electrical grid a symbol of country's disconnects
A new day for culture and consumer goods
For women, freedoms under fire
Suspicious minds in a squatters' camp
Colonel helped with the ‘Surge,’ then his past came calling

Related stories:

Troops come home to families’ delight
Koppel: Is the U.S. really leaving Iraq?
Engel: A look a the US bases, Iraqi troops and other legacies of the US presence