First day of summer in Iraq signals hot, violent months ahead

On the first day of summer the temperature has already reached 120 degrees F. in Iraq, with the hottest days yet to come. Faltering electricity, on top of violence and a political vacuum, has plunged many into deeper despair.

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“Just after the explosion one of the [relatives] of the men who were killed called me asking me to give him the day off because his wife was giving birth,” says supervisor Ali Jaber, who was thrown into the air and knocked out by the explosion. “I just hung up – I couldn’t say a word,” he says. The guard, Wissam Abdullah, was recently married.

Political vacuum

Without a stable government, Iraqis feel vulnerable to more attacks this summer.

“I believe we can expect the worst because the situation is still critical in Iraq, particularly the political situation,” says Shaker. “If we had a government there [it] would [make] a lot of difference – anyone who wanted to try to attack or do something to us would think twice.”

The March 7 elections were seen as the best hope for a more broad-based government than the current one in which Sunni Arab Iraqis felt widely excluded. But more than three months after the poll took place, as US forces continue to draw down tens of thousands of troops, political leaders are still wrangling over who will be prime minister and have made little progress in forming a government.

'This is worse than Saddam'

The political vacuum and the violence have been hugely unsettling to Iraqis. With the onset of summer, where temperatures hover close to 150 degrees F., the prospect of continued electricity cuts has plunged many into deeper despair.

“This is worse than Saddam. At least with Saddam we had electricity every two hours,” says Jaber, who says he has been sleeping on the floor in the Trade Bank office for the past 25 days because of the electricity cuts in their neighborhood.

“It’s like Christmas lights – it goes on and off.” When the electricity comes on, the water cuts out, he says. His wife and two children – aged 6 and 2 years old – have it the worst.

“When you see your child being tormented by the heat and you can’t do anything but fan them it’s like a fire eating you up inside,” he says. “We’ve decided not to have any more children to save them this torment.”

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