Even though economic and political realities are different for each of Baghdad, Beirut, and Damascus, the three capitals are experiencing joint suffering where living conditions for their citizens are ever worsening.
Power cuts and blackouts in the three major Arab cities have shifted the priorities, daily lives, and interests of millions of people living there.
Only a few days ahead of Iran-backed militants announcing an “open” war on sites they believe are held by the US military, the “ electricity battle” made its way to the top of media headlines as well as public and political discourse.
The shortage in electricity supplies has become now more pressing than ever, with summer temperatures soaring and sweltering heat taking over the three capitals.
In Iraq, several governorates saw demonstrations protesting the lack of equipment at stations, despite government spending, and the failure to resolve the electricity crisis that dates back to 2003.
Even with successive Iraqi governments spending more than $80 billion-- $36 billion of which were in investments--to fix Iraq’s electricity sector, it continues to suffer from crippling power outages.
Meanwhile, in Beirut, the city overlooking the Mediterranean Sea, its residents have been propelled into darkness, with most of them resorting to stone-age means of living.
Other than Lebanon’s official electricity crisis, debilitating power cuts in the shadow supply network, which once covered the country’s power needs over the last ten years, continue to burden thousands of homes in the capital.
The crisis is exacerbated by main generation stations’ inability to secure sufficient electricity supplies, the failure to reform transmission stations, and the absence of a political agreement to develop two much-needed power plants.
As for Damascus, the brunt of a decade of civil war, which raged on the city’s outskirts and struck the heart of the nation’s economy, took its toll on the capital’s electricity grid.
