Hours of near-total blackouts witnessed in central and southern Iraqi cities last week were far from being produced by mere technical error. Hints of “doubtful politics” start to spur widespread controversy as attacks against power transmission towers across the Levantine country overlap with Iran lowering its gas supply to Iraqi stations.
For days, Iraq’s power grid of over 45,000 electricity pylons has come under organized attacks that saw the setting off of explosives beneath power towers, plunging large areas of the country into darkness.
Not only were towers struck, but also systematic attacks put some of the country’s qualitative power generating stations out of service, such as the ones in Babil governorate’s Al Musayab district and Saladin governorate’s Samarra city.
The stations in Al Musayab and Samarra won’t get operations back up before a year from now.
Casting doubt in a televised comment, former electricity minister Qasim Al-Fahadawi revealed that the systematic attacks couldn’t have been staged without the culprits first obtaining technical coordinates available only to those well-informed about how the stations operate.
“All of the matter conveys clear suspicion,” he commented.
The matter of fact is that coordinated attacks against Iraq’s power network reflect an immense complexity present in the current crisis. It chiefly arises from the number of stakeholders in the energy market and the fierce competition among them.
“Recent attacks appear to be qualitative and coordinated, and differ from their precedents, which were carried out by either (ISIS) elements or small contractors who lost contracts with the Electricity and Oil Ministry,” a high-ranking officer, who requested anonymity, told Asharq Al-Awsat.
“The nature of the attacks indicates a party that has field and security authority in areas where power lines extend, especially in liberated cities, north of Baghdad,” they explained.
The map of main power transmission lines in Iraq covers vast, mostly uninhabited, areas between the governorates of Nineveh, Saladin, and Anbar. They connect all the way to southern Baghdad and then stretch into Iraqi cities.
“Explosives used (in attacks) are locally made, and bomb-disposal engineers in the security services often were familiar with them,” the officer revealed.
Political agendas are conspicuously tied to the attacks, with many saying that with parliamentary elections nearing, the electricity file stands to embarrass some candidates.
For Iraq, instability in electricity security is known to spark public rage that often leads to protests on many occasions, the most prominent of which were the 2019 demonstrations in the city of Basrah.
