Baghdad (AFP)

In Iraq, summer is always hot.

But this year, with 52 degrees in the shade, the country is plunged into darkness.

Not a single watt of electricity reaches homes where refrigerators, air conditioners and other fans are no longer needed.

When he still had power, Ali Karrar went so far as to stretch his infant for a few minutes in the fridge in his town of al-Hilla, south of Baghdad.

In Diwaniyah, further south, Rahi Abdelhussein keeps bringing bags of ice cubes to hydrate his children.

Across the country, traders have installed pipes, taps and other improvised shower heads so that passers-by can shower on the sidewalk before resuming their purchases ... quite dry a few minutes later.

"We make the children sleep on the ground to seek a little freshness and we, the adults, we do not close an eye of the night", tells AFP Mechaal Hachem, docker and father of three children in Basra.

- "Blame it on the other" -

This year's doom scenario is the result of dozens of actions that have triggered chain reactions.

Result, in the middle of the night from Thursday to Friday, no more watt circulated in the power lines of the country.

Who is responsible for all this, ask many of the 40 million Iraqis who in nearly 20 years have seen half of the country's petrodollars disappear into the pockets of crooked politicians and businessmen.

"The Ministry of Electricity says + it is the fault of the Ministry of Oil +, Oil says + it is the fault of Finance +, Finance says + it is Iran's fault +, Iran says + it is the fault of the Iraqi government +, the government says + it is the fault of the people +, the people say + it is the fault of the politicians + and the politicians say + we must do with + ", sums up, ironically, the researcher Sajad Jiyad on Twitter.

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The Ministry of Electricity has never renovated its circuits where 40% of its energy is lost, while the Ministry of Petroleum is struggling to launch its projects to transform the natural gas currently burned in flares and thus supply power stations.

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Iran, to which Iraq owes six billion dollars in unpaid bills for gas and electricity, decided on Tuesday to turn off the tap.

Baghdad replies that it cannot pay its debts because of the American sanctions against Iran and its own financial worries, while the Covid-19 has for a time plunged the prices of oil, its only source of currency.

And above all, argues the government, very few households pay their bills while everyone is making wild connections.

- Who profits from the crime?

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In the south of the country, four provinces were deprived of power as of Tuesday, in particular because, explains the Ministry of Electricity, of unsolved attacks against high voltage lines.

The authorities qualify those responsible as "terrorists" but it is impossible to know who is behind the sabotage.

"Someone is trying to destabilize the street and create chaos", recently said on television the spokesman for the Ministry of Electricity, Ahmed Moussa.

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Demonstrations have already taken place in the provinces of Missane, Wassit - where five protesters and seven police officers were injured in clashes at the doors of the provincial power plant - and elsewhere in the South.

As the government knows, no Minister of Electricity has survived the summer season for 18 years.

Every summer, but usually later in the year, protests take place across Iraq, and that minister is the first fuse to blow.

This time, Minister Majid Hantoch, supported by the turbulent Shiite leader Moqtada Sadr, took the lead: he submitted his resignation on Monday, the day before the Iranian cutoff.

Enough to give free rein to the anti-government rhetoric of the Sadrist movement which already promises to be the big winner of the legislative elections scheduled for October.

© 2021 AFP