The Techno-Politics of Electricity in the CPA's Iraq

The Bush administration foresaw the problem with the Iraqi electricity supply -- but not the extent of the damage that would be caused by post-invasion looting. On January 20, 2003, President George W. Bush issued a directive founding the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Affairs (ORHA), housed in the Department of Defense and charged with post-war Iraq under retired Gen. Jay Garner. In the early morning hours of April 13, four days after the fall of Baghdad, a 28-member ORHA team arrived in the Iraqi capital. Their official name was Joint Task Force 4, but they called themselves Task Force Fajr (Dawn, in Arabic). Task Force Fajr was in charge of restoring the flow of electrical power to hospitals, then to water treatment plants and sewer systems, then to households, and finally to business and factories. At dawn on the day they arrived, the task force met with Iraqi engineers who knew Baghdad’s power system. Prior to the occupation, Iraq had produced 4,000 megawatts of electricity per day.