Power Delayed: Iraq’s Electricity Crisis

These highly profitable centralized power systems were quickly exported around the world. Iraq was no exception. In the race to capture market share, the Germans, British, and Americans each competed to develop Iraq’s electricity infrastructure. By 1911, Western companies had founded street light ventures, a tram company, and even a cinema in Baghdad. Importers introduced energy-intensive appliances, particularly street cars, electric fans, and farm machinery, to bolster the demand for power plants.^[1] By the 1920s, the rush to carve out their share of the market had turned into an outright frenzy. In an op-ed in The Times, British diplomat Sir George Buchanan expressed his horror at the “orgy of waste,” insisting that “there must be an end to the ordering of towns to be built and lighted by electricity regardless of expense.”^[2] If for a moment the British hoped they could ‘civilize’ Iraq through infrastructure and discipline, their dreams were quickly dashed by the Iraqi revolt of 1920 and the Second World War. Concerned with a takeover by German forces in 1939, the British commenced an aerial bombardment campaign to destroy power generation stations.^[3] Interest in building Iraq’s electricity infrastructure would not return until after World War II.

While brief, the development of electrical systems under the British Mandate offers a window into the function of infrastructure in colonial and post-colonial Iraq. The manner of construction and demolition of the British electrical system reveals that it operated primarily as means of financial extraction from the future. Their interventions the 1920s demonstrate this function of infrastructure in two ways. First, the deployment of energy-intensive appliances and systems in Iraq mirrors the strategy employed by Edison, Westinghouse, and Insull to corner the American electricity market. The similarity is far from coincidental. The design of their colonial infrastructures materially embodies the extraction of value from the future in the same way as capitalist ones. Both General Electric and the British Empire seek to capitalize on the generation and distribution of electricity through monopoly and economies of scale. The installation of large centralized generators and alternative current transmission systems create reliable streams of future income that can be valued and capitalized in the present. Second, the destruction of Iraq’s production capacity follows the function of infrastructure to command that stream of income in the future. As Mitchell describes, infrastructures are built with a secondary durability through a “political and legal guarantee.”^[4] Once that political guarantee vanishes, the value of that infrastructure is immediately lost. Witnessing the collapse of their colonial enterprise, the British undertook what can now understood as a financially prudent decision to abandon and later demolish their own infrastructure. The intentional deterioration and destruction of infrastructure function part and parcel with its construction and upkeep. One can even see how the operation of a few large power stations and long exposed transmission lines invites its targeted elimination. These colonial dynamics become increasingly relevant in the events of later-half of the twentieth century.

The post-war period saw Iraq become swept up in the global zeitgeist for development. The burgeoning oil industry rapidly inflated Iraq’s currency reserves and a 1950 law dictated that 70% of those funds would be appropriated to developing the country’s infrastructure. At that point, two ideas dominated the discussion on how to electrify Iraq. The first group argued for small, decentralized units distributed across Iraq’s rural and urban areas. The second argued for building centralized units outside of major cities and inducing demand via tax incentives. The principal issue against decentralization would be the difficulty of maintaining thousands of rural units. The precise reason why centralization was pursued is not described, but the report does make note of the appointment of an American consultant in 1954. After reviewing the growth of demand in the country, the consultant recommends the monarchy the purchase of three large thermal power plants. Shortly after the 1958 Revolution, the new government created the National Electricity Administration to oversee the deployment of that centralized electrification system.^[5] In step, Iraq’s energy consumption and production doubled every 10 years with a fourfold increase between 1960 and 1980. Up until the 1990 Gulf War, Iraq’s electrical grid was high functioning, prepared for a decade of growth and prosperity.