Power Delayed: Iraq’s Electricity Crisis

The first Persian Gulf War heralded a sea change for Iraq’s electrical systems. Prior to the war, the development of the grid followed the Western industrial state model. The 1990 invasion of Kuwait, a war largely driven by Iraq’s impending debt insolvency, was met by a promise from US Secretary of State James Baker III to “bring [Iraq] back to the Stone Age.”^[1] With the full support of the United Nations, Operation Desert Storm annihilated Iraq’s electrical system. Iraq’s production capacity fell from 9500 MW to 300 MW. Yet, post-operation military documents reveal that the targeting of Iraq’s electrical systems had no discernible impact on military victory.^[2] Instead, primary purpose was to establish “Iraq's postwar dependence on massive outside technical assistance” and thereby “provide the coalition with long-term leverage.”^[3] In other words, the destruction of the nation’s electrical grid served the same objective as its construction: to ensure a durable claim to Iraq’s future.

In a similar stroke, the same physical attributes of long transmission lines and large remote power stations that enable monopolistic control over the flows of capital also produce the possibility of their ruin. War planners leapt at the opportunity provided by precision Tomahawk missiles to take full advantage of the vulnerabilities of a centralized electrical infrastructure. Citing Iraq’s “very modern, concentrated electric power system” of 19 generating stations, a US Air Force review remarks how only “1% of total US sorties flown” during Desert Storm eliminated 97% percent of the country’s generating capacity.^[4] It should be obvious that what experts praised as the military-technological revolution in warfare has another name: sabotage. If the bombing of Iraq’s electricity infrastructure by the British 70 years prior is any tell, the use of relatively minor acts on a centralized systems to affect a widespread impact is not a new tactic. In Carbon Democracy, Mitchell describes how general strikers in the 19th century discovered the potential that interrupting the factory line to obtain influence.^[5] While Mitchell focuses his analysis on coal railways and oil pipelines, high-voltage cables and pylons figure equally as sites for political contestation of power. Much to the dismay of American war planners, insurgents discovered that the same transmission lines targeted by cruise missiles could also be disabled with a well-placed explosive. In that, a system that Iraqis depend on for irrigation, sanitation and healthcare became a battlefield for territorial control.