Remember the little brouhaha about Basra and a couple of other cities in the south wanting to have weekend days other than the ones in the rest of Iraq? Well…. The kids have grown up and are now doing some serious arm-twisting.

A couple of days ago one of the main lines feeding a major electricity generating facility in Baghdad was hit, this plunged Baghdad into even more darkness. Yesterday some areas in Baghdad had no more than 5 hours of electricity throughout the whole day. Lately Baghdadis have been living on a 5off 2 on ration plan for electricity so it was bad enough already.
Obviously Iraq does not only generate electricity in Baghdad there are plants in the Shiastan and in Kurdistan but Basra has refused to help by directing some of its electricity resources to Baghdadistan.
Incidentally the Shiastan and Kurdistan regions already have more electricity per day than Baghdad but are they going to give us some? NOOOO. They are not going to share, so go away and cry at your central government’s doorstep. And they haven’t even announced themselves an independent region yet!

In Baghdad the PM’s spokesman admits that even if Basra was an independent region the laws at the moment don’t give regions that much control over electricity but he also says that there is nothing they can do. The state’s electricity minister is negotiating with the Basra electricity authority!!!