Shadow contracts, smoke, mirrors keep the lights out in Iraq

In the Baghdad suburb of Sadr City, glossy election campaign posters are plastered alongside jungles of sagging electrical wires lining the alleyway to Abu Ammar’s home. But his mind is far from Iraq’

In the Baghdad suburb of Sadr City, glossy election campaign posters are plastered alongside jungles of sagging electrical wires lining the alleyway to Abu Ammar’s home.

But his mind is far from Iraq’s Oct. 10 federal election. The 56-year-old retired soldier’s social welfare payments barely cover the cost of food and medicine, let alone electricity. Despite chronic outages from the national grid, Mr. Abu Ammar can't afford a generator.

When the lights go off, he has no choice but to steal power from a neighbour’s line. He doesn’t have the right political connections to get electricity otherwise, he says, a frail figure seated in a spartan living room.