Handoff

GLIMMERS OF hope can be found amid the chaos preceding Wednesday's formal transfer of sovereignty in Iraq. Iraqi officials are already in charge of all 25 government ministries, running -- with the help of about 200 U.S. and British consultants -- a bureaucracy of more than a million workers.

Iyad Allawi, the interim prime minister taking over from occupation leader L. Paul Bremer III, is presenting to his nation a face of amazing courage, refusing to be intimidated by the price on his head and the brutal violence around him.

Most important, there is a palpable yearning among the Iraqi people for a free and stable society that gives reason to believe the journey their leaders are about to begin could eventually lead them there.

It's ordinary Iraqis who will make the crucial difference over the next months and years -- their patience, their tolerance, their refusal to yield to insurgents and terrorists, their willingness to give their new government a chance.

Essential services such as clean water and power are still lacking, jobs are few and even with U.S.-led coalition troops still in place, many Iraqis are utterly without physical security.

a) water: Well, yes and no. I haven't heard about problems with water for a while: if there are, it's probably because the electricity for the pumps is out.

b) Electricity: generating capacity now exceeds pre-war levels, but delivery continues to be interrupted by sabotage and looting of copper cables. Allawi is bringing in the Kurdish official who stabilized the oil pumping situation in northern Iraq to address these issues nationally.

c) Jobs: not what I read at all-- rich Iraqis are importing maids and au pairs from India and the Phillipines because they can't find Iraqis willing to take the low wages. Business complain they can't find cheap unskilled labor anymore. The ministries are now being fully manned (at 10 to 20 times the payscale under Saddam). After June 30th there is $14 - $18 billion in aid and oil money waiting to be unleashed in reconstruction projects.

d) Security: yep. But the IP and ICDC and even the locals are beginning to pitch in as they realize finally that it's their show.

Another point about the electricity. It's not being distributed in the same way it was before. SH was sending more to areas where his favored people lived & allowed others to do without. IOW, some people now are living with their situation improved, while others have to deal with a reduction.

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