The Siphon Brigades of Basra

The thieves come brazenly in daylight, hauling off their cargo on carts and in buckets. Nearly everyone in Basra is stealing water.

The water system failed when looters stole parts from electricity substations after British forces took the Iraqi city April 7. The pumps could not run, so people broke open pipes to take water, and what had been a simple problem suddenly became a lot more complicated to fix.

“If people stopped stealing we could get it back to the prewar status quo in five days,” said Andres Kruesi, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross delegation in Basra.

But so many people are siphoning water that engineers have had to send high-salinity river water into the system to keep it flowing. More than half the city’s population now has running water, but it is undrinkable. About 40% have no water at all, compared with about 15% before the war.

British military officials say that more than 200,000 gallons of drinking water are being distributed daily in this southern city of 1.5 million -- much of it from Kuwaiti tankers under British guard. But locals still stop reporters in the street to tell them in English the one thing they need most: “Water!”

The problem reflects the high expectations Iraqis have of the allied forces, and the complexities of meeting those expectations quickly. In Basra, the water stopped when British troops took the city, so many people blame them, Kruesi said.

The city’s chief water engineer, Jabbar Haidary, said he drove out to the main plant as the fighting erupted around Basra. The plant was in the south, in the area of heaviest fighting, and the only way there was to drive toward the British as bombs and mortar shells rained down.

“The situation was very difficult because there was a lot of bombing and shelling,” Haidary said. “It was a bad situation, but I was laughing. We were working on the water, so why were they shooting? I had a white flag on my car.”

As soon as he approached the British soldiers, he said, he was arrested and marched more than two miles to a place for questioning. The British did not accept his explanation that he needed to maintain the water plant and ordered him to return to the city, Haidary recalled. He later tried again, this time traveling with the Red Cross, and managed to get across the line.

He risked his life to keep the water running in wartime, only to see the problem become worse after the shelling ceased.

On patrol for problems Saturday, he found broken generators, idle pumps and pipes that were either destroyed by explosions or spewing geysers from bullet holes.

A water tank was badly damaged after being shot at by a British tank, according to Abud Abdul Hassan, 53, the local water operator. A local welder was volunteering his services to fix the damage. One water pipe was destroyed when retreating Iraqi forces detonated mines on an adjacent bridge. At one plant, local residents were buying fuel to run generators.

Workers for the Basra Water Directorate, who are slowly returning to their jobs, have the tough task of plugging the thousands of holes made by the water thieves. But the most difficult part is to persuade people who have no water not to break into the pipes.

In the Yusuf family, with eight people, it is the job of Majed, 14, and his brother Mahra, 13, to find water and cart it home.

Their favorite location is a pipe under a manhole on Al Saday Street in central Basra, just a block from where Haidary and Red Cross officials gather each day to discuss how to restore the city’s water supply to full capacity.

The Yusuf boys aren’t buying the explanation that if people stop taking the water, the system could be running properly in a few days.

“This is government water,” Mahra said. “Nobody said don’t do it. It’s normal. Everyone takes it.”