Remember when we were told that electricity meant success?

Remember when we were told not too long ago that only Baghdad was suffering severe electrical problems, and that outside Baghdad some areas were enjoying 24 hour electricity?

This was touted as a success, and that, if we just waited through the surge, electricity would flow into Baghdad like the success in the countryside.

Well, read this closely. The Electricity Minister, Karim Wahid, blew the top off of a press conference today that was supposed to tout the reconstruction successes.

The government lost the ability to control the grid centrally after the American-led invasion in 2003, when looters destroyed electrical dispatch centers, the minister, Karim Wahid, said in a briefing with United States military officials.

The briefing had been intended, in part, to highlight successes in the American-financed reconstruction program here.

But it took an unexpected turn when Mr. Wahid, a highly respected technocrat and longtime ministry official, began taking questions from Arab and Western journalists.

Because of the lack of functioning dispatch centers, Mr. Wahid said, ministry officials have been trying to control the flow of electricity from huge power plants in the south, north and west by calling local officials there and ordering them to physically flip switches.

But the officials refuse to follow those orders when the armed groups threaten their lives, he said, and the often isolated stations are abandoned at night and easily manipulated by whatever group controls the area.

This kind of manipulation can cause the entire system to collapse and bring nationwide blackouts, sometimes seriously damaging the generating plants that the United States has paid millions of dollars to repair....

In some cases, Mr. Wahid and other Iraqi officials say, insurgents cut power to the capital as part of their effort to topple the government.

But the officials said it was clear that in other cases, local militias, gangs and even some provincial military and civilian officials held on to the power simply to help their own areas.

With the manual switching system in place, there is little that the central government can do about it, Mr. Wahid said.

In Basra, they're even coordinating blackouts to coincide with attacks.

“They were really controlling the whole area, turning the lights on and off at will. They would shut down one area of the city, turn it dark, attack us from there, and then switch off another one and come at us from that direction.

“What they did was very well planned.”

(Just to fill in the background, Mr. Wahid was listed as "UIC (Shia coalition), Sadr trend" when the government was formed.)