IWP PRISON WORK - ABU GHRAIB WATER TREATMENT PLANT
Veterans For Peace Iraq Water Project, now in its
tenth year, today completed installation of its fifty second and fifty third
water sterilizer units in Iraq. With these units, Abu Ghraib Prison near Baghdad has a safe water supply for the first time in months.
Currently under control of the Iraqi Ministry of Interior, Abu Ghraib holds some three thousand prisoners, a great fall off from its salad days under Saddam Hussein, when 30,000 happy inmates are said to have enjoyed the entertainment.
We have information that when US forces turned over the facility to Iraq, its very extensive water treatment equipment was no longer functioning and has not since been repaired. IWP's connection to Abu Ghraib, and the source of information, is our on-the-ground contact in Baghdad, "A", who delegates the techs to make each installation, and whose brother is employed at the prison. I withhold this man's name at his own request, as it is dangerous for Iraqis to be identified in association with US entities, even us.
Abu Ghraib is the second prison to receive water units from IWP; we got one installed at Samawa Central Prison, southern Iraq, last December. We are happy to help all the people our small project is able to reach, but dismal Abu Ghraib, so well remembered by many of us, makes a nice complement to last April's effort assisting the rebuilt alAskari shrine at Samarra. The bombing of that beautiful building in 2006 set off mutual sectarian atrocities throughout Iraq that have not disappeared even yet.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Iraq Water Project and its work, we invite your contemplation of our website, iraqwaterproject.org. Especially check out the most recent articles under "What's New". You can also contact me at artdorland@hotmail.com and I will send you more photos than you can possibly desire.
Thanks to VFP, its members, chapters and Board for all these ten years of support.
On behalf of IWP and its Committee---Art Dorland, Chair
November 6, 2009