04:47 PM CDT on Wednesday, July 21, 2004

By ED TIMMS / The Dallas Morning News

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The field has been transformed into a swamp of fermenting sewage and trash. It is a playground for children, a grazing area and source of water for domesticated animals.

Ed Timms / DMN Iraqi children play around the ditches that serve as sewer lines in the Zafariniya area of Baghdad. The water can give children skin infections and is a breeding place for insects.

Putrid black-green water oozes into the field from a ditch that twists through a cluster of ramshackle homes. That is what passes for a sewer system in Zafariniya, a predominantly Shiite area of Baghdad at the confluence of the Tigris and Diyala Rivers.

Zafariniya was perennially ignored and oppressed by Saddam Hussein's brutal regime. But not anymore. Today, U.S. troops are working to make crucial infrastructure improvements that they hope will improve residents' lives and demonstrate the coalition's commitment to helping the Iraqi people.

Roughly 300,000 people live in Zafariniya, an area that has never had a sewage system. The city's electrical power grid is dilapidated and overtaxed. So, too, is the water supply.

But more than a year after U.S. forces toppled the Iraqi dictator, residents of Zafariniya are beginning to see improvements.

Sewer, power lines

In the face of daily attacks, soldiers with Fort Hood's 1st Cavalry Division are helping to build a $36 million sewer system that includes a trunk line that will carry sewage out of the area to a treatment plant.

New electrical lines and poles are being erected, and substations are being restored. One critical power line will link a substation in the area to a generating plant. It replaces an underground cable that looters dug up so they could sell the copper.

Portions of Zafariniya have access to a water system, although it has been tapped into so much that there's often little pressure in the lines. U.S.-supported projects already have improved the water supply in some parts of the area.

Lt. Col. Brian L. Dosa, 41, of Newark, Del., who commands the 3rd Brigade Combat Team's 8th Engineer Battalion, said that residents will see substantial progress before Iraqi elections early next year.

When 1st Cavalry Division soldiers first began working in Zafariniya, they were shocked by what they saw.

"Whenever you see water in Baghdad these days, it's sewage," Col. Dosa said. "It hasn't rained."

Throughout Zafariniya, water used for everything but the toilet is dumped into open ditches in the streets. At best, human waste is piped from the houses into small holding tanks that are periodically pumped out, although the tanks sometimes overflow.

Some residents, however, don't have that luxury.

"They basically either keep it in containers in their house and then dump it out on the street," said Capt. Kenneth Bradley, 28, of Mobile, Ala., the assistant engineer for the division's 3rd Brigade Combat Team. Others, he said, flush waste "straight out onto the street."

Health issues

Aside from the appearance and the stench, Zafariniya's ubiquitous sewage also causes serious health problems for local residents. Disease-carrying mosquitoes and other insects breed in the sluggish water. Children develop skin infections. In areas that have a water system, sewage from the trenches seeps into fissures in the lines.

Ed Timms / DMN Domesticated animals such as geese and goats eat and drink in the fields of trash and sewage that form in Zafariniya.

But 1st Cavalry Division soldiers, who began operating in the area roughly three months ago, say they also see an improvement in the attitudes of Zafariniya's residents.

Spc. Luis Gutierrez, 22, of Phoenix, a Humvee gunner with the brigade's 8th Engineer Battalion, was pelted with rocks when he first patrolled the area. Residents routinely greeted U.S. soldiers with dirty looks and obscene gestures.

"Little by little, they started reacting differently, once they actually found out what we were doing," Spc. Gutierrez said. "They decided we really were here to help."

Col. Dosa said he could understand their wariness.

"Put yourself in their shoes," he said. "You see a couple of Humvees driving down the roads. Their windows are up. There's a gunner up top, and when the guys come out, they've got Kevlar helmets on and sunglasses. Your initial reaction is not going to be real positive. You're going to question, what are they doing? Are they here to give us a hard time?"

As they've come to understand what the U.S. soldiers are doing for the community, he said, people in Zafariniya have been very friendly.

One mosque, in particular, had been a trouble spot for the U.S. soldiers working in Zafariniya. People associated with the mosque have ties to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose rhetoric contributed to a violent uprising among supporters.

"One of the things we've seen since we've been working on the infrastructure down in this area is ... we think this mosque is changing, definitely turning away from al-Sadr and becoming less violent," Col. Dosa said.

"We still have our concerns," he said. "But for them to go around and try to recruit people to take up arms against the coalition, when we're working to improve the quality of life ... all around the mosque, is kind of hard to do."

As barefoot children skipped across a nearby sewage trench, a middle-aged Iraqi who lives near the Diyala River talked briefly about the planned improvements. A mangy flock of goats and a few geese strolled through the field of sewage and trash beyond the trench.

The man, who declined to give his name, said that conditions in his neighborhood are very bad and that he is waiting for the U.S. soldiers to help.

So far, he said, the war hasn't changed the situation much, but he has hope.

A long wait for services

In a different part of Zafariniya, Haider Kadem, 29, stands with his three young children outside his house. There, too, sewage trickles through an open trench in the street.

"Our children are playing in this," he said, gesturing to the trench. "The environment is not good."

Mr. Kadem said the Hussein regime told residents that there was a big budget for neighborhood improvements, but the promises never materialized.

He said it was a "dream for us" when coalition forces liberated Iraq from the regime, "and we are waiting until now."

But he also accepts that he may have to be patient. After all, he said, there's only been a new Iraqi government for a short time, and it's difficult for contractors to work on projects "because the security is not good."

Perhaps, next year, he predicted, conditions will be better.

"It is getting better," said Spc. Ramon Lopez, 21, of Hobbs, N.M, but, "it's going to take us a long while to get this squared away."