Featured: Iraq 2003

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File Name: feat30 Caption: 8-9-03 Photograph by William E. Thompson A street vendor walks through a sewage flooded street Saturday afternoon in downtown Baghdad Iraq as he takes food to a customer while a U.S. Army civil affairs soldier supervises the clean up of the street. Many of the narrow streets in the oldest part of the city are filled with sewage and piles of trash accumulated over the past several years. Many of the neighborhoods in the poor Shi’ite areas were severely neglected under Saddam’s rule. The residents of these communities are finding it hard to cope with the decay of the infrastructure. Although the U.S. military is attempting to reestablish basic trash, water, electric and sewage services, actual repairs and updating of the infrastructure will take months if not years to complete.