BAGHDAD — Every day, a man driving a tanker truck filled with water comes to Nashat al Chamamla's village in southern Iraq, and every day the people line up to fill their jugs and jerry cans.
"The water we buy from the tanker isn't clean. You can see the dirt in it," Chamamla said. "But we drink it anyway."
Violence has dropped dramatically across Iraq in recent months, but the fight for a better life is just beginning. From electricity and health care to education and the economy, Iraq has many needs, and safe drinking water is among the most urgent.
"The water situation in Iraq is a crisis," said Bushra Jabbar al Kinani, an Iraqi lawmaker and a member of the parliament's services and public works committee. "We see the consequences in the health of our people, and they are very bad."
Waterborne diseases such as cholera and typhoid are endemic. A cholera outbreak this summer sickened hundreds in Baghdad and Babil province. Diarrhea is among the leading causes of childhood illness and death in Iraq, according to the Iraqi Red Crescent Organization, a nonprofit aid agency.
"Everywhere there is not clean water there is disease," said Jalil al Shimari, a doctor with Baghdad's health directorate. "We see a steady number of people still getting sick from the water problems."
No one in Nashat al Chamamla's village about 200 miles southeast of Baghdad has running water. Until an enterprising man started showing up with the tanker truck a couple of years ago, everyone drank from the Euphrates River. Most people in the village still use river water to bathe and wash their clothes, and some still drink it.
"I hear it's dangerous," said Chamamla, who's unemployed. "But I haven't been sick from the water yet, so I think it's OK."
Though estimates vary, most say that nearly half of Iraq's people don't have reliable access to safe drinking water. In a national survey that questioned 8,700 people in August, 58 percent said they can get clean water at least some of the time, according to a Defense Department report.
For the rest, every sip is a gamble.
About 40 percent of Iraqi households still don't have running water, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Even before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, a large portion of Iraq's population lacked access to safe drinking water. The 1991 Gulf War and the sanctions that followed it took a toll on the country's ability to deliver clean water and properly handle sewage. The violence and the widespread looting that accompanied the fall of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship aggravated the problems.
Some families without running water buy it from stores and tanker trucks, but others who are too poor collect it from rivers, canals and wells that often are badly polluted.
In Baghdad, about two-thirds of the city's sewage still flows untreated to rivers and other waterways, said Lt. Col. Jarrett Purdue, the head of the water sector for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Gulf Region Division.
Even for those who have it, running water isn't consistently available, and its safety is questionable.
"People can simply smell the water and know it's bad. I hear this all the time," Kinani said. "And often they turn on the tap and there is nothing."
Haider Hussein, a 35-year-old father of two, said that his house in Baghdad's Sadr City district rarely has water. "Especially in the mornings, you turn on the sink and nothing comes out," he said. "If it does it smells of sewage . . . . I am afraid to give it to my children, but we can't afford bottled water every day."
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