'We'll vote but it may not change anything'

If Baghdad is scary during the day, it becomes more frightening at night.

Large parts of the centre lie in medieval darkness, with only the silhouettes of office buildings against the sky to remind you this was once a city with reliable mains electricity. The car headlights, the main source of light in these otherwise deserted places, dwindle to a trickle by 7pm, and only partly because of an ill-enforced curfew. Nobody wants to find out the hard way what may be lurking in the dark.

But as the daylight goes, and everyone flees home to their locks, bars and barricades, thousands of Iraqis are preparing to brave the night on these dangerous streets.

They are not the police, or the army. They are just people queuing for petrol. The fuel shortage in Iraq, once the world's second largest oil producer, has become so acute it is now routinely necessary to spend a night, possibly two, queueing in your car.

"We do not care about the election, we care about the petrol," said Ayad al-Yisri, who has been waiting in line since Wednesday.

"We will vote but we are not sure if it will change anything." Power cuts have seen supply reduced to one hour on, four hours off, in many areas of Baghdad. No wonder, then, that energy is now both a major issue in Sunday's elections, and a major battleground for the insurgents determined to disrupt the transition to democracy.

"The Americans never managed to turn off the lights during the war," said Bashar al-Naeemi, a computer scientist. "The street-lights stayed on even when the bombs were falling. But the insurgents have managed it."

The run-up to the elections has been perhaps less bloody than expected. Distant explosions and a brief outbreak of gunfire, quite common Baghdad sounds, could still be heard yesterday - but the number of attacks in the city has fallen. Officials speak of a "lull before the storm", with the possibility of terrible violence on polling day. But another reason might be the insurgents are running a different campaign - of fewer, but more damaging attacks.

Iraq's fuel distribution and electricity

systems have long been targets. But the attacks are growing in sophistication and efficiency.

Tanker drivers making the runs from oil refineries to petrol stations say they are being forced at gunpoint to hand over their authorisation papers allowing them to pick up their loads.

Attacks on the power grid seem to happen at the places where the most damage will be done. There is no better symbol of Iraq's difficulties. The power cut and the petrol queue have been the marks of failing states, from Nigeria and Zimbabwe to Britain, on a smaller scale, in the Seventies.

In Sunday's election, many voters do not know or care about the programmes of the parties, or the merits of those few candidates who have identified themselves, or even, yet, how and where to vote. All they want is the electricity back on. That, however, like so many of the other things which matter to the people of Iraq, is not something Sunday's elections are likely to be able to deliver.