Apparently it is boiled, and aromatics and sulphates are added to make it slightly more palatable, but the smells of pollution and sewage cling to your skin. Baghdad is a pleasant well-designed city with around five million inhabitants. The reason the rest of Iraq has not flocked to the relative safety and comfort of their capital is that Saddam Hussein, introduced a law forbidding anybody not born in Baghdad before 1957 from buying property or passing it on as inheritance. Renting is not an option. The road to the port of Basra, in the southern no-fly zone, has become highly dangerous and driving at night is out of the question.
Carjackings are rife.
Many Iraqis say that burglary, theft and assault, normally unusual in Arab societies, have become standard. The biggest and saddest effect of the sanctions is the destruction of a society. Iraq has suffered an enormous brain drain. We used to be a normal society. Now many young men don't want to get married because they cannot afford a wife and family.