Two weeks after being captured and occupied in the opening days of the war, this southern port town of 40,000 people located on the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border, is securely in the hands of coalition forces.

Thousands of British and US troops are stationed around the run-down community, which has been turned into the main point for humanitarian aid deliveries.

But for the locals, the struggle between the Western soldiers and the Iraqi forces for control of the region is less important than their own struggle to recover their daily lives.

There has been progress. Electricity -- cut off the first day of the war -- is available in much of the town since Monday thanks to generators. Petrol can be bought at the one service station. A few shops are offering eggs, tomatoes, onions, cigarettes and bread.

But existence remains tough.

"Our biggest problem is still the lack of water. And in this heat, that's not a good thing," says Tamal, who lives with his mother and seven siblings in a fragile house.

The few water trucks driven up from Kuwait and the daily water distributions organised by British troops are insufficient for the needs of the arid region, especially now that midday temperatures are already hitting 35 degrees Celsius (95 Fahrenheit).

Near Tamal's home is one of the town's schools. Its interior is a mess, evidence of when the Iraqi soldiers took it over to defend Umm Qasr and of the subsequent looting that occurred when they left in haste. There have been no classes for weeks.

The town's sole hospital, meanwhile, is overflowing with patients looking for help with health problems caused by the war or compounded by the paucity of basic necessities.

Just two doctors treat the daily line of around 200 people. Two of their three other colleagues have gone to the main southern city of Basra, besieged by British forces for more than a week, to help out, while the other has been called away by a family emergency.

"It's been three days now that we haven't received one litre of water," says the hospital's director, Doctor Mohammed al-Mansoury.

"When have you ever visited a hospital without water? The Americans and the British promised me they would bring some."

He looks at the patients calling out to him.

"The town is more or less safe now, but the people are starting to doubt the Americans and the British. The war started two weeks ago, and everything is the same as before, or worse."

Humanitarian aid organisations are finding the going difficult, too.

"To get over the border takes a massive effort for a result that really is very small," says Marc Vergara, a UNICEF spokesman who was supervising five water trucks his organisation drove into Iraq.

Fear that the invading forces might fail to kill or depose Saddam Hussein also reigns.

Almost nobody talks politics in town, at least "not right now," as many say, and no-one wants to go near a particular abandoned building in the middle of Umm Qasr -- the local headquarters of Saddam's Baath party.

Ask anybody to point it out, and they quickly wave their hand in its direction. "It's over there. But I won't take you," they say.

SPACE.WIRE