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The deadly legacy of 20 years of US 'War on Terror' in Iraq

By:   []

Date: 2021-09

The victims were people from all walks of life: shepherds, fishermen, construction workers, street cleaners, doctors, clerics, journalists, politicians, policemen, housewives… killed as they walked, slept, drove, or changed a tyre.

Images of the last 20 years include wooden coffins, bodies in white shrouds, the names and faces of those killed – some smiling in old photographs – and many blown-out cars. There are also stories of heroes, like 18-year-old vendor Ahmed Draiwel, who picked up a bomb and ran with it, away from the busy market, in Sadr City in March of 2007. He was the only one who died when it exploded.

Thousands of civilians have been killed each year, since the night of the flashing images. At its peak, the terror claimed 29,027 in 2006; at its calmest, 902 in 2020. but 18 years on, the deaths continue.

Protests

In July 2021, as summer temperatures reached scorching levels, hundreds of Iraqis poured into the streets to protest widespread power outages in Baghdad and the country’s southern provinces. In Basra demonstrators blocked highways and burned tyres.

There have been regular waves of anti-government protests since 2015. Between September and December 2019 the country witnessed the largest and bloodiest protests since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003. This year, the main grievance is chronic electricity cuts.

Iraqis have been frustrated by the lack of clean water and electricity, widespread poverty, high levels of unemployment, government corruption, and dismal prospects for the largely young population.

The common explanation of the protests in Western media is “poor government service delivery ” and “rampant corruption”. Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, joined them in explaining the “total collapse of the electricity supply” as the result of “enormous state corruption in Iraq, with billions in oil money disappearing to private pockets”. This is also the official line presented by US government agencies, which criticise the corruption, incompetence, and mismanagement at the Iraqi Ministry of Electricity, as well as blaming “wasteful consumption by some Iraqis who treat electricity as an entitlement to be received at a very low fee or at no cost at all”.

A costly invasion

But putting the blame solely on the failure of the Iraqi authorities and people to improve life and employment conditions in the country ignores the fact that the 2003 invasion, followed by the military occupation lasting until 2011, drained the country’s resources. The occupation allowed Western multinationals to exploit Iraqi resources with almost no control from the government.

In fact, the current sad state of Iraq’s economy and institutions is the direct result of historical and geographical factors that include the devastating impact of imperialism and exploitation that continue to this day.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq, led by the George W Bush administration, destroyed all existing political and economic institutions, aiming to turn Iraq into a “neoliberal utopia”. When Saddam Hussein’s regime was defeated and replaced by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), headed by Paul Bremer, a series of extensive neoliberal measures were quickly introduced.

Within a month, 200 Iraqi state-owned companies were privatised, and corporate tax was reduced from 45% to 15%. Foreign firms were also allowed to retain 100% of their Iraqi assets. Furthermore, Iraq’s oil revenues, the main source for state expenses, were put into the US-dominated Development Fund for Iraq (DFI). This was held in an account at the Federal Reserve in New York and used for restructuring expenditure.

According to US government-sponsored audit reports to the US Congress in January 2005, from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), there was poor government oversight and subcontracting procedures which allowed questionable costs to go undetected. The CPA provided less than adequate controls for approximately $8.8bn of the Development Fund for Iraq, and did not establish or implement sufficient managerial, financial, and contractual controls to ensure that funds were used in a transparent manner.

Consequently, there was no assurance that the funds were used for the purposes of meeting the humanitarian needs of the Iraqi people, the economic reconstruction and repair of Iraq’s infrastructure, or any other purposes benefiting the people of Iraq.

Plundering a state

When the 2003 war started, the economy of Iraq was already in shambles, with the country having gone through the eight-year war with Iran in the 1980s, the first Gulf War of 1990-91, and the UN-imposed financial and trade embargo since 1990.

In the first year of the occupation, more than 70 American companies and individuals, (including Halliburton, Bechtel and Bearing Point) won reconstruction contracts, largely paid for from Iraqi funds. During the same period, Iraqi firms received just 2% of the value of contracts paid for from Iraqi funds.

Research from 2013 by the Financial Times showed that the top ten contractors secured business worth at least $72bn between them. Professor David Whyte of Liverpool University describes the economic performance of the Coalition Provisional Authority as “one of the most audacious and spectacular crimes of theft in modern history”.

"The suspension of the normal rule of law by the occupying powers,” Whyte wrote,
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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/north-africa-west-asia/the-impact-of-the-war-on-terror-on-iraq-state-economy-and-civilian-deaths/
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