[Peace-discuss] Wrecked Iraq--analysis.

[Brussel Morton K.]

The Devastation in Iraq Is Systematic -- And It's About to Get Much  
Worse

By Michael Schwartz, Tomdispatch.com. Posted October 27, 2008.


Iraq's state of complete disrepair has created a population in  
steaming discontent.

Controversial Status of Forces Agreement Facing Iraqi Opposition

The Roman historian Tacitus famously put the following lines in the  
mouth of a British chieftain opposed to imperial Rome: "They have  
plundered the world, stripping naked the land in their hunger they  
are driven by greed, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor  
They ravage, they slaughter, they seize by false pretenses, and all  
of this they hail as the construction of empire. And when in their  
wake nothing remains but a desert, they call that peace."

Or, in the case of the Bush administration, post-surge "success."  
Today, however, success in Iraq seems as elusive as ever for the  
President. The Iraqi cabinet is now refusing, without further  
amendment, to pass on to Parliament the status of forces agreement  
for stationing U.S. troops in the country that it's taken so many  
months for American and Iraqi negotiators to sort out. Key  
objections, as Juan Cole points out at his Informed Comment blog,  
have come from the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, which is [Prime  
Minister Nouri] al-Maliki's chief political partner, the support of  
which he would need to get the draft through parliament." That party,  
Cole adds tellingly, "is close to Tehran, which objects to the  
agreement." The Iranian veto? Hmmm

Among Iraqis, according to the Dreyfuss Report, only the Kurds, whose  
territories house no significant U.S. forces, remain unequivocally in  
favor of the agreement as written. Frustrated American officials,  
including Ambassador Ryan Crocker ("Without legal authority to  
operate, we do not operate That means no security operations, no  
logistics, no training, no support for Iraqis on the borders, no  
nothing"), Secretary of Defense Robert Gates ("Without a new legal  
agreement,'we basically stop doing anything' in the country"), and  
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen ("We are clearly running out  
of time") are huffing and puffing, and threatening -- if the  
agreement is not passed as is -- to blow the house down.

Without a mandate to remain, American troops won't leave, of course.  
At year's end, they will, so American officials insist, simply  
retreat to their bases and assumedly leave Maliki's government to  
dangle in the expected gale. Clearly, this is a game of chicken.  
What's less clear is who's willing to go over the cliff, or who  
exactly is going to put on the brakes.

In the meantime, the administration that, only four years ago,  
imposed conditions on Iraq at least as onerous as those nineteenth  
century colonial powers imposed on their colonies, can no longer get  
an agreement it desperately needs from its "allies" in Baghdad. Could  
this, then, be the $700 billion kiss-off? Stay tuned and, in the  
meantime, consider, as described by TomDispatch regular Michael  
Schwartz, what the Bush administration did to Iraq these last five  
years. Imagine it as a preview of the devastation the  
administration's domestic version of de-Baathification is now doing  
to the U.S. economy.

Schwartz's striking piece encapsulates a story he's been following  
closely for years: the everyday economic violence that invasion and  
occupation brought to Iraq. It's being posted in honor of the just- 
released latest TomDispatch volume, his War Without End: The Iraq War  
in Context, beautifully produced by Haymarket Books. Think of this  
superb new work on the American war in Iraq as Tacitus updated. In  
it, Schwartz offers a gripping history -- the best we have -- of how  
(to steal a phrase from the Roman historian), "driven by greed [and]  
ambition," the U.S. dismantled Iraq economically. It's a nightmare of  
a tale, which you can watch Schwartz discuss in a brief video by  
clicking here. If this be "success," then we truly are wandering in  
the desert. (By the way, any author profits from the book will go to  
IVAW, Iraq Veterans Against the War.) Tom

Wrecked Iraq

What the Good News from Iraq Really Means
By Michael Schwartz

As the Smoke Clears in Iraq: Even before the spectacular presidential  
election campaign became a national obsession, and the worst economic  
crisis since the Great Depression crowded out other news, coverage of  
the Iraq War had dwindled to next to nothing. National newspapers had  
long since discontinued their daily feasts of multiple -- usually  
front page - reports on the country, replacing them with meager meals  
of mostly inside-the-fold summary stories. On broadcast and cable TV  
channels, where violence in Iraq had once been the nightly lead,  
whole news cycles went by without a mention of the war.

The tone of the coverage also changed. The powerful reports of  
desperate battles and miserable Iraqis disappeared. There are still  
occasional stories about high-profile bombings or military campaigns  
in obscure places, but the bulk of the news is about quiescence in  
old hot spots, political maneuvering by Iraqi factions, and the newly  
emerging routines of ordinary life.

A typical "return to normal life" piece appeared October 11th in the  
New York Times under the headline, "Schools Open, and the First Test  
is Iraqi Safety." Featured was a Baghdad schoolteacher welcoming her  
students by assuring them that "security has returned to Baghdad,  
city of peace."

Even as his report began, though, Times reporter Sam Dagher hedged  
the "return to normal" theme. Here was his first paragraph in full:

"On the first day of school, 10-year-old Basma Osama looked uneasy  
standing in formation under an already stifling morning sun. She and  
dozens of schoolmates listened to a teacher's pep talk -- probably a  
necessary one, given the barren and garbage-strewn playground."
This glimpse of the degraded conditions at one Baghdad public school,  
amplified in the body of Dagher's article by other examples, is  
symptomatic of the larger reality in Iraq. In a sense, the (often  
exaggerated) decline in violence in that country has allowed foreign  
reporters to move around enough to report on the real conditions  
facing Iraqis, and so should have provided U.S. readers with a far  
fuller picture of the devastation George Bush's war wrought.

In reality, though, since there are far fewer foreign reporters  
moving around a quieter Iraq, far less news is coming out of that  
wrecked land. The major newspapers and networks have drastically  
reduced their staffs there and -- with a relative trickle of  
exceptions like Dagher's fine report -- what's left is often little  
more than a collection of pronouncements from the U.S. military, or  
Iraqi and American political leaders in Baghdad and Washington,  
framing the American public's image of the situation there.

In addition, the devastation that is now Iraq is not of a kind that  
can always be easily explained in a short report, nor for that matter  
is it any longer easily repaired. In many cities, an American  
reliance on artillery and air power during the worst days of fighting  
helped devastate the Iraqi infrastructure. Political and economic  
changes imposed by the American occupation did damage of another  
kind, often depriving Iraqis not just of their livelihoods but of the  
very tools they would now need to launch a major reconstruction  
effort in their own country.

As a consequence, what was once the most advanced Middle Eastern  
society -- economically, socially, and technologically -- has become  
an economic basket case, rivaling the most desperate countries in the  
world. Only the (as yet unfulfilled) promise of oil riches, which  
probably cannot be effectively accessed or used until U.S. forces  
withdraw from the country, provides a glimmer of hope that Iraq will  
someday lift itself out of the abyss into which the U.S. invasion  
pushed it.

Consider only a small sampling of the devastation.

The Economy: Fundamental to the American occupation was the desire to  
annihilate Saddam Hussein's Baathist state apparatus and the economic  
system it commanded. A key aspect of this was the closing down of the  
vast majority of state-owned economic enterprises (with the exception  
of those involved in oil extraction and electrical generation).

In all, 192 establishments, adding up to 35% of the Iraqi economy,  
were shuttered in the summer and fall of 2003. These included basic  
manufacturing processes like leather tanning and tractor assembly  
that supplied other sectors, transportation firms that dominated  
national commerce, and maintenance enterprises that housed virtually  
all the technicians and engineers qualified to service the  
electrical, water, oil, and other infrastructural systems in the  
country.

Justified as the way to bring a modern free-enterprise system to  
backward Iraq, this draconian program was put in place by the  
President's proconsul in Baghdad, L. Paul Bremer III. The result? An  
immediate depression that only deepened in the years to follow.

One measure of this policy's impact can be found in the demise of the  
leather goods industry, a key pre-invasion sector of Iraq's non- 
petroleum economy. When a government-owned tanning operation, which  
all by itself employed 30,000 workers and supplied leather to an  
entire industry, was shuttered in late 2003, it deprived shoe-makers  
and other leather goods establishments of their key resource. Within  
a year, employment in the industry had dropped from 200,000 workers  
to a mere 20,000.




By the time Bremer left Iraq in the spring of 2004, the inhabitants  
of many cities faced 60% unemployment. Meanwhile, the country's  
agriculture, a key component of its economy, was also victimized by  
the dismantling of government establishments and services. The lush  
farming areas between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers suffered badly.  
The once-thriving date palm industry was a typical casualty. It  
suffered deadly infestations of pests when the occupation eliminated  
a government-run insecticide spraying program. Even oil refinery- 
based industrial towns like Baiji became cities of slums when plants  
devoted to non-petroleum activities were shuttered.

This economic devastation fueled the insurgency by generating  
desperation, anger, and willing recruits. The explosion of  
resistance, in turn, tended to obscure -- at least for western news  
services -- the desperate circumstances under which ordinary Iraqis  
labored.

As violence has subsided in Baghdad and elsewhere, demands for relief  
have come to the fore. These are not easily answered by a still  
largely non-functional central government in Baghdad whose  
administrative and economic apparatus was long ago dismantled, and  
many of whose key technical personnel had fled into exile. Meanwhile,  
in early 2006, the American occupation declared that further  
reconstruction work would be the responsibility of Iraqis. It is not  
clear into what channels the growing discontent over an economy that  
remains largely in the tank and a government that still cannot  
deliver ordinary services will flow.

Electricity: A critical factor in Iraq's collapse has been its  
decaying electrical grid. In areas where the insurgency raged,  
facilities involved in producing and transmitting electricity were  
targeted, both by the insurgents and U.S. forces, each trying to  
deprive the other of needed resources. In addition, Bremer eliminated  
the government-owned maintenance and engineering enterprises that had  
been holding the electrical system together ever since the U.N.  
sanctions regime after the 1991 Gulf War deprived Iraq of material  
needed to repair and upgrade its facilities. Maintenance and  
replacement contracts were given instead to multinational companies  
with little knowledge of the existing system and -- due to cost-plus  
contracting -- every incentive to replace facilities with their own  
proprietary technology. In the meantime, many Iraqi technicians left  
the country.

The successor Iraqi governments, deprived of the capacity to manage  
the system's reconstruction, continued the U.S. occupation policy of  
contracting with foreign companies. Even in areas of the country  
relatively unaffected by the fighting, those companies did the  
lucrative thing, replacing entire sections of the electric grid,  
often with inappropriate but exquisitely expensive equipment and  
technology.

A combination of factors -- including pressure from the insurgency,  
the soaring costs of security, and an almost unparalleled record of  
endemic waste and corruption -- led to costs well beyond those  
originally offered for the already overpriced projects. Many were  
then abandoned before completion as funding ran out. Completed  
projects were often shabbily done and just as often proved  
incompatible with existing facilities, introducing new inefficiencies.

In one altogether-too-typical case, Bechtel installed 26 natural gas  
turbines in areas where no natural gas was available. The turbines  
were then converted to oil, which reduced their capacity by 50% and  
led to a rapid sludge build-up in the equipment requiring expensive  
maintenance no Iraqi technicians had been trained to perform. In  
location after location, the turbines became inoperative.

Even before the invasion, the decrepit electrical system could not  
meet national demand. No province had uninterrupted service and  
certain areas had far less than 12 hours of service per day. The vast  
investments by the occupation and its successor regimes have  
increased electrical capacity since the invasion of 2003, but these  
gains have not come close to keeping up with skyrocketing demand  
created by the presence of hundreds of thousands of troops, private  
security personnel, and occupation officials, as well as by the  
introduction of all manner of electronic devices and products in the  
post-invasion period. Recent U.N. reports indicate that, in the last  
year, electrical capacity has slipped to less than half of demand.  
With priority going to military and government operations, many  
Baghdad neighborhoods experience less than two hours of publicly  
provided electricity a day, forcing citizens and business enterprises  
to utilize expensive and polluting gasoline generators.

In spring of this year, 81% of Iraqis reported that they had  
experienced inadequate electricity in the previous month. During the  
heat of summer and the cold of winter, these shortages create real  
health emergencies.

In 2004, the U.N. estimated that $20 billion in reconstruction funds  
would be needed for a fully operative electrical grid. The estimates  
now range from $40 billion to $80 billion.

Water: The Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which flow through the  
country from the northwest to the southeast, have since time  
immemorial irrigated the rich farming land that lay between them,  
nurtured the fish that are a staple of the Iraqi diet, and provided  
water for animal and human consumption. American-style warfare, with  
its reliance on tank, artillery, and air power, often resulted in the  
cratering of streets in upstream Sunni cities like Tal Afar, Falluja,  
and Samarra where the insurgency was strongest. One result was the  
wrecking of already weakened underground sewage systems. In the Sadr  
City section of Baghdad, for instance, where much fighting has taken  
place and American air power was called in regularly, there is now a  
lake of sewage clearly visible on satellite photographs.

The ultimate destination of significant parts of the filth from  
devastated sewage systems was the two rivers. Five years worth of  
such waste flowing through the streets and into those rivers has left  
them thoroughly contaminated. Their water can no longer be safely  
drunk by humans or animals, the remaining fish cannot be safely  
eaten, and the contaminated water reportedly withers the crops it  
irrigates.

Iraq's never-adequate water purification system has proven woefully  
insufficient to handle this massive flow of contamination, while  
inadequate electric supplies insure that the country's few functional  
purification plants are less than effective.

In many cities, the sewage system must be entirely reconstructed, but  
repairs cannot even begin without a viable electrical system, a  
reinvigorated engineering and construction sector, and a government  
capable of marshalling these resources. None of these prerequisites  
currently exist.

Schools: Education has been a victim of all the various pathologies  
current in Iraqi society. During the initial invasion, the U.S.  
military often commandeered schools as forward bases, attracted by  
their well-defined perimeters, open spaces for vehicles, and many  
rooms for offices and barracks. Two incidents in which American  
gunfire from an occupied elementary school killed Iraqi civilians in  
the conservative Sunni city of Falluja may have been the literal  
sparks that started the insurgency. Many schools would subsequently  
be rendered uninhabitable by destructive battles fought in or near them.

Under the U.S. occupation's de-Baathification policy, thousands of  
teachers who belonged to the Baath Party were fired, leaving hundreds  
of thousands of students teacherless. In addition, the shuttering of  
government enterprises deprived the schools of supplies -- including  
books and teaching materials -- as well as urgently needed maintenance.

The American solution, as with the electric grid, was to hire  
multinational firms to repair the schools and rehabilitate school  
systems. The result was an orgy of corruption accompanied by very  
little practical aid. Local school officials complained that  
facilities with no windows, heating, or toilet facilities were  
repainted and declared fit for use.

The dwindling central government presence made schools inviting  
arenas for sectarian conflict, with administrators, teachers, and  
especially college professors removed, kidnapped, or assassinated for  
ideological reasons. This, in turn, stimulated a mass exodus of  
teachers, intellectuals, and scientists from the country, removing  
precious human capital essential for future reconstruction.

Finally, in Baghdad, the U.S. military began installing ten-foot tall  
cement walls around scores of communities and neighborhoods to wall  
off participants in the sectarian violence. As a result,  
schoolchildren were often separated from their schools, reducing  
attendance at the few intact facilities to those students who  
happened to live within the imprisoning walls.

This fall, as some of these walls were dismantled, residents  
discovered that many of the schools were virtually unusable. The  
Times's Dagher offered a vivid description, for instance, of a school  
in the Dolaie neighborhood which "is falling apart, and overwhelmed  
by the children of almost 4,000 Shiite refugee families who have  
settled in the Chukouk camp nearby. The roof is caving in, classroom  
floors and hallways are stripped bare, and in the playground a pile  
of burnt trash was smoldering."

The Dysfunctional Society: Much has been made in the U.S.  
presidential campaign of the $70 billion oil surplus the Iraqi  
government built up in these last years as oil prices soared. In  
actuality, most of it is currently being held in American financial  
institutions, with various American politicians threatening to  
confiscate it if it is not constructively spent. Yet even this bounty  
reflects the devastation of the war.

De-Baathification and subsequent chaos rendered the Iraqi government  
incapable of effectively administering projects that lay outside the  
fortified, American-controlled Green Zone in the heart of Baghdad. A  
vast flight of the educated class to Syria, Jordan, and other  
countries also deprived it of the managers and technicians needed to  
undertake serious reconstruction on a large scale.

As a consequence, less than 25% of the funds budgeted for facility  
construction and reconstruction last year were even spent. Some  
government ministries spent less than 1% of their allocations. In the  
meantime, the large oil surpluses have become magnets for massive  
governmental corruption, further infuriating frustrated citizens who,  
after five years, still often lack the most basic services.  
Transparency International's 2008 "corruption perceptions index"  
listed Iraq as tied for 178th place among the 180 countries evaluated.

The Iraq that has emerged from the American invasion and occupation  
is now a thoroughly wrecked land, housing a largely dysfunctional  
society. More than a million Iraqis may have died; millions have fled  
their homes; many millions of others have been scarred by war,  
insurgency and counterinsurgency operations, extreme sectarian  
violence, and soaring levels of common criminality. Education and  
medical systems have essentially collapsed and, even today, with  
every kind of violence in decline, Iraq remains one of the most  
dangerous societies on earth.

As its crisis deepened, the various areas of social and technical  
devastation became ever more entwined, reinforcing one another. The  
country's degraded sewage and water systems, for example, have  
spawned two consecutive years of widespread cholera. It seems likely  
that this year, the disease will only subside when the cold weather  
makes further contagion impossible, but this "solution" also  
guarantees its reoccurrence each year until water purification  
systems are rebuilt.

In the meantime, cholera victims cannot rely on Iraq's once vaunted  
medical system, since two-thirds of the country's doctors have fled,  
its hospitals are often in a state of advanced decay and disrepair,  
drugs remain scarce, and equipment, if available at all, is outdated.  
The rebuilding of the water and medical systems, however, cannot get  
fully underway unless the electrical system is restored to reasonable  
shape. Repair of the electrical grid awaits a reliable oil and gas  
pipeline system to provide fuel for generators, and this cannot be  
constructed without the expertise of technicians who have left the  
country, or newly trained specialists that the educational system is  
now incapable of producing. And so it goes.

On a daily basis, this cauldron of misery renews powerful feelings of  
discontent, which explains why American military leaders regularly  
insist that the country's current relative quiescence is, at best,  
"fragile." They believe only the most minimal reductions in U.S.  
forces in Iraq (still hovering at close to 150,000 troops) are  
advisable.

Even if Washington prefers to ignore Iraqi realities, military  
officials working close to the ground know that the country's state  
of disrepair, and an inability to deal with it in any reasonably  
prompt way, leaves a population in steaming discontent. At any  
moment, this could explode in further sectarian violence or yet  
another violent effort to expel the U.S. forces from the country.




See more stories tagged with: iraq, reconstruction

Michael Schwartz is a professor of sociology and faculty director of  
the Undergraduate College of Global Studies at Stony Brook University.

-------------- next part --------------
Skipped content of type multipart/related