The same old racket in Iraq

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The Guardian (UK)
Saturday December 13, 2003
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Tariq Ali
The same old racket in Iraq
To the victors, the spoils:
Bush's colonialism will only deepen resistance

Iraq remains a country of unbearable suffering, the sort
that only soldiers and administrators acting on behalf
of
states and governments are capable of inflicting on
their
fellow humans. It is the first country where we can
begin
to study the impact of a 21st-century colonisation. This
takes place in an international context of globalisation
and neo-liberal hegemony. If the economy at home is
determined by the primacy of consumption, speculation as
the main hub of economic activity and no inviolate
domains
of public provision, only a crazed utopian could imagine
that a colonised Iraq would be any different.

The state facilities that were so carefully targeted
with
bombs and shells have now to be reconstructed, but this
time under the aegis of private firms, preferably
American,
though Blair and Berlusconi, and perhaps plucky Poland
too,
will not be forgotten at handouts time. Meanwhile, Dick
Cheney's old firm, Halliburton, awarded a contract
(without
any competition) to rebuild Iraq's oil industry, is
happily
boosting profits by charging the US government $2.64 a
gallon for the fuel it trucks into Iraq from Kuwait. The
normal price per gallon in the region is 71 cents, but
since the US taxpayer is footing the bill, nobody cares.

The secret plan to privatise the country by selling off
its
assets to western corporations was drafted in February
this
year and surfaced in the Wall Street Journal, which
helpfully explained that "for many conservatives, Iraq
is
now the test case for whether the United States can
engender American-style free-market capitalism within
the
Arab world". Worried by the leaks, Bush and Blair issued
a
user-friendly joint statement on April 8, stressing that
Iraq's oil and other natural resources are "the
patrimony
of the people of Iraq, which should be used only for
their
benefit". But who decides on behalf of the Iraqi people
-
Bremer/Chalabi or Chalabi/Bremer?

Iraq's state-run health service, which, prior to the
killer
sanctions, was the most advanced in the region, is now
being privatised, courtesy of Abt Associates, a US firm
specialising in privatisations that has clearly been
forgiven its record of "invoice irregularities" by its
Washington patron. Its first priority is instructive. It
has demanded armoured cars for its staff. Khudair Abbas,
the orthopaedic surgeon from Ilford and "minister for
health" in the puppet government, was recently in London
boasting of the state-of-the-art hospitals they would
soon
build to create a "two-tier health system". Sound
familiar?

This week Bush amplified US policy by insisting on the
time-honoured norm: to the victor, the spoils. Why
should
those countries (Germany, France, China, Russia, etc)
that
had refused to make the necessary blood sacrifice expect
a
share of the loot? The EU is screaming "foul", and its
bureaucrats are suggesting that by denying the
non-belligerent states equal opportunities to exploit an
occupied Iraq, the US is withdrawing itself from the
groove
of capitalist legality. These arguments won't carry much
weight in Washington, but if China, Russia and France
insist that, as the occupying powers, the US and Britain
should immediately meet the debts incurred by the former
Iraqi regime, there might be some basis for negotiation.
A
few bones in the shape of juicy subcontracts could be
thrown in the direction of China and the EU, but only if
they stop whingeing and behave themselves in public.

On its own, the privatisation plan, if implemented
successfully, would be a disaster for the bulk of Iraqi
citizens (as is the case in most of Latin America and
central Asia), but the situation here is unique. These
"reforms" are being imposed at tank point. Many Iraqis
perceive them as a recolonisation of the country, and
they
have provoked an effective and methodical resistance. On
the military level, the situation continues to
deteriorate,
thus remaining the source of numerous internal
difficulties
and sustaining friction and strife within the west.

In a recent dispatch from Baghdad in the New York Review
of
Books, Mark Danner reported that in the two months
(October
and November) he spent in the occupied city, the number
of
daily attacks on US troops had more than doubled, from
15
to 35, and behind the bombings of other targets "one can
see a rather methodical intention to sever, one by one,
with patience, care and precision, the fragile lines
that
still tie the occupation authority to the rest of the
world". How will the occupying armies respond? In the
only
way they can, with the traditional methods of colonial
rule. The Israelis are trying their best to help, but
they
haven't been too successful themselves.

On December 7, the front page of the New York Times
carried
a report from Dexter Filkins in Baghdad. Its opening
paragraph could have applied to virtually any major
colonial conflict of the past century: "As the guerrilla
war against Iraqi insurgents intensifies, American
soldiers
have begun wrapping entire villages in barbed wire. In
selective cases, American soldiers are demolishing
buildings thought to be used by Iraqi attackers. They
have
begun imprisoning relatives of suspected guerrillas in
hope
of pressing insurgents to turn themselves in."

During the first phase of European colonisation, it was
the
companies that were provided with a charter to raise
their
own armies to defend their commercial interests. The
British and Dutch East India companies took India and
Java.
Later, their countries' empires moved in to take control
and consolidate the gains. It was different in the
Americas. Here it was always a case of "send in the
marines". General Smedley Butler, a much-decorated and
celebrated US war hero of the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, with 34 years' military service, later
reflected
on his campaigns and produced a telling volume entitled
War
as a Racket. He explained his central thesis thus: "I
spent
most of my time being a high-class muscle-man for Big
Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short
I
was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism... I helped
make
Honduras 'right' for American fruit companies in 1903. I
helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for
American
oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a
decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect
revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen
Central
American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The
record of racketeering is long."

The 21st-century colonial model appears to be a
combination
of the two approaches. Specialist companies are now
encouraged to provide "security". They employ the
mercenaries, and their profits are ensured by the state
that hires them. They are backed up by the real army
and,
more importantly, by air power, to help defeat the
enemy.
But none of this will work if the population remains
hostile. And large-scale repression only helps to unite
the
population against the occupiers. The fear in Washington
is
that the Iraqi resistance might attempt a sensational
hit
just before the next presidential election. The fear in
the
Arab east is that Bush and Cheney might escalate the
conflict to retain the White House in 2004. Both fears
may
well be justified.