It has been obvious from the start that Iraq is a mess partly because it has been overrun by US private companies.
Naomi Klein wrote an article about it as early as 2004 that made this abundantly clear:
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From the start, the neocons running Iraq had shown nothing but disdain for Iraq's state-owned companies. In keeping with their Year Zero‒apocalyptic glee, when looters descended on the factories during the war, U.S. forces did nothing. Sabah Asaad, managing director of a refrigerator factory outside Baghdad, told me that while the looting was going on, he went to a nearby U.S. Army base and begged for help. “I asked one of the officers to send two soldiers and a vehicle to help me kick out the looters. I was crying. The officer said, ‘Sorry, we can't do anything, we need an order from President Bush.’” Back in Washington, Donald Rumsfeld shrugged. “Free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.”
...
Immediately after the nominal end of the war, Congress appropriated $2.5 billion for the reconstruction of Iraq, followed by an additional $18.4 billion in October. Yet as of July 2004, Iraq's state-owned factories had been pointedly excluded from the reconstruction contracts. Instead, the billions have all gone to Western companies, with most of the materials for the reconstruction imported at great expense from abroad.
With unemployment as high as 67 percent, the imported products and foreign workers flooding across the borders have become a source of tremendous resentment in Iraq and yet another open tap fueling the insurgency. And Iraqis don't have to look far for reminders of this injustice; it's on display in the most ubiquitous symbol of the occupation: the blast wall. The ten-foot-high slabs of reinforced concrete are everywhere in Iraq, separating the protected—the people in upscale hotels, luxury homes, military bases, and, of course, the Green Zone—from the unprotected and exposed. If that wasn't injury enough, all the blast walls are imported, from Kurdistan, Turkey, or even farther afield, this despite the fact that Iraq was once a major manufacturer of cement, and could easily be again.
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The whole article by Klein is pretty interesting by the way and can be read for free at Harper's Bazaar's website.
Now
the LA Times had an article yesterday on how the number people employed by private contractors exceeds the number of US soldiers. On Daily Kos a poster named Clammy C (whose diaries are almost always pretty interesting)
puts some things in perspective:
Quote:
When I first read the LA Times article, I was thinking something along the lines of Blackwater/private militia/2nd amendment angle would be one to take. But then as I read through the article, I noticed a few other items that jump out as even bigger – things that deal with the overall privatization of Iraq – mainly to the benefit of republican party supporters (not that this is new), and what can only be described as the real willful goal of the Bush administration on many levels and the tremendous negative impact it has had in nearly every metric that can be measured.
Well, duh – you may think. But I don’t just mean the information that we have all known about in terms of "opportunities" presented prior to the invasion. Or the oil law that would presumably be the big goal of this administration as (another) payback to the big oil companies here in the US (all while they of course claim that we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil). Or even the recent announcement by the Iraq Minister of Industry recently announced the privatization of all non-oil assets
There is more, once you look deeper. Much more.
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Now we already read about the
forced labor used to build the new US embassy in Baghdad.
Literally BILLIONS of dollars are being wasted, when at the same time it was estimated that
a mere $ 100 million would go a very long way:
Quote:
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A major global consulting firm has reviewed Iraq's state-owned enterprises and estimated that it would cost $100 million to restart all of them and employ more than 150,000 Iraqis—$100 million.
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Clammy C
continues:
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when contractors themselves are unaccountable, paid multiples of what our soldiers are being paid AND the contracting companies (again, pretty much all linked to the Bush administration and republican party) get to make hundreds of millions off of our tax dollars, you can bet that the troops themselves aren’t too happy with this arrangement, nor are We the People.
But those who benefit richly are very happy – the contractors who just happen to be aligned with companies associated with the Bush administration, the republican party and their causes. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis – Iraqi citizens – could be put back to work with the amount of money that is spent in half a day in Iraq by this government. Instead, we see the entire country moving towards privatization, and contractors – a number that now is far in excess of the number of US troops.
Some level of pillaging was already obvious. The "private militia" that is now sanctioned under US contract via Blackwater USA has become a bigger issue over the past year. The forced labor and poor treatment of other foreigners brought into Iraq by companies associated with this administration and the republican party not only completes the cycle, but also accomplishes other objectives:
To keep work out of the hands of Iraqi citizens, under the guise of "they may be insurgents", and in the hands of foreign nationals who are exploited and put in dangerous situations – all to enrich those who are ensuring that the system stays rigged against Iraqis, basic labor standards and practices to their (and their cronies’) benefit.
Not unexpected, but that doesn’t make it any less inexcusable. Iraq is NOT the 51st state of the United States of America. Nor should it be another tool for enriching the republican party and its main donors.
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The whole thing goes a pretty long way to understand why there will never be an end to the insurgency. As long as there is this kind of - let's face it - colonial rule and as long as Iraqis will be made to feel they are losing control over their own country, there will be violent resistance to the occupation.
The privatization of Iraq
Re: The privatization of Iraq
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