The same old racket in Iraq

To the victors, the spoils: Bush's colonialism will only deepen resistance

Tariq Ali
Saturday December 13, 2003
The Guardian

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.

* Tariq Ali's latest book, Bush in Babylon: The Re-colonisation of
Iraq, is published by Verso