Tag: iraq

Iraq’s war economy

Finally, here’s (part of) the story behind the news: The authors Christopher Parker and Pete W. Moore in the latest MERIP issue analyze Iraq’s war economy and see much of the motives behind the insurgency against the US-led occupation in decades-old gray economic structures that are challenged by the new guys in power.

Throughout the 1990s, most of Iraq’s oil was transported in relatively small tanker trucks—to Jordan and Turkey with dispensation from Washington and undercover to Syria and the Gulf. As the pipelines to Turkey and the Gulf were turned back on in 2003, most of these truckers—many of whom had close ties with, and indeed colleagues in, neighboring countries—were out of a job. Hence, it is not surprising to learn that pipeline attacks “are now orchestrated by [insurgents and criminal gangs] to force the government to import and distribute as much fuel as possible using thousands of tanker trucks.

The authors challenge the mainstream view (and thereby also the whole reconstruction ideology) that in pre-invasion Iraq the state still functioned as a regulatory agent and controlled much of the Iraqi economy.

Washing their hands of any responsibility for the violence that plagues Iraq, they present the insurgency as springing from a yearning for lost domination on the part of groups linked to the Saddam-era state. This is the statist narrative—the idea that Saddam’s regime controlled everything worth controlling before it was overthrown.

Highly interesting are the remarks on the links to Iraq’s neighbors, most notably Jordan:

The political and social histories of modern Iraq and Jordan are bound tightly together. The deep ties between families, tribes, political movements and economic actors across the borders of these two countries have a history that, by and large, has yet to be written.

From the article it also becomes clear that the 2003 invasion merely finished off what was left of the prosperous nation that Iraq was in 1980. The US got most of the job done by sponsoring Saddam in the 80s and engineering UN sanctions in the 90s.

Iraqi oil workers on strike

Between some of the most preposterously neo-liberal economic laws anywhere in the world and attempts to give oil companies some of the most generous formulas for production sharing, Iraq has suffered plenty at the hands of US-led efforts to remodel its economy. Now it’s the Maliki government that’s threatening to come down “with an iron fist” on striking oil workers:

WASHINGTON, June 6 (UPI) — On the third day of an oil strike in southern Iraq, the Iraqi military has surrounded oil workers and the prime minister has issued arrest warrants for the union leaders, sparking an outcry from supporters and international unions.

“This will not stop us because we are defending people’s rights,” said Hassan Jumaa Awad, president of IFOU. As of Wednesday morning, when United Press International spoke to Awad via mobile phone in Basra at the site of one of the strikes, no arrests had been made, “but regardless, the arrest warrant is still active.” He said the “Iraqi Security Forces,” who were present at the strike scenes, told him of the warrants and said they would be making any arrests.

The arrest warrant accuses the union leaders of “sabotaging the economy,” according a statement from British-based organization Naftana, and said Maliki warned his “iron fist” would be used against those who stopped the flow of oil.

IFOU called a strike early last month but put it on hold twice after overtures from the government. Awad said that at a May 16 meeting, Maliki agreed to set up a committee to address the unions’ demands.

The demands include union entry to negotiations over the oil law they fear will allow foreign oil companies too much access to Iraq’s oil, as well as a variety of improved working conditions.

“Apparently they promise but they never do anything,” Awad said, confirming reports the Iraqi Oil Ministry would send a delegation to Basra.

“One person from the Ministry of Oil accompanied by an Iraqi military figure came to negotiate the demands. Instead it was all about threats. It was all about trying to shut us up, to marginalize our actions,” Awad said. “The actions we are taking now are continuing with the strike until our demands are taken in concentration.”

While you might say Iraq has bigger problems than labor woes at the moment, and that keep the oil flowing should be a national priority. Fine. But then how about giving oil workers their fair dues and not resorting to the thuggish violence characteristic of the previous regime? Or is this about keeping them off the negotiating table for the already controversial oil law?

Bacevich on his son’s death

Boston University Professor Andrew Bacevich, an opponent of the war on Iraq who recently lost his son there, wrote this WaPo op-ed. Here’s the bit about what he blames for his son’s death:

Money buys access and influence. Money greases the process that will yield us a new president in 2008. When it comes to Iraq, money ensures that the concerns of big business, big oil, bellicose evangelicals and Middle East allies gain a hearing. By comparison, the lives of U.S. soldiers figure as an afterthought.

Memorial Day orators will say that a G.I.’s life is priceless. Don’t believe it. I know what value the U.S. government assigns to a soldier’s life: I’ve been handed the check. It’s roughly what the Yankees will pay Roger Clemens per inning once he starts pitching next month.

Money maintains the Republican/Democratic duopoly of trivialized politics. It confines the debate over U.S. policy to well-hewn channels. It preserves intact the cliches of 1933-45 about isolationism, appeasement and the nation’s call to “global leadership.” It inhibits any serious accounting of exactly how much our misadventure in Iraq is costing. It ignores completely the question of who actually pays. It negates democracy, rendering free speech little more than a means of recording dissent.

This is not some great conspiracy. It’s the way our system works.

Representing the other (and oneself)

The Kevorkian Center at NYU (were I currently study) organized a wonderful literary symposium yesterday. In the morning, Elias Khoury, Yitzhak Laor and Yael Lerer spoke of “Representations of the Other in Literature,” particulary Israeli-Palestinian literature.

I have just recently read Ghassan Kanafani‘s novella “Return to Haifa,” which is generally considered to have the first humanized depiction of an Israeli character in Palestinian literature. Khoury also mentioned the work of the poet Mahmoud Darwish, in particular his poem “The Soldier Dreams of White Lilies.” In an article about Darwish, Adam Shatz writes that:

In “A Soldier Dreaming of White Lilies,” written just after the 1967 war, Mr. Darwish tells of an Israeli friend who decided to leave the country after returning home from the front.

I want a good heart Not the weight of a gun’s magazine.
I refuse to die
Turning my gun my love
On women and children.

The poem elicited ferociously polarized reactions, Mr. Darwish said: “The secretary general of the Israeli Communist Party said: `How come Darwish writes such a poem? Is he asking us to leave the country to become peace lovers?’ And Arabs said, `How dare you humanize the Israeli soldier.’ “

It’s also worth noting the character of Rita, an Israeli lover, who inhabits decades of Darwish’s poetry and was immortalized in the Marcel Khalife song with lyrics by Darwish “Rita and the Rifle.”

The first sympathetic Palestinian character in Israeli fiction on the other hand is widely considered to be the teenage Naim in A. B. Yehoshua‘s “The Lover,” written in 1977, although as panelists pointed out, even when depicterd sympathetically, few Palestinian characters in Israeli fiction are allowed to speak for themselves (in a previous Yehoshua short story, “Facing the Forests,” the Palestinian character is physically silenced: his tongue has been cut out).

Lerer, the head of the publishing house Andalus, spoke of their project to translate literature from Arabic to Hebrew, started in 2000 (she said that the number of works translated from Arabic to Hebrew is disproportionately small, both compared to translations from Western languages and to translations from Hebrew to Arabic). Unfortunately the project is currently stalled, due to generally dismal sales (a novel by the master Tayyib Saleh sold 150 copies).

According to the Israeli panelists, Israeli literature strives for a “high” literary tone and effaces both the inner heterogeneity of the Israeli experience (spoken language, Yiddish, dialects, the voices of Sephardic Jews) and links to Arabic culture and language. Laor spoke of the “fetishization of Western culture” and Lerer said that “the major Israeli policy today is building walls,” including in the field of culture.

In an afternoon panel (Sami Chetrit, Ella Shohat, Sinan Antoon and Ammiel Alcalay) this point came up again, with participants noting the difficulty of getting works by Arab Jews translated and published, because these works are not easily categorizable and challenge prevailing dichotomies.

In this panel, about “The writer as public intellectual,” the participants discussed not only the challenge for Middle Eastern writers and intellectuals of interjecting some nuance into thoroughly polarized debates, but also the growing ethnification of literature and academia, with ethnic/sectarian/racial categories expected to correspond to political positions or ideologies. Thus Sinan Antoon, an Iraqi Christian who left Iraq in 1991, has been approached and asked to write about “Iraqi Christian literature” (a category he is doubtful exists). When Ammiel Alcalay was trying to get a book about a Jewish convert to Islam in Iraq of the 1930s (by Shimon Ballas, an Iraqi Jew who emigrated to Israel in 1951) published, an editor told him: “This is an amazing book. But what does it have to do with Israel?”

I think the desire to fit Arab and Muslim and Jewish literature into identifiable categories goes beyond the “market niche” mentality of publishing and speaks to a view of the Middle East as one in which everyone can be categorized by religion/ethnicity/tribe and in which writers are often expected to inform us in some (often politically) useful way about their particular community. What I’ve often thought of as “the instrumental value” approach to, and what Antoon labelled the “forensic interest” in, Arab/Muslim literature drives me absolutely nuts and deserves a whole separate post.

In the meantime, for work that challenges such views, you may be interested in the recently published “Outcast” by Shimon Ballas, “I’jaam, an iraqi rhapsody” by Antoon, and “Scrapmetal” by Ammiel Alcalay. I picked up all three and can’t wait to read them. I would also keep my eyes out for the forthcoming English translation of Yitzhak Laor’s work. He read an excerpt and it was dark and hilarious.

“a couple guys do some things that were questionable..”

We’ve all seen the massacres and crimes and atrocities that some US forces have committed in Iraq and Afghanistan–as inevitably as members of every occupying power before them.

But as this article in today’s Washington Post makes clear, what’s perhaps even more worrying are the actions of the 20,000 or so private security contractors in Iraq, who fall under no legal system whatsoever and a few of whom apparently like to get their kicks by taking target practice on elderly taxi drivers. (It’s also worth noting the racist employment policies of the security companies: American nationals get paid $600 a day, “third state” nationals, that is non-American, non-Iraqis, get paid..$70.)

I remember a journalist friend, who had gone to live in Baghdad from pretty much day one of the invasion, telling me years ago about contractors killing Iraqi civilians–and each other!–pretty indiscriminately. I’ve always wondered why the batallion of contractors in Iraq and their actions wasn’t a bigger story.

Betrayed

I’ve been meaning to signal George Packer’s article “Betrayed” in the New Yorker from 2 weeks ago. I know the issue has been out for a while now, but this article is the definition of a must-read. Everything about it, including the accompanying photographs, is stellar reporting. Packer tells the stories of different Iraqis working for the US forces in Baghdad and through these stories captures the nuances of the relationship between Americans and Iraqis and many of the reasons the occupation has been a failure. He also justly indicts those American politicians (including most Democratic presidential candidates) who are currently perfecting the “blame-the-Iraqis-for-not-getting-their-own-occupation-right” argument for withdrawal. On top of everything else, this unwillingless to take any moral responsibility for what we’ve done in Iraq and for the lives of Iraqis who believed in our “liberation” rhetoric is shocking.

BBC: Lancet study on Iraq credible, advised top UK government scientist

I’ve been skeptical myself about the incredibly high figures for mortality in Iraq since the invasion quoted by the Lancet study — they are after all several times higher than other sources — but the BBC has obtained (through a freedom of information request) a formerly confidential report from the UK’s top government scientist who said the methodology used in the Lancet article is credible:

The British government was advised against publicly criticising a report estimating that 655,000 Iraqis had died due to the war, the BBC has learnt.

Iraqi Health Ministry figures put the toll at less than 10% of the total in the survey, published in the Lancet.

But the Ministry of Defence’s chief scientific adviser said the survey’s methods were “close to best practice” and the study design was “robust”.

Another expert agreed the method was “tried and tested”.

The Iraq government asks the country’s hospitals to report the number of victims of terrorism or military action.

Critics say the system was not started until well after the invasion and requires over-pressed hospital staff not only to report daily, but also to distinguish between victims of terrorism and of crime.

The Lancet medical journal published its peer-reviewed survey last October.

It was conducted by the John Hopkins School of Public Health and compared mortality rates before and after the invasion by surveying 47 randomly chosen areas across 16 provinces in Iraq.

The researchers spoke to nearly 1,850 families, comprising more than 12,800 people.

In nearly 92% of cases family members produced death certificates to support their answers. The survey estimated that 601,000 deaths were the result of violence, mostly gunfire.

Shortly after the publication of the survey in October last year Tony Blair’s official spokesperson said the Lancet’s figure was not anywhere near accurate.

He said the survey had used an extrapolation technique, from a relatively small sample from an area of Iraq that was not representative of the country as a whole.

President Bush said: “I don’t consider it a credible report.”

But a memo by the MoD’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Roy Anderson, on 13 October, states: “The study design is robust and employs methods that are regarded as close to “best practice” in this area, given the difficulties of data collection and verification in the present circumstances in Iraq.”

While this is not necessarily conclusive about the Lancet study, it is pretty damning about the mendacity of Tony Blair’s cabinet. But then again we knew that already. Here is another BBC analysis, dated October 2006, that looks at the competing estimates of Iraqi deaths.

Failure to communicate

Yet another story of greed, corruption and incompetence in the privatization of the US occupation of Iraq: Radar has an interview with a former private Arabic instructor who barely spoke Arabic:

The lack of Arabic translators in Iraq appears to stem from a Bush Administration decision to outsource translation services to private contractors. Called “linguistic support,” these companies, two of the largest of which are Titan Corporation and DynCorp International, have received billions of dollars to provide language interpreters to the Iraq reconstruction effort. But many of the supposed “translators” sent to Iraq were untrained, had poor language skills, or couldn’t speak Arabic at all. In many cases the contractors appear to have conducted no screenings or interviews with prospective translators. And Titan Corporation interpreters are accused of involvement in two cases of prisoner abuse in Iraq and one case of espionage at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

. . .

So you had been out of Arabic from the mid-’90s to 2002 when they hired you to teach soldiers Arabic prior to their Iraq deployment.
That’s right, with zero experience. I’d never been to a Middle Eastern country.

Do you feel you were qualified for the job?
Was I the right guy to teach the course? No.

Did they give you any instructions?
I asked them, “What do you want me to do?” And they said, “You’re the expert.” Look, it was that REEP got the contract and then they sent an e-mail to me, because it looked like I spoke Arabic, asking me if I would come teach the course. That was it. There was no interview. There was no anything. No accountability. Nothing.

How did they know you really spoke Arabic?
Because it said so on my resumé. Because I said so when they asked me.

Mahdi Army on Iran “break”

Let’s take a break from this sectarian warfare, go see our pals in Iran, and let the Americans take out the Sunnis for us. We can come back when they’re ready to leave. That’s seems to be the thinking of the Mahdi Army and their allies in the Iraqi government, anyway:

Senior commanders of the Mahdi army, the militia loyal to the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, have been spirited away to Iran to avoid being targeted in the new security push in Baghdad, a high-level Iraqi official told the Guardian yesterday.
On the day the Iraqi government formally launched its crackdown on insurgents and amid disputed claims about the whereabouts of Mr Sadr, the official said the Mahdi army leadership had withdrawn across the border into Iran to regroup and retrain.

“Over the last three weeks, they [Iran] have taken away from Baghdad the first and second-tier military leaders of the Mahdi army,” he said. The aim of the Iranians was to “prevent the dismantling of the infrastructure of the Shia militias” in the Iraqi capital – one of the chief aims of the US-backed security drive.