|
The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
|
June 29th,
2009 - Why Iraq is Now the Most Corrupt Country on the Planet |
|
Why Iraq is Now the Most
Corrupt Country on the Planet By Patrick Cockburn Counterpunch June 29, 2009 "I paid $800 to get my
job,” says Ahmed Abdul, a technician working for Karada municipality in
Baghdad. “People know this is wrong, but there is no way round it.” In Iraq corruption is pervasive at every
level. “Corruption exists all over
the world but is at its worst here,” laments Ateej Saleh Midhat, a
26-year-old employee of the state-owned Rafidain Bank. “In 2008 and 2009 it
was difficult for any graduate to have a job without paying $500 to $1,500 according to what kind of
job it was. But what about the people who cannot afford to pay?” Iraq is the world’s premier
kleptomaniac state. According to Transparency International the only
countries deemed more crooked than Iraq are Somalia and Myanmar, while Haiti
and Afghanistan rank just behind. In contrast to Iraq, which enjoys
significant oil revenues, none of these countries have much money to steal. Iraqis resent paying a bribe
for almost everything, but do not see what they can do about it. Nor will
they believe that the government is serious in its claim to be clamping down
on corruption until senior officials are punished. The first sign that this might
be beginning to happen came last month when rhe former Minister of Trade
Abdul Falah al-Sudani was arrested after the plane on which he was travelling
to Dubai was dramatically turned round in mid-air and ordered to return to
Baghdad. The Trade Ministry is known to Iraqis as “the Ministry of
Corruption” because it administers the $6 billion food rationing system,
which gives endless opportunities for making money through taking bribes from
suppliers or sending tainted goods to the shops. The trade ministry scandal
had already become very public when Mr al-Sudani’s guards shot it out at the
ministry headquarters with police come to arrest ten officials who were able
to escape through a back entrance during the gun battle. A video circulated
from phone to phone in Baghdad shows Trade Ministry officials cavorting with
prostitutes at a party. The corruption most Iraqis
run into is at a humbler level and usually means that the smallest
bureaucratic hurdle can only be overcome with a bribe. For instance several
years ago the government starting issuing special new passports which were
supposedly more secure than the old. But since the quickest and sometimes the
only way to obtain one is through a bribe, in which case few questions are
asked, the new passports are even more insecure than their predecessors. The
same is true of other identity documents. If
bribes are not paid to facilitate such transactions, officials subject
their victim to bureaucratic harassment until they pay up. It is not just that Iraqis
object to paying off officials, but they are not sure they will get what they
pay for. Laila Fadel Amr is a young housewife who graduated from a teachers’
training institute in 2005, but has never held a job since. “I didn’t want to
join any of the Islamic parties,” she says. “And I didn’t want to pay my
money for a job and then find that promises are not kept and I have paid for
nothing.” If a job is obtained then the bribe-giver has to start taking
backhanders to pay back money borrowed to make the original bribe. Iraq has offered
extraordinary opportunities for fraud since the fall of Saddam Hussein. War
created enough confusion to divert attention from theft and made it difficult
to check on what was really going on. In one notorious case in 2004-5 the
government allocated $1.3 billion for weapons purchases. These were carried
out by the then head of military procurement, Ziyad Cattan, a Polish-Iraqi
who had once run a pizza parlor outside Bonn. The Minister of Defence was
Hazem al-Shalaan who had been involved in property in a small way in London
in the 1990s. Little military equipment was ever received by the Iraqi
military aside from some 28-year-old Soviet helicopters from Poland, too
antique to fly, and second hand vehicles deemed obsolete by the Pakistani
army. The violence in Iraq in
2004-7 made it highly dangerous to check if goods paid for by the government
had ever been delivered or even existed. One instance now being investigated
concerns $600 million in food rations supposedly sent to Anbar and other
Sunni provinces at a time when they were part-controlled by the insurgents,
which may never have reached the shops from where they were to be distributed
to needy customers. Iraq was not always uniquely
corrupt. In the 1970s its administration was probably more efficient and
honest than in most oil producing countries. It was the aftermath of the
invasion of Kuwait in 1990 which criminalized Iraqi society. UN sanctions
imposed a tight economic siege and were designed to keep oil revenue out of the
hands of ruling elite. Extended over 13 years they destroyed society and the
economy. The government had no money to pay its employees. The currency
collapsed. A university professor suddenly found he was paid only the
equivalent of $5 a month and was not allowed to resign from government
service. One I knew called Jawad only succeeded in retiring by faking a heart
attack and paying off doctors to produce charts showing he was about to
expire. Since they were not paid by the government, state employees simply
charged the public for any services they provided. Though officials are now
quite well paid thiis system still goes on. At the top end of government
Saddam Hussein and his lieutenants quickly found ways of evading sanctions to
their own advantage. They controlled the black market. Uday, Saddam’s eldest
son, was paid off in millions of dollars by cigarette importers. Russian oil
brokers kicked back on oil contracts they were awarded, so money went to the
government in Baghdad and not to the UN as it was meant to do under the oil
for food program. The men who orchestrated these black market deals under
Saddam Hussein found they could quickly establish the same sort of corrupt
relationship with post-Saddam-governments. A criminal network was already in place. As Iraq was impoverished by
sanctions in the 1990s street robberies and burglaries became common. In a
country which had has little civil crime, taxi drivers began carrying
pistols. To stem criminal violence the government started amputating the ears
and hands of thieves and showing the gory results on television. By 2003 millions of
impoverished Iraqis would do anything for a living, including crime. With the
fall of Baghdad they had their opportunity. The beneficiaries of the looting
of Iraq were nicknamed the al-hawasim or ‘the finalists’ by Iraqis, a joking
reference to Saddam’s boast that the US invasion would see “the final
battle”. They stole and, since they viewed the US-installed Iraqi government
as illegitimate and an American puppet, they thought they were right to
steal. This attitude has not died away. As violence ebbed from its
highest point in 2006-7, Iraqis have become more resentful at corruption and
theft. They know that many officials and politicians own luxury villas in
Jordan and Egypt. Reconstruction is painfully slow as money allocated to it
vanishes. Many families react to a relative being imprisoned by immediately
finding out how much they have to pay to get him freed. Political parties use
ministries they control as a source of plunder and patronage. Even the best connected have
to pay. The relative of one man, a life-long opponent of Saddam Hussein, was
shot and badly wounded earlier this year. The man knew everybody in the top
ranks of government and was promised a prompt investigation. He had a strong
suspicion about who might have carried out the attempted assassination. but
he found the police and judges involved were moving very slowly. He suspected
some dark conspiracy by his political enemies and consulted his lawyer about
what to do. His lawyer laughed at his suspicions. “No, there is a simpler
reason why the police and the judge aren’t doing anything to find the
gunmen,” he said. “They are waiting for you to bribe them before they start
their investigation.” External link: http://www.counterpunch.org/patrick06292009.html |