Iraq

From Paul Bremer to Iyad Allawi - From occupation to occupation

He left at night, like a thief running for his life, just minutes after signing a paper purporting a transference of power to a handpicked assortment of CIA agents, thugs and opportunists. 'First I wanted to get out of that airspace safely,' he said later, 'we've had a number of planes hit, including one of the people who works for the CPA killed flying out the night before. So my first thought was "Let's get out of here safely".'

The pathetic ceremony - if it can be called a ceremony - was brought forward by two days to 28 June; such was the state of fear in the coalition camp. Thirty people gathered in a building in the Green Zone in Central Baghdad, surrounded by hundreds of US troops. The secretive ceremony was formal but quick; for the gallery, it began with the recitation from the Qur'an and then two persons signed a paper, a handful of journalists were suddenly escorted to the office of an ex-CIA agent, Iyad Allawi, now designated as the interim prime minister, where Shaikh Ghazi al-Yawer, another puppet now called the interim president, the US proconsul, Paul Bremer, and a few others were waiting.

'This is a historic day..., a day that all Iraqis have been looking forward to,' Shaikh Ghazi said, while no Iraqi outside knew what was going on in the secretive chamber. Later that night, the world was told sovereignty had been returned to Iraq. Then the sombre looking 'terrorist expert', who had ruled Iraq for 15 months, quickly headed for the airport where a military aircraft was ready to take off.

He departed from Baghdad, leaving behind 140,000 US soldiers, 20,000 other 'coalition' soldiers, and 20,000 private military contractors who face an uncertain future and wait for the day when they can also be in a safer airspace. But for the moment, the 62-year old career diplomat was not thinking of those soldiers; he was thinking of his home and of Washington DC where he would admit to ABC television that 'there's no doubt that the Iraqis didn't like to be occupied. Who does? And frankly, it wasn't very comfortable being occupiers either for us'.

More importantly for the future of Iraq, the man who left Baghdad like a thief left behind a plethora of Regulations, Orders, Memoranda and Public Notices issued during his 15-month illegal rule as the head of Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA).

To be precise, there are 12 'Regulations' that are 'instruments that define the institutions and authorities of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA)': 101 'Orders' counting an annex to Order Number 60, 'which are binding instructions or directives to the Iraqi people that create penal consequences or have a direct bearing on the way Iraqis are regulated, including changes to Iraqi law'; 17 'Memoranda' which 'expand on Orders or Regulations by creating or adjusting procedures applicable to an Order or Regulation'; and a host of 'Public Notices' which 'communicated the intentions of the Administrator to the public and may require adherence to security measures that have no penal consequence or reinforces aspects of existing law that he CPA intends to enforce'.

It is through these 'Orders' and 'Regulations' that the occupation of Iraq is supposed to continue. Instead of Paul Bremer, these instruments of occupation will now be used by a bunch of handpicked thugs appointed by the United States. This includes, among others, Iyad Allawi, the ex-CIA agent turned prime minister, who, by his own admission, was a Saddam loyalist until he fled to London and took the 'King's shilling' (read M16), 'CIA's dollar' and (again by his own admission) money from '12 other intelligence agencies'.

In addition to Allawi, there are of course the national security and intelligence chiefs, appointed by Paul Bremer with five-year terms, as well as an electoral commission with authority to disqualify any party or candidate.

Bremer's proclamations include the four infamous orders issued on 19 September 2003 which together constitute an instrument of economic occupation of Iraq for generations to come. These orders allow for privatisation of public enterprises, full ownership rights by foreign firms of Iraqi businesses, full repatriation of foreign profits, a Flat Tax, the opening of Iraq's banks to foreign control, an order pertaining to the treatment of foreign companies as national, and an order which eliminates nearly all trade barriers. In practical terms, these orders allow US corporations to own very business in Iraq and send all their money home.

More specifically, Bremer's Order 39 (Foreign Investment includes five elements) allows:

• privatisation of state-owned enterprises;
• 100% foreign ownership of businesses in all sectors except oil and mineral extraction, banks and insurance companies (the latter two are addressed in a separate order);
• 'national treatment' of foreign firms, meaning they are considered Iraqi;
• unrestricted, tax-free remittance of all funds associated with the investment, including, but not limited to, profits; and
• 40-year ownership licences which have the option of being renewed.

Under this order, water services, electric utilities, schools, hospitals, television, newspapers, prisons - almost everything in the services sector - could be privatised.

In fact, the water sector has already been monopolised by Bechtel Corporation of San Francisco, one of the most cruel corporations in the world, with a track record of devastating whole regions. One of its subsidiaries obtained contracts in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and immediately sent water prices sky-rocketing. Families earning a minimum wage of $60 per month faces water bills of $20 per month. Water rates were increased by 100% time and again; at one point even a 300% jump was reported.

When citizens rose in protest, the US government sent troops who fired at unarmed crowds, killing at least one 17-year old youth. Ultimately, the government relented and cancelled the contract. Bechtel when filed a $25 million lawsuit against Bolivia for lost profits. Citizens of Bolivia have written a letter to the people of Iraq, warning them of what to expect from Bechtel.

Under Order Number 39, Paul Bremer has decreed that Iraqi factories, farms, telecommunications, transportation systems, publishing, and other businesses could all be completely owned, run and employed by non-Iraqis. The Order states: 'Iraq cannot restrict access by foreign owners to any sector of the economy except resource extraction'.

This Order has allowed MCI, formerly WorldCom, to receive approximately $20 million to build a wireless phone network in the Baghdad area. Last year, the same company under its former name, WorldCom, was found guilty of cheating investors by overstating its cash flow by nearly $4 billion, and was temporarily banned from receiving federal contracts.

The same order also states that 'a foreign investor shall be entitled to make foreign investments in Iraq on terms no less favourable than those applicable to an Iraqi investor'. This means Iraq cannot ask US companies with several billion dollar reconstruction contracts to hire local contractors, nor can qualified Iraqi companies receive contracts over foreign-owned companies.

The order allowed Stevedoring Services of America (SSA) to receive a $4.8 million contract to manage the Umm Qasr seaport. When press reports revealed that the British experts had already identified Iraqis who could perform the same duty, there was an outcry, leading to a slight rift among the top brass in Britain and the US. Britain's chief military officer in the Gulf told The Guardian in public that the port should be run by Iraqis as a model for future reconstruction of the country, but the US disagreed, and hired SSA instead, a company notorious for its anti-unionist policies.

National treatment is also a powerful leverage used by companies to circumvent domestic regulations on the environment, public health, employee and consumer safety.

The same draconian order (39) allows investors to 'transfer abroad, without delay, all funds associated with [their] investment, including shares or profits and dividends'.

This provision allows foreign investors to put their money wherever they like and take it out whenever they want to 'without delay'. This is exactly the provision which has been identified as the primary cause of the East Asian financial crisis of the 1997-98 and the financial collapse of Argentina in 2000. Such provisions eliminate all government regulations on how much foreign investment can enter an economy, where it can be invested, how long or how much money must stay in the economy.

Paul Bremer further decreed in his Order 39 that 'Iraq will be locked into its contracts under these rules for forty years, with an option of unlimited renewal'. His Order 40 allows privatisation of the banking sector. Any foreign bank can now own up to 50% of Iraqi banks. JP Morgan, the second largest bank in the US implicated in the Enron scandal, has already been awarded a contract to run a consortium of 13 banks that will constitute the Trade Bank of Iraq.

In short, by the time Bremer left Iraq in the darkness of that terrible secrecy, he had already established instruments of US occupation. During his stay in Iraq, the US has extracted billions of dollars from Iraq in various ways, including an undisclosed amount of oil.

In June 2003, when Bremer issued on Order called the 'Trade Liberalisation Policy', he suspended 'all tariffs, customs duties, import taxes, licensing fees and similar surcharges for goods entering or leaving Iraq, and all other trade restrictions that may apply to such goods' until December 2003. Thus, during this period of six months and 18 days, the US was importing and exporting all goods into and out of Iraq without paying any duties.

All orders issued by Paul Bremer were designed to shackle the Iraqi economy permanently. Of course, they are all illegal and immoral, just as the invasion of Iraq itself was. Fortunately, it is too late in the day for an occupying army to employ 19th century tactics for its legacy. The people of Iraq and the heroic resistance now well underway will never accept these shackles.

It is merely a question of time that the world's most technologically advanced army will be forced to leave Iraq. No matter when that happens, Paul Bremer and his puppets have already recorded their names in the darkest annals of human history.