The U.S. Occupation of Iraq: An Overview
Harvard Initiative for Peace and Justice, May 2004
Iraq’s Strategic Significance: the real reason we went to war
Iraq’s oil reserves are the second largest in the world and have the potential to challenge Saudi Arabia as a guarantor of world oil price stability, if the proper infrastructure is developed to tap into these reservoirs. The Iraqi oil supply can be used to promote the interests of U.S. multinational corporations and the government’s economic agenda as long as they have control and access over it. Bush often proclaims Iraqi oil is for the Iraqi people – but even if oil revenues did return to Iraqis, this would be less significant for global economic leverage than who has control and access. By invading Iraq and constructing a government sympathetic to U.S. interests, the Bush administration invests in power over oil price fluctuation – and establishes bases for a stronger military presence in the region.
The so-called “Bremer orders” of September 2003 flagrantly violate international law on occupation. Recalling “shock therapy” techniques implemented during the 1990s in countries like Argentina and Russia, which intend to liberalize previously controlled economies and have often resulted in economic catastrophe, the Bremer orders consist of sweeping economic reforms, including the sale of all national industries, except oil, to private corporations, along with the liberalization of foreign investment, taxes, and tariffs. For instance, the corporate tax rate has been capped at an extremely low 15%. No democratically elected governing body chose these reforms for the Iraqi economy; they demonstrate the Bush administration is more committed to enforcing a “free and open market economy” – i.e., an economy dominated by U.S. corporations – than to the rights and well-being of the Iraqi people.
Corporate profiteering
The war has been better to no one than the corporations that make up a military-industrial complex with the U.S. government. Besides major defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrop Grumman, which received boosts from the invasion itself, Halliburton, Bechtel and other corporate heavies have won no-bid contracts to “reconstruct” Iraq and manage its infrastructure. As the products of cronyism, many contracts were awarded to companies with histories of corruption, at huge costs to U.S. taxpayers and the Iraqi people. For instance, Halliburton has been caught overcharging for fuel imports from Kuwait to Iraq. Several contractors in Iraq have already been penalized millions of dollars by the U.S. government for fraud.
The investments of U.S. corporations in Iraq are backed up risk-free by the Iraq Development Fund, which is controlled by the Occupational Authority and consists mainly of oil revenues. The Iraq Development Fund was formerly the United Nation’s oil-for-food program – its funds should rightfully be spent on food and basic necessities for the Iraqi people, but are being used to pay for contracts such as Halliburton’s.
JP Morgan has been awarded management of the newly created Trade Bank of Iraq. This bank replaces the U.N. oil-for-food program’s international trade functions. Unfortunately, the Trade Bank is set up to favor companies from contributing nations, regardless of the quality and price of their products. Through it, Iraqi ministries may borrow billions of dollars to buy much needed equipment from overseas suppliers, but only by mortgaging national oil revenues.
Besides projects centered around the oil industry and in spite of hefty contracts, any “reconstruction” in Iraq has been shockingly absent. Suffering most egregiously are hospitals, many of which were bombed during the invasion, and which continue to face severe supply shortages and filthy conditions – in Baghdad, doctors are forced to operate while standing in raw sewage because of broken pumps. One year after the invasion, roads and phones are in disrepair, electricity is intermittent, and water is unsafe to drink. Bechtel, which was contracted to repair schools, has left many untouched, while other supposedly “rebuilt” schools were installed with faulty fans, fake plumbing, and broken doors. Reconstruction has been hindered by corporate fraud and ineptitude in navigating Iraqi society – in one case, Bechtel subcontracting the repair of 15 schools to a butcher. Meanwhile, 70-80% of Iraqis remain unemployed.
Life under occupation
Recent photographs of torture in Iraqi prisons do not represent an aberration, as Bush and Blair might have us interpret, but an institutional pattern. The New Yorker disclosed a February 2004 report by Major General Antonio M. Taguba not meant for public release, which offers devastating conclusions about conditions in Army prisons that include chemical burnings, beatings, sodomy, and attack dogs. Amnesty International has documented abuses since the beginning of the invasion and stated about the photos from Abu Ghraib prison: “Our extensive research in Iraq suggests that this is not an isolated incident. It is not enough for the USA to react only once images have hit the television screens.” In fact, CBS at first refrained from releasing the photos under pressure from the Defense Department, which only caved when they had already begun circulating publicly elsewhere.
For months, the U.S. occupation forces have pursued a policy of arbitrary detention without hearing or redress, in the name of imposing security. The manner of soldiers’ frequent raids on houses is brutal. U.S. troops have regularly shot, beaten, and mistreated civilians without provocation. In the course of these raids, sick and elderly have died as a result of needless mishandling. Back in July 2003, Amnesty International reported that rounded up detainees were locked up for 24 hours a day in rooms with no light, or held in overcrowded tents in temperatures approaching 122F. Relatives gather outside of prisons daily, but are completely denied information on the whereabouts of the missing and barred from visiting. Among detainees kept in such conditions were 80 minors, including an 11-year-old boy:
“Sufiyan Abd al-Ghani, 11 … was with his uncle in a car that was stopped near his home in Hay al-Jihad at just after 10 p.m. on May 27. The boy’s father heard a commotion and rushed outside to see him sprawled face down on the road with a rifle muzzle pressed against his neck and US officers shouting that someone in the car had shot at them.
“Sufiyan was made to stay on the ground for three hours, while more than 100 soldiers poured into the neighbourhood, searching houses and cars. Eventually he was taken away with his hands trussed behind his back and a hood draped over his head. No weapon had been found. The boy said that soldiers dug rifle butts into his neck and back and that the first night he was handcuffed and left alone in a tiny room open to the sky.
“The following day he was moved to the airport, where he said for eight days he shared a tent with 22 adults, sleeping on the dirt, with no water to wash or change his clothes. Sufiyan said that he was pulled from the tent one morning, hooded and manacled again, and driven to Sarhiyeh prison, to be kept in a room with 20 other youths aged 15 or 16 – regarded as minors by the Geneva Convention.
“A woman inmate took his name and details and when she was released she alerted Sufiyan’s family. On June 21, the family obtained an injunction from a judge ordering the boy’s release, but they were told at the prison that the signature of an Iraqi judge no longer had legal authority. Even when an American military lawyer demanded his freedom, US troops refused to release him until the lawyer appeared at the prison.”
-- The Times Online, http://globalresearch.ca/articles/MCG307A.html
The arbitrariness of detention, difficulty of securing release, and utter lack of accountability of occupation forces to the Iraqi public in this story are not exceptional, but part of a systemic pattern of abuse under the occupation.
The U.S. military actions have at times indiscriminately targeted civilians. By conservative estimates, at least 11,000 Iraqi civilians and 30,000 Iraqis have been killed. In early April, U.S. media reported a ceasefire in Falluja which the military had indeed declared – but during the ceasefire, U.S. snipers only continued to shoot civilians, even targeting ambulances with their gunfire. U.S. soldiers killed hundreds of refugees trying to flee the city. Through such actions, at least 600 Iraqis, including 300 women and children, have been slaughtered in Falluja. In Sadr city, U.S. helicopters have fired rockets into residential areas. Although no curfew has officially been imposed, U.S. soldiers have made a practice of aiming tank fire on cars they find moving through the streets after dark. Soldiers have shot and killed Arab-looking journalists, as well as protesters at peaceful demonstrations.
The U.S. military has deceived the public as to the damage wrought by the invasion. The Pentagon initially claimed that 80 percent of rockets fired in this second Gulf War would be “smart” weapons. However, subsequent figures suggest that as many as 48 percent of weapons fired in the invasions first week of “Shock and Awe” were “moron munitions.”
What next?
The Bush administration’s claims at bringing democracy to Iraq are a hollow cover for the advancement of American corporate, military, and strategic interests. From the Governing Council to town administrations, Iraqis appointed to government positions have largely been unrepresentative, unelected puppets with little power. Furthermore, U.S. plans for June 30 will not mark any step towards Iraqi sovereignty. The U.S. plans to maintain control of Iraq’s military, and Rumsfeld has announced an escalation of U.S. deployments. Paul Bremer has publicly admitted the administration has no definite plans for just who they intend to transfer sovereignty to. The administration has supported a UN proposal for transfer to a “caretaker” government that will be appointed top-down, similar to the current Governing Council.
More info: www.occupationwatch.org, www.democracynow.org, www.warprofiteers.com, http://electroniciraq.net
TEACH-IN 7:30 pm Mon., May 10, Harvard Hall 104 Meetings: 6 pm Mon. Loker 29