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Authors: Patrick Cockburn
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recoup his investment from kickbacks at checkpoints on the roads, charging every goods vehicle that passed through. An Iraqi businessman told me some years ago that he had stopped importing goods through Basra port because the amount of money he had to spend bribing officials and soldiers at every stage as his goods were moved from the ship at the dockside to Baghdad made it unprofitable.
Another friend in Baghdad (I am afraid any account of Iraq will always be littered with sources who wish to remain anonymous) told me: “Soldiers under Saddam Hussein often wanted to desert—they were scarcely paid. But they knew they would be killed if they did, so it was better to die in battle. The present army has never been a national army. Its soldiers were only interested in their salaries and they were no longer frightened of what would happen to them if they ran away.”
* * *
Iraqis are not naïve. The grim experiences of their country’s rulers over the past fifty years have led many to recognize them as being self-serving, greedy, brutal, and incompetent. Ten years ago, some had hopes that they might escape living in a permanent state of emergency as the US and Britain prepared to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Others were wary of Iraqis returning from abroad who promised to build a new nation.
A few months before the 2003 invasion and occupation, an Iraqi civil servant secretly interviewed in Baghdad made a gloomy forecast. “The exiled Iraqis are the exact replica of those who currently govern us … with the sole difference that the latter are already satiated since they have been robbing us for the past thirty years,” he said. “Those who accompany the US troops will be ravenous.”
Many of the Iraqis who came back to Iraq after the US-led invasion were people of high principle who had sacrificed much as opponents of Saddam Hussein. But fast-forward a decade and the prediction of the unnamed civil servant about the rapaciousness of Iraq’s new government turns out to have been all too true. As one former minister put it, “the Iraqi government is an institutionalized kleptocracy.”
“The corruption is unbelievable,” said politicalscientist and activist Ghassan al-Attiyah. “You can’t get a job in the army unless you pay; you can’t even get out of prison unless you pay. Maybe a judge sets you free but you must pay for the paperwork, otherwise you stay there. Even if you are free you may be captured by some officer who paid $10,000 to $50,000 for his job and needs to get the money back.” In an Iraqi version of catch-22, everything is for sale. A former prison detainee said he had to pay his guards $100 for a single shower. Racketeering was, and continues to be, the norm: one entrepreneur built his house on top of a buried oil pipeline, drilled into it, and siphoned off quantities of fuel.
Corruption complicates and poisons the daily life of Iraqis, especially those who can afford to pay. But the frequent demand for bribes has not in itself crippled the state or the economy. The highly autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government is deemed extremely corrupt, but its economy is booming and its economic management is praised as a model for the country. More damaging for Iraq has been the wholesale theft of public funds. Despite tens of billions of dollars being spent, there is a continued shortage of electricity and other necessities. Few Iraqis regret the fall of Saddam, but many recall that, after the devastating US air strikes on the infrastructurein 1991, power stations were patched up quickly using only Iraqi resources.
There is more to Iraqi corruption than the stealing of oil revenues by a criminalized caste of politicians, parties, and officials. Critics of Prime Minster Maliki, who has been in power since 2006, say his method of political control has been to allocate contracts to supporters, wavering friends, or opponents whom he wants to win over. But that
Another friend in Baghdad (I am afraid any account of Iraq will always be littered with sources who wish to remain anonymous) told me: “Soldiers under Saddam Hussein often wanted to desert—they were scarcely paid. But they knew they would be killed if they did, so it was better to die in battle. The present army has never been a national army. Its soldiers were only interested in their salaries and they were no longer frightened of what would happen to them if they ran away.”
* * *
Iraqis are not naïve. The grim experiences of their country’s rulers over the past fifty years have led many to recognize them as being self-serving, greedy, brutal, and incompetent. Ten years ago, some had hopes that they might escape living in a permanent state of emergency as the US and Britain prepared to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Others were wary of Iraqis returning from abroad who promised to build a new nation.
A few months before the 2003 invasion and occupation, an Iraqi civil servant secretly interviewed in Baghdad made a gloomy forecast. “The exiled Iraqis are the exact replica of those who currently govern us … with the sole difference that the latter are already satiated since they have been robbing us for the past thirty years,” he said. “Those who accompany the US troops will be ravenous.”
Many of the Iraqis who came back to Iraq after the US-led invasion were people of high principle who had sacrificed much as opponents of Saddam Hussein. But fast-forward a decade and the prediction of the unnamed civil servant about the rapaciousness of Iraq’s new government turns out to have been all too true. As one former minister put it, “the Iraqi government is an institutionalized kleptocracy.”
“The corruption is unbelievable,” said politicalscientist and activist Ghassan al-Attiyah. “You can’t get a job in the army unless you pay; you can’t even get out of prison unless you pay. Maybe a judge sets you free but you must pay for the paperwork, otherwise you stay there. Even if you are free you may be captured by some officer who paid $10,000 to $50,000 for his job and needs to get the money back.” In an Iraqi version of catch-22, everything is for sale. A former prison detainee said he had to pay his guards $100 for a single shower. Racketeering was, and continues to be, the norm: one entrepreneur built his house on top of a buried oil pipeline, drilled into it, and siphoned off quantities of fuel.
Corruption complicates and poisons the daily life of Iraqis, especially those who can afford to pay. But the frequent demand for bribes has not in itself crippled the state or the economy. The highly autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government is deemed extremely corrupt, but its economy is booming and its economic management is praised as a model for the country. More damaging for Iraq has been the wholesale theft of public funds. Despite tens of billions of dollars being spent, there is a continued shortage of electricity and other necessities. Few Iraqis regret the fall of Saddam, but many recall that, after the devastating US air strikes on the infrastructurein 1991, power stations were patched up quickly using only Iraqi resources.
There is more to Iraqi corruption than the stealing of oil revenues by a criminalized caste of politicians, parties, and officials. Critics of Prime Minster Maliki, who has been in power since 2006, say his method of political control has been to allocate contracts to supporters, wavering friends, or opponents whom he wants to win over. But that
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