The greatest failure of all in Iraq
Published 04 September 2006
Of all the promises that were made to the Iraqi people on the eve of the invasion three and a half years ago, the pledge of humanitarian support, aid and reconstruction was the one that struck an immediate and profound chord with everyone in the country.
Many other promises were made, of course, in order to make the case that the policy of regime change was not only desirable, but urgently needed. But these other arguments seemed far more hypothetical and distant. The pledge to provide the money and resources to improve basic services was always going to have a far greater and more immediate power in the minds of ordinary Iraqis than the rhetoric of a political vision that promised a new constitution, human rights, relations with neighbours, and so on. As important as these issues are, they just couldn't match the vision of better healthcare, electricity, the repair of sewage systems and all the other critical civilian infrastructure that would be shat tered by military conflict.
I still remember hearing the words of George W Bush, three hours after the invasion began. The first bombs had just begun to hit the western suburbs of the city, and at the same time President Bush's voice came over the radio. He said he wanted to speak to the Iraqi people, because he had a message for them. He promised them that as British and American soldiers dismantled the infrastructure of Saddam Hussein's rule, it would be replaced by aid and hum anitarian supplies. If ever there was a failed promise, it is this one; and in many ways it is the worst promise Britain and America could have reneged on: the one that really meant something tangible and real in the lives of ordinary Iraqis.
The extent to which the stated humanitarian objective of the Iraq war has failed to materialise is astounding, even to the greatest cynic. It is almost invisible. On the one hand, this is a measure of just how bad the security situation in the country has become. But it is also a measure of how much this conflict is no longer about humanitarian issues; the resources, people and political capital is now focused overwhelmingly on security and counter-terrorism.
The words that Bush spoke directly to the Iraqi people are now without any real basis. Even he has given up the pretence of pledging billions of dollars to largely theoretical reconstruction projects; and last year the administration made it clear that much of the money for any such projects would come out of Iraqi oil funds. Yet, so widespread is the level of corruption in Iraq, on the part of western officials as well as Iraqi, that one has to wonder what proportion of oil sales makes it into Iraqi state coffers, compared to the amounts diverted to private bank accounts.
The absence of humanitarian reconstruction and the level of corruption in Iraq has received so little coverage that it will be easy for us to say that "we never knew" when more information finally emerges. Let me, for the record, give a small number of illustrations.
The vast majority of senior UN meetings and consultations on Iraqi aid and humanitarian projects don't take place in Iraq: they meet in neighbouring Jordan. So even discussions about Iraq don't happen in the country.
Even as far back as 2004, the World Food Programme revealed the findings of a baseline survey which concluded that 6.5 million Iraqis, 25 per cent of the entire population, "remained highly dependent on food rations". The survey went on to say that "around 27 per cent of all children up to the age of five are chronically malnourished". This was based on data that Iraqi health workers were able to collect in 2003 when the security situation meant that aid workers could travel around and work. God only knows what the picture is like now.
The period of the formal US-led occupation was just as bad. It lasted for one year, until the handover of sovereignty in June 2004. In that time, the Coalition Provisional Authority under Paul Bremer spent just under $20bn of Iraqi oil revenues on contracts the coalition awarded to western contractors. To this day, no one, including the General Accounting Office of the US Congress, the British parliament or the UN can accurately account for how that $20bn was dispersed. It goes on and on.
It is mystifying how something so fundamental to the US/UK presence in Iraq can be so under-reported. There are many exceptions: Patrick Cockburn of the Independent and several programmes on Channel 4 have highlighted the humanitarian failures of the Iraq conflict. But I suspect that the vast majority of British viewers and readers have heard little on this subject.
While many western contractors have done very well out of reconstruction projects, the tiny handful of NGOs run by westerners and Iraqis working in co-operation (who actually have a presence inside Iraqi communities, where the larger international relief organisations do not) are in some cases having their funding cut. In my next column, I will write about one such organisation, whose Iraqi doctors, teachers and engineers are now suddenly having to face a future without even the tiny amount of funding that the Department for International Development has provided them with for many years.
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