[lit-ideas] Naomi Klein question
- From: Eternitytime1@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2004 23:57:05 EDT
Hi,
Can someone tell me about Naomi Klein? I think I keep mixing her up with
someone else...
Thanks,
Marlena in Missouri
Baghdad Year Zero
Pillaging Iraq in pursuit of a neocon utopia
Posted on Friday, September 24, 2004. Originally from Harper's Magazine,
September 2004. By Naomi Klein.
http://harpers.org/BaghdadYearZero.html
It was only after I had been in Baghdad for a month that I found what I was
looking for. I had traveled to Iraq a year after the war began, at the
height
of what should have been a construction boom, but after weeks of searching I
had not seen a single piece of heavy machinery apart from tanks and humvees.
Then I saw it: a construction crane. It was big and yellow and impressive,
and when I caught a glimpse of it around a corner in a busy shopping
district
I thought that I was finally about to witness some of the reconstruction I
had heard so much about. But as I got closer I noticed that the crane was
not
actually rebuilding anythingâ??not one of the bombed-out government buildings
that still lay in rubble all over the city, nor one of the many power lines
that remained in twisted heaps even as the heat of summer was starting to
bear down. No, the crane was hoisting a giant billboard to the top of a
three-story building. SUNBULAH: HONEY 100% NATURAL, made in Saudi Arabia.
Seeing the sign, I couldnâ??t help but think about something Senator John
McCain
had said back in October. Iraq, he said, is â??a huge pot of honey thatâ??s
attracting a lot of flies.â?? The flies McCain was referring to were the
Halliburtons and Bechtels, as well as the venture capitalists who flocked to
Iraq in the path cleared by Bradley Fighting Vehicles and laser-guided
bombs.
The honey that drew them was not just no-bid contracts and Iraqâ??s famed oil
wealth but the myriad investment opportunities offered by a country that had
just been cracked wide open after decades of being sealed off, first by the
nationalist economic policies of Saddam Hussein, then by asphyxiating United
Nations sanctions.
Looking at the honey billboard, I was also reminded of the most common
explanation for what has gone wrong in Iraq, a complaint echoed by everyone
from John Kerry to Pat Buchanan: Iraq is mired in blood and deprivation
because George W. Bush didnâ??t have â??a postwar plan.â?? The only problem
with
this theory is that it isnâ??t true. The Bush Administration did have a plan
for what it would do after the war; put simply, it was to lay out as much
honey as possible, then sit back and wait for the flies.
* * *
The honey theory of Iraqi reconstruction stems from the most cherished
belief
of the warâ??s ideological architects: that greed is good. Not good just for
them and their friends but good for humanity, and certainly good for Iraqis.
Greed creates profit, which creates growth, which creates jobs and products
and services and everything else anyone could possibly need or want. The
role
of good government, then, is to create the optimal conditions for
corporations to pursue their bottomless greed, so that they in turn can meet
the needs of the society. The problem is that governments, even
neoconservative governments, rarely get the chance to prove their sacred
theory right: despite their enormous ideological advances, even George Bushâ??
s
Republicans are, in their own minds, perennially sabotaged by meddling
Democrats, intractable unions, and alarmist environmentalists.
Iraq was going to change all that. In one place on Earth, the theory would
finally be put into practice in its most perfect and uncompromised form. A
country of 25 million would not be rebuilt as it was before the war; it
would
be erased, disappeared. In its place would spring forth a gleaming showroom
for laissez-faire economics, a utopia such as the world had never seen.
Every
policy that liberates multinational corporations to pursue their quest for
profit would be put into place: a shrunken state, a flexible workforce, open
borders, minimal taxes, no tariffs, no ownership restrictions. The people of
Iraq would, of course, have to endure some short-term pain: assets,
previously owned by the state, would have to be given up to create new
opportunities for growth and investment. Jobs would have to be lost and, as
foreign products flooded across the border, local businesses and family
farms
would, unfortunately, be unable to compete. But to the authors of this plan,
these would be small prices to pay for the economic boom that would surely
explode once the proper conditions were in place, a boom so powerful the
country would practically rebuild itself.
The fact that the boom never came and Iraq continues to tremble under
explosions of a very different sort should never be blamed on the absence of
a plan. Rather, the blame rests with the plan itself, and the
extraordinarily
violent ideology upon which it is based.
* * *
Torturers believe that when electrical shocks are applied to various parts
of
the body simultaneously subjects are rendered so confused about where the
pain is coming from that they become incapable of resistance. A declassified
CIA â??Counterintelligence Interrogationâ?? manual from 1963 describes how a
trauma inflicted on prisoners opens up â??an intervalâ??which may be extremely
briefâ??of suspended animation, a kind of psychological shock or
paralysis. . . . [A]t this moment the source is far more open to suggestion,
far likelier to comply.â?? A similar theory applies to economic shock therapy,
or â??shock treatment,â?? the ugly term used to describe the rapid
implementation
of free-market reforms imposed on Chile in the wake of General Augusto
Pinochetâ??s coup. The theory is that if painful economic â??adjustmentsâ??
are
brought in rapidly and in the aftermath of a seismic social disruption like
a
war, a coup, or a government collapse, the population will be so stunned,
and
so preoccupied with the daily pressures of survival, that it too will go
into
suspended animation, unable to resist. As Pinochetâ??s finance minister,
Admiral Lorenzo Gotuzzo, declared, â??The dogâ??s tail must be cut off in one
chop.â??
That, in essence, was the working thesis in Iraq, and in keeping with the
belief that private companies are more suited than governments for virtually
every task, the White House decided to privatize the task of privatizing
Iraqâ??s state-dominated economy. Two months before the war began, USAID began
drafting a work order, to be handed out to a private company, to oversee
Iraqâ??s â??transition to a sustainable market-driven economic system.â?? The
document states that the winning company (which turned out to be the KPMG
offshoot Bearing Point) will take â??appropriate advantage of the unique
opportunity for rapid progress in this area presented by the current
configuration of political circumstances.â?? Which is precisely what happened.
L. Paul Bremer, who led the U.S. occupation of Iraq from May 2, 2003, until
he
caught an early flight out of Baghdad on June 28, admits that when he
arrived, â??Baghdad was on fire, literally, as I drove in from the airport.â??
But before the fires from the â??shock and aweâ?? military onslaught were even
extinguished, Bremer unleashed his shock therapy, pushing through more
wrenching changes in one sweltering summer than the International Monetary
Fund has managed to enact over three decades in Latin America. Joseph
Stiglitz, Nobel laureate and former chief economist at the World Bank,
describes Bremerâ??s reforms as â??an even more radical form of shock therapy
than pursued in the former Soviet world.â??
The tone of Bremerâ??s tenure was set with his first major act on the job: he
fired 500,000 state workers, most of them soldiers, but also doctors,
nurses,
teachers, publishers, and printers. Next, he flung open the countryâ??s
borders
to absolutely unrestricted imports: no tariffs, no duties, no inspections,
no
taxes. Iraq, Bremer declared two weeks after he arrived, was â??open for
business.â??
One month later, Bremer unveiled the centerpiece of his reforms. Before the
invasion, Iraqâ??s non-oil-related economy had been dominated by 200
state-owned companies, which produced everything from cement to paper to
washing machines. In June, Bremer flew to an economic summit in Jordan and
announced that these firms would be privatized immediately. â??Getting
inefficient state enterprises into private hands,â?? he said, â??is essential
for
Iraqâ??s economic recovery.â?? It would be the largest state liquidation sale
since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
But Bremerâ??s economic engineering had only just begun. In September, to
entice
foreign investors to come to Iraq, he enacted a radical set of laws
unprecedented in their generosity to multinational corporations. There was
Order 37, which lowered Iraqâ??s corporate tax rate from roughly 40 percent to
a flat 15 percent. There was Order 39, which allowed foreign companies to
own
100 percent of Iraqi assets outside of the natural-resource sector. Even
better, investors could take 100 percent of the profits they made in Iraq
out
of the country; they would not be required to reinvest and they would not be
taxed. Under Order 39, they could sign leases and contracts that would last
for forty years. Order 40 welcomed foreign banks to Iraq under the same
favorable terms. All that remained of Saddam Husseinâ??s economic policies was
a law restricting trade unions and collective bargaining.
If these policies sound familiar, itâ??s because they are the same ones
multinationals around the world lobby for from national governments and in
international trade agreements. But while these reforms are only ever
enacted
in part, or in fits and starts, Bremer delivered them all, all at once.
Overnight, Iraq went from being the most isolated country in the world to
being, on paper, its widest-open market.
* * *
At first, the shock-therapy theory seemed to hold: Iraqis, reeling from
violence both military and economic, were far too busy staying alive to
mount
a political response to Bremerâ??s campaign. Worrying about the privatization
of the sewage system was an unimaginable luxury with half the population
lacking access to clean drinking water; the debate over the flat tax would
have to wait until the lights were back on. Even in the international press,
Bremerâ??s new laws, though radical, were easily upstaged by more dramatic
news
of political chaos and rising crime.
Some people were paying attention, of course. That autumn was awash in
â??rebuilding Iraqâ?? trade shows, in Washington, London, Madrid, and Amman.
The
Economist described Iraq under Bremer as â??a capitalist dream,â?? and a flurry
of new consulting firms were launched promising to help companies get access
to the Iraqi market, their boards of directors stacked with well-connected
Republicans. The most prominent was New Bridge Strategies, started by Joe
Allbaugh, former Bush-Cheney campaign manager. â??Getting the rights to
distribute Procter & Gamble products can be a gold mine,â?? one of the
companyâ??s partners enthused. â??One well-stocked 7-Eleven could knock out
thirty Iraqi stores; a Wal-Mart could take over the country.â??
Soon there were rumors that a McDonaldâ??s would be opening up in downtown
Baghdad, funding was almost in place for a Starwood luxury hotel, and
General
Motors was planning to build an auto plant. On the financial side, HSBC
would
have branches all over the country, Citigroup was preparing to offer
substantial loans guaranteed against future sales of Iraqi oil, and the bell
was going to ring on a New Yorkâ??style stock exchange in Baghdad any day.
In only a few months, the postwar plan to turn Iraq into a laboratory for
the
neocons had been realized. Leo Strauss may have provided the intellectual
framework for invading Iraq preemptively, but it was that other University
of
Chicago professor, Milton Friedman, author of the anti-government manifesto
Capitalism and Freedom, who supplied the manual for what to do once the
country was safely in Americaâ??s hands. This represented an enormous victory
for the most ideological wing of the Bush Administration. But it was also
something more: the culmination of two interlinked power struggles, one
among
Iraqi exiles advising the White House on its postwar strategy, the other
within the White House itself.
* * *
As the British historian Dilip Hiro has shown, in Secrets and Lies:
Operation
â??Iraqi Freedomâ?? and After, the Iraqi exiles pushing for the invasion were
divided, broadly, into two camps. On one side were â??the pragmatists,â?? who
favored getting rid of Saddam and his immediate entourage, securing access
to
oil, and slowly introducing free-market reforms. Many of these exiles were
part of the State Departmentâ??s Future of Iraq Project, which generated a
thirteen-volume report on how to restore basic services and transition to
democracy after the war. On the other side was the â??Year Zeroâ?? camp, those
who believed that Iraq was so contaminated that it needed to be rubbed out
and remade from scratch. The prime advocate of the pragmatic approach was
Iyad Allawi, a former high-level Baathist who fell out with Saddam and
started working for the CIA. The prime advocate of the Year Zero approach
was
Ahmad Chalabi, whose hatred of the Iraqi state for expropriating his familyâ??
s
assets during the 1958 revolution ran so deep he longed to see the entire
country burned to the groundâ??everything, that is, but the Oil Ministry,
which
would be the nucleus of the new Iraq, the cluster of cells from which an
entire nation would grow. He called this process â??de-Baathification.â??
A parallel battle between pragmatists and true believers was being waged
within the Bush Administration. The pragmatists were men like Secretary of
State Colin Powell and General Jay Garner, the first U.S. envoy to postwar
Iraq. General Garnerâ??s plan was straightforward enough: fix the
infrastructure, hold quick and dirty elections, leave the shock therapy to
the International Monetary Fund, and concentrate on securing U.S. military
bases on the model of the Philippines. â??I think we should look right now at
Iraq as our coaling station in the Middle East,â?? he told the BBC. He also
paraphrased T. E. Lawrence, saying, â??Itâ??s better for them to do it
imperfectly than for us to do it for them perfectly.â?? On the other side was
the usual cast of neoconservatives: Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld (who lauded Bremerâ??s â??sweeping reformsâ?? as
â??some
of
the most enlightened and inviting tax and investment laws in the free
worldâ??), Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and, perhaps most
centrally, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith. Whereas the State
Department had its Future of Iraq report, the neocons had USAIDâ??s contract
with Bearing Point to remake Iraqâ??s economy: in 108 pages,
â??privatizationâ??
was mentioned no fewer than fifty-one times. To the true believers in the
White House, General Garnerâ??s plans for postwar Iraq seemed hopelessly
unambitious. Why settle for a mere coaling station when you can have a model
free market? Why settle for the Philippines when you can have a beacon unto
the world?
The Iraqi Year Zeroists made natural allies for the White House
neoconservatives: Chalabiâ??s seething hatred of the Baathist state fit nicely
with the neoconsâ?? hatred of the state in general, and the two agendas
effortlessly merged. Together, they came to imagine the invasion of Iraq as
a
kind of Rapture: where the rest of the world saw death, they saw birthâ??a
country redeemed through violence, cleansed by fire. Iraq wasnâ??t being
destroyed by cruise missiles, cluster bombs, chaos, and looting; it was
being
born again. April 9, 2003, the day Baghdad fell, was Day One of Year Zero.
While the war was being waged, it still wasnâ??t clear whether the pragmatists
or the Year Zeroists would be handed control over occupied Iraq. But the
speed with which the nation was conquered dramatically increased the neoconsâ??
political capital, since they had been predicting a â??cakewalkâ?? all along.
Eight days after George Bush landed on that aircraft carrier under a banner
that said MISSION ACCOMPLISHED, the President publicly signed on to the
neoconsâ?? vision for Iraq to become a model corporate state that would open
up
the entire region. On May 9, Bush proposed the â??establishment of a
U.S.-Middle East free trade area within a decadeâ??; three days later, Bush
sent Paul Bremer to Baghdad to replace Jay Garner, who had been on the job
for only three weeks. The message was unequivocal: the pragmatists had lost;
Iraq would belong to the believers.
A Reagan-era diplomat turned entrepreneur, Bremer had recently proven his
ability to transform rubble into gold by waiting exactly one month after the
September 11 attacks to launch Crisis Consulting Practice, a security
company
selling â??terrorism risk insuranceâ?? to multinationals. Bremer had two
lieutenants on the economic front: Thomas Foley and Michael Fleischer, the
heads of â??private sector developmentâ?? for the Coalition Provisional
Authority
(CPA). Foley is a Greenwich, Connecticut, multimillionaire, a longtime
friend
of the Bush family and a Bush-Cheney campaign â??pioneerâ?? who has described
Iraq as a modern California â??gold rush.â?? Fleischer, a venture capitalist,
is
the brother of former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. Neither man had
any high-level diplomatic experience and both use the term corporate
â??turnaroundâ?? specialist to describe what they do. According to Foley, this
uniquely qualified them to manage Iraqâ??s economy because it was â??the
mother
of all turnarounds.â??
Many of the other CPA postings were equally ideological. The Green Zone, the
city within a city that houses the occupation headquarters in Saddamâ??s
former
palace, was filled with Young Republicans straight out of the Heritage
Foundation, all of them given responsibility they could never have dreamed
of
receiving at home. Jay Hallen, a twenty-four-year-old who had applied for a
job at the White House, was put in charge of launching Baghdadâ??s new stock
exchange. Scott Erwin, a twenty-one-year-old former intern to Dick Cheney,
reported in an email home that â??I am assisting Iraqis in the management of
finances and budgeting for the domestic security forces.â?? The college
seniorâ??s favorite job before this one? â??My time as an ice-cream truck
driver.â?? In those early days, the Green Zone felt a bit like the Peace
Corps,
for people who think the Peace Corps is a communist plot. It was a chance to
sleep on cots, wear army boots, and cry â??incomingâ??â??all while being
guarded
around the clock by real soldiers.
The teams of KPMG accountants, investment bankers, think-tank lifers, and
Young Republicans that populate the Green Zone have much in common with the
IMF missions that rearrange the economies of developing countries from the
presidential suites of Sheraton hotels the world over. Except for one rather
significant difference: in Iraq they were not negotiating with the
government
to accept their â??structural adjustmentsâ?? in exchange for a loan; they were
the government.
Some small steps were taken, however, to bring Iraqâ??s U.S.-appointed
politicians inside. Yegor Gaidar, the mastermind of Russiaâ??s mid-nineties
privatization auction that gave away the countryâ??s assets to the reigning
oligarchs, was invited to share his wisdom at a conference in Baghdad. Marek
Belka, who as finance minister oversaw the same process in Poland, was
brought in as well. The Iraqis who proved most gifted at mouthing the neocon
lines were selected to act as what USAID calls local â??policy
championsâ??â??men
like Ahmad al Mukhtar, who told me of his countrymen, â??They are lazy. The
Iraqis by nature, they are very dependent. . . . They will have to depend on
themselves, it is the only way to survive in the world today.â?? Although he
has no economics background and his last job was reading the
English-language
news on television, al Mukhtar was appointed director of foreign relations
in
the Ministry of Trade and is leading the charge for Iraq to join the World
Trade Organization.
* * *
I had been following the economic front of the war for almost a year before
I
decided to go to Iraq. I attended the â??Rebuilding Iraqâ?? trade shows,
studied
Bremerâ??s tax and investment laws, met with contractors at their home offices
in the United States, interviewed the government officials in Washington who
are making the policies. But as I prepared to travel to Iraq in March to see
this experiment in free-market utopianism up close, it was becoming
increasingly clear that all was not going according to plan. Bremer had been
working on the theory that if you build a corporate utopia the corporations
will comeâ??but where were they? American multinationals were happy to accept
U.S. taxpayer dollars to reconstruct the phone or electricity systems, but
they werenâ??t sinking their own money into Iraq. There was, as yet, no
McDonaldâ??s or Wal-Mart in Baghdad, and even the sales of state factories,
announced so confidently nine months earlier, had not materialized.
Some of the holdup had to do with the physical risks of doing business in
Iraq. But there were other more significant risks as well. When Paul Bremer
shredded Iraqâ??s Baathist constitution and replaced it with what The
Economist
greeted approvingly as â??the wish list of foreign investors,â?? there was one
small detail he failed to mention: It was all completely illegal. The CPA
derived its legal authority from United Nations Security Council Resolution
1483, passed in May 2003, which recognized the United States and Britain as
Iraqâ??s legitimate occupiers. It was this resolution that empowered Bremer to
unilaterally make laws in Iraq. But the resolution also stated that the U.S.
and Britain must â??comply fully with their obligations under international
law
including in particular the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the Hague
Regulations of 1907.â?? Both conventions were born as an attempt to curtail
the
unfortunate historical tendency among occupying powers to rewrite the rules
so that they can economically strip the nations they control. With this in
mind, the conventions stipulate that an occupier must abide by a countryâ??s
existing laws unless â??absolutely preventedâ?? from doing so. They also state
that an occupier does not own the â??public buildings, real estate, forests
and
agricultural assetsâ?? of the country it is occupying but is rather their
â??administratorâ?? and custodian, keeping them secure until sovereignty is
reestablished. This was the true threat to the Year Zero plan: since America
didnâ??t own Iraqâ??s assets, it could not legally sell them, which meant that
after the occupation ended, an Iraqi government could come to power and
decide that it wanted to keep the state companies in public hands, or, as is
the norm in the Gulf region, to bar foreign firms from owning 100 percent of
national assets. If that happened, investments made under Bremerâ??s rules
could be expropriated, leaving firms with no recourse because their
investments had violated international law from the outset.
By November, trade lawyers started to advise their corporate clients not to
go
into Iraq just yet, that it would be better to wait until after the
transition. Insurance companies were so spooked that not a single one of the
big firms would insure investors for â??political risk,â?? that high-stakes
area
of insurance law that protects companies against foreign governments turning
nationalist or socialist and expropriating their investments.
Even the U.S.-appointed Iraqi politicians, up to now so obedient, were
getting
nervous about their own political futures if they went along with the
privatization plans. Communications Minister Haider al-Abadi told me about
his first meeting with Bremer. â??I said, â??Look, we donâ??t have the mandate
to
sell any of this. Privatization is a big thing. We have to wait until there
is an Iraqi government.â??â?? Minister of Industry Mohamad Tofiq was even more
direct: â??I am not going to do something that is not legal, so thatâ??s it.â??
Both al-Abadi and Tofiq told me about a meetingâ??never reported in the
pressâ??
that took place in late October 2003. At that gathering the twenty-five
members of Iraqâ??s Governing Council as well as the twenty-five interim
ministers decided unanimously that they would not participate in the
privatization of Iraqâ??s state-owned companies or of its publicly owned
infrastructure.
But Bremer didnâ??t give up. International law prohibits occupiers from
selling
state assets themselves, but it doesnâ??t say anything about the puppet
governments they appoint. Originally, Bremer had pledged to hand over power
to a directly elected Iraqi government, but in early November he went to
Washington for a private meeting with President Bush and came back with a
Plan B. On June 30 the occupation would officially endâ??but not really. It
would be replaced by an appointed government, chosen by Washington. This
government would not be bound by the international laws preventing occupiers
from selling off state assets, but it would be bound by an â??interim
constitution,â?? a document that would protect Bremerâ??s investment and
privatization laws.
The plan was risky. Bremerâ??s June 30 deadline was awfully close, and it was
chosen for a less than ideal reason: so that President Bush could trumpet
the
end of Iraqâ??s occupation on the campaign trail. If everything went according
to plan, Bremer would succeed in forcing a â??sovereignâ?? Iraqi government to
carry out his illegal reforms. But if something went wrong, he would have to
go ahead with the June 30 handover anyway because by then Karl Rove, and not
Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld, would be calling the shots. And if it came
down to a choice between ideology in Iraq and the electability of George W.
Bush, everyone knew which would win.
* * *
At first, Plan B seemed to be right on track. Bremer persuaded the Iraqi
Governing Council to agree to everything: the new timetable, the interim
government, and the interim constitution. He even managed to slip into the
constitution a completely overlooked clause, Article 26. It stated that for
the duration of the interim government, â??The laws, regulations, orders and
directives issued by the Coalition Provisional Authority . . . shall remain
in forceâ?? and could only be changed after general elections are held.
Bremer had found his legal loophole: There would be a windowâ??seven monthsâ??
when
the occupation was officially over but before general elections were
scheduled to take place. Within this window, the Hague and Geneva
Conventionsâ?? bans on privatization would no longer apply, but Bremerâ??s own
laws, thanks to Article 26, would stand. During these seven months, foreign
investors could come to Iraq and sign forty-year contracts to buy up Iraqi
assets. If a future elected Iraqi government decided to change the rules,
investors could sue for compensation.
But Bremer had a formidable opponent: Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani, the
most
senior Shia cleric in Iraq. al Sistani tried to block Bremerâ??s plan at every
turn, calling for immediate direct elections and for the constitution to be
written after those elections, not before. Both demands, if met, would have
closed Bremerâ??s privatization window. Then, on March 2, with the Shia
members
of the Governing Council refusing to sign the interim constitution, five
bombs exploded in front of mosques in Karbala and Baghdad, killing close to
200 worshipers. General John Abizaid, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, warned
that the country was on the verge of civil war. Frightened by this prospect,
al Sistani backed down and the Shia politicians signed the interim
constitution. It was a familiar story: the shock of a violent attack paved
the way for more shock therapy.
When I arrived in Iraq a week later, the economic project seemed to be back
on
track. All that remained for Bremer was to get his interim constitution
ratified by a Security Council resolution, then the nervous lawyers and
insurance brokers could relax and the sell-off of Iraq could finally begin.
The CPA, meanwhile, had launched a major new P.R. offensive designed to
reassure investors that Iraq was still a safe and exciting place to do
business. The centerpiece of the campaign was Destination Baghdad
Exposition,
a massive trade show for potential investors to be held in early April at
the
Baghdad International Fairgrounds. It was the first such event inside Iraq,
and the organizers had branded the trade fair â??DBX,â?? as if it were some
sort
of Mountain Dewâ??sponsored dirt-bike race. In keeping with the extreme-sports
theme, Thomas Foley traveled to Washington to tell a gathering of executives
that the risks in Iraq are akin â??to skydiving or riding a motorcycle, which
are, to many, very acceptable risks.â??
But three hours after my arrival in Baghdad, I was finding these
reassurances
extremely hard to believe. I had not yet unpacked when my hotel room was
filled with debris and the windows in the lobby were shattered. Down the
street, the Mount Lebanon Hotel had just been bombed, at that point the
largest attack of its kind since the official end of the war. The next day,
another hotel was bombed in Basra, then two Finnish businessmen were
murdered
on their way to a meeting in Baghdad. Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt finally
admitted that there was a pattern at work: â??the extremists have started
shifting away from the hard targets . . . [and] are now going out of their
way to specifically target softer targets.â?? The next day, the State
Department updated its travel advisory: U.S. citizens were â??strongly warned
against travel to Iraq.â??
The physical risks of doing business in Iraq seemed to be spiraling out of
control. This, once again, was not part of the original plan. When Bremer
first arrived in Baghdad, the armed resistance was so low that he was able
to
walk the streets with a minimal security entourage. During his first four
months on the job, 109 U.S. soldiers were killed and 570 were wounded. In
the
following four months, when Bremerâ??s shock therapy had taken effect, the
number of U.S. casualties almost doubled, with 195 soldiers killed and 1,633
wounded. There are many in Iraq who argue that these events are connectedâ??
that Bremerâ??s reforms were the single largest factor leading to the rise of
armed resistance.
Take, for instance, Bremerâ??s first casualties. The soldiers and workers he
laid off without pensions or severance pay didnâ??t all disappear quietly.
Many
of them went straight into the mujahedeen, forming the backbone of the armed
resistance. â??Half a million people are now worse off, and there you have the
water tap that keeps the insurgency going. Itâ??s alternative employment,â??
says
Hussain Kubba, head of the prominent Iraqi business group Kubba Consulting.
Some of Bremerâ??s other economic casualties also have failed to go quietly.
It
turns out that many of the businessmen whose companies are threatened by
Bremerâ??s investment laws have decided to make investments of their ownâ??in
the
resistance. It is partly their money that keeps fighters in Kalashnikovs and
RPGs.
These developments present a challenge to the basic logic of shock therapy:
the neocons were convinced that if they brought in their reforms quickly and
ruthlessly, Iraqis would be too stunned to resist. But the shock appears to
have had the opposite effect; rather than the predicted paralysis, it jolted
many Iraqis into action, much of it extreme. Haider al-Abadi, Iraqâ??s
minister
of communication, puts it this way: â??We know that there are terrorists in
the
country, but previously they were not successful, they were isolated. Now
because the whole country is unhappy, and a lot of people donâ??t have
jobs . . . these terrorists are finding listening ears.â??
Bremer was now at odds not only with the Iraqis who opposed his plans but
with
U.S military commanders charged with putting down the insurgency his
policies
were feeding. Heretical questions began to be raised: instead of laying
people off, what if the CPA actually created jobs for Iraqis? And instead of
rushing to sell off Iraqâ??s 200 state-owned firms, how about putting them
back
to work?
* * *
From the start, the neocons running Iraq had shown nothing but disdain for
Iraqâ??s state-owned companies. In keeping with their Year Zeroâ??apocalyptic
glee, when looters descended on the factories during the war, U.S. forces
did
nothing. Sabah Asaad, managing director of a refrigerator factory outside
Baghdad, told me that while the looting was going on, he went to a nearby
U.S. Army base and begged for help. â??I asked one of the officers to send two
soldiers and a vehicle to help me kick out the looters. I was crying. The
officer said, â??Sorry, we canâ??t do anything, we need an order from
President
Bush.â??â?? Back in Washington, Donald Rumsfeld shrugged. â??Free people are
free
to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.â??
To see the remains of Asaadâ??s football-field-size warehouse is to understand
why Frank Gehry had an artistic crisis after September 11 and was briefly
unable to design structures resembling the rubble of modern buildings.
Asaadâ??s looted and burned factory looks remarkably like a heavy-metal
version
of Gehryâ??s Guggenheim in Bilbao, Spain, with waves of steel, buckled by
fire,
lying in terrifyingly beautiful golden heaps. Yet all was not lost. â??The
looters were good-hearted,â?? one of Asaadâ??s painters told me, explaining
that
they left the tools and machines behind, â??so we could work again.â?? Because
the machines are still there, many factory managers in Iraq say that it
would
take little for them to return to full production. They need emergency
generators to cope with daily blackouts, and they need capital for parts and
raw materials. If that happened, it would have tremendous implications for
Iraqâ??s stalled reconstruction, because it would mean that many of the key
materials needed to rebuildâ??cement and steel, bricks and furnitureâ??could be
produced inside the country.
But it hasnâ??t happened. Immediately after the nominal end of the war,
Congress
appropriated $2.5 billion for the reconstruction of Iraq, followed by an
additional $18.4 billion in October. Yet as of July 2004, Iraqâ??s state-owned
factories had been pointedly excluded from the reconstruction contracts.
Instead, the billions have all gone to Western companies, with most of the
materials for the reconstruction imported at great expense from abroad.
With unemployment as high as 67 percent, the imported products and foreign
workers flooding across the borders have become a source of tremendous
resentment in Iraq and yet another open tap fueling the insurgency. And
Iraqis donâ??t have to look far for reminders of this injustice; itâ??s on
display in the most ubiquitous symbol of the occupation: the blast wall. The
ten-foot-high slabs of reinforced concrete are everywhere in Iraq,
separating
the protectedâ??the people in upscale hotels, luxury homes, military bases,
and, of course, the Green Zoneâ??from the unprotected and exposed. If that
wasnâ??t injury enough, all the blast walls are imported, from Kurdistan,
Turkey, or even farther afield, this despite the fact that Iraq was once a
major manufacturer of cement, and could easily be again. There are seventeen
state-owned cement factories across the country, but most are idle or
working
at only half capacity. According to the Ministry of Industry, not one of
these factories has received a single contract to help with the
reconstruction, even though they could produce the walls and meet other
needs
for cement at a greatly reduced cost. The CPA pays up to $1,000 per imported
blast wall; local manufacturers say they could make them for $100. Minister
Tofiq says there is a simple reason why the Americans refuse to help get
Iraqâ??s cement factories running again: among those making the decisions, â??
no
one believes in the public sector.â??[1]
This kind of ideological blindness has turned Iraqâ??s occupiers into
prisoners
of their own policies, hiding behind walls that, by their very existence,
fuel the rage at the U.S. presence, thereby feeding the need for more walls.
In Baghdad the concrete barriers have been given a popular nickname: Bremer
Walls.
As the insurgency grew, it soon became clear that if Bremer went ahead with
his plans to sell off the state companies, it could worsen the violence.
There was no question that privatization would require layoffs: the Ministry
of Industry estimates that roughly 145,000 workers would have to be fired to
make the firms desirable to investors, with each of those workers
supporting,
on average, five family members. For Iraqâ??s besieged occupiers the question
was: Would these shock-therapy casualties accept their fate or would they
rebel?
* * *
The answer arrived, in rather dramatic fashion, at one of the largest
state-owned companies, the General Company for Vegetable Oils. The complex
of
six factories in a Baghdad industrial zone produces cooking oil, hand soap,
laundry detergent, shaving cream, and shampoo. At least that is what I was
told by a receptionist who gave me glossy brochures and calendars boasting
of
â??modern instrumentsâ?? and â??the latest and most up to date developments in
the
field of industry.â?? But when I approached the soap factory, I discovered a
group of workers sleeping outside a darkened building. Our guide rushed
ahead, shouting something to a woman in a white lab coat, and suddenly the
factory scrambled into activity: lights switched on, motors revved up, and
workersâ??still blinking off sleepâ??began filling two-liter plastic bottles
with
pale blue Zahi brand dishwashing liquid.
I asked Nada Ahmed, the woman in the white coat, why the factory wasnâ??t
working a few minutes before. She explained that they have only enough
electricity and materials to run the machines for a couple of hours a day,
but when guests arriveâ??would-be investors, ministry officials, journalistsâ??
they get them going. â??For show,â?? she explained. Behind us, a dozen bulky
machines sat idle, covered in sheets of dusty plastic and secured with duct
tape.
In one dark corner of the plant, we came across an old man hunched over a
sack
filled with white plastic caps. With a thin metal blade lodged in a wedge of
wax, he carefully whittled down the edges of each cap, leaving a pile of
shavings at his feet. â??We donâ??t have the spare part for the proper mold,
so
we have to cut them by hand,â?? his supervisor explained apologetically. â??We
havenâ??t received any parts from Germany since the sanctions began.â?? I
noticed
that even on the assembly lines that were nominally working there was almost
no mechanization: bottles were held under spouts by hand because conveyor
belts donâ??t convey, lids once snapped on by machines were being hammered in
place with wooden mallets. Even the water for the factory was drawn from an
outdoor well, hoisted by hand, and carried inside.
The solution proposed by the U.S. occupiers was not to fix the plant but to
sell it, and so when Bremer announced the privatization auction back in June
2003 this was among the first companies mentioned. Yet when I visited the
factory in March, nobody wanted to talk about the privatization plan; the
mere mention of the word inside the plant inspired awkward silences and
meaningful glances. This seemed an unnatural amount of subtext for a soap
factory, and I tried to get to the bottom of it when I interviewed the
assistant manager. But the interview itself was equally odd: I had spent
half
a week setting it up, submitting written questions for approval, getting a
signed letter of permission from the minister of industry, being questioned
and searched several times. But when I finally began the interview, the
assistant manager refused to tell me his name or let me record the
conversation. â??Any manager mentioned in the press is attacked afterwards,â??
he
said. And when I asked whether the company was being sold, he gave this
oblique response: â??If the decision was up to the workers, they are against
privatization; but if itâ??s up to the high-ranking officials and government,
then privatization is an order and orders must be followed.â??
I left the plant feeling that I knew less than when Iâ??d arrived. But on the
way out of the gates, a young security guard handed my translator a note. He
wanted us to meet him after work at a nearby restaurant, â??to find out what
is
really going on with privatization.â?? His name was Mahmud, and he was a
twenty-five-year-old with a neat beard and big black eyes. (For his safety,
I
have omitted his last name.) His story began in July, a few weeks after
Bremerâ??s privatization announcement. The companyâ??s manager, on his way to
work, was shot to death. Press reports speculated that the manager was
murdered because he was in favor of privatizing the plant, but Mahmud was
convinced that he was killed because he opposed the plan. â??He would never
have sold the factories like the Americans want. Thatâ??s why they killed
him.â??
The dead man was replaced by a new manager, Mudhfar Jaâ??far. Shortly after
taking over, Jaâ??far called a meeting with ministry officials to discuss
selling off the soap factory, which would involve laying off two thirds of
its employees. Guarding that meeting were several security officers from the
plant. They listened closely to Jaâ??farâ??s plans and promptly reported the
alarming news to their coworkers. â??We were shocked,â?? Mahmud recalled.
â??If
the
private sector buys our company, the first thing they would do is reduce the
staff to make more money. And we will be forced into a very hard destiny,
because the factory is our only way of living.â??
Frightened by this prospect, a group of seventeen workers, including Mahmud,
marched into Jaâ??farâ??s office to confront him on what they had heard.
â??Unfortunately, he wasnâ??t there, only the assistant manager, the one you
met,â?? Mahmud told me. A fight broke out: one worker struck the assistant
manager, and a bodyguard fired three shots at the workers. The crowd then
attacked the bodyguard, took his gun, and, Mahmud said, â??stabbed him with a
knife in the back three times. He spent a month in the hospital.â?? In January
there was even more violence. On their way to work, Jaâ??far, the manager, and
his son were shot and badly injured. Mahmud told me he had no idea who was
behind the attack, but I was starting to understand why factory managers in
Iraq try to keep a low profile.
At the end of our meeting, I asked Mahmud what would happen if the plant was
sold despite the workersâ?? objections. â??There are two choices,â?? he said,
looking me in the eye and smiling kindly. â??Either we will set the factory on
fire and let the flames devour it to the ground, or we will blow ourselves
up
inside of it. But it will not be privatized.â??
If there ever was a moment when Iraqis were too disoriented to resist shock
therapy, that moment has definitely passed. Labor relations, like everything
else in Iraq, has become a blood sport. The violence on the streets howls at
the gates of the factories, threatening to engulf them. Workers fear job
loss
as a death sentence, and managers, in turn, fear their workers, a fact that
makes privatization distinctly more complicated than the neocons foresaw.[2]
* * *
As I left the meeting with Mahmud, I got word that there was a major
demonstration outside the CPA headquarters. Supporters of the radical young
cleric Moqtada al Sadr were protesting the closing of their newspaper, al
Hawza, by military police. The CPA accused al Hawza of publishing â??false
articlesâ?? that could â??pose the real threat of violence.â?? As an example,
it
cited an article that claimed Bremer â??is pursuing a policy of starving the
Iraqi people to make them preoccupied with procuring their daily bread so
they do not have the chance to demand their political and individual
freedoms.â?? To me it sounded less like hate literature than a concise summary
of Milton Friedmanâ??s recipe for shock therapy.
A few days before the newspaper was shut down, I had gone to Kufa during
Friday prayers to listen to al Sadr at his mosque. He had launched into a
tirade against Bremerâ??s newly signed interim constitution, calling it â??an
unjust, terrorist document.â?? The message of the sermon was clear: Grand
Ayatollah Ali al Sistani may have backed down on the constitution, but al
Sadr and his supporters were still determined to fight itâ??and if they
succeeded they would sabotage the neoconsâ?? careful plan to saddle Iraqâ??s
next
government with their â??wish listâ?? of laws. With the closing of the
newspaper,
Bremer was giving al Sadr his response: he wasnâ??t negotiating with this
young
upstart; heâ??d rather take him out with force.
When I arrived at the demonstration, the streets were filled with men
dressed
in black, the soon-to-be legendary Mahdi Army. It struck me that if Mahmud
lost his security guard job at the soap factory, he could be one of them.
Thatâ??s who al Sadrâ??s foot soldiers are: the young men who have been shut
out
of the neoconsâ?? grand plans for Iraq, who see no possibilities for work, and
whose neighborhoods have seen none of the promised reconstruction. Bremer
has
failed these young men, and everywhere that he has failed, Moqtada al Sadr
has cannily set out to succeed. In Shia slums from Baghdad to Basra, a
network of Sadr Centers coordinate a kind of shadow reconstruction. Funded
through donations, the centers dispatch electricians to fix power and phone
lines, organize local garbage collection, set up emergency generators, run
blood drives, direct traffic where the streetlights donâ??t work. And yes,
they
organize militias too. Al Sadr took Bremerâ??s economic casualties, dressed
them in black, and gave them rusty Kalashnikovs. His militiamen protected
the
mosques and the state factories when the occupation authorities did not, but
in some areas they also went further, zealously enforcing Islamic law by
torching liquor stores and terrorizing women without the veil. Indeed, the
astronomical rise of the brand of religious fundamentalism that al Sadr
represents is another kind of blowback from Bremerâ??s shock therapy: if the
reconstruction had provided jobs, security, and services to Iraqis, al Sadr
would have been deprived of both his mission and many of his newfound
followers.
At the same time as al Sadrâ??s followers were shouting â??Down with
Americaâ??
outside the Green Zone, something was happening in another part of the
country that would change everything. Four American mercenary soldiers were
killed in Fallujah, their charred and dismembered bodies hung like trophies
over the Euphrates. The attacks would prove a devastating blow for the
neocons, one from which they would never recover. With these images,
investing in Iraq suddenly didnâ??t look anything like a capitalist dream; it
looked like a macabre nightmare made real.
The day I left Baghdad was the worst yet. Fallujah was under siege and Brig.
Gen. Kimmitt was threatening to â??destroy the al-Mahdi Army.â?? By the end,
roughly 2,000 Iraqis were killed in these twin campaigns. I was dropped off
at a security checkpoint several miles from the airport, then loaded onto a
bus jammed with contractors lugging hastily packed bags. Although no one was
calling it one, this was an evacuation: over the next week 1,500 contractors
left Iraq, and some governments began airlifting their citizens out of the
country. On the bus no one spoke; we all just listened to the mortar fire,
craning our necks to see the red glow. A guy carrying a KPMG briefcase
decided to lighten things up. â??So is there business class on this flight?â??
he
asked the silent bus. From the back, somebody called out, â??Not yet.â??
Indeed, it may be quite a while before business class truly arrives in Iraq.
When we landed in Amman, we learned that we had gotten out just in time.
That
morning three Japanese civilians were kidnapped and their captors were
threatening to burn them alive. Two days later Nicholas Berg went missing
and
was not seen again until the snuff film surfaced of his beheading, an even
more terrifying message for U.S. contractors than the charred bodies in
Fallujah. These were the start of a wave of kidnappings and killings of
foreigners, most of them businesspeople, from a rainbow of nations: South
Korea, Italy, China, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Turkey. By the end of
June more than ninety contractors were reported dead in Iraq. When seven
Turkish contractors were kidnapped in June, their captors asked the â??company
to cancel all contracts and pull out employees from Iraq.â?? Many insurance
companies stopped selling life insurance to contractors, and others began to
charge premiums as high as $10,000 a week for a single Western executiveâ??the
same price some insurgents reportedly pay for a dead American.
For their part, the organizers of DBX, the historic Baghdad trade fair,
decided to relocate to the lovely tourist city of Diyarbakir in Turkey, â??
just
250 km from the Iraqi border.â?? An Iraqi landscape, only without those
frightening Iraqis. Three weeks later just fifteen people showed up for a
Commerce Department conference in Lansing, Michigan, on investing in Iraq.
Its host, Republican Congressman Mike Rogers, tried to reassure his
skeptical
audience by saying that Iraq is â??like a rough neighborhood anywhere in
America.â?? The foreign investors, the ones who were offered every imaginable
free-market enticement, are clearly not convinced; there is still no sign of
them. Keith Crane, a senior economist at the Rand Corporation who has worked
for the CPA, put it bluntly: â??I donâ??t believe the board of a multinational
company could approve a major investment in this environment. If people are
shooting at each other, itâ??s just difficult to do business.â?? Hamid Jassim
Khamis, the manager of the largest soft-drink bottling plant in the region,
told me he canâ??t find any investors, even though he landed the exclusive
rights to produce Pepsi in central Iraq. â??A lot of people have approached us
to invest in the factory, but people are really hesitating now.â?? Khamis said
he couldnâ??t blame them; in five months he has survived an attempted
assassination, a carjacking, two bombs planted at the entrance of his
factory, and the kidnapping of his son.
Despite having been granted the first license for a foreign bank to operate
in
Iraq in forty years, HSBC still hasnâ??t opened any branches, a decision that
may mean losing the coveted license altogether. Procter & Gamble has put its
joint venture on hold, and so has General Motors. The U.S. financial backers
of the Starwood luxury hotel and multiplex have gotten cold feet, and
Siemens
AG has pulled most staff from Iraq. The bell hasnâ??t rung yet at the Baghdad
Stock Exchangeâ??in fact you canâ??t even use credit cards in Iraqâ??s
cash-only
economy. New Bridge Strategies, the company that had gushed back in October
about how â??a Wal-Mart could take over the country,â?? is sounding distinctly
humbled. â??McDonaldâ??s is not opening anytime soon,â?? company partner Ed
Rogers
told the Washington Post. Neither is Wal-Mart. The Financial Times has
declared Iraq â??the most dangerous place in the world in which to do
business.â?? Itâ??s quite an accomplishment: in trying to design the best
place
in the world to do business, the neocons have managed to create the worst,
the most eloquent indictment yet of the guiding logic behind deregulated
free
markets.
The violence has not just kept investors out; it also forced Bremer, before
he
left, to abandon many of his central economic policies. Privatization of the
state companies is off the table; instead, several of the state companies
have been offered up for lease, but only if the investor agrees not to lay
off a single employee. Thousands of the state workers that Bremer fired have
been rehired, and significant raises have been handed out in the public
sector as a whole. Plans to do away with the food-ration program have also
been scrappedâ??it just doesnâ??t seem like a good time to deny millions of
Iraqis the only nutrition on which they can depend.
* * *
The final blow to the neocon dream came in the weeks before the handover.
The
White House and the CPA were rushing to get the U.N. Security Council to
pass
a resolution endorsing their handover plan. They had twisted arms to give
the
top job to former CIA agent Iyad Allawi, a move that will ensure that Iraq
becomes, at the very least, the coaling station for U.S. troops that Jay
Garner originally envisioned. But if major corporate investors were going to
come to Iraq in the future, they would need a stronger guarantee that
Bremerâ??s economic laws would stick. There was only one way of doing that:
the
Security Council resolution had to ratify the interim constitution, which
locked in Bremerâ??s laws for the duration of the interim government. But al
Sistani once again objected, this time unequivocally, saying that the
constitution has been â??rejected by the majority of the Iraqi people.â?? On
June
8 the Security Council unanimously passed a resolution that endorsed the
handover plan but made absolutely no reference to the constitution. In the
face of this far-reaching defeat, George W. Bush celebrated the resolution
as
a historic victory, one that came just in time for an election trail photo
op
at the G-8 Summit in Georgia.
With Bremerâ??s laws in limbo, Iraqi ministers are already talking openly
about
breaking contracts signed by the CPA. Citigroupâ??s loan scheme has been
rejected as a misuse of Iraqâ??s oil revenues. Iraqâ??s communication minister
is
threatening to renegotiate contracts with the three communications firms
providing the country with its disastrously poor cell phone service. And the
Lebanese and U.S. companies hired to run the state television network have
been informed that they could lose their licenses because they are not
Iraqi.
â??We will see if we can change the contract,â?? Hamid al-Kifaey, spokesperson
for the Governing Council, said in May. â??They have no idea about Iraq.â??
For
most investors, this complete lack of legal certainty simply makes Iraq too
great a risk.
But while the Iraqi resistance has managed to scare off the first wave of
corporate raiders, thereâ??s little doubt that they will return. Whatever form
the next Iraqi government takesâ??nationalist, Islamist, or free marketâ??it
will
inherit a shattered nation with a crushing $120 billion debt. Then, as in
all
poor countries around the world, men in dark blue suits from the IMF will
appear at the door, bearing loans and promises of economic boom, provided
that certain structural adjustments are made, which will, of course, be
rather painful at first but well worth the sacrifice in the end. In fact,
the
process has already begun: the IMF is poised to approve loans worth $2.5â??
$4.25 billion, pending agreement on the conditions. After an endless
succession of courageous last stands and far too many lost lives, Iraq will
become a poor nation like any other, with politicians determined to
introduce
policies rejected by the vast majority of the population, and all the
imperfect compromises that will entail. The free market will no doubt come
to
Iraq, but the neoconservative dream of transforming the country into a
free-market utopia has already died, a casualty of a greater dreamâ??a second
term for George W. Bush.
The great historical irony of the catastrophe unfolding in Iraq is that the
shock-therapy reforms that were supposed to create an economic boom that
would rebuild the country have instead fueled a resistance that ultimately
made reconstruction impossible. Bremerâ??s reforms unleashed forces that the
neocons neither predicted nor could hope to control, from armed
insurrections
inside factories to tens of thousands of unemployed young men arming
themselves. These forces have transformed Year Zero in Iraq into the mirror
opposite of what the neocons envisioned: not a corporate utopia but a
ghoulish dystopia, where going to a simple business meeting can get you
lynched, burned alive, or beheaded. These dangers are so great that in Iraq
global capitalism has retreated, at least for now. For the neocons, this
must
be a shocking development: their ideological belief in greed turns out to be
stronger than greed itself.
Iraq was to the neocons what Afghanistan was to the Taliban: the one place
on
Earth where they could force everyone to live by the most literal,
unyielding
interpretation of their sacred texts. One would think that the bloody
results
of this experiment would inspire a crisis of faith: in the country where
they
had absolute free reign, where there was no local government to blame, where
economic reforms were introduced at their most shocking and most perfect,
they created, instead of a model free market, a failed state no
right-thinking investor would touch. And yet the Green Zone neocons and
their
masters in Washington are no more likely to reexamine their core beliefs
than
the Taliban mullahs were inclined to search their souls when their Islamic
state slid into a debauched Hades of opium and sex slavery. When facts
threaten true believers, they simply close their eyes and pray harder.
Which is precisely what Thomas Foley has been doing. The former head of
â??private sector developmentâ?? has left Iraq, a country he had described as
â??the mother of all turnarounds,â?? and has accepted another turnaround job,
as
co-chair of George Bushâ??s reelection committee in Connecticut. On April 30
in
Washington he addressed a crowd of entrepreneurs about business prospects in
Baghdad. It was a tough day to be giving an upbeat speech: that morning the
first photographs had appeared out of Abu Ghraib, including one of a hooded
prisoner with electrical wires attached to his hands. This was another kind
of shock therapy, far more literal than the one Foley had helped to
administer, but not entirely unconnected. â??Whatever youâ??re seeing, itâ??s
not
as bad as it appears,â?? Foley told the crowd. â??You just need to accept that
on
faith.â??
About the Author
Naomi Klein is the author of No Logo and writer/producer of The Take, a new
documentary on Argentinaâ??s occupied factories.
Notes
1. Tofiq did say that several U.S. companies had expressed strong interest
in
buying the state-owned cement factories. This supports a widely held belief
in Iraq that there is a deliberate strategy to neglect the state firms so
that they can be sold more cheaply--a practice known as "starve then
sell." [Back]
2. It is in Basra where the connections between economic reforms and the
rise
of the resistance was put in starkest terms. In December the union
representing oil workers was negotiating with the Oil Ministry for a salary
increase. Getting nowhere, the workers offered the ministry a simple choice:
increase their paltry salaries or they would all join the armed resistance.
They received a substantial raise. [Back]
This is Baghdad Year Zero, a feature by Naomi Klein, originally from
September
2004, published Friday, September 24, 2004. It is part of Features, which is
part of Harpers.org.
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