False promises (15 May 2003)

The Blair government won the support of parliament for an invasion of Iraq on two major grounds: the claims about a threat from Iraq's weapons, and the proposal for an international programme to reconstruct Iraq. Whilst the first argument is looking more implausible now than ever before, the second has been discredited by the draft resolution co-sponsored by the UK and circulated among UN Security Council members on 8 May.

Here are two simple examples of false promises made by Tony Blair prior to justify the conflict. The motion proposed by Blair to the Commons on 18 March contained the commitment that after a conflict, "the United Kingdom should seek a new Security Council Resolution that would affirm ... the use of all oil revenues for the benefit of the Iraqi people". In complete contrast to this commitment, paragraph 20 of the UK-sponsored text put to the Security Council requires that for the foreseeable future, a percentage of all Iraq's oil revenues - so far undetermined, but probably 25% - shall be deducted to pay in compensation for the invasion of Kuwait. Iraq has already paid almost $18bn of reparations. The UN has already determined that it should pay a further $26bn in reparations, and governments and corporations have claimed over $200bn more. To give this some context, that amount is 20 years worth of Iraq's entire oil income at present levels.

A second commitment by Blair in his speech of 18 March was that following the overthrow of the Iraqi regime, "the oil revenues, which people falsely claim that we want to seize, should be put in a trust fund for the Iraqi people administered through the UN." False claims, indeed? The UK-US draft resolution creates an "Iraqi Assistance Fund", in which Iraqi oil revenues are placed after the deduction for compensation. It then states (paragraph 13) that "the funds in the Iraqi Assistance Fund shall be disbursed at the direction of the Authority". And who is the Authority? As the draft resolution defines it, the Authority is the "unified command" of the "United States of America and the United Kingdom ... as occupying powers".

So in direct contrast to Blair's claim, the oil revenues are to be seized by the US and UK. The UN has no administrative role at all, according to the draft resolution: it has one seat on the "advisory board" for the fund (the others are held by the IMF and World Bank, at Washington's insistence, in the knowledge that these bodies are dominated by the US). It has a role in supporting humanitarian work, "promoting human rights", encouraging other states to give aid to Iraq and so on. But it has no responsibilities in Iraq whatsoever.

You might have thought by this stage, the US and UK would be wanting the UN to come in to clean up the mess that they have created. With basic services still not functioning across the vast majority of the country, continuing civil disorder and the prospects of a cholera epidemic, the US has sacked its senior staff and brought in a former counter-terrorism advisor with no experience of Iraq to run the country. It has supplemented this approach by bringing in a Michigan-based group of Iraqi exiles, now known as the Iraqi Reconstruction and Development Council (IRDC), to act as "senior advisors" at each of the ministries. Unlike the UN, which has had a key role in coordinating with Iraqi services since 1996 and thus has experience of how the country can be run, the members of the IRDC have been out of the country for up to 25 years, and have worked as political lobbyists over recent years.

The problems in the political sphere are more significant still. The US has held two conferences of Iraqis inside the country, on 15 April in al-Nasiriya and on 28 April in Baghdad. The first of these was boycotted by all the main Shi'a groups. All the major groups sent low-level delegations to the second conference, with the knowledge that if their leaders were seen to be consorting too closely with the US occupation authorities, their credibility would be damaged.

The absence of a legitimate central forum in which popular political grievances can be expressed and debated has had two major results. Firstly, popular protest at the occupation continues. This has resulted on occasion with the US army attacking hostile crowds, such as in Mosul on 15 April, in which 7 Iraqis were killed; and in Fallujah on 29 April in which 13 were killed.

The second result has been that armed militia have realised that the best way to exercise political leverage is not by winning popular support but by capturing areas of the country in which they can then recruit members and base their offices. The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) has set up base in the town of Kut, where it has installed one of its leaders as mayor. The Islamic Call (al-Daawa) has taken control over the town of al-Nasiriya. The Sadr II Movement rules the streets of the Baghdad suburb previously known as Saddam City, now named Sadr City, as well as Najaf and Kufa. Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, meanwhile, in concert with US forces, has control over central Baghdad, and has collected up to 60 tonnes of documents from the offices of Saddam Hussein's secret police, which it seems to be releasing gradually in order to discredit political opponents and other governments.

In his speech of 18 March, Tony Blair outlined his "larger global agenda: on poverty and sustainable development; on democracy and human rights; and on the good governance of nations." The US/UK occupation of Iraq has made considerable strides on each item of this agenda. But these strides have not been in the direction that MPs believed Blair to be proposing.

Author: Glen Rangwala

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