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Myth of reconstruction in Iraq

22 July 2004, 18:00 PM
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
By Tanveer Ashraf, On e-mail
22 July 2004, 18:00 PM
. PHOTO: AFP
The whole Iraq affair has been littered with false intentions and lies on the part of the coalition, who were solely interested in the strategic and economic capability of Iraq. There was the pre-war intelligence deceit, the motives for war deceit, the link to terrorism deceit, the issue of sovereignty deceit and now there is the deceit surrounding the reconstruction of Iraq.

The American government has promised and allocated $18.4 billion for reconstruction in Iraq, but the ugly reality is that the vast majority of it has yet to be spent. In addition to these funds, there is the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI) a fund established by the UN in May 2003 to collect Iraq's oil revenues. It has a total cash inflow of over $20 billion, with almost $9 billion available for spending.

The finance has clearly been available for reconstruction of Iraq's shattered basic infrastructure to begin in full earnest, yet the following statistics attest to the fact that reconstruction has been woefully neglected.

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