The myth of reconstruction in 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 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.

* Only $3.2bn of the $18.4bn reconstruction budget has so far been spent.

* Only $2.5bn has been used from the DFI.

* Only $13.7 billion of the $58 billion pledged and allocated world-wide to rebuild Iraq has been spent. The biggest chunk of that money has instead been used to run Iraq's ministry operations, overseeing the quelling of popular uprising, and facilitating the US operations in exporting Iraqi oil back to the US.

Taking this into account shows that very little has been spent at all on reconstruction. Examining the small amount that has been spent, highlights the complete deceit surrounding the whole reconstruction rhetoric.

According to Charles Adwan of Transparency International, quoted on US National Public Radio's Marketplace programme, "at least 20 percent of US spending in Iraq is lost to corruption."

Marie DeYoung audited accounts for Halliburton's subsidiary KBR (responsible for some of the biggest reconstruction contracts). She claims there was no effort to hold down costs, she repeatedly complained to superiors of waste and fraud. The company's response, according to DeYoung was: "We can be as dumb and stupid as we want in the first year of a war, nobody's going to care."

DeYoung produced documents detailing alleged waste even on routine services: $50,000 a month for fizzy drinks at $45 a case; $1 million a month to clean clothes -- or $100 for each 15-pound bag of laundry.

The Coalition Provisional Authority's inspector general issued three reports that highlighted serious management difficulties at the CPA. The reports found that the CPA wasted millions of dollars at a Hilton resort hotel in Kuwait because it didn't have guidelines for who could stay there, lost track of how many employees it had in Iraq and didn't track reconstruction projects funded by international donors to ensure they didn't duplicate U.S. projects.

Billions of dollars from the Iraqi oil revenues have been diverted to "a host of poorly planned projects," according to Iraq Revenue Watch, a program of the Open Society Institute. "The lack of planning and the huge funds on tap for cash give-aways and other highly discretionary programs have paved the way for corruption and waste," the organisation wrote in June.

The consequences of such deceit are immeasurable for the Muslims of Iraq where many of them are much worse now than prior to the war. According to calculations in the General Accounting Office report it offers a bleak assessment of Iraq after 14 months of U.S. military occupation. Among its findings and other reports:

* In 13 of Iraq's 18 provinces, electricity was available fewer hours per day on average last month than before the war. Nearly 20 million of Iraq's 26 million people live in those provinces.

* The country's court system is more clogged than before the war, and judges are frequent targets of assassination attempts.

* The new Iraqi civil defence, police and overall security units are suffering from mass desertions, are poorly trained and ill-equipped.

* Iraqi children perish for want of medicines and equipment in Iraq's under-funded hospitals while U.S. Treasury officials have billions of dollars of Iraqi oil revenues stashed away in secondary "slush funds" and U.S. Treasury bills.

* The Associated Press reported on June 4: "At Baghdad's General Teaching Hospital for Children, children die each week from diarrhoea because of poor sanitation, shortages of medical equipment and poorly trained staff . . .. Even though improved medical care is a stated priority of U.S. occupation authorities, medicine is still costly and in short supply."

* Many hospital's sewage system have largely collapsed and are working at 10 to 20 percent of capacity. Hospitals also lack air conditioning.

* Most hospital deaths -- between 15 and 20 a month -- are from secondary infection, mainly because of the unsanitary hospital conditions.

It is also alleged that Iraq's oil revenues have been mismanaged and that untold millions have been siphoned off into unregulated "slush funds." This should not be surprising considering that reconstruction of Iraq is being handled under the supervision of Capitalist nations whose sole motivation for invading Iraq was its oil riches. What is clearly being seen in Iraq is mass corruption and misappropriation of wealth whilst the Muslims of Iraq are lying in a pitiful state.

Many of those who have been hand-picked to be Iraq's new government have years of connections to powerful western corporations. They will continue to manage Iraq on behalf of the wealthy industrialists, in return for power, kickbacks and protection; therefore how is Iraq any different to any of the other tyrannical regimes which preside over the Muslim world?

It is only when the Muslims of Iraq are able to decide their own political destiny without the interference of western occupiers or their imposed puppet Governments, that they will be able to once again realise their glorious history of being the centre of the Islamic world, such as when the seat of the Islamic Khilafah was in Baghdad.

Only then were the Muslims able to have their basic needs fully provided for, by rulers that understood the obligations they had to their citizens. In this very setting was found one of the greatest centres of learning and gave rise to the first hospitals and advances in all aspects of science and technology.

The future for Iraq, and the wider Muslim world under western interference is one of deceit and enslavement. This has been the case for the last century, and there is no sign that it will change, unless Muslims act to rectify the situation. This can only be done when the western inspired and controlled leaderships in the Muslim world are removed, and Muslims return to the Islamic Khilafah. The Islamic Khilafah is the only political system based on Islam, under which the Muslim world is united by Islam, and where the interests of Islam and Muslims are second to none.

Omar Khattab is a contributor to The Daily Star.