Denationalization, privatization and plunder in the name of "reconstruction"
After crushing and ensuring the destruction of basic infrastructure in Iraq due to three weeks of bombings, the US is now set to begin the so-called reconstruction of Iraq and the task of putting it in order.
The US government and American companies would like to make it appear that they are pouring billions of dollars into Iraq to "raise Iraqi society" from the doldrums out of the goodness of their heart. In truth, these companies are out to pass on the financial burden of "recons-tructing" Iraq to the people and government of Iraq. The Bush has set aside a mere $7.5 billion for war reparations. Most of it will end up with American compa-nies that have been granted contracts for the "recons-truction." Initial estimates already put the amount needed to revive Iraqi cities at tens of billions of dollars. In fact, even before the aggression had ended, the Bush government had already seized more than $1.74 billion deposited by the Iraqi government in US banks.
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Part of the "reconstruction" involves the rehabilitation of roads, seaports, airports, schools, hospitals, electric power plants, water supplies and other public facilities and infrastructure destroyed by the invading troops.
As early as February, even before the US had rained bombs on Baghdad, the US had "given out" contracts for the "reconstruction" of all roads, seaports, airports and other public infrastructure in Iraq programmed for destruction. The US has no plans to leave efforts to "reconstruct" Iraq to the United Nations, as called for by most of the countries that had opposed the war. This is lest it lose control and the ability to maximize the spoils of war and occupation for US monopoly capitalists. Neither does the US want the UN Arms Inspection Team to return to Iraq as this would once more highlight the already discredited US claim that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction.
Instead of coursing things through the UN, the US plans to eventually let the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund take over the supervision of Iraq's "reconstruction."
For now, the US is using the USAID to prettify the entry of US monopoly corporate vultures and manipulate the "distribution" of contracts to the White House and Defense Policy Board's favorites.
US corporate vultures are scrambling to bag lucrative contracts for "reconstruction." Much like the practice of bureaucrat capitalists in the Philippines, corruption, nepotism and other ano-malies proved decisive in the "distribution" of contracts, which monopoly capitalists gobbled up. Five companies known for their close relations with the Bush family and the administrations of both the elder and younger Bush have cor- nered all the contracts.
The first contracts given out were for one to four years. But US plans for Iraq are for the long term.
Actually, the "reconstruction" is but the beginning of the longer process of incorporating Iraq into the devastating framework of "globalization" and "free trade," a process that will subsume all aspects of Iraqi life and society.
It is the Iraqi economy nation-alized by the former Ba'ath government that it now much-coveted by US monopoly capitalists. They plan to thoroughly denationalize and privatize the economy to siphon off the country's natural resources, pry it open as a market for excess capital and excess goods and intervene in it in every way to make it serve their interests completely.
The US is primarily pushing the denationalization and privatization of oil extraction and processing in Iraq. With opposition to such plans a certainty, the US intends to let its puppet Fadhil Chalabi oversee the process of denationalizing and privatizing the Iraqi oil industry. Chalabi, a former Iraqi petroleum minister, currently heads a pro-imperialist institution based in the UK. He was also a longtime consultant of the US State Department on the privatization of the Iraqi oil industry. Chalabi is set to grant the first contracts to extract Iraqi oil to ExxonMobil and Shell. This early, Chalabi has declared that "reconstruction" efforts would entail huge amounts of foreign exchange, a need that he claims could only be met by selling Iraq's oil fields to foreigners.
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