Democracy in Iraq

Now that democratic elections have been held in Iraq, we are told that this means the war was worth it.

There are several arguments against this based on the illegality of the war and the lies we were told to justify it, but there are also several features of this Iraqi "democracy" that make it look rather hollow.

For me, the most severe weaknesses in Iraqi democracy are the limitations in what any Iraqi democratic government will be able to do. The Wall Street Journal summed this up rather neatly, on 13th May, 2004, when it said, "the new Iraqi government will have limited control over its army, will not have the authority to make or change laws and wont have the opportunity to make important decisions without the tacit approval of the US". Some of the limitations on the sovereignty of the "democratic" Iraqi Government are summarised below.

• Before the war, the Iraqi education system was largely state-run and free at the point of delivery. Iraq saw the most successful literacy campaign ever in the world. The Iraqi education system is now in the process of being privatised and is expected to pass almost entirely into the hands of U.S. and other foreign private companies. Textbooks teaching Iraqi children how their country was “liberated” by the U.S.A. have already been printed (in the U.S.A.) and their use will be compulsory. The "democratic" Iraqi government will be unable to change this.
  
  
• The senior civil servants who will run "democratic" Iraq have already been appointed by the US-run occupation authority (after being vetted to ensure their loyalty to the U.S.A.). Their contracts are mostly for 20-30 years and the "democratic" Iraqi government will be unable to sack them. The new "democratic" Government of Iraq has even proved powerless to remove more junior pro-U.S. officials who do not have these ironclad contracts. When the Iraqi Government decided to dismiss some of them, the senior U.S. official in Iraq swiftly instructed them that this was not permitted. This happened despite the fact that some of these pro-U.S. junior officials were believed to be guilty of human-rights abuses while serving under the previous regime.
  
  
• Before the war, although Iraq was not in any sense a socialist country, a significant part of the economy was state-run. The 200 largest state-owned companies¹ are now in the process of being privatised and seem certain to pass almost entirely into the hands of U.S. private companies. They do not include the oil sector whose future is still in doubt².  The "democratic" Iraqi government will be unable to change any of this. These 200 privatisations were ordered in September 2003 by Paul Bremer, the USA’s administrator of Iraq. They were part of a parcel of measures decreed by Bremer that transformed the Iraqi economy. These measures opened the way for 100% foreign ownership in most sectors of the Iraqi economy, 50% foreign ownership of each Iraqi bank, a limit of 15% tax on the incomes of companies and their owners, and a guarantee that foreign investors in the Iraqi economy will have no restrictions on exporting profits or capital. Bremer’s measures of September 2003 were planned in a study commissioned (for $250 million) by the US Government from the American computer and financial consulting firm, "Bearing Point", and completed a month before the war. No Iraqi government, “democratic” or otherwise, had any part in planning these measures, gave any agreement to them, or will be able to overturn them. These measures also saw the final destruction of Iraq’s state health care system.
  
  
• Before the first U.S./Iraq Gulf war, the Iraqi health service was state-run (based on our NHS) and health care was largely free at the point of delivery. Before that war, the Iraqi health service was widely acknowledged as the best in the region. This health service had already been decimated by sanctions and war. The previous Iraqi Government (the one Saddam Hussein ran) partially privatised it in an attempt to surmount the effects of international sanctions following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent war. The health service’s wreckage is now in the process of being completely privatised. It is expected that it will pass almost entirely into the hands of U.S. private companies. The "democratic" Iraqi government will be unable to change this.
  
  
• The "democratic" Iraqi government also seems powerless to do anything about any of the more than 17,000 Iraqis detained in Iraq by the U.S. and Coalition military forces. It has been unable to prevent or control which "terrorists" seized on Iraqi territory are abused in Abu Ghraib or flown to U.S. bases in Guantanamo Bay or on Diego Garcia. The “democratic” Iraqi government has even seemed powerless to prevent its own members being abused by US troops.  On the 21^st of April ,2005, an important Shiite elected representative, Fatah  Al-Sheikh, alleged he was choked, physically hurt, and cursed by a US soldier at a US checkpoint, who told him, "to hell with you and the National Assembly".
  
  
• Despite the elections, the war continues. The worst reported part of it is probably the continuing (almost daily) air-raids by U.S. and British aircraft. These are not small-scale operations and the average weekly tonnage of bombs is believed to be still greater than the weekly tonnage dropped by the Nazi German Luftwaffe during their blitz on Britain. The interim Iraqi government has complained about this but has been ignored.

There are plenty of other examples about the limitations of Iraqi democracy, but these examples alone might persuade some people that this “democracy” has not really justified the estimated 100,000 – 150,000 plus Iraqi civilians who have been killed by U.S/coalition forces since war broke out two years ago. Studies of conditions in Iraq repeatedly confirm that far from being better than before, life for nearly all Iraqis has not improved, and is in fact much worse. Availability of clean water is much worse, electricity supplies are worse, malnutrition rates are worse, the rate of water-borne diseases, including typhoid, is worse, and unemployment is much worse. Women’s employment has all but disappeared in some areas and some parts of the economy, and women’s rights have been much reduced. Of course, most Iraqis regarded Saddam Hussein as an unpleasant tyrant, but that did not mean they wanted to be bombed, invaded, and occupied. Of course, Iraqis are not the only people who are suffering and dying. Official figures show 88 British military deaths, 90 fatalities from other non-US coalition military forces, and 1,586 US personnel killed, with thousands wounded or suffering from mental symptoms. The election of a toothless and subservient government in a country occupied by foreign troops has not convinced me the war was right or justified.