Naomi Klein: Democracy and robbery

[dw]

Tuesday February 10, 2004, The Guardian of London

If you believe the White House, the future government of Iraq is being designed in Iraq. If you believe the Iraqi people, however, it is being designed in the White House. Technically, neither is true; Iraq's future government is being engineered in an anonymous research park in suburban North Carolina.

On March 4 last year, with the military campaign just 15 days away, the United States agency for international development asked three American firms to bid for a unique job; after Iraq had been invaded and occupied, one company would be charged with setting up 180 local and provincial town councils in the rubble.

This was newly imperial territory for firms that were more accustomed to the friendly NGO-speak of "public-private partnerships", and two of the three companies decided not to apply. The "local governance" contract, worth $167.9m in the first year and up to $466m in total, went to the Research Triangle Institute (RTI), a private non-profit-making body best known for its drug research. None of its employees had been to Iraq in years.

At first, RTI's Iraq mission attracted little public attention. Next to Bechtel's inability to turn the lights on, and Halliburton's wild overcharging, RTI's "civil society" workshops seemed rather benign. No more. It now turns out that the town councils RTI has been quietly setting up are the centrepiece of Washington's plan to hand over power to appointed regional caucuses - a plan that has been so widely rejected in Iraq, it could end up bringing the occupation to its knees.

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[Djinn]

1. thanks for this

she did a really good piece a while back about how the contracts were all illegal - in the Guardian too I think

[CHIMO]

2. Some More

Items

http://www.nologo.org/

[ithacan]

3. no surprise here...

anyone who REALLY believes that the Bush gang wants any kind of true democracy in Iraq is hopelessly naive.

In fact, this is the way the US goes about "spreading democracy" everywhere! It's really about destroying democracy and putting in place structures that ensure that the government does what the US wants.

It's kind of sad, most Americans are so hopelessly blinded by the image they have of the US as a beacon of freedom in the world that they actually think that one of the positive things about the US is this kind of democracy promotion project.

By the way, here's the US propaganda (web site of USAID's Iraq projects):

http://www.usaid.gov/iraq/

Here's the press release from AID announcing RTI's getting the contract: http://www.usaid.gov/press/releases/2003/pr030411_1.html