Bechtel's billions down the drain
By Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily
BAGHDAD - The decision of the giant engineering company Bechtel to withdraw
from Iraq has left many Iraqis feeling betrayed. In the company's departure,
they see the end of remaining hopes for the reconstruction of Iraq.
"It is much worse than in the time of Saddam Hussein," Communist Party member
Nayif Jassim said. "Most Iraqis wish
Saddam would be back in power now that they lived out the hardships of the
occupation. The Americans did nothing but loot our oil and kill our people."
Bechtel, whose board members have close ties to the administration of US
President George W Bush, announced last week that it was done with trying to
operate in the war-torn country. The company has received US$2.3 billion of
Iraqi reconstruction funds and US taxpayer money, but is leaving without
completing most of the tasks it set out to do.
On every level of infrastructure measurable, the situation in Iraq is worse now
than under the rule of Saddam. That includes the 12 years of economic sanctions
since the first Gulf War in 1991, a period that Dennis Halliday, former United
Nations humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, described as "genocidal" for Iraqis.
The average household in Iraq now gets two hours of electricity a day. There is
70% unemployment, 68% of Iraqis have no access to safe drinking water, and only
19% have sewage access. Not even oil production has matched pre-invasion
levels.
The security situation is hellish, with a recent study published in the
prestigious British medical journal Lancet estimating 655,000 excess deaths in
Iraq as a result of the invasion and occupation.
The group Medact recently said that easily treatable conditions such as
diarrhea and respiratory illness are causing 70% of all child deaths, and that
"of the 180 health clinics the US hoped to build by the end of 2005, only four
have been completed - and none opened".
A proposed $200 million project to build 142 primary-care centers ran out of
cash after building just 20 clinics, a performance the World Health
Organization described as "shocking".
Iraqis are complaining more loudly now than under the sanctions. Lack of
electricity has led to increasing demand for gasoline to run generators. And
gasoline is among the scarcest commodities in this oil-rich country.
"We inherited an exhausted electricity system in generating stations and
distributing nets, but we were able to supply 50% of consumer demand during
heavy load periods, and more than that during ordinary days," an engineer with
the Ministry of Electricity said.
"The situation now is much worse, and it seems not to be improving despite the
huge contracts signed with American companies. It is strange how billions of
dollars spent on electricity brought no improvement whatsoever, but in fact
worsened the situation."
The engineer said, "We in the ministry have not received any real equipment for
our senior stations, and the small transformers for the distributing nets were
of very low standard."
Bechtel's contract included reconstruction of water-treatment systems,
electricity plants, sewage systems, airports and roads.
Two former Iraqi electricity ministers were charged with corruption by the
Iraqi Commission of Integrity set up under the occupation. One of them, Ayham
al-Samarraii, was sentenced to jail but was taken away by his US security
guards. He insisted it was not he who looted the ministry's money.
Managers at water departments all over Iraq say the only repairs they managed
were through UN offices and humanitarian-aid organizations. The ministry
provided them with very little chlorine for water treatment. New projects were
no more than simple maintenance moves that did little to halt collapsing
infrastructure.
Bechtel was among the first companies, along with Halliburton, which US Vice
President Dick Cheney once headed, to have received fixed-fee contracts drawn
to guarantee profit.
Ahmed al-Ani, who works with a major Iraqi construction contracting company,
says the model Bechtel adopted was certain to fail.
"They charged huge sums of money for the contracts they signed, then they sold
them to smaller companies who resold them again to small, inexperienced Iraqi
contractors," Ani said. "These inexperienced contractors then had to execute
the works badly because of the very low prices they got and the lack of
experience."
Some Iraqi political analysts, rather optimistically, look at Bechtel's
departure from a different angle.
"I see the beginning of a US withdrawal from Iraq," Maki al-Nazzal said. "It
started with Bechtel and Halliburton's propaganda, and might end with their
fleeing from the field. They came with Bremer and introduced themselves as
heroes and saviors who would bring prosperity to Iraq, but all they did was
market US propaganda." L Paul Bremer was the head of the Coalition Provisional
Authority that ran Iraq after US forces toppled Saddam's government.
President Bush told reporters on a visit to Iraq in June: "You can measure
progress in megawatts of electricity delivered. You can measure progress in
terms of oil sold on the market on behalf of the Iraqi people."
By his standards, the position in Iraq is now much worse.
