Page 2 of 3 DISPATCHES
FROM AMERICA How Iraq won its 'freedom'
By Tom Engelhardt
energy working group, would be
tapped as Iraq's oil minister, was surrounded by
Western advisers who had worked for the oil
giants, and set his mind to "privatizing" the
Iraqi energy industry.
With the
third-largest oil reserves on the planet, Iraq
was, sooner or later, to be thrown open to
investment from US energy firms and, in the
process, that "clock" in Baghdad would be turned
back perhaps 40 years to a time before energy
resources were
nationalized everywhere in the
Middle East. (That the effort has, so far,
largely, though not completely, failed wasn't due
to lack of effort.)
When it came to the
freedoms of Western occupiers (or liberators, if
you will), including armed mercenaries, however,
Bremer achieved a true medal-snatching feat. He in
essence turned that Baghdad clock back to the 19th
century and made that "time" stick to this very
day. On the eve of his departure, he issued a
remarkable document of freedom - a declaration of
foreign independence - that went by the name of
"Order 17" [1] and that, in the US mainstream
media, is still often referred to as "the law" in
Iraq.
Order 17 is a document well worth
reading. It in essence granted to every foreigner
in the country connected to the occupation
enterprise the full freedom of the land, not to be
interfered with in any way by Iraqis or any Iraqi
political or legal institution. Foreigners -
unless, of course, they were jihadis or Iranians -
were to be "immune from any form of arrest or
detention other than by persons acting on behalf
of their Sending States", even though US and
coalition forces were to be allowed the freedom to
arrest and detain in prisons and detention camps
of their own any Iraqis they designated worthy of
that honor. (The present prison population of
American Iraq is reputed to be at least 24,500 and
rising.)
All foreigners involved in the
occupation project were to be granted "freedom of
movement without delay throughout Iraq", and
neither their vessels, vehicles nor aircraft were
to be "subject to registration, licensing or
inspection by the [Iraqi] government". Nor in
traveling would foreign diplomat, soldier,
consultant, or security guard, or any of their
vehicles, vessels, or planes be subject to "dues,
tolls, or charges, including landing and parking
fees", and so on. And don't forget that on
imports, including "controlled substances", there
were to be no customs fees (or inspections),
taxes, or much of anything else; nor was there to
be the slightest charge for the use of Iraqi
"headquarters, camps, and other premises"
occupied, nor for the use of electricity, water or
other utilities.
And then, of course,
there was that "international zone", now better
known as the Green Zone, whose control was
carefully placed in the hands of the Multinational
Force or MNF (in essence, the Americans and their
contractors) exactly as if it had been the
international part of Shanghai, or Portuguese
Macau, or British Hong Kong in the 19th century.
Promulgated on the eve of the "return of
sovereignty", Order 17 gave new meaning to the
term "free world". It was, in essence, a
get-out-of-jail-free card in perpetuity.
Above all else, Bremer freed an already
powerful shadow army run out of private security
outfits like Blackwater USA that, by now, has
grown, according to recent reports, into a force
of 20,000-50,000 or more hired guns. These private
soldiers, largely in the employ of the Pentagon or
the US State Department - and so operating on US
taxpayer dollars - were granted the right to act
as they pleased with utter impunity anywhere in
the country.
More than three years later,
the language of Order 17, written in high
legalese, remains striking when it comes to the
contractors. (The man who, according to the
Washington Post, composed the initial draft of the
document, Lawrence T Peter, is, perhaps not
surprisingly, now director of the Private Security
Company Association of Iraq, which "represents at
least 50 security companies".) Order 17 begins on
private security firms with a stated need "to
clarify the status of ... certain international
consultants, and certain contractors in respect of
the government and the local courts." But the key
passage is this:
Contractors shall not be subject to
Iraqi laws or regulations in matters relating to
the terms and conditions of their contracts ...
Contractors shall be immune from Iraqi legal
processes with respect to acts performed by them
pursuant to the terms and conditions of a
contract or any subcontract thereto ...
Certification by the Sending State that its
contractor acted pursuant to the terms and
conditions of the contract shall, in any Iraqi
legal process, be conclusive evidence of the
facts so certified ...
In other
words, when, in June 2004, Bremer handed over
"sovereignty" to an Iraqi "government" lodged in
the foreign-controlled Green Zone and left town as
fast as he could, he in essence handed over next
to nothing. He had already succeeded in making
Iraq a "free" country, as only the Bush
administration might have defined "freedom": free
of taxes, duties, tolls, accountability or
responsibility of any kind, no matter what
Americans or their allies and hirelings did or
what they took. In Iraq, in a twist on the
nightmare language of George Orwell's dystopian
novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, freedom meant
theft.
When it came to the Iraqi
government, freedom also meant the freedom not to
be informed. Take an example: the US military
recently announced that it was about to build a
new base in Iraq, right up against the Iranian
border, that would be ready for operation this
November. Officially, such decisions are, of
course, supposed to be made in conjunction with
the sovereign government of the country, but Kaveh
L Afrasiabi of Asia Times Online informs us that
"Iraqi officials were apparently not even
consulted prior to an announcement on this issue".
(See Growing need for US-Iran confidence
steps, September 18.)
The
freedom of 'Bloody Sunday' "I saw women
and children jump out of their cars and start to
crawl on the road to escape being shot, but still
the firing kept coming and many of them were
killed. I saw a boy of about 10 leaping in fear
from a minibus; he was shot in the head. His
mother was crying out for him, she jumped out
after him, and she was killed. People were
afraid."
This is the testimony of Hassan
Jabar Salman, a lawyer "shot four times in the
back, his car riddled with eight more bullets" as
he attempted to escape a fusillade from Blackwater
hired guns guarding a US convoy in the middle of
Baghdad on September 16. Only the latest of many
Blackwater "incidents", "Bloody Sunday" -
depending on which report you read, between eight
and 28 Iraqi men, women and children died -
brought into sharper focus the free world that
Bremer had helped create at the behest of his
president.
In this rare case, the Iraqi
government publicly and vociferously complained.
As in Vietnam in the 1960s, even the officials of
puppet governments often turn out to be
nationalists; even they get fed up with their
patrons' arrogance sooner or later; and often,
their officials, having spent so much time up
close and personal with the occupiers, have
nothing but contempt for them.
Prime
Minister Nuri al-Maliki promptly called "Bloody
Sunday" a "crime" by out-of-control private
security contractors. "We will never," he said at
a news conference, "allow Iraqi citizens to be
killed in cold blood by this company that is
playing with the lives of the people."
(Blackwater, not surprisingly, denied that its
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
