[Seattle-editorial] FP: WSF story link to organizing for upcoming Pacific NW SF

[Sheri Herndon]

hi,
this is a global story, but we've got a local angle.  and the world social forum is an important global event with reverberations that ripple to the local.  is anyone interested in working on this?  i can't write it right now, but i could help if someone wanted to take it on.
sheri

====== Forwarded Message ======
Date: 1/13/04 3:39 PM
Received: 1/13/04 8:43 AM -0000
From: N.Bullard at focusweb.org (n.bullard at focusweb.org)
To: focus-on-trade at lists.riseup.net

FOCUS ON TRADE  
NUMBER 96, JANUARY 2004

THIS year's World Social Forum - the first to be held in Asia -- is 
important. Four year's after the first brilliant and inspiring gathering 
in Porto Alegre, Brazil, we are facing a world situation where the 
stakes are still frighteningly high, with new threats but also with 
new opportunities. The US' imperial ambitions are leading it into 
direct confrontation with adversaries and allies alike, paradoxically 
resulting in fractures to the post-Cold War consensus that gave us 
rampant "globalisation" and the disintegration of politics and 
society. These cracks let in the light.

Tens of thousands are coming to Mumbai with a sense of urgency 
and optimism: urgency because of the problems we face and 
optimism because the movement for change is growing. We all 
believe that while me must continue to talk, we must also act. The 
trajectory of militarisation foisted on the rest of the world by the 
US, the growing nuclear threat in Asia, corporations running amok 
with greed and corruption, ecological disasters consuming 
communities and livelihoods, cannot continue. Our collective future 
is at stake.

This year, also for the first time, there will be a significant 
representation from the Arab and Islamic worlds - a deliberate and 
essential effort by everyone to bring together justice, peace and 
anti-imperialist movements from all parts of the world, in spite of 
the attempts to divide us by religion.

On the eve of the 4th World Social Forum, we have in this issue of 
Focus on Trade an overview of the world situation from Walden 
Bello, a view from the heart of Mumbai on the politics of place, and 
a report from Iraq on why the "reconstruction" is at a standstill.

GLOBAL CIVIL SOCIETY MEETS AMIDST CRISIS OF EMPIRE
By Walden Bello
POLITICS AT THE VENUE: THE WSF IN MUMBAI 
By Vijay Prashad
THE RECONSTRUCTION'S BOTTOM-LINE  
By Herbert Docena

*************************************************

GLOBAL CIVIL SOCIETY MEETS AMIDST CRISIS OF EMPIRE
By Walden Bello*

For the thousands of representatives of global civil society who will 
be gathering in Mumbai for the World Social Forum on January 16-
22, Washington is the world's number one problem. Yet what a 
difference a year makes!  The US they confront today is not quite 
the same cocksure superpower of yesterday.

When George W. Bush landed on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham 
Lincoln off the California coast on May 1st last year to mark the 
end of the war in Iraq, Washington seemed to be at the zenith of its 
power, with many commentators calling it, with a mixture of awe 
and disgust, the "New Rome."  The carrier landing, as Canadian 
scholar Anthony Wallace points out, was a celebration of power-a 
spectacle that was masterfully choreographed along the lines of 
the American sci-fi thriller Independence Day and Leni Riefenstahl's 
Triumph of the Will.

In the opening scene of Triumph, Adolf Hitler is pictured 
approaching from the air the Nazi Party rally at Nuremberg in 1934. 
 President Bush began his big spectacle on board the Abraham 
Lincoln by touching down on the vessel's deck in a S-3B Viking jet. 
 Emblazoned on the windshield of the aircraft were the words 
"Commander in Chief."  The US president then emerged in full 
fighter garb, invoking the imagery of the dramatic concluding 
scenes in Independence Day.  In those scenes, an American 
president leads a global coalition from the cockpit of a small jet 
fighter. The aim of this US-led operation is to defend the planet 
from the attack of outer-space aliens.

But fortune is fickle, particularly in wartime.  

Less than six months later, in mid-September, the US, along with 
the European Union, lost the "Battle of Cancun," as the fifth 
Ministerial Meeting of the World Trade Organization collapsed in 
that Mexican tourist town.  A key architect of the successful effort 
to thwart Washington and Brussels' plan to impose their agenda on 
the developing world was the newly formed Group of 20, led by 
Brazil, India, South Africa, and China. 

That the G20 dared to challenge Washington was not unrelated to 
the fact that by September, the legitimacy of the invasion was in 
tatters owing to the collapse of the weapons-of- mass-destruction 
rationale for waging the war; Bush's loyal ally, Tony Blair, was 
fighting for his political life; and US forces in Iraq were being 
subjected to something akin to the ancient torture known as 
"Death by a Thousand Cuts."

Power is partly a function of perception, and the inflation of US 
power right after the Iraq invasion was followed by an even more 
rapid deflation in the next few months. With its image transformed 
into that of a flailing Gulliver lashing out ineffectively at unseen 
Lilliputians in Baghdad and other cities in central Iraq, other 
candidates for "regime change" such as Pyongyang, Damascus, 
and Teheran saw Washington's missives as increasingly hollow.  
Washington was not unaware of the rapid erosion, in the eyes of 
the world, of its capacity to coerce: by late October, in fact, 
George W. Bush was talking, Bill Clinton-like, about giving a 
"security pledge" to North Korea, the aggressive isolation of which 
had been one of the hallmarks of this first year in office.

Unable to call for a higher troop commitment without triggering the 
perception of being trapped in a war without a foreseeable ending, 
Washington was desperate.  By the time of the Cancun ministerial, 
the message coming out of Washington was:  "We want to get out 
of Iraq, but not with our tail between our legs.  We need UN cover, 
some semblance of a multinational security force to leave behind, 
and some semblance of a functioning governme
nt." 

US authorities hailed the passing on October 17 of a watered-down UN Security Council resolution authorizing a multinational force under US leadership, but most observers saw few non-US occupation troops and little non-US
 funding for reconstruction resulting from its vague provisions.  To many governments, it was reminiscent of "peace with honor," Richard Nixon's exit strategy from Vietnam, and few were willing to become ensnared in a los
t cause.  When Washington announced an accelerated withdrawal plan a few weeks later in response to increasingly effective guerrilla attacks, the impression stuck that, indeed, the Bush administration was after a Vietnam-
style exit.

By the third week of October, 104 US occupation soldiers had been killed since Bush's May 1st declaration ending the war-with the average death rate hitting one a day in the first three weeks of the month.  In November, a
lso known as Washington's cruelest month, some 74 US combatants were killed in action, over 30 of them in three helicopters brought down by Iraqi fire.  By the end of 2003, some 325 US troops had been killed in combat sin
ce the invasion of Iraq in March, 210 of them since Bush's Nuremberg-style descent from the skies.

The capture of Saddam Hussein in mid-December simply served to confirm that Saddam was not in control of what was clearly a people's resistance since guerrilla attacks continued unabated.  And as 2004 commences, the quest
ion is no longer whether the Iraqi resistance would stage their equivalent of a Tet Offensive but when.

THE DYNAMICS OF OVEREXTENSION
The Iraq quagmire and the collapse of the Cancun ministerial of the WTO were just two manifestations of that fatal disease of empires: over-extension.  There were other critical indicators, among them:
- the failure to consolidate a dependent regime in Afghanistan where the writ of the Karzai government only extends to the outskirts of Kabul;
- the utter failure to stabilize the Palestine situation, with Washington increasingly held hostage by the Sharon government's lack of any interest in serious negotiations to bring about a viable Palestinian state;
- the paradoxical boost given to Islamic extremism not only in its Middle Eastern birthplace but in South Asia and Southeast Asia by US-led invasions-that of Iraq and Afghanistan-that had been justified to snuff out terro
rism;
- the unraveling of the Atlantic Alliance that won the Cold War;
- the emergence in Washington's own backyard of anti-US, anti-free-market regimes exemplified by those led by Luis Inacio da Silva in Brazil and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela while the US was focused on the Middle East
- the rise of a massive transborder civil society movement that has led the increasingly successful drive to delegitimize the US presence in Iraq and contributed decisively to the collapse of the WTO ministerials in Seatt
le and Cancun.

IMPERIAL DILEMMA
Against such challenges to its hegemony, the US's absolute superiority in nuclear and conventional warfare capability counts for little, in much the same way that a sledgehammer is useless in swatting flies.  To intervene
, invade, and enforce an occupation, ground forces will continue to be the decisive element, but there is no way the US public, most of whom no longer see the Iraq invasion as worth its price in US casualties, will tolera
te a significant expansion in ground troop commitments beyond the 168,000 serving in Iraq and the Gulf states and some 47,000 deployed to Afghanistan, South Korea, the Philippines, and the Balkans.

One option is to return to the gunboat diplomacy of the Clinton era, to what Boston University's Andrew Bacevich describes as the calibrated application of airpower without ground force commitments "to punish, draw lines,
 signal, and negotiate." The Bush people, however, rail against such an option, and for good reason: whether it was Bill Clinton's fusillade of cruise missiles against Osama bin Laden's reported hideouts in Afghanistan an
d Sudan or President Lyndon Baines Johnson's Operation Rolling Thunder against North Vietnam in 1964, air strikes are very limited in their impact against a determined foe.  But then neither does the ground troop option f
are any better, leading to the question: is the US in a no-win situation?

The problem is that the Bush people have unlearned a vital lesson of imperial management: that, as Bacevich puts it, "Governing any empire is a political, economic, and military undertaking; but it is a moral one as well.
"  If the Roman Empire lasted 700 years, says UCLA's Michael Mann, it is because the Romans figured out that the solution to the problem of overextension was not the deployment of more and more legions but the extension o
f citizenship first to local elites, then to all freemen.

For much of the post-World War II period, in fact, the dominant bipartisan faction of the US political elite exhibited the Roman realization that a "moral vision" was central to imperial management.  That was a world forg
ed mainly by alliance-building, undergirded by multilateral mechanisms such as the United Nations, World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, and resting on the belief that, as Frances Fitzgerald put it, "electoral 
democracy combined with private ownership and civil liberties, was what the United States had to offer the Third World." 

National Security Memorandum 68, the defining document of the Cold War, was not simply a national security strategy; it was an ideological vision that spoke of a "long twilight struggle" against communism for the loyaltie
s of the peoples and countries throughout the world.  This cannot be said of the current administration's National Security Strategy document which speaks in narrow terms of the American mission mainly as one of defending
 the American way of life from its enemies abroad and arrogates the right to strike against even potential threats in pursuit of American interests.  Even when the reigning neoconservatives speak about extending democracy
 to the Middle East, they cannot dispel the impression that they see democracy in the light of realpolitik--as a mechanism to destroy Arab unity in order to assure the existence of Israel and guarantee US access to oil.

A RETURN TO MULTILATERALISM
Can a more sophisticated administration undo the damage to US imperial management wrought by the Bush presidency by bringing back mutilateralism and a "moral" dimension to empire?
Perhaps, but even this approach may be anachronistic.  For history does not stand still.  It will be difficult for a reinvigorated US-led coalition politics to douse the wildfire of Islamic fundamentalist reaction that wi
ll eventually bring down or seriously erode the staying power of US allies like the Saudi and Gulf elites.  Going back to the Cold War era promise of extending democracy is unlikely to work with disenchanted people who ha
ve seen US-supported elite-controlled democracies in places like Pakistan and the Philippines become obstacles to economic and social equality.  To revert to the Clinton era of promising prosperity via accelerated globali
zation won't work either since the overwhelming evidence is that, as even the World Bank admits, poverty and inequality increased globally in the 1990s -- the decade of accelerated globalization.  

As for economic multilateralism, financier George Soros' appeal for a reform of the IMF, World Bank, and WTO to promote a more equitable form of globalization may seem sound, but it is unlikely to draw the support of the 
dominant US business interests which, after all, torpedoed the WTO talks with their aggressive protectionist posture on agriculture, intellectual property rights, and steel tariffs, and their gangbuster attitudes towards 
other economies in the areas of investment rights, capital mobility, and the export of genetically  modified products.  Armed with the ideological smokescreen of free trade, the US corporate establishment is, in fact, lik
ely to become even more protectionist and mercantilist in the era of global stagnation, deflation, and diminishing profits that the world has entered.

CHALLENGERS 
And the future? Militarily, there is no doubt that Washington will retain absolute superiority in gross indices of military might such as nuclear warheads, conventional weaponry, and aircraft carriers, but the ability to 
transform military power into effective intervention will decline as the "Iraq syndrome" takes hold.

The break-up of the Atlantic Alliance is irreversible, with the conflict over Iraq merely accelerating the disruptive dynamics of differences building since the 1990s in practically all dimensions of international relatio
ns. Europe will most likely move towards creating a European Defense Force independent of NATO, though it will not challenge US strategic superiority.  Politically, however, Europe will increasingly slip out of the US orb
it and present an alternative pole--pursuing regional self-interest via a liberal, diplomacy-oriented, and multilateral approach.  

In terms of economic strength, the US will remain the dominant power over the next two decades, but it is likely to slip as the source of its hegemony--the global framework for transnational capitalist cooperation to whic
h the WTO is central--is eroded.  Bilateral or regional trade arrangements are likely to proliferate, but the most dynamic ones may not be those integrating weak economies with one superpower like the US or EU but regiona
l economic arrangements among developing countries-or, in the parlance of development economics, "South-South cooperation."  Formations, such as Mercosur in Latin America, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN
), and the G20, will increasingly reflect the key lessons that developing countries have learned over the last 25 years of destabilizing globalization: that trade policy must be subordinated to development, that technolog
y must be liberated from stringent intellectual property rules, that capital controls are necessary, that development demands not less but more state intervention.  And, above all, that the weak must hang together, or the
y will hang separately. 

Among the developing countries, China is, of course, in a category by itself.  Indeed, China is one of the winners of the Bush era.  It has managed to be on the side of everybody on key economic and political conflicts an
d thus on the side of nobody but China.  As the US has become ensnared in wars without end, China has deftly maneuvered to stay free of entangling commitments to pursue rapid economic growth, technological deepening, and 
political stability.  Democratization, of course, remains an urgent need, but the unraveling of China owing to its slow progress--which many China watchers love to predict to sell their books--is not likely to happen.

The other big winner of the last few years is what the New York Times called the world's "second superpower "after the US.  This is global civil society, a force whose most dynamic expression is the World Social Forum tha
t is meeting in Mumbai. This rapidly expanding trans-border network that spans the South and the North is the main force for peace, democracy, fair trade, justice, human rights, and sustainable development.  Governments a
s disparate as Beijing and Washington deride its claims.  Corporations hate it.  And multilateral agencies find themselves compelled to adopt its language of "rights."  But its increasing ability to delegitimize power and
 cut into corporate bottom lines is a fact of international relations that they will have to live with.

A decreased US capacity to control global events, the rise of regional economic blocks as the multilateral system declines, rising assertiveness among developing countries, and the emergence of global civil society as an 
increasingly powerful check on states and corporations-these trends are likely to accelerate in the next few years.  

History is cunning and mischievous, often playing an outrageous game of bringing about precisely the opposite than what its actors intend.  "Full spectrum dominance" by the United States in the 21st century has been the a
vowed objective of the neoconservatives that came to power with George Bush.   Paradoxically, pursuit of this objective by the current administration has accelerated the erosion of US hegemony-a process that might have be
en slowed down by a more skilled imperial elite.   

The crowds in Mumbai will undoubtedly continue to regard the US as a mortal threat to global peace and justice, but they will also be cheered by the increasing difficulties of an arrogant empire that fails to see that dec
line is inevitable and that the challenge is not to resist the process but to manage it deftly.

*Walden Bello is professor of sociology and public administration at the University of the Philippines and executive director of the Bangkok-based research and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South.  He is one of t
he recipients of the Right Livelihood Award-better known as the Alternative Nobel Prize-for 2003.

*************************************************
POLITICS AT THE VENUE: THE WSF IN MUMBAI 
By Vijay Prashad*

The World Social Forum opened in India at least a year ago. That's when the debates within the Left about the nature of the WSF started. Marxists, liberals, and others began to argue about the utility of the WSF, its role
 within India, the problem of funds for something so large as the WSF and the larger question of the relationship between a national struggle and international solidarity. The debate has not been without rancor, but it ha
s certainly been vibrant. Expect nothing less from as politically aware a society as India today.

The story begins with the movement of the WSF from a city of the Left (Porto Alegre) to a city of the Right (Mumbai).

To call Mumbai, once Bombay, a city of the Right is not to say that it does not have a glorious working-class history or that the Left has ceased to operate there. It is simply to indicate that Mumbai is the incubus of th
e cruel cultural nationalism that now rules from New Delhi, and it is the center of Indian finance capital (from Dalal Street, India's own Wall Street). Like New York City, Mumbai's strong organized working-class was assa
ssinated in the past three decades by Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE).

The Communist Party has been a very strong presence in Bombay, especially in the organization of the textile workers and in the successful struggle for the creation of the linguistic state of Maharasthra, of which Mumbai 
is the capital (the Samyukta Maharashtra movement in the 1950s). Noone in this period would have suspected that the Left would be weakened, but this is just what happened.

The first blow came from the closings of the mills, as the organized working class lost their jobs and homes. Unable to stave off the transfer of the mill industry from the unionized city to non-union regions, the Communi
st movement lost part of its base. In 1982, the workers of the textile mills followed the union leader Datta Samant into a protracted strike that raised their dignity, but provided an opportunity for the industrialists to
 pull out of the city entirely.

The journalist Praful Bidwai's assessment of the strike notes, "Great mass struggles such as these shape history. If they succeed, they produce qualitative change and paradigm shifts. If they fail, the consequences can be
 epochally painful. The textile strike failed, but it was a Great Failure, an historic event." The battle over land occupied by workers' housing and by unused mills is the remnant of that struggle. 

"Criminalization is no longer invisible," notes Communist activist Vivek Monteiro. "It has expanded vertically and horizontally. It has diversified and multiplied and spread to all areas of the economy. What was earlier a
n occupational hazard for unions has become an environmental hazard for citizens."

The second blow came from the rise of the fascistic Shiv Sena. Founded in 1966, the Shiv Sena transferred the cause of job loss from the industrialists to "foreign" workers from other Indian states.

This issue remains on the agenda, as the Shiv Sena spent part of 2003 on its campaign against "outsiders" and in favor of "sons of the soil." The party demands that unskilled jobs be reserved for "locals," a class-based s
trategy that wins its allies among the disenfranchised sections of society and which allows it to cultivate ties with the well-heeled "knowledge workers" many of whom are themselves "outsiders."

Even as this campaign is a violation of Article 19 of the Indian Constitution (guarantees freedom of movement of its citizens), it has given the Shiv Sena a devoted cadre among many who are the broken eggs of globalizatio
n's hidden omelet.

The red flag came down from many neighborhoods of the workers, and the Shiv Sena's saffron flag went up its shaky poles. Organized pogroms against Muslims helped consolidate the hold of the Shiv Sena: one governmental com
mission of inquiry set up to investigate a recent riot notes, "From January 8, 1993 at least (the riots began on January 6), there is no doubt that the Shiv Sena and the Shiv Sainiks took the lead in organizing attacks on
 Muslims and their properties under the guidance of several leaders of the Shiv Sena from the level of shakha pramukhs (local leaders) to the Shiv Sena pramukh (Thackeray)."

The adoption of the riot-wing moved the ideologically unsteady Congress Party away from its semi-socialistic origins toward neoliberal and cultural cruelty, and therefore gutted social democracy of any legitimacy among th
e socially oppressed.

The Left remains, in two incarnations, as the Communist movement and as the new social groups. Both have played an active and generative role in the opposition to the current political configuration - to the neoliberal po
licies and the fundamentalist politics of the Shiv Sena, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and the Congress Party (which is with the people when in the opposition, but which is anti-people in power).

It is, therefore, no surprise that the Communists and the new social groups are jointly working to host the WSF. Indeed this is perhaps already something to be celebrated. The politics of the venue demand it.

But the politics of the venue have already drawn sharp criticisms from some who have created Mumbai Resistance, a formation in opposition to the WSF because, MR argues, the WSF is not sufficiently clear on its resistance 
to capitalism and because it has historically received funds from dubious agencies and foundations. The Mumbai-based Research Unit for Political Economy's "The Economics and Politics of the World Social Forum" offers the 
clearest elaboration of the type of criticism made by Mumbai Resistance (available on-line at http://www.rupe-india.org/index.html).

There is much to be learnt from the document, but on the whole, I believe, the positions taken by RUPE are purist in action: they disregard the current local and world political situation. The onslaught of the global Righ
t (of which the Indian BJP is one part) demands that we have a catholic approach to movement building, and that is what the WSF allows.

For the past several months, the Communist Party of India (Marxist)'s newspaper, People's Democracy, has run a column that "thinks together" about the WSF. Each issue has taken up some of the criticisms and offered divers
e viewpoints on the subject (you can read the paper at pd.cpim.org).

The CPIM, for example, has taken issue with aspects of the Charter of the WSF that excludes groups who "take people's lives as a method of political action." The Communists ask, what about groups that have had to take up 
arms to defend the existence of their communities from annihilation by a violent state. The CPIM also questions the Charter on its exclusion of political parties, and wonders if this is an attempt by social democrats and 
new social groups to exclude the European communists. Readers have sent in questions and there has been a lively debate on many of these issues.

I want to share two points from this debate that bear some reflection for those who will go to India from without. The first is the nature of the WSF. The Indian Communists see the WSF, in the words of the CPIM Politburo 
member Sitaram Yechury, as "an open space and a contending space. The contending character comes from the diverse ideological moorings of the various forces that participate in the forum. The WSF is an open space - open t
o all who stand in opposition to neoliberal economic policies.

In India this space has been further defined as opposition to imperialist globalization, patriarchy, war, casteism, racism and communalism (religious sectarian exclusions)." The WSF is an open space, but also a strategic 
space to push the anti-corporate agenda toward anti-capitalism, to move, as Yechury puts it, from There is No Alternative (TINA) to Socialism is the Alternative (SITA).

The second major debate prior to the WSF has been over funds, and, therefore over the character of the groups that come to the WSF. Within India, the Communists and the Left have spent the last two decades in ideological 
struggle against "foreign funds," against NGOization of political life and particularly against the way "international" donors set the agenda and create groups that are accountable to them and not to the people.

Furthermore, the NGO sector is often a partner of globalization in that it has joined the World Bank and others in the critique of the state form: it talks of "people's power" without offering any specific sense of how to
 build this in an age of privatization.

In the context of this long conversation, critics of the WSF, such as Mumbai Resistance and the RUPE group, raise questions about "foreign funds." Certainly, agencies like the Ford Foundation came to India in the 1950s wi
th a specific agenda to undermine communism.

As Merl Curti wrote in his 1963 classic American Philanthropy Abroad, the Ford Foundation chose to work in South and West Asia because of the region's "proximity to the Soviet Union and Communist China and the opportunity
 for channeling rising nationalism into constructive humanitarian purposes within a democratic framework." The Ford mandate in India was to promote ideas of free market capitalism in opposition not only to communism but a
lso to radical nationalism (in the 1950s, Nasserism was a major target).

The WSF does take donor funds, but these are very small compared to the amount of money expended by individuals and groups who use their own funds to get to the event. The WSF India committee has decided not to accept any
 money from corporate sponsors and to reject money from "sources that are clearly aligned to forces that promote globalization. Funding agencies that will NOT be approached to fund the WSF in Mumbai include DFID [British 
government funding agency], USAID, and corporate controlled funding agencies such as Ford and Rockefeller Foudations."

Most important, the Mumbai WSF will cost less than half that spent at Porto Alegre last year; "the event," says the WSF India Committee, "should be modest and ostentations should be avoided." The most important point is t
hat individuals and groups may come to Mumbai with funds from agencies that have their own agenda, "But given the highly dispersed nature of resources that go towards the organization of the WSF - the bulk of which is mad
e up a large number of individuals and organizations - it is difficult for a handful of donor agencies to direct the trajectory of the WSF."

That the debate on funds takes place in India and not in the US is indicative of the way our political life within the US has already been so usurped by NGOs and by the foundations. But for a few political parties much po
litical work now happens in the world of the 501c3, many of whom have a close relationship with a "program officer" whose wisdom defines the work we do. We need to have a public debate on our reliance upon foundations and
 not on a membership or on other accountable institutions for our funds.

Writer Suketu Mehta, whose Maximum City: Bombay Stories will be published next year by Knopf, says that Mumbai is the planet's biggest city because "all of the world's problems are manifest in it." The politics of the ven
ue are rich, and it is hoped that the participants to the WSF will take time to get to know the city, to get to know "the urban disaster in the making, but," as Mehta notes, "also how the city, despite this, is in such ru
de good health." One of the reasons is the vibrancy of the contentious Left.

*  This article was first published in ZNet Commentary, 11 January, 2004.

*************************************************	

THE RECONSTRUCTION'S BOTTOM-LINE  
The US-led reconstruction business in Iraq is faltering because it is less about reconstruction than about business

Nine months after the invasion, deteriorating living conditions marked by constant lack of electricity, a severe petrol shortage, and massive unemployment highlight the failure of the US-led reconstruction of Iraq. While 
insecurity and incompetence are partly to blame, the problems could be more adequately explained by the US and its contractors' determination to hang on to as big a portion of the post-war bounty as possible. 

By Herbert Docena*

BAGHDAD - Even if the occupation were working perfectly well, it would still be wrong. This has become trite commentary among Iraqis who bitterly want the occupation to fail but, at the same time, hope that the reconstruc
tion of their country succeeds. Still, no matter how successful the occupiers try to make the reconstruction, the US and its corporations have no right staying here.

What seems to be exasperating Iraqis more, however, is that they're not even trying. 

NO LIGHTS, NO GAS, NO PAYCHECKS 
At night, most of downtown Baghdad is still clad in darkness, with only the blue and red police sirens lighting the streets and the sound of intermittent gunfire puncturing the silence -- definitely not a picture of a fes
tive newly liberated capital. With most of Iraq suffering from power interruptions lasting an average of 16 hours daily, it's a little hard to party in the dark. How many US soldiers does it take to change a light bulb? A
bout 130,000 so far but don't hold your breath.

South of the city, a double-columned queue of cars -- stretched up to three kilometers -- snake around street blocks, and cross a bridge over the Tigris, before finally ending at a petrol station surrounded by barbed wire
 and protected by a Humvee and an armored tank. Come closing time, so as not to abandon the queue and line up all over again the following day, most of the car owners decide to leave their vehicles parked overnight -- a n
ightly vigil for petrol in a country with the world's second largest reserves of oil.

During the day, some of Iraq's12 million unemployed hang out in front of Checkpoint 3 of the Green Zone, the heavily fortified headquarters of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). The chances of an American coming o
ut of their version of Saddam's spider hole and accepting resumes is next to nil but they come every day anyway. Others try their luck loitering at the hotel lobbies, besieging journalists or NGO workers in need of driver
s and translators. 

With many unemployed former university professors, engineers, and civil servants choosing to become cab drivers instead, Baghdad probably has the most educated taxi drivers per square kilometer in the world today. Strike 
up a conversation and the cabbies will most likely tell you what seems to have become the conventional wisdom today: not even Saddam could have screwed up this badly.

FRUSTRATED BEYOND BELIEF 
Not that they want him back but neither could they have expected the occupation forces to completely bungle up such simple tasks as switching back the light. The lack of power is the number one gripe for most Iraqis, but 
the list is long: uninstalled phone lines, shoddily repaired schools, clogged roads, uncollected garbage, defective sewage, a nonexistent bureaucracy, mass unemployment and widespread poverty -- the general unexpected cha
os that Iraq still is today.

Iraqis are in broad agreement that life is deteriorating rather than improving. The prevailing sentiment is a complex mix of resentment and resignation, frustration and incredulity. On the one hand, Iraqis feel bitter abo
ut being occupied and yet many are resigned to entrusting their day-to-day survival to the Americans. On the other hand, they could not quite believe how -- despite all the time and money -- the world's sole superpower ca
n't make the reconstruction process go right.

For its part, the US says the Iraqis are expecting too much too soon. "The bottleneck is sheer time," explained Ted Morse, the CPA's coordinator for the Baghdad region. "Wherever you have had a true conflict situation, th
ere is an impatience in that people think it can be done immediately. It cannot."

But Iraqis themselves have showed that it can. In 1991, after the first Gulf War and despite the UN-imposed sanctions, it took Iraq's bureaucrats and engineers just three months to restore electricity back to pre-war capa
city, boasted Janan Behman, manager of Baghdad's Daura power station. Now -- after almost nine months and despite the involvement of Bechtel, builders of the Hoover Dam and some of the world's biggest engineering works - 
Iraq's power sector is still  producing less than 20% or 3,600 MW out of the 20,000 MW required. 

IT'S THE STUPIDITY, STUPID 
The occupation forces would not admit this, of course, but much of the problem could be attributed to the successful efforts of the resistance to ensure that nothing works as long as an illegal occupation stays in place. 
The resistance has kept the authorities too busy dodging bombs to spare time for such trifling matters as providing Iraqis with jobs. With the resistance targeting not just combatants but also those profiting from the occ
upation, it's a little too much to expect contractors to go out of their tightly guarded bubbles and move around. Bechtel employees, for example, only travel in military helicopters or armed convoys with at least one desi
gnated "shooter" in every vehicle. [1] 

A lot of the mess can also be attributed to the incompetence and lack of experience of the people running Iraq. Much has been said about how the administrators housed in the Green Zone have little or no experience in publ
ic administration. There have also been various reports about the confusion and lack of coordination among the different agencies involved. Moreover, as in previous colonial administrations, it is often difficult to entic
e the best and the brightest to pack up, leave everything behind, relocate to some far-flung hardship post – only to be welcomed with guns. 

HIDING THE MOON 
But insecurity and incompetence -- while part of the complete and complex picture -- do not go far enough in explaining why the reconstruction effort has so far been an evident failure.

First, although only one per cent of those surveyed in a recent Gallup poll believe that the US came to establish democracy, the majority of the Iraqis are not actively fighting the occupation. While the resistance is gro
wing, this is not an intifida -- yet. While a mere six per cent of those surveyed believed the US are here to help [2], Iraqis who are in the position to assist in the reconstruction effort actually want to make it work -
- not so much to prop up the occupying forces, they say, but to ensure that oil and electricity are kept available. Iraqis may not necessarily like the Americans but they would sure like some hot water in the morning this
 winter.

"If this is the system, then I have to follow," said Dathar al-Khshab, general director of the Daura oil refinery said. It's the only way to keep things moving then so be it, he said, echoing other utilities managers. Ran
k and file oil industry workers are likewise hesitant to shut down the refineries as a bargaining chip for negotiations and as a tactic to undermine the occupation. On the one hand, they know that this could paralyze the 
Americans. On the other, they are afraid of its effect on the Iraqi people. But asked whether they support the coalition forces, Hassan Jum’a, leader of the Southern Oil Compamy union, was firm: "You can't hide the moon. 
Every honest Iraqi should refuse the occupation."

LIKE DOGS 
However, the charge of incompetence is not completely convincing because, for all the allegations of unfair competition and shadowy connections, it would be difficult to accuse Bechtel or Halliburton of not knowing what i
t is doing. 

With projects scattered all over the globe, Bechtel is one of the world's biggest construction firms and it has achieved some of history's most awesome engineering feats. Halliburton, on the other hand, has been repairing
 oil wells and refineries around the world for decades. Even Iraqi officials readily acknowledge that, technically speaking, they should be in good hands with these American contractors. As the grudging respect gradually 
gives way to disappointment, Iraqis are even more baffled as to how these corporations could fail their expectations.

Another popular explanation making the rounds alleges that sabotaging the reconstruction is a conscious and deliberate effort on the part of the occupation forces to make the Iraqis completely dependent and subservient. K
eeping a dog hungry not only keeps it from barking, it also makes the dog follow its master anywhere.

The problem with this theory is that due to the relatively decentralized reconstruction process involving dozens of contractors and subcontractors, an explicit order for deliberate failure would have been almost impossibl
e to secretly enforce. Moreover, faced with a mounting resistance, this tactic could be extremely risky because it undermines the effort to "win hearts and minds." Keeping a dog hungry could also turn it desperate and rab
id.

MADE IN THE USA 
A clue to why the reconstruction has been botched up so far lies at the Najibiya power station in Basrah, Iraq's second largest city located south of Baghdad. Sitting uninstalled between two decrepit turbines are massive 
brand new air-conditioning units shipped all the way from York Corporation in Oklahoma. Pasted on one side of each unit was a glittering sticker proudly displaying the "Made in USA" sign -- complete with the stars and str
ipes.

It's just what the Iraqis don't need at this time. Since May, Yaarub Jasim, general director for the southern region of Iraq's electricity ministry, has been pleading with Bechtel to deliver urgently needed spare parts fo
r their antiquated turbines. "We asked Bechtel many times to please help us because the demand for power is very high and we should cover this demand," Jasim said. "We asked many times, many times."

Two weeks ago, Bechtel finally came. Before it could deliver any of Jasim's request, however, Bechtel transported the air-conditioners -- useless until the start of summer six months from now.

But even if the air-con units eventually become useful, stressed plant manager Hamad Salem, other spare parts would have been much more important. The air-conditioners, Salem pointed out, were not even in the list of the 
equipment and machine components that they submitted to Bechtel.

NO STARS AND STRIPES 
Ideally, said Jasim, it would be best to get the spare parts from the companies that originally built the turbines because they would be more readily available and more suitable for their technology. Unfortunately, Jasim 
pointed out, Iraq's generators happened to have been provided by companies from France, Russia, and Germany -- the very countries banned last week by the Pentagon from getting contracts in Iraq -- as well as Japan. Upon i
nspection, it was clear that the turbines don't carry the stars and stripes logo. The dilapidated turbines in Najibiya, for example, still proudly wore "Made in USSR" plates.

Why then have the required components not been delivered? Jasim replied dismissively, as though the answer was self-evident: "Because no other company has been allowed by the US government, only Bechtel."

Unlike those of the other banned corporations, Bechtel carries the requisite brand. Since its founding, Bechtel's officials have had a long and very cozy relationship with and within the state now disbursing the billion-d
ollar contracts. For example, Bechtel board member George Schultz was former Treasury Secretary to Nixon, State Secretary to Reagan, and -- coincidentally  -- chairman of the advisory board of the Committee for the Libera
tion of Iraq. Also once included in Bechtel's payroll were former Central Intelligence Agency chief John McCone, former Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger, and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Jack Sheehan.

GRAND BUSINESS PLANS
Awaiting urgent rehabilitation, Iraq's French, Russian, German, and Japanese-made power infrastructure is slowly disintegrating. At the station, workers are trying to make full use of the turbines by cooking pots of rice 
on the surface of the rusting hot pipes. If the stations are not rehabilitated any time soon, repairs will no longer be enough to keep them running, warned Jasim.

To finally end Iraq's crippling power shortage and to ensure that the turbines are not completely degraded, Bechtel should either quickly manufacture the required spare parts itself (a very long and very costly process) b
uy the spare parts from the Russian company directly, or hire the Russian firm as a subcontractor. That or they just allow the crumbling turbines to turn completely useless. Then, they bid for building new billion-dollar 
power generators themselves.

Incidentally, part of Bechtel’s contract includes making "roadmaps for future longer term needs and investments." In other words, Bechtel is currently being paid to determine what the Iraqis will "need" to buy in the futu
re -- using the Iraqis and the US taxpayers' money. According to independent estimates, Bechtel stands to get up to $20 billion worth of reconstruction contracts in the next few years. [3]

If Bechtel has grander plans for Iraq's power sector, however, they’re not telling the Iraqis. The utilities managers interviewed said they are not being consulted at all regarding Iraq's strategic energy plans. Bechtel o
fficials don't even bother to explain what's taking them so long to deliver the parts they need. "They just collect papers," said Jasim.

AN INCENTIVE TO FAIL 
Iraq's power sector problem is illustrative of the bigger pattern.

Iraqis spend up to five hours lining up for gasoline not only because of the sabotage of pipelines but also because there's limited electricity to run oil refineries that are crying for quicker action from Kellog, Brown, 
and Root (KBR), the Halliburton subsidiary and contractor for rehabilitating the oil infrastructure. According to workers from the South Oil Company in Basrah, which KBR is obliged to rehabilitate, they are not aware of a
ny repairs KBR has actually undertaken.

With Iraq's oil refineries still awaiting rehabilitation, Iraq cannot refine enough crude oil to meet domestic consumption. The US is instead exporting Iraq's crude oil and employing KBR under a no-bid cost-plus-fixed fee
 contract to import gasoline from neighboring Turkey and Kuwait.

In late December, an official Pentagon investigation revealed that KBR is charging the US government more than twice what others are paying for imported gasoline. What was left unsaid, however, is the conflict of interest
 inherent in hiring KBR for both the oil infrastructure reconstruction and the oil importation. If Iraq's pipelines and refineries were suddenly fully functional and Iraq is able to produce all the oil it needs, it would 
be the end of KBR's lucrative oil-importing business.

There has been no evidence that KBR is deliberately delaying the repair the refineries, only that there is an obvious disincentive to speed things up. There is a serious but overlooked clash of incentives when the same co
mpany tasked to revive the oil industry is simultaneously making money from a condition in which that industry stays in tatters.

NO MONEY AT ALL? 
Just outside the CPA headquarters, a small unorganized group of employees of the former regime gathered and unfurled their banner: "We Need our Salaries Now." They were demanding 10 months worth of back-wages. "We thank y
ou because you saved our lives from Saddam. But we want to live so you should help us," their unofficial spokesperson, Karim Hassin, said indignantly, addressing the unresponsive 10-foot high wall protecting the compound.
 "Paul Bremer promised us salaries. We heard it with our own ears. What happened to these promises?" 

A day after that the Pentagon's investigation on KBR was publicized, 300 soldiers walked out of the US-created 700-member New Iraqi Army decrying unreasonably low wages. Most of the deserters were recruited from Saddam's 
former army but for only $50 a month, they had decided to transfer their allegiance to the occupation forces. Trained by the military contractor Vinnell Corporation, their only demand from their new masters was a raise in
 pay to $120 a month. That would have amounted to a mere monthly increase in spending of only $49,000 -- small change put beside the US' $4 billion monthly military spending in Iraq and a miniscule amount compared to the 
$61 million in overcharges by KBR.

Hearing about all these developments, it would appear as though the occupation forces have come to liberate Iraq on a really tight budget. The common refrain of the Iraqis who have chosen to work with the US-installed bur
eaucracy, is that there is no quid. Pressed to explain the failure of his ministry to significantly increase power, for example, Iraq's electricity chief, Ayhem Al-Samaraie, grudgingly admitted: "I have no money in my min
istry at all." 

Indeed, a quick visual survey of Baghdad -- from the unkempt streets, the aging machines, the raging workers to the unbelievably long lines for gasoline -- makes this explanation for Iraq's reconstruction problems sound a
lmost convincing. That the reconstruction effort is in shambles because there is no money almost seems plausible.

NONE FOR IRAQ, BILLIONS FOR BECHTEL 
But it isn't. Last November, the US Congress eventually passed Bush's $87 billion request for Iraq with barely a dissenting voice. Before that, the US had already spent $79 billion for both Iraq and Afghanistan. On top of
 this, the US also has complete control of the UN-authorized Development Fund for Iraq (DFI) which contains all of the former government's assets as well as past and future revenues from Iraq's oil exports, including left
over from the UN Oil for Food Program. 

By the end of the year, the DFI would have given the occupation forces access to a total of $10 billion in disposable funds. [4] Though control would be less direct, the occupation forces can also tap a few more billions 
from the estimated $13 billion grants and loans raised during the Madrid donors conference on Iraq last October.

On paper, the amount that will be paid to contractors like Bechtel will come from US taxpayers' money. In practice, however, all that is being spent on Iraq's reconstruction is mixed in a pot containing the US and other c
oalition-member countries grants plus the Iraqis' own funds.

So there's money; it's just not going around. And here perhaps lies the solution to the mystery of how the world's superpower and the world's biggest corporations can't even begin to put Iraq together again after almost n
ine months: The reconstruction is less about reconstruction than about making the most money possible.

Firms like Raytheon, Boeing, and Northrop Gruman will get their fair share of the $4 billion that the US is spending monthly on military expenses in Iraq; but there will not be an extra dime for the New Iraqi Army recruit
s. Bechtel's useless Oklahoma-made air-conditioners will be paid for under the $680 million no-bid contract; but there will be no money for the desperately needed Russian-made components for Najibiya's turbines. Halliburt
on and its subcontractors creamed off $61 million dollars importing oil from Kuwait; but there will be no pay-raise for Iraq's oil refinery workers.

While the US finds it increasingly harder to raise funds for the occupation, there is still enough money for the most critical aspects of the reconstruction. Those profiting from it, however, are determined to keep the bi
ggest share possible to themselves. The bottom-line of the reconstruction mess is the bottom-line.

THE BUSINESS OF MAKING MONEY  
"The profit motive is what brings companies to dangerous locations. But that is what capitalism is all about," Richard Dowling, spokesperson of the US Army Corps of Engineers, the agency that contracted KBR, explained. "I
f it takes profit to motivate an organization to take on a tough job, we can live with that. Yes, there's a profit motive but the result is the job gets done." 

The problem is, as evidenced most clearly by the case of Bechtel and KBR, the job is not even getting half-done. Profit-maximization has not resulted in the most efficient restoration of power and oil production possible.
 On the contrary, it gets in the way of doing things right. The power plants will eventually be built and the oil refineries will run again, but not after unnecessary deprivation on the part of Iraqis and not after Bechte
l has made the most of the opportunity.

This war to liberate Iraq was never about liberating the Iraqis. Unsurprisingly then, that the reconstruction effort is also not about reconstruction. In this occupation, the US and its allies' primary goal is not to rebu
ild what they have destroyed; it's to make a fast buck. Contractors like Bechtel and KBR are assured of getting paid no matter what; that the power plants will eventually be constructed is just incidental. They will be bu
ilt in order to justify the pretext for the profit-making: that a war had to be waged and that everything that was destroyed have to be rebuilt.

As Stephen Bechtel, the company's founder, once made clear, "We are not in the construction and engineering business. We are in the business of making money." Billed as the biggest rebuilding effort since World War II, th
e reconstruction of Iraq is expected to cost $100 billion -- some even say $200 billion -- depending on how long they stay. For the post-war contractors, this is not a reconstruction business; it is a hundred-billion-doll
ar bonanza.

As the reconstruction process continues to disillusion Iraqis, the myth that the US is here to help is also steadily collapsing. With no light, no gasoline, and no paychecks, more and more Iraqis are no longer just cursin
g the darkness. "If you want to live in peace, Americans, give us our salary," warned Hassim, the Iraqi protesting at the gates of the CPA. "If you do not, next time we'll come back with weapons." 

* Herbert Docena is a research associate with Focus on the Global South. He was in Iraq in December. Email herbert at focusweb.org

NOTES: 
[1] Steve Schifferes, "The challenge of rebuilding Iraq," BBC News Oct 21, 2003 
[2] Walter Pincus, "Skepticism About U.S. Seek Deep, Iraq Poll Shows," Washington Post, November 12, 2003 
[3] Elizabeth Becker, "Companies From All Over a Piece of Action Rebuilding Iraq," New York Times, May 21, 2003 
[4]Christian Aid, "Iraq: The Missing Billions: Transition and 
Transparency in Post-War Iraq" Briefing Paper for the Madrid 
Donor’s Conference, October 23-24, 2003

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