Meet The Buyers! – The Free Trade Travelling Circus Hits London!

Between Monday April 26th and Wednesday the 28th London plays host to the ‘Iraq Procurement Conference – Meet the Buyers’, a three day expo which will see contract-hungry British companies compete for their slice of the privatisation pie of the century – post war Iraq. The multinational corporate shindig is sponsored by companies with glowing human rights records such as Shell, Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco, arms dealers Raytheon, security company Erinys (employing former South African apartheid murderers and Colombian paramilitary trainers), and pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Oxy.

Iraqi people, having suffered enough through centuries of empire and colonialism and occupations including the Ottoman, British and internal Baathist, are now enduing further collective punishment under the year-old and entrenched political and economic US-UK-Polish occupation. Little known to many, Poland controls a third of Iraq and commands 19 multinational divisional forces, while former Finance Minister and architect of the US pushed Free Market Shock Therapy programmes of the early 90s Marek Belka is now priming Iraq for the same treatment based on his wealth of experience, and turning a blind eye to the poverty of its results. A fifth of Poland’s population is unemployed.

13 years of genocidal sanctions, qualified as such by former UN Assistant Secretary-General Denis Halliday who resigned as head of the Oil for Food Programme over their impact which was claiming an estimated 250 Iraqi lives per day) did more than kill over a million and a half people, mostly children, from preventable diseases, they also primed Iraq for a full free-market take-over by levelling the country into an infrastructural ground zero. Every sector from the docks to the oil to the electricity and agricultural needs reconstruction. Enter the occupation and its sale of the century contract proffering conferences such as Iraq Procurement 2004.

Sessions at the conference will cover financial issues and risks, construction, agriculture, electricity, oil and gas, communications, and the ambiguously titled ‘cultural strategies. Possibly bringing western ‘expertise’ and ‘innovation’ to a country which invented mathematics, engineering, the alphabet, and at one point printed more books than any other country in the world. Iraqi industry also ran for 13 years of the US-UK-UN genocidal sanctions regime on little more than the inventiveness, ingenuity and accumulated skill of ordinary Iraqi engineers and workers, keeping their war-smashed industries turning over without spare parts or essential machinery. Some workers have repeated the process, due to the incompetency of foreign companies and also to preserve their honour, dignity and pride as workers and ‘sons of Iraq’. Southern Oil Company workers reconstructed parts of every location in the company using spare parts from the local market, black market and those finally offered, 6 months on into the occupation by KBR, They also barred all foreign workers, including all KBR employees from entering their locations. Despite the need for reconstruction, Iraqi workers have proved that they can do this themselves with the right equipment, a little more training and the autonomy to do so, exposing the racist global capitalist myths of west knows best and Multinational elite expertise, and corporate capital being responsible for anything more than supervising, managing and shifting profit, while ordinary working class people, as usual, make everything run.

Conference literature states that, ‘most importantly, the event is designed for one-to-one meetings, contract signing and forming buyer-supplier relationships’. David J Nash – Director of the Iraq Program Management Office of the Occupation Government aka The Coalition Provisional Authority plus representatives from the US installed Governing Council – an array of 23 un-elected, widely rejected, ridiculed and resented talking heads who form what is known colloquially as the ‘Majester al Jawazees’ – the Council of Collaborators. GC members need mass armed protection wherever they go, one has already been assassinated and there are two armed resistance groups - The Jihad Brigades of Imam Ali bin Abi-Taleb (Shi’ite) and Seraya Al Jihad (Sunni) – which have vowed to kill every single last one of the GC. Over half of the Governing Council are ex-pats and have no standing in Iraq communities. Many of the parties have their own intelligence and surveillance apparatuses, and armed militias, aping their predecessors, The Ba’ath, in terms of authoritarianism, hierarchy and corruption. Already party members have managed to secure reconstruction contracts through their cosy connections with the CPA and are ransoming ordinary people into their parties by offering them jobs for membership. In a country where unemployment stands at a staggering 70%, more and more people are being tempted by mafia work and aid-stealing rackets. Both were in evidence in Baghdad’s squatted government buildings-turned-slums for the homeless and Al Awda Palestinian refugee camp, as well as Basra were foreign contractors were receiving death-threats from Islamic part reps. The hand-over of power on June the 30th is dismissed by many as nothing but a cosmetic shift in responsibility for oppression. As in occupied Afghanistan, the ruling elite was installed by the US to serve as a guard-dog and scapegoat for the occupation to hide-behind and carry on its budget forming, security planning (i.e attacks, sieges, searches and ultimatums) and resource stealing. Iraq will be no different in its ‘ethnic and religious tension’ blamed turmoil. Democracy is delivered – an Iraqi government – and they become the occupation with an Iraqi face. 14 permanent military bases are being re-enforced right now in Iraq. Bremer himself admitted in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that post June, the only thing that will change with the CPA will be the name. Iraqis must also defer all decisions a Security Adviser, Iraq’s own American version of Condoleeza Rice. Strategic occupation imperatives such as which town will be declared a closed military zone and pummelled with F16 and Apache fired bombs, missiles and rockets, annihilating hundreds of civilians and incinerating ambulances in the process or which village will be surrounded with razor-wire and apache gunship patrols and placed under curfew next or which holy city will be stormed to kill the next radical Iraqi cleric who is denouncing US domination?

Despite the seemingly logical and natural nature of the event, it is technically illegal given that the Occupation Orders – de-facto Iraqi National laws, of which over 70 have already been passed and signed by former Contra cultivating anti-Terrorism chief Paul Bremer III, acting President of Iraq with veto power over all GC decisions – are actually break international law. An Occupation force does not have the right to re-write fundamental laws of a country relating to its resources and ecomomy. Order 39 on Foreign Investment – the Order underpinning Iraq Procurement 2004 - has thrown open the door for 100% foreign corporate privatisation of everything above ground level in Iraq and constitutes ‘Pillage’ under the Hague Regulations 1907. It also allows for 100% capital flight, post-profit from Iraq, meaning none of the millions made by companies will be ploughed back into the Iraqi economy. Furthermore, under The Hague regulations, occupying powers "shall be regarded only as administrator and usufructuary of public buildings, real estate, forests and agricultural estates belonging to the hostile state, and situated in the occupied country. It must safeguard the capital of these properties, and administer them in accordance with the rules of usufruct." Naomi Klein hits the nail on the head when she asks, ‘what could more substantially alter "the substance" of a public asset than to turn it into a private one?’. And this is what the Occupation Administration is busily doing and institutionalising with the help of events like Iraq Procurement 2004. With regards to the Geneva Conventions (the US is a signatory to both the Hague Regulations and the Geneva Conventions) Article 53 has also been violated. It states: ‘Any destruction by the occupying power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons, or to the state, or to other public authorities, or to social or cooperative organisations, is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.’ ‘Necessary’ military operations pursuing the wholesale sell-off of state assets and perpetuation of the free market through destruction? This is the Free Market Fundamentalist pathology of the bomb and build industry laid bare.

Order 49 on Tax Strategies for 2004 retains its predecessor Order 37 on Tax Strategy for 2003 by slashing the highest rate of tax in Iraq – corporate tax – from 45% to 15%. Section 4 on Exemptions follows the same guidelines as the US’s Free Trade Agreement with Jordan – the Middle East’s prototype Free-Market test-case. The only country in the region to join the WTO, a country with bilateral trade agreements with Israel, 12 Qualified Industrial Zones – QIZ’s – aka as Free Trade Zones, modelled on Maquiladora exploitation belts in Mexico where immigrant mostly female workers (men form unions to readily, women are easier to intimidate and assault) earn slave wages in sweatshops making garments for US markets – tariff free. In Jordan’s FTZs most of the workers are ghettoised Palestinians which make up over half of Jordan’s 7 million population plus imported Philippine and Indonesian workers. Order 49 states that Foreign (Non-Iraqi) employees and foreign (non-Iraqi) subcontractors of foreign (non-Iraqi) governments, international organisations, and non-governmental organisations registered pursuant to CPA Order 45 that are providing technical, financial, logistical administrative or other assistance to Iraq. Under Order 45 international organisations carrying out reconstruction work do not have to register formally but can be approved by the Foreign Minister. Definitions of International organisations include UN Agencies, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank and ‘any organisation that has an international legal identity’ and ‘performs functions of genuinely international character’. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) – the primary awarder of post-war reconstruction contracts would fit the bill too.

Order 49 goes on to say ‘Foreign employees of such contractors and sub-contractors shall not be liable to pay any tax on income or similar charge while in the territory of Iraq on income from foreign sources or on income from paid or paid on behalf of such governments, international organisations or non-governmental organisations.’ This technically exempts corporate staff from companies given contracts by USAID which is responsible for awarding a no-bid contract to Halliburton – formerly headed by current US Vice President Dick Cheney (still working under an ‘emergency repairs’ contract to reconstruct the oil sector but also includes oil exports and has a maximum return value of $7bn) SSA Marine (formerly Stevedoring Services of America - $4.8m) running Um Qasr port, and KBR (Kellogg Brown and Root – subsidiary of Halliburton – responsible for building the cages at Guantanamo Bay and currently operating an open-ended contract to supply logistics and support to US troops – contract from the US Army corps of Engineers – an international organisation). All of the above points to one conclusion: the crony companies of the Bush regime and their employees are carrying out their privatisation projects with maximum profit returns, Tax Free – profiteering heaven – 100% capital flight, mega-low corporate taxes and masses or disposal income. Iraq gains nothing! Corporate parasites make a killing tax free. The money from re-set high taxes could be used to fund social services in Iraq, social reconstruction and unemployment benefits, potentially of $100 per month, as demanded by the Union of the Unemployed – Iraq’s largest representative of the country’s jobless. This is not an impossibility given Iraq having the worlds second largest oil reserves with gallons still as yet untapped.

The icing on the pie is the Occupation’s Order 30 on Employment and Salaries. This sets the wages for all public sector workers in Iraq – i.e 90% of the Iraqi workforce. Order 30 contains an arbitrary 13-level wage table incoherent with fluctuating fuel prices (a canister of cooking gas rose from 500 ID (30 cents) to 12,000 ID $7) in the space of 4 months. Rents have been soaring due to competition from refugees returning from Iran and leaving the country for the cities in search of work. The average rent is 40,000 ID per month ($30). The national minimum wage set by the Occupation is 69,000 ID ($45) per month. Less than half the recommended monthly wages of a sweatshop worker in neighbouring Iran. The cheapening of Iraqi labour, the opening of its borders up for rampant free trade, and taxless corporate and private profits have not just transformed Iraq into one big Free Trade Zone but have set the living standards and future possibilities for Iraqi generations to come – IF the occupation, its puppet government and imposed brand of terrorist free market fundamentalism triumph in Iraq. Already over 10,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the war and occupation began. Over 1500 Fallujah residents (local figure - unconfirmed) were apached, F16’ed and gunned down to death, plus between 250-300 US soldiers killed (local estimate) in the siege and massacre of Fallujah this month, plus over a hundred in anti-occupation demonstrations. Thousands more can expect to die in the expected future insurrections for liberation. We have a responsibility to support those struggling for self determination and the freedom to chose their representatives, and economic and social policies in Iraq – and these are ordinary people, working class people, the intifada is generalised and popular, the culmination of daily protests by the unemployed, students, pensioners, women, former soldiers and former prisoners all over Iraq, with political organisations playing catch-up to an unpredictable and increasingly militant popular movement.

We have a responsibility to join the millions in Iraq and the world over in calling for an end to the brutal and fundamentally racist Occupation of Iraq. We have a responsibility to Meet The Buyers in London on April 27th and confront them with what their money really buys – more bombs, bloodshed, destruction, and death.

WHAT YOU CAN DO! – Form affinity groups, book coaches, get your local Stop The War Coalition groups to support, and just COME!

Full action details available at

 http://www.theirpayday.org

Monday 26th Wake-up Call To The Buyers - The Occupation Kills. Stop the massacres against the Iraqi people.

Occupation isn't liberation. Justice For Iraq.
Funeral procession and die-in honouring the dead of Fallujah and beyond. Meeting the buyers. More details later.
Tuesday 27th Gala Dinner: You are invited to dine with the war profiteers, oil robber barons, and mercenaries.
Meet Central London 6:30 pm onwards. More details TBA.
Wednesday 28th: Large Action TBA.
See www.iraqprocurement.org and www.cpa-iraq.org for more details