[E-rundbrief] Info 522 - Privatized Iraq

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief - Info 522 - Privatized Iraq - 4 years after the US-invasion.

Bad Ischl, 17.3.2007

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

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Privatized Iraq

People Putting Food First, Number 89

This month marks the four-year anniversary of the 
U.S. invasion of Iraq  or, to put it more 
accurately, the invasion and privatization of 
Iraq. Under Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party, most 
resources and services (such as oil, water, 
banking, and agriculture) were nationally owned. 
Furthermore, non-Arab foreigners were prohibited 
from owning property or investing in Iraqi 
businesses. All that has changed since 2003.

When the Coalition Provisional Authority assumed 
power after invading Iraq, its head, L. Paul 
Bremer, rewrote the country’s laws and issued the 
”100 Orders”, which have been largely responsible 
for transforming Iraq into a complete market 
economy. One of the most insidious of the Bremer 
Orders is Order 81, which deals with Plant 
Variety Protection, or PVP. This means that under 
Order 81, Iraqi farmers are now required to buy 
”protected”, or patented, crop varieties from 
biotech corporations like Monsanto and Syngenta. 
Farmers are not allowed to save and share local 
varieties of Fertile Crescent crops like barley 
and dates, as they have been doing for thousands 
of years, because they must sign the corporations’ Technology User Agreements.

In 2004, the Virginia-based management consulting 
firm BearingPoint, Inc., received a $250 million 
contract from USAID to help privatize Iraqi 
agriculture. According to policy analyst Antonia 
Juhasz, one of BearingPoint’s main objectives in 
Iraq is to ”explore new market potential with new 
products such as high valued fruits and 
vegetables, flowers, seed export, and other 
possibilities.” Agriculture in Iraq may face a 
future similar to that of the banana republics in 
Central America; Monsanto, BearingPoint, and 
Cargill, to just name a few corporations, are in 
some ways today’s United Fruit Company. When 
BearingPoint speaks of ”high valued fruits and 
vegetables, flowers, seed export, and other 
possibilities”, they are speaking of 
non-traditional agricultural exports (NTAEs), or 
luxury crops grown as a monoculture by the south, for the north.

Monoculture does not only have to pertain to 
agriculture, but to aquaculture. For more than 
five thousand years, the Shi’a Marsh Arabs in the 
southern marshlands maintained an integrated 
agroecosystem in which they fished, raised 
livestock like water buffalo, grew crops, and 
constructed artificial islands from qasab (reeds) 
and papyrus. In the 1990s, the Ba’ath Party 
drained and dammed more than 90 percent of the 
marshes in retaliation against Shi’a uprisings 
during the Iran-Iraq War. Since the 2003 
invasion, USAID, Bechtel, and other foreign 
actors have been interested in rehydrating the 
marshes. They are not so much concerned with 
ensuring that the Marsh Arabs have sustainable 
livelihoods, but rather with developing intensive 
fish farming  particularly that of tilapia, which is in high demand in Europe.

"Food First" <foodfirst at foodfirst.org>

Works Cited:

Hassan, Ghali: ”Biopiracy and GMOs: The Fate of 
Iraq’s Agriculture”, Centre for Research on Globalisation, December 12, 2005

Iraq Marshlands Restoration Program (USAID): 
”Support Capture Fishing and Fish Farming”

Juhasz, Antonia: ”The Economic Colonization of 
Iraq: Illegal and Immoral”, Global Policy Forum, May 8, 2004

Wells, Leah C.: ”In Iraq, Water and Oil Do Mix”, 
Counterpunch (online), May 16, 2

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Events related to the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq:

http://codepink-aot.org/calendar/

http://answer.pephost.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ANS_homepage

http://www.moveon.org/

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Matthias Reichl, Pressesprecher/ press speaker,
     Begegnungszentrum fuer aktive Gewaltlosigkeit
     Center for Encounter and active Non-Violence
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