Washington taps corporate alumni to run Iraqi economy

The appointment of a number of former executives from US corporations to run the Iraqi economy has raised fears that its reorganisation will be designed to serve US corporate interests rather than the people of Iraq.

Emad Mekay

THE Bush administration is aggressively appointing a series of former private sector executives to run the Iraqi economy, prompting warnings that it will impose failed free market policies on Baghdad and open the oil-rich nation further to US business interests.

In the week of 21 April, Agriculture Secretary Ann M Veneman appointed agricultural industrialist Dan Amstutz ‘to lead the US government’s agriculture reconstruction efforts in Iraq’.

Amstutz, who spent most of his professional life working for the US agriculture industry and lobbying for its interests, will serve as senior ministry adviser for agriculture and will coordinate US government activities in the sector.

The businessman also worked for Cargill, the largest privately owned corporation in the world and the third largest food processor on the globe. It controls a large portion of US grain exports and is a leading promoter of genetically modified food and new farming technology.

In the same week, US Treasury Secretary John Snow appointed the two officials who will co-ordinate the economic rebuilding of Iraq.

Peter McPherson, a long-time Washington insider who was deputy US Treasurer in the Reagan administration in the late 1980s, will be financial co-coordinator for the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA).

McPherson was also the group executive vice-president of Bank of America. His deputy in Iraq will be George Wolfe, a senior US Treasury Department lawyer and a strong loyalist of the department’s foreign policies.

Both men will work to reorganise the Iraqi finance ministry, the central bank and the banking system.

New playground

‘It’s very much like the Bush administration itself - a bunch of private sector alumni called upon to perform the task in government [that] they were performing in the private sector,’ said Doug Henwood, editor of the Left Business Observer, about the list of new administrators in Iraq.

‘They are going to have a whole country to play with now,’ he told IPS.

The Treasury Department is known as a strong backer of the free market policies imposed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on developing nations, and is highly likely to push for identical policies on the occupied Arab nation.

Corporations have long backed policies of economic liberalisation as they help ensure the free movement of their products and investments around the globe.

The Wall Street Journal also reported that the administration of President George W Bush has picked Philip Carroll, former chief executive of the US division of oil giant Royal Dutch-Shell, to lead the management team of the lucrative Iraqi oil industry, and is reportedly planning to remodel the industry to function more like a US oil corporation, with a chairperson, chief executive and a 15-member board of international advisers.

Such appointments complement the appointment of retired army general Jay Garner to head the ORHA.

Garner is known for links to the international arms industry and is controversial in the Arab world, where he is seen as a staunch advocate of Israel’s harsh military crackdown on the Palestinians in the occupied territories.

After retiring from the army, Garner became president of SY Coleman, a defence contractor specialising in military defence technology.

Recreating Iraq in US’ image

Washington has repeatedly denied any imperial ambitions in the Middle East region but said the new appointments will further its efforts to create a ‘democratic, market-driven economy in Iraq’, especially because many of the experts come from the private sector.

The US administration also plans to send more officials to help rebuild the Iraqi political system, restart key government agencies and restore many sectors of the economy.

But such appointments have drawn fire from some critics, who say that Washington is trying to recreate Iraq in its own image, and warn that the administration’s tactics could backfire.

For example, the appointment of Amstutz could commercialise the reconstruction of Iraq and threaten the country’s agriculture sector, which was the only thread that kept some 26 million Iraqis from falling into all-out famine under 12 years of suffocating UN sanctions, says international charity and development group Oxfam.

As Cargill vice-president, Amstutz drafted the original text of the current Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture within the WTO, considered by many developing countries and pro-development groups as innately unjust. The agreement allows rich countries to dump their subsidy-backed agricultural surpluses on world markets, depressing prices to levels at which producers in developing nations can no longer compete.

Oxfam Policy Director Kevin Watkins told Britain’s Guardian newspaper on 28 April that ‘putting Dan Amstutz in charge of agricultural reconstruction in Iraq is like putting Saddam Hussein in the chair of a human rights commission’.

On Carroll’s appointment, oil analyst Michael Renner of the US-based Worldwatch Institute said the move might be intended to boost plans to privatise the Iraqi oil industry, without consulting the Iraqi people. ‘There’s no shortage of Iraqis who know how to run the oil industry, so why exactly do you need someone like Carroll,’ he asked in an interview. ‘It’s likely that Iraqi oil is headed toward de facto privatisation - a scheme that puts real control in the hands of the oil multinationals.’

Henwood agreed. ‘They are very eager to privatise the Iraqi oil industry and would like to, I am sure, privatise the rest of the Middle Eastern oil industry,’ he said.

While the appointments look likely to fuel accusations that Washington is attempting to hijack the Iraqi economy, particularly its oil fields, and force open its doors for US investment, Henwood charges that the administration has reached a point of not fearing criticism.

‘I don’t think the Bush administration cares,’ he said. ‘They are completely contemptuous of the UN and completely contemptuous of any foreign opinion ... Some of them think that they have been chosen by God for this mission. They are a shameless group.’ - IPS