Risky business

Cash-strapped Egypt is seeking finance from Iraq, but it could well be disappointed, writes Salah Nasrawi


Egypt is facing enormous difficulties in its attempts to convince Iraq’s Shia-led government to extend it financial and economic aid amid growing fears that the country is on the brink of an economic downhill slide.
Hard hit by its inability to finance imports of fuel, wheat and other basic commodities caused by sliding foreign currency reserves and a soaring budget deficit following the 25 January Revolution that toppled former president Hosni Mubarak, Egypt has been casting around for credits and cash to stem an economic collapse.
Iraqi officials say that Cairo’s efforts to gain Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki’s approval for a multi-billion dollar bond to be deposited in Egypt’s Central Bank to bolster its faltering economy and pay for badly needed supplies of crude oil have stumbled over Egypt’s desire for generous terms and domestic political complexities in both countries.
Last week, Al-Maliki’s deputy Hussein Al-Shahristani was quoted as saying that his country would ship four million barrels of crude oil to Egypt every month starting from April. The announcement raised hopes that the Iraqi supplies would help assuage a severe fuel shortage that has been feeding anti-government sentiment in Egypt.
But one Iraqi official said that little had been done to finalise an agreement that could meet Egypt’s ambitious expectations from a country that is already embroiled in political conflict and ethno-sectarian strife that its Shia-led government partially blames on its Sunni-dominated Arab neighbours.
“We haven’t seen any sign of concrete talks. In order for the oil deal to hit the ground, Baghdad is waiting for detailed negotiations with Cairo regarding a broader and more systematic approach to bilateral relations,” the Iraq official told Al-Ahram Weekly on Tuesday.
“There are outstanding issues which need to be tackled before any financial or oil deal can be reached,” he stressed without elaborating.
Among the obstacles that Iraq says could block any financial deal with Egypt are restrictions on transactions put in place by the UN sanctions following former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, including an embargo on the Cairo branch of the Iraqi state-owned Rafidain Bank which Iraq wants to reopen to handle financial transactions.
Iraq also wants Egypt to lift visa restrictions on its citizens, who currently need security clearance for entry.
In addition to these restrictions, a request from Egypt for a $4 billion bond to be deposited in Egypt’s Central Bank to shore up its foreign currency reserves has hit a snag over the easy terms requested by Egypt, according to the Iraqi official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi had initially made a request for a $5 billion deposit during a visit by Al-Maliki to Cairo in February. The sum was meant to be similar to the deposits in Egypt’s Central Bank from Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey that have been ring-fenced and cannot be touched.
Al-Maliki reportedly told Morsi that he could not guarantee the endorsement by Iraq’s fractured parliament of such a huge sum, but that he would consider a smaller amount and suggested negotiations between the two governments on terms.
Egypt is also believed to be seeking Iraqi crude oil at preferential prices in a deal similar to the one with neighbouring Jordan. Egypt is said to want to import diesel fuel from Iraq on a daily basis.
Last month, Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Kandil visited Iraq at the head of a large government and business delegation to follow up on the loan request and make other requests, including the provision of Egypt with crude oil.
The talks also focussed on the areas of trade, power, health and reconstruction. After the visit, Iraq lifted a ban on Egyptian dairy imports and released pensions owed to Egyptians who left Iraq after Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
Iraqi-Egyptian relations were broken off in 1990 after Egypt joined the US-led coalition that forced Iraq out of Kuwait during the Iraq-Kuwait war. The two countries partially patched up ties during Saddam’s last years in power, with Egypt becoming Iraq’s fourth-largest business partner, but relations have remained cool with the Shia-led government that came to power in Iraq following Saddam’s ouster.
Last year, Iraq transferred $408 million, the value of remittances owed by Iraq, to 670,000 Egyptian workers who left the country in the 1990s during the Gulf War. Efforts to solve the problem during Mubarak’s rule had faltered because Egypt had insisted that Iraq should also pay some $100 million in interest.
While Egypt is still waiting for Baghdad’s nod to help salvage its sky-diving economy, it has also escalated attempts to improve relations with Shia Iran, which is believed to be a close ally of Al-Maliki’s government.
Iran and Egypt resumed commercial flights this week some 34 years after the two countries severed relations following the Islamic Revolution in Iran that toppled the pro-Western shah Mohamed Reza Pahlavi and triggered an ideological backlash from Egypt.
Relations soured even more under Mubarak, who accused Iran of supporting radical Islamist groups in Egypt and Shias throughout the Middle East.
But Tehran and Cairo moved to improve ties following the ouster of Mubarak, and Morsi was the first Egyptian president to visit the Islamic Republic last August. In February, Morsi received Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Cairo while the latter was attending a conference of Islamic nations.
On Sunday, dozens of Iranian tourists arrived in southern Egypt to visit Pharaonic sites as part of a bilateral tourism-promotion deal. The following day, Ahmadinejad signed a draft law that would see the lifting of visa requirements for Egyptian tourists visiting the Islamic Republic.
Under a cooperation agreement signed last month, charter flights between Egypt and Iran will link the Upper Egyptian tourist cities of Luxor, Aswan and Abu Simbel with Iran.
Iranian tourists will initially not be allowed to visit Shia shrines in Cairo.
Egypt’s willingness to engage with Iraq and Iran could be largely motivated by economics, but it also indicates how economic difficulties are shaping the perspectives and strategies of Egypt’s new Islamist rulers.
Many observers believe that thaws in relations with Iran and stepping up ties with Iraq could signal the intention of the Egyptian government to integrate economic relations with foreign policy, even if that could harm its relations with some of Egypt’s traditional allies.
Many Egyptians feel they have been betrayed by their Sunni Arab brethren since the 25 January Revolution and feel shock and anger at what they consider to be their economic excommunication, leaving the country to scramble to cut deals abroad to help keep it from sinking into chaos.
Egypt has sought help from several wealthy Arab countries to shore up depleted reserves in its Central Bank, but few have been forthcoming. Only the oil-rich Gulf emirate of Qatar has provided funding, including a $5 billion loan deposit.
Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, has provided only $1 billion in loans.
On the other hand, Cairo’s new approach could challenge the United States, which considers Iran to be its arch-enemy in the Middle East. Washington is Egypt’s largest donor, and it has announced that it will provide an extra long-term loan of $450 million to spur reform.
Some Egyptians believe that their Muslim Brotherhood-controlled government is playing a dangerous game by trying to put pressure on the oil-rich countries in the Gulf by strengthening cooperation with Iran and Shia-led Iraq.
They believe that this policy could further alienate Egypt from its Arab neighbours, while giving no guarantees that the Iraqis and Iranians will deliver.
The policy is also facing domestic opposition. Hard-line Islamist groups such as the Salafists have voiced concern that Iranians and Iraqi Shias could soon be flocking to Egypt to spread their Shia brand of Islam.
A previously unknown group called the Islamic Alliance for the Defence of the Prophet’s Companions and his Family warned on Sunday that it “would not allow” Iranian tourists into Egypt and would send them back to their country.
But Essam Al-Erian, a senior Muslim Brotherhood leader and deputy president of its political front the Freedom and Justice Party, dismissed the threats.
“Egypt cannot be infiltrated by a trend or an ideology. It has defied communism and secularism, and it has mixed its nationalism with an Islamist element,” he wrote on Facebook on Saturday.
“Egypt will remain Sunni,” Al-Erian wrote.
However, the hard political facts remain. Iraq’s Shia-led government and its Iranian allies are not going to help Egypt without reciprocal political benefit. For them, the goal should be to lure Egypt further away from its Arab Sunni brethren, especially Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf nations.
Such an outcome would be extremely costly to Egypt, which would likely suffer from restrictions and probably boycott by the Gulf countries and the United States, jeopardising other aspects of its foreign policy.

                                            

27-03-2013 04:25PM ET

More than a border dispute

Can Iraqis and Kuwaitis draw appropriate lessons from their turbulent past and live peacefully as neighbours, asks Salah Nasrawi

The escalation of tensions along the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border and the consequent political developments have cast a long shadow over efforts to normalise relations between Baghdad and Kuwait more than two decades after the invasion of the tiny emirate by former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
Iraq hopes that the UN Security Council will make a formal announcement next month to lift the remaining UN sanctions imposed on Iraq after the 1990 invasion following the completion of the border demarcation between the two long-time foes.
Under the sanctions to force Saddam to withdraw from Kuwait, Iraq was placed under Chapter 7 of the United Nations charter, which gives the Security Council the power to take military and non-military action to “restore international peace and security”.
Kuwait has rejected all Iraqi attempts to lift the embargo until Iraq fulfils its obligations, including ending border-demarcation disputes, determining the fate of missing Kuwaiti persons and property, and payment of war reparations and loans made to Saddam to fight the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran War.
Earlier this month, Iraqi residents of the border town of Umm Qasr threw stones in protest against the demarcation of the border with Kuwait after workers tried to evict them from their houses to build pillars along the 205km border.
The United Nations has set 31 March as the deadline for ensuring the completion of the work and before the Security Council meets again to review Iraq’s compliance with the obligations.
In a report to the council this month, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon reminded Iraq of the need to remove all obstacles to the completion of the project marking the border between Iraq and Kuwait on time.
The Umm Qasr incident, which prompted security forces on both sides of the frontier to fire in the air to disperse the protesters, underlined the lingering territorial dispute between the two neighbours.
Successive Iraqi governments since the modern state of Iraq came into being in 1923 have not accepted the British-drawn borders that established Kuwait as a separate sheikhdom after the signature of the Anglo-Ottoman Convention of 1913.
After his 1990 invasion, Saddam annexed Kuwait and declared it to be Iraq’s 19th province. However, after the sheikdom’s liberation by a US-led international coalition Saddam formally accepted UN resolutions that assigned the organisation to assist in making arrangements with Iraq and Kuwait to demarcate the boundary between them.
The United Nations Iraq-Kuwait Boundary Demarcation Commission was established to help define the border between the two countries, its mandate being that its decisions regarding the demarcation of the boundary would be final.
The Security Council also provided a map for the demarcation and decided to “guarantee the inviolability of the above-mentioned international boundary and to take as appropriate all necessary measures to that end in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations”.
Work in demarcating the boundaries, however, was brought to a halt by the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. Later, the IKBMP, or Iraq-Kuwait Boundary Maintenance Project, was established in the form of a joint committee between both countries to finalise efforts to determine the borders.
No final agreement has yet been announced, and many Iraqis in the area remain opposed to the demarcation negotiations, saying that the new border has robbed them of property and territory.
After the Umm Qasr incident, Kuwait expressed its dismay to the United Nations, claiming that the Iraqis had obstructed UN-supervised border-sign maintenance and had removed the border fence between two signs.
Days later, Kuwait arrested at least six Iraqi fishermen and seized their boats, allegedly for crossing into the emirate’s territorial waters, in the latest incident to have taken place in the narrow strip of water separating the two countries at the northern tip of the Arabian Gulf.
The Kuwaiti coastguard often opens fire on Iraqi fishermen in the area, claiming encroachment on its territorial waters.
Government officials in Iraq and Kuwait have avoided making public statements on the recent incident probably in order to avoid a flare up, but politicians on both sides have talked up the border dispute, some apparently for reasons of political opportunism.
In Kuwait, several lawmakers wanted to question their government and called for tougher measures to protect Kuwaiti employees and military personnel in the border area. Others have been seeking a slow-down in normalising relations with Iraq.
Iraqi parliamentarians went as far as to ask their government to stop its cooperation with the United Nations in the demarcation work altogether.
The Al-Sadr bloc, which is controlled by the radical Shia cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr, called on the Iraqi government to renegotiate the border deal, which it said had been unfairly imposed by the United Nations.
The Iraqi government has made it clear that it wants to comply with all the UN resolutions relating to Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait in order to convince the Security Council to lift the crippling obligations under chapter 7 of the UN charter from Iraq.
Iraq hopes that an expected visit by Kuwait’s Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Al-Mubarak to Baghdad next month will end several pending issues, including the demarcation of borders.
Ahead of the visit, Kuwait said it had agreed with Iraq to build new houses for Iraqis to quicken the demarcation process. Under the plan, a new housing project accommodating more than 200 Iraqi families will be built some three kilometres from the border posts and beyond a security zone.
For Kuwait, the US-led war that toppled Saddam in 2003 was supposed to herald a new relationship with Iraq, a country that had long been ruled by hostile regimes and had briefly subjugated it to a ruthless military occupation.
For many Kuwaitis, the question now is still whether post-Saddam Iraq will be peaceful and friendly towards Kuwait and abide by the rules of international law, or whether it use its oil heft and large population to get its way.
Ten years after the US-led invasion, Kuwaitis still seem concerned by the spectre of threats from their northern neighbour. The Kuwaitis fear that some Iraqis still challenge their version of the history of their country and could still claim that Kuwait belongs to Iraq.
Another mantra repeated by many Kuwaitis, mostly Sunni Muslims, is that post-US-invasion Iraq is dominated by pro-Iranian Shias and these could be just as threatening as an Iraq led by the Sunni Saddam.
Recently, some Kuwaiti lawmakers have alleged that thousands of Iraqi Shias who entered the emirate during the invasion and sought settlement there are loyal to the Mahdi Army, an Iraqi paramilitary force created by Muqtada Al-Sadr.
Meanwhile, many Iraqis are worried about Kuwait’s intentions and wonder if the oil-rich emirate will want to relinquish its past fears about Iraq and work to maintain long-term friendly relations with their country regardless of who is in power in Baghdad.
They also prefer to limit the disputes and claims and counter-claims within the two countries in order to try to resist any involvement and display of leadership by a third party, even if it is the United Nations.
One of the remaining contentious issues is Kuwait’s construction of a major port on Boubyan Island on the Khor Abdallah waterway, which is the only strategic access to the sea for Iraq.
Many Iraqis maintain that the Mubarak Al-Kabir Port will limit access to Iraqi ports because the Kuwaiti port would leave only a narrow lane free for Iraq-bound ships.
Kuwait maintains that the mega-project is being built in order to meet its needs for a strategic port in the region and that it would not choke off Iraqi ports.
Amid tensions over the construction of the Port last year, Iraqi radical groups threatened to launch rocket attacks on the port if work was not stopped on its construction.
Iraq and Kuwait are bound to find common ground and to start confidence-building measures in order to maintain a stable and amicable relationship. It is essential that Iraq quickly frees itself from the UN Chapter 7 sanctions and that Kuwait facilitates this.
Iraq, on the other hand, should also make every effort to mitigate fears that it is an existential threat to its southern neighbour. If relations between Iraq and Kuwait were to become hostile once more, the whole region would suffer.
                        
                                                                  قمــة الـلامعنــــي 

يزخر المعجم السياسي بمقولات ساخرة عن القمم العربية باعتبارها جزءا من فولكلور أسهم في ادامة حالة العجز والتردي العربي في مواجهة تحديات هائلة واجهتها المنطقة علي مدي نحو سبعة عقود هي عمر جامعة الدول العربية‏,‏ التي تتولي زمام ما يطلق عليه بمسيرة العمل العربي المشترك.لعل خلاصة خبرة هذه التجربة التاريخية المريرة تتجلي الآن في ما آلت إليه المنطقة العربية من أوضاع تسير بها الي النقيض تماما لما قامت عليه الجامعة, حيث لا دولها عادت دولا ولا مجتمعاتها غادرت قبليتها وطائفيتها لتكون أمة, كما تواجه هويتها القومية الآن تحديات التعصب الديني والانقسام المذهبي.
هذه الحالة هي التي ستضلل ثاني قمة عربية تعقد بعد موجة الهبات الثورية التي أطاحت بعدد من أعتي الأنظمة العربية قبل عامين ووضعت المنطقة برمتها علي أعتاب مرحلة جديدة, ما يجعل من مجرد التئامها نشازا في ايقاع حركة التطور في المنطقة, وكأنها تعقد خارج السياق التاريخي التي أصبحت تسير عليه. والقائمون علي قمة الدوحة يدركون تماما هذه المفارقة ولذلك استعانوا بمحترفي تدبيج الشعارات الذين أطلقوا علي القمة التي تفتتح اليوم قمة الوضع الراهن وآفاق المستقبل وأسبغوا عليها أيضا مهمة وهي انعقادها من أجل غد أفضل للشعوب العربية, وهو ما ينتمي الي منظومة الخداع والتضليل السياسي, وليس إلي الحقيقة.
كل الوقائع المتوافرة تشير الي أن هذه القمة, ومثلها كانت قمة بغداد العام الماضي أيضا, هي مجرد عرض من تلك العروض البائسة التي دأب علي اقامتها النظام العربي سنويا والتي لا هدف لها إلا انعاش مؤسسة تحتضر بعد أن فقدت بوصلتها وانطفأ بريقها وأصبحت عاجزة عن مواجهة متطلبات مرحلة ثورية تسعي لاقامة الحرية علي الأرض العربية التي جرفها الاستبداد والفساد. مؤسسة القمة العربية هذه فقدت حتي عنصر الكوميديا التي كانت توفرها اعلاناتها بالتنديد والاستنكار والشجب, أو مشاهد المناكفات بين المشاركين فيها أو الممارسات المسلية التي كان يضفيها عليها طاغية مهووس مثل معمر القذافي.
فمهما وضع منظمو هذا المهرجان السنوي من شعارات أو ترنموا بخطابات فانهم سيكونون بعيدين عن الواقع الدراماتيكي الذي يمر به العالم العربي اليوم. وما لا يدركونه هو أن العالم العربي لم يعد ذلك الاقليم الذي أسست من أجله الجامعة العربية بهدف حماية دوله وكياناته التي صاغت حدودها اتفاقية سايكس بيكو الاستعمارية وأنه يعيش اليوم وفق حقائق جيوسياسية جديدة ومتغيرات تفرزها وقائع سنين الغليان التي سيظل يعيشها العرب بعد أن حطمت ثورات ربيعهم ذلك الاستثناء العار الذي وصمت به كأمة غير قادرة علي كسر جدران الخوف والانعتاق من الطغيان.
أحد أهم أسباب حالة الفوضي الحالية والثمن الباهظ الذي ندفعه لها والاحتمالات المفتوحة علي تفكيك المنطقة وتشظي بعض دولها هو المؤسسة نفسها, التي تمثلها القمة التي تدعي أنها ستأتي للعرب بمستقبل أفضل. لقد فوتت هذه المؤسسة أهم فرصة توافرت لها قبل عقد من الزمان لاصلاح أنظمتها ومجتمعاتها.
في قمة تونس عام2004 أجهض المشاركون فرصة نادرة للبدء بعملية الاصلاح والتحول الديمقراطي في العالم العربي حين استخدموا كل حيلهم وألاعيبهم وأساليب المماطلة والتسويف بغية افشال مشروع الاصلاح, الذي لو كان انجز لانتشل المنطقة من المستنقع الذي كانت فيه وأنقذها من هذا المصير الذي آلت اليه. وفي تلك القمة تجلت بشكل فاضح شراسة الأنظمة العربية في مواجهة أي محاولة حقيقية للاصلاح.
محاضر جلسات القمة تكشف عن كراهية لا مثيل لها لكلمة الاصلاح نفسها, رفضت بعض الوفود العربية أن تتضمنها أي وثيقة واستبدلوها بكلمة تطوير المطاطة ضمنوها ورقة سموها التطوير والتحديث في الوطن العربي وبيانا أطلقوا عليه  وثيقة العهد في ايحاء مزر أن الحرية لن تكون إلا منحة بأيدي الحكام وليست حقا من حقوق الشعوب.
ولم ينج بيان قمة بغداد العام الماضي من هذا الازدراء لكلمة الاصلاح حتي بعد ثورات شعبية في خمسة بلدان عربية, حيث أشار الاعلان الي الاشادة بـ التطورات والتغييرات السياسية وربطها بـ احترام القانون, في حين أصر البعض في مؤتمر وزراء الخارجية العرب الأخير علي اعادة إحياء وثيقة العهد البائسة بـ اعتبارها الأساس الأمثل الذي ينبغي الانطلاق منه في التطوير برغم ان الوثيقة ؤدت في مهدها لحظة مولدها عام.2004
ولم يقتصر الأمر علي اجهاض تلك الفرصة الذهبية, بل أن الأنظمة العربية ذات الامكانات المالية البترولية والمواقف السياسية المحافظة والتي أخذت مقعد القيادة في غيبة اطراف مؤثرة في النظام العربي, تعاملت مع حركات التغيير والثورات العربية بطريقة تآمرية, كما شاهدنا في العراق وفي مصر وليبيا واليمن وسوريا, لحسابات علي رأسها منع امتداد شرارة التغيير إليها, وأيضا لرغبة دفينة في اضعاف دول رئيسية تزعجهم قدراتها البشرية والجيواستراتيجية.
الطربقة الوحيدة التي يمكن أن تكون فيها القمة العربية هذه نافعة هي أن تقر استراتيجيات ايجابية متكاملة للوقوف الي جانب الثورات العربية وتتبني أهدافها في تحقيق الديمقراطية الحقيقية والحرية والعدالة والمساواة لجميع الشعوب العربية. ومن مستلزمات ذلك توفير دعم مالي سخي لاعادة بناء دول الثورات العربية التي خربت بسبب سياسات الدكتاتورية ونهب الثروات والفساد ومساعدتها علي تعزيز نموها الاقتصادي والاجتماعي في الفترات الانتقالية التي تمر بها.
مثل هذه المساعدات ليست منة, بل هي كفارة عن تلك السياسات التي عرقلت التحول الديمقراطي في العالم العربي لعقد من الزمن دفعت خلاله شعوبه وستدفع اثمانا باهظة, ولكي تكون ترجمة فعلية لشعار القمة من أجل غد افضل للشعوب العربية. إن مؤتمرا يأنف عن دعم الثورات ويجعلها ورقة في المساومات الاقليمية والدولية, ناهيك عن أن يقر بها في بياناته لا يستحق أن يسمي قمة, بل سيكون قمة اللامعني للنظام العربي ولجامعة دوله.

Fiasco of the Iraq war anniversary

A decade after the US-led invasion of their country, Iraqis are still counting the costs in human suffering and destruction, writes Salah Nasrawi

The newsroom in the villa-turned-office of the Associated Press in the Qatari capital of Doha looked like any other newsroom, except that it was being swiftly readied for “Shock and awe”, the codename given by the Pentagon to the upcoming US-led invasion of Iraq.
In early March 2003, I was sent there as an AP correspondent to join a strong team of editors and writers who would be reporting and supervising news coverage of the war on Iraq.
The gas and oil-rich Gulf emirate was hosting two US military bases and the headquarters of the war command, where daily briefings were planned over the course of the war.
As an Iraqi reporter who had covered the Iraq-Iran War in the 1980s and the 1991 Gulf War for AP, I was also supposed to provide independent coverage from the invaded country’s point of view and help other AP reporters shape their stories by providing input on the cultural and historical background of Iraq.
Personally, I did not support the war, but probably like most Iraqis I was excited at the prospect of the new opportunities that could await the Iraqi people after the expected ouster of the Saddam Hussein dictatorship.
Yet, I already had my doubts about the announced goals of the invasion, especially about its creating a functioning democracy in Iraq. Based on thorough research of the war preparations and previous US experiences of intervention, it had become clear to me that Washington had no nation-building plans for Iraq and that it had thrown together a strategy for the invasion on the fly.
What came to trouble me most and prompted me to leave AP’s war room in Doha after only two weeks was my feeling that I should not put myself in a position where I might be seen as unpatriotic or unconsciously boosting the US-led invasion and occupation of my country.
Indeed, during the standoff with the Saddam regime, I had resisted attempts to be manipulated by the bizarre media fabrication of news about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction, which had helped former US president George W Bush make the case for war.
Three months before the war started, I had argued in an article published in the Arabic-language newspaper Al-Hayat that the United States would eventually defeat Saddam’s forces, but that disaster would ensue, leaving the country in ruins.
Ten years after the horrendous adventure, Iraq today is a devastated and tormented nation. Reports published on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the US-led invasion show that both the human and financial costs of the invasion of Iraq are higher than most people realise.
A decade of war in Iraq has killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and potentially contributed to the deaths of many hundreds of thousands more from indirect causes related to devastated infrastructure.
There are now more than one million Iraqi refugees abroad who have little hope of returning to their homes due to the ongoing political instability and violence. Millions of Iraqis remain displaced inside Iraq, some of them indefinitely, and many of them are living in grotesque conditions.
Iraq’s healthcare, infrastructure, and education systems were devastated by the war. Public services, including water and electricity supplies, are in disarray.
The ripple effects on the Iraqi economy have also been significant, as Iraq now imports most of its food, and farmers and factory workers have found themselves out of their jobs as agriculture and industry have ground to a halt.
Corruption is rampant. Bribery, graft and racketeering are not only widespread, but they are also systematic and institutionalised. Since the US occupation in 2003, Iraq has been ranked by the international NGO Transparency International as among the most corrupt countries in the world.
Most women in Iraq live in poverty, and they are shut out of social life. Violence against women, high rates of female unemployment, increasing religious intolerance and widowhood have further eroded their status.
While it was promised that the US-led invasion would bring democracy, freedom and human rights to Iraq, the country remains enmeshed in a grim cycle of human rights abuses, including attacks on civilians, the torture of detainees and unfair trials.
In a report on the country 10 years after the US-led invasion, the international NGO Amnesty International said this week that a decade of abuses had exposed a litany of torture and other ill-treatments of detainees committed by the Iraqi security forces and foreign troops in the wake of the 2003 invasion.
The report highlighted the “Iraqi authorities continuing failure to observe their obligations to uphold human rights and respect the rule of law in the face of persistent deadly attacks by armed groups, who show callous disregard for civilian life.”
Iraq is now gripped in its worst political crisis since the US-led invasion, amid sectarian divisions, rival clashes and terrorist attacks that have sparked concerns about the country’s post-war stability.
Iraq’s government is in disarray. Nearly half of the ministers have been boycotting cabinet meetings for months, while the parliament rarely meets to debate national issues.
The country’s constitution is a matter of opinion, and its political elite are at loggerheads with each other. Its president has been reported to be clinically dead, while political parties cannot even contemplate choosing a successor.
For months, the country has been gripped by the worst political crisis for years, with Iraq’s three main ethnicities bickering over a power and wealth-sharing structure formulated by the US occupation authorities that made Iraq into a federal state.
A few weeks before last year ended, the political deadlock took a sharp and perilous course as the country’s Shia-led government and its Kurdish and Sunni partners engaged in a bitter power struggle and military standoffs.
The sharpening divide between Iraq’s Shias and Sunnis has given rise to increasing sectarianism. Hundreds of people are still losing their lives to sectarian conflict each month, mostly in attacks by the Sunni Al-Qaeda terrorist group against Shias.
By and large, the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq and its aftermath over the past ten years has inflicted multiple disasters on the country and turned Iraq into a failed state.
Today, Iraq stands on the verge of a devastating all-out civil war that would complete what the Americans started by ruining the country that was once the birthplace of human civilisation.
Surprisingly, many of the writers in the US mainstream media who swarmed over Iraq for the tenth anniversary of Bush’s army marching on Baghdad are still removed from reality and look at Iraq through the lenses of the war’s promoters.
Some of them insist that Iraq today has far better prospects than it would have had under Saddam, citing for example the Shias’ public displays of their faith by hanging up images of their revered saints, or nightly TV talk shows that bristle with barking criticisms of the government.
In talking themselves into believing these lurid fantasies, these reporters do not neglect to mention other signs of progress, such as waiters in Baghdad restaurants taking orders for spaghetti and pizza on iPads, or shopping malls and swanky hotels opening up in some parts of Iraq.
Other US writers have missed the opportunity for real reflection on the anniversary, instead engaging in useless debate about the flawed case for the war made by the Bush administration and by the dysfunctional national security process and tensions between different policy-making bodies.
A decade after the catastrophic invasion of Iraq, the Iraqi people are entitled to know more about the deceit of US policy-makers who deliberately and consciously launched a war to destroy Iraq.
Like during the fiasco of the invasion itself, when the US mainstream media participated in building the case for the war, the fiasco of the war’s anniversary has shown that the same media has not been forthcoming in reflecting on the broader question of why the Bush administration embarked on the vicious enterprise of destroying Iraq, unleashing the dynamics that are now playing out and destroying the wider Middle East.

Iraq’s media in the Sectarian crossfire

With sectarian tensions in the country running high, Iraq’s media may be adding fuel to the fire, writes Salah Nasrawi
The sharpening divide between Iraq’s Shias and Sunnis has given rise to sectarianism in the Iraqi media that many believe is increasingly turning nascent outlets into venues for sowing chauvinism and undermining nation-building in the ethnically split and violence-torn country.

The era after the fall of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein has brought unprecedented waves of enthusiasm for independent news organisations and triggered a boom in the local media that has given Iraqis free-for-all platforms on their new-found but troubling path to democracy.
However, 10 years after the US-led invasion of the country that toppled the repressive Saddam regime and was hailed as paving the way for democracy in Iraq, the mood has changed as Iraqis face the daily reality of their media suffering from serious professional and ethical problems, including shady ownership, political influence and bias.
Indeed, due to their flagrant bias and even the sectarian warfare they have found themselves engaged in, much of what has been left are merely the mouthpieces of various ethnic and sectarian factions and party patrons who use them for their own ends.
In recent weeks, and as the country has been mired in a deep Shia-Sunni conflict over power and wealth-sharing, concerns have been growing that the media is playing a negative role in deepening the country’s political crisis.
Whether by choice or by ownership agendas, Iraq’s media is widely seen as being driven into participating into the kind of sectarian shouting that many of the country’s politicians fear could be the trigger for renewed civil strife on street level.
Overall, the Iraqi media is now split into three camps, Shia, Sunni and Kurdish, each of which leans towards its own community. While the third is basically oriented to defending Kurdish interests, the Shia and Sunni camps remain engaged in sectarianism and political insult throwing.
Sunni-owned radio and television stations have been accused by Shias of partaking in the vocal fighting by presenting rumours or sectarian rhetoric and giving platforms for speakers and preachers to incite hatred.
Since the Sunnis started demonstrations in December to protest against perceived discrimination, orators at their public rallies have been accusing Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki’s government of being “Safavids”, a derogatory way of saying that it belongs to Shia and Persian Iran and is not of Arab descent.
Another insult used recently at Sunni protests against Shia politicians is that the latter are “Alqamis”, a reference to the Shia chief minister to the last Muslim Abbasid caliph Ibn Alqami, who, Sunnis claim, betrayed the Sunni caliph and surrendered Baghdad to the Mongols in 1258 CE.
Both accusations are meant to blame Iraqi Shias for the US-led invasion in 2003 and Iran’s increasing influence in the country afterwards.
Last week, many Sunni-owned media outlets reported that fliers signed by a Shia militant group had been distributed in some neighbourhoods of Baghdad ordering Sunnis to leave their homes. The same outlets had reported earlier that many Sunni activists had been assassinated by “silencers” in other neighborhoods.
On Sunday, Iraq’s media regulatory body sent a stern warning to the country’s media outlets that it would not tolerate sectarianism in their broadcasts. “They should rectify their discourse and stop the sectarianism,” Mujahid Abul-Leil of the Iraqi Communications and Media Commission was quoted as saying by several Iraqi outlets.
Al-Maliki himself has blasted certain unnamed television networks for providing platforms to his Sunni opponents, whom he has accused of using sectarianism to incite members of their communities against the government.
“I tell those speaking with sectarianism in the sectarian media… to keep away from it,” Al-Maliki told a conference in Basra in south Iraq on Sunday.
On the other hand, Sunnis have accused media outlets owned or financed by Shia political groups of lacking religious tolerance, with some of them going as far as to promote sectarian divisions. 
Many Iraqis accuse Al-Maliki’s Shia-led government of using the state-owned media to slander his opponents as either “terrorists” or “collaborators” with foreign countries.
Among the country’s mostly criticised outlets are Iraqiya TV and the Al-Sabah daily newspaper, which are run by the Iraqi Media Network, a national conglomerate funded by public money.
Although its director, Mohamed Abdel-Jabar Al-Shabout, a Shia journalist who is close to al-Maliki, has denied that the two outlets are government mouthpieces, he has insisted that the group is entitled to take up positions on key issues.
“The duty of the state media is to defend the society and to prevent its slipping into a civil war, to encourage dialogue, and to seek political compromises instead of military confrontations,” Al-Shabout wrote in an editorial in Al-Sabah recently.
“The state-owned media cannot be neutral. Neutrality should not come at the expense of objectivity and national interests. You cannot be neutral between chaos and order, or between war and peace, or between a state and no state,” he wrote.
The Network, which was meant to be a world-class media operation, was established by the US-led coalition to replace Saddam’s state-owned media and produce “fair and balanced news coverage” and function as a public-broadcasting service that would transcend political and sectarian divisions.
However, once leading Shia parties took control of the government following the 2005 elections, the multi-million-dollar body evolved into a propaganda tool for the government with a discernible sectarian bias.
One of the key accusations is that the group did not send reporters to cover the ongoing protests in the Sunni provinces, though Al-Shabout has said that this was out of fear that its reporters could be harassed or even killed.
The Kurds, who have been at loggerheads with the Baghdad government over resources and territory, are also unhappy with the group’s performance and accuse it of being a mouthpiece for Al-Maliki.
The controversy has underscored the troubled status of the Iraqi media, which many believe is a mirror of a country that has acquired the image of an ethnic and sectarian cauldron.
Since the US-led invasion, hundreds of media outlets, including satellite television stations, radio stations and newspapers, have sprung up, many of them owned or run by political groups touted as sectarian.
Dozens of TV and radio stations that now capture the Iraqi airwaves, and many more print publications that pepper Iraqi newsstands, are affiliated with political or religious parties that seek to advance their agendas.  
Some are reportedly financed or backed by Iraq’s neighbours, such as Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and some are accused of being responsible for boosting sectarianism in Iraq. Others receive lavish finance from Iraqi and Arab entrepreneurs who have business interests in Iraq.
Another outlet that is fuelling the sectarian divide in Iraq is the Internet, and many websites can be seen as ways of promoting the interests of sectarian groups.
As a result, Iraq’s media now reflects the country’s political and religious divisions rather than being a diverse and free media and a means to inform, educate and entertain people and act as an essential instrument of nation-building.
What is most disconcerting is that the Iraqi media and journalists are being caught in the crossfire of the country’s sectarian divisions and driven by warlords and self-centred politicians who are inflaming sectarianism for their own greedy interests.

Analysis & views from the Middle East