By Falih Hasan Fezaa
The experience of the last 10 years has taught Iraqis that their country has become a failed state, because political entrepreneurs have gambled with the future of the country.
In September, the San Francisco Chronicle interviewed Iraq’s new ambassador to the United States, Loqman Faily, and described how Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had “yanked him from his position as ambassador to Japan and sent him to America a few months ago to carry the message: We need help with governance.”
No doubt, the Americans are crucially needed to rescue Iraq from collapse at the hands of the Islamist entrepreneurs.
Faily stated that Iraq was “sitting on billions of barrels of oil. But no one has clean water.”
He stated in no certain terms that daily life in Iraq is deteriorating, lacking in clean water, a workable budget, modern technology and efforts to fight corruption.
Based on Mr Faily’s statements, I had thought that Baghdad’s Islamist rulers had finally realized their failures, and were looking to America for help.
But then, when Maliki visited Washington earlier this month, he reportedly asked for more weapons, instead of help with things like water and electricity. This is a dysfunctional government with no real military capabilities.
More than 10 years since the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship, the Shiite Islamists in Baghdad have failed to govern, while the Kurds have succeeded in carving out an autonomous and historic safe haven for themselves in the midst of Iraq’s sea of violence. These are parallel tales of failure and success.
Iraq’s vast oil wealth means nothing without workable planning and suitable laws. Last year, Iraq’s per capita income climbed to $6,300, up from just $1,300 in 2004. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) expects the Iraqi economy to grow by nine percent this year.
*The author is an independent Iraqi researcher and former editor-in-chief of the Foreign Culture Magazine in Baghdad.
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