Banning the magic wand is not enough, heads must roll
Finally, the device that caused thousands of deaths in Iraq has been banned from the streets.
As Prime Minister Haider Abadi finally bans the device that Iraqi guards were using at checkpoints and was supposed to detect explosives, it will end up where it should have been long before: in the garbage.
The tragedy is that all of Iraq has known for years that the device, the ADE-651, which is shorthand for Advanced Detection Equipment, and that is internationally and cynically known as the ‘magic wand’, does not work.
British businessman James McCormick was convicted in Britain for fraud last year, after he sold for as much as $85 million of the devices to Iraq, receiving around $8,000 per piece, and now is serving a ten-year jail service.
Yet in 1996 the American security agency FBI had already ruled that the empty box with a short antenna was fake, and after a British Home Office scientist tested it in 2001, he issued a strong warning against its use.
But to no avail, as the BBC recently uncovered, that for years the device has been sold by different fraudsters for different purposes – to find golf balls, to find drugs, to detect explosives, and most recently even to detect HIV and hepatitis – and all are equally bogus.
The trial and conviction of McCormick should have rung a bell in Baghdad, but if it did, that remained hidden inside the corrupted government.
The devices were bought during the rule of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, when corruption was widespread, and the acquisition must have lined the pockets of those involved, which could even be the main reason for it being bought in the first place.
It makes you wonder if any of those responsible are amongst the 2,165 Iraqis the Integrity Commission of the parliament has charged for embezzlement and bribery.
On the list of those whose arrest is demanded, are also six ministers and dozens of high-ranking managers within government institutions, many of whom have left the country to avoid prosecution.
Yet the case of the magic wand shows that corruption is not only a financial, economic and criminal problem, but that it could have deadly consequences too.
As just about everybody in Baghdad knew the device did not work, terrorists were also assured they could bring in explosives without getting caught.
Not only it did not prevent bombs from being brought into the city, it even almost solicited this happening as it was so easy.
Prime Minister Abadi stated recently that the attacks in Baghdad had been planned in Fallujah when it was under the rule of the Islamic group ISIS, so it must have been clear to his government that the materials needed were brought into the city, passing the checkpoints.
That means that it was as clear to the government as it was to the ordinary people, that the detecting device was a fake.
Yet until now, it was not replaced by something that would do the job. Probably because announcing that the thing was a fraud would have led to repercussions against those who brought it in.
I am with the Iraqis who have seen daily bombings and the loss of family, friends and relatives and who eventually were so frustrated with the government that they stormed its parliament and chased off Abadi’s convoy at the scene of the Karrada bombing.
Frustration and the sense of helplessness has long kept people in the grip of politicians who were elected to serve.
When that leads to neglect, and huge loss of innocent life, the lack of trust and the disappointment towards the politicians turn into aversion, revulsion and even sheer hate.
That is the situation the Iraqi Prime Minister will somehow have to turn around.
Banning the magic wand could be a good start, although it is too little too late.
It has to be followed by measures against those responsible, for buying it and keeping it in place when its dangerous uselessness had already been proven.
Iraqis will be waiting, that the least possible compensation for their grief, is for political heads to roll.
But we will all be wondering if Abadi will be strong enough to confront the monsters around him that time and again chose money over human life.