[NYTr] Corruption and theft soar in Iraq

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

NY Times via Int'l Herald Trib - Dec 2, 2007
http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=8557146


Corruption and theft soar in Iraq

By Damien Cave

BAGHDAD: Jobless men pay $500 bribes to join the police force. Families
build houses illegally on government land, car washes steal water from
public pipes and nearly everything the government buys or sells can now
be found on the black market.

Painkillers for cancer (from the Health Ministry) cost $80 for a few
capsules; electricity meters (from the Electricity Ministry) go for
$200 each and even third-grade textbooks (stolen from the Education
Ministry) must be bought at bookstores for three times what schools
once charged.

"Everyone is stealing from the state," said Adel al-Subihawi, a
prominent Shiite tribal leader in Sadr City, throwing up his hands in
disgust. "It's a very large meal and everyone wants to eat."

Corruption and theft are not new to Iraq, and government officials have
promised to address the problem. But as Iraqis and U.S. officials
assess the effects of this year's U.S. troop increase, there is a
growing sense that, even as security has improved, Iraq has slipped to
new depths of lawlessness.

One recent independent analysis ranked Iraq the third most corrupt
country in the world. Out of 163 countries surveyed, only Somalia and
Myanmar were worse, according to Transparency International, a group
based in Berlin that publishes the index annually.

And the extent of the theft is staggering. Some U.S. officials estimate
that as much as a third of what they spend on Iraqi contracts and
grants ends up unaccounted for or stolen, with a portion going to
Shiite or Sunni militias.

In addition, Iraq's top anti-corruption official estimated this fall -
before resigning and fleeing the country after 31 of his agency's
employees were killed over a three-year period - that $18 billion in
Iraqi government money had been lost to various theft schemes since
2004.

The collective filching undermines Iraq's ability to provide essential
services, a key to sustaining recent security gains, according to U.S.
military commanders. It also sows a corrosive distrust of democracy and
hinders reconciliation as entrenched groups in the Shiite-led
government resist reforms that would cut into reliable cash flows.

In interviews across Baghdad, though, Iraqis said the widespread
thieving affected them at least as powerfully on an emotional and moral
level.

The Koran is clear on stealing: "God does not love the corrupters," one
verse says. And for average Iraqis, those ashamed of the looting that
took place immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the current
era of anything-goes is particularly crushing because almost no one can
avoid its taint.

For many, it is not a question of getting rich. Theft and corruption
have become survival tools, creating a spiral of dishonest transactions
that leave nearly everyone feeling dirty.

Cash is also often what leads to promotions - with the help of a fake
college degree, purchased for about $40 - and theft is no less common.
One government worker, who goes by the name Abu Muhammad, said a senior
administrator at the ministry where he worked recently sold computers,
laser printers, office furniture and other supplies that appeared to
have been paid for with U.S. aid. The official was never caught or
prosecuted, he said.

Haider Abu Laith, an engineer at the Culture Ministry, said that a
close friend and fellow engineer at a government agricultural agency
recently told him he was being pressured to inflate the cost of
equipment purchased abroad so that senior officials could skim the
surplus. His said his friend quit, fearing that he would be killed if
he refused.

And at the Health Ministry's main warehouse in Baghdad, U.S. troops
discovered this summer that two trucks full of medicines and medical
equipment had disappeared while several guards on duty said they saw
nothing.

Even some Iraqi lawmakers admit that the free-for-all has become too
extensive to stop easily.

"The size of the corruption exceeds the imagination," said Shatha
Munthir Abdul Razzaq, a member of Parliament's largest Sunni bloc.
"Because there are no tough laws, no penalties for those who steal."

Stuart Bowen Jr., who runs the Office of the Special Inspector-General
for Iraq Reconstruction, said Prime Minister Nouri Kamal al-Maliki
actually undercut anti-corruption efforts this year by requiring that
investigators get permission from his office before pursuing ministers
or former ministers on corruption charges.

Maliki has also not rescinded a law, opposed by the Americans, that
lets ministers exempt their employees from investigation.

"Those two legal positions within the fledgling Iraqi government are
incompatible with democracy," Bowen said in an interview. "My concerns
about the corruption problem have risen."

Ali al-Dabbagh, the prime minister's spokesman, has acknowledged that
corruption is a problem and pledged to address it. And at some gas
stations, especially where U.S. troops have concentrated their efforts,
Iraqis report fewer demands for the bribes that once tripled or
quadrupled the price of gas.

But for a large number of people, survival still depends on taking what
they can, when they can. Some estimates put unemployment at 40 percent.
For many Iraqis, minor theft seems justified because others take so
much and because daily life in Iraq still feels precarious - a crust of
calm resting on currents of sectarianism, poverty and anger.

Baghdad, in particular, is still marked by desperation, with women
begging at intersections and with many Iraqis barely getting by, even
with a little cheating. These are people like Sattar Alwan, 41, a taxi
driver who lives with nearly a dozen relatives in a makeshift, illegal
house on government land in eastern Baghdad. He said his family built
the squat brick structure because gunmen pushed them out of their own
home and they had nowhere else to go.

Or Abbas Wadi Kadhim, 42, who uses a raspy air compressor to extract
city water from broken pipes so he can earn money washing cars.

Kadhim acknowledges that he does not pay for the water, nor does he pay
rent at the abandoned government building a few hundred yards away,
where he often sleeps so he can be ready when customers arrive at 7 a.m.

He figures his government owes him. He was imprisoned by Saddam's
government and disabled in the Iran-Iraq war. His left forearm is as
thin as a child's and crooked at the wrist.

"I have six kids," he said, "and all I get is 150,000 Iraqi dinar,"
about $120 a month in disability payments. "It's not enough."

[Reporting was contributed by Hosham Hussein, Qais Mizher, Anwar J. Ali,
Abeer Mohammad and Diana Oliva Cave.]

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