Daily Star: $ 100 billion size of money laundering in Iraq since 2003

Daily Star: $ 100 billion size of money laundering in Iraq since 2003

Publication Date 16/11/2014 09:42 AM

In order to understand how bad things are in Iraq after the US invasion in 2003, we read the final report in 2013 entitled – learning from Iraq – which was written by Stuart Bowen, the inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, who was his office is responsible for auditing the continued waste and mismanagement and abject failure there. Bowen and guess that 40% of the projects sponsored by the United States and has been audited characterized by disorder and major deficiencies.

Was spending in Iraq out of control, and a reminder of the Bowen writes, saying that the United States handed over in 2003 and 2004, more than ten billion dollars in cash withdrawn from Iraqi oil revenues, frozen and sent in the form of crinkly packages of dollars percent category, has not been managed properly. In fact most of them had been stolen.

Bowen says, he describes the Iraqi Central Bank, “was US reconstruction program sponsors inadvertently politically triad includes political parties and government officials and sectarian groups. This killer axis fueled terrorism and caused havoc in the poisoning of the country.”

Therein lies the challenge, and Iraq over the past decade had been ruined because of corruption and sectarian violence, and that any US effort to rebuild the Iraqi army strong enough to defeat the extremists Daash, must overcome these issues.

Here, too, Obama was right in his insistence on the need for the departure of the corrupt and sectarian Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki as a condition of US military assistance.

But why now? How Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, backed by the United States is working on the most salient issues cleaner and less sectarian government? Abadi has begun a good start, but slow; to look at the list: 1. corruption; that Iraq can not succeed militarily or economically without curbing the rampant corruption of the reign of al-Maliki. Based on the audit, the Bowen-money laundering through the central bank may cause the loss of more than $ 100 billion over the past ten years, most of them leak to banks in Dubai and Beirut.

Central Bank Governor of the newly appointed Ali is the relationship, who was secretary of the Council of Ministers Maliki and oversees government contracts, what makes it so frustrating news.

2. sectarianism; Use the Maliki government to punish the year, pushing them into the arms of extremists. The Abadi has talked about ending the sectarian police state, but he chose for the highest office in the Ministry of the Interior in charge of one of the organizations that are seen as the year of death squads, and the fear that the minister would take his orders from the leader of this organization.

3. military training; the Iraqi army collapsed, the coach at the hands of the Americans, when they swept Daash city of Mosul in June. Today new instructors from the United States and other countries up to rebuild. But the planners in the Pentagon are wondering what differed this time, after the United States spent $ 20 billion on training Iraqi security forces from 2005 to 2011.

4. communicate with the Kurds; in order to gain the support of the Kurds, the Abadi implement what is stated in the Constitution to give them 17% of the national budget, and it also passed a new law to guarantee the participation of oil money. And since June has not received the Kurds dinars and one of the promised budget allocations.

5. Regional communication; in order to build trust with the year, the Abadi work with neighboring Arab Gulf states and not only with Iran. The participation of the Arabs through a lane: Abadi visit to Riyadh and other capitals of the Gulf and Saudi Arabia and others return visit, but that this did not happen until now.

Iraq could take the lead against Daash only if the shift to a more decentralized and more inclusive state. Obama’s strategy is the logical in principle, but it will not succeed without progress against sectarianism and corruption.

altahreernews.com