[Fwd: Fwd: [Reader-list] UN engaged in retrieving corporate profits]

[Vivek Narayanan]

More from Naomi Klein:

What I am struggling to assimilate all this information into is a larger 
logic, a way of reasoning; for what I am left at the moment is pure 
greed and opportunism.  But surely that is too simplistic a way to see a 
vast network with various actors, not all of them purely self-interested?

V.

Why is war-torn Iraq giving $190,000 to Toys R Us?

Saturday October 16, 2004
The Guardian / Naomi Klein

Next week, something will happen that will unmask the upside-down morality of
the invasion and occupation of Iraq. On October 21, Iraq will pay $200m in
war
reparations to some of the richest countries and corporations in the world.

If that seems backwards, it's because it is. Iraqis have never been awarded
reparations for any of the crimes they suffered under Saddam, or the brutal
sanctions regime that claimed the lives of at least half a million people, or
the US-led invasion, which the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, recently
called "illegal". Instead, Iraqis are still being forced to pay reparations
for
crimes committed by their former dictator.

Quite apart from its crushing $125bn sovereign debt, Iraq has paid $18.8bn in
reparations stemming from Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion and occupation of
Kuwait. This is not in itself surprising: as a condition of the ceasefire
that
ended the 1991 Gulf war, Saddam agreed to pay damages stemming from the
invasion. More than 50 countries have made claims, with most of the money
awarded to Kuwait. What is surprising is that even after Saddam was
overthrown,
the payments from Iraq have continued.

Since Saddam was toppled in April, Iraq has paid out $1.8bn in reparations to
the United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC), the Geneva-based quasi
tribunal that assesses claims and disburses awards. Of those payments, $37m
have gone to Britain and $32.8m have gone to the United States. That's right:
in the past 18 months, Iraq's occupiers have collected $69.8m in reparation
payments from the desperate people they have been occupying. But it gets
worse:
the vast majority of those payments, 78%, have gone to multinational
corporations, according to statistics on the UNCC website.

Away from media scrutiny, this has been going on for years. Of course there
are
many legitimate claims for losses that have come before the UNCC: payments
have
gone to Kuwaitis who have lost loved ones, limbs, and property to Saddam's
forces. But much larger awards have gone to corporations: of the total amount
the UNCC has awarded in Gulf war reparations, $21.5bn has gone to the oil
industry alone. Jean-Claude Aimé, the UN diplomat who headed the UNCC until
December 2000, publicly questioned the practice. "This is the first time as
far
as I know that the UN is engaged in retrieving lost corporate assets and
profits," he told the Wall Street Journal in 1997, and then mused: "I often
wonder at the correctness of that."

But the UNCC's corporate handouts only accelerated. Here is a small sample of
who has been getting "reparation" awards from Iraq: Halliburton ($18m),
Bechtel
($7m), Mobil ($2.3m), Shell ($1.6m), Nestlé ($2.6m), Pepsi ($3.8m), Philip
Morris ($1.3m), Sheraton ($11m), Kentucky Fried Chicken ($321,000) and Toys R
Us ($189,449). In the vast majority of cases, these corporations did not
claim
that Saddam's forces damaged their property in Kuwait - only that they "lost
profits" or, in the case of American Express, experienced a "decline in
business" because of the invasion and occupation of Kuwait. One of the
biggest
winners has been Texaco, which was awarded $505m in 1999. According to a UNCC
spokesperson, only 12% of that reparation award has been paid, which means
hundreds of millions more will have to come out of the coffers of post-Saddam
Iraq.

The fact that Iraqis have been paying reparations to their occupiers is all
the
more shocking in the context of how little these countries have actually
spent
on aid in Iraq. Despite the $18.4bn of US tax dollars allocated for Iraq's
reconstruction, the Washington Post estimates that only $29m has been spent
on
water, sanitation, health, roads, bridges, and public safety combined. And in
July (the latest figure available), the Department of Defence estimated that
only $4m had been spent compensating Iraqis who had been injured, or who lost
family members or property as a direct result of the occupation - a
fraction of
what the US has collected from Iraq in reparations since its occupation
began.

For years there have been complaints about the UNCC being used as a slush
fund
for multinationals and rich oil emirates - a backdoor way for corporations to
collect the money they were prevented from making as a result of the
sanctions
against Iraq. During the Saddam years, these concerns received little
attention, for obvious reasons.

But now Saddam is gone and the slush fund survives. And every dollar sent to
Geneva is a dollar not spent on humanitarian aid and reconstruction Iraq.
Furthermore, if post-Saddam Iraq had not been forced to pay these
reparations,
it could have avoided the $437m emergency loan that the International
Monetary
Fund approved on September 29.

With all the talk of forgiving Iraq's debts, the country is actually being
pushed deeper into the hole, forced to borrow money from the IMF, and to
accept
all of the conditions and restrictions that come along with those loans. The
UNCC, meanwhile, continues to assess claims and make new awards: $377m
worth of
new claims were awarded last month alone.

Fortunately, there is a simple way to put an end to these grotesque corporate
subsidies. According to United Nations security council resolution 687, which
created the reparations programme, payments from Iraq must take into account
"the requirements of the people of Iraq, Iraq's payment capacity, and the
needs
of the Iraqi economy". If a single one of these three issues were genuinely
taken into account, the security council would vote to put an end to these
payouts tomorrow.

That is the demand of Jubilee Iraq, a debt relief organisation based in
London.
Reparations are owed to the victims of Saddam Hussein, the group argues -
both
in Iraq and in Kuwait. But the people of Iraq, who were themselves Saddam's
primary victims, should not be paying them. Instead, reparations should be
the
responsibility of the governments that loaned billions to Saddam, knowing the
money was being spent on weapons so he could wage war on his neighbours and
his
own people. "If justice, and not power, prevailed in international affairs,
then Saddam's creditors would be paying reparations to Kuwait as well as far
greater reparations to the Iraqi people," says Justin Alexander,
coordinator of
Jubilee Iraq.

Right now precisely the opposite is happening: instead of flowing into Iraq,
reparations are flowing out. It's time for the tide to turn.

·Naomi Klein is the author of No Logo, and Fences and Windows


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