Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140-153)
MR YAHIA
SAID
18 JANUARY 2005
Q140 Chairman: There has been quite a
lot of debate in the UK in the business pages about how much business
UK companies are getting out of reconstruction as compared to
how much business US companies are getting out of reconstruction.
I suppose one of the issues we should be considering is to what
extent is this an Iraqi-led reconstruction process. Do you get
the impression that DFID is facilitating an Iraqi-led reconstruction
process or is it simply that the coalition as occupiers are undertaking
such reconstruction as they feel as occupiers is needing to be
done?
Mr Said: There are several questions
here that need to be addressed. First of all, it is not so much
a real reconstruction effort that is going on. There is a patchwork
of investment projects or activities that are taking place—an
airport here, a sewer station there, a couple of electricity power
stations over there. In all these areas there are certain works
that cannot be done by Iraqis. Building a deepwater seaport is
nothing that any construction company in Iraq can carry out and
it is definitely where a lot of revenue will be acquired by foreign
companies. Fixing up a school or resurfacing the road is something
that Iraqi companies can do and are doing. The money for a lot
of reconstruction effort, where it has been possible, has been
primarily going to Iraqi companies simply because the foreign
companies cannot bring people to Iraq to do that work. It is quite
dangerous for them and it is more cost effective for Iraqi companies
to do that. There is no impression in Iraq that there is a co-ordinated,
coherent reconstruction programme that is taking place and many
people argue in Iraq that it is not correct to have that because
these are long term decisions that affect the long term future
of Iraq and these decisions should be left to a government that
is elected and seen as fully legitimate.
Q141 Chairman: Is there sufficient money
for the reconstruction that needs to be done and, if there is
sufficient money, is the difficulty just with dispersing it?
Mr Said: There is probably too
much money going into reconstruction in Iraq. The problem is the
following. The ministries spend the bulk of their money paying
salaries and what has been happening with the Iraqi ministries
is that they have, especially since June, re-hired all the people
that had been fired during the Saddam years. At the same time
they are keeping their own staff but sometimes they have been
returning Ba'athists to office that they have fired over the last
two years. What you have is that each ministry is re-hiring 2,000
or 3,000 people on top of the bureaucratic bloat that they already
had during the Saddam years. Therefore, a significant portion
of Iraqi budgetary resources have been tied up with paying salaries
As a short term measure in a way it is good; it is keeping the
peace, it is keeping lots of Iraqi families funded and supplied,
although it is not necessarily a good thing in terms of institution
building. On the other side of that you have the billions that
have been earmarked by the international community for reconstruction
and I do not think there is enough capacity within Iraq to absorb
these billions, especially considering the security situation.
In a way the solution at this moment is not by committing more
resources, especially not committing more resources for large
investment projects, but rather improving the absorption capacity
in Iraq for these resources. That is not necessarily in terms
of the capacity of ministries but is especially in terms of the
institutional framework, the political framework and the security
programme.
Q142 Ann Clwyd: Where were you in Iraq?
Did you travel through Iraq?
Mr Said: I have been travelling
to Iraq every three months since the war and during my first trip
I went to the south, to Amara. Recently I have been only travelling
to Baghdad, obviously, because of security and because the roads
are the most dangerous part of Iraq.
Q143 Ann Clwyd: You gave a partial assessment
of the security situation and you talked about Sadr City and other
parts of Baghdad and other areas. Can you give us a global assessment
of the security situation?
Mr Said: As you hear on the news,
there is widespread violence in Iraq and it is for various reasons.
There are many aspects to the violence. A big part of the violence
is criminal. There are lots of highway robberies, murders, kidnapping
for ransom, extortion. Then there are the terrorists that you
hear about, the Al-qaeda types. Over the last months we have seen
a coming together of people associated with Al-qaeda and some
of the remnants of the regime. Part of the insurgency that is
quite significant is nationalist Islamic, people who were against
Saddam but who are very unhappy not only with the presence of
foreign troops but also with the direction in which the new Iraqi
government and the new Iraqi political system seem to be heading,
people who are motivated by, for example, religious reasons because
they feel that the new Iraqi government is too westernised, people
who feel that exiles are playing too big a role in the country.
There are people with personal reasons, people who have had someone
killed by the Americans or who were mistreated at a checkpoint
or who just feel unhappy about the Americans running around. There
is a large number of grievances that are not finding political
expression and are creating space where violence is thriving.
These feed into each other so, for example, a lot of the criminal
violence is piggy-backing on the insurgency. When I was in Baghdad
a taxi driver had his car car-jacked by two persons who were pretending
to be suicide bombers. They started to pray as if they were about
to blow themselves up, so he jumped out of the car and they stole
the car. What you have is different kinds of violence bolting
on to the core of the insurgency and I believe at the end of the
day that the core of the insurgency has a legitimate point to
it which is the fact that they are people who are unhappy about
the fact that is Iraq is occupied.
Q144 Ann Clwyd: What effect is that going
to have on the elections and the legitimacy of the elections?
Mr Said: I am moderately optimistic
about the elections. Many people in Baghdad, including people
who are pro-insurgency, who think that a violent resistance to
the occupation is justified, nonetheless intend to vote, to participate
in the election. They think that the elections will be flawed,
will be far short of what they view as the ideal, but nonetheless
they think that the elections will be a step towards full independence,
towards the return of self-determination to Iraqis. Literally
there was a person who told me, "Maybe I will get one or
two people who I believe in into parliament rather than a large
faction but maybe in the next round we will get more people in".
There is sufficient hope among Iraqis that despite all the problems
with the elections they will be a step away from the current chaos.
Also, although I have been describing a picture of the insurgency
as quite widespread and strong, on the worst day you have in Iraq
about 150 or 200 attacks. There are 6,000 or 7,000 polling stations,
so even with all the efforts of the insurgents, they will not
be able to attack a significant number of polling stations, enough
to disrupt the elections in a serious way. That said, I am not
listing all the other issues that are very well covered, like
Sunni participation in elections. These are all issues that will
still be there. I am just trying to describe the elements that
make me a little optimistic. Despite the rhetoric people do believe
that the Electoral Commission, which was entirely set up by the
UN, enjoys a certain legitimacy, definitely more legitimacy than
the interim government itself, and the fact that it is in control
of the election process gives comfort to at least some of the
sceptical among Iraqis about the elections, that at least that
part of it will be legitimate. There are other concerns. I am
sure you have heard the reports about Alawi's party giving $100
bills to journalists to give them positive coverage, that there
are militias in the south that are trying to convince people to
participate in the elections and so on. There will be all kinds
of violations so it will be very far from an ideal process but
many people in Iraq, including those who are opposed to the occupation
and to the current government, believe they should participate
just to get that step closer to the end goals.
Q145 Mr Battle: It is encouraging to
hear what you say despite the fact that many candidates cannot
reveal their names and that the positions of some polling stations
are being kept secret because they might be bombed beforehand.
What hope do you hold out after the elections that those Sunnis
who refuse to participate will say, "We have had a vote That
is democracy. We will now join in"? Do you see any signs
of that at all? Will the elections be a healing or a dividing
process?
Mr Said: I have been speaking
to the Council of Muslim Clerics which is the most influential
Sunni institution. It is not a political organisation. It is essentially
just formed of the majority of the Sunni clerics in Iraq; it is
almost like a trade union. Rhetorically they are quite vehemently
opposed to the election; they describe them in the most negative
terms, but I know that they quietly have been looking for ways
to get back into the political process. I think they will stay
out of the elections. I do not think they are campaigning energetically
enough for their members not to vote, which is quite a positive
sign. In a way it is almost like Hamas and the Palestinian Territories,
which does not participate but does not call for a boycott. I
think that although they explicitly did not say that, in practice
on the ground this is what we are seeing. I think they will not
vote. They do not want to be associated with the election, they
think it will taint their patriotic Islamic credentials, but at
the same time they are looking for ways back. Unfortunately, on
the other side we do not see enough movement to meet them halfway.
There are people who are currently involved in the political process
who feel threatened by these forces that are outside and would
rather have them stay outside. They would rather push them further
and describe them as terrorists, as bitter-enders and so on for
their own political benefit and this is definitely irresponsible.
To go back to what will happen after the election, it will depend
a lot on what the people in power, who are elected to the parliament,
do to reach out to those who have been outside the political process.
There is definitely a space for dialogue There is lots of
rhetoric about national dialogue but unfortunately many of the
mainstream political parties have been going in the opposite direction,
have been going for sectarian and identity politics that are not
helpful for resuming dialogue.
Q146 Tony Worthington: One of the consequences
in the long lead-up to the elections is reports of criminality
and corruption increasing. Is that your assessment, and that senior
people in the government are rumoured to be involved in corruption
as well?
Mr Said: I do not have any hard
evidence of corruption on a significant scale in the government
but if you speak to any Iraqi they are 100 per cent convinced
that there is widespread corruption that goes to the highest places.
The perception, if not the reality, is of widespread, endemic
corruption. Many people that I spoke to in Iraq believe that corruption
goes on not only in the government but also in the coalition,
in the US and British governments, and with people who are involved
in the distribution of funds. I have not seen any evidence of
that but everybody I spoke to across the political spectrum strongly
believe that there is such corruption. I have seen anecdotal evidence
of corruption, such as a minister whose chief of staff is his
cousin. The Minister of the Interior has hired about 200 of his
relatives to high positions in the government. When he was questioned
about it in parliament he said, "Because I trust them".
There is anecdotal evidence that points in the direction of corruption.
Baghdad and most of Iraq currently are currently suffering from
a severe fuel shortage. There is no gas at the gas stations and
there is no kerosene for heating. The Baghdad City Council have
been accusing the Ministry of Oil that it is corruption at the
Ministry of Oil that is causing the shortage, not a real shortage
of oil supplies because Baghdad oil products come from a refinery
within the city so there is no such thing as saying that there
is sabotage on the roads to prevent these products from coming
to the gas stations. I have not seen any evidence of that. One
suspects that there is scope for corruption because gas in Baghdad
filling stations is sold at half a cent a litre and given the
lack of gas—Iraq imports a lot of it from Kuwait at what
I suspect to be one dollar a litre—obviously there is a
space for arbitrage and if there are any commercially-minded people
within the Ministry of Oil or anywhere in Iraq, I am sure they
will be trying to bridge that gap between the price at the gas
station and the money Iraq has paid to buy gas. There are conditions
for corruption and again billions of dollars are being spent.
My colleagues before spoke about there not being sufficient funds
for civil society. I think there is too much money being spent
on Iraqi civil society. There is no way that Iraqi civil society
can absorb the £10 million that the British Government, for
example, has set aside for its development, let alone the $50
million that the US Government is spending. There are not enough
NGOs in Iraq or people capable to work in NGOs that can absorb
so much money. I do not know how much NGOs in Britain spend.
Q147 Tony Worthington: Let us be quite
clear about this strange expression, that there is no way people
can absorb so much money. I do not think people have any problem
absorbing the money. What you are saying basically is that it
is not going to the purpose it was intended for?
Mr Said: Yes. Civil society specifically
is almost smoke and mirrors. It is about voluntarism, it is about
a feeling of participation, it is about debate, it is about dialogue,
it is about consensus. It is all these ephemeral things. If you
speak about civil society in terms of distributing food and blankets,
of course you can spend a lot more money on that, but if you talk
about civil society in terms of Iraqi's engagement in shaping
the future, it is something where you can spend £20 or £50
on water bottles and we have a debate and you achieve a lot more
than when you spend, for example, and I am guilty of that, £20,000
or £30,000 getting ten Iraqis to Amman, putting them in a
five-star hotel and giving them a lecture about fund-raising.
There are ways and ways to spend money on developing civil society.
Q148 Tony Worthington: There is a sort
of irony, when you mentioned the Iraq before, that the major centre
of talk in terms of corruption was the oil-for-food programme
but there is now no talk about corruption there. Is that just
because everybody is being fed by it? How is it being done now?
There is this extraordinary operation of the whole country being
fed. Is it because everybody is being fed?
Mr Said: No. In the oil-for-food
programme Iraq was exporting as much oil as it could but could
only import food or there was a restricted list of where it could
spend the money. What is now happening I think is that most of
the Iraqi oil revenues are spent on salaries so there is no space
for corruption there. There are monies coming in. Iraqi policemen
used to earn two dollars a month. They now earn $200 a month and
there is a lot more of them, so there is no space for that money
to be diverted.
Q149 Tony Worthington: There is always
space for something to be diverted.
Mr Said: I am sure there is some
diversion but it is on a much smaller scale. In the oil-for-food
programme the whole idea was that Saddam was trying to milk it
for his own benefit. What I found out is that that very corruption
that was inside Saddam's efforts to utilise the oil-for-food programme
was destroying the regime because it turned the regime into gangs
that were competing for these diverted funds and although Saddam
thought that some of these funds were going towards his chemical
and biological weapons programme, in reality they were all going
into various pockets of his cronies who were fighting real wars
with each other.
Q150 Tony Worthington: When you get a
disruption and you cut people out of the food chain, you know,
you have got gangs who are dependent on the income, where have
they gone now because they have no longer got their income? Where
are they getting their income from?
Mr Said: A lot of the people at
the top of the food chain have left the country. A lot of the
people who were involved in the billions of dollars that were
being diverted are people sitting in Damascus and in Amman and
there is a real-estate boom in those countries because of that.
As for the minions, the henchmen, the people involved in that,
as I have described, there are wide criminal networks involved
in smuggling, in sabotage, in kidnapping people, in highway robberies
and such activities, but the real big thieves, the big robber
barons, are sitting in Damascus and Amman.
Q151 Tony Worthington: Let us go on to
something different. In all these conflicts where there has been
terrible oppression and massive abuse of human rights in a previous
regime, it is always thought that there has somehow got to be
closure at the end of it, there has to be some kind of reconciliation
or a sense of justice. How do you assess the way in which the
crimes of the former regime are going to be dealt with?
Mr Said: There is a semi-official
process, which is the Memorial Foundation that is run by Kanaan
Makiya, which I think has received significant funds from the
US administration and has also received access to almost all the
documents that are being collected around the country and have
been collected around the country about the regime. Unfortunately,
this process, viewed from Baghdad, lacks transparency; it is not
public enough and therefore is not serving its purpose. In a way,
somebody sitting in New York and London collecting all these documents
and analysing them, and I am sure they are making an admirable
effort in that, is not giving Iraqis a sense of closure. This
is one of the missed opportunities, I think, of the last two years,
in other words, trying to develop a system for truth and reconciliation,
a system of somehow holding the henchmen of the regime accountable
without creating a whole group of Iraqis who feel targeted, without
turning it into a witch-hunt. Now, unfortunately, because of the
way the US has been using all the regime's crimes in its rhetoric,
even that process has been discredited. Because it has been left,
because every time you speak of grievances about what is going
on today, the US Embassy answers you with quite correct stuff
about mass graves and crimes against humanity committed by Saddam,
somehow that noble memory is being tainted by the occupation.
Somewhere down the road we will go back to these documents that
are being collected now and this evidence and get it out into
a transparent public process.
Q152 Tony Worthington: But you are not
optimistic that that can be done now?
Mr Said: It is definitely not
happening now. Unfortunately, the court for Saddam Hussein's henchmen
has been quite disorganised and definitely lacks transparency,
definitely lacks the legitimacy that one hopes for from such a
court. I think it was a mistake not to set up an international
court because Iraq definitely does not have the capacity to prosecute
the crime of aggression, for example, as in the case of Kuwait,
let alone other crimes that Saddam's henchmen are being prosecuted
for. Unfortunately this is a missed opportunity and it will be
doubly difficult to do it again correctly some time down the road
than had it been done correctly from the beginning. This is a
very important question because one of the main mistakes that
everyone agrees has been committed by the Bremer government was,
for example, the dissolution of the army, or the de-Ba'athification.
These are both measures that have been taken because nobody had
the patience to set up a truth and reconciliation process which
would have been a lot better transitional justice process at weeding
the criminals, the Ba'athists, out of the system than a blanket
dismissal of the entire army or of the three top echelons of the
Ba'ath party.
Q153 Ann Clwyd: It would have been better
had the UN set up an international war crimes tribunal. I think
that is the major mistake. The UN did not grasp that opportunity.
Mr Said: Unfortunately, I know
that the UN was quite keen to do that and it was the US and some
other countries that were in coalition with the US that were opposed
to it. I made a mistake there.
Chairman: Thank you very much. My impression
also was that the UN wanted to do it but was not allowed to by
the US. Thank you very much for some really helpful insights,
all the more helpful because you have recent experience of being
in Iraq.
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