BY ALISON DELLIT
Australian companies have joined the queue for contracts to rebuild Iraq, the country that Australia has just helped destroy. At the same time, Prime Minister John Howard has confirmed that the Australian military will help occupy Iraq as part of the US-led force.
On April 10, the US government briefed representatives from the "coalition of the willing" countries on how it intended to administer reconstruction contracts, and how to apply. "The coalition countries certainly should have an opportunity to be involved in whatever reconstruction effort there is ... I think this means the British, Australians and others that have been very supportive", US commerce secretary Donald Evans explained.
On April 7, foreign minister Alexander Downer returned from a visit to Washington (he stayed at the home of US secretary of state Colin Powell). Downer announced that Australia would "probably" play a "key role" in developing agriculture in the "new" Iraq.
Already, Canberra has sent six representatives — a diplomat, an aid officer, an economist, a defence official and oil and agricultural experts — to the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Affairs, set up by the US to divide up reconstruction contracts.
These contracts are being bitterly fought over, even before the war has ended. Companies see this as a chance to establish a new market. According to the April 12 Sydney Morning Herald, such contracts may be used to expand Australian corporations' activities, particularly in the engineering and consulting sector.
Australian business is expected to win big on some wheat contracts, and may propose joint bids with British and US companies for medical contracts. By April 13, more than 200 companies had registered an interest in Iraq contracts with Austrade.
Of course, the Australian slice of the Iraq pie will be token by world terms — the US intends to use the reconstruction period to entrench US business in the country.
The Australian government will be contributing $100 million in "aid" to Iraq (a fraction of the $500 million spent to create the humanitarian crisis). While $38 million of this will be paid to the UN, the remaining $62 million will probably become handouts to Australian businesses in the form of reconstruction contracts.
Iraq desperately needs humanitarian aid: it doesn't need profit-hungry corporations swallowing up the "aid" money provided by Western governments. The rebuilding of Iraq, while funded by those countries who bear responsibility for the devastation (through the war and, before that, through sanctions), should be administered by the Iraqis themselves.
The war profiteers seem oblivious to the pain that their bonanzas will be built upon. After explaining how British corporations intend to use a 10-year reconstruction period to consolidate their hold on the "Iraqi market", Health Network Associates David Raines enthused to the April 11 ABC AM program: "Already there's one British company that is building prosthetics for little kiddies that lost both their arms."
From Green Left Weekly, April 16, 2003.
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