• «En Irak, l'instabilité politique arrange tout le monde»

Flore Galaud (lefigaro.fr) 09/12/2009

ANALYSE VIDEO - Les régulières flambées de violences en Irak montrent que le pays n'est toujours pas doté d'un gouvernement fort et stable. Pour Georges Malbrunot, grand reporter pour Le Figaro, personne n'a intérêt à voir cette situation changer.

Un regain de violences à craindre jusqu'aux élections. Mardi, la capitale irakienne a été le théâtre de plusieurs attaques simultanées, deux jours seulement après qu'une nouvelle loi électorale a été votée, qui va permettre la tenue de législatives dans le pays début 2010.

«Régulièrement, les terroristes concentrent leurs efforts sur des attentats spectaculaires», explique Georges Malbrunot, grand reporter pour Le Figaro. Si novembre a été le mois le moins sanglant en cinq ans, à l'approche des élections législatives, les terroristes entendent bien faire remonter la pression :
vidéo :
http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2009/12/08/01003-20091208ARTFIG00524-en-irak-l-instabilite-politique-arrange-tout-le-monde-.php?mode=imprimer

· Les motivations des terroristes dans ce genre d'attentats sont multiples : décrédibiliser le pouvoir irakien, et en particulier, le Premier ministre irakien, Nouri al-Maliki. Mais aussi les forces de sécurité et relancer le conflit religieux.

Le gouvernement irakien a du mal à faire face à ces attaques. Et pour cause : il manque à l'Etat un homme fort. L'Irak «est un régime d'assemblée ingouvernable», résume Georges Malbrunot.

Le Premier ministre, qui ne peut décider seul, ne rencontre pas l'appui de ses partenaires de coalition, comme l'ont prouvé les difficiles négociations autour de la loi pétrolière ou de la loi électorale. «Tous les jours, il doit négocier pour faire avancer les choses. On a donc toujours un Irak sans véritable Etat».

«Personne», estime Georges Malbrunot, «n'a intérêt à l'émergence d'un pouvoir fort en Irak aujourd'hui». Cette instabilité arrange en effet beaucoup de gens, notamment ceux qui tirent les ficelles de la corruption. Là-bas, «l'argent coule à flot». Une instabilité gouvernementale, en fin de compte, «arrange tout le monde, parce que tout le monde peut faire ses petites affaires» dans son coin, conclut-il.


http://www.lefigaro.fr/international/2009/12/08/01003-20091208ARTFIG00524-en-irak-l-instabilite-politique-arrange-tout-le-monde-.php

Money for Iraq's reconstruction projects have been wasted or stolen

23-09-2008
By Dana Hedgpeth
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 23, 2008; Page A19

A former Iraqi official estimated yesterday that more than $13 billion meant for reconstruction projects in Iraq was wasted or stolen through elaborate fraud schemes. Salam Adhoob, a former chief investigator for Iraq's Commission on Public Integrity, told the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, an arm of the Democratic caucus, that an Iraqi auditing bureau "could not properly account for" the money. While many of the projects audited "were not needed -- and many were never built," he said, "this very real fact remains: Billions of American dollars that paid for these projects are now gone."

He said a report that went to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other top Iraqi officials was never published because "nobody cares" about investigating such cases. Many investigators, he said, feared for their safety because 32 of his co-workers have been murdered. Adhoob said he reported the abuses to the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, an agency charged by Congress with helping to root out cases of waste, fraud and abuse in the nearly $50 billion U.S. reconstruction effort.

SIGIR spokeswoman Kristine Belisle said her agency continues to "actively follow up" on Adhoob's information, but she would not discuss ongoing investigations. Adhoob was one of three Iraqi men who testified before the Democratic panel yesterday.

Abbas S. Mehdi, a former Iraqi official who held a cabinet-level post, told of widespread corruption. And an Iraqi American who for five years has been a senior adviser to Defense and State department officials in Iraq testified in silhouette by video from an undisclosed location because, he said, he feared for his safety. In a modified voice, he said Iraqi government officials worked with al-Qaeda terrorists at the Baiji refinery to steal oil to sell on the black market. Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.), who chairs the committee, said that "taxpayers have been bled dry with massive misuse of public dollars." "It is all pretty sobering," he added later. "Our country cannot continue to be blind or oblivious to what is happening."

Adhoob, who worked for three years at the Iraqi agency and oversaw 200 investigators and other employees, said he had a "firsthand, up-close look at corruption" and eventually had to flee the country because of death threats. He said his agency -- the Commission on Public Integrity, which U.S. government officials say is the equivalent of the FBI -- estimates that an additional $9 billion in U.S. funds was lost because of corruption and waste. Because the $13 billion figure came from the Iraqi auditing bureau and the $9 billion figure came from Adhoob's agency, Dorgan's staff members said there could be some overlap.

Adhoob's agency has been accused of pursuing investigations against political rivals. In one scheme described by Adhoob, Iraqi Defense Ministry officials helped set up two front companies that were to buy airplanes, armored vehicles, guns and other equipment with $1.7 billion in U.S. funds.

The companies were paid, but in some cases they delivered only "a small percentage" of the equipment that had been ordered and, in one case, delivered bulletproof vests that were defective and could not be used. The companies also overcharged for military helicopters and tried to deliver aircraft that were more than 25 years old, he said. Instead of demanding the money back, Adhoob said, the Defense Ministry renegotiated with the companies for "a series of mobile toilets and kitchens -- which have never been delivered." Adhoob said some of the investigations conducted by his agency and others uncovered "ghost projects" that never existed or instances in which Iraqi and U.S. contractors did poor-quality work.

In one case, $24.4 million was spent on an electricity project in Nineveh province but an oversight agency found that it "existed only on paper." Investigations by Iraqi oversight agencies also found that some of the money sent to the Defense Ministry was diverted to al-Qaeda in Iraq, Adhoob said, and deposited into banks in Jordan and elsewhere.

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Budget unlikely to help ordinary Iraqis: economists

BAGHDAD, Feb 17, 2008 (AFP) —

Corruption will eat away at Iraq's 48 billion dollar budget, which is unlikely to bring much relief to the hard-hit Iraqi in the street and will turn the jobless into an army of beggars, economists say.

The gloomy prognosis is based on patterns of administering the budget in the past four years, which, they say, has been bedevilled by a lack of planning and technical expertise and an inability by provinces to spend allocated moneys.

The budget, passed on Wednesday after months of wrangling by the deeply divided parliament, devotes the lion's share to the security forces, which gets 8.85 billion dollars -- up from 7.5 billion dollars in 2007 -- and to education, which gets 4.13 billion dollars.

Other major allocations include 1.92 billion dollars to the health ministry and 1.37 billion dollars to electricity -- much of the latter expected to go towards upgrading infrastructure in a country still mostly in the dark.

Despite the healthy figures -- more than double what they were before the overthrow of the regime of Saddam Hussein -- economists believe not enough will filter down to ordinary Iraqis.
"The problem is not the size of the budget but whether it will be spent properly and free of financial and administrative corruption," said Baghdad economic expert Walid Khalid.

"What have citizens seen of last year's budget, which was also large? Approving the budget is not the problem; the problem is how much Iraqis will benefit from it," Khalid told AFP.

Economic researcher and financial journalist Husam al-Samook said that Iraq's economic governance since the US-led invasion in 2003 has been badly affected by lack of expertise.
"For four years in a row, we have not had the technical experts who know how to draft a budget or even how to implement one," said Samook. "There is mis-planning and mis-implementation."
Provincial administrations, in particular, have performed poorly, he said.

"The most effective rate of implementation of the budget in the provinces was only 60 percent (in 2007), while in some of the more volatile provinces it was only 10 percent," he said.
"Those who drafted the budget did not take into account the urgency of the need to create job opportunities nor design adequate investment programmes.
"They burdened the budget by setting aside more than 720 million dollars for the social sector to pay two million unemployed," said Samook.
"In fact what they are doing is converting two million people to beggars instead of putting this money towards investment programmes and projects that create jobs."

Economic expert in the finance ministry, Hilal al-Taan, acknowledged that the budget did not "wholly" meet the needs of Iraqis.
"The allocations for the defence (4.99 billion dollars) and the interior (3.86 billion dollars) ministries are the greatest because the security forces are at the forefront of ensuring security," said Taan.

"The budget is not ideal, we hope to do better in the coming years -- if the price of oil is increased."

Revenue projections for the budget were based on oil priced at 57 dollars a barrel, whereas prices are now projected to average 85 dollars a barrel this year.

Iraq's oil production reached an average of 2.38 million barrels a day in the fourth quarter of 2007, the highest level since 2003 but still short of pre-war levels of 2.5 million barrels a day.
Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi acknowledged defects in the government's financial and monetary policies, but said a committee of experts was being set up "to resolve the economic shortcomings."