September 19, 2005

World Media Watch

by Gloria R. Lalumia

BuzzFlash Note: WMW provides BuzzFlash readers foreign views and perspectives that are not usually available from the media here in the U.S. The presentation of these articles from these international publications is not an endorsement of their viewpoints.

* * *

WORLD MEDIA WATCH FOR SEPTEMBER 19, 2005

1//The Independent, UK--WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO IRAQ’S MISSING $1BN (One billion dollars has been plundered from Iraq's defence ministry in one of the largest thefts in history, The Independent can reveal, leaving the country's army to fight a savage insurgency with museum-piece weapons. The money, intended to train and equip an Iraqi army capable of bringing security to a country shattered by the US-led invasion and prolonged rebellion, was instead siphoned abroad in cash and has disappeared. "It is possibly one of the largest thefts in history," Ali Allawi, Iraq's Finance Minister, told The Independent. … Most of the money was supposedly spent buying arms from Poland and Pakistan. The contracts were peculiar in four ways. According to Mr Allawi, they were awarded without bidding, and were signed with a Baghdad-based company, and not directly with the foreign supplier. The money was paid up front, and, surprisingly for Iraq, it was paid at great speed out of the ministry's account with the Central Bank. … The Iraqi Board of Supreme Audit says in a report to the Iraqi government that US-appointed Iraqi officials in the defence ministry allegedly presided over these dubious transactions. Senior Iraqi officials now say they cannot understand how, if this is so, the disappearance of almost all the military procurement budget could have passed unnoticed by the US military in Baghdad and civilian advisers working in the defence ministry. Government officials in Baghdad even suggest that the skill with which the robbery was organised suggests that the Iraqis involved were only front men, and "rogue elements" within the US military or intelligence services may have played a decisive role behind the scenes.)

2//Gulf News Online, United Arab Emirates--MP ACCUSES MINISTRIES OF CORRUPTION (A Shiite politician on Sunday accused Iraqi ministries of corruption in the handling of defence and reconstruction contracts, saying millions of dollars had been wasted. Hadi Al Amiri, the head of parliament's integrity committee, said he would aggressively pursue those guilty of wrongdoing. . … "Our funds are under the control of ignorant people," Amiri said, referring to the ministries of defence, interior and others. … He cited as potential misconduct the $283 contract signed by the Electricity ministry for a new power station that has already cost $326 million.)

3//The Daily Star, Lebanon--WORLD BANK GIVES GLOOMY ASSESSMENT OF IRAQ’S IMMEDIATE HOPES FOR RECOVERY (Violence in Iraq has slowed reconstruction and economic recovery more than expected, the World Bank said on Thursday in a grim assessment of the country's immediate hopes for recovery. In a report released to Reuters, the World Bank said deadly attacks had spooked private investors and slowed physical reconstruction, while oil production and electricity were disrupted by sabotage. … The government's ability to allocate resources effectively and track spending was limited, it noted. Most of Iraq's 192 state-owned enterprises are idle because of damage from war and looting, while salaries and pensions of the 500,000 employees were covered by the budget, the bank said. It estimated at least two million Iraqis were unemployed - about 30 percent of the total workforce - with families heavily dependent on government subsidies.)

4//The Sydney Morning Herald, Australia--TILT AT DEMOCRACY TESTS KARZAI (… But insisting he was on top of things, the Pashtun President stuck with his choice of an electoral system that many fear could backfire explosively. Karzai disagrees. But the new parliament could be elected by as few as 20 per cent of voters, making it utterly unrepresentative; and Karzai's black-balling of political parties risks returning an unruly rabble that might eat him alive. A diplomat who watched the arm-wrestling told the Herald: "He wouldn't budge. He claims he can manage a big bunch of independents, and the shifting coalitions they will form, better than a small group of parties who will work the parliament." Almost four years after the US-led invasion that toppled the Taliban regime, Afghanistan is at a crossroads. Yesterday's election is the last piece in a jigsaw for change crafted at a postwar conference in Bonn in 2001. But the country is still on its knees - take out drugs and foreign aid and it doesn't have an economy; take out the foreign troops and its security forces would run a mile from a reinvigorated Taliban; take out the NGOs and the bureaucracy and services would collapse in a heap. Time is precious. A senior US military official told the Herald: "The people might just get tired and impatient if they don't see development or reform.")

5//Deutsche Welle/dw-Worlde.de, Germany--DECIDING VOTE IN TWO WEEKS? (Although the Social Democrats scored fewer votes than the Christian Democrats, it can win extra seats. Tipping the scales are so-called "overhang" seats, which derive from the two votes that each German casts when he goes to the polls. … Overall, it means a party can win seats individually and as a group, and if there is a difference in the number obtained under either system, the party is allowed to keep the extras, which are known as the "overhang" seats. … Who takes power could first be decided in two weeks, when one district Dresden heads to the polls. The district in the East German city will vote on Oct. 2 this year because a candidate for the right wing National Democratic Party (NPD) died suddenly during campaigning last month -- causing a re-scheduling. In voting Sunday, the city's second district voted CDU. Experts say Dresden could decide as many as three Bundestag seats. With the SPD estimated to get 222 or 221 seats, and the CDU/CSU between 224 and 225 seats, the district could decide whether Schröder or Merkel takes power, should the two major parties form a "grand coalition" with one another.)

* * *

1//The Independent, UK Published: 19 September 2005
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article313538.ece

WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO IRAQ’S MISSING $1BN
By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad

One billion dollars has been plundered from Iraq's defence ministry in one of the largest thefts in history, The Independent can reveal, leaving the country's army to fight a savage insurgency with museum-piece weapons.

The money, intended to train and equip an Iraqi army capable of bringing security to a country shattered by the US-led invasion and prolonged rebellion, was instead siphoned abroad in cash and has disappeared.

"It is possibly one of the largest thefts in history," Ali Allawi, Iraq's Finance Minister, told The Independent.

"Huge amounts of money have disappeared. In return we got nothing but scraps of metal."

The carefully planned theft has so weakened the army that it cannot hold Baghdad against insurgent attack without American military support, Iraqi officials say, making it difficult for the US to withdraw its 135,000- strong army from Iraq, as Washington says it wishes to do.

Most of the money was supposedly spent buying arms from Poland and Pakistan. The contracts were peculiar in four ways. According to Mr Allawi, they were awarded without bidding, and were signed with a Baghdad-based company, and not directly with the foreign supplier. The money was paid up front, and, surprisingly for Iraq, it was paid at great speed out of the ministry's account with the Central Bank. Military equipment purchased in Poland included 28-year-old Soviet-made helicopters. The manufacturers said they should have been scrapped after 25 years of service. Armoured cars purchased by Iraq turned out to be so poorly made that even a bullet from an elderly AK-47 machine-gun could penetrate their armour. A shipment of the latest MP5 American machine-guns, at a cost of $3,500 (£1,900) each, consisted in reality of Egyptian copies worth only $200 a gun. Other armoured cars leaked so much oil that they had to be abandoned. A deal was struck to buy 7.62mm machine-gun bullets for 16 cents each, although they should have cost between 4 and 6 cents.

Many Iraqi soldiers and police have died because they were not properly equipped. In Baghdad they often ride in civilian pick-up trucks vulnerable to gunfire, rocket- propelled grenades or roadside bombs. For months even men defusing bombs had no protection against blast because they worked without bullet-proof vests. These were often promised but never turned up.

The Iraqi Board of Supreme Audit says in a report to the Iraqi government that US-appointed Iraqi officials in the defence ministry allegedly presided over these dubious transactions.

Senior Iraqi officials now say they cannot understand how, if this is so, the disappearance of almost all the military procurement budget could have passed unnoticed by the US military in Baghdad and civilian advisers working in the defence ministry.

Government officials in Baghdad even suggest that the skill with which the robbery was organised suggests that the Iraqis involved were only front men, and "rogue elements" within the US military or intelligence services may have played a decisive role behind the scenes.

Given that building up an Iraqi army to replace American and British troops is a priority for Washington and London, the failure to notice that so much money was being siphoned off at the very least argues a high degree of negligence on the part of US officials and officers in Baghdad.

The report of the Board of Supreme Audit on the defence ministry contracts was presented to the office of Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the Prime Minister, in May. But the extent of the losses has become apparent only gradually. The sum missing was first reported as $300m and then $500m, but in fact it is at least twice as large. "If you compare the amount that was allegedly stolen of about $1bn compared with the budget of the ministry of defence, it is nearly 100 per cent of the ministry's [procurement] budget that has gone Awol," said Mr Allawi.

The money missing from all ministries under the interim Iraqi government appointed by the US in June 2004 may turn out to be close to $2bn. Of a military procurement budget of $1.3bn, some $200m may have been spent on usable equipment, though this is a charitable view, say officials. As a result the Iraqi army has had to rely on cast-offs from the US military, and even these have been slow in coming.

(MORE)

2//Gulf News Online, United Arab Emirates Published: 18/9/2005, 00:00 (UAE)
http://www.gulf-news.com/Articles/RegionNF.asp?ArticleID=182505

MP ACCUSES MINISTRIES OF CORRUPTION
Agencies

Baghdad : A Shiite politician on Sunday accused Iraqi ministries of corruption in the handling of defence and reconstruction contracts, saying millions of dollars had been wasted.

Hadi Al Amiri, the head of parliament's integrity committee, said he would aggressively pursue those guilty of wrongdoing.

(SNIP)

"Our funds are under the control of ignorant people," Amiri said, referring to the ministries of defence, interior and others.

"There have been many violations of the bidding process that have led to huge losses of public funds. Many bids weren't properly conducted and were awarded by ministers without any input from committees set up to assess the bids," he said.

He cited as potential misconduct the $283 contract signed by the Electricity ministry for a new power station that has already cost $326 million.

Amiri said the distribution of food via Iraq's ration programme has also been affected by corruption, with $1 billion going missing in the last year.

3//The Daily Star, Lebanon Saturday, September 17, 2005
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?editi...

WORLD BANK GIVES GLOOMY ASSESSMENT OF IRAQ’S IMMEDIATE HOPES FOR RECOVERY

WASHINGTON: Violence in Iraq has slowed reconstruction and economic recovery more than expected, the World Bank said on Thursday in a grim assessment of the country's immediate hopes for recovery. In a report released to Reuters, the World Bank said deadly attacks had spooked private investors and slowed physical reconstruction, while oil production and electricity were disrupted by sabotage.

The violence, which has killed 170 people in just the past 48 hours, has also squeezed the country's budget with spiraling security costs despite revenues fattened by higher oil prices, said the bank, the globe's biggest development lender.

"Continued insecurity, political uncertainties and weak public institutional capacity have resulted in mixed economic results and slower-than-expected reconstruction over the past 24 months," said the report, discussed by World Bank member countries Thursday.

Sabotage to oil infrastructure had stagnated production and exports and that would likely slash economic growth to 3.7 percent in 2005 from an initial strong rebound of 46.5 percent in 2004, the bank said.

Thanks to a soaring oil price, revenues exceeded projections by some $2.25 billion as of August 1, it added, but the bank warned oil exports could grow only if a vulnerable northern pipeline was kept operational.

For 2006, the bank said economic growth should climb again to 17 percent if security and oil output improved and then decline slowly to 7 percent by 2010.

The bank warned there was no room for relaxed fiscal discipline or a sharp decline in the oil prices that are keeping Iraq's budget afloat. Oil was trading around $63 a barrel on Thursday.
"These are considerable risks, particularly because insecurity remains high and oil prices are potentially volatile," the World Bank said.

The government's ability to allocate resources effectively and track spending was limited, it noted.
Most of Iraq's 192 state-owned enterprises are idle because of damage from war and looting, while salaries and pensions of the 500,000 employees were covered by the budget, the bank said.

It estimated at least two million Iraqis were unemployed - about 30 percent of the total workforce - with families heavily dependent on government subsidies.

The agricultural sector had become an important employer despite low productivity.

In its own plans for Iraq over the next two years, the World Bank said its objective was to help Iraq's fledgling government strengthen its institutions.

Restoring basic services, especially electricity, was critical and was the biggest concern for Iraqis, even more than national security, it said, quoting Iraqi opinion polls.

(MORE)

4//The Sydney Morning Herald, Australia September 19, 2005 - 11:16AM
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/tilt-at-democracy...

TILT AT DEMOCRACY TESTS KARZAI
The future is daunting for the President as Afghans vote, writes Paul McGeough.

The Afghan poll is a high-stakes contest over who knows best how to run this broken-down country - President Hamid Karzai or the army of foreign diplomats push-pulling his government down the democracy road.

They pleaded with him. Out of sheer frustration, the United Nations, the Europeans and others warned Karzai: "You'll be sorry."

But insisting he was on top of things, the Pashtun President stuck with his choice of an electoral system that many fear could backfire explosively.

Karzai disagrees. But the new parliament could be elected by as few as 20 per cent of voters, making it utterly unrepresentative; and Karzai's black-balling of political parties risks returning an unruly rabble that might eat him alive.

A diplomat who watched the arm-wrestling told the Herald: "He wouldn't budge. He claims he can manage a big bunch of independents, and the shifting coalitions they will form, better than a small group of parties who will work the parliament."

Almost four years after the US-led invasion that toppled the Taliban regime, Afghanistan is at a crossroads. Yesterday's election is the last piece in a jigsaw for change crafted at a postwar conference in Bonn in 2001.

But the country is still on its knees - take out drugs and foreign aid and it doesn't have an economy; take out the foreign troops and its security forces would run a mile from a reinvigorated Taliban; take out the NGOs and the bureaucracy and services would collapse in a heap.
Time is precious. A senior US military official told the Herald: "The people might just get tired and impatient if they don't see development or reform."

So too might the rest of the world, if it doesn't see a more determined Afghan commitment to make the best of its aid contributions and troop presence.

Already there are signs of donor fatigue - the UN is still panhandling for the cost of the election. And despite the Taliban being in a new lethal phase, military limits are being reached - Washington is talking troop cuts and NATO is baulking at US calls for it to join the counterinsurgency.

(SNIP)

Karzai's insistence on the rarely used SNTV electoral system - single non-transferable vote - allows voters to choose just a single candidate in fields of up to hundreds for no more than a dozen seats in most provinces. The most populous, Kabul, has 33 seats - but there is a field of 389 candidates.

A senior foreign diplomat observed: "Predicting the outcome is impossible. No candidate is likely to get more than 10 per cent. If the rest are lucky they'll get about 1 per cent each.

"We hope we are wrong. But a 20 per cent parliament is a risk because Afghans are bad losers. With such a thin spread of votes, how is a 1.09 per cent loser going to feel when he sees a 1.1 per cent winner?"

He is referring to one of Afghanistan's most absurd election rules. Known as the "assassination clause", it calls for the next-highest vote winner to replace any MP who dies. A similar rule applied to the election of delegates to a national political conference in 2002. Within four hours of the announcement of the successful candidates two were assassinated.

The diplomat shrugged: "But Karzai says none of this is a problem."

Cetin confidently predicts Karzai will be able to manage the parliament. The European Union's special representative, Frances Vendrell, put a bob each way: "He can't run the parliament, but it won't eat him alive - and a fractured parliament is better than a majority working against him."
The US ambassador Ronald Neumann diplomatically described the process as "an Afghan decision" to contain the commanders and warlords.

But it has failed to do that. Karzai is surrounded by alleged war criminals from all the Afghan conflicts and many warlords are being allowed to hide behind the uniform and authority of his security services and provincial administration.

Diplomats say up to 150 known warlords - not to mention an unknown number of their proxy candidates - were allowed to contest the election after a failed fig-leaf effort to vet candidates for criminal and militia activity.

And there is strong anecdotal evidence of drug money feeding into the campaign. Without referring to a New York Times report that named Karzai's brother, Ahmed Wali, who was a candidate, as the family's conduit to the drug barons, a senior diplomat told the Herald: "The Karzais don't own enough land or oil wells to be dishing out the Thurayas [mobile phones], money and wheat bags that Wali is said to be handing out to seduce would-be voters in Kandahar."

President Karzai last week defended the warlord candidacies. "It's opening a new life, a new avenue to the Afghan nation to participate and to differentiate. Now we have that opportunity, freedom to choose, to differentiate."

But in a city where foreigners are increasingly nervous about Afghan sensitivities, Vendrell thinks differently: "I fear a parliament with a considerable number of current or former commanders and jihadi figures and only a minority of moderate and modernist secularists - and the strongest of those will be women."

There is an expectation that, in time, caucuses will emerge in the parliament. But in the short term, the consensus among diplomatic observers is an ill-defined opposition in which loose groupings will coalesce around the grievances of individuals.

Searching for a positive note, one diplomat welcomed the notion of a check on Karzai's unfettered executive power of the last three-plus years: "At least there will be a constitutional space for people with grievances that might generate reform. We don't expect to see many self-declared democrats or modernisers, but there will be a handful - especially the women."

But hours later, the head of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, Sami Samar, confirmed a suspicion among some observers that many of the women running for the 59 seats reserved for female candidates were proxies for the old all-male establishment.

(MORE)

5//Deutsche Welle/dw-Worlde.de, Germany 18.09.2005
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,1564,1714108,00.html

DECIDING VOTE IN TWO WEEKS?
Overhang seats and a delayed election: how the SPD might yet become Germany's strongest party.

Although the Social Democrats scored fewer votes than the Christian Democrats, it can win extra seats. Tipping the scales are so-called "overhang" seats, which derive from the two votes that each German casts when he goes to the polls.

In the first vote, the candidate with the most votes in each constituency is elected to one of 299 seats -- half of the 598-seat Bundestag chamber.

Keeping the extra seats

The second vote decides the allocation of the other 299 seats via the state lists using a proportional system of calculation. Those seats are distributed based on the number of votes obtained by party lists, with people at the top of their lists having the best chance of getting in.

Overall, it means a party can win seats individually and as a group, and if there is a difference in the number obtained under either system, the party is allowed to keep the extras, which are known as the "overhang" seats.

(SNIP)

Dresden the decider?

Who takes power could first be decided in two weeks, when one district Dresden heads to the polls. The district in the East German city will vote on Oct. 2 this year because a candidate for the right wing National Democratic Party (NPD) died suddenly during campaigning last month -- causing a re-scheduling. In voting Sunday, the city's second district voted CDU.

Experts say Dresden could decide as many as three Bundestag seats. With the SPD estimated to get 222 or 221 seats, and the CDU/CSU between 224 and 225 seats, the district could decide whether Schröder or Merkel takes power, should the two major parties form a "grand coalition" with one another.