From The Nation
Posted online December 18
Risky Busines
By Naomi Klein
It's 8:40 am and the Sheraton Hotel ballroom thunders with the sound of plastic explosives pounding against metal. No, this is not the Sheraton in Baghdad, it's the one in Arlington, Virginia. And it's not a real terrorist attack, it's a hypothetical one. The screen at the front of the room is playing an advertisement for "bomb resistant waste receptacles": This trash can is so strong, we're told, it can contain a C4 blast. And its manufacturer is convinced that given half a chance, these babies would sell like hotcakes in Baghdad--at bus stations, Army barracks and, yes, upscale hotels. Available in Hunter Green, Fortuneberry Purple and Windswept Copper.
This is ReBuilding Iraq 2, a gathering of 400 businesspeople itching to get a piece of the Iraqi reconstruction action. They are here to meet the people doling out the cash, in particular the $18.6 billion in contracts to be awarded in the next two months to companies from "coalition partner" countries. The people to meet are from the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), its new Program Management Office, the Army Corps of Engineers, the US Agency for International Development, Halliburton, Bechtel and members of Iraq's interim Governing Council. All these players are on the conference program, and delegates have been promised that they'll get a chance to corner them at regularly scheduled "networking breaks" . . . .
At ReBuilding Iraq 2, held on December 3-4, it seems finally to have dawned on the investment community that Iraq is not only an "exciting emerging market"; it's also a country on the verge of civil war. As Iraqis protest layoffs at state agencies and make increasingly vocal demands for general elections, it's becoming clear that the White House's prewar conviction that Iraqis would welcome the transformation of their country into a free-market dream state may have been just as off-target as its prediction that US soldiers would be greeted with flowers and candy . . . .
It turns out that there is a rather significant hitch in Paul Bremer's bold plan to auction off Iraq while it is still under occupation: The insurance companies aren't going for it. Until recently, the question of who would insure multinationals in Iraq has not been pressing. The major reconstruction contractors like Bechtel are covered by USAID for "unusually hazardous risks" encountered in the field. And Halliburton's pipeline work is covered under a law passed by Bush on May 22 that indemnifies the entire oil industry from "any attachment, judgment, decree, lien, execution, garnishment, or other judicial process" . . . .
Normally, multinationals protect themselves against this sort of thing by purchasing "political risk" insurance. Before he got the top job in Iraq this was Bremer's business--selling political risk, expropriation and terrorism insurance at Marsh & McLennan Companies, the largest insurance brokerage firm in the world. Yet in Iraq, Bremer has overseen the creation of a business climate so volatile that private insurers--including his old colleagues at Marsh & McLennan--are simply unwilling to take the risk. Bremer's Iraq is, by all accounts, uninsurable.
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