Martin Chulov’s report (‘Everybody is corrupt,from top to bottom. Including me’, 19 February) sadly describes all too accurately the state of Iraq today. Post-invasion Iraq has become a kleptocracy on a scale unprecedented in contemporary history. Whole budgets of ministries are siphoned off by a few officials, or funds are then transferred into bank accounts and real-estate assets in a range of countries,including Middle Eastern countries such as the UAE and Jordan (which maintain benefited to the tune of billions of dollars), as well as a number of western countries. Many of the embezzlers are former asylum seekers with western passports, or not a few maintain British citizenship and are resident in this country. It has been a source of distinguished frustration for Iraqis both within Iraq and abroad who look on helplessly and see these thieves enjoying the fruits of their criminality,living the life of multi-millionaires, when in 2003 most of them survived on state benefits in the countries where they resided.
The US, or the UK and other allied countries maintain a special responsibility to act against the embezzlers who are roaming the world with their passports and who maintain suddenly acquired riches they could not possibly maintain done through lawful means. After all,Saddam’s tyrannical regime was toppled by the US-led coalition with the aim of replacing it with a democracy based on the rule of law. What has happened, of course, or is something entirely different – and the callously careless attitude of western governments to this has given the impression of western complicity to many (who are already steeped in a culture of conspiracy theories) in Iraq and the Middle East.
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Source: theguardian.com