Taking money away from criminal gangs
Zaid al-Jafari still drives a beat-up Volkswagen to work at the National Security Advisor’s office every day. Mid-forties, with a wife and several children, Zaid has a lot to look forward to in life – and a lot to worry about. Many officials working for the Government of Iraq have finagled their way into getting an armored sedan and a driver to take them to work as well as many other perks, but Zaid resists the temptation to take advantage of his position – either for profit or personal safety. His selfless dedication to his country and its people was an inspiration for many of his Iraqi colleagues and his American friends; his reputation for integrity brought him to the attention of a US Embassy official, Jamie Miller, who was tasked by Ambassador Ryan Crocker to approach the Iraqi government about launching a joint anti-corruption effort in fuel delivery. Zaid and Miller conceived of Project Clean Delivery, a pilot program designed to improve the delivery of kerosene to one of Baghdad’s neighborhoods in order to develop lessons-learned for further efforts targeting corrupt officials and militant criminality subverting the delivery of government services in Baghdad.
Iraq has a public welfare system that delivers products to its entire population as a basic right; Iraqis get a monthly basket of foodstuffs from the government as well as authorization to purchase rations of fuels like kerosene, commonly used for cooking and heating. Iraq sells its fuel at a cheap subsidized rate to its citizens. With a weak government, this is a recipe for disaster. Corrupt officials on the inside and criminal networks on the outside have incredible incentives to divert these supplies and re-sell them (at black market rates) for exorbitant prices.
Profits taken in Baghdad’s neighborhoods were supporting the militias that were terrorizing those very neighborhoods. Project Clean Delivery brought together US and Iraqi officials from a variety of institutions to look at every conceivable angle of this problem: the economic (are there policies we can change?), the security (can we prevent theft of kerosene at the warehouses?), the political (how will leaders who may be profiting from illicit activity respond?), the bureaucratic (what new procedures would prevent corrupt officials from re-selling fuel?) and major problems involving infrastructure (can we get more fuel into Baghdad to begin with?).Over the winter of 2007-08, the Project Clean Delivery team securely delivered kerosene at the government price to over 50,000 families in recovering post-conflict neighborhoods in downtown Baghdad. This successful delivery inspired the expansion of the project into other areas of Baghdad and brought serious attention to efforts to fight corruption in the delivery of other government services. Project Clean Delivery, as a coordinated attempt to build Iraqi inter-institutional cooperation, propose effective anti-corruption measures and encourage debate about Iraq’s social and economic policies, was a success for a variety of reasons. One key factor came from “the ground up.”
One of the primary reasons Baghdad’s citizens permitted militias to operate in their neighborhoods was due to the perceived security they could provide in an unpredictably violent city. But it had a price. Criminal militias exploited these neighborhoods, charging “protection fees” from merchants, ransoms for kidnappings, and by taking a cut of the official fees due the government for some services. As security began to improve, many of Baghdad’s citizens began to turn against these militia practices. A combination of this backlash against militias amongst Iraqis, coupled with effective targeting of militia leadership by US forces, plus the docility of militants obeying Moqtada al-Sadr’s cease-fires during this period produced some significant momentum towards convincing many Shia political leaders to widen the political space in Baghdad and pull back from some formerly extreme positions to consider compromise with rival factions. As we started to gain ground with this initiative focused on the urban Shia population of Baghdad a major breakthrough occurred with the rural Sunnis.
The Sunni suburbs find a Communist champion
Rural areas generally always feel neglected by a central government; Baghdad province’s outlying communities, a ring of small towns and villages separated by sparse badlands around the edge of metropolitan Baghdad, have always gotten the short end of the stick.
One Provincial Council member described to me Saddam’s method of dealing with those rural areas dominated by tribal leaders: “F—k ‘em.” However these rural areas and tribal communities were also serving as havens for Iraq’s insurgency and thus were critical to the long-term stability of Baghdad. Even though “foreign fighters” from neighboring countries were responsible for bringing in much of the ideology, weaponry and funding that supported the insurgency, the truth of the matter was that local Iraqis often harbored, supplied and fought alongside these insurgent groups. But just like many of the Shia militants that went too far in exploiting their neighborhoods, many of the Sunni insurgent leaders found their villages turning against them after they demanded strict observance of Islamic customs and banned smoking, alcohol and entertainment. Insurgent groups were also muscling in on many tribal leaders’ traditional power base – the distribution of jobs and money around the village. Some of these tribal sheikhs started to push back. This Sunni backlash moment in Baghdad’s hinterlands was fostered by the Awakening of Anbar province, as well as the shift in US military policy that permitted units to hire local “security guards” from among these tribal populations. Money is a strong competitor with ideology. So fairly soon we found ourselves engaging with a number of Sunni leaders from rural Baghdad that suddenly liked Americans, but they certainly didn’t like the Shia politicians running the central government. To help bridge that gap, we needed a Communist. Subhy al-Meshadani is one of a dying breed of Iraqi: a cosmopolitan, poetry-quoting, hard-drinking, Paris-loving, international worker of the world. One of two members of the Iraqi Communist Party elected to the Baghdad Provincial Council, he has the distinction of being the only ethnic Sunni Arab on that body. Primarily known for giving long-winded speeches (even by lengthy Iraqi standards) and then falling asleep during council meetings, Subhy’s career took a surprising turn when Chairman Mueen al-Khademy tapped him to take over the Rural Services Committee, the body responsible for developing provincial government policy for the delivery of services to the outlying rural counties of Baghdad province. At first it seemed like a clever ploy by Mueen – the token Sunni on the Council given the impossible task of improving services in those ungovernable tribal areas. However, Subhy proved remarkably adept at charming both some very wary Sunni tribal leaders and some extremely hesitant Shia government officials; bringing them together in a forum we called the Joint Rural Planning Committee.
Baghdad’s government is extraordinarily complex; to improve any one service you have to deal with the technocratic officials that work in that ministry and their political bosses, the local council that represents the people in that area, and the local executive official that works for the Governor of the province in that area. Getting the Joint Rural Planning Committee up and running was thus a massive exercise. The idea was to schedule regular meetings where leaders from a rural community would truck in to the IZ (International Zone, a.k.a. the Green Zone) in downtown Baghdad (often escorted by the US Army unit responsible for that area) and talk (argue; shout; complain; rant; etc) about the service needs of their communities to officials from the provincial and national governments. The first few meetings we were just glad nobody got shot. Soon the meetings became more streamlined and productive. And then, in May 2008, Chairman Mueen decided that the meetings should be held at the Provincial Council, not at the PRT’s office in the IZ. This was a crucial turning point. The Shia leader of the Shia-dominated Provincial Council was taking responsibility for a forum largely beneficial to Sunni residents of Baghdad. In a moment of candor, Chairman Mueen admitted that the move might be “politically advantageous” for him; in other words, he saw political value in showing that the Provincial Council was reaching out to some disenfranchised communities in Baghdad. A stepping stone towards a more politically-inclusive Iraq. But political progress isn’t just about bridging the sectarian divide; it’s about fundamentally changing the nature of politics.
