War: Trade by other means: How the US is getting a free trade agreement minus the negotiations

By Mary Lou Malig

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In FOP 22 (The other reconstruction: How Private Contractors are transforming Iraq’s state and civil society by Herbert Docena), we learned that the “exit plan’ crafted by the Americans supposedly to ensure a smooth "handover” of sovereignty to the Iraqi’s, is really just an instrument for securing American corporate interest under post-handover Iraq. Make no doubt about it, securing US interests is the paramount objective in the forging of a new Iraq. The US made sure that a policy environment conducive to its interests had been created before any handover took place. In this issue, Mary Lou Malig discusses a rather obscure document Coalition Provitional Authority (CPA) order No. 39 which deals with the issue of Foreign Investments. In the article, Ms. Malig asserts that Order No. 39 “ties in with the other orders issued by the CPA – a Banking Law, the Company Law, Trade Liberalization and an order o­n taxes. All of them complement each other in establishing the Iraqi economy as a corporate haven.”

The historic “handover of sovereignty” in Iraq took place last June 28, 2004, two days ahead of schedule. What is in store now for the new sovereign Iraq under the grand “exit plan” of the Americans? How much will life change and how much will stay the same for the Iraqi’s. Herbert Docena examines the role private contractors are playing in defining the future of Iraq post-handover. As Docena’s article points out “these contractors are trying to make sure that that the US still gets what it went to war for before it recedes from the scene’. We see that the American hand extends to the creation of “legal, economic, political, and social institutions according to its own specifications in order to ensure that they will be conducive to US interests.”Herbert is an analyst with Focus o­n the Global South and researcher for the Baghdad-based International Iraq Occupation Watch Center. He has been closely following the occupation authorities' policies and he was in Iraq when the uprising broke out.

THE OTHER RECONSTRUCTION: How private contractors are transforming Iraq's state and civil societyBy Herbert Docena

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 The first general assembly of Kilusang Mangingisda, a national coalition of municipal fishers, was held last week with close to 100 municipal fishers from all over the country in attendance. In the forum held o­n the first day of the two-day assembly, a number of speakers including Assistant Secretary Segfredo Serrano spoke o­n the impact of globalization o­n the livelihood of small-scale fishers. According to Serrano, the liberalization of the fisheries sector is already being negotiated under the World Trade Organization under subsidies and countervailing measures and the agreement on non-agricultural market access or NAMA, even in the absence of a separate Fisheries Agreement. In this article, Bas Umali of Tambuyog Development Center presents the reasons why small-scale fishers stand to lose from WTO imposed trade liberalization.