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

By Mary Lou Malig

In this issue:

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.”

Mary Lou Malig works as regional trade liaison officer for Focus o­n the Global South.