Last June 30, the Iraqi Al-Mada newspaper published the latest draft of the Iraqi constitution that was then being negotiated upon by Iraqi politicians.1 Its contents would have been enough to give former occupation authority chief Paul Bremer a heart attack.
The Iraqis—even those who were willing to cooperate with the Americans—wanted, at least on paper, to build a Scandinavian-type welfare system in the Arabian desert, with Iraq’s vast oil wealth to be spent upholding every Iraqi’s right to education, health care, housing, and other social services. “Social justice is the basis of building society,” the draft declared. All of Iraq’s natural resources would be owned collectively by the Iraqi people. Everyone would have the right to work and the state would be legally bound to provide employment opportunities to everyone. The state will be the Iraqi people’s collective instrument for achieving development. (See key provisions in matrix below.)
In other words, the Iraqis wanted a country different from that which the Americans had come to Iraq for. They, or at least those who were involved in drafting the constitution, wanted nothing of the kind of economic and political system that Bremer and other U.S. officials had been attempting to create in Iraq ever since the occupation began. What the occupation authorities wanted was to fulfill “the wish-list of international investors,” as The Economist magazine had described the economic policies they began imposing in the country in 2003.2
As direct occupiers, the United States had enacted laws which give foreign investors equal rights as Iraqis in the domestic market; permit the full repatriation of profits; institute the flat tax system; abolish tariffs; enforce a strict intellectual property rights regime; sell off a whole range of state-owned companies; reduce food and fuel subsidies; and privatize all kinds of social services such as health, education, water delivery, etc.
By the time the next version was leaked in late July, the progressive provisions in the draft constitution had disappeared.
