International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies - Current Issue

The development of the Iraqi petroleum sector during the period 2008−18 represents, from all related aspects, a distinct phase in the sector and in its role in the national economy. The petroleum sector comprises three different but interrelated sub-sectors through critical forward-backward linkages: upstream (including exploration, field development and production); midstream (pipeline, storage, export terminals); and downstream (crude refining, gas processing, petroleum product distribution and petrochemicals).

What is done is done. Iraq, over the past fifteen years, took huge leaps backwards. It is very important for politicians, historians, experts and judicial bodies to analyse what happened, why it happened, who is responsible and how to hold them accountable. But what is more important now is to ensure that Iraqi society recovers from the calamities of the past fifteen years and the preceding 30 years and that the country’s resources are used to serve Iraqis and provide them with good living conditions and never again be wasted and dissipated. This article focuses on the pathway of healing Iraqi society from the aftermath of decades of war, poverty and immense suffering. Restoring good education and health care is the first step on the pathway of healing and recovery and some aspects related to this will be discussed in this article. Also, neutralizing and reversing several dangerous post conflict societal problems that have arisen over the years such as traumatized war children, warinjured young men, drug abuse among youth and an alarming increase in neoplastic diseases just to name a few are a priority. Given the weakness of the government, corruption and contradictions between legislation and jurisdiction, one must consider new non-traditional approaches to solving these problems; a few focusing on health and well-being are presented in the article. The success of any future government should be measured by how much it can ameliorate the essential life-sustaining and life-enhancing services for ordinary citizens.

The article addresses the subject through four topics: the first topic offers an empirical examination of the performance of the banking sector during the period 2010–15. It also diagnoses the sector’s weaknesses and attributes such weaknesses to their inherited causes, be it legal, environmental, managerial or regulatory issues of the banking industry. The analysis paves the way to suggest required reforms and to answer the question of whether the sector, in its present state, is capable of leading or at least contributing substantially to the economic development of Iraq. The period examined is believed to fairly represent the sector’s performance in general since there is no reason to suggest that previous periods were any different. The second topic focuses on the reforms required to: enhance the sector’s contribution to GDP; and enable it to become a key player in the rebuilding of Iraq through making more loans and credits available for the private sector. Reform must be professional, profound and comprehensive and should be achieved in a manner conducive to major structural changes. Reform should address several issues such as availability of fund, equal treatment for both government-owned and privately owned banks and more effective supervision by the Central Bank of Iraq (CBI) including adherence to the Basel Accords and other international rules and standards including, but not limited to, liquidity ratios, stress tests, capital adequacy ratios, risk analysis and risk mitigation, and adequate governance rules. The third topic will shed light on: the environment under which the Iraqi banking industry operates, highlighting the limitations and obstacles that impede the sector’s growth including the judicial system and the state of the prevailing over-banking; the investment environment and whether it is attractive for the business community to invest and do business in Iraq. Finally, the CBI’s dollar window impact on the banking industry will also be examined.

Results from stakeholders mapping and analysis are used to prepare for an EU-IRQ energy centre (EUIEC). The centre consists of research, training, business, policy and dialogue components. This article focuses on setting up the research centre. EUIEC could be built on good examples taking advantage of EU-IRQ bilateral agreements and ongoing intense developments in Iraq’s energy sector involving top international companies and their large networks. The author advocates actively and mutually facilitating the process particularly in the kick-off and start-up phase (two to five) years. A multi-disciplinary experts’ network setting is recommended that fits best when integrated with the other EUIEC components and services. Recommendations are made to cluster mono-disciplinary research programmes and projects (RP) into multi-disciplinary themes and research areas (RA). The final EUIEC organization, RP and facilities integrating all its components will require further efforts from the consultants, lead stakeholders and experts building up on preliminary results from this study.

‘It has nothing to do with oil, literally nothing to do with oil’, said US Defense Secretary Rumsfeld in 2002, of the planned attack on Iraq. Politicians and conservative commentators in the United States and United Kingdom were insistent on this point, even while it felt obvious to many in their countries, and in Iraq itself, that oil objectives were central. This article will review what we now know about discussions of oil that took place during the war planning and execution, based on documents that have been released in the fifteen years since. It will examine the nature of the strategic objectives, how the US and UK governments planned to achieve them and how they decided to talk about them in public. Reflecting on this evidence will allow us to revisit the question: was oil a major reason for the war?

Iraq’s management of its energy sector and oil and gas revenues is badly organized and promotes competition over resources and corruption, rather than cooperation within a federal context. Constitutionally, many articles in the country’s Federal Constitution of 2005 are supposed to outline how the sector should be managed, but due to vague language these articles have become legally contested, resulting in conflict between the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq and the Federal Government while hindering key legislations to pass. This requires a constitutional reform. Institutionally, what is missing is a number of federal laws and entities that shape the federal state of Iraq, such as the creation of a Federal Oil and Gas Council. This institution will help regulate the petroleum sector at a federal level and balance the relationship between the producing regions and the federal state according to the constitution, and ensures a ‘wall of separation’ between the Ministry of Oil, who would have a clearly defined management and oversight role for managing the sector as a policy maker, and the day to day operations of state-owned enterprises that are regulated by the ministry. This essay highlights the petroleum related issues in the constitution with focus on regulator and regulated bodies.

Why has a developing country like Iraq shown a fragile economic development, despite the rosy picture that had been drawn about the potential of the Iraqi economy? To answer this question, an attempt has been made to look at the Iraqi development from the new institutional economic (NIE) perspective. This article contains a brief summary of a Ph.D. dissertation on the economic development of contemporary Iraq. In essence it traces the role of institutions, institutional policies and how the rapid and frequent institutional changes have driven the Iraqi economy for decades. Although applying the NIE to Iraq expands the range of choices of institutions that could be examined, the choices have been narrowed down by focusing on three central issues: agriculture, oil and wars. The picture emerging from the dissertation is one of abrupt and instantaneous institutional changes, through which institutions were repeatedly subject to reshuffle and facing changing circumstances. Consequently these changes have markedly affected the path of economic development in Iraq.

The Inside Story: Iraq’s Nuclear Program from Start to Finish, Basil Assa’ati (2018) London: E-Kutub Ltd, May, 180 pp., ISBN: 978-1-78058-362-4, e-book, $9.99

(The Iraq Economy: Crises and Development), Ali Khedher Merza (2018) Beirut and Lebanon: Arab Scientific Publishers Inc.SAL, 527 pp., ISBN: 978-6-14013-537-7, p/bk