N E P in Iraq
By DESMOND STEWART THE first reforms of the Iraqi Revolution have been designed to meet the more emotional criticisms of the 'destroyed regime.' Solidarity with the United Arab Republic need not wait for the decision between total union (as wanted by the Baathists) and a federation (as wanted by everyone else). The abolition, on the second day of the Revolution, of tribal law, as a separate legal system, was one blow against the 'feudalism' of the large landowners; the new land-reform law is another. The reforms which will be most decisive, in the short and long term alike, will be economic. At the moment, there is a mood of hangover in Baghdad : either the State will initiate popular and beneficial measures, which will revive the now stagnant economy, or there will be fumbling, and continued stagnation, with dangers to the move- ment of July 14.
Muhammad Haddid, the Minister of Finance and acting Minister of Development, is therefore a key figure in the new government. He has spent a lifetime in revolutionary politics, though in any less dictatorial system than the old Iraq his moderate views would not have impelled him in- to anything more rebellious than a Reform Club. He has, in the past, collaborated with Communists, sometimes with Rightists; in the present govern- ment he is again one of a mixed team. He is a tall, knobby man with a bashful, ironic smile. His gentleness does not hide indignation at the cor- ruption of the old regime, nor does his bashfulness conceal a conviction that he knows how to put things right. His criticisms of Nuri's regime are the more telling for being told without rhetoric or that display of emotion which makes the listener suspicious. As his reforms will correct old abuses, I shall list the abuses, in the order in which he described them to me.
1. The Old Regime was grossly extravagant. Contracts were hardly checked, and were awarded on a basis of bribes. (Another Minister, Sadiq Shenshel, told me that to him the greatest dis- covery of the Revolution was that the local agents of imperialism were far worse than the imperial- ists: 'far more grasping, far more dishonest. Indeed, we have found that some English com- panies were disgusted at how contracts were awarded only to those who spent lavishly on bribes for our corrupt Ministers.') 2. The Development Board invested immense sums on long-term schemes, such as dams, bridges and roads, which gave no immediate benefit to the. impoverished fellahin.
3. These long-term projects, while of ultimate value, were less effective than they should have been, as they were not linked to any plan for industrialisation. The dams, for example, were neither equipped to generate electric power nor even constructed so that the equipping could be done at a future date. Mr. Haddid thinks this reflects a hostility to industrialisation on the part of foreigners, and a preference by the Oil Com- pany that power in Iraq should be generated from its oil. 'We wish to sell our oil, if we can get the same amount of power from water. We can use every spare fits in the battle against poverty.'
4. The inflation consequent on these large schemes was not tackled in an intelligent way. The surplus money was mopped up on the most wanton importation of luxuries. (I remember when I visited Baghdad a few months before the Revolution, this was what most depressed me: the old, egalitarian, shabby Baghdad had sud- denly split into a city of classes, with the 4bject poor in their mud-and-wattle houses, while the new rich drove to new shopping centres where every luxury from Europe could be bought. There was a flower shop near Bab Sherji with tulips and gladioli flown in daily from Holland, behind win- dows that seemed to be raining, as in Mayfair or Paris.) The T first intention of the new Government is to watch every fits; not to argue, we are rich, we can afford to be extravagant; but to state, we are temporarily in receipt of cash, which we must invest with scrupulous rigour, for the day when this oil revenue may diminish or cease. Luxuries will be progressively restricted, eventually banned; the only whisky imported, for example, will be for the tourist trade. 'Are you teetotal yourself?' 1 asked the Minister, thinking of a Baghdad obliged to drink its own nuistaki araq, which tastes of metal polish. 'No, not at all.' I asked why no Iraq government had ever allowed the importation of cheap Lebanese wine : the cheapest French wine in a Baghdad restaurant costing a minimum of two pounds a bottle. To this Mr. Haddid replied that those who liked wine in Baghdad preferred French vintages : which answer did not satisfy me, as the so-called vintages, jolted across 4,000 miles of sea and desert, are mostly scrap Algerian, at least in taste, while the democratic Musar or Ksara, with a shorter journey behind them, remain palatable, and above all, cheap.
The second plan of the Government is to en- courage industry. The long-term development projects will be completed, but instead of starting new ones, the Government will concentrate on factories which, Mr. Haddid claims, can be erected complete in a year or two, and can then start employing labour and producing goods. There is no plan to socialise industry. 'We should prefer it all to be financed by private savings, but these are inadequate, and therefore the Government will invest in industry. The sheikhs, whose surplus land is to be taken from them, in return for monetary compensation, will be encouraged to invest in industry.' In other words, there will be a strict money control : the sight of illiterates in agal and keftia driving Cadillacs in Lebanese resorts will, perhaps, be less common.
A third key to Iraq's economic future is a revision of the system of taxation. In the old days the poor were heavily burdened, through indirect taxation on the necessities of life; the rich, particularly the landowners, escaping the collector more or less scot-free. In Nuri's Iraq there was not even a land tax of the fictitious kind collected in Faroukian Egypt.
Such economic planning as Mr. Haddid en- visages is not particularly original : one has heard similar aspirations from other newly independent countries. But the difference in Iraq is that no miracles are needed to make this country of six million people prosperous, except peace and cohesion. Almost unlimited land (hence the generous maximum holding permitted by the land-reform law), five copious rivers, oil which will bring in a cash revenue for at least twenty years, and will thereafter be useful for Iraq's own needs, sulphur deposits which, when developed, may bring in as much revenue a year as the present oil, a mixed population whose chromosomes link them with some of the most talented people of the Ancient World, compose advantages rarely equalled. The Iraqi temperament, unfortunately, is 'not the most cohesive in the world : the twentieth century is not the period most predict- able for peace. Otherwise the omens are excellent.
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