James Steele: America's Mystery Man in Iraq

Beijing's Ministry of Railways to become an SOE

I have been continuing to research the Chinese railroad industry, and am working on a longer piece on corruption and progress, the dichotomy of captains of industry and robber barrons.  Today,  new plans were announced to turn China's Ministry of Railways into a single State Owned Enterprise.  Read my commentary here, or on Counterpunch.

Major Shakeup in Chinese Rail: Ministry to become an SOE

As the 3,000 person National People’s Congress meets for its annual session and spectacle in Beijing, major shakeups are happening in China’s railway industry. Caixin Online reports on new plans just announced to turn the CCP’s Ministry of Railways into a single, unnamed, state owned enterprise (SOE). All 18 of the Ministry’s bureaus and its three private companies are to be considered assets of the new SOE, and its initial capital will be 1.036 trillion Yuan (167 billion dollars). What does this mean for the continent building project that is China’s railway development? The answer is impossible to tease out, but a few angles need to be examined

Looming largest is the major corruption scandal that hit the Railway Ministry in February 2011, when Minister Liu Zhijun and two top deputies were detained and investigated for “severe violations of discipline.” One of deputies, Luo Jinbao, was put on trial in late December of last year, accused of taking $7.5 million in bribes, cars, and property, as well as illegally owning a (single) shotgun. While the results of the trial have yet to be announced, he will almost certainly be found guilty, and may face execution. Such a penalty was the fate of Shen Chungfu, director of the Chongqing branch of China Mobile. Despite being the head of the world’s largest cell phone company in the world’s largest city, Shen was taken down in the same corruption purge as Luo, put on trial in November 2011, and will be killed within two years.

The trial date for Liu, who had been Minister of Railways since 2003, is unknown. However, it will certainly be high profile event, as Liu was the face of the Chinese rail boom of the 2000’s. While the U.S. was busy waging war, Beijing decided it was about time to cover Eurasia in railroad tracks, and high-speed ones to boot. Since 2008, when China completed its first high-speed line for the Olympics, the Ministry has built 5,809 miles of high-speed track, and more than ten times that amount or regular rail track. Liu also signed deals with a large number of other Eurasian countries to build international rail lines, and since 2011 the German national rail company, Deustche Bahn, has been running everyday overland rail transport between China and Western Europe. Without a doubt, Liu’s Ministry was an empire builder. Do the new plans to turn the ministry into an SOE signal a shift, a purge not only of people but of policy as well?

Finally, it is absolutely critical to question whether new reforms will help lead to better safety and good governance in Chinese rail development. Liu garnered a nickname as Little Leap Liu, as people thought his policies progressed to quickly, breeding corruption and shoddy work. There has been only one major high-speed rail crash, but charges are common that the Ministry cut corners when building so many miles of track so quickly. And as railroads have already become the dominant method of transport for domestic travel in China and are quickly gaining large parts of the market share for international trade, their proper and safe functioning is close to a global imperative. Industry depends on it, as do the 1.3 billion Chinese people and the millions of Kazakhs and Turks and Burmese and others whose countries are working with Beijing on railroad projects. It is not out of the question to call it the new backbone of the global economy. Will changing the Ministry of Railways into an SOE help put an end to shoddy workmanship and corruption? Definitely not. Will it help? Possibly. But regardless, it is a development that needs to be closely followed.

Z Magazine March 2013: Turkey, Central Asia, and the Failure of U.S. Imperialism

My most recent article has been published in the March edition of Z Magazine.  While Z has put the article behind a subscribers paywall (and I encourage everyone to subscribe), I will post the article here for Open Source reasons.  Part 2, "The New Crossroads of Empire," will be published in the April edition of Z.  Turkey, Central Asia, and the Failure of  Imperialism

Z is definitely worth reading if you don't know about it.  A monthly magazine published out of Woods Hole, Massachusetts since 1987, Z is edited by Lydia Sargent, Michael Sargent, and Michael Albert.  Coming out of Boston's radical 1970s South End Press (Chomsky, exposes on COINTELPRO and FBI domestic action, gender and identity politics, critical theory), Z now puts out a monthly magazine, publishes books, puts out videos and documentaries  and organizes community action.  It is the living lion of the American New Left, available at Barnes and Nobles, and it is excellent.  The March issue features 2012 Green Party Presidential Candidate Jill Stein, Wharton Professor Emeritus Edward S. Herman, and 12 others, including feature articles on climate change in India, U.S. domestic economics, and me on U.S. attempts at dominion over everything).  Z also features an excellent calendar of national events, brief news recaps, and reviews.  With yearly subscription rates at $3 per issue, it is definitely worth it.

Patrick Cockburn on Iraq

Patrick Cockburn, the world's most knowledgable English language journalist on Iraq, published three articles last week on the present day situation in the country.

"How Baghdad Became a City of Corruption"
"The Sunni Rise Again"
"Death and Dollars in the New Iraq"

Some excerpts:
"The corruption is unbelievable,” says Ghassan al-Atiyyah, a political scientist and activist. “You can’t get a job in the army or the government unless you pay; you can’t even get out of prison unless you pay. Maybe a judge sets you free but you must pay for the paperwork, otherwise you stay there. Even if you are free you may be captured by some officer who paid $10,000 to $50,000 for his job and needs to get the money back.” In an Iraqi version of Catch-22 everything is for sale. One former prison detainee says he had to pay his guards $100 for a single shower. Racketeering is the norm: one entrepreneur built his house on top of a buried oil pipeline, drilled into it and siphoned off quantities of fuel...

There is more to Iraqi corruption than the stealing of oil revenues by a criminalised caste of politicians, parties and officials. Critics of Nouri al-Maliki, Prime Minister since 2006, say his method of political control is to allocate contracts to supporters, wavering friends or opponents whom he wants to win over. But that is not the end of the matter. Beneficiaries of this largesse “are threatened with investigation and exposure if they step out of line”, says one Iraqi observer. Even those who have not been awarded contracts know that they are vulnerable to being targeted by anti-corruption bodies. “Maliki uses files on his enemies like J Edgar Hoover,” the observer says. The system cannot be reformed by the government because it would be striking at the very mechanism by which it rules. State institutions for combating corruption have been systematically defanged, marginalised or intimidated.

*****
Demonstrations by Sunni, in their tens of thousands, began with the arrest of the bodyguards of a Sunni politician on 20 December and are still continuing. For the first time since 2003 the Sunni – one fifth of the 33 million Iraqi population – are showing signs of unity and intelligent leadership as they try to escape political marginalisation in a country ruled since the fall of Saddam Hussein by the Shia majority in alliance with the Kurds...

The Sunni demonstrations, now entering their third month, raise a question crucial to the future of Iraq: how far will the Sunni, once dominant, accept a lower status? Members of the government fear the real agenda of the Sunni is not reform but regime change, a counter-revolution reversing the post-Saddam Hussein political settlement. “Shia leaders believe they have been elected, are legitimate and any change should come through an election,” said one senior official. “If there should be any attempt to take power from them by force, they will fight.”

*****
The Sadrists are seeking to transform themselves from a feared paramilitary organisation into a respected political movement. There are parallels here with the way Sinn Fein and the IRA in Northern Ireland demilitarised during the 1990s in order to gain power constitutionally and share it with their former enemies. Earlier this year Muqtada attended a Christian service in the Our Lady of Salvation Church in central Baghdad where some 50 worshippers had been slaughtered by al-Qa’ida in 2010. He later prayed in the Sunni Abdul-Qadir al-Gailani mosque in central Baghdad. He supports the protests in Anbar and Sunni areas on the condition they do not demand regime change. He said: “We support the demands of the people but I urge them to safeguard Iraq’s unity.” He attacked Maliki for giving the impression that the Shia want domination over Sunni, Kurds, Christians, Mandeans and Jews in Iraq. He added that “what was happening in Anbar is not a crisis, but a healthy phenomenon that reflects a popular and democratic movement...”

Kurdistan presents itself as the new economic tiger of the Middle East, flush with the prospect of exploiting its oilfields. The tall towers of two new luxury hotels rise high above the Kurdish capital Erbil, the oldest inhabited city in the world whose skyline had previously been dominated by its ancient citadel for thousands of years.

Nearby, a glittering new airport has replaced the old Iraqi military runway. In contrast to Baghdad and other Iraqi cities the cars in the streets look new. Above all, and again in sharp contrast to further south, there is a continuous supply of electricity.

“I cannot find employees to go and work in the oilfield,” complains a Kurdish manager in a Western oil company. “I cannot even find rooms in the new hotels for visiting executives because they are so full.” Convoys of shiny black vehicles conveying delegations of visiting businessmen from Germany, France, the UAE and Turkey race through the city...

In many respects the exaggerated expectations generated by the Kurdish tiger resemble those surrounding the Celtic tiger in Ireland before 2008. Both nations are small, long-oppressed and impoverished, and feel history has treated them unfairly. Having endured hard times for so long, both may be vulnerable to seeing a boom as being permanent when it is in fact part-bubble.

Excellent interview on Iran

My favorite radio host, Scott Horton, recently conducted an hour long interview with Flynt and Hilary Mann Leverett on Iran.  If you don't know the Leveretts, they are worth checking out.  A married couple, they worked in both the Clinton and Geore W. Bush administrations negotiating with Iran, quit to become academics, and have written two books on U.S.-Iranian relations, including the recently published Going to Tehran: Why the United States must come to terms with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The interview, from late February, can be found here
The Leveretts' website can be found here