Because of the war long time and the heavy direct and indirect expenses accompanied by the decrease in oil barrel price from 40 to 17 dollars and the decrease in the dollar value itself, all Iraqi ambitious developing plans came to a halt and spending on the civil sector in Iraq came to the minimum and the war economy policy dominated all the life activities in Iraq.  The choking Iraqi economic crisis was very clear in the beginning of 1986 at the time parts of the Iraqi territories were already occupied by Iran. By the end of the war in 1988, the Iraq’s total foreign debt used on covering both the military and civil expenses totaled 120 billion dollars. Because oil is the main source of income in Iraq, Iraq found itself forced to develop and rebuild the oil production and export facilities that mostly have been bombarded and destroyed by the Iranians during the war. Close to the Iran-Iraq long borders and in the southern Iraq borders were most of the vital industrial facilities and agricultural establishments destroyed. The decrease in oil exports was so huge. The Iraq 3.4 MMBPD production was shut down for several months and later on little quantities were exported through turkey and Syria and stopped in 1982. The oil exports from the southern Iraqi ports stopped in September 1980 till running the pipeline running through KSA in 1985. Because of this war-forced decrease in oil exports, Iraq lost l06 billion dollars while the other oil neighbors Kuwait, KSA  and UAE got a so more money as their exports increased by compensating for the Iraq export OPEC share along the 8 years of the war. After the war all of these neighbors, considered the money they donated to Iraq as a support during the war as loans that should be, consequently, paid back.

The Iraqi leadership tried hard to rehabilitate the exhausted Iraq post-war-economy but the results were strategically minor because of the big obligations at the time of low income and the huge due debts with their interests. In 1990 the official Iraqi debts totaled, including the interests, 65 billion of dollars in addition to 10 and 12 billions for Kuwait and KSA. The major part of the last 22 billions, mostly as services not in cash, were given to Iraq as assistance and support for Iraq against the common Arab’s enemy, Iran, but later on after the war the two countries particularly Kuwait considered all this money as loans with very soon due date.

Iraq proved for the UN by thousands of official documents that Iran was the beginner of the war and called the UN to investigate all the suspended issues between the two countries and to affirm both sides’ responsibilities. The US and its allies in the UN stressed very hard not to solve those minor remaining issues between the two countries to ruin Iraq's future.

The agony here is that USA and Israel tried hard to embroil Iraq in the war and to lengthen its period with the aid of some Arab countries like Kuwait, KSA and UAE which earned so much money because of the increase in the oil prices and the suspension and the shut down of Iraq’s oil exports. Turkey built and established so many industries that pumped all of its low quality products in the Iraqi markets. The Jordanian economy that was on the brink of a catastrophe got resuscitated because of the open activities to the Iraqi economy. Syria supported Iran by missiles and stopped the Iraqi oil export pipeline that passes through Syria. Egypt got rid of all of its Russian weapons selling them to Iraq in cash to purchase the American weapons after the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel signed by Sadat. The Russian abstained supplying weapons to Iraq at the beginning of the war claiming to stay neutral but later on after the Iran contra scandal they made up their minds. Iraq was, staying isolated suffering the scourge of war, bleeding and all of its economical and human resources were being destroyed and the dream of building its modern country vanished.

2.         The Iraqi economic losses because of the Kuwait oil policy  

While Iraq was busy sacrificing souls and blood in the fight against Iran defending all the Arab territories including Kuwait's. Kuwait took the chance to carry out a scheme of programmed and gradual occupation of the Iraqi territories. Kuwait was building military bases, oil facilities and farms on the Iraqi land. Iraq's foreign affairs ministry addressed this in an official memo to the Arab League on 15/7/1990 stating that Iraq has a complete documented record for all of these violations committed by the Kuwaiti government. All the documents were presented to the Arab League to solve this problem through the Arab League practices and the Arab fraternity relations.

After the liberation of Al-Faw peninsula and during the Arab summit in 1988, Iraq notified the Kuwaiti government about the Iraq intention to solve all of those bilateral problems through the even direct dialogues but there was no response from the Kuwaiti side who continued to raise up faked complications and to build petroleum military and police installations on the Iraqi territories.

The Kuwaiti and UAE governments pursued a satanic procedure to flood up the international oil market by producing more oil then their OPEC predetermined shares with historically unprecedented rationalizing. The oil market flooding up process led to a horrible decrease in the oil prices. The oil prices decreased from 24 dollars / barrel to lower than the minimum OPEC agreed-on price - 18 dollar to 11-13 dollar/ barrel. Every 1 dollar reduction in the oil barrel price was causing Iraq lose 1 billion dollars/year. Because of the Kuwait and UAE policy the oil barrel price deteriorated, In 1990, from the common price 28$ to 18$ and the total Iraq losses totaled 14 billion dollars  per year while Iraq was defending it's and all the Arab’s territories and security for 8 years.

In addition to the aforementioned oil market flooding up policy, Kuwait, since 1980, started founding petroleum installations on the southern part of Al-Rumaila oil field and started stealing the oil in the Neutral Zone which is an extension for the southern Al-Rumaila oil field.  Kuwait established Alretka 33- oil-well field to bleed up the Iraqi oil reservoir. on the 17th September, 2000 the former Iraqi oil minister Amer Al-Obaidi accused Kuwait of steeling 300,000 barrels /day stating "The Iraqi oil steeling is a fact that the Kuwait can not deny and this takes place at the southern Al-Rumaila field".

The Kuwaiti oil market flooding up policy which included the stolen Iraqi oil represented doubled action harm to Iraq by weakening its economy through reducing its export profits, at the time Iraq is in bad need of every cent to restore its demolished capabilities, and by stripping its natural resources.

The Iraqi oil stolen by Kuwait between 1980-1990, which is against all the Arab fraternity principles and values, totaled 24 billion dollars. The Iraqi government proved in official documents presented to the Arab League all the Kuwaiti violations against Iraq and called for the refund for all the oil stolen of its reserves and territories and appealed Kuwait to be responsible for all the misbehavior and violations against Iraq. Iraq did its best to resolve these suspended issues with Kuwait through the Arab League but Kuwait continued its policy without any response.

Iraq concluded that Kuwait’s policy was just a military aggression; Kuwait was continuing extorting the Iraqi territories and oil resources, which is considered a military aggression, while Iraq was trying to impair its economy and was facing big Zionist threats. Iraq was the only Arab power that really confronting Israel. Invading Kuwait was the only way that Iraq could follow after trying all the possible peaceful initiatives and solutions.

The USA administration concentrated all the international public opinion against Iraq enforcing it to withdraw its troops from Kuwait and to destroy Iraq’s military power, infrastructure and Iraq’s vital structural civil and military industries for the benefit of the Zionism whose main goal is to kick Iraq from the strategic Arab core location and to disable Iraq’s military effective acting in the region.

The disaster on this issue was that many of the Arab countries participated in and incited the others to join the operations called "The Desert storm" to retaliate for old issues with Iraq for the sake of Zionist entity service.

3.         The Iraqi losses due to the 1991 American aggression and during the sanctions and blockade years

The whole world got mad against Iraq and its political regime after invading Kuwait as, in this way, Iraq could get hold of 20% of the world oil reserves.

The Gulf war against Iraq was not to defend or liberate Kuwait but to defend the economic and strategic interests of the international imperialism in the region. The "Desert Storm" war in 1991 resulted in a terrible devastation in Iraq. Most of the civil facilities were hit, bombarded or destroyed. The damaged civil facilities and utilities included the main bridges, the transportation junctions, oil refineries, the communication centers, schools, institutes, universities, hospitals; potables water plants, irrigation plants, mosques, churches, government buildings, museums, food depots and mills in   additions to the human casualties. According to the Iraqi government estimations, the losses due to this war totaled 230 billion dollars. The "Arab Funds Corporation" estimated the resulting losses to be 190 billion dollars.

Moreover, The US administrations abused the U.N to execute its oppressive policy against Iraq and issued a resolution to block all the Iraqi deposited funds in all the banking associations around the world. As a result to this, the Iraqi accounts have been frozen in 56 countries as the following,

i)                    3 billion dollars in the USA alone managed by the Federal Bank in New York.

ii)                  About 6.1 billion dollars in the UK in addition to 350 billion dollars in Al-Rafidain Bank, London branch.

iii)                More than 1.0 billion dollars run by the Swiss National Bank.

iv)                More than 1.5 billion dollars in French banks.

v)                  700 million dollars in Japanese banks.

vi)                About 2.5 billion dollars in EU banks supervised by the EU countries central banks.

vii)              500 million dollars in Jordan under the supervision of the "Iraqi Funds Managing Corporation" that belongs to the Jordanian Central Bank  and assigned only for this job.

viii)            More than 500 million dollars in Lebanese banks.

ix)        Many other accounts in different European, Asian and African counties.

x)         Al-Rafidain branches accounts in Oman, Cairo, Beirut and Bahrain.

xi)        The Iraqi commercial commissions outside Iraq and the Iraqi airlines.

xii)       The Iraqi shares in companies with other Arab counties.

Very big burdens and obligations have been imposed on Iraq. Iraq was supposed just to fulfill his obligations without any right for discussions, objections, modifications or even explanations. The legitimacy of these obligations and how they are estimated were not determined according to any known rules or practices. Thus Iraq was forced to pay Kuwait, and some other countries, compensations for the Iraqi troops 7 months invasion. Kuwait asked for a compensation of 350 billion dollars. Saudi Arabia asked for 28 billion dollars because of the damage the Iraqi forces caused to its environment as result of setting its oil wells in fire during the Iraqi army withdrawal and also for the rehabilitation of the coasts, deserts and fisheries. In addition Egypt, Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Syria have asked also for compensations. The compensations committee that the UN set after the Gulf war imposed compensations of 48.6 billion dollars of which only 8.4 billion dollars were paid.  The assessment of the Kuwait compensations was very exaggerated because, later on after Kuwait rebuilding and rehabilitating, the Kuwaiti government official ministry of treasury and Kuwait National Bank reports stated that the total Kuwaiti economy losses due to the invasion and the Desert Storm war were 99 billion dollars of which 30 billion dollars are rebuilding costs, 23 billion dollars are non exported oil value and the rest was Kuwait’s contribution in financing the desert storm war. It is very clear that the overestimation of Kuwait compensations and losses by over than 25 billion dollars was just to keep Iraq in debts for many generations. By abusing the international legitimacy, The US administration imposed oppressive and unlawful economical sanctions, embargo and financial blockade against Iraq. The sanctions and the blockade continued for about 13 years and severely affected all the Iraqi people. Due to this blockade Iraq lost about 150 billion dollars as oil export losses. Iraq could manage itself using all of its strengths and human efforts in a very big mission to restore what the war has damaged. The Iraqi capabilities have generally been weakened and undermined at the time of its so heavy after-war enforced obligations, imposed by the UN, and the negative financial blockade burdens such as the big budget deficit and the due debts. With the continuation of the oppressive economic sanctions and blockade, Iraq was exhausted and its people day life economic and social difficulties got highly intensified. All the infrastructure, the public utilities, health and education foundations collapsed.  Iraq could not any more conceive any plan for development even on the minimum level and life become so miserable leading to the unknown.

It is very important to mention here again that the Kuwaiti government continued to steel the Iraqi oil though the wells that have been drilled in the Neutral Zone to the south of the southern Al-Rumaila oil field. Naji Al-Hadithi, the former Iraqi foreign affairs minister assured that Kuwait, after the UN borders demarcation in 1993, offered long term concessions for American and British companies to invest on  oil exploration and production in Southern Al-Rumaila and Al-Zubair where the first extends to Al-Retka and the second ends at Safwan region on the borders between the two countries. The Iraqi minister added that after the year 1995 the international companies, working for Kuwait, intensified their activities using huge drilling rigs and reclamation and landscaping equipment to work directly in the two regions. Later the Iraqi oil ministry assured, depending on technical reports and surveys, that the Kuwaiti government has stolen millions of oil barrels along the blockade period from the wells drilled in the two aforementioned regions which illegally were granted to Kuwait according to the UN oppressive borders demarcation.

On the other hand the behavior of Iran against Iraq was also so weird. To protect the Iraqi civil and military aircraft from being hit or bombarded by the Americans and their allies, Iraq sent 11 civil Boeings, Falcon, Jet star and 115 fighter and bombing fighter planes, and 15 Ilyushin airfreight planes to the Iranian airports to be hosted during the war according to the agreement set between the Iraqi transport minister Mohammed Hamza Al-Zubaidi and the Iranian former president Rafsanjani in the presence of the Iranian transport minister. The Iraqi fighter planes included some of the best military planes like the Meg, Sukhoi, and Mirage. Later after the war Iran refused to give these planes back to Iraq claiming that Iraq has so many due obligations for Iran due to last war between the two countries. The fighter plane were annexed to the Iranian air forces and the 5 civil Boeings aircrafts, 5 Falcon, one Jet star and 15 Ilyushin airfreight planes were painted in the Iranian air ways colors and registered as part of the Iranian airways fleet. This action represents a big scandal and unlawful way to settle any conflicts or obligations.

Facts and opinions about the figures stated about the Iraqi funds and obligations

It is possible to authenticate the information about Iraq's funds and debts for the following reasons:

1-                  All the aforementioned data are officially documented. Working for government departments involved in economic affairs, I was able to   read such documents as this was part of my job as an economy specialist and as a part of a supervision and executive follow up team on the issue of the Iraqi obligations – Availables and Requirements - to the other countries and particularly the Gulf’s. There was a supreme economical committee established in 1989, the economical committee, following the resolved "economical operations chamber" directed by Taha Yassin Ramadan. The economical committee was related to the presidency department and supervised by Sa’adoun Hammadi then Hikmet Mizban Ibhraim , the minister of treasury,  and included  the ministers of Commerce, oil, Planning - later became  the planning corporation - the Iraqi Central Bank governor and some associated specialist managers. In addition to its responsibility as an economical operation chamber for the Iraqi economy program, which was an eccentric case in planning and execution according to the centralization policy, this committee was responsible for preparing the lists and the   data base for the Iraqi obligations – Availables and Requirements - and its periodic traffic according to the branch data made by the government departments associated with Iraq obligations to the other countries. The technical part of this committee was in charge of the preparation and the follow up of the obligations traffic report. This report and its data were systematically proceeded to the economy section in the presidency department for evaluating, assessing and commenting the processing and the recommendations that the committee presents to find their best possible solutions.

We are very sure that all the data and the information exist in the following places:

A.    The economical section in the presidency department inside the republic palace buildings compound in Karadat Mariam.

B.     The ministers council located inside the former central statistics foundation building which is annexed to the ministry of planning buildings.

C.     The economical committee which occupies a building annexed to the National Iraqi Council in Al-Salehia. This place was recording all the details about the creditors and debtors, the kinds of assets and their values and all the funds sums in details in addition to the due dates and the details of the agreements and the financial protocols and the names of the banks and the finical institutions.

In the first hours of Baghdad occupation, the coalition occupation troops broke into these places and later on they let Ahmed Al-Chalbi bands get all the documents, files and the floppy disks that exist in these buildings. Later, all the people and employees involved with these economy matters were arrested according to lists prepared by Al-Chalabi band. The arrested employees included Mohammed Mehdi Saleh AL-Rawi, minister of commerce, Esam Huwaish, Central Bank governor and the economy consultant Khalid Al-Mamouri.

2-      There have been so many official appeals from Iraq in official meetings with the UN to discuss the possibility to release the blocked Iraqi assets. There have been also trials with the Arab League to support these requests which were documented and including all the details of those frozen assets and funds.

3-      The Iraq debt according to statuary official documents in 1990, i.e. before Kuwait invasion, was 65 billion dollars including the loans’ interests.  This didn’t include the disputed 10 and 12 billion dollars for Kuwait and KSA who insist that the 22 billion dollars were real loans while this sum consists of several components one of them is exporting quantities of oil on the behalf of Iraq during Iraq - Iran war. Kuwait & KSA were exporting, as a beginning, about 50,000 barrel/day from the Neutral Zone which is currently called also Al-Khafji for a short period of time as a result of the war break up and the stop of oil exports through the Iraqi southern harbors Al-Bakr and Khor Al-Amia which were located in the range of the Iranian fire and this was not only because of Iraq financial needs but also for the continuing of oil flow in the international markets. The Kuwaiti and Saudi regimes were always declaring, on all of there official meeting with the Iraqi officials, that the biggest part of the exported oil funds is an assistance and support for Iraq in its war against Iran. The real part of the debts as loans is the Saudi and Kuwait, on the behalf of Iraq, fulfilling of the Iraq’s financial obligations to the others or the guaranteeing Iraq with others or enabling the Kuwaiti and Saudi private sectors to freely deal with the    Iraqi government. The rest of the real debt is supplying Iraq with civil equipment that help in the military sector such as carriers, vehicles, loaders and all of them were recorded as donations and support for Iraqi civil sector. The civil support also included facilitations in the Kuwaiti and Saudi harbors like exempting from customs and loading and    unloading fares, fueling the Iraqi tankers, sheltering the Iraqi navy pieces, maintenance work for the Iraqi pipeline passing through Saudi Arabia and other kinds of help during the Iraqi Iranian war.

The situation understanding was nearly like this in 1990 before the first Gulf war and the American aggression against Iraq which is different from the estimation of the UN and the international financial bodies in 1991 where the Iraqi debts were estimated to be 86 billion dollars according to the exaggerating data and information supplied by the countries to which Iraq is claimed to have obligations especially after Kuwait and KSA had considered all of their donations to Iraq as loans with interests counted since being provided to Iraq.    

In Olympia, on the 19th October 2003, during a seminar for encouraging investments in Iraq, Richard Segal, the manager of the British "Exotex Limited" research center uncovered statistics for Iraqi loans from KSA and Kuwait presented to the UN. The statistics showed that the Iraqi debts for KSA and Kuwait totals 42.1 billion dollars, 23.5 in the eighties during in the Iraq Iran war until 1991 - i.e. before Iraq invaded Kuwait. The rest was presented in other statistics presented later and they were 4.9 billion dollars in 1992, 4.8 billion dollars in 1993, 4.6 billion dollars in 1994, 2.9 billion dollars in 1995 and 1.3 billion dollars in 1996 and later years. It is very clear from Segal's report that KSA and Kuwait presented theses figures just to enlarge the Iraqi debts as these loans took place after the withdrawal of the Iraqi troops from Kuwait when there were no political or commercial relations between Iraq and the 2 countries due to the invasion of Kuwait and the war. On the other hand the economical blockade did not allow Iraq make any economical deal with any country around the world. There may be a question that the above figures are interests for the due debts but simple calculations can prove that these figures are fabricated imaginary figures and absolutely very far from any reasonable loans' interests. The figures should have been compared to the Iraq official obligations and debts data which the American destroyed at the beginning of Baghdad occupation by helping some mobs who burnt the government departments and the official documents. More than once Iraq presented the UN documents with the real Iraqi debts but the organization response to Iraq was that such issues would not be considered before Iraq fulfils all of the obligations stated in the Security Council resolution. At the same time the international organization considered the statistics, appeals and the claims against Iraq that the other countries presented. From this it's proved that during the political and the economical Iraq blockade and on cornering Iraq to fulfill the UN resolutions, so many international parties abused the situation to authenticate faked obligations and rights against Iraq with the complete help of the UN as a result of the US extorting policy that dominated the un and its resolutions against Iraq. The exaggeration and the overestimation of the Iraq debts value is just a kind of economical and political extortion coming along with the status of aggression and hostilities against Iraq and its people.

Iraq set several plans to face the problem of debts and the Iraqi economy rehabilitation. I participated in an official study that assured Iraq's capability of paying back all of its foreign debts and the unnecessary for any more foreign loans to rehabilitate the Iraq economy according to the following indications and processes:

1.           Following a firm military spending shrinking policy especially military industrial spending.             

2.           Diverting a big part of military industrial projects to civil products and preparing economy balance for these projects to work on profit - loss principle.

3.           Diverting many of the government installations from central to self financing to work as self independent units to finance its activities according to the profit - loss principle also.

4.           Increasing the oil production which might have reached 7 million barrel /day if the joint venture investing Italian, Russian or Chinese agreements have been approved. With the help of some foreign expertise and by pumping some more national investments in the oil sector, Iraq with only the national capabilities the oil production could have reached 5.5 million barrel /day.

5.           Encouraging foreign and Arab investments according to special mechanisms and rules that include a lot of exemptions, facilitations and stimulants.

6.           Resolving the financial ties between the government and the public foundations which were depending on the government support to finance some of their activities. In this way these foundations can cover their expenses by finding means of investing the primary government supporting funds to cover their expenses. This plan was implemented really when the national Ba’ath Party leadership decided to be independent and cover its expenses through some investments.

7.           Encouraging investments in the private sector and stimulating it to establish and run economical and social projects without any ceiling for the capital funds.

8.           Selling a big portion of the government projects and foundations according to a program set to expand the general sector privatizing without any social or economical impact or deviation from the state general policy of serving the society and modernizing it socially and economically.

9.           Seeking the capabilities and the possibilities of Iraqi international investments to get additional income sources.  This investment may be with the co-operation of other countries or associations.

10.       Investing the Iraqi technical the human resources in the international market to get additional revenues for both the society and the individuals.

By implementing the above processes and others it was estimated that Iraq could have paid back all of its debts in 5-7 years while executing the Iraqi economy rehabilitation plan but the problem that prevented the implementation of these plans was the behavior of the Gulf countries, especially the government of Kuwait and UAE, which flooded up the oil market with more than the OPEC predetermined shares and with the abetting of KSA, Qatar and other Gulf countries which ignored the issue to get use of this situation producing and exporting oil more than the OPEC shares that ended with the collapse of the oil prices with a tremendous impact on the Iraqi economy. Kuwait was also continuing the southern Al-Rumaila oil field stealing presenting a threat to the political and economical Iraqi future triggering Gulf war.

Before talking about the Iraqi losses, casualties and the programmed stealing and looting operations of its resources due to the Anglo - American aggression and occupation, we should talk about some important facts about the nature of the Iraqi economy operations during the blockade and before the braking up of this aggressive war.

1.           Because of the sharp decrease in the oil prices beginning from 1980 with its big impact on the Iraqi economy and the concurrent decrease in the US dollar value, the Iraqi leadership, stressed by the Iranian occupation of the Iraqi Al-Faw peninsula, followed some wise and important steps. The most important was opening a special account called "Exceptional Batch" to be a strategic reserve in case of top emergencies. The account started with 3 billion dollars transferred from the Central Bank oil revenues, and with the time the process continued calling this as the Exceptional Account going sometimes to 10 billion dollars. The transferred money to this account was done according to official documents and recorded as a debt to the presidency budget which was formed and prepared in top confidentiality with the direct supervision of the leadership and the Central Bank Governor. In some cases the special account was very helpful but some economy specialists don’t support such kind of processes because financing this special reserve didn’t appear in the lists of the national accounts due to state security issues. The emergency account financing priority has a big effect on the economical planning and the economy performance assessment as a whole. In addition, some government sectors were squandering like the military industry association when it was supervised by Hussein Kamel. The special account continued until 1988 when it was divided into 2 sections, the first one was about 2 - 3 billion dollars in gold and banknotes in the possession and under the direct  supervision of the presidency as a strategic reserve in case of only top special emergencies while the other section was in the Central  Bank and any transaction was done with also the presidency approval for the emergency needs of the national vital sectors like the defense, military industry or its related industries or any unconventional issues necessary for the continuing operation of the government and the Iraqi people in the troubled war economy which was away from the national general budget. The above system continued in the following years to keep the country running its work adapting itself to the limited resources specified by the general official budget and to enable the leadership respond to the emergency needs using its special accounts and strategic reserves and that’s the reality about the money and gold found in the presidency headquarters and the special government complexes and taken by the occupation troops on entering Baghdad. There were so many dirty rumors and false cheap claims propagated by the occupation and its agents that this money was belonging to the president and his family and these lies were just to cover the criminal section of the invaders and their co-working thieves in Iraq.

2.           Iraq became unable to get use of its oil or other resources income because of the blockade dictated by the USA and its allies. The oil export began only in 1996 according to the oil - for - food agreement which was restricting the exported quantity to a certain figure. In the beginning Iraq was allowed to export oil in the range of 2 billion dollars every 6 months and later on it became 5.26 billions every 6 months but in December 1999 the UN cancelled this upper limit. Two thirds of the export revenues were allocated to cover the humanitarian needs of the Iraq people such as food and medicine and the last third was for covering the Kuwait war compensations and the expenses of the UN inspectors commissions in Iraq with its offices and activities including he weapons search commission and all the oil for food  program committees’ expenses and any UN committee or association involved in any Iraqi issue according to the UN resolution No 986. It is very ironic to mention the UN was covering the expenses of any thing that passed by the name of Iraq even the expense of a printed paper from the Iraqi oil revenues.  Sometimes international delegates heading to different parts of the world in non-Iraqi issues missions were covering their expenses from the Iraqi oil revenues if they mentioned Iraq or any of its problems in their talks. Iraq was monitoring all of this nonsense and presented so many objection memos against the corruption that dominated the implementation of the UN programs in spending, contracting, compensating and UN expenses estimating. The UN ignored the Iraqi memos and there were only vague promises and procrastination and the corruption continued for about 7 years of the program life.

Recently the scandal emerged when Kufi Anan decided to interrogate the officials of the program after the confirmation of embezzlement signs of the program funds in a report done by the UN accounting association. Later on it will be uncovered that the UN and other countries are involved in the corruption and robbery operations from the Iraqi people resources. They are now trying to mix papers and propagate that the Iraqi former government is also involved in the corruption and the dirty fishy implementation of the program processes and to arrange for theses accusations they destroyed the country and destroyed all of its official documents and government buildings. Such allegations and claims are unrealistic and illogic because Iraq was the only victim of the blockade and the oil with its revenues are the Iraq's. What is important for US in this issue is the committee 661 which was responsible for approving the import contracts according to the oil-for-food program. The committee 661 was complicating the processes of approval and was rejecting so many contracts for a common reason which is "double usage", i.e. the imported goods are for both military and civil usage. This repeated rejection banned the Iraqi community and government so many essential needs and consequently the Iraqi account balance in the program accumulated and become so huge due to the steady export with unsteady and intermittent spending and Iraq couldn’t get use of these accumulated funds. Iraq was forced to follow another way to get funds by exporting oil, away from the oil - for - food program, through the borders. ON average Iraq was exporting 100- 200,000 crude oil barrels / day in addition to several petroleum products like the liquefied petroleum gas. In December 2000, the Iraqi government imposed 25 - 30 cents/barrel as a tax on the exported oil through the oil-for-food program to get more funds for sufficing the Iraqi community essential needs which were very hard to get through the committee 661 of the oil-for-food program and to build the previously mentioned special emergency strategic reserves with its two sections the presidency section and the Control Bank section.

3.           Confronting the American war threats, the Iraqi leadership took some precautions and prepared for confronting a war that would last for at least one year. Under the supervision of the central bank Iraq deposited 3.5 billion dollars in several Arab and foreign banks in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Byelorussia for the emergency needs during the war. The funds were the same as the strategic presidency and Iraqi Central Bank reserve accounts. These 3.5 billion dollars were deposited in a secret way to protect them from being frozen, blocked or confiscated by the enemy. It is worth mentioning that all of these countries notified the US administration to uncover these Iraqi accounts on preparing for the aggression.

Juan Carlos Zarate, the US assistant secretary of treasury "for monitoring terrorism financing and for the monetary crimes " admitted that those countries      co-operated with the US administration and started uncovering the Iraqi assets on the war break up night.  The Iraqi government stored huge amounts of food, civil goods and petroleum products to suffice the country needs during the war so that the government will not be forced to import any thing during the first six months of the war according to the mobilization planning previously followed during Iran - Iraq war.

4. The Iraqi losses due to the last aggressive war and the current Anglo –  American occupation

The Anglo-American war against Iraq overthrew its political and constitutional regime and let to its occupation. During the war thousands of tones of bombs and explosives have been dropped on Iraq to destroy its infrastructure and all of its military and civil installations belonging to both the government and the Iraqi community. All the building and the facilities have been bombarded or blown up to turn them out of order or completely out of service. Looting, Sabotage and steeling operations in Baghdad were taking place on the eye of the occupation forces with their help, abetting and protection to make Iraq go several years back because of the destruction and the ruin which dominated every corner of Iraq. The Iraqi society is now bitterly suffering and beginning from zero and is hardly in need of every aid.

In the following paragraphs, we shall state the occupation negative impacts on the Iraqi economy in the figures and the facts which the Iraqi experts got according to primary evaluations and calculations done in Iraq.

1.      Direct losses: the Iraqi losses due to the aggressive war and the occupation totals, in addition to the human casualties, 450 billion dollars and this figure covers all the expenses of building the Iraqi army, which was resolved by an American illegal and unlawful decision, for arming, training, equipment, military camps, air bases, military factories, maintenance centers and all other appliances and facilities. All what    results from the accumulative spending along the Iraqi army history has been destroyed by the occupation troops in the last short period.  A part of the army equipment has been disassembled, split and sold as scrap to the neighbor countries in very low prices and all the revenues went directly to the occupation troops, their co-operators and the wars    different - nationalities dealers who got hold of the weapons with the help of the occupation. The arms contained equipment and military vehicles, light and heavy weapons, airports' equipment, military factories machinery and all of what Iraq was purchasing along the last years. It is very interesting to mention that the retired colonel Jay Gardener whom the occupation employed as the Coalition Provisional Authority director in Iraq was weapons and military equipment dealer. The Iraqi specialists said that if those wasted weapons were sold the normal way, their value might have reached 100 billion dollars.

The Iraq's infrastructure facilities which have been destroyed included power transmission lines, wire and wireless communication systems, potable water and sewage treating plants, medical and education centers, irrigation plants, high ways, bridges, buildings, factories, government buildings, public facilities, ware houses, university labs and scientific research centers, the basic services in industry and agriculture in addition to destroying huge quantities of equipment and appliances necessary for the efficient performance of the government and the society as a whole. And at last the human resources which Iraq spent a lot to develop and prepare through education and training nationally and abroad. Iraq has got a lot of civil and military scientific specialists in all aspects of life. All of these elite staff people have been fired or forced to retire or even quit and most of the foundations, associations, factories or institutions where these valuable highly effective people were working have been destroyed or abandoned.

Killing and forced immigration became a method to destroy this important national resource. Moreover the tremendous and horrible losses of the monuments, museums and manuscripts that narrate the Iraq history where some of these pieces and artifacts exceed millions and billions of dollars.

2.      The Iraqi wasted and stolen funds which have been held by the US administration and the occupation authorities after the fall of Baghdad or during the aggression and these can be summarized as follows:

1.           In 2003, during the military operations in Iraq, the US administration made a decision to get hold of all the Iraqi assets and funds all over the world which total 13 billions of dollars.  Another decision has been made to seize and confiscate the Iraqi funds in the USA which totals more than 3 billions and gave itself the permission to freely deal with the foreign Iraqi funds. Later on in March 2003 the Swiss second biggest bank admitted that the bank has transferred funds from an Iraqi UBS accounts to the US administration without any permission from the official Swiss authorities. The bank didn’t declare the value of these funds but "Excel Langer" the bank official speaker told the Swiss news agency that the confiscation of the Iraqi funds took place after the US treasury ministry has blocked the Iraqi assets in 17 US banks including UBS branch itself in the USA. Before that time the Swiss Central Bank declared tat there have been some assets for the Iraqi government in several Swiss banks.

      In October 2003 the New York Times said that the US administration had confiscated 1.7 billion dollars of the blocked Iraqi funds. It is very clear then that after the disappearance and the absence of the legal Iraqi authority the US administration could confiscate all the Iraqi foreign funds and deal with these funds without any watcher or observer. All the experts think that this issue has been settled since the first days of the occupation.

2. :: Article nr. 13905 sent on 21-jul-2005 01:05 ECT