Q & A from old Babylon.

Free Iraqi answers questions from readers of his blog.

Carla said:

I love your blog, Ali. I wonder, how much are you still troubled by corruption and bribes. Can you get things done without the old system still with its tentacles holding on??

Thanks for your kind words. This question was asked by another reader by mail. I think corruption is a huge problem all over Iraq. One example is what a colleague of mine who works in Ammara told me lately. His hospital is getting renewed by a company that works with the British army. After my friend and his colleagues became tired of waiting for the rebuilding to finish, as it's taken three months till now, they went to the hospital director and asked him how long it was going to take before they can go back to real work instead of sitting their in the ruins doing almost nothing. The director told them that it's going to take a long time because the hospital is going to be renewed and after it's done it would be leveled with the ground to be build again! They told him that he must be kidding and he said he wasn't. They asked him why would he approve of something like that and he said it wasn't his call and that it's the city council that decided that. The city council of that small town (it's called "Ali Al Garbi") is controlled by Sadirists by the way.

It appears that the city council made a contract with the British army to renew the hospital then they made another contract with another party to totally re-build the hospital! It's a perfect way to hide whatever theft they're doing in the renewal process since it's going to be leveled down! It's crazy but that's how it is and my friends feel helpless, as to whom they can complain when these people control everything!? The press isn't strong enough to produce any effect yet.

I want to stress though that the corruption is not new in Iraq at all. It was even much worse before the war, but people just couldn't talk about it. I think the reports that said Iraq has the most corrupt government in the world are very inaccurate. Iraq has probably the most corrupt elected government. In the neighboring dictatorship as well as in Saddam's times it's totally different.

*Everything* is owned by the dictator and his thugs and that's worse than any corruption alone yet there was a huge corruption in government offices at Saddam's times. It was just uncovered because of the fear and because Iraq was a totally closed state. Now everyone in the world can know at least some of what's happening down here and that's the only difference and corruption is still less than what it was.

Since the war I never found myself forced to bribe anyone. I had to wait for 7 months to get my salary but no one forced me to pay anything and I was determined not to do so even if it was going to solve the problem fast. In the end I got paid and it was very frustrating but it felt good that got something solved without bribing anyone. Before the war, I like everyone else, we had to bribe someone to get any problem solved when it comes to the government-related problems. I mean you could *never* get anything working without that. Now it's much better although it's still bad compared to other democratic countries. I never had to bribe anyone in any checkpoint since the war, and that was also a problem before the war. Most of those checkpoints (before the war) were places where security guards, policemen or military intelligence use to rob people for very silly reasons. They didn't have a problem with finding an excuse and people had to pay or face a horrible fate.