“We can gain some insight through the general observation that nations make war the same way they make wealth.”

- Vice Admiral Arthur K. Cebrowski, U.S Navy, 1998

On May 29th, 2007, British IT consultant Peter Moore was giving a lesson at the Ministry of Finance on the identification of fiscal corruption when one hundred uniformed police officers from the Ministry of Interior stormed the building and kidnapped him and five of his fellow colleagues. For two-and-a-half years, Moore was held hostage in a basement until released in a prisoner exchange with the Shia militia group (and later political party) Asaib Ahl al-Haq. While no official account stands, it has been suggested by those affiliated with him that he was targeted for installing software to track the flow of money through Iraq’s government ministries. [1]

The abduction of Peter Moore represents a pivotal moment in the conflict between the American-led coalition and Iraqi political factions after the 2003 invasion. While coalition forces fought street-by-street to stabilize Iraq’s security situation, American and European financial consultants filled the offices of Iraq’s banks and ministries to restore Iraq’s economic system. Both parties failed. At the height of the US presence in Iraq in 2007, the country climbed to the rank of 178th out of 179 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index and the war entered its deadliest year-to-date.

With the subsequent troop surge of late 2007 and eventual withdrawal of American forces in 2011, Iraq’s worst days appeared to be behind except for the advent of the Islamic State in mid-2014. When the terror caliphate shed its last dunam in December of 2017, the nation hardly held its breath. In the summer of 2018 and most recently in the fall of 2019, painful mismanagement and lack of investment in electrical and water infrastructure led to the sweltering protests that erased any doubt that Iraq would rebound after the defeat of the Islamic State.

The tumultuous events of the past decade-and-a-half suggest that a re-reading of the reconstruction of Iraq is in order. In their wake, the three pillars of nation-building in post-Cold War era – security assistance, economic reconstruction and political freedom – appear not only to have failed to uplift the once-besieged nation but also to be directly intertwined in its destabilization.

Notes and Further Reading