Sounds like chaos to me. The breakdown of the State
due, not to class conscious activity, but to a
free-market turned into a free-for-all--class divided
social relations without benefit of the rule of
bourgeois law and its police.
Too bad the breakdown of the Iraqui State isn't an
example of anarchy at work.
Socialist greetings,
Mike B)
--- Michael Pollak [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
[An idyllic scene from the quiet, British, Southern
part of the country]
URL:
http://www.iraq-today.com/news/business/9.html
Economy
Date posted: 09.09.2003.
Law order
Pirates, pillagers, and smugglers plague Basra
port
By Ahmad Mukhtar
ABUL KHASIB - Port manager Hamid al-Jabriy says
he can stand at
the waterline and see pirate speedboats, armed
with RPG rocket
launchers and PK machineguns, some 500 meters off
the wharves in
the narrows of the Shatt al-Arab waterway,
waiting for their prey.
The guards at his gate, meanwhile, shrug and say
they can't
possibly do their job - they don't have the guns
to fight looters,
and even if they did manage to kill one it would
only land them in
a tribal blood feud. One of them recalls how he
once got up in the
middle of the night to use the bathroom. When he
came back, his
cot was missing.
By land and by sea, the port of Abu Filoos in the
town of Abul
Khasib has a bit of a security problem.
Iraq's second port after Umm Qasr, Abu Filoos -
roughly
translatable as Mr Moneybags - used to fuel the
thriving
commercial markets of Basra. Now, it's become the
sugar daddy for
pillagers who pray on whatever commerce dares to
enter.
The guards, says al-Jabiry says, fears looters
-if you shoot them,
you'll get pulled into a tribal dispute which
will end either in
revenge killing or the payment of blood money
compensation.
Some in the area have decided that if you can
beat them, join
them. Painted on the vow of a vessel docked at
the nearby al-Ashar
wharf is the following warning: This ship is
under the protection
of the al-Qaramsha - a tribe once known for
trade in dairy
products and scrap, now for racketeering.
Al-Jabiry, for his part, says that he appealed to
the Americans,
the British, and the local governor for help. In
desperation, he
appealed to local tribal leaders and the Supreme
Council for the
Islamic Revolution in Iraq, who provided him with
weapons and fast
boats to chase the pirates.
However, his quarry can always take refuge on the
Iranian side of
the waterway. Another problem is administrative
disorder. After
the port was looted during the war, officials
turned to private
subcontractors to provide equipment and
longshoremen. The private
businessmen, however, generally deal directly
with the owners of
vessels, rarely coordinating activities with the
port
administration. The result is chaos on the
wharves.
Coming into Iraq via Abu Filoos are cars, plastic
goods, and
canned foodstuffs. As for export, many
commodities that are either
required for industrial development or are likely
to have been
stolen are banned from leaving the country, so
little more than
cottonseed, wool, and jute go out.
Legally, that is. Abu Filoos officials know very
well that they
are a haven for smugglers.
Iraqi fishermen, they say, used to be considered
vital to the
country's food stability, so the old regime gave
them a quota of
diesel to motor down the Shatt al-Arab to fish in
the Arabian
Gulf. An intelligence outpost at the mouth of the
sea would verify
their catch to make sure they were doing what
they were supposed
to do.
These days, however, the security outpost is
gone, but the
fishermen still receive their diesel. Instead of
bothering about
the Arabian Gulf chasing fish, port officials
say, many fishermen
simply sell their quota to passing boats.
Officials recall one fishing boat that demanded a
refill of diesel
after its initial quota had run out. It blocked
entrance to a
wharf to a cargo vessel, claiming that it didn't
even have the
fuel to motor out. Rather than give into
blackmail, the officials
proudly recall, they simply got a lift and
hoisted the offending
vessel away.
Despite the port's troubles, Al-Jabiry thinks
most of his problems
could be solved by centralized policing. A strike
force armed with
fast boats to chase smugglers and pirates, he
says, would perfect
the solution.
=
*
Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute,
and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty
girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.
THAT'S relativity.
Albert Einstein
http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal
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