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Oversight out the door in Baghdad

By New York Times
In print: Tuesday, November 18, 2008

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BAGHDAD — The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is systematically dismissing Iraqi oversight officials. They were installed to fight corruption in Iraqi ministries by order of the American occupation administration, which had hoped to bring Western standards of accountability to the notoriously opaque and graft-ridden bureaucracy.

The dismissals, which were confirmed by senior Iraqi and American government officials on Sunday and Monday, came as estimates of official Iraqi corruption are soaring.

One Iraqi former chief investigator recently testified before Congress that $13-billion in reconstruction funds from the United States had been lost to fraud, embezzlement, theft and waste by Iraqi government officials.

The moves have not been publicly announced by Maliki's government, but word of them has begun to circulate through the layers of Iraqi bureaucracy as parliament prepares to vote on a long-awaited security agreement.

That pact sets the terms for a continued American presence after the U.N. mandate expires Dec. 31, but also amounts to a framework for a steady reduction in that presence. Such a change will undoubtedly lessen American oversight of Iraqi institutions.

While some Iraqi officials defended the dismissals, saying there had been no political motivation, others pointed to the secrecy involved as supporting their view that those removed had lost their posts without good cause.

Each of Iraq's 30 Cabinet-level ministries has one inspector general. These oversight officials are supported by varying budgets and staffing. Although some of the inspectors general have been notably quiet, others have investigated both current and former ministers and other senior officials vigorously, and the top echelons of Iraqi officialdom have found ample reason to fear them.

In one case, investigations of a former electricity minister landed him in jail before he escaped and fled to the United States.

How many of the ministries have received orders to dismiss their inspectors is a matter of disagreement among Iraqi governmental officials, but their estimates range from a handful to as many as 17. Several senior Iraqi and American officials agreed that seven to nine inspectors general had already been dismissed or forced into retirement.

Adel Muhsin, Maliki's coordinator of anticorruption organizations and himself the inspector general at the Health Ministry, said any suggestion that the dismissals were politically motivated "is absolutely completely nonsense."