Today is five years since the invasion of Iraq
This post is part of the March 19 Iraq blogswarm
Other posts in today's series are here and here |
Order 81 was left along with a total of 100 orders during the “transfer of sovereignty” by the chief of the occupation authority in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer. All of these orders currently function as binding law in Iraq. According to William Engdahl,
Bremer’s first act was to fire 500,000 state workers, most of them soldiers, but also doctors, nurses, teachers, publishers, and printers. Next, he opened the country’s borders to unrestricted imports: no tariffs, no duties, no inspections, no taxes…. Before the invasion, Iraq’s non-oil economy had been dominated by some 200 state-owned companies, which produced everything from cement to paper to washing machines. In June, 2003 Bremer announced that these state firms would be privatized immediately. CPA Order 37 lowered Iraq’s corporate tax rate from roughly 40 percent to a flat 15 percent. Without tax revenues, the state would be unable to pay a role in anything. Order 39 allowed foreign companies to own 100 percent of Iraqi assets outside of the natural-resource sector. This ensured unrestricted foreign business activities in the country. Investors could also take 100 percent of the profits they made in Iraq out of the country. They would not be required to reinvest and they would not be taxed. -- Iraq and the Seeds of Democracy
With this economic overhaul intended to legalize the Iraqi state’s dependency on foreign corporations came CPA Order 81. Beyond economic implications, this order also houses huge potential for environmental degradation in Iraq. Order 81, according to a jointly issued report from Focus on the Global South and GRAIN, has “made it illegal for Iraqi farmers to re-use seeds harvested from new varieties registered under the law.” While it does not make illegal Iraqis’ use of traditional seed stocks they have already saved, in reality the paired devastation of drought and the war in the region may make holding onto these stored seeds more difficult. As time passes and these seeds disappear, Order 81’s intentions will manifest; a new seed market will emerge in Iraq in which every cropping season Iraqi farmers must purchase seeds from transnational corporations like Monsanto.How exactly does it create this corporate dependency? Order 81 only allows “plant variety protected” (PVP) planting materials to enter the Iraqi market. PVP plants are patented, and must be “new, distinct, uniform and stable.” These plants are owned by large corporations who claim to have created new plants and have entered the market with a 20 year monopoly for crop varieties and 25 year monopoly for trees and vines. During this period, it is illegal for Iraqi farmers to save and re-plant PVP seeds. In 2002, the Food and Agriculture Association (FAO) estimated 97 percent of Iraqi farmers utilized saved seeds to grow their crops.
With Order 81, the powers of Monsanto, Sygenta, Bayer and Dow Chemical have run free in the Iraqi market, bringing with them genetically modified seeds that have taken over the farming economy in much of the Global South. With these seeds, these regions have seen both the health and ecological threats of GM seeds manifest. GM seeds are designed to create a dependency on the pesticides created by the corporations who produce the seeds, and seriously wreck havoc on biodiversity where they are planted. According to the Focus on Global South/GRAIN report cited above, “In some countries like India, the 'accidental' release of GM crops is deliberately manipulated, since physical segregation of GM and GM-free crops is not feasible. Once introduced into the agro-ecological cycle there is no possible recall or cleanup from genetic pollution.” (Read of a similar model initiated by the Gates/Rockefeller Foundation threatening Africa here). If this same thing occurs in Iraq, farmers will have no choice but to accept GM crops into their lives.
Order 81 has taken over Iraq’s right to food sovereignty, overtaking a farming system that has thrived in the region since approximately 8,000 BC. They have been cited as the developers of many of the seed varieties of wheat we use today. According to Engdahl,
...for years, the Iraqis had held samples of such precious natural seed varieties in a national seed bank, located, ironically, in Abu Ghraib, the city made infamous as a US military torture prison site in 2004. Following the US occupation and various bombing campaigns, the historic and invaluable seed bank in Abu Ghraib vanished, a possible further casualty of the Iraq war. -- Iraq and the Seeds of DemocracyIn India, farmers are committing suicide in huge numbers (see also) due to the devastation brought on by companies like Monsanto (hear a moving interview on this with Vadana Shiva). It is only time before we begin to hear similar stories in the Iraqi farming community, farmers spending their last bit of money to buy foreign pesticides they then drink to escape a life in which their basic human rights have been lost to corporate occupation.
For more reading on the ecological implications of GM crops, check out this recent Celsias article. Other related articles:
