International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies 12.3 is now available

Intellect is pleased to announce that the International Journal of
Contemporary Iraqi Studies 12.3 is now available! For more information
about the issue, click here >>
https://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-issue,id=3680/

*Content*

*Editor’s Note*
Authors: William W. Haddad

*Guest Editor’s Introduction*
Authors: Ahmed Mousa Jiyad

*Restraining the game-changer: A decade of uneven development in the
petroleum sector*
Authors: Ahmed Mousa Jiyad

The development of the Iraqi petroleum sector during the period 2008−18
represents, from all related aspects, a distinct phase in the sector and in
its role in the national economy. The petroleum sector comprises three
different but interrelated sub-sectors through critical forward-backward
linkages: upstream (including exploration, field development and
production); midstream (pipeline, storage, export terminals); and
downstream (crude refining, gas processing, petroleum product distribution
and petrochemicals).

*Iraq must now take the path of healing and recovery*
Authors: Juman Kubba

What is done is done. Iraq, over the past fifteen years, took huge leaps
backwards. It is very important for politicians, historians, experts and
judicial bodies to analyse what happened, why it happened, who is
responsible and how to hold them accountable. But what is more important
now is to ensure that Iraqi society recovers from the calamities of the
past fifteen years and the preceding 30 years and that the country’s
resources are used to serve Iraqis and provide them with good living
conditions and never again be wasted and dissipated. This article focuses
on the pathway of healing Iraqi society from the aftermath of decades of
war, poverty and immense suffering. Restoring good education and health
care is the first step on the pathway of healing and recovery and some
aspects related to this will be discussed in this article. Also,
neutralizing and reversing several dangerous post conflict societal
problems that have arisen over the years such as traumatized war children,
warinjured young men, drug abuse among youth and an alarming increase in
neoplastic diseases just to name a few are a priority. Given the weakness
of the government, corruption and contradictions between legislation and
jurisdiction, one must consider new non-traditional approaches to solving
these problems; a few focusing on health and well-being are presented in
the article. The success of any future government should be measured by how
much it can ameliorate the essential life-sustaining and life-enhancing
services for ordinary citizens.

*Performance evaluation and proposals to enhance the Iraqi banking sector*
Authors: Mowafaq H. Mahmood

The article addresses the subject through four topics: the first topic
offers an empirical examination of the performance of the banking sector
during the period 2010–15. It also diagnoses the sector’s weaknesses and
attributes such weaknesses to their inherited causes, be it legal,
environmental, managerial or regulatory issues of the banking industry. The
analysis paves the way to suggest required reforms and to answer the
question of whether the sector, in its present state, is capable of leading
or at least contributing substantially to the economic development of Iraq.
The period examined is believed to fairly represent the sector’s
performance in general since there is no reason to suggest that previous
periods were any different. The second topic focuses on the reforms
required to: enhance the sector’s contribution to GDP; and enable it to
become a key player in the rebuilding of Iraq through making more loans and
credits available for the private sector. Reform must be professional,
profound and comprehensive and should be achieved in a manner conducive to
major structural changes. Reform should address several issues such as
availability of fund, equal treatment for both government-owned and
privately owned banks and more effective supervision by the Central Bank of
Iraq (CBI) including adherence to the Basel Accords and other international
rules and standards including, but not limited to, liquidity ratios, stress
tests, capital adequacy ratios, risk analysis and risk mitigation, and
adequate governance rules. The third topic will shed light on: the
environment under which the Iraqi banking industry operates, highlighting
the limitations and obstacles that impede the sector’s growth including the
judicial system and the state of the prevailing over-banking; the
investment environment and whether it is attractive for the business
community to invest and do business in Iraq. Finally, the CBI’s dollar
window impact on the banking industry will also be examined.

*Recommendations for an EU-IRQ energy centre from stakeholders and experts
network studies: The research component*
Authors: U. F. A. Karim

Results from stakeholders mapping and analysis are used to prepare for an
EU-IRQ energy centre (EUIEC). The centre consists of research, training,
business, policy and dialogue components. This article focuses on setting
up the research centre. EUIEC could be built on good examples taking
advantage of EU-IRQ bilateral agreements and ongoing intense developments
in Iraq’s energy sector involving top international companies and their
large networks. The author advocates actively and mutually facilitating the
process particularly in the kick-off and start-up phase (two to five)
years. A multi-disciplinary experts’ network setting is recommended that
fits best when integrated with the other EUIEC components and services.
Recommendations are made to cluster mono-disciplinary research programmes
and projects (RP) into multi-disciplinary themes and research areas (RA).
The final EUIEC organization, RP and facilities integrating all its
components will require further efforts from the consultants, lead
stakeholders and experts building up on preliminary results from this study.

*No blood for oil, revisited: The strategic role of oil in the 2003 Iraq
War*
Authors: Greg Muttitt

‘It has nothing to do with oil, literally nothing to do with oil’, said US
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld in 2002, of the planned attack on Iraq.
Politicians and conservative commentators in the United States and United
Kingdom were insistent on this point, even while it felt obvious to many in
their countries, and in Iraq itself, that oil objectives were central. This
article will review what we now know about discussions of oil that took
place during the war planning and execution, based on documents that have
been released in the fifteen years since. It will examine the nature of the
strategic objectives, how the US and UK governments planned to achieve them
and how they decided to talk about them in public. Reflecting on this
evidence will allow us to revisit the question: was oil a major reason for
the war?

*Fixing Iraqi federalism*
Authors: Luay al-Khatteeb

Iraq’s management of its energy sector and oil and gas revenues is badly
organized and promotes competition over resources and corruption, rather
than cooperation within a federal context. Constitutionally, many articles
in the country’s Federal Constitution of 2005 are supposed to outline how
the sector should be managed, but due to vague language these articles have
become legally contested, resulting in conflict between the semi-autonomous
Kurdish region of Iraq and the Federal Government while hindering key
legislations to pass. This requires a constitutional reform.
Institutionally, what is missing is a number of federal laws and entities
that shape the federal state of Iraq, such as the creation of a Federal Oil
and Gas Council. This institution will help regulate the petroleum sector
at a federal level and balance the relationship between the producing
regions and the federal state according to the constitution, and ensures a
‘wall of separation’ between the Ministry of Oil, who would have a clearly
defined management and oversight role for managing the sector as a policy
maker, and the day to day operations of state-owned enterprises that are
regulated by the ministry. This essay highlights the petroleum related
issues in the constitution with focus on regulator and regulated bodies.

*Taking institutions seriously: Applying the new institutional economics to
Iraq*
Authors: Omar A. M. El-Joumayle

Why has a developing country like Iraq shown a fragile economic
development, despite the rosy picture that had been drawn about the
potential of the Iraqi economy? To answer this question, an attempt has
been made to look at the Iraqi development from the new institutional
economic (NIE) perspective. This article contains a brief summary of a
Ph.D. dissertation on the economic development of contemporary Iraq. In
essence it traces the role of institutions, institutional policies and how
the rapid and frequent institutional changes have driven the Iraqi economy
for decades. Although applying the NIE to Iraq expands the range of choices
of institutions that could be examined, the choices have been narrowed down
by focusing on three central issues: agriculture, oil and wars. The picture
emerging from the dissertation is one of abrupt and instantaneous
institutional changes, through which institutions were repeatedly subject
to reshuffle and facing changing circumstances. Consequently these changes
have markedly affected the path of economic development in Iraq.

*Reviews*
Authors: Imad Khadduri And Ahmed Mousa Jiyad

   - The Inside Story: Iraq’s Nuclear Program from Start to Finish, Basil
   Assa’ati (2018)
   - (The Iraq Economy: Crises and Development), Ali Khedher Merza (2018)

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