Iraqis get cash to ‘ease’ their pain

It is a politician’s dream: Handing out cold, hard cash to people on the street as they plead for help.

It is a politician’s dream: Handing out cold, hard cash to people on the street as they plead for help. Iraq’s Prime Minister has been doing just that in recent weeks, doling out Iraqi dinars as an aide trails behind, keeping a tally.

The handouts by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and a handful of other top officials are authorised — as long as each goes no higher than about $8,000, and the same people don’t get them twice. Aides say they are meant merely to ease the pain a bit, and are motivated by a belief that better conditions will lead to more security.

The cash handouts are just one small — if eye-catching — part of a major investment push this summer by Iraq’s government. The aim is to rebuild basic services and jumpstart Iraq’s damaged economy by quickly distributing as much of the country’s glut of oil revenue as possible.

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US officials and a fed-up American public are urging exactly that — for Iraq to spend its own money, not America’s, to rebuild the country now that violence has eased.

Yet the new Iraqi effort runs a high risk of failure: The government is disorganised, fears of favouritism remain and the shadow of corruption haunts every step.

“Money is not a problem,” al-Maliki told a recent gathering of tribal chiefs in the southern city of Basra, after government forces had defeated Shiite extremists there. “But we must put it in honest hands to spend.”

Despite such problems, Iraq’s oil revenues, an estimated $70 billion this year, still provide the best chance of leveraging the country’s fragile period of calm into something more lasting, many officials say.

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Top US commander Gen David Petraeus has repeatedly called money a crucial weapon to lure neighbourhoods from extremists and stabilise Iraq. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, urged the government to pass out money even faster this week on a trip to devastated Mosul in the north.

The United States has been doling out cash itself, most effectively to former Sunni militants who switched sides to fight al-Qaida. The military has also provided money and assistance to projects like fixing damaged roads in the Shiite enclave of Sadr City after battles there.

Yet most recent big spending announcements have been Iraqi: $100 million to rebuild Sadr City; another $100 million to the Shiite city of Basra after fighting there; $100 million for another southern Shiite town, Amarah; and $83 million to help internal refugees return home.