Gold and the Old Problems of the New Iraq
When we tried to leave Iraq last, my wife was held up for a bit because she happened to be wearing, and carrying, some modest amount of gold jewelry. Some of you reading this who are under 30 years of age might be entirely baffled, or wonder what I mean by a "modest amount", because surely no sane customs official cares about personal pieces of jewelry. In fact, it was less than two ounces certainly, though how much less I don't know. We spent a fair amount of time discussing the matter with the customs officials, addressing their concerns, being patient, and finally getting to pass after three supervisors approved, so long as a notation was made in my wife's passport that she was carrying gold. This seemed necessary to them, though it more amused the US officers when they saw it than concerned them. Their Iraqi compatriots on the other hand were certain we would be held up and the gold confiscated at the border, but figured if we insisted, and they did their job by making a notation in the passport, it was not their concern any further.
To understand this, you have to keep in mind two things. FIRST, that the real price of gold peaked in 1980 at something that approaches in 2009 dollars $2500 an ounce. If you had two ounces of gold, you were carrying $5000 on you. So in the 1970's, carrying around gold was a concern in some number of places, it was far too easy a substitute for cash given its value. That, and the fact that it wasn't as easy to transfer cash back then led to some suspicion when so much value went across borders.
SECOND, that time just about stopped in Iraq in 1980, when the war with Iran began.
All of us who looked forward at one point to the US invasion of Iraq made so many mistakes and are guilty of so many misjudgments but one that has been largely underestimated, and remains so, is the extent to which people who are stuck decades behind the rest of the world don't magically become unstuck when they're reconnected. I think all of us knew, or at least suspected, that the isolation of Iraq since the 1970's would have its effects, but we imagined it would be transitory. You bring in the internet, show people how ATM's work, let a few big law firms open up, translate a few modern codes respecting security on property, and the like, and within a year, maybe two, everyone is up to date.
But that turns out to be quite wrong, at least in this context. We didn't move from 1979 to 2009 in one to two years, it took us 30 years. ATM's came gradually, law firms grew organically, laws changed incrementally. You then try to bring all of this stuff into Iraq in a year or two, and it's a mess. Not just gold or a modern bank (there are none, people still ask me why I have no traveler's checks with me, I don't even know what one looks like, though it brings back vague memories of my parents signing something twice while I sat in the back of a station wagon without a seat belt), but everything. Nobody sees what's wrong with having every business deal done, even billion dollar oil contracts, by a solo practicioner. Modern ideas of arbitration are unusual, and terrifying. Standard oil contracts are highly controversial as sell outs to foreigners. The idea that a private company would produce the nation's electricity and sell it to the government is offensive. Doctoral students literally handwrite their dissertations, and then take it to be typed. When I suggested to a female doctoral student she might do well to learn Word and type it herself, she thought it was sexist of me to assume she'd be good at secretarial work, which is what typing is in Iraq, and what it was in the US in the 1970's.
Of course satellite television took off immediately upon the fall of the regime, as did internet chats and yahoo email addresses. The denial of information certainly led to a hunger within society for information. But this was grafted on top of a 1970's world. You do know how to type internet chat sessions, but when it comes to a dissertation, that the secretary does for you.
It's quite culturally fascinating, to see how modern technology is absorbed into this society that remains very much stuck in a 1970's mentality, but it is also quite frustrating. A common enough reaction, when faced with the hundredth Iraqi in a row explaining why current Iraqi law does actually provide remarkably well for the creation of a workable international arbitral regime, or why the trend respecting the right of a mother to pass citizenship to her children as fathers do, is against global consensus, is to just throw up one's hands and just say "these people are just too stupid or too stubborn to change" without thinking that the change we're pointing out is thirty years ahead of where they were, and they've only been at it six years.
So I don't mean this pessimistically, but rather realistically. They're not going to have a modern oil law in the next year, they're not going to internalize global trends, they're not going to learn to type, as quickly as the world demands. Economic pressures may be what they are, but people are also who they are, and the material forces can only do so much to change them. Change will seep in surely, the society will develop, but it's going to take time. A LOT of time.
HAH
To understand this, you have to keep in mind two things. FIRST, that the real price of gold peaked in 1980 at something that approaches in 2009 dollars $2500 an ounce. If you had two ounces of gold, you were carrying $5000 on you. So in the 1970's, carrying around gold was a concern in some number of places, it was far too easy a substitute for cash given its value. That, and the fact that it wasn't as easy to transfer cash back then led to some suspicion when so much value went across borders.
SECOND, that time just about stopped in Iraq in 1980, when the war with Iran began.
All of us who looked forward at one point to the US invasion of Iraq made so many mistakes and are guilty of so many misjudgments but one that has been largely underestimated, and remains so, is the extent to which people who are stuck decades behind the rest of the world don't magically become unstuck when they're reconnected. I think all of us knew, or at least suspected, that the isolation of Iraq since the 1970's would have its effects, but we imagined it would be transitory. You bring in the internet, show people how ATM's work, let a few big law firms open up, translate a few modern codes respecting security on property, and the like, and within a year, maybe two, everyone is up to date.
But that turns out to be quite wrong, at least in this context. We didn't move from 1979 to 2009 in one to two years, it took us 30 years. ATM's came gradually, law firms grew organically, laws changed incrementally. You then try to bring all of this stuff into Iraq in a year or two, and it's a mess. Not just gold or a modern bank (there are none, people still ask me why I have no traveler's checks with me, I don't even know what one looks like, though it brings back vague memories of my parents signing something twice while I sat in the back of a station wagon without a seat belt), but everything. Nobody sees what's wrong with having every business deal done, even billion dollar oil contracts, by a solo practicioner. Modern ideas of arbitration are unusual, and terrifying. Standard oil contracts are highly controversial as sell outs to foreigners. The idea that a private company would produce the nation's electricity and sell it to the government is offensive. Doctoral students literally handwrite their dissertations, and then take it to be typed. When I suggested to a female doctoral student she might do well to learn Word and type it herself, she thought it was sexist of me to assume she'd be good at secretarial work, which is what typing is in Iraq, and what it was in the US in the 1970's.
Of course satellite television took off immediately upon the fall of the regime, as did internet chats and yahoo email addresses. The denial of information certainly led to a hunger within society for information. But this was grafted on top of a 1970's world. You do know how to type internet chat sessions, but when it comes to a dissertation, that the secretary does for you.
It's quite culturally fascinating, to see how modern technology is absorbed into this society that remains very much stuck in a 1970's mentality, but it is also quite frustrating. A common enough reaction, when faced with the hundredth Iraqi in a row explaining why current Iraqi law does actually provide remarkably well for the creation of a workable international arbitral regime, or why the trend respecting the right of a mother to pass citizenship to her children as fathers do, is against global consensus, is to just throw up one's hands and just say "these people are just too stupid or too stubborn to change" without thinking that the change we're pointing out is thirty years ahead of where they were, and they've only been at it six years.
So I don't mean this pessimistically, but rather realistically. They're not going to have a modern oil law in the next year, they're not going to internalize global trends, they're not going to learn to type, as quickly as the world demands. Economic pressures may be what they are, but people are also who they are, and the material forces can only do so much to change them. Change will seep in surely, the society will develop, but it's going to take time. A LOT of time.
HAH
There were reports in the western (not just US) press of substantial reduction, by death and displacement, of Iraqi intellectuals, broadly defined, in the years following the US action. Were the reports correct and, if so, do you think it plays a factor in slowing the adaptation time you discuss?
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Absolutely, though I think it's a little much to place this all on the US shoulders. They bear their share of the blame certainly, but Iraq has been on a downward spiral since Saddam Hussein took control in the 1980's, and has been a miserable place to live pretty much from 1985 on. Since that time, the brain drain has been a persistent, vexing problem.
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