Wednesday, August 17, 2005

I agree with Mr. Chalabi

From OpinionJournal:

The best suggestion we've heard for cutting this Gordian knot comes from the much-maligned Ahmed Chalabi, who is now Iraq's deputy prime minister with special responsibilities for oil and infrastructure and has emerged as a major constitutional broker. He has bucked some of his Shiite and Kurdish allies by insisting that ultimate control of Iraq's natural wealth must remain in the hands of the central government, while also suggesting constitutional language that the wealth be owned by all Iraqis in "equal measure." In other words, the oil would be managed by the central government in the interests of all Iraqis wherever they live, but not owned by it.

Mr. Chalabi hopes that the "equal measure" concept will pave the way in practice for the creation of an oil trust, under which Iraqis would from birth have accounts established in their name. Iraqis would receive their full and equal share of oil revenue and the government would have to vote to tax it away. Mr. Chalabi sees this as a way of breaking the "oil curse" that has turned so many oil-rich nations into corrupt tyrannies.
I have to agree with him.

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