on building a new town (remotely)

the attitudes of the occupying forces towards the citizens of iraq were yesterday betrayed as contemptibly complacent, arrogant and detached, with the announcement that Llewellyn Davies Yeang (LDY) have signed a million pound contract to redesign the ancient city of najaf

bad enough that the contract has been outsourced to a london-based architectural company (rather than employing iraqi engineers/architects, further evidence of the coalition dividing the spoils of war), but in an allegorical twist worthy of Orwell, the announcement included details of the fact that LDY's architects will at no point visit the site they are to develop "because of the security situation"

the new najaf will be designed in an office in london

najaf, a bombed out town in southern iraq with insurgency problems, is deemed unsafe for LDY's prospectors

then don't take the fucking job

bush can wax eloquent about the symbol of this new town till LDY casts another set of ridiculous concrete cows and sends them home to najaf, but such a blatant disenfranchisement of najaf's people (and professional/intellectual community) shows the appalling depths to which the coalition's attitudes towards the iraqi people have fallen

the concept of invading a country on false premises (albeit with the tangible but questionably motivated benefit of removing a dictator), destroying large chunks of that country and then divvying up the rebuilding contracts among companies based in the invading countries that don't even have the consideration to visit the site...

fuck, that sentence just wasn't gonna end

but then, this situation may not either

LDY were keen to point out that they are confident of the success of the scheme, even though they won't be there to oversee it

using aerial photos and the firm's iraqi partners (returned exiles) as their "eyes and ears", LDY still hopes to meet with representatives "at some stage in the Kurdish north, which is a lot safer"

dandy

the symmetry of the whole affair is a little appealing, however

a country bombs a town in to oblivion from the skies, killing innocent civilians, and then that same country rebuilds that same town using the same (or similar) aerial photos that had been used to pick out targets

appealing, but hardly a humanitarian watershed

up to 70% of najaf's people are unemployed

it therefore seems galling, even by coalition standards, to hand out a contract that will benefit not the people of najaf (who had a relatively nice town before the coalition came to call), but a company like LDY

if eye-rack is to be rebuilt, let the iraqi people themselves make the decisions on how this will be done

stop lining your pockets with blood money, carving up a country that was beaten in to submission and profiting from projects that the actions of fucks like you made necessary