Two serious incidents have occurred recently in Iraq that give the lie to any claims by the U.S. and Britain that Iraq now has a sovereign government.

On Friday September 9 Baghdad International Airport was shut down. No, the closure wasn't the result of insurgent attacks. It was actually carried out by Global Strategies Group, a British security firm consisting of the usual assortment of mercenaries, in this case Fijians and Nepalese, who help disguise the shortage of soldiers.

Global Strategies said the Iraqi government owed it $36 million (that's $4.5 million per month since January) for maintaining airport security. The Iraqi government isn't disputing the figure; it's disputing the contract itself and wants to renegotiate it.

You see, Global Strategies' contract was signed by the previous government, the U.S.'s Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). In other words the Iraqi Ministry of Transportation has developed that uncomfortable feeling one gets when being screwed up the ying-yang.

The CPA signed contracts obligating the new Iraqi government to a number of expensive commitments to foreign firms and then carefully passed laws intended to force the new government to honor the contracts. It appears, however, that members of the present government are feeling less and less bound to do so. Hence the airport closure.

A private company shutting down a sovereign nation's major airport is fairly novel even by today's standards. The only other instance I can think of is Global Strategies' shutdown of the same airport in June.

Well, this time the Transportation Ministry decided they'd had enough and declared that the airport would be open come hell or high water. According to Sinan Salaheddin in an AP report,

Keeping the airport open has become a matter of pride for the Iraqi government.

"This issue is related to Iraq's sovereignty, and nobody is authorized to close the airport," Amer, the acting Transportation Minister, told AP. He said the Cabinet had approved the dispatch of Interior Ministry troops.

So the Ministry sent out the cavalry, and Guess Who should be there to greet them? Why the U.S. military! Effectively enforcing Global Strategies' shutdown while claiming no knowledge of the affair!

Brig. Gen. John Basilica Jr., commander of the 256th Brigade Combat Team of the Louisiana National Guard,1 said security remained "intact" at the airport.

Otherwise, the U.S. military, in an apparent attempt to play down the problem, said it had no information about the pay dispute or American and Iraqi force movements.

Apparently the Iraqi-American standoff was not very eventful. Hardly surprising when you consider that the Iraqis are barely armed, even though they're supposed to be off fighting insurgents.

In the airport dispute, cooler heads appeared to prevail after the angry threat of force from the Interior Ministry.

"We ordered the forces to pull back after American forces were deployed at the first checkpoint on the road. We did not want to create a confrontation," acting Transportation Minister Esmat Amer told The Associated Press.

Vultures alarmed

Salaheddin writes,

The closure of the French-built airport was believed to have been the first serious public conflict involving a Western contractor since the U.S.-led invasion ousted Saddam Hussein two years ago.

Ellen Knickmeyer and Naseer Nouri elaborate—

"We are suffering from some of the inexperienced ministers," Fadhil Mahdi, a merchant desperate to get goods into the country, said at the home of his travel agent, where he had gone for help. "They must think of the people who will be affected by their wrong decisions."

The shutdown has the potential to create major headaches for companies doing business in Iraq, said Ron Cruse, president and chief executive of Logenix International, LLC, a Springfield, Va.-based logistics firm with contracts here.

Cruse also said he was concerned about the precedent set for dealings between Iraq ministries and foreign companies, at a time when the Iraqis are taking over the management of an increasing number of contracts. "Contractors are not looking forward to doing business with the ministries for exactly this reason," Cruse said.

We are talking here about major discomfort to Bush administration cronies. If this sort of thing gets out of hand, we may need to conquer Iraq all over again.

Tomorrow: "Lessons in sovereignty - Part II: Iraq and Britain come to blows

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