13 Chapter 13: Lee Kuan Yiew and Siemens AG

My anger against Iran calmed down in the days following my return to Baghdad. The Americans tried to convince me repeatedly that I should start a war against Iran to regain the Shatt al Arab and Khuzestan territories that we had ceded to Iran in 1975. That America would provide arms and logistical support. I told them in polite terms to fuck off. What did it matter to America if hundreds of thousands of brown bastards died over a piece of land thousands of miles away from the US. I wasnt happy with the Ayatollah but I certainly did not want a pointless war.

In early 1980 I had some time to finally work on some of my aspirational long term projects for the country. Udays trial was going ahead and the Prosecutor nervously informed me that we would have to amend the existing laws to allow for a minor to be charged as an adult. It was far too easy to get that law passed. I mean that was one of the issues. The complete lack of a rule of law in the country. Mainly Saddam's fault in fact. If a country's leaders are not accountable to the written laws and repeatedly flout it and encourage their lackeys to flout it then the efficacy of the law diminishes rapidly.

For that reason and to improve my administration I took a trip to Singapore to meet with Lee Kuan Yiew, the leader of the tiny nation and his team. LKW was someone I admired greatly in my earlier life and I had to stop myself from fanboying when I got to meet him in his prime. The reason I met him and his team was because they implemented certain administrative reforms that allowed Singapore to go from being a poor backwater that Malaysia wanted to get rid off into a global powerhouse punching far above its weight.

The main reform I wanted to implement in Iraq was to introduce the up-or-out policy in the bureaucracy. Basically the idea was to set the compensation levels of government workers almost on par with what they could expect to earn in the private sector. But at the same time, their jobs were no longer untouchable. In most countries around the world, its damned hard to get a government worker fired no matter how incompetent or corrupt. But think about it this way, without incentives to perform why would a human go out of his or her way to achieve the best that they could. Hence the competitive salary was not only to attract the best talent but also incentivize them to perform to their maximum capacity. On the downside the fact that the person could be fired for incompetence or corruption would add jeopardy preventing them from misusing their position.

The 3 weeks we spent in Singapore were incredibly productive. For me it was like a holiday from the constant machinations of the Middle East. For my team including Kamal and Ahmed it was an eye opener about how competent people thought about and perceived performance and development. I liked to think that they came back with a little bit more motivation to see their own land transformed the way that Singapore was being.

Back in Iraq we began to plan a step by step way in which we would gradually introduce up or out into the Iraqi administration. It would mean smaller government presence but hopefully more effective governance per capita.

On the infrastructure side, we had put out a global tender for construction of the commercial railway line that would become the economic backbone of the country. We had money to splurge but some of the non monetary, non technical outcomes would be challenging for the biggest construction services companies of the world. For example we wanted 95% of the unskilled and semi skilled labour used to be local. We wanted at least 50% of contractor level and project manager level personnel to be Iraqi. And we wanted at least 10% representation of Iraqis in top management. But the real kickers were that we wanted tech and knowledge transfer and we wanted a firm project completion within 2 years.

I was pessimistic about the tenders prospects and in fact most of the bids were exceedingly underwhelming. But Siemens of West Germany came through in a big way. In their bid they promised 100% of unskilled and semi skilled labour to be local, 75% of contractor level as Iraqis and 25% of top level executives to be Iraqi. They also agreed to knowledge transfer and the deadline...but their cost estimate for the project was USD 10bn, which was by far the largest contract for a railways project at that point in history.

We went for it. It was fucking Siemens. German engineering.