In the spring of 2003, a young boy named Yassin stood barefoot on the rubble of what used to be his school in Baghdad. Dust clung to his eyelashes. His uniform was torn, his satchel buried somewhere beneath the debris. A journalist, stepping carefully between twisted steel and shattered bricks, knelt down and asked, “Do you know why this happened?” Yassin looked up, his face smeared with soot and disbelief. “They said it was for our freedom,” he replied. “But I don’t feel free. I feel... broken.”That scene was never broadcast on prime-time news. Instead, the world saw flag-raising ceremonies and military briefings with polished metaphors. Words like “liberation,” “mission accomplished,” and “peacekeeping” echoed in parliaments and press rooms. Meanwhile, children like Yassin quietly counted the cost.And in front of the TV, an old man once told his grandson, “Do you know why politicians never die in wars?”The boy, curious, shook his head.“Because they always send someone else's son,” the old man said, sipping his tea with a sigh. “And that’s why war looks noble in speeches but feels cruel in cemeteries.”War and poverty often dance in a vicious circle—one fuels the other, and neither seems to want to let go. In times of conflict, public spending shifts from welfare to warfare. Schools, hospitals, and clean water take a backseat to bombs, tanks, and surveillance. The poor are the first to be recruited, the first to be displaced, and the last to be remembered. And when the smoke clears, it's always the marginalised who are left sweeping up the ashes.But even more insidious is the way war manufactures poverty, not just through destruction, but through design. Resources are extracted, not invested. Local economies collapse. Global powers arrive with "aid packages" that function more like economic handcuffs. As exposed in Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007, Metropolitan Books), post-war regions often become laboratories for neoliberal experiments—where the cost of rebuilding is debt, dependency, and long-term deprivation.Ironically, it’s not the poor who start wars. But it’s almost always the poor who fight them. And worse still, it’s the poor who continue to suffer long after the last bullet is fired. In this way, war doesn't just destroy wealth—it redistributes poverty.In his book Capitalism and Freedom (1962, University of Chicago Press), Milton Friedman, a prominent economist associated with the Chicago School of Economics and a major influence on neoliberal policy, writes, “Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable.”When he writes, “Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change,” he is not merely describing the nature of catastrophe, but the unique opportunity it presents. Friedman believed that during periods of crisis—whether they are genuine emergencies or carefully framed as such—societies become more open to rapid and radical change. In times of normalcy, most people and institutions resist major reforms due to inertia, fear, or vested interests.What Friedman proposes is that intellectuals, economists, and policy advocates should prepare in advance by developing coherent, well-structured ideas that lie “in waiting.” When a crisis erupts, people no longer seek stability—they seek solutions. In this moment of desperation, the public and politicians alike are more likely to embrace new paradigms. The success of those paradigms depends not on how “good” or “just” they are, but on whether they are available, rehearsed, and ready to be deployed.Thus, Friedman’s quote is both descriptive and strategic. It captures the reality that crises disorient people, and in that disorientation, pre-packaged economic ideas can slip through the cracks. This is how major shifts—such as free-market reforms, deregulation, or reductions in government—can be implemented swiftly, bypassing normal democratic resistance.Friedman did not view this cynically. He saw it as a way to promote liberty and reduce government interference. But critics argue that this approach opens the door for exploiting vulnerable societies, especially when the crisis is used as a cover to benefit elites.In The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein argues that war and disaster are not just moments of crisis—they are opportunities, deliberately used by powerful actors to impose radical free-market reforms. According to Klein, war zones are not merely sites of conflict but “blank slates” where governments collapse, regulations vanish, and populations are too traumatised to resist. This vacuum is quickly filled by foreign contractors, global financial institutions, and private corporations seeking profit under the guise of reconstruction.Klein calls this the "shock doctrine"—a strategy where the chaos of war creates just enough disorientation to push through policies that would otherwise be rejected in times of peace. Public assets are privatised, safety nets are dismantled, and economic decisions are outsourced to international consultants. The result? A society rebuilt for investors, not for its people.She illustrates this using post-invasion Iraq as a primary example. While Baghdad was still burning, American consultants were rewriting the country’s economic laws to allow full foreign ownership, tax holidays for corporations, and the rapid sell-off of public industries. Meanwhile, Iraqis were struggling with power outages, unemployment, and shattered infrastructure. The “freedom” they were promised was quickly eclipsed by a market system designed without them in mind.War doesn't just destroy lives—it clears the path for a new kind of colonisation: economic occupation disguised as liberation. And for those left behind, poverty isn’t just collateral damage—it’s part of the business model.In The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein argues that war and disaster are not just moments of crisis—they are opportunities, deliberately used by powerful actors to impose radical free-market reforms. According to Klein, war zones are not merely sites of conflict but “blank slates” where governments collapse, regulations vanish, and populations are too traumatised to resist. This vacuum is quickly filled by foreign contractors, global financial institutions, and private corporations seeking profit under the guise of reconstruction.Klein calls this the "shock doctrine"—a strategy where the chaos of war creates just enough disorientation to push through policies that would otherwise be rejected in times of peace. Public assets are privatised, safety nets are dismantled, and economic decisions are outsourced to international consultants. The result? A society rebuilt for investors, not for its people.She illustrates this using post-invasion Iraq as a primary example. While Baghdad was still burning, American consultants were rewriting the country’s economic laws to allow full foreign ownership, tax holidays for corporations, and the rapid sell-off of public industries. Meanwhile, Iraqis were struggling with power outages, unemployment, and shattered infrastructure. The “freedom” they were promised was quickly eclipsed by a market system designed without them in mind.War doesn't just destroy lives—it clears the path for a new kind of colonisation: economic occupation disguised as liberation. And for those left behind, poverty isn’t just collateral damage—it’s part of the business model.Klein traces a chilling global arc: the triumph of free-market ideology not through consensus or gradual reform, but through crisis, coercion, and catastrophe. From Latin America to Eastern Europe, Africa to Asia, she argues that economic liberalisation was not patiently chosen—it was violently imposed.It began in Chile in the 1970s, where after General Pinochet’s military coup, a group of U.S.-trained economists known as the “Chicago Boys” implemented radical neoliberal reforms: slashing public services, privatising state companies, and eliminating trade barriers. The economic “shock therapy” was accompanied by literal torture chambers. Free market policies were not voted in—they were hammered in under a dictatorship.In the Soviet Union, the collapse of communism in the 1990s didn’t usher in democracy and prosperity, but what Klein calls “gangster capitalism.” Russia was plunged into chaos as public assets were sold off in a fire-sale to politically connected oligarchs. A handful of billionaires emerged, while millions fell into poverty—free market economics again arriving not as liberation, but as disorientation.In China, the Tiananmen Square massacre marked the moment when the Communist Party decided it could crush political dissent and still embrace market capitalism. The factories became free-market engines—but without democracy. Klein calls this the perfect merger of authoritarianism and capitalism.Iraq after the 2003 invasion became perhaps the most extreme laboratory for free-market ideology. While the country burned, American officials rewrote Iraq’s laws to allow total foreign ownership, remove tariffs, and sell state enterprises en masse. It was marketed as "rebuilding," but Klein saw it as economic colonisation—market capitalism imposed at gunpoint.Even in South Africa, where the end of apartheid raised hopes for economic justice, the transition was hijacked. While political freedom was won, economic structures remained intact. The result? A black majority with the right to vote but still economically marginalised.In Canada, Klein’s home country, economic shocks were used to justify cuts to public spending, health care, and welfare. Though less dramatic than coups or wars, the logic remained: use fear to shrink the state and empower the market.Klein’s thesis is that free-market capitalism did not spread like an idea—it advanced like an army, using crisis as cover. Whether through bombs, tanks, or budget deficits, the goal was the same: break the old system, then sell it off to the highest bidder.In his seminal military treatise On War (Vom Kriege), written in the early 19th century and published posthumously in 1832 by his widow, Carl von Clausewitz, a Prussian general and military theorist, delivered one of the most enduring definitions of war: "War is merely the continuation of politics by other means."What Clausewitz meant was not that war and politics are opposites—but that they are deeply intertwined. Politics, for him, was the realm of negotiation, power, and national interest. When diplomatic tools fail to achieve a state's objectives, war becomes an alternative means to pursue those same political goals—just far more violently and destructively. In other words, war is not a breakdown of politics; it is a brutal extension of it.Clausewitz did not romanticise war. In fact, On War is full of warnings about its unpredictability, chaos, and moral costs. But he was clear-eyed about one thing: war is never just about battlefield glory. It is always rooted in political calculation.His insights remain influential to this day, not only in military academies but also in international relations. Modern conflicts—from invasions to proxy wars—continue to reflect Clausewitz’s view that politics does not end when war begins. It merely changes form—swapping ballots for bullets, speeches for soldiers.Why do wars happen?
While leaders publicly invoke national security or human rights, many conflicts are fuelled by competition over resources—oil, minerals, or strategic territory. The 2003 invasion of Iraq, for instance, has been widely criticised not only for its flawed intelligence but for its economic undercurrents, as examined in The Looting of Iraq by Herbert Docena. War becomes a smokescreen, behind which economic agendas thrive.
"The Looting of Iraq" is written by Ali A. Allawi, a former Iraqi Minister of Trade, Defence, and Finance. The full title of the book is “The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace”, but the term “the looting of Iraq” has come to symbolise what many saw as the chaotic aftermath of the 2003 US-led invasion. The book was published in 2007 by Yale University Press.In this deeply researched and sobering account, Allawi provides an insider’s view of the American occupation and the collapse of Iraq’s state institutions. He discusses not only the physical looting—museums, ministries, and banks stripped bare—but also the metaphorical looting: the loss of sovereignty, the destruction of the civil service, the rise of sectarian militias, and the plundering of Iraq’s oil wealth. The book combines political history with personal experience, offering both a macro and micro lens on how the dreams of a democratic Iraq were shattered by greed, mismanagement, and foreign interference.The narrative begins with Allawi tracing the deep-seated ideological and political divisions within Iraq’s exile opposition and within the country itself, setting the stage for the build-up to war. He describes how external planners underestimated Iraq's complex social fabric and how US policy, often driven by ideology rather than nuanced understanding, hastily pursued invasion without adequate post-war planning.Allawi details the rapid invasion in March 2003 and the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime, emphasising how the ensuing chaos and widespread looting symbolised the failure of the occupation authorities to secure control . He criticises the Coalition Provisional Authority’s decisions to dissolve the army and purge Baathist officials, revealing how those moves unleashed economic devastation, mass unemployment, and resentment from disenfranchised groups.As state institutions crumbled, the insurgency took root among Sunnis, Shi‘a and Kurds alike, and sectarian tensions spread, particularly after April 2004. Allawi profiles the emergence of new political structures, including the Governing Council, and the influential role of Ayatollah Sistani in stabilising the situation.The book then moves through the drafting of the constitution and the fraught 2005 elections, revealing how political manoeuvring, corruption, and the rise of sectarian militias undermined efforts to establish a cohesive national identity.In later chapters, Allawi explores the rise of Nuri al‑Maliki’s government, the struggle over federalism, and the increasing centralisation of power. He laments the failure of reconstruction plans and the receding Western influence, culminating in a fragmented Iraq still riven by political crises and instability by the time of the epilogue.By the epilogue, Allawi reflects on how military success did not translate into lasting peace. The chaotic occupation, mismanagement, and the failure to reconcile Iraq’s diverse social and political groups meant that the country emerged weaker and more divided, rather than more stable or democratic.The central conclusion of The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace is that military victory without cultural understanding, institutional planning, and political humility leads to long-term failure. Ali A. Allawi argues that although the United States swiftly toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime, it failed to comprehend the fragile social fabric of Iraq and underestimated the deep divisions—ethnic, sectarian, and tribal—that defined the country. The occupation, instead of rebuilding Iraq, dismantled its core institutions, alienated its people, and created a power vacuum filled by violence, corruption, and sectarianism.Rather than bringing stability and democracy, the foreign intervention triggered the breakdown of the state, the rise of sectarian militias, and the loss of national identity. Allawi suggests that Iraq was not simply “liberated”—it was also looted, not just of treasures and oil, but of its governance, dignity, and future. The book delivers a sobering warning: you cannot export democracy through tanks and decrees without first understanding the soul of a nation.
[Part 2]
