Fake detectors are the bomb

The media spotlight on the Arab world shifts focus almost every month: counter-revolution in Egypt, civil war in Syria, an American raid in Libya ... It rarely stays on Iraq for long, because the violence there has been going on so long that it has become part of the scenery. But just be patient a little longer.

Five months ago, a British fraudster called James McCormick was jailed for 10 years for selling novelty hand-held golf-ball detectors (cost $20) to the Iraqi Government as bomb detectors (cost $40,000). Yet the Iraqi security services are still using the preposterous devices, which don't even have a power source. This tells you all you need to know about the situation in the country.

It's not because the Iraqis are unaware of the problem. McCormick allegedly received $75 million from the Iraqi Government for the useless toys, and at least a third of that would have gone as kickbacks to the government officials who signed off on the deal. That much lolly was bound to attract the jealousy of rival government officials, and so there has indeed been an Iraqi investigation into the deal.

Three local culprits, including Major-General Jihad al-Jabiri, the head of the Defence Ministry's directorate of combat explosives, went to jail over the crime (they were probably insufficiently generous in sharing their good fortune with other high office-holders). But as late as last May Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was insisting that the "ADE-651" golf-ball detectors were effective - and they are still in widespread use.

Iraq is losing about 1000 lives a month to terrorist bombings. True, five times as many people are being killed each month in the civil war in neighbouring Syria, but civil wars always kill many more people than mere terrorism. The fear now is that Iraq is drifting towards a sectarian civil war as well. Maliki's Government, dominated by politicians from the Shia majority of the Arab population, controls only about half the country. The Kurds control the north and have little interest in inter-Arab disputes. And the Sunni Arabs deeply resent being under Shia rule.

Mass Sunni protests began almost a year ago, and until last April were almost entirely non-violent. Sunni terrorists belonging to al-Qaeda-related jihadist organisations - another byproduct of the American occupation - were killing about 300 Shias a month, but had little support in the broader Sunni community.

Then in April the Iraqi (ie, Shia) army raided a peaceful protest camp in Hawijah, killing about 50 Sunnis, and suddenly the violent minority of Sunni jihadists came to be seen as defenders of Sunni rights. In May the death toll from terrorism leaped to 700. By June it was almost 1000, and some were Sunnis killed by Shia counter-terrorists. July, August and September have each brought about 1000 more victims.

This is heading back towards a civil war on the scale of what happened in 2006-07, under the American occupation, when some 3000 people were being killed each month, and the Government is doing nothing effective to stop it.

The Iraq Government gets $100 billion a year in oil revenue, but nothing gets built or maintained. The fake bomb detectors are part of that vast haemorrhage of cash, and one possible reason that they have not been replaced is that some people will make a lot of money out of whatever replaces them.

The soldiers and police using them don't mind. If they should find a bomb in a car, the suicide bomber driving it will likely detonate the device and kill them. So a detector that doesn't detect bombs is fine with them.

Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.