ABSTRACT
Iraq's current economic problems add to these complications, with one important difference. Iraq faces a growing economic crisis that is impoverishing the country, and which threatens the social fabric of the country, while politics and strategy may be able to wait, food cannot. This crisis is partly the result of decades of mismanagement by the Iraqi government, and partly the result of massive spending and foreign borrowing during the Iran-Iraq War and Gulf War. The Ba'ath government has long indulged in extensive central planning and has exercised heavy control over agriculture, foreign trade, and industrial production—leaving only small industries, and shops. Its eight year war with Iran led the government to waste the liquidity it had built up during the oil boom of the 1970s, and make Iraq a massive borrower. The current crisis is also, however, the result of damage done during the Gulf War and of more than half a decade of UN sanctions.
