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The IMF and the Future of Iraq

Zaid Al-Ali, 7 December 2004, Middle East Report Online

On November 21, 2004, the 19 industrialized nations that make up the so-called Paris Club issued a decision that, in effect, traces the outline of Iraq’s economic future. The decision concerns a portion of Iraq’s $120 billion sovereign debt—a staggering amount that all concerned parties recognize is unsustainable. In their proposal to write off some of the debt, the Paris Club members took advantage of the opportunity to impose conditions that could bind the successor government in Baghdad to policies of free-market fundamentalism.

Meet the Author

Zaid Al-Ali has been practicing law since 1999, specializing in international commercial arbitration and comparative constitutional law.

Author Zaid Al-Ali and his wife Rouba Beydoun during a dust storm in Iraq in 2010.

He has law degrees from Harvard Law School, the Université de Paris I (Sorbonne), and King’s College London. From 2005 to 2010, he was a legal adviser to the United Nations focusing on constitutional, parliamentary, and judicial reform in Iraq. Since the beginning of 2011, he has been working on constitutional reform throughout the Arab region, in particular in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt. He has published widely on Iraq and on constitutional law.

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