Scrap Pours out of Iraq

When scrap metal export restrictions were declared in Iraq earlier this year by the Coalition Provisional Authority, it fit into a pattern of similar actions taken by other nations to protect their industrial feedstock supplies.

But a report in the New York Times suggests that there is an additional purpose for the Iraqi ban: To stop an outflow of military contraband.

In an article published in late May, James Glanz of the Times takes an informal inventory at scrap yards in the neighboring nation of Jordan and finds considerable evidence of scrapped remnants of the former infrastructure of Iraq.

The volume may be significant, Glanz reports. “By some estimates, at least 100 semi trailers loaded with what is billed as Iraqi scrap metal are streaming each day into Jordan, just one of six countries that share a border with Iraq,” he writes.

The scrap takes many forms, with Glanz mentioning steel piping, entire metal buildings and “sensitive military components” as being among the items streaming out of Iraq on flat-bed trucks and closed containers.

Some observers are concerned that the exodus of metal amounts to the looting of machinery, components and raw materials that could be useful in rebuilding the war-torn nation. The Times reporter says that mingled with the scrap heading into Jordan are “piles of valuable copper and aluminum ingots and bars, large stacks of steel rods and water pipe and giant flanges for oil equipment . . . as well as chopped-up railroad boxcars, huge numbers of shattered Iraqi tanks and even beer kegs marked with the words ‘Iraqi Brewery.’”

Coalition officials say they are monitoring the shipments both to make sure that sensitive military equipment does not get into the wrong hands and to make sure the Iraqi economy does not suffer from a lack of raw materials. This, they say, is the reason export restrictions on scrap were enacted back in April.