Dr. Tayseer Abdul-Jabbar Al-Alusi
Among the top priority of the various countries of the world when setting their budgets and economic plans lies the issue of food security and the measures it requires, including due consideration to “strategic crops,” which are the backbone for achieving food security and in a more general and comprehensive way national security as a whole.
Hence, we find, for example, in the Iraqi model, in which cases of targeting and extortion are rampant in the various fields and axes of its economic plans, the phenomenon of targeting strategic crops as a dangerous approach that aims at putting an end to national security.
It does not stop at hindering the act of agriculture and its chain of activities; instead, they may turn a blind eye to agriculture itself to lurk and then go further by targeting the fruits of the Iraqi farmer’s efforts, where the wheat fires come, such as those perpetrated in Najaf on the strategic crop, to stab the farmer existentially imposing on him a state of brokenness and a double sense of loss and frustration and push him to leave the countryside, in the sense of sabotaging the first main field of the productive economy in Iraq.
In the example of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, we find these countries and many others that have clearly directed their attention to strategic crops and the means of providing them at the lowest costs in a way that preserves food security and, by consequence national security, where lies decision independence and the
country’s ability to perform distinctively in response to the strategies of major economic plans.
However, as we have mentioned, Iraq’s strategic crop harvesting seasons are usually burned and destroyed, not to mention the lack of support required for its cultivation, fertilizers, and waters, in addition to environmental phenomena such as drought and unfavorable climatic variables that have not been dealt with – by the state – not in the slightest of ways!
In terms of the crimes of burning wheat and all strategic crops, we find nothing but an official denunciation that has left the farmer with nothing to say about these criminal acts committed against him and national security! Thus, crimes pass as if nothing had happened! Isn’t that a cover-up for the well-known criminal, where the beneficiary of the ruin of the Iraqi national economy has been absorbing the wealth of the country and its people for twenty lean years and blackmailing them by providing his agricultural product, even vegetables, and simple primary animal products at prices that make him many dollars which he is not allowed to deal with internationally!
How can we turn a blind eye to all these crimes without exposing those behind them, whether they were committed directly by them or by hired perpetrators!?
The Iraqi farmer has had enough of what he goes through every day; when the people compare their situation with the countries of the region, while they are rich in sources and the productive capabilities of their youth, they find that the rentier economy approach, in terms of operational rather than investment, neglecting the environment, and destroying its sources of life, such as confiscating water, burning and/or razing and destroying forests, has left fertile land to perish and become a
wasteland with widespread desertification and its invasion of the remaining orchards and farms.
Let the productive forces of the people move with an organized approach to confront the dilemmas that have worsened and impose their demands to protect their efforts and products, especially here, from strategic crops before the crimes of sabotage and burning become deep-rooted, the crimes that are no different from the crimes of the genocide of crops and cattle!!
Let Iraq join the Arab fold, which is now strategically planning for its future with the scientific mind and the most conscious and mature collective conscience.