Word: guarde
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April 2003: Saddam Hussein is on the run, and the sky over Baghdad is choked with black smoke as looters ransack and torch government buildings. But in one district, U.S. Marines stand guard on the steps of a large modern building, their weapons trained on the street and the footbridge outside. It is the Ministry of Oil. Let this treasure chest burn, the thinking goes, and Iraq goes with...
...hand has extended into new and far more lucrative sectors of the economy. Most significantly, it has been awarded billions of dollars in contracts in the oil, gas and petrochemical industries, as well as major infrastructure projects. The government awards some of the no-bid contracts directly to the Guard's engineering arm, Khatam Al-Anbia. Other times, the link is more indirect: "Sometimes you see newly established firms, indirectly owned by IRGC members, receiving the contracts," says a director of a major engineering firm on condition of anonymity...
...Today, many of the firms that would once have been awarded government contracts are working as subcontractors to Guard-owned enterprises. In 2006 alone, Khatam Al-Anbia received a $2.09 billion contract to develop phases of a natural gas field known as South Pars, as well as a $1.2 billion contract to build a line of the Tehran metro, and a $1.3 billion contract to build a pipeline linking Iran to Pakistan...
...wealth accrued by high-ranking members of the IRGC by such contracts has raised concerns within the Iranian establishment, chiefly because it threatens to provoke the resentment of the organization's young, working-class rank and file. In 2001, three-quarters of Guard members voted for moderate President Mohammad Khatami, suggesting its majority have more in common with ordinary Iranians chafing under a poor economy, than with the hard-line newly rich leadership clique. In working-class districts of south Tehran, the discrepancy is visible among members of the Basij, a voluntary paramilitary organization that overlaps with the IRGC...
...Some analysts say the growing activities of the IRGC's engineering arm reflect an effort by the government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to extend the economic privileges within the Guard's lower ranks. "That the President owed his election to Basij support naturally supported this trend," says Farideh Farhi, an Iran expert and professor at the University of Hawaii...