- Who should be more worried, asks Kenneth Davidson, Saddam;
or the French and Russian oil companies presently in Iraq?
-
-
- France and Russia have oil companies and interests in
Iraq. They should be told that if they are of assistance in moving Iraq
towards decent government, we'll do the best we can to ensure that the
new government and American companies will work with them. If they throw
their lot with Saddam, it will be difficult to the point of impossible
to persuade the new Iraq government to work with them. Former CIA director
James Woolsey, quoted in The Washington Post, September 15, 2002. So there
you have it. The Bush administration may be telling the world that the
reason the UN Security Council has to approve an allied attack on Iraq
is because of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capability, but the real
reason France and Russia are being told to get on board the US military
bandwagon is Iraq's oil reserves.
-
- According to The Washington Post, all five permanent
members of the Security Council - the US, Britain, France, Russia and China
- have international oil companies with major stakes in a change of leadership
in Baghdad. The Washington Post is one of the major media vehicles through
which members of the American establishment talk to each other.
-
- It is clear the real issue here is who controls Iraqi
oil.
-
- Neither the US nor Britain - nor Australia for that matter
- has produced any credible evidence to back up the ostensible reason for
an attack on Iraq, or "regime change" (read assassination of
Saddam).
-
- The debate about how the US should go about getting control
of Iraqi oil has been blunt and to the point. The new regime that the US
intends to impose on Iraq will not honour any of the agreements made between
the old regime and oil companies around the world.
-
- As the Post points out, since the Gulf War in 1991, companies
from more than a dozen nations have either reached or sought agreements
to develop Iraqi oil fields or repair existing facilities.
-
- According to the latest US Department of Energy background
paper on Iraq, published in March, the UN had warned in 2000 of a "major
breakdown" in Iraq's oil industry if spare parts and equipment were
not forthcoming.
-
- The US said any extra money should only be used "for
short-term improvements to the Iraqi oil industry and not to make long-term
repairs".
-
- The US Department of Energy said: "As of early January,
2002, the head of the UN Iraq program, Benon Sevan, expressed 'grave concern'
at the volume of 'holds' put on contracts for oilfield development, and
stated the entire program was threatened with paralysis. According to Sevan,
these holds amounted to nearly 2000 contracts worth about $5 billion ($A9
billion), about 80 per cent of which were 'held' by the US."
-
- The Iraqi regime-in-waiting, politely known as the Iraqi
National Congress (an umbrella group financed by US oil interests), has
made plain that it will not be bound by any of these deals.
-
- The INC leader, Ahmed Chalabi, is quoted in the Post
as saying he favoured the creation of a US-led consortium to develop Iraq's
oil fields. Iraq's oil fields are second only to Saudi Arabia, controlled
by the US through the House of Saud, which the US has guaranteed to protect
against external or internal threats.
-
- According to the US Department of Energy: "Iraq
contains 112 billion barrels of proven reserves along with roughly 220
billion barrels of probable and possible resources. Iraq's true resource
potential may be far greater than this, however, as the country is relatively
unexplored due to years of war and sanctions."
-
- There is nothing new in the US/British policy in the
Middle East and in Iraq in particular.
-
- Iraq was a client state or, in polite terms, an ally.
Client states are defined, according to US academic Noam Chomsky, by their
obedience, not their values. Saddam was given diplomatic cover for as long
as he was obedient to US interests. Now, he is damned as a monster.
-
- A client oil state was first defined by Lord Curzon,
who was the British foreign secretary after World War I. He said it was
an "Arab facade ruled and administered under British guidance and
controlled by a native Mohammedan and, as far as possible, by an Arab staff
. . . There should be no actual incorporation of the conquered territory
in the dominions of the conqueror, but the absorption may be veiled by
such constitutional fictions as a protectorate, a sphere of influence,
a buffer state and so on".
-
- The US took over the British imperial prize in the Middle
East after WWII. The official US State Department history (1945, volume
8, page 45) noted: "These resources constituted a stupendous source
of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history
. . . probably the richest economic prize in the world in the field of
foreign investment."
-
- The US is not going to give Iraq up without a fight,
even if the main cost will be damage to its reputation as a good global
citizen.
-
- If Australia follows its present course - a more sophisticated
version of "all the way with LBJ" - we will share the cost, but
without the minor benefits that might be available to the four members
of the Security Council, which the US wants on side to provide a moral
fig leaf for its policy in the Middle East.
-
- Kenneth Davidson is a staff columnist. dissentmagazine@ozemail.com.au
-
-
- http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/09/22/1032055034013.html
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