164. The first of the oil wars
The Oil War of 2003-- the first of what will surely be many to come in
the coming decades as oil resources face a steep decline -- was
based on a complete miscalculation by president Bush and vice-president
Cheney. This was that America, which had been excluded for years by
Saddam Hussein from having any oil contracts in Iraq, would invade Iraq,
topple Saddam and instal a friendly government which would then make
contracts with US and UK oil corporations, thus guaranteeing future oil
supplies if those from Saudi Arabia faltered or failed in the future due
to revolution.
The first step succeeded -- perhaps too easily because it induced
complacency in the American armed forces in the first few days of
occupation. The second step has not yet been taken. Saddam's many statues
have been toppled but not Saddam himself. He is still at large. The third
step failed when Chalabi and his 300 well-armed bodyguards air-lifted in
from outside Iraq, and sponsored by America, was unable to find enough
political allies in the immediate aftermath. Without that support and the
subsequent support of enough of the population he was unable to act on
behalf of the Americans. Before too long a more balanced Governing
Council had to be chosen by America, but it was already too late for
rapid decisions and Chalabi found himself only as the chairman of a
diverse committee that represented most of the political forces in Iraq,
not its decision-maker. Most of these representatives on the Council have
totally opposed ingterests and so Chalbi was stymied from then onwards.
He simply couldn't take the decisions which were originally hoped for by
the Americans.
The fourth step failed, too, when the oil corporations refused to start
any sort of oil development until there was a legitimate government in
Iraq. Even Bush and Cheney's fallback position failed when Bush Senior
and Henry Kissinger, Nixon's formner Secretary of State failed to
persuade LUKoil at a meeting in St Petersburg to resume the development
contract that it had originally signed with Saddam.
At the time of writing, president Bush now has absolutely no leg to stand
on except to hope that some almost miraculous events happen in the next
few weeks, or a couple of months at the most, such as the capture of
Saddam (which would be a public relations coup for Bush's autumn election
next year), and that the Governing Council could somehow engineer a
credible government in Iraq which would then be accepted internationally
as legitimate and which could then sign contracts with US and UK oil
corporations. But, as Fergal Keen writes at the end of his article below:
"The mounting crisis in Baghdad may soon reach a point where it is
beyond the political powers of Mr Bush or Mr Blair to achieve a
reverse."
Fergal Keen, arguably only slightly behind John Simpson as the most
respected BBC foreign affairs journalist, writes why he thinks so, based
on his observations immediately after the fall of Baghdad, especially of
the widespread plunderings of ammunition and arms all over Iraq by groups
which undoubtedly became terrorist groups, and also on the previous
experience of governments in various parts of the world when faced with
terrorism.
But before I show Fergal Keen's article, another excellent one on Iraq
appeared in today's Financial Times. This is a most careful
appraisal of the religious and political balance of forces in Iraq that I
have read in recent months and it is a very useful, and fascinating,
introduction to the terrorist theme that Keen takes up in his
article.
Keith Hudson
P.S. Just at the time that this is being posted, Chalabi has announced in
Baghdad that the Governing Council will appoint a Provisional Government
of Iraqis. It is stated that this will be welcomed by Iraqis within the
country and foreign governments. This is strongly to be doubted, or
indeed, whether it is even possible that a Provisional Government can be
formed, if the analyses of the following writers are to be relied upon.
<<<<
THE KEEPER OF IRAQ'S KEYS
Charles Clover, David Gardner and Roula Khalaf
As the Bush administration this week found itself forced to re-examine
its Iraq policy and start accelerating the handover of power to Iraqis,
the man who is, arguably, most responsible for this rethink was nowhere
to be seen.
Ali Sistani did not say a word, was not seen in public and, at least
directly, took no part in negotiations. Yet the grand ayatollah,
nominally above the fray as Iraq's highest-ranking Shia religious
authority, is ultimately the main influence behind the U-turn that the
US-led occupation authority is coming to see as the last chance to
prevent postwar Iraq from sliding into a protracted guerrilla
conflict.
At the beginning of July, Mr Sistani issued a fatwa, or religious
edict, that the Coalition Provisional Authority run by Paul Bremer, the
US viceroy in Iraq, would have done well to examine more closely. It
rejected as "fundamentally unacceptable" US plans to nominate
an advisory council of leading Iraqis who would also be responsible for
writing a new constitution.
Communicating through mainly United Nations intermediaries - he has
refused to deal with Mr Bremer - the grand ayatollah demanded an Iraqi
provisional government and an elected assembly to draw up the
constitution. The authority and its masters in the Pentagon revised their
plans, to nominate instead a "governing" council, made up
mostly of exiles and with indeterminate powers. But still they baulked at
surrendering control to an elected constituent assembly.
Violence has since spiralled out of control. The transition from Saddam
Hussein's dictatorship has been stuck between the competing frameworks of
Mr Sistani and Mr Bremer, leaving a vacuum for the largely Sunni Muslim
insurgents to exploit.
Those devising policy in Washington, like those improvising government in
Baghdad, have taken a long time to grasp that one of the keys to control
of Iraq lies in Najaf, the Shia shrine-city in the south of Iraq where Mr
Sistani holds sway at the head of the Hawza, the supreme religious
authority.
The Anglo-American invasion forces certainly sought to use Mr Sistani's
influence as they stormed through the Shia heartland on their way up to
Baghdad in April. They put it about that he had issued a fatwa
urging his co-religionists not to resist the occupation. This was no
more true than the coalition's pre-scripted claims of Shia uprisings
across the south. But certainly the religious authority of Mr Sistani and
the Hawza restrained their people, and averted most of the looting and
score-settling that erupted in and around Baghdad. At the same time,
while US troops are engaged against remnants of the Hussein regime, Sunni
Islamists and aggrieved tribes in the so-called Sunni triangle north and
west of Baghdad, the Hawza has resisted pressure among the Shia to launch
a jihad against the occupation.
"There is a sense that Sistani has basically done right by the
coalition," says a western diplomat. "He could have made it
difficult. But he's kept the lid on the Shia - so that people would pay
attention to what he says."
Indeed, Mr Sistani's influence has so far delivered a sort of
acquiescence in the occupation in the south, a suspicious, often sullen,
yet expectant attitude, as the Shia - a minority in most of the Arab
world but a majority of Iraq's 25m people - feel they might at last come
into the political inheritance they have long been denied.
The grand ayatollah, 75, comes from a Shia tradition that believes the
clergy should strive for maximum spiritual influence yet stay out of
government. But there is more politics in this ostensible
"quietism" than meets the eye.
It was Shia clerics who fomented and led the rebellion against the
British colonial power in the 1920s that, in the view of clerics close to
Mr Sistani, cemented the hegemony of the Sunni minority into place for
the next 80 years. "We Shia see the 1920 revolution as a beautiful
act of martyrdom," says Ayatollah Hussein al-Sadr, a supporter of Mr
Sistani. "But we will never forget that we gave a great deal and got
nothing in return." Nor do the Shia forget what happened to their
intifada after the 1991 Gulf war. They were encouraged by the
first President Bush to rise up, but when Mr Hussein counter-attacked,
the allies left them to be butchered in their tens of thousands. Mr
Sistani is as aware as anyone that the Shia sense of betrayal runs
deep.
Born in Mashad in Iran, the young Sistani was renowned for his piety,
beginning his studies of the Koran aged five. He moved to Najaf in his
20s to study under Grand Ayatollah Abu Qassim al-Khoi, the then spiritual
leader of the Iraqi Shia. Khoi singled him out early as his successor. He
gave the 31-year-old Mr Sistani the right to practise ijtihad - to
reach judgments adapting the revealed Koran and the doings and sayings of
the Prophet Mohammed to modern circumstances - and in 1987 made him his
prayer leader. When Khoi died in 1992, Mr Sistani succeeded him, only to
be put under house arrest by the regime.
While Mr Sistani appeared to stay aloof from politics, a rival cleric,
Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, began forging Shia networks between farmers,
tribesmen and slum-dwellers, efforts that led to his assassination in
1999. His radicalised son, Muqtada al-Sadr, now challenges Mr Sistani and
the Hawza, accusing them of sponsoring a quisling regime. This struggle
for influence among the Shia, as well as Sunni resentment at their loss
of power, are but two elements confounding the US-led stewardship of
Iraq.
Supporters of the young Mr Sadr are suspected of the murder in April of
Abdel-Majid al-Khoi, the pro-western son of the late grand ayatollah. In
late August, Ayatollah Baqr al-Hakim, scion of another rival clerical
dynasty, was killed by a car-bomb in Najaf. Last month, Sadr and Sistani
loyalists shot it out in the streets of Kerbala for control of local
shrines.
Authority officials have cited such events as a reason for not risking
any election - they angered all factions in Najaf by cancelling local
elections there in June that they feared radicals would win. But the
Hawza draws the opposite conclusion. "America does not want to
acknowledge it is incapable of controlling the situation and rebuilding
Iraq," said Akram Zubeidi, a spokesman for Mr Sistani, in
August.
Lack of political (as well as security) progress is bringing the Bush
administration round. To have any chance of stabilising the situation
before the presidential elections in the US next year, Washington will
have to listen more to Najaf. Leaders across Iraq's ethnic and religious
spectrum are also realising they will have to address Mr Sistani's
concerns. "It's clear that a majority of political leaders want some
kind of elected constitutional assembly, because Sistani is holding
firm," says an Iraqi official. "He doesn't want the US to
remake our society the way they want rather than the way we
want."
What form the transition will now take in Iraq is still unclear. But it
will have to take Mr Sistani fully into account. "The [July]
fatwa is a reality and we can't reverse it," says a member of
Iraq's governing council. "We can't ignore it or confront it. We
have to work around it."
Financial Times -- 15 November 15 2003
>>>>
<<<<
FACE THE TRUTH: TERRORISTS IN IRAQ HAVE THE OCCUPYING POWERS ON THE
RUN
Is this the moment Washington began to give in to terrorism or merelt
made a pragmatic altering of course?
Fergal Keen
A few days after Baghdad fell I was driving north on the main highway
towards Tikrit. The town was just about to fall and our vehicle was
wedged in with a long column of US Marines. Half way up the road we
witnessed an astonishing human flood spilling across the road.
Scores of men rushed across the traffic carrying stacks of assault
rifles, rocket launchers, rockets and boxes of ammunition. They watched
the Americans to see if they would act and when nothing happened they
simply deposited the weapons and ran back across the road. They
were busy looting a huge arms store.
Two days later we left Tikrit and were forced to take a longer road
through the countryside. On the smaller country road we passed groups of
men standing around holding assault rifles. Then we reached a pontoon
bridge. The traffic had stalled and we waited to cross. A colleague
nudged me in the ribs. "Look outside the window," she said. I
did and my heart sank. There were perhaps 20 men and boys hauling machine
guns and rifles out of the local police station. There were grenades too
and more rockets. A local came up to the window of the car, looked in at
us and drew his finger across his throat.
Every time I hear about an attack on the coalition forces in Iraq I tend
to remember those chaotic days in the aftermath of Saddam's fall. That
was when a too small American force stood back while many of Iraq's
armouries were systematically looted. How many of those weapons, I
wonder, have now been turned on the men who came to liberate
Baghdad?
Yet had anybody suggested to coalition commanders back then that they
would have been confronted with this uprising, they would have been given
short shrift. Nobody in command wanted to believe this scenario was
possible; therefore they did not consider it. Now they are making up
policy and tactics on the hoof. With each suicide attack the casualties
climb so that the death of one or two American soldiers in a roadside
bomb is no longer news. The dead are counted in tens and we are overtaken
by what the people of Ulster called "the politics of the last
atrocity".
One of the most commonly articulated views of democratic states when
confronted with the threat of terrorism, however variously expressed, is
that they will never give in to terrorism. We will not give in. The
British government said it for years in Ulster. They said it also in
Kenya and in mandate-era Palestine. In Iraq the British and American
governments have been saying the same thing for some months
now.
Yet in Iraq the proponents of terror have succeeded in pressing the White
House to a point of significant change. In later years the historians
will argue whether this was the moment Washington began to give in to
terrorism, or merely made a pragmatic altering of course. What they will
not argue about is that Washington began to accelerate the process of'
"Iraqisation" only after the Iraqi resistance seized control of
the initiative. Well-funded and trained terrorists will always have an
advantage.
The latter point is particularly pertinent in Iraq; Rarely can an
insurgency have gone on for so long (it began within weeks of the war
ending) with so little definite intelligence on the identity of the
attackers. Six months on the media and the spooks are reduced to the
vaguest of terminologies, with "regime loyalists" and
"foreign extremists" being the shorthand for a physical threat
we cannot truly describe. There is no equivalent of Sinn Fein or Herri
Batasuna (the political wing of ETA) to speak for the armed groups. Thus
there are no embarrassing questions about atrocities for spokesmen to
answer at press conferences, nor is there any political pressure group to
infiltrate or with whom negotiations could, perhaps, be conducted. There
is nothing but blood and the threat of more blood. Some observers are
inclined to see this as evidence of a disorganised, opportunistic
insurgency.
I very much doubt that. Those who are attacking coalition troops and
Iraqi policemen are operating to a very calculating strategy. It suggests
not only that they are organised but also that they work to a centrally
dictated agenda. That may or may not be Saddam Hussein or his surviving
henchmen, but the organisers of the attacks have access to large weapons
caches and have plenty of funds. They also know how to run a guerrilla
war.
Part of George Bush's problem is that he is operating to a frantically
unrealistic timetable. In the short space of a month the guerrillas visit
several high-profile attacks and the level of political nervousness in
Washington becomes feverish. Paul Bremer is summoned for urgent talks at
the White House and is sent back to Baghdad with instructions to give
Iraq back to the Iraqis damned quick.
Meanwhile the Japanese join the list of countries thinking better of
sending troops to Iraq. This will have been watched with quiet glee by
the insurgents. For they know as well as the CIA how miserably unprepared
Iraq is for a swift transfer to local rule. And they will see any rush to
"Iraqise" as proof that their campaign is working.
To whom should the Americans deliver power? Most observers of the fervid
Baghdad political scene advise strongly against the Iraqi Governing
Council, which has no collective legitimacy. The Americans now talk of
holding elections within the first six months of next year in the hope
that a representative body will emerge.
But none of that addresses the crisis that has undermined the Iraqi state
from the days of its foundation: the division between the Sunni elite and
the majority Shia population. The current violence may be just as much a
fight for the survival of Sunni influence in Iraq as it is about driving
the Americans out, maybe even more so. The Shia watch this nervously,
knowing that a moment of bloody truth with the Sunni groups may be
looming.
In the first days after occupation I watched demonstrations involving
both Shia and Sunni clerics. They called for one Iraq and respect among
all followers of Islam. But that was another country. The violence is
breeding its own dynamics of mistrust. If the Sunni who are carrying out
the attacks in the so-called "Sunni triangle" fear a
Shia-dominated future, they are correct in one respect. The Shia feel
historically oppressed but the violence of the past few months, including
the murder of one of their most senior clerics, has hardened their
determination to resist Sunni supremacists, by force if needs
be.
On one level the idea of an election is hugely attractive. The simple
fact of allowing citizens to have a choice where none has ever been
allowed could unleash a "people power" dynamic against
violence. But that depends on being able to create an environment secure
enough for a vote and six months seems a perilously short time in which
to try to achieve that. The mounting crisis in Baghdad may soon reach a
point where it is beyond the political powers of Mr Bush or Mr Blair to
achieve a reverse.
The writer is a BBC Special Correspondent
The Independent 15 November 2003
>>>>
Keith Hudson, Bath, England,
<www.evolutionary-economics.org>
