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TWO years after the invasion of Iraq, there is new evidence that reaffirms the real motives of the war and uncovers the "fundamentals" that guide the George W. Bush administration's approach towards resource-rich West Asia. The Canadian author Linda McQuaig, in her well-researched book It's the Crude, Dude, exposes how oil has been central to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Among several arguments supporting her conclusion, Linda McQuaig quotes a revealing interview with Fadel Gheit, a leading oil analyst for the Wall Street firm Oppenheimer and Company. Asked if oil was a major factor that drove the invasion, Gheit said that Iraq was a "superstar of the future" and bigger than anything that the U.S. oil giant Exxon was involved in. He said: "That's why Iraq becomes the most sought-after real estate on the face of the earth."
Corroborating Linda McQuaig's conclusions, a recent report aired on BBC's Newsnight programme stressed that the Bush administration had planned a war to gain control of Iraq's oil well before the September 11, 2001 attacks in the U.S. The President's neoconservative allies inside the Pentagon played a key role in setting the administration's agenda on Iraq. "In fact, there were two conflicting plans, setting off a hidden policy war between the neoconservatives at the Pentagon, on one side, versus a combination of `Big Oil' executives and the U.S. State Department," the report said.
The BBC's investigation revealed that long before September 11, a series of meetings were held in California, Washington and West Asian locations to discuss Iraq. Ahmed Chalabi, a former exile and now a leading Iraqi politician, was a prominent player in these discussions. Quoting an Iraqi-born oil industry consultant, Falah Aljibury, the report concluded that the State Department originally favoured forcing a coup d'etat to topple the government of President Saddam Hussein. A "secret plan" was drafted prior to the invasion in 2003, which advocated the sale of all of Iraq's oilfields. The report said: "The new plan was crafted by neoconservatives intent on using Iraq's oil to destroy the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) cartel through massive increases in production above OPEC quotas. The sell-off was given the green light in a secret meeting in London headed by Ahmed Chalabi shortly after the U.S. entered Baghdad."
Analysts now point out that the purpose of the invasion was not the fulfilment of U.S. energy requirements. In fact, the U.S. had ample resources within and outside West Asia to cater to its demand for oil. On the contrary, Washington was looking at the political bonanza that would follow if it could get a secure hold over the Iraqi oilfields and consolidate its ascendancy over the rest of the region. In an editorial titled "Invasion Motives", the progressive U.S. journal Monthly Review said that by establishing a military hold over Iraqi oil and entrenching itself in resource-rich West Asia, the U.S. intended to monopolise power in order to marginalise possible rival centres across the globe. The editorial noted that it was "not just direct control of [West Asia] that is at issue, since other regions such as Europe, Japan and China would be vulnerable to any power that has military, economic and political ascendance over [West Asia] and its oil".
THE U.S. claim that the invasion was about removing Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) was trashed long ago. In fact, by early October 2004, Charles Duelfer, the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) top weapons inspector, "officially" confirmed in a 918-page report delivered to two U.S. congressional committees that Iraq did not have WMDs at the time of the invasion.
The repeated assertion of the Bush administration that the invasion should be seen as part of its mission to democratise West Asia has sounded hollow, given the U.S. track record in the region. Dilip Hiro, one of the leading specialists on West Asia, says: "The United States flaunts the banner of democracy in [West Asia] only when that advances its economic, military, or strategic interests." Among numerous examples, he points to the March 1949 CIA-aided coup in support of the Syrian strongman Husni Zaim in order to overthrow an elected government that was unfriendly to Israel.
The U.S. has also, for long, established special relations with Saudi Arabia's monarchy. Hiro points out that Saudi Arabia has, over the years, served two of the U.S.' core objectives. First, it has been a reliable source of oil. Second, it has played a significant role in the past to prevent the emergence of democracy in neighbouring countries, including Kuwait and Bahrain.
The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is another case in point. In unusually free elections held in 1989, the Islamic Action Front (IAF) - the political wing of the radical Muslim Brotherhood - emerged as a major political player. A year later, bowing to the demands from the grassroots, the late King Hussein called for a negotiated settlement of the crisis that had resulted from Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Washington responded angrily and described Hussein as a "dwarf King". Succumbing to U.S. pressure, Jordan went back into the U.S. fold after the 1991 Gulf War. It changed its electoral law by decree, preventing the re-emergence of a strengthened IAF in the next elections.
Yemen is another classic example of how the U.S.' "national interests" took precedence over its stated commitment to democratic principles. The Republic of Yemen was formed after the unification of North and South Yemen in 1991. The country opted for a multiparty system and in 1993 became the first nation in the Arabian peninsula to hold elections based on universal suffrage. The historic event went unnoticed in the U.S. Washington continued to rebuff Yemen because it opposed the 1991 Gulf War and supported an Arab solution to the Kuwait crisis.
TWO years of U.S. occupation has resulted in incalculable human suffering in Iraq. The unrestrained use of force, including that of air power and artillery, flattened the city of Falluja and caused massive civilian casualties. It is now well known that the Americans made an example of Falluja in order to deter other cities, such as Ramadi and Mosul, from revolting against the occupation. Juan Cole, an Iraq specialist at the University of Michigan, records: "The city [of Falluja] appears to be in ruins and perhaps uninhabitable in the near future. Of 300,000 residents, only about 9,000 seem to have returned, and apparently some of those are living in tents above the ruins of their homes.... The scale of this human tragedy - the dispossession and displacement of 300,000 persons - is hard to imagine." Prior to the U.S. assault on Falluja in November 2004, the British medical journal Lancet, in a pioneering study, concluded that over 100,000 Iraqi civilians had been killed since the March 2003 invasion. Most of them were victims of U.S. aerial bombardment. The Americans, in other words, killed more civilians in two years than what Saddam Hussein was accused of killing during his over-two-decade-long stint in power.
The U.S. death toll now stands above 1,520. But an analysis of the background of those killed shows a disturbing pattern. Many of the dead appear to have come from poorer families residing outside the U.S. heartland. In a recent article, "Deconstructing Iraq: Year Three Begins", political commentator Tom Engelhardt pointed out that 43 per cent of the U.S. troops killed in Iraq came from small towns with a population of 20,000 or less, where the majority of Americans do not reside. Nearly 24 per cent of the U.S. Army recruits have come traditionally from African-American backgrounds.
The security situation is abysmal. The Christian Science Monitor, in a recent report, said that Iraqi guerillas now dominated all roads leading out of Baghdad. The Iraqi capital is "still one of the most dangerous cities in the world" and "is ringed with peril". Recognising how dangerous the roads are, U.S. personnel residing in Baghdad's high-security "green zone" are sent by helicopter to the airport in case they have to fly out of the capital. Iraq has been unsafe for journalists, with 39 of them killed in 2004 alone. Many of the journalists killed, including some belonging to Arab satellite television stations, were not "embedded" with U.S. forces. Asserting that independent journalism outside the corporate media in Iraq had become virtually impossible, a representative of the Dubai-based Al Arabia television channel said: "We no longer know what's really going on because we can no longer get close to reality." Al Arabia's better-known rival, Al Jazeera, has been disallowed from operating in Iraq.
The experience of Giuliana Sgrena, the Italian journalist who was nearly killed by U.S. troops after her kidnappers released her on March 5, lends credence to the suspicion that Americans deliberately discouraged unbiased reporting from Iraq (Frontline, April 8). Giuliana Sgrena barely managed to survive, but Nicola Calipari, the Italian secret service agent escorting her, was killed in a hail of gunfire from a U.S.-manned checkpoint near the Baghdad airport.
Pier Scolari, Giuliana Sgrena's colleague who was with her, later said that the firing was deliberate. "The Americans and Italians knew about [her] car coming," he said on leaving Rome's Celio military hospital where Giuliana Sgrena underwent a surgery to remove shrapnel. "They were 700 meters from the airport, which means that they had passed all checkpoints."
Giuliana Sgrena, who worked for the Left-leaning Italian daily Il Manifesto, was, at the time of her kidnapping, writing about the plight of refugees from Falluja who were seeking shelter in a Baghdad mosque following the U.S. bombardment of their city. Giving details of her abduction, Giuliana Sgrena said that her kidnappers had warned her that the Americans could kill her after her release.
Despite the strife, suffering and anti-war protests, the Americans appear nowhere close to pulling out of Iraq. Glued to achieving its strategic goals, centred on controlling West Asia's energy reserves, the Bush administration is stubbornly pursing its imperial agenda. Reliable reports suggest that the U.S. is constructing 14 military bases in the occupied country - a clear indication that, if allowed, the Americans will remain in Iraq for a long time to come.
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