Gulf News, United Arab Emirates
The Oil Truth and Nothing but the Oil Truth

“Under Saddam, it was impossible for any foreign company to get such a deal. This is enslavement of our country by those who say they came to liberate us.”

By Munir Daair*  

January 16, 2007
Gulf News - U.A.E. - Original Article (English)    

The coin finally dropped. Stealthily, but we heard it loud and clear.

It dropped while we were busy scratching our heads trying to figure out what plan America's current great leader, the eminent George W. Bush, has for Iraq; what truths were buried with Iraq's former great leader, the late eminent Saddam Hussain; and how bloody Iraq's civil war will become.

This, after busily listening to tales of WMD's (was that Words of Mass Deception?) and the lies "we are not there for Iraq's oil", after watching the sham of Iraq's election process and the billions gone missing under the watchful eyes of the occupying powers.

THE OIL TRUTH IS NOW UNFOLDING

Everything else was just a charade for America, as it quietly drafted Iraq's new oil law that will further enrich Bush and Cheney’s oil buddies for the next 30 years. In fact, a representative of the American company, BearingPoint, has been working in the US embassy in Baghdad to "assist" with the law, which is to be approved by Iraq's parliament.

This law - drafted in Washington and approved by U.S. oil companies before Iraqis themselves even heard of it - gives unprecedented partnership "rights" to American and Western oil giants.

An emotional Iraqi exile I happened to sit next to in a Paris café told me recently:

"Under Saddam, it was impossible for any foreign company to get such a deal. This is enslavement of our country by those who say they came to liberate us. Do they think we will allow them to extract our oil and sell it on such terms? This is theft from a nation under siege, exploiting our weakness at the point of a gun. They are kicking us while we're down. I opposed Saddam, that's why I have live exiled in France all these years. But now I am not sure. Maybe Saddam was better."

I asked him if he had gone back. He told me he had, for one year, "but I decided it was all a big lie. You can't work within the system unless you accept the occupation first and that's too much for me to accept".

We sat in silence while he slowly turned his coffee cup in circles, his eyes holding back tears. Then he took a deep breath and added, "I think it's time I go back again to help save the country from being ripped off completely."

As we put on our overcoats to walk into the dark and cold Parisian street outside, I asked him, "Will you work within the system?" He looked intently at me for a while, reached for his cup to sip the last bit of coffee, smiled and said, "I tried that the last time, it didn't work."

CONCESSIONS

Under the new American-drafted law, the Iraqi government will offer contractual concessions up to 30 years’ long to foreign companies, using a system known as a PSA (Production Sharing Agreement). In other words, American and other Western oil companies are being allowed to exploit Iraq's current predicament and negotiate self-serving, one-sided oil PSA's that will legally commit the entire country of Iraq for the next 30 years.

So it’s no surprise that Bush will order an additional 20,000 American soldiers to risk their lives in Iraq. They will be needed to fight "terrorism" which is sure to rise as Iraqis resist the raping of their country. The world will be treated to a continuing spectacle of bloodletting. Young Iraqis dying to stop - and young Anglo/Americans dying to ensure - the transfer of Iraqi wealth to Bush and Cheney's already rich friends.

When the Anglo-American conquerors lied to us by saying oil was not the reason they came to Iraq, they thought everything would go their way and that their lies would go unnoticed. After all, wasn't everything well planned? Intelligence on WMD was concocted; Iraqi women would rush out in streets with flowers and kisses to welcome the liberating GI's; overnight, 400,000 armed and trained Iraqi soldiers and their families would be made destitute, without repercussion.

We who warned against these dangerous American fantasies were accused of being naive. My inbox was swarmed with e-mails from America. "Do I really know Iraq and how fed up Iraqis are and how much they want the liberating forces to arrive?"

FUTURE REACTION

Oh, yes sir, we here know Iraq well - its history, its present - and we can predict its future reaction too, especially with foreign occupation.

We also know how naïve the occupying powers are. And that is also why we fear the ramifications of this latest oil law, this latest naivety, which will only provoke further bloodshed.  Yet more young Iraqi and Anglo/American blood will be wasted to expand the Bush/Cheney-related bank accounts.

Meanwhile, additional Iraqis - exiled first by Saddam's brutality, disillusioned now by their inability to help their country within the system - may find their way to the streets, outside the system.

Naive? Ask my coffee companion in Paris and thousands like him.

Better still. Ask the families of the dead, dying and maimed Iraqis and Anglo/Americans. They have a mouthful for you.

Munir Daair is a Yemeni political writer.