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LOCAL COMMENT: The battle for oil will never be won
October 18, 2004
BY EDWIN BLACK
America cannot succeed in Iraq until we understand the history we
ignored and recently repeated. For the past century, Iraq has offered
only one attraction to the Western powers: oil. It has been a fatal
attraction.
During World War I, Britain invaded Mesopotamia (as the three
neglected Turkish provinces were called) for oil . . .. This was
despite a British proclamation read aloud in Baghdad on May 18, 1918:
"Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or
enemies, but as liberators."
As part of that liberation, the British illegally seized the
most valuable oil lands in Mesopotamia, the Kurdish Mosul region, on
Nov. 7, 1918, a full week after the general armistice with Turkey. This
invasion enabled Britain to cobble three ethnically separate provinces
together -- Kurdish Mosul, Sunni Baghdad and Shi'ite Basra -- into a
single land that London would rename "Iraq," from an ancient Arab
cartographic designation.
The British then established Iraq as a nation for the sole
purpose of structuring the exploitation of its oil. Arnold Wilson, the
British civil administrator of Mesopotamia, the man who authorized
General William Marshall's unauthorized push into Mosul, wrote, "thanks
to General Marshall, we had established de facto, the principle that
Mosul is part of 'Iraq,' to use the geographical expression. Whether
for the woe or weal of the inhabitants, it is too soon to say."
But Arab and Islamic nationalists in the newly invented Iraq
did not want to share their land with infidel European Christians. Nor
did they choose to share European values of democracy and pluralism,
ideals that had never taken root in the Islamic Middle East for 7,000
years. It did not take long for the Iraqis to rise up in terror raids,
burning, bombing, kidnapping and killing westerners, including those
sent to develop the land and its waterways.
The outraged British response was aerial bombardment to shock
and awe the villages. But the Iraqi violence and the British resolve to
combat it. . . persisted, all for the oil wealth of Iraq.
After World War I, the British and the French, becoming ever
more dependent on oil, engineered a secret petroleum pact, sanctioned
by the League of Nations, which divided up oil drilling and pipeline
rights in Syria and Iraq. The oil pact was announced at San Remo the
same day the League of Nations granted mandates to Britain to rule
oil-rich Iraq, and France to rule Syria where the pipelines would run
to the Mediterranean. The British worked hard to instill democratic
values in Iraq, thus creating a stable environment for the oil to flow.
But it was a governance disaster, because the people did not want it.
Genocide against minorities, ethnic cleansing, repression, corruption
and neglect was the rule in Iraq for years.
Major John Glubb, the British officer who organized the Arab
Legion, complained bitterly in a letter to Whitehall: "We . . .
imagined that we had bestowed on the Iraqis all these blessings of
democracy. Nothing could be more undemocratic than the result. A
handful of politicians obtained possession of the machinery of
government, and all the elections were rigged. . . . In this process
they all became very rich."
For eight more decades, the West -- now with the United States
joining France and Britain -- has tried to hang on to its oil lifeline
in the Middle East, using diplomats, corporate surrogates and
militaries. That has only fueled the cycle of insurrection and now
world terrorism from a people who resent our presence and resource
exploitation, and have always understood better than anyone else
exactly why we are there. It is not the sand we crave; it is oil.
America will never succeed in Iraq if we once again naively
expect democracy to take root there and flourish. What can possibly
occur next week to transform that society that has not occurred for
7,000 years?
The only way to succeed in Iraq is to survive long enough to
intelligently withdraw, and then rapidly -- at breakneck speed --
develop alternative energy resources to detach us from this far-off
place where we are not wanted, where we should not be, and upon which
our industrialized world is now dependent.
This article is adapted from Edwin Black's new book, "Banking on
Baghdad, Inside Iraq's 7,000-year History of War, Profit and Conflict."
Black, author of three other books, will be speaking in Michigan this
week, including appearances Wednesday in Adrian, and Friday at Wayne
State University in Detroit and Temple Israel in West Bloomfield. For
details see www.bankingonbaghdad.com/events.php
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