Not So Big Secrets

Antonia Juhasz | 28.06.06

Juhasz is the author of the book The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time. She said today: “The real timeline driving the conclusion of the war is the oil timeline. The U.S. government has been methodically, relentlessly pursuing a new national oil law for Iraq with its roots in the State Department. According to Iraqi Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani, the oil law is two months away from being passed and six months away from being implemented. This would give U.S. firms unprecedented producing sharing agreements in Iraq. After that, U.S. firms would need U.S. troops for protection.”

Juhasz’s most recent piece, “Trading on terror to profit a few: The U.S.-Oman Free Trade Agreement deserves greater scrutiny as it makes its way in Congress under the radar,” was just published by the Los Angeles Times.

I continue to be mystified when so-called reputable sources insist on furthering the line that U.S. troops are in Iraq for any altruistic reason, because prior to and since the invasion, I’ve met no one in my daily travels who concurs. The debate has always been whether the U.S. is entitled to profit from Iraq’s resources, (and many I know are entirely enthusiastic about that prospect and always have been), and those who find it reprehensible/undoable.

But what I find even more astounding than America’s dogged denial of the big secret that everyone seems to be in on, except for a few die-hards super-glued to the flag, content to parrot rhetorical slogans but unable to elaborate on their meanings, are Iraqis either unable or unwilling to reconcile past differences and thwart the divide and conquer strategy that is threatening the future of their country and filling their morgues beyond capacity.

Patrick Cockburn reported 22.06.06:

The power of the Kurds has not just increased geographically. The President of Iraq, chosen by parliament in Baghdad last year, is Jalal Talabani, for many years the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), which is in control of eastern Kurdistan. The very able foreign minister of Iraq since 2003 has been Hoshyar Zebari, the former spokesman of the other main Kurdish party, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). Paradoxically, the most effective members of the Iraqi government in Baghdad are Kurds who at heart would like to have a legally independent state of their own. The best units in the new Iraqi army and security forces consist of Kurdish soldiers.

But for all their outward show of self-confidence, many Kurds worry about their future. Could this be the high tide of their fortunes? For the moment their position is strong, though this could change. They are firmly allied to the US, but Washington has shown no qualms about letting them down in the past. As it withdraws its troops from Iraq it may once again look to its old ally Turkey, with its large Kurdish community and visceral suspicion of the Iraqi Kurds.

Again, the Kurds are strong because the Arabs of Iraq, the Sunni and Shia communities, together making up 80 per cent of the population, are effectively fighting a civil war in and around Baghdad. But what would happen if they came together in future? Would not one of their first priorities be to rein in the Kurds, who are now so powerful?

Many influential positions in Iraq’s government are held by individuals who do not want to see a united Iraq, who do want the Sunni and Shia warring, and support ethnic cleansing carried out by Kurds. How is that not treasonous?

Cockburn continues:

Most Iraqi Arabs accept that the three northern, wholly Kurdish provinces should enjoy autonomy close to independence. The real differences arise in defining Kurdistan. The Kurds intend to roll back half a century of ethnic cleansing, above all in the oil province of Kirkuk, over which they have de facto military and political control. They want Arab settlers to return to their homes elsewhere in Iraq and Kurdish refugees to replace them. By 31 December 2007 there should be a referendum under which Kirkuk can vote to join the Kurdistan Regional Government.

The fate of Kirkuk province has traditionally been the single issue on which agreements between past governments in Baghdad and the Kurds have always broken. At the moment the Kurds have the strength to get most of what they want, though they might have to cede control of the heavily Arab western part of the province. But their determination to include Kirkuk in their Kurdish super-region convinces Arabs that, whatever the Kurds say, they are bent on practical independence.

Reversing ethnic cleansing with ethnic cleansing? Why should the Kurdish minorities in Mosul and Kirkuk be allowed to cleanse the cities of their Sunni Arab citizens? Beneficial to the Kurds and the U.S., poke in the eye to Turkey, the Sunni eat sand, yet the Sunni, instead of forging an alliance that should make sense to an Iraqi Sunni, though not to a Saudi Sunni, seem determined to make Shia eat the same.

Stratfor reported 22.06.06:

Up to this point, the Kurds have quite adeptly secured their position regarding oil revenues. Several key articles in the Iraqi Constitution were designed explicitly to serve the purpose of maintaining Kurdish oil rights:

Article 112 of the constitution states: “The federal government in cooperation with the producing regions and governorates shall administer the extracted (produced) oil and gas from existing oil and gas fields provided that the proceeds (revenues) are evenly distributed in accordance with the demographic distribution around the whole country, and a specific share of the proceeds for a specific period of time shall be allotted to the regions which were unjustly deprived by the previous regime, and were affected by it, to secure a balanced development of the different areas of the country and this shall be regulated by law.”

This section specifies that the central government’s powers do not extend to the actual process of extracting oil and gas, which includes exploring, drilling and managing producing fields. Instead, these powers fall to the regional governorates, while the central government handles the process of exporting and marketing oil and gas. Even in this scenario, the central government’s limited involvement in the process depends on whether federal and local administrators agree on “an even demographic distribution of the oil and gas proceeds (revenues),” and a specific additional share or top-up above the demographic rights, for a period of time for the deprived areas. The deprived areas should be read as the Kurdish north and Shiite governorates in the south.

Part 2 of Article 112 states: “The federal government together with the governments of the regions and governorates shall put in place (draw up) requisite strategic policies for the development of the natural oil and gas resources in order to achieve for the Iraqi people the highest benefits by adopting the most modern market-driven principles and techniques to encourage investments.”

However, should the local and federal governments fail to agree on the issues of developing fields or dividing revenues, the regional governorates are then empowered to implement their own laws.

This idea is outlined in Article 115, which explains how the regional laws supersede the federal laws: “Any rights that are not stated under the exclusive powers of the federal authorities shall come under the authorities of the regions and the governorates, and with regard to all the other jointly shared authorities between the federal government and the regions and governorates the priority shall go to the laws of the regions and the governorates in the case of conflicts between them.”

In addition to these guarantees, the constitution excludes any mention of new and undeveloped fields, unexplored areas or discovered fields. By leaving out this critical component of the constitution, the Kurds get de facto rights over the vast undeveloped oil fields in the north. Only 17 of 80 discovered fields in Iraq have been developed and only 2,300 wells have reportedly been drilled (of which 1,600 are actually producing oil).

Also, conveniently for the Kurds, the constitution does not specify who controls new contracts, production-sharing agreements and major service contracts. Since these instruments are not designated in the constitution, this authority falls to the regional governments. Despite what is written in the constitution, Iraqi Oil Minister Hussein Shahristani, a Shi’i close to top Shiite cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has insisted that the Ministry of Oil in Baghdad should handle all production, exports and exploration bids.

With these constitutional guarantees in place, the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in the relatively stable north has been cautiously moving forward in signing production-sharing agreements and memoranda of understanding with foreign oil companies, including Norway’s DNO and Turkey’s Genel Enerji, in the face of mounting opposition. On June 12, DNO announced that it had discovered 100 million barrels of oil in its 250-square-mile licensed area near the Turkish border in the Kurdish north.

As announcements of new oil tenders conducted by the KRG continue to creep into the media, the Sunni political faction has become increasingly unnerved. Fearing that they could be left on the losing end of the bargain once the insurgency wanes, Sunni political leaders are calling for the constitution to be amended to curb guarantees that clearly work in favor of the Kurds.

To amend the constitution, the Sunnis need a two-thirds majority. Theoretically, the Sunnis and Shia could work together to amend the constitution on a Pan-Arab vs. Kurd basis. Such a vote, however, would be extremely difficult to obtain. The Sunni faction combined has a total of 55 seats in the 275-seat parliament. To get a two-thirds majority, a large portion of the Shiite bloc would have to be on board with the Sunni vision of undermining regional autonomy. Such a strategy becomes complicated when one takes into account that a good chunk of the Shiite bloc has publicly campaigned for a federalist model for Iraq that would carve out a southern Shiite enclave. With a fair number of Shia interested in maintaining their regional authority, the Kurdish and Shiite interests in this scenario largely merge and work against Sunni interests.

The Kurds left Iraq the day the U.S. invaded it and are in the process of grabbing every bit of it they can before they let everyone in on the big secret. The Sunni and Shia should cut them loose now, and define Kurdistan’s borders.

Kurdistan will survive and prosper. The question seems to be, will Kurdish citizens prosper under the government?