The Iraqi people understand why their country has been reduced from an advanced country in their region to one from which 60,000 flee their homes each month...
Smash and grab in Iraq
WORKERS, NOV 2007 ISSUE
British military officers are sometimes a source of insight into the failures of US tactics in Iraq. Brigadier Nigel Aylwin-Foster, Deputy Commander of the Office of Security Transition in the Coalition Office for Training and Organizing Iraq's Armed Forces, has written in the journal Military Review, "U.S. Army personnel were too inclined to consider offensive operations and destruction of the insurgents as the key to a given situation," without due regard for protecting the population.
The brigadier certainly has a point, but the implication given in such criticisms is usually that if only British army tactics were followed the dire military situation there might be saved.
Strategic failure
It is at the much higher level of strategy that we must look for the reasons for failure, and Britain is at the heart of that. Take the key issue of Iraq's oil. Remember when Blair told us, "the very reason we're taking the action we are is nothing to do with oil"? Remember when he told Parliament that "people falsely claim that we want to seize" Iraq's oil? What has actually happened?
Iraq has proven reserves of 115 billion barrels, 10 per cent of global reserves, the world's biggest untapped market. The multinational oil companies only own 4 per cent of the world's oil, and there is a growing trend towards nationalisation, from Venezuela to Kazakhstan. So in 2004, the Foreign Office held talks with Britain's oil companies. Then BP and Shell, together with Chevron, Exxon, Total and ENI hired Washington-based corporate lobbyist the International Tax and Investment Center. Unsurprisingly, the ITIC, advised by the Foreign Office and the Treasury, said that production-sharing agreements (PSAs) were the only way forward for Iraq. The PSAs are like colonial-era concessions, giving the companies virtually unlimited profits.
None of the top six OPEC countries uses PSAs. Instead they have service contracts, which allow the state to keep full authority over all production decisions and consign the companies to the role of contractor. The British Ambassador to Iraq himself sent the ITIC report to Iraq's Finance Minister. Now the oil companies, the US and British governments and the International Monetary Fund are trying to force through a law allowing 100 per cent foreign ownership of all Iraq's oilfields. It would allow foreign companies to explore, develop, produce and sell Iraq's oil under exclusive contracts lasting up to 30 years.
Call for oil in public hands
However, the 26,000 members of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions want a unified oil industry in public hands. They organised a meeting in September, "Oil wealth belongs to the Iraqi people".
The Iraqi government, reapplying Saddam's laws banning unions in the public sector, has ruled the union illegal and wants to shut it down, breaching Iraq's Constitution, which endorses the right to form unions. The oil minister has refused to recognise it. Yet it is strong enough to force Iraq's Prime Minister to meet it to discuss pay and the oil law.
In June, the government issued arrest warrants against the union's leaders and Iraqi troops occupied the oil fields to foil strike threats. The TUC has condemned the government's thuggish tactics and called for recognition of the union and negotiations.
Just like home: corporate power and multinationals everywhere.
Photo: US ArmyThe Iraqi people understand why their country has been reduced from an advanced country in their region to one from which 60,000 flee their homes each month. They see an average of 62 violent deaths a day. Four million people regularly cannot buy enough to eat and 70 per cent are without decent water supplies. And the British government and military talk about the importance of winning "hearts and minds"!
Take the question of Iraq's children, who represent the future for Iraqis. What has the Iraq war – which Brown has supported without reservation from its outset to the present day – brought to them?
Iraq's Ministry of Health estimates that half of the country's children suffer from malnutrition. According to a recent study by UNICEF, 10 per cent of Iraqi children under five are acutely malnourished, while another 20 per cent are chronically malnourished. 260,000 children have died as a result of the occupation, according to one estimate.
Less than a third of Iraq's children now attend school, compared with 100 per cent attendance before the March 2003 invasion. A recent survey of Baghdad primary schools showed that 70 per cent of those who do go to school suffer symptoms of trauma-related stress, due directly to the destruction, mass slaughter and chaos caused by war and occupation.
The war has orphaned countless Iraqi children and, as the United Nations reports, "Thousands of homeless children throughout Iraq ... survive by begging, stealing or scavenging garbage for food. Only four years ago, the vast majority of these children were living at home with their families."
The virtual collapse of the Iraqi health service – once the best in the Middle East – has been particularly tragic for Iraqi children. Earlier this year, 100 prominent British doctors wrote an open letter to Blair expressing their extreme concern over the impact of the occupation on Iraqi children: "We are concerned that children are dying in Iraq for want of medical treatment. Sick or injured children, who could otherwise be treated by simple means, are left to die in their hundreds because they do not have access to basic medications or other resources. Children who have lost hands, feet and limbs are left without prostheses. Children with grave psychological distress are left untreated."
Hearts and minds, indeed. It is a totally hypocritical, morally bankrupt operation in Iraq, doomed to pull us all down with the Iraqi people while enriching the oil companies and others involved there.
Meanwhile the Bush-Brown campaign in Afghanistan is beginning to unravel with potentially even higher costs. One British military officer has put it quite bluntly, without merely trying to blame US tactics. Brigadier John Lorimer, commander of British troops in Helmand province, recently said, "There is no military solution to this." He also said, "This is a counter-insurgency operation which is going to take time. It could last a decade. The counter-narcotic problem, which is huge, could take another 25 years. The British Ambassador has said it will take 30 years. He has often said that this mission is a marathon, not a sprint, and he is absolutely right." He admitted that the Afghan government might eventually be forced to negotiate with the Taliban if peace was ever to be achieved. So why not do it now?