Page 2 of 3 THE ROVING
EYE US staying the course for Big Oil
in Iraq By Pepe Escobar
the breakup of the Washington/Shi'ite
majority government collaboration and their return
to power. The Nuri al-Maliki government - in fact,
any Shi'ite majority government - cannot possibly
quash militia hell and the non-stop carnage
because the Saudi-financed Sunni Arab guerrilla
identifies any government as an occupier's tool.
And there's not much Iran can do to crush
either the jihadis (not
more
than 1,300 operatives) or the 40,000-strong Sunni
Arab resistance at large: one cannot possibly
imagine the Republican Guards crossing the border
from Iran to fight pitched battles in Ramadi
alongside the US Army.
What could be
accomplished - even though it's an extremely long
shot - is a Shi'ite-majority government sharing
some measure of power and guaranteeing a
substantial share of oil-related profits to Sunni
parties. But certainly not under the terms of the
new oil law favoring Anglo-American Big Oil.
The axis of despair
Washington's impotence and bewilderment
are astonishing - considering the flurry of
extrication-from-Iraq wishful-thinking schemes. It
starts with being caught in the middle of a "Sunni
axis" - US ally/client regimes Egypt, Saudi
Arabia, Jordan and Kuwait - supporting Sunni Arab
politicians and most of all the anti-US Iraqi
guerrillas; and on the other side Shi'ite Iran and
pro-Hezbollah, pro-Palestine Syria (predominantly
Sunni) supporting sections of the
Shi'ite-dominated, US-backed Iraqi government.
The US may be squeezed between the Sunni
axis and Iran and Syria, but it's Iraq that's the
supreme battleground. Morbidly, Iraq is now also
configured as a remix of Taliban Afghanistan in
the 1990s: Wahhabi Saudi Arabia against "apostate"
Shi'ite Iran. Meanwhile, in Lebanon - another
battlefield - the Sunni axis supports the corrupt,
Saudi-related Hariri clan and the virtually
meaningless Fouad Siniora government, against Iran
and Syria supporting Hezbollah.
Many
Persian Gulf strategists tend to abhor the ISG
recommendation of reduced US troops in Iraq. They
either go for total US withdrawal (it won't happen
anyway) or at least doubling the current number of
145,000 troops. There are insistent rumors in
Dubai that Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates
and Kuwait - all Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries (OPEC) members and Gulf
Cooperation Council members as well - could
engineer, alongside the US, a substantial increase
in oil production to force prices below $40 a
barrel, thus really hurting Iran. But in this
case, Hugo Chavez' Venezuela would certainly use
all his influence inside OPEC to undermine the
move.
Inside Iraq, Sunnis - politicians,
not the resistance - want the US to take out the
Shi'ite militias, which means, in practice, the
Badr Organization (the paramilitary wing of the
Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in
Iraq, or SCIRI, thus part of the government) and
Muqtada's Mehdi Army. The Pentagon may be itching
to engage in a battle of Sadr City, the massive
Shi'ite slum in Baghdad, but that, like the
flattening of Fallujah, would accomplish nothing,
apart from horrific "collateral damage" and the
opening of another, deadlier anti-American
guerrilla front.
Suppose Bush finally
decides to bet on the return of the Ba'athists -
now represented by al-Awdah (The Return) party. An
overall amnesty for the Sunni Arab resistance
might be offered (unlikely: Maliki would be eaten
alive by Shi'ites everywhere). Anyway, the
guerrillas have never been interested in talking
to the Americans in the first place. Take the
heavily tribal, pro-Saddam Hussein al-Anbar
province. Even the US Marine Corps has admitted
that al-Qaeda in Iraq is the "dominant
organization of influence in al-Anbar", ahead of
the Sunni resistance, the government in Baghdad
and the US "in its ability to control the
day-to-day life of the average Sunni". At the same
time al-Awdah is also very powerful; so al-Qaeda
has to fight not only the Americans and the
Baghdad government but the neo-Ba'athists as well.
The resistance would never dissolve by
simply believing a US pitch on the Badr
Organization and the Mehdi Army also being
dissolved (by a Bush/Maliki joint decree?). On the
other side of the spectrum, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim,
leader of the SCIRI, as well as Muqtada would
never fall into this trap in the first place.
Iraqi Shi'ites fear that the White House
now wants a new Saddam. They should not worry (or
should they?): the only man with certified street
power in Baghdad to become a new Saddam is
Muqtada, which for the US is anathema. What
Shi'ite politicians - SCIRI and Da'wa - want most
of all is for the US to help them take out the
Sunni Arab guerrillas as well as al-Qaeda in Iraq.
In his recent visit to Washington, Hakim was
explicit: no US withdrawal. Instead, full speed
ahead against the Sunni Arab guerrillas, but not
against the Shi'ite militias (especially his own).
Muqtada, an Iraqi nationalist (and not an
Iranian puppet), in this case would disagree,
because he views the Sunni Arabs as a
