Culture Change Media International Editor
New York, N.Y. July 24, 2004

It would appear to be politically impossible for
Washington to leave the Iraqi Sunnis without the income from oil.  If the nation is
split up amongst the three main populations, the Sunnis get left behind in
oil resources.  So, the need to placate the Saudis and the other
Sunni rulers of the Gulf states is the real reason that causes the U.S. to
perpetuate the Iraqi internal warfare. - PJ

New York  -  The U.S. Mission to the United
Nations on July 23, 2004 organized a briefing on human rights abuses in Iraq
under the former regime.  The meeting was held across the street from
the United Nations in New York and was chaired by Mr. Andrew S. Natsios, the
Washington D.C.-based Administrator of the US Agency for International
Development (USAID).

The panel included Mr. Jano Rosebiani, Director-Producer of Evini Film
Productions, who is an expert on Iraq’s Mass Graves; an Iraqi Kurd; Taimour,
a second Iraqi Kurd (last name withheld) who was only 12 years old in 1988
when he survived a massacre.  One hundred ten members of his own
extended family were slaughtered by machine guns in mass graves, so he fled
to the United States and hopes to testify in the trial of Saddam
Hussein.  Lastly, on the panel was Ibrahim Razzouki, member of a
politically important Shia family from Baghdad who was in and out of
Saddam’s jails 1986-2003.  When liberated he established The Free
Prisoners Association of Iraq with offices in 17 locations in Iraq, his
group also provides funding to dig up mass graves and uncover locations of
secret prisons.  Eventually, from the audience, a Sunni former Iraqi
police officer living now in the U.S. expressed that only about 5% of the
Iraqis benefited from the regime and 95% suffered, thus only a minority of
the Sunnis actually backed Saddam and these came from very clear groups.

We watched a 12 minutes excerpt from an Evini documentary on the mass graves
and the members of the panel made short presentations.  When the floor
was opened to questions, the first question was the most obvious question
about Iraq:  "Iraq was an artificial creation by young Winston
Churchill, then heading the Admiralty or the equivalent of the Ministry of
War. Churchill glued together three distinctly different provinces of the
Ottoman Empire thus joining together people that were not interested to live
in one common state; this created friction - why does the United States
perpetuate this situation rather then allow the three different groups to go
their own ways as they do not want to be together.  Will this not
perpetuate the warfare?"

The American chair said that if the Iraqi’s would like to break up into
separate states, this is for them to do, and the Iraqi government is the
right body to decide on such steps. The Iraqi members of the panel then
jumped upon this opportunity to speak up with full gusto, and unexpected
frankness. Their answers took about twenty minutes and overshadowed the
event.

The Kurdish moviemaker, after thanking the questioner for this question
and saying that he was of the same opinion, made it clear that the Kurds
would have preferred to go their own way, as they tried for years, but had
to consider what is possible, so they opted for a true federation. "In
a perfect world the federal system was the only way to keep Iraq as a
whole.  There is some progress in infrastructure and village life is
improving."  But the Kurds are unhappy watching how the
federation is being shaped, and are asking for redress. When a follow
up question from the UN representative of a US Federalists Non-governmental
Organization (NGO) said that keeping the ethnic culture intact should be the
goal of the Federation, the Kurdish movie maker immediately agreed and said
that this is what they want but have difficulty already now in getting from
the Iraqi Federal Government.

The Shia member of the panel, though acknowledging the US help as presented by
the Administrator of USAID, ofered the fact that now the Shia in the south may
have 12 hours of electricity a day as compared to two hours in Sadam’s
time.  The Shia’s difficulty with the present attempt at a federation is
that the central government, in order to govern, is reinstating members of the
Baath party.  "First we have to seal the borders and keep out the
Baathists that infiltrate the Sunni triangle."  He had a list of
three points, seemingly prepared a long time ago, and it was clear he had no
love left for the Sunnis.  He also had a story about Major Amr Tickriti
who, in his effort to extricate a confession from a prisoner had eleven people
rape the five months pregnant wife of the prisoner in front of him, then split
up her abdomen with a sword in front of the husband and a whole group of other
Shia prisoners holding her face up for them to see.  He did not believe
in a lot of forgiving "because forgiving may be interpreted that the Shia are
cowards."  With this he brushed away the intervention of a
representative of an NGO that professed to work with rehabilitation of
refugees in places like Bosnia.  She thought that there is not much
revenge because of a feeling that "we do not want to be like them" –
so much for some outsiders understanding of this situation.

One question, from the Representative of the Center for UN Reform Education,
asked what has the UN done all these years.  The only answer came from
the Kurdish movie maker who said they condemned the chemical attack on his
people.

The Administrator of USAID observed that the Iraqis have difficulty in
accepting a guarantee of the rights of a minority under the
concept of democracy.  They cannot see the concept of extra-majority that was built in by the
U.S. constitution in order
to safeguard the rights of minorities.  Democracy does not mean the
replacement of the dictatorship coming from the majority.  The
Administrator said that the extra-majority concept was rejected by the Shia
majority, but clergy is starting to accept the need
for such a clause.  The Shia contended that the true Muslim is not
against democracy, and the Kurdish movie maker said that a
"modified" form of democracy will have to be created. When the
religious feelings are touched, a large aspect of democracy does not work –
perhaps a new name has to be used.  So much for those believing that
present day Iraq can become a democracy — Jeffersonian or not.  Iraq has
now a history of 35 years of dictatorship — there is no concept of
democracy.  Let us be honest: better established states have difficulty
with the concept of democracy.

When the event was over I continued to mill around and we had private
conversations.  What became clear was that Iraq was created by the
British because of the prospect of finding large reserves of oil, and Iraq is
being held as one entity today just for the same economic reason. It is
assumed that the Kurds are not left to go their own way because much of the
oil is on their territory. But this is not the whole truth. In effect much of
the oil is also found in the south - in the Shia areas.  The Sunnis, who
dominated Iraq all these years, do not have a significant part of the oil
wealth on their territory.  The Sunnis dominated under the British
Occupation; there was a British-appointed king and an active British Petroleum Corporation. The
fact is that U.S. oil interests had similar influence via Sunnis in the Arab
Peninsula.  The Shia were ruling only in non-Arab Iran, being kept away from any
government in the Arab world.  This offers a clue to the current perpetuation of
the Churchill political blunder or success, depending on your point of
view.  In effect President Wilson already foresaw that Iraq will be a
center of friction. Churchill may have liked this — remember "divide and
rule"?

Now with the US Administration’s strong commercial ties with the Saudi
monarchy which is strongly influenced by the Wahhabi strict form of the
(Sunni) Islam, it would appear to be politically impossible for Washington to
leave the Iraqi Sunnis without the income from oil. So, it is the need to
placate the Saudis, and the other Sunni rulers of the Gulf states, that is the
real reason to perpetuate the Iraqi internal warfare.  The US itself will
continue to bleed in order to satisfy mainly the Saudi regime while, in the
process, nevertheless, also undermines them when considering the Bin Laden
extremists that want to see the oil money finance changes they envision for
the Arab world at large along with an eventual restart of Muslim conquest of
the infidel.

So, maybe the war in Iraq was not started for oil, but the war in Iraq will
continue because of oil - the glue that has created the artificial state of
Iraq.

Further, Turkey may be opposed to a Kurdish state on its borders.  On the
other hand, it could be argued that Turkey, with the prospect of being
accepted into the European Union, could actually relish a change to a
bi-national Turkish-Kurdish democratic state.

The oil economy of Kurdish Iraq could bring this about much easier than United
States’ unwelcome advice to Europe on accepting Turkey in order to help
"stabilize" Iraq in its present borders.  The Iraqi Kurds are
in effect the most advanced part of Iraq, when it comes to trying
for a democratic government.  That was the real underpinning of the Kurdish
movie maker’s comment on a different form of democracy in order to placate the
difficulties with the Shia and Sunni regions of Iraq.

(This article was first posted on CultureChange.org)