In the end, Iraq’s oil will be pivotal in war

Even though I don’t doubt that United States President George "Dubya" Bush and Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair (and let’s not forget their partner in determination, Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar of Madre España) are…well, pure of heart, and their main aim, "whatever the circumstances" is to topple Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein, destroy his "weapons of mass destruction," liberate Iraq’s oppressed peoples (Shias, Sunnis and Kurds primarily), and – if possible – embarrass the French, there’s the bonus for their being Boy Scouts: the vast unproven reserves of Iraqi oil.

From the pragmatic standpoint, even though they didn’t think of profiting from Iraq’s oil (since their hearts are pure), the Americans, Brits, Spaniards and their allies in the "coalition of the willing" will need the potential revenue from Iraqi oil to pay the $200 billion "costs" of the war – if they manage to save those fields (only 15 are producing at the moment) from being sabotaged and destroyed by a desperately exiting Saddam.

Can they do it? Not if they wait for the United Nations Security Council to say "yes" – which it won’t, since French President Jacques Chirac has already announced France will use its "veto," and Russia, also a permanent Security Council member, may second that veto with one of its own. A third permanent member, China, will also cry, "No." So what’s the point?

That’s what the Americans, Brits and Spaniards will probably conclude, but won’t say so, after last weekend’s emergency meeting in the mid-Atlantic Azores Island, hosted by their ally, the Portuguese.

Will they go for broke this week then? All the Furies shrieking into my ear say: You bet.

The lowdown on Iraq’s impressive but hidden oil reserves was given this writer yesterday by former Iraqi Oil Minister Issam A.R. Al-Chalabi (no relation of the high-profile leader of a major faction of the opposition-in-exile). Issam Al-Chalabi, at a one-on-one with me in the Peninsula Hotel’s Spices restaurant, revealed that according to his calculations and intensive studies, Iraq’s "probable" strategic oil reserves were not merely the published 112.5 billion barrels, but an astounding 525 billion barrels of oil. If established by actual measuring and development in a postwar Iraq (if this doesn’t sound a mite previous), this would mean that Iraq possesses reserves double those of the world’s biggest proven oil reserves, the 261.7 billion barrels belonging to next-door Saudi Arabia.

Indeed, Issam asserted that oil development has barely scratched the surface in Iraq. Only 125 wells have been drilled in the past three decades of Saddam’s rule, with only 75 oil fields discovered – and only 15 are "producing".

Most of the oil is in the south, he said, with the northern oil fields in Kirkuk – although still rich and productive – somewhat overrated, and the oil in Mosul almost played out. That’s what I gathered from our candid conversation.

Al-Chalabi, who arrived here last Friday, for his first visit to the Philippines, has been meeting officials and journalists. Since he’s apparently being sponsored by the Americans, this is probably an indication that he will play an important – if not a primary – role in the postwar disposition of oil in Iraq.

Al-Chalabi told me, when I asked, that he believes it would be wrong and, even beyond that, dangerous for the Americans and the Brits to attempt to "occupy" Iraq after they overthrew Saddam, defeated his forces, and destroyed their "weapons of mass destruction". But it’s clear that he’s trusted by them.

How then would a postwar Iraq be developed as a democracy, and how would the Sunnis and Shias be "reconciled", or the Kurds protected? Al-Chalabi maintained that the Shi’a Arabs and the Sunni Arabs (the latter hold the upperhand under Saddam, though a minority) have no real "differences" and can work as one. I’m not too sure about that, but Al-Chalabi, who’s Sunni but has never publicized the fact, is from there while I’m not familiar with what’s "on the ground" in Iraq.

As for the Kurds, Al-Chalabi says that out of the 22 million Iraqi population, 3.5 million are Kurds. There are, on the other hand, he points out, 12 to 13 million Kurds in Turkey, four million in Iran, and about 250,000 in Syria.

The Iraqi Shi’ites, Issam insists, are loyal Iraqis, and have no allegiance to Iran – proof of this is that Iraq’s Shi’ites ferociously fought against Iran’s Shi’ite regime during the eight year Iraq-Iran war.

As for me, I believe it’s a bit early in the day to speak about a post-Saddam Iraq, but I suppose planning for it and the immense problems and costs of reconstruction have to be on the drawing boards now, not later.

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What Dubya Bush is doing may have, subliminally, something to do with what dad, ex-President George Herbert Walker Bush, messily left undone when he stopped at the border in 1991, instead of giving his General, "Stormin’ " Norman Schwarzkopf the go-ahead to punch all the way to Baghdad (as Schwarzkopf had wanted) and depose Saddam.

Instead, Papa Bush and his coalition permitted Saddam to survive – to crush the rebellion which had taken over Basra, the vital port city (which the new coalition will now have to capture this time around), and the Shi’ite and Kurdish uprisings which were, subsequently, suppressed by Saddam’s Republican Guards (left intact by an unfinished Operation Desert Storm) with bloody reprisals and massacres.

The repression began in March 1991 when Saddam appointed Ali Hasan al-Masjid, his paternal cousin, his Minister of Interior. Al-Masjid had been, during the short period in which Saddam’s forces had occupied Kuwait, his brutal Military Governor there. Masjid had also been the butcher who poison-gassed the Kurds in 1987 and 1988, exterminating up to 200,000 Kurdish villagers. He also unleashed the Republican Guards on the rebellion in the south of the Shi’as, and their March 1991 intifada was crushed, with – according to a government official – the slaughter of 300,000 Shi’ites in a single month!

That Saddam is ruthless has never been in doubt. He once shot one of his Cabinet ministers to death during a Cabinet meeting (compare that to our President GMA who denies she even throws cellphones at Cabineteers who displease her – and that’s the Queen of Taray).

What happened to his two sons-in-law is a case in point. I’ve read several accounts, but what I consider the most graphic is that contained in a fascinating book I round in Paris last October, entitled SADDAM: The Secret Life. (It was recently on sale here in Manila under a slightly different title, I guess the American edition. This version was called SADDAM: King of Terror.) Indeed, he was.

The award-winning author, Con Coughlin is a journalist who has been writing about the Middle East for 20 years. He covered the Iran-Iraq war, and was one of the first British journalists to enter Kuwait City after its liberation by Saddam’s forces. He is now Executive Editor of the Sunday Telegraph in London.

In his book, which reads like both an adventure and a Gothic novel, Coughlin says that the defection of Saddam’s two sons-in-law in August 1995 was "potentially the most damaging blow he had suffered since seizing power in 1979".

It was son-in-law Hussein Kamel, as head of Iraq’s weapons procurement program, who was "particularly well-equipped to provide Western intelligence with a treasure trove of detail about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction program".

Kamel was debriefed by both the CIA and Britain’s M16, and then by Rolf Ekeus, the head of UNSCOM.

"He provided a detailed account of Iraq’s weapons program, including hitherto hidden chemical weapons plants and front companies helping with Iraq’s weapons procurement and Saddam’s VX nerve agent program. His most startling revelation was that Saddam had been within three months of testing an atomic bomb at the start of Operation Desert Storm in January 1991."

Kamel, Coughlin recounted, "fully expected to be granted asylum in either the US or Britain, from which he would base his campaign to overthrow Saddam". Thus, in an exclusive interview to TIME magazine, he told all about the Saddam regime. "The country had spent nearly fifteen years at war," he said, "and had accumulated debts that would take ‘generations and generations’ to pay." Kamel "also tried to distance himself from the brutality of the regime." He told TIME: "There are too many executions in our society, too many arrests. Whatever the age of the critic – whether 80 or 15 – many people are executed."

However, continued Coughlin: "If Hussein Kamel had expected a hero’s welcome in the West for his defection, he was sorely disappointed. Western intelligence officers were prepared to debrief him and his brother, but had no desire to perpetuate the relationship. In their view he was an arrogant, vainglorious individual who was too closely associated with Saddam’s regime to be considered as a viable alternative. However much they wanted to see the back of Saddam, they did not want him to be replaced by one of his clones. By the end of the year, Hussein Kamel, Saddam Kamel, Saddam’s daughters, and their retinue were confined to one of King Hussein’s guesthouses in Amman (Jordan), and all their overtures to be given sanctuary in the West were met with a resounding silence."

Sensing an opportunity to avenge himself on his errant sons-in-law, Saddam sent messages through his agents in Jordan about a "Presidential pardon". Saddam dispatched his eldest son, Uday, to persuade the two families to return to Iraq. "Disillusioned by the reception they had received, and arrogantly believing they had taught Saddam a lesson, in February 1996, Hussein Kamel and Saddam Kamel agreed to return home with their families."

When the party set off for Baghdad on the morning of February 20 (1996), they were met at the border at Trebel by Uday and his guards. Uday took his two sisters, Raghda and Rana, and their children into his motorcade. The two men, on the other hand, upon their arrival in Baghdad, were summoned to the Palace and forced to sign papers sanctioning their immediate divorce from their wives. They were then sent off to their father’s villa at Assadiyah, on the outskirts of Baghdad, to await their fate.

"Later that evening," the author notes, "Saddam summoned relatives and associates of the disgraced men to the Presidential Palace. Sami Salih, who was still head of Iraq’s oil-smuggling operation, was one of those present. He recalled that Saddam was ‘drunk, red-eyed, and wild. He was waving his gun around and screaming abuse.’ He told them, ‘You must remove this shame. You must get rid of them and cleanse this stain. Get rid of them’."

The relatives were bundled into three Toyota buses. They thought they themselves were going to be executed. Instead they were trucked to outside a villa they recognized, the Hussein Kamel family’s villa. The house had been surrounded by Iraqi Special Forces. Uday’s silver Mercedes Benz was clearly recognized parked in a side street. (He and his brother Qusay "watched the proceedings from the safety of their bullet-proof Mercedes".)

Although the Kamel brothers put up a brave fight, they eventually ran out of ammunition and were killed, along with their father, their sister, and her son. The Defense Minister (remember?) Masjid "went over to the body of Hussein Kamel, put his foot on the neck, and fired one last shot into the head. The bodies were then loaded onto a garbage truck and driven away."

One of the special forces commanders walked over to the buses to tell the terrified occupants – the relatives of the dead family: "We hope you enjoyed the show . . . Iraq is not a country for traitors."

Coughlin writes as a postscript: ". . . in February 2000, the mother of Hussein Kamel and Saddam Kamel, the only surviving member of the family, was stabbed to death and her body cut into pieces in her home in Baghdad."

Sanamagan!

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One who does not mourn Hussein Kamel, I think, is former Oil Minister Issam Al-Chalabi, who has been living in Amman, Jordan – in exile – and working under the modest title of "Consultant". It was Hussein who had "intrigued" him out of his Cabinet post through an elaborate conspiracy, although Issam feels it was through the instigation of Saddam himself. Fearing for his life, Al-Chalabi subsequently fled Iraq.

Obviously, Al-Chalabi became a danger to the regime because, as Oil Minister from March 1987 to October 1990, he got to know too much about Saddam, his sons, and in-laws, skimming off the top of the oil revenues and other shenanigans. He didn’t tell me this, but I got it from other sources.

Anyway, he must have been brilliant in his job since he had become Minister of Oil at the age of 45, despite not having any powerful patron, or being a friend or intimate of Saddam or anyone in his charmed circle.

Al-Chalabi describes Saddam, however, as a man of great charisma and magnetism (reminding me of what Germans who lived during his Third Reich, in rare moments of candor, used to tell me about Der Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler – who was not the figure of fun the Western press ridiculed, but whose personal magnetism sent women swooning and placed men, even the most distinguished, into fits of adoration). Saddam, though, says Al-Chalabi, never had any true friends or confidants. He was always shrewd and calculating, as well as cold-blooded in his decisions and moves.

A graduate of University College London (1965) in Mechanical Engineering, Al-Chalabi lectured for two years at Engineering College before joining the Iraqi ministry of oil. He was engineer and project manager of some of the major oil projects – such as Rumalla oilfield, strategic pipelines, Iraq-Turkey pipeline, etc.

In 1975, he became President of State Company for Oil Projects responsible for the implementation of all Iraq‘s oil and gas projects. In 1981, he became Vice President of Iraq National Oil Co. (INOC) and in 1983 Deputy Minister of Oil and President of INOC.

Since he left Iraq, he has worked as a private consultant in the field of global energy, with emphasis on oil and gas in the Middle East. He has participated in projects and attended conferences in Europe, the USA, Japan and the Mid-East.

I’m certain, in the wake of exciting events to come, we’ll be hearing more of this man – articulate, cheerful, and extremely knowledgeable in the politics and the economics of oil. It’s not about oil, the Americans and Brits declare. But they can’t avoid the question.