BOOK REVIEW; FUEL ON THE FIRE: OIL AND POLITICS IN OCCUPIED IRAQ BY GREG MUTTITT
NEW PRESS, 2012)
The withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq at the end of 2011 left a broken country and many unanswered questions. What was the war really about? Why and how did the occupation drag on for nearly nine years, while most Iraqis and Americans wanted it to end? And why did the troops have to leave?
Fuel on the Fire: Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq (New Press, 2012) takes us behind the scenes to answer some of these questions and reveal the real story of the oil politics that played out through the occupation of Iraq. Based on unreleased government documents and extensive interviews with U.S., British and Iraqi officials, author Greg Muttitt exposes the plans in place to shape policies in favor of the multinational oil companies.
The book also contains interviews with trade union leaders, Iraqi oil experts, and leaders of civil organizations, which paint another largely untold story: how the Iraqi working people struggled for their own say in their future, in spite of the US- imposed Provisional Authority regime, and rising levels of violence directed against them.
First of all, was the Iraq war about the “liberation” of Iraq? Muttitt points out Iraq controls 10% of the world’s proven oil reserves, and countries in the Middle East control 60% of the world’s proven world supply.
Combine this with U.S. Pentagon and big business oil addiction, and the fact that oil experts predict US oil supplies are to be depleted in 13 years while the Middle East has reserves for another 100, and you have a good idea about the material interests that drive US policy in the region.
Muttitt documents how years before the Iraq occupation a strategy similar to the one that actually unfolded was developed in secret memos from National Security Council meetings and Vice President Cheney’s Iraq Study Group.
As early as January of 2001 National Security Council staff were ordered by the Bush administration to cooperate with Vice President Cheney’s Energy Policy Task Force in a “melding” of “the review of operational policies towards rogue states “ such as Iraq with “actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields.”
But Muttitt cautions that the agenda was not about just gaining access to a few tankers of oil in the manner of the old conquistadors. Muttitt writes, “far more valuable today is an agreement in a laptop or a briefcase.” The battle, as we shall see, is to create a legal authority through which a steady flow of profits could be assured, stabilizing global energy markets.
We meet all the players we have come to know from the headlines of the period. We meet lawyer and advisor Ron Jonkers, fresh from spearheading the privatization of Kazakistan’s oil industry, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. (This was apparently considered a “model” at the time by oil privateers).We meet U.S. army generals, under orders in the early days of the invasion to stand by as cultural treasures in Iraq’s national museum were looted, but to safeguard the Iraqi oil ministry.
We see the imperial arrogance of US policy makers Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bremer, as they seek to build a US -friendly Provisional Authority regime. Not only was the Ba’ath Party outlawed, but skilled oil technicians, soldiers and public workers with even the most cursory ties were blacklisted. A new legislative system based on Sunni and Shi’a affiliations is established – which Muttitt documents had no basis in Iraqi national political tradition.
Particularly important, Muttitt demonstrates, is the overriding need for passage of a legal basis for privatization of Iraq’s oil industry. In Iraq this took the form of a contract known in the industry as “ a Production Sharing Agreement” (PSA).
Billed as a way to aid the Iraqi people in the modernization of its aging oil refineries, the terms of the agreement, if adopted, would have actually replaced the Iraqi Oil Ministry as the sovereign holder of Iraqi oil, instead making it merely a competing entity with foreign corporations.
In addition to granting favorable terms for long -term superprofits, the provisions of the agreement would supersede Iraqi laws and remove the multinationals from any accountability to the Iraqi people.
The overriding drive of oil corporations to establish a legal authority for long-term investment, Muttitt points out, is understandable when we know Iraqi history. In addition to being blessed with an abundance of oil, Iraq has had a long history of militant struggle against foreign corporations and states wishing to control it.
These struggles resulted in the institution of Law Number 80 in 1961 by Iraq’s Prime Minister Qasim. Although the law stopped short of nationalizing oil, it reclaimed Iraqi rights to all remaining oil in the country, with the exception of oil already in production. In 1972, Prime Minister Hussein nationalized the oil industry. Because of this history, Iraq’s oil was enshrined in the Iraqi constitution as “ the property of the whole people, ” and was popularly seen as such.
By 2007 Iraq was reeling from the effects of US occupation and its policies. Basic public services previously enjoyed by the Iraqi people such as water, gas, electricity and security had seriously deteriorated. This was the direct result of cutbacks by the Provisional Authority , and layoffs of Iraqi public workers .
US army planners and engineers instead delegated repairs to unaccountable and often negligent U.S. contractors (e.g. Kellogg,Brown & Root; Haliburton) who failed abysmally (while reaping superprofits) in most of the contracts they took on.(U.S. public workers take note!)
Sectarian militias ruled many parts of Iraq – militias Muttitt documents the Provisional Authority sometimes inadvertently fostered and sometimes deliberately supported as a counterweight against anti-occupation Iraqi nationalism. Meanwhile, secret communications between the government and the Maliki regime (recently revealed through Wikileaks) show how the overriding concern at this time continued to be that the Maliki regime get the legislature to pass the PSA.
Fuel Against the Fire would be worth reading just for its exposure of the real story behind the U.S. claims of “liberating Iraq”. But the book does not stop there. In addition to trenchant analysis and thorough documentation, it is also a story about the fightback of the Iraqi people. It is also a story of hope.
Muttitt narrates the growth and ultimately successful organizing of the Iraqi people against the Provisional Authority’s attempt to ram through the PSA in the Iraqi parliament in 2007.
In contrast to the coalition the US occupiers sought to build, based on ethnic and sectarian identification, Muttitt describes the organizing by activists of a labor-religious coalition to oppose the US oil law.
The bedrock in the fight was the organizing of Iraq’s oil workers (trade union organizing of oil workers and also civil servants was outlawed under the Hussein regime in 1987, and continued to be outlawed under the U.S occupation.)Originally organized to fight for payment of back wages by the Provisional Authority in 2003, the union at its first public conference expanded its outlook to oppose and expose the proposed oil law. Their struggle continued, despite assassinations of its leaders, kidnappings of its members, and other obstacles trade unionists in the US have seldom had to overcome.
The Association of Muslim Scholars as well as other Islamic organizations entered the struggle. Fatwa 217 was issued, calling for opposition to the oil law based on Muslim religious law. Iraqi oil experts lent their expertise to the campaign and testified before Iraqi parliament. The Provisional Authority stepped up its attacks against the oil workers union, leading to the seizing of its assets. Trade unions in Iraq and worldwide protested the repression of the Iraqi oil workers union.
How the Iraqi oil workers organized in such difficult circumstances is an inspiring story. (I was proud to read the resolution adopted by the AFL-CIO at its 2005 national convention, which called for a rapid withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. I was also proud to see that the AFL-CIO defended the Iraqi trade unions from attacks by the Provisional Authority and US occupation forces.
In addition to discussion of the AFL-CIO resolution, Muttitt describes the important role US Labor Against the War played in bringing the message of the Iraqi oil workers and their fight to the U.S. labor movement. USLAW, a coalition of labor unions pledged to be “the voice within the labor movement for peace and new priorities,” has grown to over 200 affiliated trade union locals since its founding in 2003. It has steadfastly opposed the wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, while calling for funding human needs, not war.
At a time when there was little information in the US about developments in the Iraqi labor movement, USLAW sponsored a national tour of leaders of the three major Iraqi trade union federations in 2005, and publicized their cause within the labor movement. This tour, as well as patient organizing within AFL-CIO unions, laid the basis for the campaign and passage of the historic AFL-CIO resolution.
Us troops withdrew from Iraq in late 2011. While this was a victory for the Iraqi people, as well as for the peace movement around the world, Muttitt reports that nine years of occupation and war has left a decimated Iraq, and a seriously weakened oil industry infrastructure.
Muttitt reports that oil corporations have been granted contracts favoring their interests since that time. Iraqi trade unions continue to be under attack, despite and because of their role in defeating the worst of big oil’s power grab in 2007. Continued labor solidarity from the U.S. labor movement against attack from the Iraqi government is crucial.
But there is one crucial difference. These investments came without the legality of big oil’s much sought-after Production Sharing Agreement, meaning these contracts can be suspended at any time by vote of the Iraqi people’s representatives in their legislature.
The same forces that led to the Iraqi people taking back their oil in 1961 and 1972 --and the same forces involved in the successful fight against the PSAs more recently – can and will lead to further fightbacks by the Iraqi workers. When this happens, Muttitt eloquently argues, the next generation of Iraqi workers will surely build on the heroic legacy of the Iraqi oil workers and their struggle.
I highly recommend this book to all peace activists who have organized or will be organizing in the future against U.S. war moves in the Middle East. “No Blood for Oil!” This book will be an important resource in countering future Pentagon wars, whatever their smokescreen. Author Naomi Klein has called this book “nothing short of a secret history of the war”, and I agree.
As an AFSCME member, I also recommend it to U.S. trade unionists seeking to organize for jobs, decent union contracts, and justice in our own country. The AFL-CIO resolution was important because it made this link.
What big oil sought to do in Iraq – and for that matter seeks to do elsewhere in the Middle East – it is also seeking to do right here in the U.S. What Fuel for the Fire drives home, among much else, is how labor’s struggle against U.S. wars for corporate profit around the world is part of our own struggle against privatization, and for union rights and justice here at home. They are all part of the same ongoing fight.
Chris Butters
