Colonialism reloaded
The Arabs may have invented modern mathematics, writes Abdel-Moneim Said, in the latest of a series of articles on Iraq, but when it comes to US motives for invading the country, the sums just don't add up
Perhaps the reader is thinking we've had enough of the origins of the Iraqi issue. It's time to move on to other events of no less consequence, both to Iraq itself, and also to Palestine, the Middle East, and even the whole world in which we live. However, as I've said before, the question of Iraq involves much more than Iraq. It involves the entire Arab world. And when the tensions and incongruities inherent in that problem culminate in war, it begins to shed a stark light which can enable us, paradoxically, to penetrate to the essence of things, and so distinguish between fact and fiction.
Although there are diverse aspects to the Iraqi question, the Arabs have tended to focus on the so-called reversion to traditional colonialism. The Anglo-Saxon invasion of Iraq, they say, is a replay of the 19th century drive to portion out the world among the great colonial powers so as to facilitate the plundering of the natural resources of conquered peoples. In the case of Iraq, the motive was obvious: access to oil, and with it a sizeable chunk of the so-called "pie" of national revenue, or so the argument goes.
For some odd reason -- and this may require a separate psychological study -- the Arabs suffer from a form of accounting dyslexia and an inordinate revulsion for numbers. Perhaps this is because no one knows the precise number for anything in the Arab world. Only recently, the rest of the Arabs learned that, throughout its entire period of rule, the Ba'ath Party regime in Iraq had never conducted a single census. Today, people interested in the ratios which hold between the various Iraqi ethnic groups and religious denominations still have to rely on a census dating from 1957. Nor is Iraq alone in this. There are a number of long-established Arab nations that have no precise idea of the size of their population. Moreover, the thought that a census might calculate demographic composition in terms of religious affiliation and ethnic origin makes the Arab body shudder. The prevalent image of the Arab nation is one of unadulterated ethnic purity. Whether its inhabitants are of solid Bedouin stock or Bedouinised Arabs, they are all, without exception, Arabs in blood, race and culture. Anyone who thinks differently is merely lending his support to the West and its adherents, all of whom are working to divide the single and united Arab people.
This generalised numerical pathology takes on what is perhaps its most acute form when it comes to calculating Iraq's petroleum wealth and the size of the Iraqi "pie" the invaders are drooling over. The aroma of oil and oil revenues must have wafted around so heavily during the war, that people have overlooked the fact that while Iraq may be sitting on one of the world's largest reserves of this substance, and is also one of the world's largest producers of high-quality dates (a strategic asset systematically undervalued by the contemporary geopolitical consensus), apart from these two jewels in its crown, it has nothing. Similarly, people seem to have got so high on the petroleum fumes that they can only think of the US as the world's largest consumer of oil -- in spite of the fact that it is also one of the world's largest producers of almost everything else that has to do with modern technology, from the world's first satellites, to genetically engineered plants and curring-edge pharmaceuticals, not to mention the very machinery required to extract and process oil in the first place. Indeed, not only was the US the first nation to produce oil on a large scale, it still ranks as the world's third largest oil producer after Saudi Arabia and Russia.
The fact is that there is nothing to support the contention that oil was behind everything that happened to Iraq. The US had long been the largest importer of Iraqi oil, to the tune of 800,000 barrels a day. War, troops, death and destruction were hardly necessary for it to obtain Iraqi oil in whatever quantity it wanted, since the former regime had always been more than willing to supply the US with as much oil as it asked for. Another important fact is that the world is presently up to its ears in oil. In 1973, global reserves stood at some 700 billion barrels. Today, after 30 years of continually increasing consumption, they stand at 1,100 billion barrels. Furthermore, with the boycott on Iraq, the price of oil climbed to $33 dollars -- which, adjusted for inflation, is the same price it was at nearly a quarter of a century ago, at the time of the Iranian revolution and the Iraq-Iran war.
Some other figures are even more significant, as they cast into relief the considerable exaggeration that surrounds Iraqi oil. It is commonly held that Iraq possesses the third largest petroleum reserves in the world, after Saudi Arabia and Russia. However, the 129 billion barrels that are the basis for this assessment is actually the sum of both known and assumed reserves, placed, respectively at 78 and 51 billion barrels. Were we to consider only the known reserves, Iraq's ranking would drop behind that of the UAE and Kuwait. Iraq's supposed share of the international oil market is also greatly overstated. At present, this stands at two per cent; following the huge investments that will be required to restore Iraq's production and transport infrastructure, it will probably rise to four per cent in three years' time. Then, if political conditions in Iraq stabilise and generate an attractive investment climate, its position in global oil production could climb to between six and seven per cent over the next 10 years. Yet, even under such ideal (if not idealised) circumstances, Iraq would not be able to compete with Saudi Arabia's oil producing capacity and its ability to swing the price. Saudi Arabia currently produces 10 per cent of global oil output. Thanks to its enormous reserves -- around twice those of Iraq -- it can easily raise its output to 12 per cent over the next 10 years, and in time secure a 15 per cent share of the global market.
The same reservations apply to the pot of gold which is supposed to be generated by Iraq's petroleum revenues, estimates of which, once subjected to closer inspection, also need to be revised downwards. True, Iraq is a rich country, or at least, it was rich once, with monetary reserves of up to $60 billion before the Iraq-Iran war. But, under the impact of that war and subsequent wars, its foreign debts began to accumulate, ultimately reaching some $140 billion. On top of that, Iraq is now obliged to pay approximately $300 billion in compensation to Kuwait and to Arab and non- Arab workers in Kuwait. Add to this the $50 billion in contracts Baghdad signed this year, and we find that it is $490 billion in the red.
But Iraq's debt burden does not end there. Iran has long been demanding $500 billion in compensation for the losses it suffered during the unjust war the Saddam regime unleashed against it. As for the war that has just ended, Washington had predicted that a quick operation would cost about $150 billion and that a protracted engagement could cost up to $550 billion. The war was a quick one. But even then, if we take these costs, and add the Iranian claim plus Baghdad's existing debts, we find that Iraq is shouldering a total liability of $1,140 billion. This, for our more mathematically challenged, is over a trillion dollars. In other words, far from being a sumptuous pie, Iraq is in fact totally bankrupt, without so much as a fils to pay for the contracts it has signed. Even assuming that oil prices were to remain high for the next six decades, it would take the Iraqis between 60 and 100 years to pay off their debts.
No one has taken note of this tragic fact, because everyone believes that the process of reconstruction and setting Iraq off on the road to progress is set to continue regardless. Indeed, Japan has announced that it will earmark $100 million towards that end, and the US and European nations together will come up with perhaps enough to lift the amount of aid to the neighbourhood of a billion. Perhaps, too, Kuwait and Iran will relinquish their claims for compensation, and some other creditors will write off Baghdad's debts. However, if that is the case, then the reconstruction of Iraq will have been paid for not out of the enormous Iraqi pie, but from an assortment of Japanese, European, US and Arab pies.
How then can we explain how the colonialist interpretation of recent events has become so overwhelmingly popular, other than to assume that the Arabs have a passion for believing that history repeats itself, and that there is no difference between the 19th century and the 21st? More importantly, the reversion-to-colonial- expansionism theory cannot explain why the US entered Kuwait so many years ago and had its hands on that country's oil, only to let go and leave, then return many years later, temporarily, for the purpose of staging the recently-completed campaign against Iraq. Much less can it explain why Washington withdrew its military presence from Saudi Arabia, where it had been poised to control the largest reserves of oil in the world. On the other hand -- and this would be much more dangerous -- perhaps the Arabs are simply incapable of fathoming the complexities of international relations in today's world, and of calculating the US's place in that mesh? Which brings us to the same point we reached in our attempt to probe the Arab reaction to 11 September. It appears that the more things change, the more things remain the same: the Arabs have a fundamental problem with the world and with the US, and no amount of awkward details are going to be allowed to get in the way of that problem's most simplistic expression.
The writer is director of the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.
