 "No Blood for Oil" was a slogan featured on many a sign in demonstrations during the run up to the US-led invasion of Iraq, and throughout the early years of the occupation as global opposition to it grew. But as Iraq faded from the headlines in 2009, the struggle over its oil continued. In the following interview, Greg Muttitt, investigative journalist and author of the groundbreaking Fuel on the Fire: Oil and Politics in Occupied Iraq (2012), discusses the attempts by occupying forces, multinational oil giants, and newly minted Iraqi "leaders" to privatise Iraq's oil. Having worked directly with Iraq's oil unions, Mitt also describes the heroic role that Iraqi civil society played in challenging these efforts, how it all shook out and where it might be headed today, at an especially sensitive moment when the Iraqi labour movement is facing a series of fresh attacks. The audio interview was conducted on 13 July 2012, and what follows is an edited transcript. Ali Issa (AI): Based on the hundreds of US/UK documents you have unearthed, what were your findings about the role of oil in the Iraq War? Greg Muttitt (GM): Unsurprisingly, the documentary record shows that oil was a central part of the strategic thinking behind the war, and consistently shaped the conduct of the occupation. My book is primarily about what happened during the occupation. The United States, Britain, and the "international community" were keen to see Iraq's oil developed through foreign investment. It was not so much about helping out their own corporations – that was a secondary concern for them. What they wanted was to see foreign investment in Iraq as a starting point for opening up the other nationalised industries, especially of the region, so as to get oil flowing more quickly. Iraq's oil sector had been nationalised since the 1970s. The nationalisation took place mostly in 1972, and the final phases of it continued until 1975. Essentially, what they wanted to do was to reverse that: put multinational oil companies back in the dominant role in the Iraqi oil sector. AI: You place the struggle over Iraq's 'oil law' at the centre of Iraq’s recent history. What is the oil law, how has it evolved, and what is its present status? GM: The oil law was drafted in 2006, after the first post-Saddam permanent government was formed. Then the Bush administration pushed it especially hard through 2007. The law had three purposes. The first was to create a framework in which multinationals would have a primary role in developing Iraq's oil industry, and to determine exactly the extent of that role, what rights they would have, and the extent of their powers. The second element was to clarify how that would work in an emerging federal system in Iraq. To put it simply: With whom would they sign contracts? Was it with the central government in Baghdad, or was it with regional governments – in particular, the only one that exists so far, the Kurdistan regional government? The third element of the law was to essentially dis-empower parliament in relation to decisions around oil. . . . Since 1967 Iraq has had a law in place, No. 97, which said if the government were to sign contracts to develop oil fields and run them, the parliament would have to sign a specific piece of legislation to approve them. [In other words,] the parliament would have to say, "We support and agree with this contract and we give it validity in law." That was still in force in 2003, and indeed in 2006. The government could legally sign contacts with foreign companies. But if it did so, it would have to get the OK from parliament for them to have any force. Therefore, the most important role of the oil law of 2006/2007 was not [so much] to allow contracts to be signed by multinationals, as that was already possible. It was to allow them [i.e., the contracts] to be signed without parliament having any oversight. Incidentally, the importance of parliamentary oversight is that oil accounts for over 95 per cent of government revenue. So it is quite reasonable for parliament to have some say in how that works. So this was the oil law. The United States, Britain, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and other financial institutions wanted to see it passed as soon as possible once the permanent post-Saddam government was formed in May 2006. As soon as that happened, the United States and Britain started to say, "Your priority is going to be to pass the oil law." I have documents from that period which make this very clear. They moved very quickly to draft an oil law in August 2006, and it basically delivered those three asks of it. Getting this law passed in parliament became the major political priority of the United States. AI: But the law did not pass. What prevented its passage? GM: There were two barriers to it passing. Only one of them was recognised. First, there were disputes between Iraq’s politicians – primarily, between Kurdish politicians and everyone else. The dispute was over the degree of decentralisation. Essentially, it was a squabble between politicians – who thought only about their own interests, or about their ethno-sectarian groups' interests – about which of them would get the right to sign contracts and thereby control revenues. This dispute over decentralisation slowed down the law's progress, and people on either side of that debate leaked it to their allies. This led into the second factor, which was the overwhelming opposition within the Iraqi population to giving multinationals such a central role. I think this was very well known by those in the US administration and those in the Iraqi government. So the way they planned to deal with that was by not telling anyone that this oil law was going through. But it leaked in October 2006. Once it leaked out, it started to spread into civil society. In December 2006 I attended a meeting of Iraq's trade unions in Amman. They were discussing the law and decided that they were going to campaign against it. Their strategy, which began in early 2007, was basically just to get it known about: to tell people about it. So they produced pamphlets, which they handed out to their members and to the general public. They also organised conferences, public meetings, demonstrations, etc. The more this was done, the more people knew about it, the more anger there was that in secret this government – that had a fairly limited mandate given the circumstances of an election under occupation – was trying to push something through that the occupation powers were demanding, and that looked like it would do considerable damage to Iraqi interests and the Iraqi economy. Iraqis feel very strongly that oil should remain in Iraqi hands, not least because of their historical experience with foreign companies. So, during the course of 2007, this opposition spread. One after another, new groups and new constituencies got involved in it. AI: What did the Bush administration do? GM: At the same time that opposition to the oil law was spreading, through the first half of 2007, the Bush administration was ramping up pressure on the Iraqi parliament to get it passed. They were very frustrated and angry that it had not been passed at the end of 2006. All the time, they claimed publicly that it was the dispute with the Kurds over decentralisation that was holding things up. They then claimed that the law was about the sharing of revenues between different groups, which it was not at all. |
| "The last thing the US cares about in the Middle East is democracy. It is about oil, full stop." - Dr Abdulhay Yahya Zalloum |
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On Monday September 19, 2005, two British undercover "soldiers" dressed in traditional Arab garb, were arrested by the Occupation's Iraqi police driving a car loaded with weapons, ammunition and explosives. Several media reports and eyewitness accounts suggested that the SAS operatives were disguised as Al Qaeda "terrorists" and were planning to set off the bombs in Basra's central square during a major religious event.
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