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America and Iraq: what went wrong

— Photo: R.V. Moorthy

The elected regime in Iraq has been compelled to assert itself as this is the only way to gain legitimacy among the Iraqi people, says Dilip Hiro.

The author of some 30 books, including his latest, Blood of the Earth: The Global Battle for Vanishing Oil Resources (Penguin, 2008), Dilip Hiro has established himself as one of the leading specialists on West Asia. In a recent interview with Atul Aneja in Abu Dhabi, the London-based author shared his insights on the causes behind the Bush administration’s monumental failure in Iraq and on how Iran has been upstaging the world’s foremost military power in the region. Excerpts from the interview:

Before the Iraq war, I was often asked: Will American oil companies emerge as major players in Iraq? Then I had a standard answer: There is no law against dreaming — you can dream. Quite honestly, the Iraq invasion was part of an American neo-conservative agenda adopted by President George Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, and others. Their plans were quite ambitious. The background was that after 9/11, when it became known that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, dependence on Saudi oil became quite undesirable in the popular mind. So, anything outside Saudi Arabia was welcome. In Iraq there was Saddam Hussein, the custodian of oil reserves [that were] then the second largest in the world. So, the Bush administration decided to go in there with the intention of imposing American management on the Iraqi oil industry. The American policymakers dreamt of raising Iraq’s oil output to six million barrels a day by 2009, more than double the amount [that was] being pumped in 2003. Under American control, Iraq would opt out of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, raise its output as much as it wanted, and thus weaken OPEC substantially. Oil prices would fall to $20 a barrel, Americans would be happy, and the re-election of a Republican Presidency would be assured.

One thing the American leaders did not understand was that Iraqis are extreme nationalists. They trace their ancestry to Mesopotamia. Irrespective of whether they are Sunnis, Shias or Kurds, Iraqis are emotionally attached to oil. They would not allow foreigners to take control of their oil. Now you see what has been happening. The Iraqi oil law has not yet been passed because different groups are pulling in different directions — the Iraqis in one way, the foreign companies in another way.

Also, when it comes to open bidding, the Chinese companies, the Indian companies, the Vietnamese companies, the Brazilians — they are going to outbid Western companies any day. Why? Because Western companies have to bear much higher overhead costs. It is therefore not surprising at all that the Chinese got the contract first.

First, we have to look at the Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani factor. Sistani is Iraq’s top spiritual leader with an incredibly wide following. Second, Iraqis are a proud people who have a distinct national identity — an identity which draws inspiration from its Mesopotamian heritage. It’s hard to keep such people down for long. There is a central contradiction between Washington’s aspirations and the ground realities in Iraq. Bush and company had assumed that they would invade Iraq, remove Saddam, and Iraqis would become “democratic” under their tutelage. They thought of creating a puppet state. That done, the pro-American regime, allowing permanent U.S. bases in Iraq, would be used to pressurise the regimes in Iran and Syria.

That kind of thinking was deeply flawed. In fact, the whole American project would have broken down, had Sistani not intervened after the hot war. Following the occupation, Sistani was told about the American plans for democracy. What appealed to Sistani was that democracy was about numbers. That is why he urged all believers to go out and vote, knowing full well that Shias would come to power as they were 60 per cent of the population.

But once the Shias arrived centre stage in Baghdad, a major contradiction surfaced. How could the Shia assertion become credible as long as there was an American occupier in place? How do you convince the general public that you are in command? The only way to do that is by standing up against the Americans. That’s exactly what is happening now. The elected regime has been compelled to assert itself as this is the only way to gain legitimacy among the Iraqi people. Once again we need to understand the importance of the quintessential Mesopotamian personality of the Iraqis. This identity is so strong that it can at most briefly accept this transitional period of Uncle Sam’s occupation.

There are two things that even the mightiest military cannot change. One, you cannot change the geography of a place. Iran and Iraq have a 1,200-km-long border. It is a porous border. Two, you cannot change the religious affiliations of millions of people. And we have to recognise that the roots of Shia Islam run deep, probably because it is a minority sect which brings its followers together in a way it does not do for the majority Sunni sect.

When I travelled through Iran in 2004 I talked to Iranian males at random. I found that just a year-and-a-half after the fall of Saddam, one third of my interviewees had been to Najaf and Karbala, the holy places of Shias. As for the feeling that a Shia has for the great martyr, Imam Hussein, there is no way to describe it — you have to see it in Najaf or Karbala to appreciate it.

The Iraqi Shias’ affinity with fellow Shias in Iran is therefore historic and natural. Today, any leader in power in Iraq has to consult Sistani at home and talk to the clerics in Tehran. In early June, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki went to Tehran to meet Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. After his return home he hardened his stance on the security agreement with Washington.

In the course of hundreds of interviews with Iranians, no one has ever said that our Imam Hussein was an Arab. During my visit to Iran soon after the 1979 revolution, I saw a programme on state television to teach people Arabic. Every cleric in Iran is fluent in Arabic. So this so-called divide between Arabs and Persians is a lot of nonsense.

Remember, Sistani was born in the Iranian city of Mashhad. He speaks Arabic with a Persian accent. Yet he is the most revered ayatollah of Iraqi Shias.

One is the contrast between the American approach towards Iraq, during the first Gulf war in 1991 and the U.S. invasion of the country in March 2003. In the first case, Washington demonstrated its awareness of Iran gaining enormous influence at its expense. When there were Shia uprisings in southern Iraq, President Bush Senior did not side with them. He let Saddam use helicopter gun ships to mow down the rebels. As a former director of the CIA, he knew that Shias were 60 per cent of the population and that they would be friendly with Iran. That would mean Iran extending its influence to the borders of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. But in March 2003, President Bush Junior did the opposite of what his father had done. So Iran’s influence in Iraq has expanded exponentially.

Iran’s response would be devastating. Its military commanders have said that they would launch missiles not only against Israel but also against U.S. targets. The Pentagon has 32 military bases in Iraq which fall within Iran’s short-range missiles’ range. This will be followed by asymmetrical warfare which would be equally lethal. Given its network among the Shias in the Gulf monarchies, Iran would activate its sleeper cells and cause considerable damage to American interests and the local oil industry. The Saudi Shia minority is concentrated in the kingdom’s oil-rich Al Hasa area. Shias comprise nearly 65 per cent of the population of Bahrain — the headquarters of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet. A quarter of Kuwait’s population is Shia. Military strikes on Iran by the U.S. or Israel would mean deducting 4 million barrels of oil a day from the global output of about 86 million barrels. That alone would push petroleum prices to a record high. Then there is the prospect of blocking the narrow Hormuz Straits through which most of world’s oil exports pass. Even a temporary blockage during the current financial crisis would do untold damage to the world economy.

The National Intelligence Estimates (NIE) of Washington, released last December, concluded that Iranians ceased the development of nuclear weapons in the autumn of 2003. That timing says it all. It was on October 6, 2003 that the 1,000-page Comprehensive Report by the Director of Central Intelligence on Iraq WMD concluded that Iraq had destroyed all stockpiles of WMD (weapons of mass destruction) within months of the 1991 Gulf War. Since Iran was the first victim of Saddam’s aggression in 1980, its leaders thought it prudent to counterbalance Saddam’s plans. Once they had the confirmation by an American investigation that cost $900 million that Iraq did not have WMD, it became logical for them to end any nuclear weapons programme they were pursuing.

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