Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 03:48:47 +1100
From: saeed urrehman <think-AT-riseup.net>
Subject: the US and the middle east


Understanding the Complexities and Contradictions of the Middle East
Oil Wealth, Colonial and Neo-Colonial Intervention, and Cheap South Asian 
Labor
http://members.tripod.com/~INDIA_RESOURCE/mideastoil.html

In a recent article titled "MISSING THE OIL STORY" Nina Burleigh who has 
written for The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, and New York magazine 
tried to explore the connection between the latest US military intervention 
in Afghanistan with unexploited energy reserves in the region. For 
instance, she pointed to studies that suggest that by 2050, Central Asia 
will account for more than 80 percent of our oil. She cited a September 10 
report in the Oil and Gas Journal, which reported that Central Asia 
represents one of the world's last great frontiers for geological survey 
and analysis, "offering opportunities for investment in the discovery, 
production, transportation, and refining of enormous quantities of oil and 
gas resources."

She also suggested that there was lots of oil beneath the turf of the US's 
"politically precarious newest best friend, Pakistan". According to an 
Agence France Presse report released just days before September 11, 
"Massive untapped gas reserves are believed to be lying beneath Pakistan's 
remotest deserts, but they are being held hostage by armed tribal groups 
demanding a better deal from the central government."
In an earlier article, Steve Niva (Evergreen State College, Washington) had 
pointed to how US foreign policy in the Middle East had been driven by it's 
"interests" in backing and influencing regimes who controlled the massive 
oil resources of the region. That oil has been a major factor in the 
politics of the Middle East has been brought out by numerous analysts and 
scholars of the region.
In fact, the British had recognized the importance of the region's oil 
wealth as early as 1916 when the British secretly signed the 1916 
Sykes-Pikot Agreement with France which called for the division of the 
Ottoman Empire into a patchwork of states that would be ruled by the 
British and French. The secret agreement was exposed when the Soviet 
government retrieved a copy in 1921, but a year earlier, the oil factor had 
been officially recognized in the 1920 San Remo Treaty. In 1928, the Red 
Line Agreement was signed, which described the sharing of the oil wealth of 
former Ottoman territories by the British and French colonial governments, 
and how percentages of future oil production were to be allocated to 
British, French and American oil companies. (See: Said Aburish, A Brutal 
Friendship: The West and the Arab Elite, Indigo, London, 1998)
The desire to control the region's oil wealth led to the creation of 
artificial states such as Kuwait, and states with mixed Kurdish and Arab 
populations such as in Syria and Iraq. The arbitrary creation of borders 
and the installation of unpopular pro-colonial leaders served the purpose 
of dividing the local populations and ensuring the establishment of 
impotent client-regimes whose administrations were subservient to colonial 
interests.
In 1945, when Britain was still a major colonial power, US and British 
coordination and cooperation were highlighted in the following memo: "Our 
petroleum policy towards the United Kingdom is predicated on a mutual 
recognition of a very extensive joint interest and upon control, at least 
for the moment, of the great bulk of the free petroleum resources of the 
world... US-UK agreement upon the broad, forward-looking pattern for the 
development and utilisation of petroleum resources under the control of 
nationals of the two countries is of the highest strategic and commercial 
importance." (See: Memorandum by the Acting Chief of the Petroleum 
Division, 1 June 1945, FRUS, 1945, Vol. VIII, p. 54)
Two years later, the British government expressly noted that the Middle 
East was "a vital prize for any power interested in world influence or 
domination", since control of the world's oil reserves also meant control 
of the world economy. (See: Introductory paper on the Middle East by the 
UK, undated [1947], FRUS, 1947, Vol. V, p. 569.)
After the second world war, it became impossible to prevent the wave of 
democratization that swept the colonies, and one by one, the old puppet 
governments in the region collapsed. Britain and France lost their 
colonies, but the US stepped in as the new and dominant neo-colonial power 
in the region. US imperial goals were expressed without mincing any words 
in a 1953 internal U.S. document: "United States policy is to keep the 
sources of oil in the Middle East in American hands." (See: NSC 5401, 
quoted in Mohammed Heikal,, Cutting the lion's tail; Suez through Egyptian 
eyes, Andre Deutsch, London, 1986, p. 38)
In 1958, a secret British document described the principal objectives of 
Western policy in the Middle East: "The major British and other Western 
interests in the Persian Gulf [are] (a) to ensure free access for Britain 
and other Western countries to oil produced in States bordering the Gulf; 
(b) to ensure the continued availability of that oil on favourable terms 
and for surplus revenues of Kuwait; (c) to bar the spread of Communism and 
pseudo-Communism in the area and subsequently to defend the area against 
the brand of Arab nationalism." (See: File FO 371/132 779. 'Future Policy 
in the Persian Gulf', 15 January 1958, FO 371/132 778.
The Arab peninsula's oil wealth also led to the cementing of ties between 
successive Saudi and US governments. US "interests" were exemplified by the 
quote: "...the defence of Saudi Arabia is vital to the defence of the 
United States". Since the 1930s, when oil was discovered in the Arab 
peninsula, this became one of the key pillars of US foreign policy in the 
region, and the US government did everything in it's power to maintain the 
feudal regime of the the house of Al Sa'ud. Operateing without any regard 
for democratic norms or civil rights for it's citizens or millions of 
migrant workers that produce most of the nation's wealth, this royal clan 
which has been propped up since 1943, has also been called the largest 
family business in the world. Lacking any popular mandate, it has survived 
largely on the basis of US military strength, and according to some 
analysts, the US government has pumped in over $33 billion in weapons, 
military supplies and equipment so as to preserve the authority of this 
decadent and oppressive monarchy.
The US government (through the CIA) has also been implicated in the coup 
against the democratically elected, left-leaning government of Dr. Mohammad 
Mossadeq, which had planned to nationalize Iran's oil industry. In it's 
place, the Shah was installed as a result of a covert operation 
masterminded by the American CIA and British MI6. (See quotes from 'The 
Federation of American Scientists' in C. M. Woodhouse: Something Ventured, 
Granada, London, 1982; Roosevelt, Kermit, Countercoup: The struggle for the 
control of Iran, McGraw Hill, London, 1979.)
Critics of US policy such as Middle East observer and scholar, Mamoun Fandy 
of Georgetown University's Center of Contemporary Arab Studies have noted 
how: "Securing the flow of affordable oil is a cornerstone of U.S. Middle 
East policy.". Noting that uncritical U.S. support for autocratic Gulf 
monarchies and their human rights abuses exposes the hypocrisy in American 
rhetoric about democracy and human rights and "creates the perception among 
Gulf subjects that their countries are being ruled in the interests of an 
outside power." (See Mamoun Fandy 'US Policy in the Middle East', Foreign 
Policy In Focus, Vol. 2, No. 4, January 1997.)
It is therefore hardly surprising that anti-war activists are quick to 
notice the role of controlling the world's oil supplies in US military 
maneuvers in the region. In an Oct 10 statement issued by Darshan Pal and 
G. N. Saibaba of the All India Peoples Resistance Forum (AIPRF), there was 
a suggestion that the US was waging a new war for oil and more military 
bases in the Middle East. That Germany, France and Japan (who have 
previously benefited from the deposits of super-profits from the oil-fields 
of the Middle East) have endorsed the latest US war efforts suggests that 
this is indeed quite likely.
Vital to the profitability of oil production in the Middle East is the vast 
and unhindered supply of cheap labor mainly from the South Asian region. 
While India is the largest supplier of high-technology intellectual workers 
in the kingdoms of the Persian Gulf, a variety of skilled and unskilled 
manual workers are provided not only by India and Pakistan, but also by 
countries such as Nigeria, Egypt and the Sudan in Africa, and by 
Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines in Asia. In 
Saudi Arabia, immigrant workers make up at least 35 percent of the 15 to 64 
age population group. In addition to filling many low paid manual jobs, 
immigrants are estimated to provide 84 percent of doctors, 80 percent of 
nurses, 55 percent of pharmacists and 25 percent of all teachers. More 
recently however, the Saudi government has begun to replace expatriate 
workers with Saudi nationals, and thousands of foreign workers without 
proper papers have been arrested and deported.
Nevertheless, immigrant workers play a vital role in these economies, not 
only in Saudi Arabia, but also in the Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait 
and Bahrain. In some of these Gulf kingdoms, temporary immigrant workers 
outnumber citizens by a factor of 2 to 1, or even 3-1. Although the ruling 
elites in these kingdoms are amongst the richest people on the planet, not 
all the citizens benefit from the super-profits garnered from the oil 
industry, and women are often given a raw deal, particularly in Saudi Arabia.
By some accounts, as much of 40 percent of the country's oil revenues goes 
straight into the pockets of the ruling family. As a result, poor education 
and unemployment are increasingly becoming the bane of many of these 
authoritarian monarchies, as is the repression against local dissent. The 
complete suppression of the rights of immigrant workers, has of course, 
been a much older problem.
Secrecy and fear permeate every aspect of the state structure in Saudi 
Arabia, and most Gulf Kingdoms lack political parties, trades unions, 
workers safety or immigrant rights advocates, women's groups, or other such 
democratic organizations. There are no bar associations or organizations 
that might ensure a fair and independent judicial process. As a result, 
political and religious opponents of these governments are detained 
indefinitely without trial or are imprisoned after grossly unfair trials. 
Torture is endemic, and foreign workers, particularly non-Muslims are most 
at risk.
With few exceptions, there are stringent controls on media outlets. In 
Saudi Arabia, the government controls all the domestic radio and TV 
stations, and closely monitors privately owned print media. No criticism of 
Islam, the ruling family or the government is tolerated. Forms of 
punishment are often quite barbaric and include public executions and 
amputations. Also frequent are private acts of vendetta and rape against 
less than docile immigrant workers, particularly women.
As the citizenry feels a growing sense of alienation vis-a-vis these highly 
unpopular and repressive regimes, the US government is now being held 
responsible for this state of affairs. At the same time, immigrant workers 
remain completely voiceless and are most oppressed. While there have been 
several attempts at organizing amongst such workers, state repression and 
the temporary nature of the work-tenure of most immigrants hinders the 
formation of lasting organizations that could successfully ameliorate 
working conditions for the most exploited of these expatriate workers. 
Temporary contract workers thus pay a very heavy price for the 
super-profits that are generated in the oil-fields of the Middle East.
Although the nations that export labor to the Middle East benefit from the 
hard-currency savings repatriated to their home countries, many of these 
countries suffer more from the high price of energy resources that 
strangulates the growth of the domestic economy in these countries. 
Oil-deficit nations, such as India and the Philippines are at a grave 
disadvantage in this regard. But all capital-poor nations suffer to the 
extent that the profits from the oil-wealth of the Middle East are 
deposited in banks in the US, Britain, France, Germany or Japan.
Only a small fraction of this important source of capital finds it's way 
into the economies of poor countries in Africa or South Asia, and even when 
it does, such capital investments are laden with onerous and debilitating 
conditions. South Asian nations are amongst the worst victims, having 
already suffered two centuries of grueling oppression under British 
colonial rule. Now they remain capital starved, even as their citizens toil 
hard to make the oil-rich gulf kingdoms, the richest in the world. They 
also suffer from the export of the most medieval and repressive versions of 
Islamic orthodoxy, preventing the people of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh 
from uniting against what are clearly, common enemies.
As the old colonial powers join hands with the US government in waging new 
wars in the Middle East, it is crucial that the people of the Middle East, 
along with their often more oppressed brothers and sisters all across Asia 
and Africa, refrain from religious extremism and ultra-nationalist 
sectarianism, but instead, join hands. By understanding the roots of their 
common oppression, and by uniting in a spirit of mutual respect - they can 
jointly root out all vestiges of colonial and neo-colonial plunder and 
pillage that have created enormous tensions and dissatisfaction all across 
the world.
By encouraging their governments to cooperate with each other instead of 
competing to become the most loyal lackeys and agents of the US 
war-machine, the people of the region could usher in an era of peace and 
progress, putting an end to the social, political and economic misery that 
has besieged the people of the colonized world for far too long.



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