"War for Oil" as Literature

Kurdish deputy Mahmoud Othman said 'the British and the Americans, who were in a hurry to decide on an oil and gas law, had a major role in convincing the Kurds to accept [this version]'... Othman explained some of the details of the process, that led to the council of Ministers approving this after so many months of disagreement between the central government and the regional government. The British and the Americans, who were bound and determined to accelerate the process of deciding on an oil and gas law, had a major role in convincing the Kurdish parties to accept this, after intensive discussions between the parties leading to haggling about exploitation, contract-management, and distribution. Othman added: 'The latest visit by US ambassador Khalilzad to [the Kurdish region] focused on convincing the Kurds to accept [the current version] after promising them that the new law would protect Kurdish interests,' and Othman explained: 'The Kurds had wanted the authority to enter into contracts for oil and exploitation and the granting of operating permits to corporations, on a par with the authority of the central government [elsewhere in Iraq], while the Baghdad government wanted to have a presence in overseeing contracts [in Kurdistan] equal to that of the the Kurds.' Othman said: 'That was finally agreed, but only after an agreement that one-half of the contracts signed would be within the jurisdiction of the Region of Kurdistan.'

M. Othman's account must be fifth- or sixth-hand, and one can only guess if it is reality-based at all, especially when we have no idea what his prejudices may be. Yet considered critically as a tale of Levantine skullduggery, the paragraph is very admirably invented. Here is the way a Berlin-to-Baghdad railroad should be run in a novel! Everything corresponds to one's antecedent stereotypes admirably, does it not?

(1) The local gentry, al-A‘yán, the Talibanis and Barzanis, foregather privately with Khalilzad Pasha and decide what's to be what in His Excellency's pashalik, meaning that

(2) Subjects and clients know only by rumor how they are really ruled, and

(3) "Laws," and even "constitutions," become only a minor nuisance to the empowered gentry, although it is inadvisable to say that out loud when Westerners of unknown reliability are around.


Thus far, it may seem a negligible detail that Khalilzad Pasha answers to Crawford in 2007 rather than Constantinople in 1887. Yet our fictionist has an eye for concrete details and makes his characters behave consistently in this transaction as in others. For example,

(4) Free Kurdistan is already murkily divided between Barzanis and Talabanis on essentially the same basis, and

(5) The "constitution" that the pasha's Master has graciously bestowed upon his neosubjects in "Iraq," is also chockful of blank spaces disguised as legalese.[*] That apparently sloppy brand of legal drafting would never do in Greater Texas, of course, and Mr. Madison must be rotating in his grave, but in Mesopotamia it works fine -- perhaps better than anything else the Occupying Power has been up to. Naturally after a ploy has worked for them once, they resort to it again.

(6) Probably M. Othman is no deep student of Crawfordology, but by a happy accident, if that's what it is, his account is true to the inner character of GOP extremism, as inculcated in MBA candidates at the Harvard Victory School and the like. The object of all those lawyers that every large business corporation employs is to reduce all contracts by construction to a level of vagueness that can be "negotiated" with Levantines in the first place, once they understand who the dealer is and that the dealer wins all ties, even ones about exactly what counts as a tie. In the USA, that's only a remoted dream or Platonic ideal, but east of Suez it can actually be realized!

(7) The Green Zone régime is also represented in accord with its essential character. That is to say, it is scarcely present at all. Certainly not present when serious deals are being made.[**]


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[*] In the real world, an outsider cannot easily guess the ever-shifting intentions of militant Republicans. As long as one is admittedly only spinning a yarn, however, one can make them out clever enough to have planned that subjects and clients and unreliable Westerners should understand these blanks as "(to be decided later)," whereas those privy to the secrets of the Proconsular Palace understand that in most cases some fix is already in, but not of a nature to be written down in a "constitution."


[**] For reasons that could be better explained in a strictly non-literary treatment, the pashalik of "Iraq" under its Crawford Constitution does allow "deputies" like M. Othman to stick a spoke in the wheels. Indeed, it even allows "deputies" from Free Kurdistan to stick spokes into purely Greenzonian wheels, an unprecedented arrangement. It follows theoretically that a fifty-fifty division of jurisdiction between Free Kurdistan and Greater Greenzonia would be really a sixty-forty one, for the clients of Talibanis and Barzanis get counted 100% as Kurds and then about 20% as "Iraqis" also, whereas the rest count 0% as Kurds and only 80% as "Iraqis." In practice this peculiar structure is of great importance up to a point, but only up to a point. The Crawford Constitution, rather like that of ancient Poland, makes every faction very strong defensively, but pretty well impotent to act constructively without virtual unanimity. Hence the systematic overrepresentation of Free Kurdistan makes very sure that the régime at New Baghdad can not constitutionally or legally meddle with it, without affording it any ability to intervene in the internal affairs of "Iraq" unilaterally, not even to the extent that a swing vote can sometimes do in some American states.

Exactly what would happen if the AEI pasha's latest brainstorm is ever put to the test, with the Proconsular Palace advising the Free Kurds that such-an-such a petroleum deal is unacceptable, I have no clear idea. Probably His Excellency has none either, whether because he supposes the contingency will never arise, or because if it does, he himself will long since have departed. Who knows, by the time such a difference actually arises, the Proconsular Palace itself may be in the gift of us Democrats! (That complication would not have vexed an equivalent Ottoman overlord in 1887.)

How such a difference of opinion would be resolved depends little or nothing on how the "law" reads, or even on exactly what sort of gentlemen's agreement was made by the Free Kurd notables with Khalilzad Pasha. It would, or will, depend on the actual correlation of forces at some future time, a matter which perhaps Nostradamus can tell you about, but not I. Under certain circumstances, the resolution might even depend on how lawyers and judges parse the texts of contracts and "laws" and "constitutions," as it would in Paris or Peoria. This event is not likely, but it is not logically impossible either. There is no harm in hoping, I don't think.

Some commentators who approach this matter more from the petroleum end than from the occupation policy end have speculated that Big Oil will be reluctant to invest no matter what the natives' "law" may say, in light of the long-term nature of such ventures and the extreme uncertainty of developments in the Republican Party's neo-Iraq. That seems to me the way a Western railroad ought to be run, prudently almost to excess, but whether the pertinent tycoons think so too, who knows?

M. Othman writes "in a hurry" and "bound and determined to accelerate the process" about the Crawfordites, and such is my own impression as well from rather closer to the ranch. But why should they be hasty? Alternatively, if it really was all that important to them, why did they not impose their druthers before snapping gridlock on the Green Zone pols with Khalilzad Pasha's "constitution"? Did something happen just recently that makes the matter urgent for the militant GOP?