Self-Love is a Beautiful Thing

A Shared Stake in Iraq's Future How the Oil Agreement Points the Way Forward By Zalmay Khalilzad Under the national hydrocarbon law approved this week by Iraq's Council of Ministers, oil will serve as a vehicle to unify Iraq and will give all Iraqis a shared stake in their country's future. This is a significant achievement for Iraqis' national reconciliation. It demonstrates that the leaders of Iraq's principal communities can pull together to peacefully resolve difficult issues of national importance. Resolving concerns about control of oil is central to overcoming internal divisions in Iraq. The country has the third-largest oil reserves in the world, and more than 90 percent of federal income comes from oil revenue. The effective and equitable management of these resources is critical to economic growth as well as to developing a greater sense of shared purpose among Iraqi communities. The goal of Iraq's leaders was to draft a law that ensured that all Iraqis could be confident they would receive their fair share of the benefits of developing the country's resources, that the revenue from oil and gas would enable a decentralization of power while maintaining national unity, and that Iraq would adopt the best international practices for the development and management of its mineral wealth. By these standards, the hydrocarbon law is a great success. It: · Reaffirms that oil and gas resources are owned by all the people of Iraq and contains a firm commitment to revenue-sharing among regions and provinces on the basis of population. · Establishes a predictable framework and processes for federal-regional cooperation that demonstrate the government's commitment to democracy and federalism. · Creates a principal policymaking body for energy -- the Federal Council on Oil and Gas -- that will have representatives from all of Iraq's regions and oil-producing provinces. · Ensures that all revenue from oil sales will go into a single national account and that provinces will receive direct shares of revenue, thereby significantly increasing local control of financial resources. · Establishes international standards for transparency and mandates public disclosure of contracts and associated revenue and payments. This is essential to build confidence in the new political order and to counter corruption. The law defines a role for the Oil Ministry that is primarily regulatory, which is the modern standard[A] and which will also harness the market to achieve the optimal development of Iraq's resources. It provides the legal framework to enable international investment in Iraq's oil and gas sectors, a break from the statist and overcentralized practices of the past. It also requires best practices in environmental protection and field management and development, ensuring that the environment is not damaged and that hydrocarbon assets are not wasted by poor practices of the past. While the draft law will need to be enacted by the Iraqi Council of Representatives when it returns from recess, the prospects for passage are excellent because all the major parliamentary blocs are represented in the cabinet. Companion legislation will be required in several areas, and Iraqi leaders hope to complete the entire package of hydrocarbon legislation by the end of May.[B] Arriving at this agreement was not easy. It has taken other countries years to complete such legislation.[C] While negotiating this law presented special challenges for the federal government, the Kurdistan regional government and the leaders of key political blocs, the approval of the draft by the Council of Ministers sets a precedent for problem-solving and cooperation that is critical to the stabilization and development of Iraq. This is the first time since 2003 that all major Iraqi communities have come together on a defining piece of legislation.[D] A national reconciliation that stabilizes Iraq can be achieved if similar compromises are made on the future of de-Baathification and on amending the constitution. The agreement on the oil law should give us confidence that Iraqis are willing and able to take the steps needed for Iraq's success.

Khalílzád Pasha cannot be blamed for how the Washington Post decided to title his Party agitprop, but what the editor decided on, "How the Oil Agreement Points the Way Forward," seems fair enough and balanced to me. His Excellency's thesis does indeed appear to be that one agreement or obedience paves the way for additional agreements or obediences. If the invasionites can get their petroleum bill ratified by the quasiparliament, then a bill on rehabilitatin' the Ba‘thís might get through as well. And then after that, perhaps they might even fill in a few of the blanks in the Crawford Constitution. And then after that, by a very long leap, there is somehow to be " national reconciliation that stabilizes Iraq."

One might almost wonder what the Crawfordites think they require the services of Dr. Gen. Petraeus for, now that Sultan Zalmáy has everythin' figured out. Almost, but not quite, because one can not bring oneself to suppose that His Excellency is really layin' all his Party's cards on the table in a piece like this one. The ideological axiom I have attributed to him in note [D] he no doubt holds with complete subjective sincerity, but with a lot of the rest of his guff one must remember that this factious tank-thinker is enough of a diplomat not to limit himself to his own opinions when somethin' else might work better. Does he really think that there won't be any difficulties with the quasideputies about his oil bill? And after that, one's doubts about his candor increase with each proposed step along Forward Way. Conjecturing what Khalílzád Pasha actually thinks is only a parlor game, however, compared with wondering whether any of it will turn out to be reality-based. Probably the man really thinks that ever more concessions to those poor oppressed Arabophone Sunnis -- his nominal coreligionists, if such a connection can matter to a High Mammonite -- is just the ticket, and probably it is not the right ticket at all.

The ideological axiom gets in Z. Khalílzád's way, I fear, because it would tend to make him believe that Ba‘thís and takfírís will come in out of the cold as soon as they are properly bribed with their own oil revenues. As soon as Kurds and Twelvers can be arm-twisted by ZK into paying the bribes, that is. The theory that all foreigners can be bought is questionable in itself, and the challenge at hand becomes even more daunting because the target bribees are not unaware that Party arm-twistin' has occurred and that the hillbillies and the Safavids are not in fact bubbling over with a desire to be perfectly equitable to them. Their politicians are as little talented as anybody else in the neocolony except Dr. Chalabí and the Rev. ‘Abd al-‘Azíz al-Hakím, so perhaps they do not consciously notice that fairness to Sunnis is likely to last about as long as the GOP occupation lasts and no longer. They do not, however, require to consciously make that connection, when the bad attitudes of the other indigenous pols are more than adequate to keep them from responding to Khalílzád Pasha's blandishments as he'd like them to. All that His Excellency's (or Master Hadley's?) clever schemin' is likely to accomplish is to fragment the Arab Sunni "community" even further, a work of supererogation if ever there was one, and a work that is counterproductive even from a strict Boy-and-Party standpoint. Perhaps I exaggerrate, but to call it a proposal to fund the native insurgency as well as the Crawfordites' counterinsurgency seems wrong mainly because there won't be much actual fundin' as long as the troubles continue. In the abstract, of course, she who undertakes to finance both sides is naturally suspected of hoping that the conflict continues indefinitely. The militant Republicans are excused from suspicion, though, because they know not what they are doin'.

That is to say, I, who am fairly well acquainted with them, excuse them. Unfortunately a large number of Arabs and Muslims who don't know enough about Crawfordology to be very dangerous genuinely believe that Khalílzád Pasha and the other neocomrades are deliberately playin' the divide et impera game. After all, isn't that what imperialists and colonialists do?

I digress. What the natives make of ZK is another story. The present scribble is intended to induce Televisionland and the electorate at home to think well of him and Boy and Party. As such, it seems rather a forlorn effort. Not many GOP dupes or swing voters will attend to an editorial based on a news story that belonged in the financial pages rather than on the front page to begin with. More accurately, which will belong there, if and when Khalílzád Pasha's oil bill is enacted. They are gettin' a little desperate down at the ranch, perhaps, that they should have to fadge up a milestone that consist in gloatin' now about what 99% of America will find eye-glazing when it actually happens. If Dr. Gen. Petraeus can't do better than this for them, the invasionites will be in sad condition. What hitherto loyal elephant person would find it especially cheerin' to be advised that it is not, after, antecedently impossible for his Party's neo-liberateds' politicians to agree about anythin'? That's a bit like being advised that your heart is in excellent shape, even despite the terminal cancer.

A number of armed groups contend for a number of causes amidst the bushogenic doo-doo of neo-Iraq, but not one of them for control of the oil and gas considered as separate from control of everything in general. Even the invasionites themselves are not in fact conductin' a "war for oil," despite occasional polemics against them to the contrary from the port side. For that matter, Khalílzád Pasha's AEI-centric selflovefest -- "a break from the statist and overcentralized practices of the past" and so on -- has everything to do with the abstract dogmatism of the individual and very little to do with concrete greed from the side of the Big Management Party.

This particular milestone is not on any of the ways, real or mendacious, that the neocomrades have alleged that they got themselves to Brave New Baghdad in the first place, and it is equally not on any way out. It does not even necessarily mean that they intend never to leave at all, although on that score a case could be made for its importance. ZK, however, absolutely could not talk about that aspect, no matter what his personal views or plots, because even most GOP dupes will understand "Iraq's success" to involve the paleface invaders finally goin' away and the natives left to enjoy "Freedom means peace" and "nonsectarianism" without any Occupyin' Power around to rub their noses in their national happiness all the time. If Sultan Zalmáy himself does not have any radiant bipartisan Vision of Withdrawal before his inner eye -- and I incline to think he doesn't -- he certainly will not share his private thinkin' with the customers of the Washington Post. Considered as a milepost towards the Big Management Party hangin' around that neighborhood forever, Khalílzád's oil bill can safely be discussed only with great circumspection behind closed doors. To write such a milestone up for vulgar consumption like this is problematical, because even if the Pasha carefully avoids actually sayin' anythin' about withdrawal, he knows that he solicits that sort of interpretation, that as soon as he mentions "success," there will be a howl from the back seat "Are we there yet, Daddy?"

The above article is very feeble as a way of replying "No, but we're on the way!" -- on the way, because now the invasionites have found that their neo-Iraqi subjects have,.or ought to have, "a shared stake in their country's future." That and a dollar or two ought to get you a cup of coffee to read with your Washington Post.

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[A] "The modern standard"? "The best international standards"? Here we have perhaps a Jesuitism rather than an honest WASP lie. Khalílzád Pasha is probably going by the deals Big Oil has imposed on the post-Soviet statelets in Central Asia rather by than what is customary in the lands actually produce signficant amounts of oil and gas at the moment.


[B] "Companion legislation will be required" ought to be engraved on Sultan Zalmay's sepulcher, it is is so characteristic of his wheelin's and dealin's. Better make that his cenotaph, though, and have a blank space there as well.


[C] Few countries have had the honour to be invasionized by militant Republicans, however. And it appears to have taken four years in the case at hand.


[D] "Defining" is odd and striking, not merely as comin' from Mr. Fill-In-The-Blanks-Later, and not merely because the GZ quasideputies may well make more difficulties than are anticipated at the Proconsular Palace, but above all as a reflection of how Khalílzád Pasha supposes that his neo-subjects think. For AEI and GOP, it is understandable that the national character of "Iraq" should consist mainly of being located on top of fossil fuels. Ninety percent of the indigs, however, everybody other than the rootless cosmopolitan community, and perhaps even not all of them, are rather less enlightened about how to define themselves and/or "Iraq." Even the westoxicated liberalism described by M. Hourani reached Mesopotamia before the black gunk was commercially discovered, although not very long before.

There are limits to what aggressions and occupations can hope to accomplish in the matter of "identity" or "definition," even when invaders and occupiers are far more competent than our Crawfordites have shown themselves. In a very long term, even the language and religionism of conquered provinces can be altered out of all recognition, but needless to say AEI tank-thinkers do not operate with reference to so vast a time horizon. Nothing has been clearer throughout the whole Stumblebum Saga than that the invasionites dearly wish that 90%, instead of only 10%, of their neo-subjects were defined the way a Boy-and-Party fan from South Succotash or Rio Limbaugh would define herself -- or better, as her obituary in the local paper will define her retrospectively, viz., by what jobs she held. Even chez nous that is not quite the whole story, of course. Whatever Greater Texas may be, America is not simply the place where the streets are paved with gold. Nevertheless, as a first approximation, one may reasonably explain to a Martian that the whole joint is a fief of Lord Mammon's.

Anybody who said the same thing about the militant GOP's neo-Iraq, or any "Iraq" that came before it, would be either demented or Marxist. Khalílzád Pasha, like his Party bosses, is presumably neither, and so he does not say anything so silly out loud, yet everything in this morning's scribble takes that silliness tacitly for granted. Consider His Excellency's partin' short or bottom line: "Iraq's success" -- the creation of a neo-Iraq that will allow Boy and Party to boast of their success and victory -- means makin' the protectorate over as a fief of Lord Mammon's. Once the natives are innocently engaged in getting money, they will lose interest in "sectarianism" and tribalism and vendetta and all that obsolete jazz. (As to globoterrorism, however, with which the militant GOP professes itself chiefly to be at "war," one should not expect too much even from Lord Mammon: converts to AEI values would not, of course, actually engage in globoterror personally, but they might well fund those who do. Still, at this point a neo-Iraq that is no worse than Sa‘údiyya is by no means to be disdained.)

Khalílzád Pasha's ideological axiom is not silliness simpliciter, most likely, but it is extremely silly secundum quid if the "quid" be that Lord Mammon is to triumph in months or years rather than decades or centuries. Or indeed if it be that GOP invasionism shall be significantly credited with effectin' the conversion. And there is a possibility, even if only a slight one, that mass conversion to AEIdeology will never happen at all amongst the Muslims and neo-Muslims. That would be rather unfair to Lord Mammon and the absolute merits of his demoplutocratic product. It is certainly not his lordship's fault that Islam knew all about "us" in the West and did not like us or trust us mushrikín long before demoplutocracy was hatched and we began to worship the golden calf for its gold rather than as an emblem of fertility or banner of pastoralism.