Sasha Lilley :
© Dissident Voice, November 12, 2002
A New Age of Empire in the Middle East, Courtesy of the US and UK
British
Member of Parliament George Galloway says that a plan for the division
of the Middle
East is circulating in the corridors of power on both sides of the Atlantic.
In a recent interview,
Galloway asserted that ministers and eminent figures in the British government
are deliberating the
partition of the Middle East, harking back to the colonial map-making in
the first quarter of the
20th century that established the modern nation-states of the region. An
Anglo-American war
against Iraq, he tells me, could be the opening salvo in the break up of
the region. Galloway, who
met with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad this August, states that the war aims
of the US and Britain
go well beyond replacing the Iraqi leader. "They include a recasting of
the entire Middle East, the
better to ensure the hegemony of the big powers over the natural resources
of the Middle East
and the safety and security of the vanguard of imperialist interests in
the area – the state of Israel.
And part of that is actually redrawing boundaries."
Galloway
is privy to such information as he is the Vice-Chairman of the Parliamentary
Labour
Party Foreign Affairs Committee with close relations to Britain’s Ministry
of Defense. Galloway
says that British ministers and former ministers are primarily focused
on the break-up of Saudi
Arabia and Iraq in the wake of an attack against Saddam Hussein, but are
also discussing the
possible partition of Egypt, the Sudan, Syria and Lebanon. These officials
have become taken
with the realization that the borders of the Middle East are recent creations,
dating back only to
World War I when Britain and France divided the region between themselves.
Galloway adds,
"There are many ways in which a new Sykes-Picot dispensation could be drawn
up in the Middle
East to guarantee another few decades of big power hegemony over the area."
The
Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, codified by the League of Nations in 1920,
parceled out
the crumbling Ottoman Empire extending over much of the Middle East between
Britain and
France. By the early 1920s Britain, which as the reigning imperial power
already effectively ruled
Egypt, the Sudan, Oman, Kuwait and Qatar, made off with the lion’s share.
This divvying up of
the region by imperial powers led to the creation of the states of Jordan,
Syria, Lebanon and Iraq
among others. Under the aegis of Britain, the modern state of Saudi Arabia
emerged in the late
1920s, absorbing the hitherto separate eastern, central and western regions
– including the holy
sites of Mecca and Medina – of what constitutes the country today.
The
partition of the Middle East was partially driven by the oil conglomerates
of the time. Britain
pushed through the interests of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (British
Petroleum’s predecessor)
and Royal Dutch Shell, over American oil companies Exxon and Mobil by means
of the colonial
mandate it had established following WWI. Jockeying over oil resulted in
an Anglo-French
agreement giving Britain the northern Iraqi province of Mosul. This lead
to in Iraq’s modern
boundaries, formed in 1921 when Britain combined the three Ottoman provinces
of Mosul,
Baghdad and Basra, which were predominantly Kurdish, Sunni and Shi’a Muslim
respectively.
Today
British and American petroleum interests dominate the scene once more,
although Britain
is reduced to the role of junior partner. The United States and Britain
are home to the four biggest
petroleum producers in the world – Exxon-Mobil, Chevron-Texaco, British
Petroleum-Amoco
and Royal Dutch-Shell – with the French-Italian TotalElfFina following
in fifth place. While a
massive upheaval in the Middle East would hurt oil revenues initially,
a new constellation of power
there could in the long run safeguard the interests of the petroleum conglomerates
from the
present instability of the region. While the US government has been considering
alternate sources
of oil in the Caspian Sea area, Russia and Africa, analysts admit that
none of these compare to
the known riches of the Persian Gulf.
Not
surprisingly then, if hawks on both sides of the Atlantic have their way,
Saudi Arabia would
be at the core of a hegemonically reshaped Middle East. Saudi Arabia alone
contains a quarter of
the world’s petroleum reserves and is one of the only countries able to
increase production to
meet rising demand for oil, expected to grow by fifty percent in the next
two decades. Yet Saudi
Arabia is no longer seen by the US and UK governments as a trustworthy
ally, and certainly not
one on which they can afford to be so dependent, given the kingdom’s internal
vulnerability and
its sponsorship of Islamic fundamentalist insurgents (Saudi nationals comprising
fifteen of the
nineteen September 11th hijackers) – even though such patronage had been
coordinated by the
United States in earlier, happier times.
"I
think the United States in particular has lost confidence in the ruling
family in Saudi Arabia, so
far as their interests are concerned," Galloway maintains. "They realize
that the radicalization of
the Saudi Arabian population has proceeded at very great pace, has reached
very great depths,
particularly amongst young people." The United States and Britain are fearful
that the unreliable
House of Saud will be overthrown and that the new anti-American rulers
will shut off the flow of
oil. "The United States is afraid that one day they’ll wake up and a Khomeini
type – or be it
Wahhabi Sunni Khomeini – revolution would have occurred, and they would
have lost everything
in the country." The British Foreign Office has warned that dissent, bubbling
up from a dissatisfied
population that sympathizes with Osama bin Laden and seethes at the pro-American
stance of the
ruling elite, has reached the point where the country risks being taken
over by al-Qaeda.
"Saudi
Arabia could easily be two if not three countries," Galloway says, summarizing
the
neo-imperialist position discussed in British government circles, "which
would have the helpful
bonus of avoiding foreign forces having to occupy the holiest places in
Islam, when they’re only
interested really in oil wells in the eastern part of the country." According
to him, the US troops
based throughout Saudi Arabia could be withdrawn from the areas containing
Mecca and
Medina, the most hallowed sites in the Islamic world, where US military
presence is a source of
great resentment for many Saudis.
Instead
the soldiers would occupy only the Eastern Province of the country, which
borders on the
Persian Gulf and is inhabited by Saudi Arabia’s Shi’a minority. This area
contains the major
oilfields, including the largest oilfield in the world, Ghawar, as well
as the industrial centers of the
kingdom. "The theorists of this idea have fastened on to the fact that
a very substantial proportion
of the population in the Eastern Province, where the oil is, are Shi’ite
Muslims with no particular
affection for the ruling Wahhabi clique who form the House of Saud." Galloway
adds that for the
first time, leaders in the West are becoming concerned with the human rights
of the Shi’a
population, which "now that they coincide with Western interests, are moving
up the agenda."
In
the United States, those in interlocking circles around the Bush administration
have been calling
for the dismemberment of Saudi Arabia. This past July, an analyst from
the US
government-funded Rand Corporation presented a briefing in Defense Secretary
Rumsfeld’s
private conference room titled "Taking Saudi Out of Arabia," which advised
the assembled
luminaries of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board that the US government
should demand Saudi
Arabia stop supporting hostile fundamentalist movements and curtail the
airing of anti-US and
anti-Israel statements, or its oilfields and financial assets would be
seized. A month later Max
Singer, co-founder of the rightwing US think tank the Hudson Institute,
gave a presentation to the
Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, in which he counseled the US government
to forge a
"Muslim Republic of East Arabia" out of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia.
Whether
the imperialist strategem of the neo-conservatives comes to pass remains
to be seen.
What is apparent, however, is that the potential for such a cynical adventure
to go wrong would
be quite high. Colonial undertakings have a tendency to not work out as
expected, even if the
fantasies of draughtsman in the Pentagon and Britain’s Whitehall are implement
through "native"
proxies. This is especially the case when the populations of the areas
to be shaped, rather than
viewing the US as deliverers of a pipedream of "democracy," are intensely
hostile to the imperial
designs of the West.
Sasha Lilley is an independent producer and correspondent for Free Speech
Radio News.