‘What does a war for oil look like?

American troops going into battle with tanks waving "Exxon Mobil" and "Chevron" flags right behind? Are the flags then planted squarely in the ground and the oil beneath officially declared war bounty? Well, some members of the Bush administration and U.S. oil companies may have favoured such an approach. But the device ultimately chosen to win this war for oil is only slightly more subtle: a law, to be passed by the Iraqis themselves, which would turn Iraq's oil over to foreign oil companies.

The U.S. State Department Iraq Study Group began laying the foundations for the new law prior to the invasion of Iraq. Its recommendations, released only after the invasion, were quickly enshrined in a draft oil law introduced to the interim Iraqi government by the U.S.-appointed interim prime minister of Iraq, Ayad Allawi (a former CIA operative).

The Bush administration has spent four years trying to force successive Iraqi governments to pass the law, referred to as either the "hydrocarbons" or "oil" law. While it has gone through several permutations, the basics have remained the same and have followed the original prescriptions set out by the State Department.

The law would change Iraq's oil system from a nationalized model -- all but closed to U.S. oil companies - to a privatized model open to foreign corporate control. At least two-thirds of Iraq's oil would be open to foreign oil companies under terms that they usually only dream about, including 30-year-long contracts. (For details of the law, see my March 2007 New York Times Op-Ed, "Whose Oil Is It, Anyway?")

In January, after four years of trying to get the law passed in Iraq, President Bush went public with this demand when he made his "speech to the nation" announcing the "surge" of 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq.

The president explained that the surge would be successful where other U.S. efforts had failed in Iraq because the Iraqi government would be held to a set of specific "benchmarks." Those benchmarks were laid out in a White House Fact Sheet released the same day that explained that the Iraq government had committed to several economic and political measures, including to "enact [a] hydrocarbons law to promote investment, national unity, and reconciliation."

With few exceptions, the American press has adopted the adminstration's language and continually and virtually exclusively refers to the oil law as a revenue sharing measure - ignoring completely the fact that Iraqis would only be able to share the revenues left over after the foreign oil companies received their very sizeable cut.

Benchmark Boogie: A Guide To The Struggle Over Iraq's Oil

meanwhile …..

Hassan Jumaa Awad al Assadi, President of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions (IFOU), is speaking in London on Wednesday 18 July. It's a timely visit following bushit’s preposterous statement this week that "progress" is being made in Iraq and the US-UK war "can still succeed".

The truth is - as two thirds of the American people now believe - the war has brought the most powerful military force on earth to the brink of defeat. In the process one million Iraqi civilians have been killed and one in seven of the population is now a refugee. 3,500 US soldiers have died and the war has cost the American taxpayer US450 billion +.

Prominent voices in the US Congress, from both the Republican and Democratic parties, have outlined the exit strategy which bushit may well himself adopt before too long:

· blame the Iraqi people for being too "divisive" to accept the gift of "democracy" and "freedom" brought to them at the end of a Cruise missile;

· withdraw troops to six giant super-bases that America has built in the Iraqi desert;

· maintain devastating fire-power at these bases to demonstrate whenever necessary where ultimate authority in the country lies, particularly in relation to its oil.

For this reason, whether America is close to defeat or not, the mass slaughter will continue while bushit fails to secure one of the central aims of his war: to privatise Iraqi oil and hand control of production and profits to foreign oil companies, The oil law before the Iraqi parliament has been devised for this very purpose. The claim that the law is intended to resolve sectarian divisions in Iraq between Sunnis, Shia and Kurds is a smoke screen (the law would in fact enshrine those divisions).

Bushit has now openly made the passing of this law a condition for the withdrawal of US troops, but the Iraqi parliament has so far resisted the intimidation and threats because it knows how the majority of Iraqis will react to the theft of their most valuable resource (see Hands Off Iraqi Oil).

Hassan Jumaa is a central figure opposing the attempts to privatise Iraq's oil and transfer control to foreign companies. The union he leads represents 26,000 oil workers across Iraq and it has struck three times against the privatisation of Iraqi oil, as well as consistently opposing the US-UK occupation.

"We will stand firm against this imperialist plan, " he says, "that would hand over Iraq's wealth to international capitalism such that the deprived Iraqi people would not benefit from it. Iraqis are capable of managing their companies and their investments by themselves."