In 1990, after two world wars and a protracted cold war there was a hope that the world would enter into a new peaceful era. Oil became once again the center of a very serious international conflict, the world was jolted by the venture of another crazy 20th century dictator. Saddam Hussein has recently emerged from his eight years war with Iran bloodied and weakened but also not quite defeated, the war has ended with him in control of an incredibly powerful military machine but also bankrupt and with tens of billions of dollars in debt. To the South was the small Kuwait with its vast amounts of oil and its other immense resources, it was very tempting, an enormous prize.
In the early hours of August 2, 1990, hundreds of thousands of his troops in thousands of armored personnel carriers supported by hundreds of tanks and military aircraft crossed the border and occupied it. Had Saddam been able to get away with his Kuwaiti adventure it would have made him the leading oil power, he would have been in control of the planet’s largest oil reserve and one of the earth’s most powerful men, but it would have caused a dramatic shift in the international balance of power something the world was simply not prepared for and did not accept, the stakes were very high. The world was not prepared to accept Saddam’s invasion and yield to his crazy diktats they have learned a painful lesson from the oil embargo of 1973. The hostility to Saddam’s occupation of Kuwait was led by the United States government which was his main backer during his recent war with Iran, now this same government in the person of its president has made a complete turn in its attitude to the Iraqi dictator, President Bush [the first] said “this will not stand” and went on gathering a three dozen small and not very small countries to eject him from Kuwait, which they ultimately succeeded in achieving after six months under his leadership. Saddam’s forces were kicked out of Kuwait, but he was spared and went on to massacre the people who were encouraged by the American president to revolt against his rule, but when they were being murdered in the thousands by his forces, the Americans were looking in the other direction.
Oil is a naturally occurring bituminous liquid which is formed under Earth’s surface by the decomposition of marine organisms. The remains of tiny organisms that live in the sea and, to a lesser extent, those of land organisms that are carried down to the sea in rivers and of plants that grow on the ocean bottoms are enmeshed with the fine sands and silts that settle to the bottom in quiet sea basins. Such deposits, which are rich in organic materials, become the source rocks for the generation of crude oil. The process began many millions of years ago and it continues to this day. Once the petroleum forms, it flows upward in Earth’s crust because it has a lower density than the brines that saturate the interstices of the sands, and carbonate rocks that constitute the crust of Earth. The crude oil and natural gas rise into the microscopic pores of the coarser sediments lying above. Oil is composed principally of hydrocarbons with very few sulfur and oxygen compounds as gaseous, liquid and solid elements.
The surface deposits of crude oil have been known to humans for thousands of years. In the areas where they occurred, they were long used for limited purposes, such as caulking-boats, waterproofing cloth, and fueling torches. By the time the Renaissance era began in the 14th century, some surface deposits were being distilled to obtain lubricants and medicinal products. The real exploitation of crude oil did not begin until the 19th century. The Industrial Revolution had by then brought about a search for new fuels, and the social changes it effected had produced a need for good lamps, people wished to be able to work and read after dark. The search for a better lamp fuel led to a great demand for “rock oil” and various scientists in the mid-19th century were developing processes to make commercial use of it. In 1852, the Canadian physician and geologist Abraham Gessner obtained a patent for producing from crude oil a relatively clean-burning, affordable lamp fuel called kerosene. In 1855, an American chemist, Benjamin Silliman, published a report indicating the wide range of useful products that could be derived through the distillation of oil including gasoline which with the invention of the car a new era opened, a new civilization was born. Modern western civilization is based on oil. Oil has become the most important source of mobility on land, sea and in the air. Oil and its derivatives have become an essential ingredient in the manufacture of his medicines, paints, building materials and cloth and in generating electricity.
If oil was a boon to the western civilization and a major catalyst in its development it has also proved to be a curse and a fool’s gold to its producers, look at what happened to the late the shah of Iran, the Mexican economy, the Soviet Empire, Nigeria and Algeria. The greed, corruption and political prostitution it has created is astronomical. But nowhere was the oil curse as destructive and damaging as it was in Iraq. Saddam Hussein was able to earn during his years in power hundreds of billions of dollars from the sale of Iraq’s oil, a very small percentage of those billions were spent on the requirements of the population. Almost two hundred billion were stolen and embezzled by Saddam, his family and members of his innermost circle of cronies and thugs, the rest were plundered in futile wars and conspiracies against neighboring states and others. The crazy adventures in military industrialization like his ongoing romance with weapons of mass destruction a romance which has started in 1975 and continued until his fall down from power. All that has left the country in a truly dire state, with unemployment reaching 60%. The highest infant mortality rate and malignancies in the area, more than a third of the children between the ages of six months and four years are in a state of advanced malnutrition. The ration coupon and essential services are just a little above zero. I am not going to talk about the energy supply and electricity, because that has become a very painful and apparently an unfathomable problem. We are already back to the kerosene lamp when kerosene is available.
Dr. Najeeb Hanoudi
Baghdad, May 21, 2005
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