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The Middle East: Oil and Turmoil |
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Wednesday, 04 October 2006 |
There is no accepted definition of the region we call the Middle East, history has tended to shift what is meant by the Middle East around to suit its own convenience, Afghanistan and Azerbaijan have sometimes been included sometimes not. Likewise Sudan and Libya, traditionally those countries and the Levant region of Syria, Lebanon and Palestine belonged not to the Middle East but the Near East, a construction that also included neighboring bits of Europe like Greek and the Balkans, elsewhere the Near East and the Middle East overlapped and could be confusing.
Even supposing that a physical definition of the region where possible it would be flatly denied by its human components, the Anthology of the Middle East is as complicated and controversial as one would expect of a continental isthmus, no less heterodox are its belief systems, Jews, Christians and Muslims all account for parts of Middle East and sometimes the same parts as particularly in the holly land.
Islam has long been the prevailing religion and the Arabic the prevailing language, but neither is exclusive to the region, Arabic is also spoken throughout much of North Africa and there are far more Muslims outside the Middle East than within it, the human geography is no more revealing than the physical one In fact the Middle East has never had a geographical expression it has always and essentially been an economic and a political one the term Middle East is a fairly recent derivation. It was coined in the west and it reflects western perceptions in that it defines the region in terms of what the western powers considered its characteristic uses and abuses, and these very often varied, during the early twentieth century the uses being often strategic and the abuses always requiring foreign intervention.
At the end of the nineteenth century, the region started to have attractions more important than just as a staging ground for armies or a silk road, a very significant new attraction of huge strategic dimensions started to make itself increasingly evident with the discovery of Oil. During the late nineteenth and very early in the twentieth century, petroleum looked almost irrelevant. No one at that time foresaw its amazing potential as an energy source, during those days the world was powered mainly by coal, during those days highly inflammable kerosene which was refined at Baku in Azerbaijan was carried by steam tankers through the Suez canal destined to centers in the far east, to most people those days oil did not mean power but light and a little warmth, the kerosene which was imported from Russia was mainly burnt in lamps, electricity was still in the future, by kerosene most of the world worked and played after dark. Baku’s prominence was short lived, at the turn of the century haphazard drilling and appalling working conditions brought a dramatic fall in the yield and the western world was forced to look somewhere else for its energy supply. Oil has proved to be a very important source of energy, Henry Ford's T models cars were invading the roads in increasing numbers, the British navy has very successfully turned to moving its fleet by oil rather than coal, various kinds of oil products were used as an energy source, the hydrocarbon age has arrived and the hydrocarbon man was fighting for the blood of his civilization and this started a great scramble to dominate the concessions and exploration rights in the Middle East which was now acknowledged as an area with tremendous deposits of the vital stuff under it soil.
In the early years of the twentieth century the importance of the Middle East to practically all the western powers can be explained in one word, oil. This area is known to have most of the oil reserves in the whole world. The most important player in this drama was at that time Britain because in spite of the fact that it has won the war against imperial Germany and the Turks, it came out of the four years war impoverished and weak, but the British and the French had anticipated two years before the end of the war that Germany and the Turks were loosing the war so they sat and negotiated the division of the expected gains amongst themselves and agreed on what later on came to be famous as the Sykes–Picot agreement to divide the expected loot amongst themselves. The two Vilayets of Baghdad and Basra which belonged to the Turkish empire should go to Britain and that the Vilayet of Mosul should go to the French, but Mosul was smelling of oil and a lot of it and Britain had already changed the powering of its fleet from using coal to oil, so they started to machinate over Mosul. The conflicts between the main powers of those days where fought behind the scenes, so at the end it was agreed between the French and British that Mosul should go to Britain and three Vilayets which belonged to Turkey were joined together into a single entity which was called Iraq. Iraq is a recent appellation; this land has always been known in history as Mesopotamia.
Keeping Iraq under British control to ensure a constant supply of Iraq oil was an easy enterprise as creating it, Britain was able to get the vitally needed Iraq oil mostly by very subtle and clever scheming and maneuverings. But often by the use of sheer force like the way they treated the events of the summer of 1920 when the people in Southern Iraq rose up in a well organized revolt against their rule to which they retaliated by very aggressive bombardment and burning of mostly civilian targets which occasioned a death toll at least a ten thousand, once again like has very often happened in the tragic history of this land a conquering power inflicted a terrible detritus, which to add insult to the energy the British had always downplayed these events and very often neglected mentioning them, during its presence in Iraq, Britain was forced to manage other similar events also by force whether that was done by themselves or by the Hashemite monarchy which was only able to survive under their protection. At last everything came to a very tragic end when a group of young middle ranked officers rose up against the monarchy threw out the British in the murderous events of July 1958. Britain's removal from the scene ushered in the Americans.
During the first half of last century the American's have paid only a nominal attention to the Middle East and its problems as long its supplies of oil from there were guaranteed they always tried to stay away from its politics and social upheavals leaving those aspects of its life to the British and the French who were involved there much earlier and knew it much better than themselves. During the second half of the 20th century they were getting gradually more and more active there, because of their increasing reliance on its oil and their total commitment to the survival and security of the newly formed state of Israel which makes it and still making it now an extremely complicated and very controversial. It has mostly been one sided, myopic and badly ignorant of the history of the land and the cultural heritage of its people, but I am going to leave all that now and end with the next few words.
The Bush administration's handling of this country's after its invasion in 2003, have created in the aftermath of their occupation an unbelievable and a very dangerous mess.
A terrible situation for the United States and its people, a real quagmire, a second Vietnam, It would be a real miracle if they are going to be able to extricate themselves from it.
Najeeb Hanoudi
Baghdad/Iraq
Sunday October 1, 2006
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