IF oil is the question, Iraq is not the answer. Some people say the Iraq crisis has been manufactured to cloak an “oil grab” by the United States and the American oil industry. Others believe that a liberated Iraq will flood the world market with cheap oil and provide a quick fix for concerns about our energy security.

These perspectives, while very different, are based on a fundamental misperception — of both scale and timing. Yes, Iraq is a major oil country, with the world’s second largest known reserves. But in terms of production capacity, Iraq represents just three per cent of the world’s total. Its oil exports are on the same level as Nigeria’s. Even if Iraq doubled its capacity, that could take more than a decade. In the meantime, growth elsewhere would limit Iraq’s eventual share to perhaps five per cent, significant but still in the second tier of oil nations.

But even that scenario assumes that Iraq will welcome foreign investors on a reasonable timetable — and, history tells us, that is not a foregone conclusion. After the 1991 Gulf War, a liberated and grateful Kuwait announced that it would open its oil industry to foreign investment in order to boost production. Eleven years later, that still has not happened, owing to nationalistic opposition in Kuwait’s parliament. While this crisis is focused on overall security — Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction — there is a clear energy dimension to the confrontation: the security and stability of the Gulf region, from which flows almost a quarter of the world’s oil.

Saddam Hussein’s drive to dominate the region is obvious and cannot be dismissed. He invaded Iran in 1980 and then, a decade later, invaded Kuwait and threatened Saudi Arabia. The other Gulf states have no love for him, and with good reason. But it requires several leaps of logic — as well as inattention to developments in the rest of the world’s markets, particularly in Russia, the Caspian region and West Africa — to conclude that the current Iraq crisis is all about oil. No US administration would launch so momentous a campaign just to facilitate a handful of oil development contracts and a moderate increase in supply — half a decade from now.

How would a Gulf without Saddam affect the future of Iraqi oil? The discussion now underway in Washington and elsewhere — which takes place under the rubric of “the day after” — is dominated more by the uncertainties and risks than the benefits. The most immediate question involves a possible war, and the resulting damage that it might do to Iraq’s output at the very moment when a new regime would desperately need oil revenues to secure its own stability.

There also is much apprehension that Saddam would torch Iraq’s oil facilities in a Pyrrhic defeat. That is exactly what Iraqi forces did on their way out of Kuwait in 1991. It took eight months to extinguish the fires in the Kuwaiti oil fields. This time, however, some Iraqi commanders might be loath to obey any such orders, as they would have to answer after the war for their actions.

The next critical issue, when “the day after” arrives, will be the question of authority. Who would be in charge? If there is a temporary military government, either UN- or US-led, it would be preoccupied with establishing firm control over Iraq’s weaponry and laying the basis as quickly as possible for a new Iraqi government with broad representation. It would certainly be focused on security, including the oil facilities.

After all, the country earns the bulk of its living by exporting oil. For that reason, a temporary military authority would be keen to see the “new” Iraq maximize its oil earnings. But a military authority is unlikely to want to get much involved in the decision-making about the future of the industry. Rather, it will try to push the responsibility into the hands of a new Iraqi government — or an interim group of technocrats.

A new Iraqi government, for its part, will just as surely want to get its hands on its number one economic resource so that it can generate revenue for reconstruction and development. Iraq is not Afghanistan. It has the means, through oil, to pay for rebuilding the country. At the same time, a new government would also be determined to bolster its sovereignty, legitimacy and nationalist credentials — all of which will be essential requirements for holding the country together. This ensures that Iraq will be a very tough negotiator when it sits down with the oil companies.

It is often assumed in the “it’s all about oil” discussions that Iraq would turn over its current 2.8 million barrels per day of production capacity to international companies — that this is the new “prize” up for grabs. But that is another shaky assumption. If the new Iraqi government brings in foreign companies, it will have to split revenue — keeping perhaps 88 cents of every dollar of earnings for itself, with 12 cents or so going to the companies. Why not keep the whole dollar for itself and simply buy what it needs in terms of technology and equipment for the existing fields?

What a post-Saddam government will need is capital — lots of it — for exploration and new production from its currently undeveloped fields. And that is where a new regime is likely to turn to international oil companies. But which ones?

It will have no shortage of suitors. Once things are clear, companies will be eager to get in line to sign contracts with a country that has 11 per cent of the world’s proven reserves. (Saudi Arabia, the highest, has 25 per cent; the United States, just two). But they will be very cautious when it comes to spending billions of dollars until they are pretty confident about security and stability — and “stability” applies not only to the new regime but also to the contracts they sign.

Companies from several countries — Russia, France, Italy and China, among others — already hold contracts, but they are not operational because of UN sanctions still in place. Companies without contracts, including the American ones, will have to assess how much time and trouble they are willing to bear. For the oil companies, the big issue, wherever they operate in the world, is how to manage the range of risks — from the geological to the political. In response, they often work together in consortia and partnerships. This approach hedges their bets, spreads their investments and diversifies their portfolios.

And that is likely to be the outcome for Iraq. The companies with existing contracts will likely team up with other companies — American, European, Canadian, Australian, Japanese — to form new partnerships. Such partnerships would meet the crucial need of a new Iraqi government, which would want to strengthen its position by dealing with a diversified political portfolio of companies representing many different nationalities.

None of this will take place swiftly. It might take a new regime a year or so just to get things organized and begin to negotiate contracts. When it does, it will have to face the deteriorating condition of the Iraqi oil industry. Production capacity has dropped from its peak of 3.5 million barrels a day in 1980, before the Iran-Iraq war, to about 2.8 million barrels per day and falling. Reservoirs have been damaged by years of mismanagement. The infrastructure — whether wells, pipelines, pumping stations or ports — is in poor shape. Equipment is rusting and malfunctioning. Environmental considerations are widely ignored.

To get back to 3.5 million barrels could take three years or more, at an estimated cost of at least seven billion dollars. This would put Iraq back into the leagues of Norway, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Mexico and Venezuela. Another two million barrels per day would require a major push, and it would still leave Iraq several rungs below the capacity of the Big. Three producers — Saudi Arabia, the United States and Russia. Making that leap to 5.5 million barrels a day would come sometime after 2010 — at a cost of upwards of $20 billion.

As its output increased, Iraq would begin jostling its neighbours for market share. That would not, however, give Iraq enough clout to be an OPEC-buster. It would not have the ability to “flood” the market. Nor the desire. Its intense need for revenues would make it much more interested in oil at $20 or $25 a barrel, rather than at a cut-rate of $10.

By the year 2010, world oil demand, driven by countries such as China and India, could be almost 90 million barrels a day — 17 per cent greater than today. And where will that oil come from? Here is where the picture grows more complex.

One can already see the beginning of a large contest. On one side are Russia and the Caspian countries, primarily Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan; on the other side, the Middle East, including Iraq. Over the last three years, spurred by what has been called “the miracle in the Russian oil fields,” Russian output has increased by about 25 per cent, to eight million barrels a day. The race heated up with the recent announcement by four Russian oil companies of their intention to build a new Arctic port to export directly to the United States.

Right now, Russia and the Caspian nations seem to have the edge in this race. All that, however, is subject to change. The outcome will be determined not only by geology and the balancing of opportunity and risk by companies, but also by political and economic stability and by the decisions governments make.

But the prize of this larger race to meet growing world demand is very tangible — by 2010, an additional $100 billion or more a year in oil revenues flowing into national treasuries. After “the day after,” Iraq will be in a better position to compete for its share. But it will be only one of several strong contestants.—Dawn/ Washington Post Service.

IT HAS been interesting — and not a little amusing — to watch the contortions and hand-wringing surrounding England’s upcoming cricket World Cup fixtures in Zimbabwe from afar. Would Tony Blair stop Nasser Hussain and his men getting on the plane? Would the English cricket authorities put profit or principle first? And once it seemed that Mr Mugabe had won the round, how would the English team avoid the prospect of an embarrassing public handshake with the reviled Zimbabwean leader?

If these are the questions that have preoccupied politicians, pundits and sports fans in England, though, the Zimbabwe boycott affair has posed a rather different one in the minds of many of us in this part of the world: how can it be that England is obsessing over the morality of playing cricket in Zimbabwe at precisely the same time that it — along with the United States — is leading the world to the brink of a grossly unjust and potentially catastrophic war against Iraq? Doesn’t Mr Blair’s acute sensitivity to the plight of the Zimbabwean people look just a little ironic next to his apparent readiness to vapourize thousands of Iraqis? A little rich, even?

For the truth is that, while many outside Europe and America would be willing to argue the point over whether Mr Mugabe was a tyrant so brutal that sportsmen should stay away from his country, you would be hard pressed to find anyone who thinks that a war on Iraq makes any sense. George W Bush and Tony Blair can say that Saddam Hussein poses a grave threat to the US and its allies until they are blue in the face, but no one in the Muslim world will ever believe it — in fact, everyone here is convinced that the seemingly inevitable attack on Iraq is being orchestrated at the behest of the powerful Israeli lobby and to secure the Iraqi oilfields.

The technology gap between the US and the Muslim states is growing at such a frightening pace that the entire Muslim world put together cannot pose any threat to the US. This impending war will be even more one-sided than the native Americans fighting the US cavalry with bows and arrows.

There is little love lost for Saddam among Muslims; the vast majority would love to see the back of this ruthless dictator. But here everyone remembers that, not long ago, Saddam was the US’s blue-eyed boy, and his weapons of mass destruction were supplied by the western countries. However, there is tremendous concern for the 22 million Iraqi people who have already gone through terrible suffering. There is also anxiety that after this one-sided war there will be further polarization between the West and Islam. Hatred against America will increase, and most of us fear that there will be more terrorist attacks against the US and its citizens.

On September 11 the entire Muslim world stood behind the US and extended it full support in the war against terrorism. This support began to evaporate when, just three weeks after 9/11, the unfettered bombing of Afghanistan began. No Afghan was involved in the attacks, and yet more Afghan civilians were killed by American bombs than all those killed in the Twin Towers.

And since the attack on Afghanistan, things have gone from bad to worse. On CNN and the BBC, the world watched Taliban prisoners of war being summarily executed. Many of them were Pakistanis: simple country folk who had not even heard of Al Qaeda. Other prisoners were whisked away to Guantanamo Bay in chains. They neither had the rights that are accorded to PoWs under the Geneva conventions, nor were they charged in any court of law. Britain was not directly responsible for these abuses, you may say, but I did not hear Mr Blair jumping up to condemn the treatment of men like animals in Guantanamo, or the brutal treatment meted out to other Taliban prisoners by the West’s local allies.

The Pakistan government bent over backwards to cooperate with the US, despite public anger at the shedding of innocent blood in Afghanistan. Yet Pakistanis are being treated as the enemy. The FBI picks up Pakistani citizens, who disappear for days on end without trace or charges, reducing the sovereign law of Pakistan to mockery and ridicule. Dr Aamir Aziz, one of our top orthopaedic surgeons and known for his philanthropic work, disappeared one day. There was this bizarre, humiliating spectacle where his mother was seen begging the Americans to return her son — all on Pakistan’s sovereign soil!

In the recent elections in Pakistan, the religious parties made dramatic gains. In the country’s 55-year history they had never managed to get more than 10 seats in the National Assembly. This time they got 52. What is more, their support is growing, as seen in the recent by-elections. This trend can be observed in almost the entire Muslim world. An attack on Iraq is going to exacerbate this hatred. And it is this hatred, tinged with a lethal feeling of impotence and humiliation, that drives certain people to inflict as much damage as possible on the strong, even if it means losing their lives in the process.

This US arrogance and insensitivity to the feelings of the Islamic world can be traced back to the easy defeat of the Taliban. The hardliners surrounding Bush declared it a great triumph, as if they had overwhelmed some great superpower rather than a medieval militia. Overflowing with confidence, they are now egging on the US — and its allies — to subjugate all its “enemies” with or without the approval of the world community.

Iraq may well capitulate even quicker than the ragtag Taliban army did. But what if there is another terrorist attack on US soil? Where and how will the US look for terrorists among 1.3 billion people? Will it start by interning the six million Muslims residing in the US? What happens to a country like Pakistan, with 140 million people, if some fanatics from here conduct terrorist attacks against the US? Will we all face collective punishment like Afghanistan? This is the fear that is sweeping through the Muslim world.

Most of all, is it wise for the US and Britain to evoke such hatred against themselves? Given that technology is advancing all the time and a few people could inflict an unprecedented amount of devastation on a civilian population through chemical, biological and even miniature nuclear weapons, is it wise to take this aggressive course?

The recent experience of Kashmir, Palestine, Chechnya and Sri Lanka shows that when human beings reach a stage where they prefer death to a life of slavery and humiliation, then even the most powerful armies in the world cannot win a clear victory. Most people in the Muslim world believe that September 11 was entirely due to America’s blind support for Israel. People do not blow themselves up because they envy the freedoms of others or their way of life. Rather, they want to emulate them. They blow themselves up only when a volcano of hopelessness of ever getting those freedoms and rights for themselves and their children explodes within them. And the best way to defuse that volcano is not to occupy Iraq but to secure a just settlement of the Palestinian issue.

Returning to the subject of England and cricket, most people in the Muslim world are totally perplexed by Mr Blair’s blind support for Mr Bush. They always believed that Britain, with its enormous experience of dealing with empire and freedom struggles, would have a far more balanced and mature foreign policy. What is the reason for this total subservience to Washington’s wishes? they wonder. Can it really be true, as Mr Blair claims, that the only way of preventing an American attack is by holding Mr Bush’s hand up to the very brink of war? Let’s hope that Mr Blair is right, for if he and Mr Bush drag their countries into a bloody, immoral conflict, Britain will have to take its share of responsibility for the consequences.

Although I refused to play in apartheid South Africa, I have never been a great enthusiast for sporting boycotts — there are so many countries with questionable records on human rights that the overzealous boycotter could quickly find himself left with nowhere to play.

But if and when this cynical war begins — and especially if it inflicts large numbers of Iraqi civilian casualties — other cricketing countries will have to ask themselves a tricky question: should they play in England, a country quite prepared to visit far more destruction on Iraq than Mr Mugabe has ever visited on his own land? Perhaps it is time to entertain the unthinkable: a cricket boycott of the home of cricket. Might that be one language Mr Blair would understand?—Dawn/Guardian News Service.

FOR the moment the great debate about going to war with Iraq is cast almost exclusively in the dark shades of realpolitik — will it achieve its objective and disarm Iraq once and for all?

Will it lead to the introduction of a pro-western democratic regime? Will it open the way for a realignment of dictatorial Arab regimes that tolerate, even encourage, anti-American feeling? But the morality of war is given very short shrift.

Last month Pope John Paul 11 spoke out, saying war in Iraq “would be a defeat for humanity”. Many people, of many different cultures and persuasions often tack to a common standard when it comes to the making of war — at least in principle.

Buddhist teaching asks, “Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hateful”. Confucianism asks, “Do not to others what you would have them do to you.” Hindu teaching says, “This is the sum of duty: do not to others what would cause you pain if done to you.” Islam, one of the most pacific of religions, preaches, “No one of you is a believer until he desires for his brother that which he desires for himself”. Judaism, although it is known for its precept of an “eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” also talks of “what is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow men”.

All these admonishments have been pulled part and broken to pieces by the adherents of all religions. The most bellicose of the great faiths is Christianity whose European followers were nearly always at war until finally they were awoken from their folly by the two biggest wars of all time and created in the aftermath the European Union to bind them together. Christ’s teaching rejecting an eye for an eye and asking us to “turn the other cheek” has rarely been taken at face value.

What is perhaps extraordinary is that occasionally someone who has been steeped in realpolitik and some of its most bloody compromises should emerge as a spokesman for moral principles being applied to the making of war.

I am thinking of Robert McNamara, who was Secretary of Defence under presidents Kennedy and Johnson and was responsible for many of the decisions that led to the prolongation of the terrible war in Vietnam. One of his closest friends told me, “he bleeds inside for deeds done in Vietnam”.

I am sure he does but perhaps no other high official who has commanded a war machine has done more to raise the level of the moral debate. One after the other, over the years, his articles and books have given us insights that have shown that it is possible to be concerned with the security of one’s country without the reflex of always preparing for war.

McNamara is convinced there is a way to achieve a radical reduction in the killing of human beings if we think morally, rationally and with empathy towards those we are in conflict with. “Might war — especially Great Power war — be relegated, perhaps like slavery, to a cruel and primitive past?”

This is the total opposite of the way the great scholars of realpolitik and “realism” have argued it, such men as Henry Kissinger and John Mearsheimer. Mearsheimer is convinced that “there have been no fundamental changes in the nature of international politics since World War 2 military competition between sovereign states will remain the distinguishing feature of international politics.”

But are these “realists” in fact unreal in their analysis of our world? Perhaps they are blind to the danger of trying to intimidate, humiliate or coerce a nation whose self-image is that of an important power? We may intimidate them to do what we want in the short run but the memories of the humiliated tend to be long ones.

McNamara is convinced that current US policy which sees China and sometimes Russia as aspiring to challenge and defeat the US as perverse. “It creates enemies where there need not be enemies and it leads to missed opportunities for sustainable peace that may never come again.”

It was the great British philosopher Isaiah Berlin who wrote that in addition to knowing the mind of an adversary we need empathy to grasp “the particular vision of the universe which lies at the heart of his thought”. McNamara, who sat at Kennedy’s right hand during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, when the US and the Soviet Union came their closest to nuclear war, believes only Kennedy’s empathy of what was going on in Khrushchev’s mind saved the world from catastrophe.

We need this empathy with Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-il today. The US needs to talk to these men face to face at the highest level and see what it is that makes them feel so threatened that they lash out at all around them. It won’t solve every problem, but it might avoid the recourse to a murderous and unnecessary war.—Copyright Jonathan Power

KARACHI holds the world record for the number of honorary consuls-general and consuls who, collectively, manage to represent every square yard of territory in Africa, Asia, Central and South America and Europe.

It was at a reception recently hosted by one of these honorary consuls, who represents a country whose entire population could fit into the space between Buffer Zone and the second chowrangi in Nazimabad, that the host collared me and admonished me for the desultory tone of my articles. Why didn’t I write about the real issues facing the country, like building up foreign exchange reserves, increasing exports, blunting the military threat from across the border, introducing information technology and creating jobs for unemployed youth?

He said that while he read my pieces regularly, he found me extremely cynical and angry. I was quite astonished at his observation, and it occurred to me that members of the city’s bourgeoisie have a very different idea of what constitutes progress in a backward country. Achievement is invariably measured in fiscal and not in human terms, in how much wealth one accumulates and not in terms of the dignity of the working man.

How can any writer worth his salt be anything but cynical or angry while commenting on the injustice that continues to be inflicted on the poor and defenceless in the province of Sindh, while well meaning citizens stand by helplessly as those who can, and should, do something, don’t even make appropriate gestures? The authors of that recently published White Paper, with its air of verisimilitude, claim that not only have meaningful police reforms been introduced, the strong arm of the law has also been supplied with the latest sophisticated equipment designed for the detection of crime. The emphasis is, of course, on detection, not on implementation. On identifying crime, not on meting out punishment.

Now, into which pigeonhole in a cabinet of curiosities does one stick a straightforward assault case where five armed landlords rape a 17-year old peasant girl who, after regaining consciousness, arrives at a police station where the station house officer refuses to register an FIR? And even when, after considerable persuasion by a newspaperman or a human rights activist, he finally does register an FIR, into which pigeonhole will it find its final resting place? The easiest thing is to chuck it into the no-action tray.

To date, no action has been taken against the station house officers who allegedly received a bribe to hush up the heinous stoning to death of a young girl by her two uncles, because she committed the unpardonable sin of dancing at a wedding reception, and the rape of a Hindu girl by her father-in-law , and the subsequent handing over of the young woman and her minor children to his cronies, who kept her in confinement for five days. The gory details were reported in a Karachi eveninger on January 29.

While all this was going on, the members of that august body called the Sindh Assembly, congregated to take up the business of the day, where one of the items on the agenda was the deteriorating law and order situation in the province. On the first day the members indulged in an atrocious display of bad manners and unruliness when Rahela Tiwana took charge during a brief absence by the speaker. Unfortunately, the Wednesday session got off to an equally dreadful start and the suave and highly articulate speaker, Syed Muzaffar Hussain Shah of Umerkot, was sorely put to the test as he attempted to stem the tide of rowdiness which had marred earlier sessions of the house during the oath-taking ceremonies.

The high jinks started when the beleaguered speaker ruled ‘out of order’ the opposition’s objection that the requisitioned session of the assembly was not being convened and instead, preference was being given to the government agenda. The ruling resulted on the point of order which had been raised by Nisar Ahmed Khuhro, Syed Qaim Ali Shah and Syed Murad Ali Shah — three gentlemen who have been hoisting aloft the PPP flag all along. The genesis of the protest was the submission of a plea by N.A. Khuhro of the requisitioning of the assembly under Article 54(3) read with Article 127 of the Constitution.

The requisition had been signed by 62 MPAs who wanted, primarily, a debate on the unnecessary delay in announcing the NFC award. There were, of course, other issues like growing unemployment, the continued ban on fresh recruitment, the effects of the Thal canal project, deteriorating law and order, the government’s indifference to the problems of sugarcane growers, and the provincial government’s alleged interference in the recently held by-elections.

When the speaker had finished his ruling the PPP supporters trotted out for a five-minute token protest. The speaker, who had reserved his ruling on the issue, stated that he was going to summon the provincial assembly on January 30, when on January 21 the governor of Sindh had summoned the assembly to meet on January 27. Spectators had witnessed democracy in action.

Unfortunately, the matter did not end there. The discussion on law and order had been on the agenda for three sittings, but no meaningful discussions took place. In an earlier session provincial minister Saeeda Malik did scratch the surface a little by saying that while the law and order situation is certainly not hunky dory, the police should be given a little more time and their pay scales should be raised.

Shazia Mari of the PPP angrily put in her bit about police excesses, fratricide, dacoities, car-snatching and kidnappings which were on the rise in Sindh. But surprisingly, she too didn’t say a word about the protection of vulnerable, destitute women in a feudal society. There were also some harsh exchanges between supporters of the MQM and the MMA on the issue of control of mosques, and the usual peccadilloes that crop up from time to time in an assembly where members are still trying to feel their way though. A colleague who is also cynical and angry put it rather nicely when he said, translating from the vernacular, “it is too early for the members to do anything worthwhile. Currently everybody is ‘trying to make their number.’ It’s much ado about nothing.”

Meanwhile, as the prime minister was busy spreading goodwill in the Middle East, the people of the country’s largest province learned that Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, president of the PML(Q) , had discovered a penchant for writing letters which he had hitherto not shared with his supporters.

Soon after being elected president of the King’s party, he thought it was in the fitness of things to write to President George Bush — which is something that Benazir Bhutto used to do with a certain relish when she was out of power. Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain’s subject was the controversial new National Security Entry Exit Registration system, which has not only irked Pakistanis residing and working in the United States, but has also created considerable embarrassment to President Musharraf who is coming under increasing attack from the country’s right wing religious forces anxious to terminate political links with the United States.

His second letter was addressed to the Punjab chief minister, Chaudhry Parvez Elahi and dwells on the kind of repast to be offered to guests during marriage ceremonies. His arguments, motivated by considerations of austerity, are certainly cogent. But his timing is wrong. As the Punjab government had already decided on a certain course of action, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain’s letter is being regarded as blatant interference. Is a party official supposed to issue instructions to a federal or provincial chief executive ? Much could be said on both sides, as Dr Johnson would have certainly pointed out, if he could have been exhumed and resurrected for the purpose of answering this query.

In the past, it was not unusual for chief ministers to be told by prime ministers what they were expected to do in a given situation, provided they belonged to the same party. This sort of thing was quite common during the days of PPP and PML(N) rule. In England, it is not uncommon for a prime minister to issue a friendly rebuke to a cabinet minister over a drink, when the former felt the latter was straying from the fold and an action might be an embarrassment to the party.

But in Pakistan, while this might be resented in certain circles as federal interference, it was justified on the grounds that the prime minister was also the party chief and was only ensuring party discipline. Whatever may be the outcome of this correspondence, one fact emerges loud and clear: there is never a dull moment in the politics of Pakistan.