News Analysis - Iraq: all about oil
WORKERS, OCT 2007 ISSUE
Britain's vaunted political system has achieved something new – following the USA into not one but two unwinnable wars at once. These are not "wars for peace" or "wars for democracy". As Alan Greenspan, the ex-chairman of the US Federal Reserve, has admitted, "the Iraq war is largely about oil." And the Afghan war is largely about oil pipelines.
In Afghanistan, the US and British occupying forces are killing more civilians than the Taliban do. This year, from January to August, coalition forces killed 203 civilians, the insurgents killed 178. Approximately 8,000 civilians had been killed in this war and 657 coalition troops, as of 22 September 2007. The death rate of coalition troops is rising: 12 in 2001, 68 in 2002, 57 in 2003, 58 in 2004, 130 in 2005, 157 in 2006 and 175 in the first eight months of 2007. Only four British soldiers were killed there from 2001 to 2005, but 36 in 2006 alone and 30 more in the first eight months of 2007. The Labour government and the Conservative opposition want to add to the 7,000 British troops now serving there. Yet polls suggest that only 18 per cent of the British people believe the war in Afghanistan is winnable.
The British-led effort to cut Afghan drug production has completely failed. 2007 saw yet another record opium crop, 8,200 tons, up by 34 per cent from 2006's record. Afghanistan now produces 93 per cent of world opium. Is this an accident?
Permanent war
The June 2007 figure for Iraqi casualties since the war began is 785,987 civilians killed and 1,414,723 seriously injured. Last year, 29 British soldiers were killed; this year, 41 already. By 20 September 2007, a total of 168 British soldiers and 3,722 US soldiers had been killed and 27,409 seriously wounded. The war in Iraq has so far cost Britain £6 billion. Brown has rejected calls to withdraw the remaining 5,500 British troops. Army head General Sir Richard Dannatt warns of 'a generation of conflict'.
US General David Petraeus has recommended withdrawing by next July the 30,000 US troops that Bush sent as his 'surge', leaving, as before, 130,000 US troops. Far from reducing the war danger in the Middle East, Petraeus has urged a raised level of threat to Iran. He claims that the 'surge' is working, but that where it isn't working, this is due to 'malevolent' intervention by Iran, which the Pentagon says – without producing a single shred of evidence – is directly implicated in the deaths of dozens of US soldiers.
The US is now building a new base on the border with Iran. 350 British troops have already been sent to the area. Bush has ordered the Pentagon to draw up a plan to escalate tension with Iran leading up to an attack. The plan includes a list of 2,000 bombing targets. President Nixon in the 1970s attacked Cambodia and Laos before having to leave Vietnam in defeat and dishonour. Is President Bush scheming similar wider mayhem before having to leave Iraq?
In both wars, British television shows only British and US troops on the ground, on the defensive, or trying to 'win the hearts and minds' of the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan. It never shows the daily bombing attacks by the USAF and RAF that kill so many civilians.