April 9, 2012
In this provocative study, journalist and activist Muttitt, former co-director of the London advocacy group Platform and policy director for the antipoverty organization War on Want, weaves a narrative of “how the struggles for control of Iraq’s oil shaped events during the occupation.” Drawing on U.S. and U.K. government documents obtained under Freedom of Information statutes and interviews with government officials and “ordinary Iraqis,” the author claims that U.S. efforts in Iraq were tailored to “help the oil companies” at the expense of Iraqis. To that end, he charges that U.S. policy sowed the seeds of sectarianism among Iraqis—an “alien sectarian politics and discourse” that the “Iraqis quickly rejected.” Muttitt goes to great length to show that U.S. officials tried to shape a new oil law that favored international companies, although most Iraqis wanted to keep control of the country’s oil in the public sector. He also insinuates that Centcom Commander Adm. William Fallon resorted to strong-arm tactics to force Iraqi acquiescence. Whatever its merits and intentions, the American effort to secure an oil law failed. After repeated questioning of U.S. motives, Muttitt concludes that political psychology, not conspiracy, explains the U.S. approach: officials genuinely believed that what is good for America is good for Iraq.
June 1, 2012
The former co-director of Platform, a London-based group devoted to combating the harmful influences of transnational corporations, unravels Iraq's oil politics. In this well-reported debut, Muttitt never insists that oil was the sole motive for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. As both an activist and freelancer, he makes his sympathies plain from the beginning, but he rejects crude conspiracy theories in favor of a more subtle take: that the occupiers genuinely saw themselves as liberators, never acknowledging their own self-interest in securing an energy supply. Still, the British and Americans acted in precisely the manner expected of imperial powers, particularly when it came to the oil sector, installing dubious allies in government and industry, starving domestic institutions of resources and authority, and stoking political divisions among the indigenous opposition. Muttitt relies on his own deep familiarity with the region, damning documents made available by the Freedom of Information Act, and interviews with numerous Iraqi oil experts and government officials to demonstrate the centrality of oil to the war's planning and execution, to explain the chaotic first months of occupation (ever wonder why the Ministry of Oil was the sole public building unlooted or unburned?), and the many missteps of the Coalition Provisional Authority. Follow the oil, Muttitt advises, to fully understand the years of sectarian violence, the tortuous formation of the deeply flawed permanent government, the thwarted attempt to privatize an oil industry 30 years nationalized, and the handoff from occupying powers to armed security forces of the big oil companies. Throughout, the author displays an exquisite sensitivity and a deep respect for the resilience of the Iraqis and the sophistication of their oil industry before its gutting by the occupation. He's contemptuous of today's scramble for profits among the likes of ExxonMobil, BP and Shell. No, the war wasn't only about oil, but as one State Department adviser asked, "What did Iraq have that we would like to have? It wasn't the sand." There will be readers who disagree with Muttitt's thesis. They will now be obliged to marshal similarly convincing evidence.
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