Talk in the US Congress of Iraq paying the costs of its own occupation may ring of farce, but it has reopened charges that the war was indeed about US control of Iraqi oil, writes Salah Nasrawi When US congressman Dana Rohrabacher called on Iraq early this month to repay to the United States the billions of dollars that Washington has spent in the country since the US-led 2003 occupation, the Baghdad government's reaction was surprisingly muted. Rohrabacher, a member of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee on a visit to Baghdad, said he had raised the issue in a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki. He declined to give specifics on how much should be paid back, or over what timeframe, but he said that the "mega-dollar" payback should be made "once Iraq becomes a very rich and prosperous country". Since the war which overthrew the regime of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, the US has spent an estimated $1 trillion on its occupation of the country, with some 4,463 American soldiers having been killed and an estimated 100,000 wounded. There was no immediate White House reaction to Rohrabacher's remarks, but US Ambassador to Iraq James F Jeffrey told a small group of Iraqi journalists that they did not reflect the administration's stance. Although Iraqi government spokesman Ali Al-Dabbagh later described Rohrabacher's comments as "irresponsible", there was no diplomatic protest by Baghdad or even an official request to Washington for clarification. However, the demand, which came amidst efforts by US officials to get Al-Maliki to request an extension of the US troop presence in Iraq past the 31 December deadline, infuriated ordinary Iraqis and politicians, many of them describing the congressman's remarks as being skewed by arrogance and contempt. The US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq, far from heralding a new era of nation building, freedom and democracy, as the US Bush administration claimed at the time and as many US politicians still believe, has long been viewed as a fiasco. Today's Iraq, a nation having a history as old as that of human history itself, is mired in tragedy, thanks to the conduct and consequences of the US-led war and the incompetence and corruption of the post-invasion Iraqi leaders. For many Iraqis, the US occupation has resulted in genocide and large-scale destruction that may constitute one of the greatest injustices of our time. There is no way that the human, financial and political costs of the occupation may be measured, with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, mostly civilians, being killed and wounded, while nearly four million more were either internally displaced or sought refuge abroad. The financial costs of the invasion in terms of the destruction of the country's infrastructure, its devastated economy and the loss of opportunities has also been mammoth. There has been vast human suffering, including as a result of increasing poverty, unemployment, the deterioration of health services and the destruction of the country's ecology. Eight years after the US-led invasion, Iraqi healthcare facilities still face grave shortages of staff and supplies, and the water, sewage and electricity infrastructure is in a critical condition. Cancer, leukemia and brain tumours widely believed to have been caused by the US war, including the use of certain types of weapons and ammunition, have all been on the rise, with research suggesting that they now rival those reported among survivors of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Wholescale corruption in the form of bribery, kickbacks and illegal enrichment has plagued the Iraqi administration from the top leadership down to the soldiers who man checkpoints. According to the international NGO Transparency International, Iraq has been ranked as the third worst country in the world for corruption from 2006 through to 2011. The political costs of the invasion, when dealing with its impact on Iraq's integrity, sovereignty and national unity, have also been beyond anyone's grasp, with US rule creating a political system controlled by anti-democratic sectarian groups controlling the country like fiefdoms. Eight years after the invasion, violence remains rampant, and the country has been turned into a playground for international terrorists. One of the worst consequences of the war has been the growth of sectarianism in the region, deepening the Sunni-Shia historical divide, exacerbating regional tensions and inviting intervention by rival regional powers. Iraq has become one of the most vulnerable countries in the region, with all its neighbours now interfering in Iraqi internal affairs by building power bases and turning the war-battered nation into a battlefield for competing regional influences. Despite these huge costs of the US-led invasion, no efforts have been made to make reparation to Iraqis or compensate them for their losses and suffering in line with international law. In fact, on the contrary the Iraqis are now being asked to pay from their own badly needed resources for eight years of foreign occupation, humiliation, subjection and the destruction of their once-prosperous country. However foolish Rohrabacher's demand may be, it should not be overlooked or underestimated. Some observers say that Iraq is already paying for the war in the form of its huge oil resources being mortgaged to US companies or American subcontractors working with international consortiums. On Saturday, the New York Times disclosed that American oil companies stand to make tens of billions of dollars from new activity in Iraq, even though most Iraqi oil-field development projects went to international companies by auction. The paper said that Russian and other international oil companies that won fields in the auctions are now subcontracting contracts to four American oil-service companies, Halliburton, Baker Hughes, Weatherford International and Schlumberger. The paper quoted industry experts as saying that about half of the $150 billion the international oil companies are expected to invest in Iraqi oil fields over the next decade would go to subcontractors. The auction system was originally designed to help defuse criticism that the United States had invaded Iraq for its oil, since the country has the world's second-largest reserves. However, the subcontracting now reveals that these auctions have let American oil companies slip in through the backdoor. In a book published in April this year, oil campaigner Greg Muttitt wrote that oil was at the heart of the US-led invasion, despite denials by the Bush administration that oil was the motivation behind the war. According to an account of some 1,000 documents published in Muttitt's book, entitled Fuel on Fire, the Bush administration approached US oil corporations at the time and tried to strike deals with the French and Russian governments and energy companies regarding the future of the Iraqi oil fields. Further evidence also surfaced this week about Iraqi oil money going into American pockets. On Sunday, Iraq's parliament disclosed that it was demanding the return of $17 billion in oil money it said had been stolen by US institutions in the wake of the 2003 invasion. A parliamentary committee said it that it had asked for United Nations help in finding and recovering the money, believed to be the largest such heist in history, which had been allocated to developing Iraq. This is not the first time that allegations of missing billions have surfaced in relation to the US-led invasion of Iraq and its aftermath, and Iraq's vulnerability to creditors' claims will rise in June when the trust fund established after the US-led invasion to finance the country's reconstruction and food purchases is dismantled. The closure of the Iraq Development Fund could see commercial and sovereign claimants intensify their efforts to seize Iraqi assets. Questions are being raised as to whether the Iraqi government will come forward and tell the Iraqi people of its plan to deal with such claims for war reparations if these are allowed to go beyond the present rhetoric and become a serious issue. Many Iraqis are suspicious that their politicians have become empowered by the occupation and that they are themselves complicit in corrupt oil deals, making it unlikely that they will act to stop the plundering of Iraqi money and resources.
