British Member of Parliament George Galloway says that a plan for the
division of the Middle East is circulating in the corridors of power on
both sides of the Atlantic. In a recent interview, Galloway asserted that
ministers and eminent figures in the British government are deliberating
the partition of the Middle East, harking back to the colonial map-making
in the first quarter of the 20th century that established the modern
nation-states of the region. An Anglo-American war against Iraq, he tells
me, could be the opening salvo in the break up of the region. Galloway,
who met with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad this August, states that the war
aims of the US and Britain go well beyond replacing the Iraqi leader.
“They include a recasting of the entire Middle East, the better to ensure
the hegemony of the big powers over the natural resources of the Middle
East and the safety and security of the vanguard of imperialist interests
in the area – the state of Israel.! And part of that is actually redrawing
boundaries.”
Galloway is privy to such information as he is the Vice-Chairman of the
Parliamentary Labour Party Foreign Affairs Committee with close relations
to Britain’s Ministry of Defense. Galloway says that British ministers and
former ministers are primarily focused on the break-up of Saudi Arabia and
Iraq in the wake of an attack against Saddam Hussein, but are also
discussing the possible partition of Egypt, the Sudan, Syria and Lebanon.
These officials have become taken with the realization that the borders of
the Middle East are recent creations, dating back only to World War I when
Britain and France divided the region between themselves. Galloway adds,
“There are many ways in which a new Sykes-Picot dispensation could be
drawn up in the Middle East to guarantee another few decades of big power
hegemony over the area.”
The Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, codified by the League of Nations in
1920, parceled out the crumbling Ottoman Empire extending over much of the
Middle East between Britain and France. By the early 1920s Britain, which
as the reigning imperial power already effectively ruled Egypt, the Sudan,
Oman, Kuwait and Qatar, made off with the lion’s share. This divvying up
of the region by imperial powers led to the creation of the states of
Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq among others. Under the aegis of Britain,
the modern state of Saudi Arabia emerged in the late 1920s, absorbing the
hitherto separate eastern, central and western regions – including the
holy sites of Mecca and Medina – of what constitutes the country today.
The partition of the Middle East was partially driven by the oil
conglomerates of the time. Britain pushed through the interests of the
Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (British Petroleum’s predecessor) and Royal
Dutch Shell, over American oil companies Exxon and Mobil by means of the
colonial mandate it had established following WWI. Jockeying over oil
resulted in an Anglo-French agreement giving Britain the northern Iraqi
province of Mosul. This lead to in Iraq’s modern boundaries, formed in
1921 when Britain combined the three Ottoman provinces of Mosul, Baghdad
and Basra, which were predominantly Kurdish, Sunni and Shi’a Muslim
respectively.
Today British and American petroleum interests dominate the scene once
more, although Britain is reduced to the role of junior partner. The
United States and Britain are home to the four biggest petroleum producers
in the world – Exxon-Mobil, Chevron-Texaco, British Petroleum-Amoco and
Royal Dutch-Shell – with the French-Italian TotalElfFina following in
fifth place. While a massive upheaval in the Middle East would hurt oil
revenues initially, a new constellation of power there could in the long
run safeguard the interests of the petroleum conglomerates from the
present instability of the region. While the US government has been
considering alternate sources of oil in the Caspian Sea area, Russia and
Africa, analysts admit that none of these compare to the known riches of
the Persian Gulf.
Not surprisingly then, if hawks on both sides of the Atlantic have
their way, Saudi Arabia would be at the core of a hegemonically reshaped
Middle East. Saudi Arabia alone contains a quarter of the world’s
petroleum reserves and is one of the only countries able to increase
production to meet rising demand for oil, expected to grow by fifty
percent in the next two decades. Yet Saudi Arabia is no longer seen by the
US and UK governments as a trustworthy ally, and certainly not one on
which they can afford to be so dependent, given the kingdom’s internal
vulnerability and its sponsorship of Islamic fundamentalist insurgents
(Saudi nationals comprising fifteen of the nineteen September 11th
hijackers) – even though such patronage had been coordinated by the United
States in earlier, happier times.
“I think the United States in particular has lost confidence in the
ruling family in Saudi Arabia, so far as their interests are concerned,”
Galloway maintains. “They realize that the radicalization of the Saudi
Arabian population has proceeded at very great pace, has reached very
great depths, particularly amongst young people.” The United States and
Britain are fearful that the unreliable House of Saud will be overthrown
and that the new anti-American rulers will shut off the flow of oil. “The
United States is afraid that one day they’ll wake up and a Khomeini type –
or be it Wahhabi Sunni Khomeini – revolution would have occurred, and they
would have lost everything in the country.” The British Foreign Office has
warned that dissent, bubbling up from a dissatisfied population that
sympathizes with Osama bin Laden and seethes at the pro-American stance of
the ruling elite, has reached the point where the country risk! s being
taken over by al-Qaeda.
“Saudi Arabia could easily be two if not three countries,” Galloway
says, summarizing the neo-imperialist position discussed in British
government circles, “which would have the helpful bonus of avoiding
foreign forces having to occupy the holiest places in Islam, when they’re
only interested really in oil wells in the eastern part of the country.”
According to him, the US troops based throughout Saudi Arabia could be
withdrawn from the areas containing Mecca and Medina, the most hallowed
sites in the Islamic world, where US military presence is a source of
great resentment for many Saudis.
Instead the soldiers would occupy only the Eastern Province of the
country, which borders on the Persian Gulf and is inhabited by Saudi
Arabia’s Shi’a minority. This area contains the major oilfields, including
the largest oilfield in the world, Ghawar, as well as the industrial
centers of the kingdom. “The theorists of this idea have fastened on to
the fact that a very substantial proportion of the population in the
Eastern Province, where the oil is, are Shi’ite Muslims with no particular
affection for the ruling Wahhabi clique who form the House of Saud.”
Galloway adds that for the first time, leaders in the West are becoming
concerned with the human rights of the Shi’a population, which “now that
they coincide with Western interests, are moving up the agenda.”
In the United States, those in interlocking circles around the Bush
administration have been calling for the dismemberment of Saudi Arabia.
This past July, an analyst from the US government-funded Rand Corporation
presented a briefing in Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s private conference
room titled “Taking Saudi Out of Arabia,” which advised the assembled
luminaries of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board that the US government
should demand Saudi Arabia stop supporting hostile fundamentalist
movements and curtail the airing of anti-US and anti-Israel statements, or
its oilfields and financial assets would be seized. A month later Max
Singer, co-founder of the rightwing US think tank the Hudson Institute,
gave a presentation to the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, in which
he counseled the US government to forge a “Muslim Republic of East Arabia”
out of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia.
Whether the imperialist strategem of the neo-conservatives comes to
pass remains to be seen. What is apparent, however, is that the potential
for such a cynical adventure to go wrong would be quite high. Colonial
undertakings have a tendency to not work out as expected, even if the
fantasies of draughtsman in the Pentagon and Britain’s Whitehall are
implement through “native” proxies. This is especially the case when the
populations of the areas to be shaped, rather than viewing the US as
deliverers of a pipedream of “democracy,” are intensely hostile to the
imperial designs of the West.
Sasha Lilley is an independent producer and correspondent for Free
Speech Radio News.