The Slick But 'Franks' Truth

A few days ago, Tommy Franks, commander-in-chief, US central command, who’s spearheading the US war onIraq, made a frank admission. During the daily briefings that the US army holds in Doha, he said the war’stiming was influenced by oil. The fear that Saddam Hussein was about to torch the nearly 500 oil wells insouthern Iraq forced US policy makers to launch the ground assault on March 20, 2003 (Baghdad time). Franks’statement was backed by President George Bush, who too said the decision to send ground troops that morningwas to save the oil wells for the Iraqi people.

Possibly, for the first time, top US political and military leaders have publicly confessed that criticaldecision-making was dictated by oil economics; saving the wells for the Iraqi people translates intoprotecting them for the US oil majors and American allies in the "coalition of the willing". But, inretrospect, it exposes a few glaring holes in US war strategy. In fact, it gives credence to currentallegations by military experts that the US pushed itself into a war with not enough ground troops, confidentthat it would be a short, swift battle for Baghdad.

To put it in context, Franks gave the oil wells argument while defending the US decision, saying there wasno argument between him and Donald Rumsfeld, US secretary of defense, on the number of troops that should besent to Iraq. He was obviously reacting to articles in The New Yorker and Washington Postquoting unnamed Pentagon officials that while Franks wanted more troops, Rumsfeld said no. In the samebriefing, Franks added that the US was never expecting a short war, and the troops management was based onachieving "flexibility" to change tactics midway during the course of the longish battle.

However, Franks’ defence reveals that the troops were too thin if he was indeed thinking in terms of awar that could stretch for weeks. More importantly, it goes counter to "saving the oil wells" argument ifthe US thought that Baghdad would fall in weeks, and not days. Let’s explore this a bit more by goingthrough events in the past fortnight. Coalition troops moved in fast to secure the oilfields in southern Iraq(basically the north and the south Rumaila fields). Contrary to rumours that Saddam had set some 30-40oilfields on fire in the region, the US engineering corps found that only seven had been damaged.

Now just digest a few facts. The southern region (including Rumaila) accounted for half of the 2.5 millionbarrels per day (bpd) that Iraq was producing prior to the war. (Experts now estimate that production from theoil wells in the region can be boosted to 1.8 million bpd after investing nealy $1 billion on dousing thefires and repairing the crumbling oil infrastructure due to neglect since the 1991 Gulf War.) The remainingIraqi oil comes mainly from oilfields in the North, basically around Kirkuk (proven reserves: 10 billionbarrels), and in adjoining fields like Jambur, Bai Hassan and Khabbaz.

Bush, Rumsfeld and Franks knew there was no coalition support in the north, once Turkey refused to allowground troops to be sent across its borders. It should have been evident to them that the thousands of Kurdishmilitia, who have been fighting Saddam for years in north Iraq, didn’t have the requisite firepower to "secure"the Kirkuk oilfields. Not surprisingly, Kirkuk is still not under the coalition control. But US sourcescontend that the 1,000 Italian paratroopers along with Kurdish fighters, who secured an important airfield inthe region mid-last week, have kept these oilfields under "direct artillery attack" in case Iraq tries todamage them.

That still allowed Saddam nearly one week to destroy the Kirkuk fields ever since the war began. And hecould have easily done that. If the US did believe that the war would be a long one, there was no reason togive Saddam time to torch Kirkuk wells. So, the only logical reason why the US was not bothered about thenorthern oilfields is because it thought Saddam would focus on protecting Baghdad, that he would fall withindays and, hence, securing Kirkuk was not critical to the overall war strategy. This itself proves that theBush-Rumsfeld-Franks combine was banking on a short war, not a long drawn-out one.

Well, there can be other corollary theories to explain the importance the coalition troops gave to thesouthern oilfields, and not the northern ones. The most obvious one relates to the oil supply chains. TheKirkuk oil is supplied to Turkey through the 600-mile, 40-inch pipeline which can easily handle 900,000 bpd.This oil subsequently finds it way to European countries. The northern oilfields were also the source forpre-war smuggling across the Iraq-Syria border in contravention of UN sanctions. Oil from southern fields wentto Persian Gulf through the Mina al-Bakr oil terminal.

By taking a chance on the northern routes, the coalition troops risked supplies to Europe via Turkey. It’snot a coincidence that the most vociferous opponents of Bush’s war have been France and Germany, two majoroil consumers. In addition, the US has been peeved with Turkey’s decision not to allow ground troops acrossits border. Militarily, an ok from Turkey would have given the coalition a chance to squeeze Saddam from thenorth and the south. Norhtern disruptions would have also affected illegal supplies through Syria, which hasbeen accused by the US of helping Iraq during the war. In one shot, damages to the northern fields and theirsupply routes would have hurt the US non-allies.

Yet another reason for the desperation to save southern fields is that the potential, but unexplored,reserves there are supposedly larger than in the north. And, if the US does decided to control the Iraqioilfields post-war, the American companies would want their toehold in the south. Since the mid-1990s, Iraqhas reportedly signed a number of multi-billion dollar contracts to further develop the southern fields withnon-US oil companies, mainly from China, France and Russia. (Once again, remember that all these three nationsopposed the war on Iraq.)

Such contracts include a $3.5 billion Russian deal to rehabilitate the 15-billiion barrels West Qurnafields (near Rumaila fields) and agreements with a French company (TotalfinaElF) to developoilfields in Majnoon (10-30 billion barrels) and Nahr Umar (6 billion barrels). China too has shownconsiderable interest in exploring new Iraqi oilfields. Obviously, US oil majors believe they will get theselucrative development rights at the expense of their competitors from countries which opposed the war. In fact,one purported reason behind the US attack is to get their firms involved in these contracts.

So, gauge the win-win for the US by merely securing the southern fields. To begin with, it thought a quickwar would help secure all the Iraqi oilfields (both in north and south).Even if that didn’t happen, thesouthern fields were more important to it, both in terms of supply routes and lucrative contracts that couldgo to American oil firms in a post-war scenario.