Posted on 7-1-2002
Oil
and the Islamists
by George Caffentzis*
The hidden civil war within the oil-producing countries from
Algeria to
Iran may help to provide a context for the brutal attacks on
the World
Trade Centre and the Pentagon. The role of the US has been the
crucial
factor in the region, as exemplified by the devastation of Iraq,
unstinting
US support for Israel, the US Government's proprietary attitude
to oil
resources in the Middle East, and the building of US bases in
Saudi Arabia,
Islam's most sacred land.
The result has been deep divisions within the ruling elites
which pit
pro-American governments - often consisting of royal dynasties
in the
Arabian Peninsula - against dissidents who, in the name of the
Qur'an,
accuse them of being corrupt, of squandering the region's resources,
of
selling out to the US, of having betrayed Islam. These dissident
fundamentalists have used their wealth to create a multinational
network of
groups stretching through every continent, and offered an alternative
'social contract' to the poor of North Africa, the Middle East
and West Asia.
From Cairo's bread riots of 1976, through the uprisings in Morocco
and
Algeria of 1988 - both crushed in bloodbaths - to the more recent
anti-IMF
riots in Jordan (and the list is much longer), it is evident
that it has
become more and more difficult for poor sectors of the population
to
survive. The fundamentalists have attempted to win over people
in urban
areas through providing basic necessities such as schooling
and healthcare
that have been suffering as a result of cuts in government subsidies
and
programs dictated by the World Bank and IMF. It is the Islamic
fundamentalist networks, for example, that organise healthcare
and
education in the Palestinian 'territories', almost functioning
as an
alternative government to the PLO at grassroots level. But Islamic
fundamentalism also continues to have an attraction within the
ruling
circles of the wealthiest Muslim nations. This internal contradiction
has
created a tangled net of consequences which is now embarrassing
many not
just in the governments of the Middle East, but in the US Government
too.
For they have financed and trained the very generation of dissidents
who
are now so violently turning against them.
On the one side, a portion of Middle Eastern oil revenues has
been used to
fund assaults on symbols of the New World Order; on the other,
the US
Government financed and trained many members of this dissident
branch of
the Middle Eastern ruling classes in its effort to destabilise
the Soviet
Union in Afghanistan. Many of those who have been brought back
into power
in George W Bush's administration were the ones who were responsible,
during his father's presidency, for the training and financing
of the very
organisations they now hunt under the banner of 'terrorism'.
The executive dynasties in both the US and Saudi Arabia must
both be
worried about family members who have been compromised by their
past
connections to the networks they now claim to be responsible
for the events
of 11 September - and this includes the US President's family.
For example,
The Wall Street Journal of 28 January reported that George Bush
Senior
works for the bin Laden family business in Saudi Arabia through
the Carlyle
Group, an international consulting firm - as do other close
associates of
the President like former Secretary of State James Baker.
The 11 September attacks were, however, symptoms of desperation,
not of
power, resulting in a devastating US military response with
predictable
results: the destruction of thousands of Islamic fundamentalist
militants
along with tremendous collateral damage to the people of Afghanistan
and
probably other countries in North Africa, the Middle East, and
West Asia.
Who on the ground can survive in such a maelstrom? Indeed, the
actual
perpetrators and their accomplices, whoever they are, must have
been very
desperate to take such a risk with their own network and the
lives of
millions of people of the region. Clearly something so very
important was
going on that the perpetrators of 11 September needed to thwart
by
desperate and inherently uncertain measures. What was it? My
view is that
the source of this desperation involved the oil industry and
globalisation
in the Arabian Peninsula. Here is my hypothesis.
In 1998 (after the collapse of oil prices due to the Asian financial
crisis), the Saudi monarchy decided, for 'strategic reasons',
to globalise
its economy and society, beginning with the oil sector. The
oil industry
had been nationalised since 1975, which means that foreign investors
were
allowed to participate only in 'downstream' operations like
refining. But
in September 1998 Crown Prince Abdullah met senior executives
from several
oil companies in Washington DC. According to Gawdat Bahget,
writing in Arab
Studies Quarterly: 'The Crown Prince asked the oil companies'
executives to
submit directly to him recommendations and suggestions about
the role their
companies could play in the exploration and development of both
existing
and new oil and gas fields.' These 'recommendations and suggestions'
were
then submitted to the Supreme Council for Petroleum and Mineral
Affairs in
early 2000 (after being vetted by the Crown Prince) and in the
middle of
2000 the Saudi Government ratified a new foreign-investment
law.
Under the new law, 'tax holidays are abolished in favour of
sweeping
reductions in tax on profits payable by foreign entities, bringing
them
nearer to levels that apply to local companies. Wholly owned
foreign
businesses will have the right to own land, sponsor their own
employees and
benefit from concessionary loans previously available only to
Saudi
companies.' Clearly 'the right to own land' would be a red flag
for anyone
committed to the sacred character of the Arabian Peninsula.
Experts on the
Middle East were literally falling over themselves in their
effort to
highlight the new Investment Regulation. 'Keep your fingers
crossed,' said
one, 'but it looks as if Saudi Arabia is abandoning almost 70
years of
restrictive, even unfriendly policy toward foreign investment.'
This law
constituted, in effect, a NAFTA-like agreement between the Saudi
monarch
and the US and European oil companies.
At the same time as this law was being discussed, a ministerial
committee
announced that up to $500 billion of new investments would be
deployed over
the next decade to change the form of the Saudi national economy.
Around
$100 billion of this investment was already promised by foreign
oil
companies. In May 2001 the first concrete step in this stepped-up
globalisation process was concluded when Exxon/Mobil and Royal
Dutch/Shell
Group led eight other foreign companies (including Conoco and
Enron from
the US) into a $25-billion natural-gas development project in
Saudi Arabia.
The financial press noted that the deal would not be very lucrative
in
itself, but that 'it's part of a long-term ploy of the oil companies,
[which] want ultimately to get access again to Saudi crude'.(1)
By the summer of 2001 the Saudi monarchy had cast the die and
legally,
socially and economically crossed the globalisation Rubicon.
It did so not
because Saudi Arabian debt was unmanageable (as was the case
with most
other countries which bent to the globalising dictates of the
IMF) but
because, faced with a intensifying opposition, the Royal circle
realised
that only with the full backing of the US and European Union
could they
hope to preserve their rule in the years to come. Their strategy
was aimed
at getting the economy moving again and thereby reducing three
things: its
dependence on oil exports; its large and growing youth unemployment
rate;
and its huge foreign labour force (around 6-7 million in a population
of
about 22-23 million). This required a radical departure from
the patronage
the Saudi monarchy had exercised in the past to keep social
peace, made
possible until recently by its immense oil wealth. But this
wealth is not
infinite and is declining. GNP per capita fell from approximately
$13,000
in 1983 to $8,000 in 1993 and has since continued to fall.(2)
Inevitably, this strategy was bound to impact on the economic
policies of
the other oil-producing governments in the region, especially
Oman, Qatar,
United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Kuwait. But if it worked,
it would also
deal a decisive blow to the Islamicist opposition, undermining
its ability
to recruit converts - people employed in the upper echelons
of a
'globalized economy and society' would be distinctly less likely
to respond
than those driven to despair by political powerlessness and
long periods of
unemployment. The cat-and-mouse game that the Saudi monarchy
had played
with fundamentalist dissidents (in which the King and his dynasty
claimed
to be even more fundamentalist than them) would end. But the
introduction
of foreign ownership of land and natural resources, backed up
by large
investments, and the hiring of more expatriates from Europe
and the US,
would also bring major social change in its train. Whatever
hopes the
Islamic opposition in the ruling classes of the Arabian Peninsula
had ever
harboured of getting their governments to send American troops
packing and
turning their oil revenues into the economic engine of a resurgent
Islam
were facing a historic crisis in the summer of 2001. Without
a major
turnaround, the Islamic fundamentalist opposition would have
to face the
prospect of total civil war in their own countries or face extinction.
It is possible that elements of this opposition decided that
only a
spectacular action like the 11 September attack could turn back
the tide.
Perhaps they hoped that the turmoil and uncertainty generated
by the
attacks on New York and Washington would generate a strategic
US retreat
from the Arabian Peninsula - just as the bombing in Lebanon
in 1983 led the
US to pull out from there. On the basis of this analysis, then,
the 11
September attacks on New York City and Washington DC were linked
to a
struggle over the fate of oil politics in its heartland: the
Arabian
Peninsula. We should be watchful of developments there, which
will
undoubtedly be hidden from sight, and not just the sound and
fury directed
towards Afghanistan. And in this context, it is pertinent to
ask: how can
the populations of North America and Europe continue to be blind
to the
social cost of the oil they put in their cars, and the economic
and social
inequities built upon it?
1 Los Angeles Times, 19 May 2001.
2 Anthony Cordesman, Saudi Arabia: Guarding the Desert Kingdom,
Westview
Press, 1997.
George Caffentzis is a co-ordinator of the Committee for Academic
Freedom
in Africa and an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University
of
Southern Maine. Article from - the New Internationalist, December
2001,
www.newint.org
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