Puppet regimes and colonial agendas
By Sandhya Jain

RECENT developments in neighbouring Nepal, where a caretaker regime
has literally usurped unacceptable powers to humiliate the King and
change the character of the nation, have shown Indian foreign policy
in a poor light. But this is by no means the only occasion on which
the UPA Government has handled Indian foreign policy from a
non-nationalistic perspective. While the usage of the Volcker Report
to turf out Natwar Singh in order to save chairperson Sonia Gandhi can
be put down to domestic compulsions, the sustained indifference
towards the suffering of the Iraqi people is truly shameful. Worse,
Dr. Manmohan Singh has failed to undertake a course correction even
after Iran successfully forced President George Bush to modify his
policy of browbeating it on the issue of uranium enrichment.

Nations with aspirations to the international high table, symbolised
by permanent membership of the Security Council, do not behave like
the puppets of other nations. Sadly, India has been doing this for
some time now, and in an increasingly obvious manner. Yet superpowers
do not need friends, they need satellites. By refusing to look at the
sufferings of the Iraqi people (as evidenced by the growing incidents
of resistance to the occupation, and also the growing disclosures of
abuse of prisoners), and by refusing to change its attitude towards
Iran's so-called nuclear ambitions, the UPA is assisting the Bush
agenda of subordinating the Gulf economy and oil reserves to American
multinational corporations.

What is happening in Iraq is colonialism by remote control (ie, a
puppet regime), with the tacit complicity of the United Nations. A
look at the Baghdad story may be instructive for those of us who fear
that a similar fate is intended for India, as mindless globalisation
is promoted through a hedonistic corporate-political class with little
accountability towards its natal country.

In a meticulous expose of corporate America's intentions in the Gulf,
Antonia Juhasz (The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a
Time, 2006) argues that the principal Iraqi collaborator is vice
president Adel Abdel Mahdi, who has been a member of every
US-appointed post-invasion regime. Mahdi is the most vocal supporter
of the Bush agenda to open Iraq, especially its oil sector, to US
corporate loot. Already, 150 American corporations have received $50
billion worth of contracts, and despite completely failing in the
reconstruction of that occupied nation, nevertheless received the
money!

Occupation incharge Paul Bremer said the reconstruction failed because
of poor planning, but the truth is that it was tailored to serve the
interests of US multinationals, and the plan was ready two months
before the invasion! It was written by Virginia-based Bearing Point
Inc., which received a princely $250 million contract to rewrite
Iraq's economy. Paul Bremer created this new economy, which involved
radical corporate globalisation through free investment rules for
multinational corporations. This allowed corporations to enter Iraq
without contributing in any way to its economy. There was a vicious
tilt—Iraq could not give preference to Iraqi companies or workers in
the reconstruction, and so American companies got preference, and made
things worse by hiring non-Iraqi workers.

The Bechtel Corporation of San Francisco, to cite one example, secured
$2.8 billion to rebuild water, electricity and sewage systems, the
lifeline of the nation. After the first Gulf War, the Iraqis rebuilt
these systems in three months' time; but now, after three years,
services are below pre-war levels. Bearing Point, which wrote the
blueprint for Iraq's destruction, is in reality the well known KPMG
Consulting, which changed its name after a major scandal. It even got
its contract renewed, and its sole focus now is the privatisation of
Iraq's state-owned enterprises. No doubt, it will achieve this before
the contract is up for renewal in 2007.

It is pertinent to know that everything America has done in Iraq is
blatantly illegal under international law. The Geneva Conventions
emphasise that occupying powers must provide basic security and
services. They are not empowered to change the laws or political
structure of the occupied nation. The Bush regime has done precisely
the opposite—changed all foundational economic and political laws and
failed to provide security and basic needs of the Iraqi people.

Antonia Juhasz believes this is because the Bush administration is a
creature of the oil and gas industry. The President, Vice President
and Secretary of State are all former energy company officials. The
oil industry funded the Bush-Cheney campaign handsomely, and was
rewarded with huge tax subsidies, deregulation, and even a war waged
by the American nation for their benefit.

The significance of the Iraq invasion lies in the fact that while Iraq
officially has the second largest oil reserves in the world, some
geologists believe it may actually be at par with Saudi Arabia.
American oil companies and leaders like Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz,
Zalmay Khalilzad, and Donald Rumsfield, have for two decades demanded
increased US access to Iraq's oil, saying it should not be left in the
hands of Saddam Hussein (who has since been deposed).

Under the occupation, Bush did not merely change the regime. He
changed the political and economic structure in Iraq. In the process,
Halliburton, Chevron, Bechtel, Lockheed Martin, Exxon, and Marathon
have made a killing. Chevron played a major role in demanding
increased US economic access to Iraq. It is now poised to rape the
country once the new oil law is implemented. This oil law was created
just before the occupation, in the U.S. State Department's Iraqi Oil
and Energy Working Group!

After the invasion, a member of this working group was made Oil
Minister of Iraq. He cancelled all pre-existing oil contracts
negotiated by Saddam Hussein, because none of these was with US oil
companies. At the very beginning of the Bush administration, Dick
Cheney officially met oil majors Bechtel, Chevron, Halliburton, Exxon,
and they decided to take steps to increase their access to Gulf oil.
So Ibrahim Bahr Al-Aloum became Iraq's Oil Minister.

It stands to reason that the Iraqi people cannot trust or respect the
occupation-imposed regime. The resistance will continue until the
occupation forces are withdrawn. The botched up Iraqi operation has,
however, forced a US climbdown on Iran, as US generals have indicated
that the armed forces are not game for further sacrifices for the
enrichment of oil majors. Only South Block has not yet changed course.


ORGANISER, one of the oldest and most widely circulated weeklies from
the capital, first hit the stands in 1947, a few weeks before
Partition, Edited and enriched by eminent personalities likeA.R. Nair,
K.R. Malkani, L.K. Advani, V.P. Bhatia, Seshadri Chari and now
R.Balashanker (Email: editor@organiserweekly.com) to name but a few,
ORGANISER has come to believe that resistance to tyranny is obeisance
to God.