Former British Premier Edward Heath has warned of cataclysmic consequences approximating those of a “third world war” with the explosion of the Gulf Apart from fearful death and destruction, war may change the map of the Middle-East, play havoc with the environment and impose a crushing economic burden on the third world.
One insight into Saddam’s present frame of mind is provided by a prophetic speech he made in 1975: “Oil for the USA today has become a decisive element in American global politics…. the USA will not rest content with the present ‘status quo’…. America will have the lion’s share of the joint oil wealth of Arab countries…. It may be that the future will favour the US for some time, but in the longer term it will favour the peoples ….[who] will turn towards an anti-American stand, regardless of the strong grip of America’s local allies….”
The historical background is confirmed by a French scholar: “Just before being toppled in 1958, the master of Baghdad, the pro-Western Nouri al Said, had planned with the British and Americans, to stage an entry of the Iraqi army into Kuwait. This project proved abortive [because Brig Kassem’s army overthrew the pro-Western government of Nouri al Said] but it gives a touch of irony to the present Anglo-Saxon reaction to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.”
Last summer, Saddam Hussein was in desperate straits. The Iran-Iraq war had depleted his economy. The Kuwaitis refused to write off his war debts, they refused to negotiate his historical claims on some oil well,s they refused to give him access to two islands in the Gulf for shipping his oil. He wanted to increase oil prices; they, along with the Saudis and the West, were planning to reduce it.
First, Saddam complained bitterly to the US. Then he ordered large scale military manoeuvres on Kuwaiti borders. The US didn’t respond. Emboldened, or provoked, if you will, the Iraqi dictator sent his tanks into Kuwait. His decision had nothing to do with the Palestinian cause.
Amidst echoes of the “white man’s burden”, the US reacted swiftly. Within a couple of months, the US cobbled a Coalition under the UN umbrella, backed by an armada of half a million troops, unprecedented since the second world war, to demand an “unconditional Iraq withdrawal” from Kuwait.
Saddam Hussein’s motives were purely mercenary; if he retains Kuwait, he will control nearly 40% of the world’s oil and dictate OPEC’s pricing policies. For precisely the same reason, because their economies are in the trough of a recession, Western powers are up in arms against him. But the US’s uncommonly militant reaction is explained by another, perhaps more compelling,dialectic: in the post-cold war world, the US views this occasion as providing an excellent opportunity to establish the “new rules of the game”, President, Bush’s “new world order”, after the collapse of yesteryears’ superpower, the USSR. No wonder, after refusing to clear its financial dues to the United Nations earlier, the US has now hurriedly beefed it up to claim a perfect legitimacy for its strategy.
The destruction of Iraq will unleash sombre consequences. King Hussain’s Hashemite Jordan could disappear. The Iranians might seize Iraqi territory. The Turks might have to contend with a Kurdish state. Syria would be tempted to gobble up Lebanon. In due course, a Muslim backlash against the West and its Arab allies might hasten their demise. And a doubling in oil prices would impose a crippling burden of US$ 150 billion per annum in much of the third world. Israel apart, it is difficult to visualize any winners in the Gulf. Both Saddam and Bush are victims of misplaced concreteness, one for violating the sovereignty of an independent stat and the other for thrusting his warped policies upon the rest of the us.
As for Pakistan, its foreign policy is really up the creek. Civilian and military opinion frowns upon the destruction of Iraq. Yet, we have sent 12000 troops in aid of the coalition and more are to follow. Islamabad thinks, wrongly, that in the aftermath of this conflict, Pakistan stands to reap the rewards of participation in a Pan-Islamic peacekeeping force in the Gulf.
This is wishful thinking or rank opportunism. There is no treasure buried beneath a holocaust in the Middle-East.