Oil law is tool to take Iraqi oil
Toolbox
Published: May 31, 2007
President Bush and his administration are putting great pressure on the Iraqi government to approve a new hydrocarbon (oil) law. The U.S. Congress has enacted legislation that includes adoption of the oil law as a benchmark of "progress" in Iraq and condition of continued reconstruction funding. The oil law is being promoted as a means to assure the equitable distribution to all parts of Iraq of the revenues earned from the sale of our oil.
Everyone knows that this oil law does not serve the Iraqi people, and that it serves Bush, his supporters and foreign oil companies at the expense of the Iraqi people who have been wronged and deprived of their right to their oil despite enduring great suffering and sacrifice.
It is common knowledge that the occupation spared neither the old nor the young, and that Iraq is passing through the most difficult of times because all and sundry are hounding it and covet a share of its riches. We see no good reason for linking the passing of this oil law to the withdrawal of the occupation troops from Iraq.
It is important that the Bush administration, the U.S. Congress and the American people understand why Iraq's oil workers, a majority of its Parliament and most Iraqis oppose this law.
It was our hope that after the fall of Saddam Hussein Iraqis would witness the dawn of a new era marked by recognition of the legitimate rights of our union's members in the oil sector. We discovered, however, that the freedom and democracy promised by President Bush was an empty promise. Instead, the occupation regime continued to enforce Saddam Hussein's law that makes it illegal for workers in public sector enterprises (including the oil sector) to organize unions and negotiate for fair wages and working conditions. That anti-labor law is still enforced to this day, four years after Saddam was deposed. Can there be a real democracy where unions must organize outside the law and basic labor rights guaranteed in international law are routinely ignored and violated?
It has been clear that the Bush administration came to Iraq for the oil. He has from the very start tried to privatize our work and transfer control of our nation's most important natural resource, which belongs to all the people of Iraq, to foreign corporations. Our union has resisted repeated efforts to bring foreign contractors into our industry to do work that we have done for decades. We built this industry. We kept it running through the Iran-Iraq War, through 12 years of international sanctions, and through invasion and occupation. We were successful in defeating each attempt to privatize our work and to bring foreign workers into the oil sector. What President Bush was not able to do directly, he now seeks to accomplish with this oil law.
The law that President Bush wants to impose on our country was not drafted in Iraq as a result of careful, transparent and inclusive participation of members of our Parliament, our union, and other representatives of civil society organizations in Iraq. Most members of Parliament never saw the law until it was leaked to the public a few months ago. It was imported to our country by the United States and the International Monetary Fund. The IMF has told our government that it must pass the law as a condition of debt relief and future financial aid. Is that how laws in America are made? The debt is not a debt of the Iraqi people. It is a debt of a dictatorship. Why would the IMF try to impose such a burden on our people and use it to extort adoption of this oil law?
What is wrong with the law?
You are being told the law will guarantee equitable distribution of oil revenues to all areas of Iraq. But in a law that has more than 40 articles, there is only one reference to fair distribution: "The government's revenue, including the oil revenue, must be distributed through the federal budget in a fair and just way in adherence to the constitution." Fair distribution of oil revenues already exists in our constitution. This law adds nothing to that. There are, however, thousands of words devoted to assuring that foreign oil corporations will be able to secure long-term contracts (up to 30 years) to develop, extract, control and sell what amounts to two-thirds of our country's oil reserves.
The law requires a royalty payment to the Iraqi government of just 12.5 percent. Does that sound to you like a fair distribution of oil revenues? The law does not require foreign corporations to hire Iraqi workers, to purchase from Iraqi businesses, to transfer technology to Iraqis, to reinvest profits in Iraq, or to submit disputes to resolution through the Iraqi judiciary. It even puts representatives of the oil cartel on the council that will be created to issue contracts to those same corporations.
By voting to make adoption of the oil law a benchmark of Iraqi cooperation, your Congress has become complicit in a raid by the international oil cartel on the national legacy of the Iraqi people and an attack on the sovereignty of our country. Congress is now a partner with President Bush in a scheme to recolonize our country. That is something we are pledged to prevent. Prior to the nationalization of our oil in 1972, foreign corporations controlled most of our oil resources and enriched themselves while the Iraqi people suffered. We will not allow our country to return to that condition.
Your nation's mothers and fathers have lost more than 3,400 precious lives of their sons and daughters in Iraq. Our nation's mothers and fathers have lost many hundreds of thousands of our children's precious lives. Millions of Iraqis have been forced from their homes; many had to flee the country. Unemployment in many areas is 70 percent. Our hospitals have been destroyed and many doctors have fled. Our schools, power plants, sanitation system and many homes have been destroyed.
The general public in Iraq is totally convinced that Bush wants to rush the promulgation of the oil law so as to be able to leave Iraq with a victory of sorts, because his project is failing every day and the occupation is collapsing in all parts of Iraq.
We wish to see you take a true stance for the children of Iraq and for your own, and we always say that history will remember those who advance peace over war. We are not your enemy. We mean you no harm. Allow us to resolve our differences free of outside interference. Please leave our country so that we can heal our wounds, as you must heal yours. Both our peoples have suffered enough. Let there be peace for us all.
Faleh Abood Umara is general secretary of the Iraq Federation of Oil Unions.
13