Iraq Progresses toward a Future Built on Oil Wealth

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http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,826447,00.html

http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-80885.html

There's a fine line between being snubbed and humiliated -- and no one in Iraq knows this better than Hussein al-Shahristani.

Two executives from the world's largest private energy company, ExxonMobil, are sitting and waiting in the outer office of Baghdad's most powerful government oil official. For the first 10 minutes, they sit at attention, ready to jump up as soon as Shahristani asks them in. But Shahristani doesn't ask. They sink down further into their deep armchairs and start playing with their smartphones.
After half an hour, they ask their Iraqi escort if something is wrong. The secretary takes pity on them and calls a staff member to sit with the visitors. They tell him about their flight in from Dubai, about the Qatar professional soccer league -- and they eventually venture a cautious question: Is it perhaps conceivable that an oil company could one day sponsor a football club in Iraq? FC Exxon Samarra? Mobil Basra United? It's a bold idea.

Then, nearly an hour after their 12 o'clock appointment at Adnan Palace in Baghdad's maximum-security zone, the phone finally rings and the secretary asks the two Americans to follow her. Doctor Shahristani now has time for them, she says.

Empty Promises

For the past nine years, the world has been waiting for Iraq's oil. Ever since Saddam Hussein was toppled from power in 2003, politicians in Baghdad and Washington have been announcing that the country would soon double, triple or perhaps even quintuple its oil exports. After all, former US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, one of the architects of the Iraq war, had promised that the country would finance its reconstruction on its own.