from UPI, via AlterNet:
Opposition to American Oil Grab is Unifying IraqisBy Ben Lando, UPI. Posted July 12, 2007.
Washington says a new Iraqi hydrocarbon law has the potential to unite Iraqis. That may be right, but not in the way White House planners had hoped. U.S. President Bush may be right: Iraq's oil law, although highly controversial, could be a "benchmark for reconciliation."
When Iraq's council of ministers last week suddenly approved the law, critics of various stripes united in opposition. Shiite and Sunni political parties alike denounced it, vowed to defeat it, even threatened to ensure Parliament can't take it up. It is seen by some as weakening the central government and giving too much to foreign companies.
Iraq depends on the sale of oil for the vast majority of its federal budget. It's infrastructure badly needs investment to boost production. A law governing the world's third largest reserves -- and a sizable amount of natural gas -- has been as elusive as security there.
In one attack alone Saturday in the northern city of Tuz Khurmato, nearly five times as many were killed than at the Virginia Tech massacre in the United States.
In the midst of a war zone of more than four years old, the Bush administration itself could be the most divisive agent. And, it's the White House's support for Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's administration, as well as the heavy pressure on it to pass the oil law, that could draw together the fractured country.
The fate of and fight for control over Iraq's oil is the same for the country itself. At issue is to what extent the federal government, as stewards of Iraq as a whole, will decide oil policy. Local governments, especially the Kurdistan Regional Government, disapprove of strong central control; their suspicions rest on memories of Saddam's Iraq, where the central government's uneven investment hand benefited only some, and its heavy hand brutalized the rest. ......(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/56513/