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“Hook in the jaw": Gog and Magog Alliance Part 4: Oil the Cause of Wars

Watch and Pray

Gas plant

Oil has been connected to war and violence throughout its history. In the First World War, seizure of Iraq’s oilfields was a “first class British war aim”. During the Second, the Japanese attack on the U.S. Pacific fleet in Pearl Harbour was largely an attempt to control the Pacific theatre, including the oilfields of Indonesia.

It has been estimated that between one-quarter and one-half of all interstate wars since 1973 have been linked to oil, and that oil-producing countries are 50% more likely to have civil wars.

For example:

  • Oil was the reason the Nigerian military conducted “wasting operations” against the Ogoni community who opposed Shell in the 1990s.

  • Exxon was accused of providing machinery for digging mass-graves in Indonesia’s war against secessionists in the province of Aceh (the company denies this).

  • Oil development was at the center of Colombia’s bloody civil war.

  • BP ignored warnings that its Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline would exacerbate conflict, passing through or near seven war zones. The pipeline became a major cause and target of Russia’s war with Georgia in 2008.

Arctic nations have militarized their northern zones, with a view to securing new oil resources. By far the greatest militarization has been in the Middle East, which holds more than half of the world’s oil reserves. The U.S. military presence – at an estimated cost of over $8 trillion since 1976 – has consistently exacerbated regional tensions and instability. Furthermore, oil producers such as Saudi Arabia have been key beneficiaries of U.S. weapons sales.

The U.S. government strenuously denied an oil motive for the 2003 invasion of Iraq; in reality its war plans grew out of oil supply fears. Throughout the occupation, from 2003 to 2011, privatizing the oil – against the wishes of Iraqis – was a consistent U.S. priority, and was closely tied to military operations.

  • Chaco War (1932-1935) - was fought between Bolivia and Paraguay over control of the northern part of the Gran Chaco region (known in Spanish as Chaco Boreal) of South America, which was thought to be rich in oil.

  • World War II (1939-1945): Oil campaign of World War II, Oil campaign chronology of World War II, Oil campaign targets of World War II

  • USA-Japan (1941-1945)

  • World War II was already an energy-induced conflict, impelled by Germany’s drive toward the oil fields of Azerbaijan and by Japanese aggression in the Dutch East Indies.

  • The Biafran War, also known as the Nigerian Civil War (1967-1970)

  • The Saddam Hussein & Iraqi Wars - Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988), Gulf War (1990–1991), Gulf War oil spill, Kuwaiti oil fires, The Iraqi no-fly zones conflicts (1992–2003), Iraq War (2003–2011), Rationale for the Iraq War#Oil

  • Conflict in the Niger Delta (2004-)

  • 2014 Russian military intervention in Ukraine (2014-ongoing)

  • 2014 military intervention against ISIS (2014-)

  • 2014 Core Coalition intervention in Syria (2014-)

  • 2015 Russian military intervention in Syria (2015-)

Africa

History provides a sobering lesson about western involvement in the Middle East and Africa.

The wars in the Middle East and corruption in Africa have resulted in regime change and has galvanised the Muslim world to reject what they see as western imperialism. The African continent is extremely rich in scarce resources. It is rich in oil, uranium, copper, gold, platinum, tin, diamonds, timber, export-based agriculture, bio-fuels, biodiversity, land and people. Africa natural resources whether oil, mining or gold has been taken over by Western companies, signing deals with their leaders in return for nothing. Yet with all the richness of the African continent, most of its people live in abject poverty. Their governments do not provide them with even the most essential of services such as clean drinking water, medical care, and the availability of electricity, education and basic infrastructure and where there is oil there are wars.

How does one explain all the poverty among all the wealth? The simple explanation is local corruption and foreign exploitation. Global corporations and foreign nations cut deals with corrupt leaders for billions of US dollars and then turn their head while despots raid the people’s treasury. All of these countries use state supported corporations, transnational corporations, world organizations, foreign aid, loans, diplomacy and military intervention to further their national agendas.

Once thriving and self-supporting villages have been made completely unlivable, security forces and rebel groups have caused severe human rights abuses, and communities have found few ways to seek redress – except by holding hostage the producers and the production of oil.

It is remarkable that none of those in Britain who talk about African dictatorship and kleptocracy seem aware that Idi Amin came to power in Uganda through British covert action, and that Nigeria's generals were supported and manipulated from 1960 onwards in support of Britain's oil interests.

Saudi Arabia

Since its inception in 1960, Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has never been shy about flexing its energy-fuelled power over the West. But those days are gone. And it’s not just the U.S. and Israeli shale gas and oil revolution which threatens OPEC’s decline.

OPEC, is an intergovernmental organization of 13 nations as of 2017, founded in 1960 in Baghdad by the first five members (Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela), and headquartered since 1965 in Vienna. As of 2015, the 13 countries accounted for an estimated 42 percent of global oil production and 73 percent of the world's "proven" oil reserves, giving OPEC a major influence on global oil prices that were previously determined by American-dominated multinational oil companies. OPEC's stated mission is "to coordinate and unify the petroleum policies of its member countries and ensure the stabilization of oil markets, in order to secure an efficient, economic and regular supply of petroleum to consumers, a steady income to producers, and a fair return on capital for those investing in the petroleum industry." The organization is also a significant provider of information about the international oil market.

The days when OPEC could hold the West to political ransom – as it did when it ordered an oil embargo after the U.S. supplied Israel with arms during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War – are over. The tables have indeed been turned due in no small part to the development of fracking.

As of January 2017, OPEC's members are Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Gabon, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia (the de facto leader), United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela. Two-thirds of OPEC's oil production and reserves are in its six Middle Eastern countries that surround the oil-rich Persian Gulf.

For the first time in a generation, a relationship between Saudi Arabia, the ruler of the world’s biggest oil exporter to the leader of the world’s largest oil consumer, US, is changing. Saudi Arabia hold on USA is weakening specially as the USA is now exporting oil to Middle Eastern countries and as more and more countries are producing their own oil or are now dependenent on Russia. Due to the changing global energy market Saud Arabia is waking to the idea that it cannot rely on the kind of relationship it had previously enjoyed under successive US administrations and suddenly found itself in the uncomfortable position with rising tensions in the Middle East. The Saudi royal family is leading the Sunni cause against a resurgent Iran, battling for dominance in a bitter struggle between Sunni and Shia across the Middle East. "Right now, the Saudis have only one thing on their mind and that is the Iranians. They have a very serious problem. Iranian proxies are running Yemen, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon," said Jim Woolsey, the former head of the US Central Intelligence Agency.

In 2016 Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman announced the ambitious plan to diversify the economy. The National Transformation Plan, “Vision 2030” agenda is a plan to reduce Saudi Arabia's dependence on oil, diversify its economy, and develop public service sectors such as health, education, infrastructure, recreation and tourism. Goals include reinforcing economic and investment activities, increasing non-oil industry trade between countries through goods and consumer products, and increasing government spending on the military, manufacturing equipment and ammunition.

The boom in US shale drilling and increase in high-cost oil production outside OPEC further eroded Saudi Arabia’s ability to influence policy in the world’s largest economy.

Syria

The background to the current conflicts in Syria is difficult to get your ahead around. Below is a timeline of events:

  • 2010 - Arab Spring was a revolutionary wave of both violent and non-violent demonstrations, protests, riots, coups, foreign interventions, and civil wars in North Africa and the Middle East that began on 18 December 2010 in Tunisia with the Tunisian Revolution.

  • 2011 - uprising toppled Tunisia's and Egypt's presidents. This gave hope to Syrian pro-democracy activists.

  • That March, peaceful protests erupted in Syria as well, after 15 boys were detained and tortured for writing graffiti in support of the Arab Spring. One of the boys, a 13-year-old, was killed after having been brutally tortured.

  • The Syrian government, led by President Bashar al-Assad, responded to the protests by killing hundreds of demonstrators and imprisoning many more.

  • In July 2011, defectors from the military announced the formation of the Free Syrian Army, a rebel group aiming to overthrow the government, and Syria began to slide into civil war.

While the protests in 2011 were mostly non-sectarian, the armed conflict surfaced starker sectarian divisions. Most Syrians are Sunni Muslims, but Syria's security establishment has long been dominated by members of the Alawi sect, of which Assad is a member.

On Fri, 06 Jun 2008 Russia's parliament ratified an agreement to write off nearly three-quarters of Syria's roughly US$14 billion (€9 billion) debt from the Soviet era. The State Duma, the lower house, registered its approval of the 2005 deal and a 2007 supplement. There's also Tartus, a Syrian port in the Mediterranean which helps Russia as an official base for its ships and also as a point of delivery for weapons to the Syrian Government.

Russia has laid to rest the financial ghosts of the Cold War, paying back its entire Soviet-era debt to western countries as well as Middle Eastern and African nations.

Crude Oil and the Syrian Conflict

In 2009, Assad refused to sign an agreement with Qatar to build an underground natural gas pipeline from the country's North Field to Turkey, traversing Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria to Mediterranean with a view to supply European markets crucially bypassing Russia, reducing European dependence on Russian gas. Turkey too was in favour of this 'Islamic Pipeline', as it would have made the country a key player in the transit, not to mention profits. At the time, both Qatar and Turkey had good relations with the US and western countries. However, Assad refused because he wanted "to protect the interests of [his] Russian ally, which is Europe's top supplier of natural gas."

Assad further enraged the Gulf’s Sunni monarchs by endorsing a Russian approved “Islamic pipeline” running from Iran’s side of the gas field through Syria and to the ports of Lebanon. The Islamic pipeline would make Shia Iran instead of Sunni Qatar, the principal supplier to the European energy market and dramatically increase Tehran’s influence in the Mid-East and the world. Israel also was understandably determined to derail the Islamic pipeline which would enrich Iran and Syria and presumably strengthen their proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas.

The Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline plan was a "direct slap in the face" to Qatar's plans. No wonder Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, in a failed attempt to bribe Russia to switch sides, told President Putin that "whatever regime comes after" Assad, it will be "completely" in Saudi Arabia's hands and will "not sign any agreement allowing any Gulf country to transport its gas across Syria to Europe and compete with Russian gas exports", according to diplomatic sources.

Other reports in the Turkish press said the two states were exploring the possibility of Qatar supplying gas to the strategic Nabucco pipeline project, which would transport Central Asian and Middle Eastern gas to Europe, again bypassing Russia. A Qatar-to-Turkey pipeline might hook up with Nabucco at its proposed starting point in eastern Turkey, but this project failed.

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