The increasing flow of oil and the keen interest of the oil barons are signs, among others, that U.S.-British forces have made progress in stabilizing their occupation of the country of 25 million people. Speaking of the major oil firms, Muhammad al-Jiburi, director general of the Iraqi oil company’s export division, said May 30, “You just name it and they have been in touch with us.” Among the reported suitors were the world’s three biggest oil companies: ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco of the United States—the two largest—and British Petroleum of the United Kingdom.

The two U.S. giants were among the biggest U.S. buyers of Iraqi oil under the UN oil-for-food program—the form the sanctions took from the mid-1990s on. The termination of the program ends the role of UN-approved middlemen, enabling the oil giants to deal directly with an Iraqi oil ministry functioning under Washington and London’s auspices.

Bidding for contracts opened May 30. There are already plenty of indications that contracts French and Russian companies signed with the former Saddam Hussein government for oil and gas exploration, amounting to some $20 billion, will not be honored. Paris and Moscow were among the principal beneficiaries of the oil-for-food program, and had signed these contracts to go into effect once the UN sanctions were lifted. According to ABC News on Line, Richard Perle, a former Pentagon adviser, said Russia had “placed its bets on a loser.” Barhim Sali, prime minister in the Kurdish-controlled areas of northern Iraq, stated during a recent visit to Washington that these contracts “will not be honored.”

The May 27 Le Monde, a Paris daily, published an article titled “Iraq moves rapidly to restore oil production.” It stated, “The Americans are in full control of [oil] exploitation; they have named a new Iraqi ‘ministry’ and are ensconced in its management…. Today production approaches 700,000 barrels, a figure which should double over the coming month.”

Iraq’s oil fields were a principal target of the imperialist troops both in the invasion and before, when U.S. Special Forces collaborated with the Kurdish parties to secure the fields in the north. Today, the total U.S. and British forces in Iraq stand at around 160,000.  
 
Imperialist forces under attack
Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, head of U.S. and British ground forces in Iraq, indicated at a May 29 press conference that he would cancel the scheduled return home of soldiers of the U.S. Third Infantry Division. Some would be sent to towns northwest of Baghdad where U.S. soldiers had faced a string of attacks in the previous few days, he said. The division was part of the original drive from Kuwait to Baghdad beginning in late March. It has been used since then in policing the capital.

Iraqi fighters killed several GIs the last week of May in firefights and ambushes. The U.S. occupying forces have suffered some 40 casualties in the six weeks since the collapse of the Iraqi armed forces, compared with 120 during the previous month of combat.

U.S. troops have shot down an unreported number of Iraqis in the most recent engagements. The most serious clash took place in Fallujah, when two U.S. soldiers were killed in an attack with rocket-propelled grenades on their checkpoint. Three weeks earlier U.S. soldiers stationed in a Fallujah schoolhouse had fired on a crowd protesting the occupation, killing more than a dozen people.

A similar attack on a U.S. military convoy took place in Baghdad June 1. One GI was wounded and one Iraqi civilian killed in the firefight.

The Iraqi actions are not “criminal activities, these are combat activities,” said McKiernan. “We’re going to address those activities by applying every resource available to us.”

The May 30 Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. command had decided to “pull out troops from the city of Hit after violent anti-American protests” earlier that week. Hit is around 100 miles west of Baghdad.

Sporadic military resistance notwithstanding, street demonstrations against the occupation have been smaller and less frequent than in the first weeks following the war, including in the south. The last major protest in Baghdad, organized by Shiite opponents of the occupation, took to the streets May 19. Shiite clerics mounted a far smaller protest May 29.

One source of frustration and resentment, particularly among the layer of Iraqi politicians who see themselves playing starring roles in a future pro-imperialist administration, has been Washington and London’s cancellation of announced plans to rapidly establish an interim Iraqi government.

On June 1 the head of the U.S. administration in Iraq, Paul Bremer, announced that he would appoint a “political council” of up to 30 Iraqi citizens, each of whom would be given an advisory post in a government ministry. Bremer briefed a group of Iraqi politicians about the proposal, including representatives of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdish Democratic Party, the Iraqi National Congress, Iraqi National Accord, and the Shiite-based Dawa Party and Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

Afterwards, one Iraqi participant commented, “I think they are looking for some role for the political parties to have some Iraqi faces.”  
 
‘Weapons of mass destruction’
A small number of the occupying forces—some 1,000 U.S., British, and Australian operatives—have been assigned to the search for Saddam Hussein’s alleged stockpiles of “weapons of mass destruction.” After checking out some 200 “suspect” sites, the “searchers” have come up empty-handed. Their failure has received considerable coverage in the big-business media in Europe, where the French and German governments took their distance from the U.S.-led drive to war—a course they rightly saw as threatening their own imperialist interests.

U.S. officials have downplayed the issue, emphasizing that it was never their sole stated reason for war. On May 30 the Pentagon made this crystal clear by releasing the full transcript of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz’s remarks to Vanity Fair magazine.

In the interview Wolfowitz explained why the issue got such coverage, saying, “the truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on [in the propaganda offensive], which was weapons of mass destruction, as the core reason.”

Wolfowitz continued, “There have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is [Saddam Hussein’s] criminal treatment of the Iraqi people.”

Meanwhile, revelations of the occupying forces’ “criminal treatment of the Iraqi people” during the one-month invasion have begun to come to light.

A week after British officers criticized their U.S. allies for failing to gain the confidence of the people in Baghdad—allegedly in contrast to their own record in Basra—photos have been published showing the use of torture against Iraqi prisoners by British troops.

Kelly Tilford, 22, who is the proprietor of a photo shop in Tamworth, Staffordshire, discovered several incriminating shots on a roll of film delivered by a soldier in the 1st Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, which served in southern Iraq. The soldier is being questioned by military police.

In one shot, an Iraqi prisoner trussed in rope was dangling from the raised forks of a forklift truck. “I saw the look on his face,” said Tilford. “He was petrified.” Three other photos showed Iraqi prisoners engaged in coerced sexual acts.

The revelations followed news that Col. Timothy Collins, commander of the 1st Battalion of the Royal Irish Regiment, faces allegations of abuse of Iraqi civilians. A U.S. soldier accused Collins of pistol-whipping one man, firing at the feet of others, and shooting at the tires of passing vehicles to no military purpose.  
 
 
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