(Edited to add the link)
From <a href="http://www.nationalpost.com/world/story.html?id={A95B1BED-60E9-4862-80CC-226AE6BD68BF}" target="_blank">here</a>.
Iraq's oil fields will be war's launch pad
U.S. seeking access to northern Iraq from Turkey
Peter Goodspeed
National Post, with files from news services
Saturday, February 01, 2003
As the threat of war looms, tensions are growing in northern Iraq.
Secret armies, spies, ethnic tribal militias and competing national interests are all desperately jockeying for position in the oil-rich, Kurdish-controlled area.
U.S. Special Forces commandos and Central Intelligence Agency spies have already flooded into the region as the vanguard of an invasion force that will sweep south toward Baghdad.
Yesterday, government and military leaders in neighbouring Turkey decided to ask parliament for permission to base foreign troops there and to post Turkish troops abroad in the run up to a possible war with Iraq.
Turkish newspapers say Washington has asked for permission to deploy up to 80,000 troops inside the country along with another 5,000 to 6,000 Special Forces units that would be inserted into northern Iraq to secure the region's oil wells in advance of a full-scale war.
Iraq for its part has begun to expel families from a 32-kilometre strip along the border of nearly autonomous Kurdish areas in northern Iraq.
That move, which became public yesterday, is regarded by some as a possible prelude to the creation of a military buffer zone to defend against a possible U.S.-led invasion. It could also signal a determination by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to wage war literally on top of his country's oil fields.
U.S. military planners have spent months trying to devise strategies for protecting the oil fields, fearing Saddam might set them aflame as he did Kuwait's in 1991.
Iraq has oil reserves estimated at 112 billion barrels, the second largest in the world after Saudi Arabia. The country's two major oil producing regions are the Kurdish-controlled north, which has about 500 wells and the far south, which has another 1,000 wells.
Iraq's undeveloped western desert region is also believed to contain vast amounts of undiscovered oil.
The United States has not given much publicity to its plans for the oil fields, out of concern it will be accused of attacking Iraq for its oil rather than its weapons of mass destruction.
Washington has, however, convened a special task force of energy experts, oil industry executives and Iraqi opposition groups to study how to protect, revive and expand Iraq's oil empire once Saddam is deposed.
George W. Bush, the U.S. President, believes money earned from oil exports should be used to rebuild Iraq's economy after a war, a project the United Nations has estimated may cost between US$30-billion and US$40-billion.
U.S. energy service companies, which oversaw most of the repair work in the Kuwaiti oil fields, could also earn billions by helping to upgrade Iraq's oil wells.
Once a war breaks out, U.S. troops are expected to move at once to secure and protect the oil fields, possibly by dispatching Special Forces to seize individual wells, and by using electronic jamming equipment to prevent Iraqi officials from coordinating a campaign of destruction.
U.S. planners also hope individual Iraqi leaders will balk at destroying their country's oil industry and will choose to ignore orders to destroy wells.
Concerns over the oil industry are closely tied to a military desire to wage and end a war with Iraq as rapidly as possible.
That has placed an extra emphasis on pre-invasion operations in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, a region already protected by British and U.S. imposed no-fly zones.
The opening of a smaller "northern front," in Iraq, in addition to the main invasion into southern Iraq from Kuwait, could shorten the war considerably, by forcing Iraq to divide its forces.
A northern option also draws the U.S. deep into the region's long-simmering ethnic tensions and regional infighting.
Turkey, the only Muslim state in NATO, has hesitated to open its bases and territory to U.S. troops to attack Iraq. Ankara fears the upheaval could spill across its own border and stir unrest among its Kurdish minority in southeast Turkey.
In a bid to ease Turkey's concerns, Washington has agreed to an increased Turkish troop presence in northern Iraq, to halt an influx of Kurdish refugees and to discourage the creation of an independent Kurdish state after the fall of Saddam.
At the same time, U.S. troops will also have to control large swaths of northern Iraq, to prevent either the Turks or the independence-minded Kurds from trying to seize the region's oil wealth as a prize of war.
If Turkey does not agree to give access to U.S. troops, Washington will likely airlift thousands of troops into northern Iraq at the onset of war. But Ankara appears to have approved plans to send at least 20,000 U.S. troops into Iraq through Turkey, including an initial deployment of a mechanized division. The air base at Incirlik in southern Turkey would also take in U.S. troops in order to ferry supplies and reinforcements to forces in northern Iraq.
Right now the region is abuzz with preparations.
Supplies of antidotes against chemical and biological weapons are being flown into the Incirlik base and Turkish newspapers say airplane hangars at an airbase in southeastern Turkey have been transformed into morgues for possible military casualties.
Turkey has already doubled its military strength in northern Iraq to 12,000 soldiers, with armoured units seizing positions astride strategic highways and along the border with Syria, in order to keep Syrian forces from coming to the aid of the Kurds.
In Hungary, at the Taszar air base, 200 kilometres southwest of Budapest, U.S. experts have begun training 3,000 Kurdish and Iraqi opposition members to serve as translators and guides for invading U.S. troops.
U.S. Special Forces are also said to have reopened an abandoned Iraqi air base at Harir, 48 km north of the northern Iraqi town of Irbil.
Residents throughout northern Iraq report a sudden increase in military movements and late-night convoys of trucks.
Iraqi spies are said to have heavily infiltrated Kurdish nationalist movements and Iraqi opposition groups.
Just this week, Kurdish officials in the Iraqi town of Sulaimaiyah warned a handful of U.S. journalists and several foreign aid experts running U.S.-sponsored programs that they could be targets of an assassination plot orchestrated from Baghdad.
Officials with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan said they had evidence members of a militant Islamic group, Ansar al Islam, which is said to have ties to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist group, were prepared to attack any Americans they find in northern Iraq.
JOCKEYING FOR POSITION:
Under a proposed deal between the Turkish military and the Pentagon, Ankara will allow an initial deployment of a mechanized division, which will travel through Turkey to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.
The U.S. troops would be based at the Incirlik base in Turkey's southern province of Adana and at bases in the southeastern provinces of Batman and Diyarbakir.
IRAQ OIL RESERVES:
Estimated at 112 billion barrels, second only to Saudi Arabia and five times U.S. reserves -- but could be much greater because vast areas have not been explored
Source: Graphic News, New York Times
pgoodspeed@nationalpost.com
© Copyright 2003 National Post
From <a href="http://www.nationalpost.com/world/story.html?id={A95B1BED-60E9-4862-80CC-226AE6BD68BF}" target="_blank">here</a>.
Iraq's oil fields will be war's launch pad
U.S. seeking access to northern Iraq from Turkey
Peter Goodspeed
National Post, with files from news services
Saturday, February 01, 2003
As the threat of war looms, tensions are growing in northern Iraq.
Secret armies, spies, ethnic tribal militias and competing national interests are all desperately jockeying for position in the oil-rich, Kurdish-controlled area.
U.S. Special Forces commandos and Central Intelligence Agency spies have already flooded into the region as the vanguard of an invasion force that will sweep south toward Baghdad.
Yesterday, government and military leaders in neighbouring Turkey decided to ask parliament for permission to base foreign troops there and to post Turkish troops abroad in the run up to a possible war with Iraq.
Turkish newspapers say Washington has asked for permission to deploy up to 80,000 troops inside the country along with another 5,000 to 6,000 Special Forces units that would be inserted into northern Iraq to secure the region's oil wells in advance of a full-scale war.
Iraq for its part has begun to expel families from a 32-kilometre strip along the border of nearly autonomous Kurdish areas in northern Iraq.
That move, which became public yesterday, is regarded by some as a possible prelude to the creation of a military buffer zone to defend against a possible U.S.-led invasion. It could also signal a determination by Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to wage war literally on top of his country's oil fields.
U.S. military planners have spent months trying to devise strategies for protecting the oil fields, fearing Saddam might set them aflame as he did Kuwait's in 1991.
Iraq has oil reserves estimated at 112 billion barrels, the second largest in the world after Saudi Arabia. The country's two major oil producing regions are the Kurdish-controlled north, which has about 500 wells and the far south, which has another 1,000 wells.
Iraq's undeveloped western desert region is also believed to contain vast amounts of undiscovered oil.
The United States has not given much publicity to its plans for the oil fields, out of concern it will be accused of attacking Iraq for its oil rather than its weapons of mass destruction.
Washington has, however, convened a special task force of energy experts, oil industry executives and Iraqi opposition groups to study how to protect, revive and expand Iraq's oil empire once Saddam is deposed.
George W. Bush, the U.S. President, believes money earned from oil exports should be used to rebuild Iraq's economy after a war, a project the United Nations has estimated may cost between US$30-billion and US$40-billion.
U.S. energy service companies, which oversaw most of the repair work in the Kuwaiti oil fields, could also earn billions by helping to upgrade Iraq's oil wells.
Once a war breaks out, U.S. troops are expected to move at once to secure and protect the oil fields, possibly by dispatching Special Forces to seize individual wells, and by using electronic jamming equipment to prevent Iraqi officials from coordinating a campaign of destruction.
U.S. planners also hope individual Iraqi leaders will balk at destroying their country's oil industry and will choose to ignore orders to destroy wells.
Concerns over the oil industry are closely tied to a military desire to wage and end a war with Iraq as rapidly as possible.
That has placed an extra emphasis on pre-invasion operations in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, a region already protected by British and U.S. imposed no-fly zones.
The opening of a smaller "northern front," in Iraq, in addition to the main invasion into southern Iraq from Kuwait, could shorten the war considerably, by forcing Iraq to divide its forces.
A northern option also draws the U.S. deep into the region's long-simmering ethnic tensions and regional infighting.
Turkey, the only Muslim state in NATO, has hesitated to open its bases and territory to U.S. troops to attack Iraq. Ankara fears the upheaval could spill across its own border and stir unrest among its Kurdish minority in southeast Turkey.
In a bid to ease Turkey's concerns, Washington has agreed to an increased Turkish troop presence in northern Iraq, to halt an influx of Kurdish refugees and to discourage the creation of an independent Kurdish state after the fall of Saddam.
At the same time, U.S. troops will also have to control large swaths of northern Iraq, to prevent either the Turks or the independence-minded Kurds from trying to seize the region's oil wealth as a prize of war.
If Turkey does not agree to give access to U.S. troops, Washington will likely airlift thousands of troops into northern Iraq at the onset of war. But Ankara appears to have approved plans to send at least 20,000 U.S. troops into Iraq through Turkey, including an initial deployment of a mechanized division. The air base at Incirlik in southern Turkey would also take in U.S. troops in order to ferry supplies and reinforcements to forces in northern Iraq.
Right now the region is abuzz with preparations.
Supplies of antidotes against chemical and biological weapons are being flown into the Incirlik base and Turkish newspapers say airplane hangars at an airbase in southeastern Turkey have been transformed into morgues for possible military casualties.
Turkey has already doubled its military strength in northern Iraq to 12,000 soldiers, with armoured units seizing positions astride strategic highways and along the border with Syria, in order to keep Syrian forces from coming to the aid of the Kurds.
In Hungary, at the Taszar air base, 200 kilometres southwest of Budapest, U.S. experts have begun training 3,000 Kurdish and Iraqi opposition members to serve as translators and guides for invading U.S. troops.
U.S. Special Forces are also said to have reopened an abandoned Iraqi air base at Harir, 48 km north of the northern Iraqi town of Irbil.
Residents throughout northern Iraq report a sudden increase in military movements and late-night convoys of trucks.
Iraqi spies are said to have heavily infiltrated Kurdish nationalist movements and Iraqi opposition groups.
Just this week, Kurdish officials in the Iraqi town of Sulaimaiyah warned a handful of U.S. journalists and several foreign aid experts running U.S.-sponsored programs that they could be targets of an assassination plot orchestrated from Baghdad.
Officials with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan said they had evidence members of a militant Islamic group, Ansar al Islam, which is said to have ties to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist group, were prepared to attack any Americans they find in northern Iraq.
JOCKEYING FOR POSITION:
Under a proposed deal between the Turkish military and the Pentagon, Ankara will allow an initial deployment of a mechanized division, which will travel through Turkey to Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.
The U.S. troops would be based at the Incirlik base in Turkey's southern province of Adana and at bases in the southeastern provinces of Batman and Diyarbakir.
IRAQ OIL RESERVES:
Estimated at 112 billion barrels, second only to Saudi Arabia and five times U.S. reserves -- but could be much greater because vast areas have not been explored
Source: Graphic News, New York Times
pgoodspeed@nationalpost.com
© Copyright 2003 National Post
