Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed
Clairview, East Sussex: 2003, p/back, £11.95
It is, perhaps, unfair to review a current affairs book, a year or so after its initial publication. In this age of the Internet and the speed at which information is passed between people and continents, what chance does any book stand of still being relevant, especially when dealing with such a media saturated (and mediated) series of events as the US led ‘War on Terror’ and invasion and occupation of Iraq?
Ahmed’s book was mainly written in the run-up to the final invasion of Iraq, during the period after the events of ‘9-11’. He does a fine job of summarising the various ploys used, including the nonsense at the United Nations, which refused to rubber-stamp the invasion (for all the good that did anyone); the anthrax scare, which he shows was most probably a home-grown and organised dirty tricks op; and the Iraq ‘weapons of mass destruction’ – dismissed with the help of the people who were involved in monitoring the destruction of Iraq’s ability to make further supplies.
The author goes into the long-term background for the invasion, controlling a major source of the world’s slowly diminishing oil supply. This has been of strategic importance to both British and US governments since the 1930s and there has been constant interference (and straightforward military occupation) on numerous occasions since then.(1)
My problems with the book are minor: the subtitle assumes that potential readers have been asleep for the past 15 years. Is it really possible to make any claim for secrecy regarding western strategy with regard to Middle Eastern oil and the need for the installation and maintenance of compliant domestic regimes? There is a strange non-sequitur in the first chapter where a ‘secret’ official British policy document from 1958 relating to the Middle East is immediately followed by ‘Thus, shortly after the First World War, turning their eyes towards the Middle East, the western powers aimed to dismantle Ottoman Turkey.'(p.24)
And there is the problem of hindsight and prediction. Post-war Iraq has not seen a wholesale reimposition of the Ba’athist regime – a more widely based puppet regime has been installed instead. On the plus side Ahmed foresaw the possibility of widespread resistance, including Islamic militants.
The book lacks a bibliography, which is a shame – even a simple list of the books consulted would have been useful. Many of the notes refer to Internet sources, which is inevitable these days. Let’s hope that the URLs remain current for the foreseeable future or that someone can make the articles available on a CD or DVD, otherwise the supporting documentation will be lost.
This a competent book which summarises the work of many researchers of the reasons behind the war against Iraq and its subsequent occupation. For those who have been following the story there’s not much here that will come as a surprise, but it may have some use as background reading for those new to the subject.
Notes
1 It’s welcome to see the ideas around Colin Campbell’s ‘peak oil’ thesis being incorporated into this argument. See for example, <www.hubbertpeak.com/de/lecture.html>