HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- Copyright 2002 Institute for Public Affairs In These Times October 28, 2002 SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 3 LENGTH: 862 words HEADLINE: Crude Maneuvers; The race for Iraqi oil is on BYLINE: By Armen Georgian BODY: As military strategists in Washington and London pore over invasion plans for Iraq, the rush to control the country's lucrative northern oil fields has already begun -- with Turkey leading the fray. The oil-rich Kirkuk and Mosul regions comprise part of the no-fly zone in northern Iraq, where an autonomous Kurdish administration has operated since the end of the Gulf War. An estimated 3 million Kurds live uneasily in the area alongside tens of thousands of ethnic Turkmens and Arabs. The Kurds, Turkmens, Ankara and Washington all have one common interest: Kirkuk oil. The "great game" for Kirkuk stretches back to 1918, when the oil-hungry British seized the region from the defeated Ottoman empire. Since then, Turkey has periodically raised the issue of its lost territories. Oil analysts estimate the present Iraq-Turkey pipeline could yield eight times its current output in a post-sanctions, post-Saddam Iraq. Total reserves in the Kirkuk field are worth an estimated $ 10 billion. "Freeing up these reserves would benefit Turkey, which has no oil of its own," says independent political analyst Mohammed Noureddine, "and Washington, which needs its NATO ally to transport the oil safely to Western markets." At the end of August, Turkish Defense Minister Sabahattin Cakmakoglu made a thinly veiled threat to annex Kirkuk and Mosul by referring to the areas as "historic Turkish lands" under Ankara's "direct safekeeping." The controversial comments were followed on September 6 by calls from the deputy speaker of the Turkish Parliament, Murat Sokmenoglu, for an autonomous Turkmen region comprising Kirkuk and Mosul. He reasoned that the Turkmens' linguistic and ethnic ties to Turkey -- the two groups share a common ancestry and speak similar languages -- would make them an ideal buffer against wayward Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, who has worried Ankara by demanding an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq. On September 9, Turkish Foreign Minister Sukru Sina Gurel ominously remarked: "Turkey will do whatever is necessary in line with its national interests and security needs," another threat to annex Kirkuk should Barzani get his way. Small wonder, then, that Washington and Ankara reportedly clinched a deal in January 2001 if the United States decided to oust Saddam by force. According to the Germany-based Kurdish newspaper Ozgur Politika, such a deal would kill two birds with one stone by blocking an incipient Kurdish state and securing U.S.-Turkish control over the Kirkuk and Mosul oil fields. Apart from its common strategic interests with Ankara, the Bush administration has thick oil ties of its own to northern Iraq. As CEO of oil giant Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney oversaw the sale of more than $ 73 million in spare parts and equipment to Iraq through French subsidiaries from early 1997 to the summer of 2000, U.N. records show. Much of the equipment was used to refurbish the creaking Iraq-Turkey pipeline. Thus, it's no surprise that Cheney had long advocated an end to unilateral U.S. sanctions on Baghdad. According to a Washington Post report in June 2001, Halliburton subsidiaries Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump traded with Iraq for a year under Cheney -- signing some $ 30 million in contracts -- before he sold the subsidiaries in February 2000. In July of that year, Cheney denied the deals had taken place, but changed his tune three weeks later when a Halliburton spokesman confirmed Dresser's and Ingersoll's dealings in Iraq. Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi has predicted that, in the event of Saddam's ouster, U.S. oil heavy-weights will have a "big shot at Iraqi oil" -- companies like Halliburton, ExxonMobil and Chevron Texaco. But first Turkey will have to secure control over Kirkuk -- and all the options are fraught with danger. According to analyst Noureddine, the reclaiming of former Turkish lands would open up a Pandora's box of suppressed territorial disputes with neighboring Syria, Armenia and Greece, potentially destabilizing the whole Middle East. Moreover, Nourredine warns, Syrian Kurds live close enough to sabotage the Iraq-Turkey pipeline if Ankara got heavy-handed with their brethren in Northern Iraq. Playing the Turkmen card is problematic too. So far, the six major Turkmen factions have cooperated uneasily, but a power struggle post-Saddam could sharpen existing rivalries and undermine the unity Ankara and Washington are banking on. Enmity toward the Iraqi Kurds also goes back a long way. In July 1959, Kurdish communists massacred most of Kirkuk City's Turkmens. Ultimately, Iraq's Kurds and Turkmens may be unwilling to give up the relative freedom they have enjoyed under the no-fly zones to become pawns in the regional chess game masterminded by Washington and Ankara. And, if the ethnic rivalries for Kirkuk lead to bloodshed, warns Kani Xulam, director of the American Kurdish Information Network, "Turkey will have to say goodbye to Iraq." If he's right, it would also be a rueful goodbye from Dick Cheney, and from the oil giants now salivating at their prospects once Saddam has gone. 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