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Saboteurs go for Iraq's
jugular
By Charles
Recknagel
PRAGUE - Resistance to the United
States-led authority in Iraq is falling into a clear
pattern some three months after the capture of Baghdad
and the toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime.
Most frequently, it takes the form of attacks on
US soldiers patrolling Baghdad and areas to the north
where concentrations of Ba'ath Party loyalists remain.
In the latest of what have become almost daily ambushes
of US troops, two soldiers were killed on Monday in
separate attacks on their convoys in the capital. Such
attacks have killed almost 30 US soldiers since
Washington declared on May 1 that major combat was over.
Less frequent, but equally persistent, are
attacks by saboteurs on Iraq's energy infrastructure. In
past weeks suspected members of the former regime or
other anti-coalition groups have hit pipelines to
disrupt the operation of power plants in Baghdad and to
delay the renewed export of Iraqi crude oil.
Repeated attacks on pipelines carrying crude oil
from Iraq's northern oil fields to the main al-Daura
refinery in Baghdad caused panic buying of gasoline by
motorists in the capital last month. Those attacks,
which reduced the refinery to operating at 45 percent
capacity, were accompanied by the spreading of
anti-American rumors. One rumor was that the US-led
Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) was restricting
gasoline supplies to punish ordinary Iraqis for
resisting them.
Similarly, saboteurs two weeks
ago damaged the main pipeline carrying crude oil for
export to the Baiji refinery complex, Iraq's largest,
some 200 kilometers north of Baghdad. There, output is
already running at only 70 percent capacity due to the
pillaging of power lines, which occasionally forces the
complex to temporarily shut down.
Oil experts
say that a combination of sabotage attacks and looting
has already forced Iraq's oil ministry to postpone its
original plans to begin large-scale exports of crude
five weeks ago. Acting oil minister Thamer Ghadhban
moved that target date to the middle of this month, but
it remains uncertain whether he will find his new
deadline any easier to meet.
Walid Khadduri, an
oil expert and editor in chief of the Cyprus-based
Middle East Economic Survey, said that the widespread
looting that took place following the Iraq war "stripped
a lot of the fields and refineries and oil installations
of equipment and spare parts and material, and this
created a big hole in the operations and created the
first [production] delay and the first shortfall."
He said that another problem with resuming
Iraq's oil exports is the half-dozen pipeline bombings
over the past three weeks. "It is possible to fix
pipelines in 48 hours, but it disrupts the normal flow
of oil and creates havoc in the normalcy of contracts
done with customers, because customers expect a steady
flow of oil," Khadduri said.
Khadduri said that
production in Iraq now stands at about 900,000 barrels
per day (bpd). That is just 60 percent of the Iraqi oil
ministry's production target of 1.5 million barrels per
day by the middle of this month - a quantity that would
mark the return of Iraq as a significant oil exporter.
Prior to the war, Iraq's production was some 2.5 million
bpd.
As Iraq's oil ministry struggles to build
production, it has yet to win the confidence of global
oil buyers. Analysts say that oil companies remain
hesitant to sign contracts to buy Iraqi oil on a steady
basis - the mainstay of the oil industry business -
until a steady flow of oil is assured. For now, the
ministry has been forced to put Iraqi oil up for bid
only after the oil has actually been produced and put in
storage tanks, rather than taking bids for future
production.
Iraq's oil infrastructure is an
attractive target for saboteurs because it directly
undercuts the funding for reconstruction efforts. Iraq's
US-led administration is counting on using the country's
oil revenues as the main source of money for reviving
the country's economy after more than a decade of UN
sanctions.
The saboteurs may also hope that
disrupting the oil supply puts political pressure on
Washington and London by helping keep world oil prices
high. That could make attacks on the pipelines a lever
for possibly winning some concessions from the allies if
the attacks are pressed hard enough.
Oil expert
Khaddouri says that the slow return of Iraqi oil to the
world market, among a number of other factors, has
helped to keep prices up since the war. The other
factors contributing to the upward pressure include a
spike in the price of natural gas in the US, which is
causing US power companies to temporarily switch to fuel
oil, and labor problems slowing oil production in
Nigeria and Venezuela.
In recent weeks, some
evidence has emerged that the sabotage attacks may be
part of a plan prepared by Saddam's regime to wage a
guerrilla war if it were to be defeated. The New York
Times reported late last month that allied officials
found an "emergency plan" in Basra dated January 23,
which outlined steps including sabotaging power plants
and cutting communication lines to undercut any
occupying force. The document was marked for
distribution to intelligence officers throughout the
country.
In reaction to the sabotage, the oil
ministry recently proposed doubling the number of guards
it employs. Iraq's three state-owned oil companies are
reported to currently have a total of some 5,000
security men, but there are more than 4,500 miles of
pipelines crisscrossing Iraq's desert. US and British
forces are said to be stretched too thin to undertake
intensive patrolling of the oil infrastructure in
addition to their current security duties.
Also,
in response to the growing sabotage problem, CPA head L
Paul Bremer recently announced plans to form a new
all-Iraqi security force to protect key utility and oil
installations. The size of the new force, which is to be
made up of former soldiers, has not yet been announced.
The CPA, which also plans to create a new Iraqi army,
disbanded the former national army of some 400,000 men
two months ago to purge it of Ba'athist loyalists.
Copyright (c) 2002, RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted
with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington DC
20036
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