Stagnation in Burma (Myanmar).

My vist in March 2003 felt like a travel back in time. The placid Irrawaddy river feeds and connects the different ancient communities, the women wash in it, the children and animals play in it. On the shore, the buffalo pulls the carts overloaded with hay. The teak wood houses slumber in the shade and everywhere there are pagoda’s of solid gold, or just painted in gold, drifting by in the hot afternoon sun.

Rangoon, Shwedagan Golden Pagoda
(click thumbnail to enlarge)

Life in the villages, where 70% of the population lives, seems unchanged over the last thousand years. In the un-exciting cities, the skyline is dominated by even richer pagoda’s and the streets punctuated by the orange robes of Buddhist monks, but the pace remains slow and the atmosphere strangely disconnected from the outside world.

Mandalay, student monks at lunch
(click thumbnail to enlarge)

Drugs production up-country and its trade are closely guarded secrets, criticism of the corrupt but ruling military junta is politely muted and the world-famous name of the leader of the “National League for Democracy”,Suu Kyi, only reluctantly mentioned. And whatever there is of a modern economy seems barely functioning for lack of outside impulses.

And yet, this potentially very rich land has been producing and exporting oil since 1887. Since the nationalisation of the private Burma Oil Company, however, the State Oil Company has only been able to keep a modest level of exploration, production and distribution going. Nevertheless, gas exports to neighbouring Thailand started in 1998.

20th Century Burmah Oil Company offices, now standing derelict
(click thumbnail to enlarge)

The development prospects for oil and gas production, both on- and off-shore, are excellent, but need larger investments and know-how, which only major international oil companies can provide. Therefore, the 100% State owned Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE) has invited the collaboration of such companies through production sharing contracts. But a United States embargo on any collaboration with the current regime scares would-be investors away. So far only minor companies (with the exception of Total of France) have come forward. The only interested US oil company, Unocal, is in deep trouble at home. Reebok, Levi Straus and Heineken all either withdrew or shelved investment plans under pressure from US-based pressure groups. Personally, I think this only retards the progress of education and democracy in Myanmar. It is another example, after Cuba and Iraq, of embargoes hurting and isolating, not the rulers, who do very well in a climate of suspicion and hate, but the common people on whom progress towards democracy depends.

Para-economic Expenditures by Oil Companies
by
Louis Wesseling
and
Juan Carlos Boué
Oxford Institute for Energy Studies
August 2003

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The increasingly vocal debate about corporate accountability - whether in terms of financial probity, transparency or social responsibility - has recently crystallised in a number of national and international legal instruments designed to reduce or eliminate unacceptable business practices, broadly defined as "those that are not allowed at home, and hence should not be practiced away from home". This note explores one aspect of this subject, namely those 'murky payments' that are not explicitly required by law, yet seem "necessary to get the job done". This paper focuses on defining such payments, and develops and explores a proposal for their exposure and accounting.

Traditionally, public opinion in most countries has taken it for granted that the profitability of the oil business is in large part a function of the oil industry's leverage on governments and its ability to set the terms of trade unfairly to the industry'sadvantage. However, this negative perception has not really had a great impact on the way that oil companies go about their business, except at a few critical junctures. We appear to be at such a juncture today. Indeed, it is probably fair to say that international oil company managements have not been subjected to so much corporate responsibility pressure since the days of the Rhodesian blockade and the South African oil embargo. This time round, though, the backdrop to the demands that the Augean stables be cleaned has been the wide-spread and growing distrust of the management of major companies amongst shareholders, who have seen the value of their investments deteriorate in the wake of a series of high-profile corporate governance scandals.

Given the colossal economic interests that revolve around oil, it is only natural perhaps that the reaction to the breaches of corporate responsibility (particularly in the area of oil companies' relationships with governmental actors) should be primarily emotive. Unfortunately, this also constitutes a major obstacle to understanding and dealing with the underlying conditions that almost inevitably lead to "murky payments" being made, no only in dysfunctional developing countries but also in the developed world (vide the latest in the Elf bribery trials). Indeed, when revising the extant literature on this subject, it is difficult not to be reminded of Carlyle's opinion about the historiography of the French Revolution: "It is unfortunate, though very natural, that the history of this period has so generally been written in hysterics. Exaggeration abounds, execration, wailing; and on the whole, darkness".

One of the reasons why the debate on this topic has not produced much new thinking leading to suggestions for improvement can be traced to the failure to move from the anecdotal plane to the next step: the critical examination of the underlying motives for endemic corruption but also of the reasons why certain industries (armaments, civil engineering and infrastructure, commercial aircraft, petroleum, to name the most prominent) are particularly prone to it. A principal reason for the unsatisfactory state of the debate, however, is the schizoid attitude that many opinion leaders in the West display towards the issue of corruption. Their attitude has two basic dimensions, one practical and one legal, which are complementary but actually seem to pull in opposite directions. We shall examine each one of these dimensions in turn.

At the practical level, the attitude we are talking about attempts to draw a supposedly pragmatic distinction between corporate responsibility issues in stable and democratic countries, on one side, and in the less salubrious places of the globe, on the other. It posits that in countries of the developed world, corruption cannot and should not be condoned or excused under any circumstance. At the same time, it two-facedly holds that the notion that bribery and extortion should not be allowed anywhere anytime is idealistic and not really applicable to countries where laws are not conducive to clean and transparent business, where payments are very often required for a host of services outside projects per se and where, crucially, most of the oil in the world available to private companies is now to be found. In these countries, the argument goes, "gifts" (that would be called outright "bribes" in the West) actually function as a palliative for the non-existent rule of law, thereby "oiling" the machinery of government in a way that allows economic activity to take place. Without such "oiling", trust-based relationships with local elites cannot be built and resource development therefore cannot take place, which would ultimately be to the detriment of both the populations of these countries (whose main hope of progress involves oil being extracted and exported by foreign oil companies), and the oil companies and their shareholders. Ultimately, the argument concludes, however distasteful this sort of activity might appear to some Western eyes, companies would not be discharging their duties to their shareholders if they turned down opportunities just because they involved "oiling" (in its bribery sense), not least because some of their competitors would not necessarily feel themselves bound by similar scruples. And if these "facts of life" make some shareholders and critics queasy, then these people should ponder on the fact that it is not so long since "cowboy" or "crony" capitalism gave rise to the rule of law in most (but by no means all) western market economies and that, with any luck, bribes and grease will gradually wither away as economic progress eliminates the economic gap that they are substituting for.

There are many objections one can pose against this point of view. First of all, even if one grants that grease might serve a function in places where there is only a rudimentary system for the enforcement of property rights, grand corruption can never be anything other than a millstone around a country's neck (a popular saying of early post-revolutionary Mexican vintage pertinently pointed out that the key reason why the Mexican states were not as productive as they could be was that they were required to produce a rich governor and state legislature every four years). Moreover, it is both sanctimonious and patronising, not least in the way in which it glosses over the frequency with which one encounters large doubtful payments and illegal political contributions in the supposedly "clean" developed countries. It also ignores the fact that Enron's above-board deregulation-linked campaign contributions, for instance, do not necessarily differ in principle from a decision taken by a Western company to offer a bribe to authorities in order to obtain an oil concession in an underdeveloped nation Indeed, the main difference is one of degree. The link between payment and the desired outcome is highly attenuated in the West, where the polyarchical nature of polities greatly increases uncertainty because of the many actors who can oppose or hinder any policy initiative. Thus George W. Bush and his Congressional fraction might have delivered to the oil industry on the ANWR issue, but the Refuge has not been opened up to drilling because the US President does not have the final say in such matters.

Quite apart from the above, however, this point of view is also highly objectionable because it stretches pragmatism to the point of complicity. Surely amongst the obligations that managements have towards their shareholders one can include not spending the latter's money in a corrupt way? Thus, recognizing the existence of latter-day cowboy/kleptocratic capitalism is one thing, participating enthusiastically in the game, all the while pretending to occupy the moral high ground, is quite another. And while it may be true that, in every single country in the world, corruption is a symptom of a systemic malady as opposed to a disease in and of itself, it is also true that plenty of the things that oil companies do in the political sphere tend to perpetuate the malady, and hence exacerbate corruption. By the same token, even though there are rigorous sociological and economic explanations as to why the taking and distribution of bribes is part and parcel of the economic process in what Francis Fukuyama called "low trust" societies, the alleged "naturalness" of these practices is easy to overstate. After all, in how many of those countries where bribery is allegedly "the accepted local custom" are the names of bribe-takers a matter of public record? It is clear, therefore, that there is some bad faith in the argument that oil companies which have identified a good opportunity in a country where corruption is endemic are in effect totally powerless to resist such corollaries as consensus-forming payments, bribery of the political elite and so on. In fact, the bigger and more technologically advanced an oil company is, the more desirable its involvement in a development project will be, and the greater its leeway will be to avoid corrupt payments. Having said that, stock market valuations reward companies doing dodgy deals in developing countries with higher earnings multiples than the staid old decent looking and acting firms, implicitly because most shareholders either subscribe to the pragmatic view of corruption or are simply unaware of its existence. This puts oil companies on the horns of a dilemma. They may find themselves damned if they don't (by analysts, institutional investors and some shareholders, not to mention government officials in the countries in which they operate), and damned if they do (by activists, NGOs, other shareholders and even their home governments). Under these circumstances, managers seeking guidance and enlightment are not helped a great deal by anti-corruption legislation from advanced countries.

Aside from a certain leeway for minor transgressions (i.e. grease), neither the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) nor the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Government Officials or the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises admit any fine gradations in the subject of bribery and extortion. Their message is clear: no such payments under whatever guise are allowed anywhere, under any circumstances. Period. Unsurprisingly, business principles advertised by some oil companies faithfully echo the official language, confirming categorically that their managers never engage in such practices. But how can one reconcile the puritanical legal attitude of western actors (and particularly governments) towards corruption with the well known practical dimension described above? The answer is simple: in honesty, one cannot. Given this, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the main effect of this corpus of legislation is to function as a salve on collective consciences and as an incentive for company lawyers to invent subterfuges. In effect, its blanket condemnation of corruption (and the harshness of potential punishments) allows boards to distance themselves from the corruption that may be going on all around them and claim that the operations and accounts of their company are nothing other than clean, all the while resting comfortably in the knowledge that their local managements - formally ordered to steer clear of local corruption - will find by stealth a way to obtain what their company really needs. In other words, the legislation enables oil company managers to deal with anomalies like the fact that the price of pipeline paid in a certain jurisdiction is ten percent higher than the norm for no good reason, but without their having to suffer from an unclean conscience, without their having to take on the responsibility of asking where that surplus money might be going, and even without their having to foot the bill for this creaming (because the companies get this money back through their remuneration formulae). Since the essence of these anti-corruption rules and guidelines is to forbid rather than to open doubtful cases for objective inspection, it is very difficult for companies to come clean about possible misdemeanours, as they would be setting themselves up for self-incrimination and prosecution. Because of this, only insignificant or token corrupt payments are revealed under current "best" practice by "socially conscious" top managements, in thinly audited Corporate Social Responsibility reports. Everybody suspects that much larger amounts lurk in the nether reaches of the companies' accounts, or in the accounts of their sleeping partners, safely tucked away under headings like "legal fees", "advertising", "local assistance", "consultancy fees", to say nothing of paying salaries to nationals who are supposed to be employees and trainees, but who never put in an appearance.

The lack of concordance between Western anti-corruption praxis, on the one hand, and law, on the other, is clearly something that needs to be addressed if the problem of corruption is finally to come out from under the legalistic carpet where it has been swept for decades. Increased transparency (rather than more "detect, discipline and punish" initiatives) seems to offer the most promising way out of this cul de sac. An example of the power of transparency to galvanise actors into action can be seen in the genesis of George Soros' "Publish What You Pay" initiative, which is the direct offshoot of just a few reliable numbers about the hidden diversions of official oil company tax payments within several West African governments. When outside studies of government accounts had shown that billions of tax dollars failed to reach their rightful destination in the ministries of finance, the World Bank, various nongovernmental

organisations and individuals like Soros, started this campaign for oil companies to produce full data of all their payments to governments. To their credit BP did just that in Angola, against the strenuous objections of the Angolan government (regrettably, other major companies have not come out in support of BP, and are hiding behind confidentiality clauses, notwithstanding the well known fact that these big fish can afford higher standards of conduct than little contractors at the bottom of the heap). Similar far-reaching practical initiatives have also been taken in Chad by the World Bank and by ExxonMobil in the Doba oil project, for joint Revenue Management Programmes whose objective is to allow publicly announced tax revenue to be used for the benefit of social rather than military spending (an example perhaps for Iraq?). The Transparency in Extractive (both petroleum and mineral) Industries initiative sponsored by the British government is another step in the right overall direction.

Regrettably however, compliance with increased transparency is seen as burdensome in some quarters, as witnessed by the hostile reception the Transparency in Extractive Industries has had in certain American boardrooms (and, by extension, amongst American politicians). Indeed, were this attitude to remain unchanged, any international transparency drive in the oil industry would probably be stillborn. At first glance, this hostility seems difficult to explain. After all, the main thrust of both the Soros and British government initiatives is that companies should, first and foremost, publish all those payments stemming from their legal compliance with their host countries' resource laws and regulations (i.e. acreage bonuses, severance, taxes, surface rents, royalties and income taxes). In other words, "publish what you pay" in this context is a way of shifting the onus of accountability for diversion of monies to host countries (and it has little to do with bribery involving oil companies as such). One might suppose that Americans are against this initiative because their FCPA explicitly forbids American companies from making subterranean payments, making it uncomfortable for American companies to admit even the knowledge of subsequent illegal diversion of funds by the host governments. Having said that, a long historical precedent shows that company managements are partial to opacity precisely because it provides the best conditions for corruption to thrive (and companies appreciate the finer points of corruption as a marketing tool of sorts, a double-edged control device over people of influence, and an instrument of non-price competition). In light of the above, American opposition to the aforementioned transparency initiatives leads one to think that, at the moment, there is not a great deal of principled corporate or governmental support in the USA for a worldwide anti-corruption drive, even though it was the American government that pushed through the OECD Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Government Officials,

Although company managers might view things differently, transparency initiatives are actually something that is in their firms' best interests to support. Company managements, when confronted with the excesses of the people that they happily do business with, tend to answer with the oldest excuse in the Book: "Am I my brother's keeper?". As well as being ethically unsatisfying, such a stance poses significant dangers to their own organisations. Publicity, for starters, is a force for moderation that influences not only those who find themselves at the receiving end of demands for payments, but also those that demand them. As with price transparency in markets, transparency in these matters should lead to lower costs. Quite apart from this, it has been proven time and again that organisations that enter into contact with systemic corruption and consistently turn a blind eye to it, cannot help but be affected (indeed, infected) by it, sometimes with fatal consequences. Anyone who doubts this should recall, say, the push that the CIA gave to the world heroin trade as a result of its attempts to fight the Vietcong by means of the Montagnard tribes in Vietnam and Laos. Closer to home, it is difficult not to trace Gulf's eventual demise in the early 1980s back to the explosive contents of the report of a review committee set up by the company's board as part of the obligations stemming from a suit brought by the Securities Exchange Commission in the wake of Watergate, and which chronicled fourteen years of large scale illegal activity by Gulf (with millions of dollars being funnelled through secret accounts in the Bahamas, before finding a home with politicians both in Washington and abroad). The recent scandals surrounding the Tenghiz megaproject constitute another case in point, one that led to the cull of a number of managers who for a long time had headed the second largest oil company in the USA.  1

As said before, the main thrust of the Transparency in Extractive Industries initiative is in the direction of payments actually required by law (because these are prone to go AWOL in certain countries). However, it would be very desirable if a similar "publish what you pay" initiative were extended to a different type of payment, which we would call "para-economic". We would define these payments in the following terms:

a) they are not required by law;

b) they may or may not be booked as legally and normally acceptable expenses;

c) they make no direct, immediate and transparent contribution to the maintenance of good industry practice (safety and environmental standards and so on) OR to revenues and profits AND they divert resources (not necessarily in an illegal fashion) away from both shareholders and tax authorities towards outsiders who are seen as able to exert influence on a company's social and political milieu;

d) they are judged essential by management for the continued existence and stable growth of an enterprise in a given social and political context.

Para-economic expenditures therefore range all the way from the costs of meeting the demands of international action groups like Green Peace, to non-project specific and voluntary environmental studies, the construction of interpretative centres for natural areas and archaeological sites disturbed or encountered while developing, local community education and non-petroleum related training projects, the sponsoring of local sports teams, payments which should normally the responsibility of government, all the way down to subsidies for hostile neighbourhoods money paid/extorted to assure the safety of personnel. In other words, para-economic payments span a very wide spectrum in both the developing and fully developed nations of the world. But what is the point of lumping together the perfectly legal with the repugnant and immoral? Is this not a way of dignifying corruption? Is not "para-economic" one of those terms that seek to make respectable what is quintessentially objectionable? We shall answer these questions by referring to a concrete and well-known example: Shell's disposal of the Brent Spar.

Readers will recall that the pressure on Shell not to dispose of the Spar by sinking it into deep waters eventually materialised in a German consumer boycott and a spate of vandalism causing millions of euros worth of damages to the company's service stations (again, chiefly in Germany). This convinced the company to take a large (and totally unnecessary, according to scientific data) loss in its British operations by disposing of the Spar on land, in order to stop both the boycott and the sabotage. In other words, Shell caved in to local demands and incurred certain expenditure to obtain a tacit renewal of its licence to operate without aggravation in Germany. So far so legal (and so understandable). But, seen in the light of this case, what can one make of a hypothetical decision to finance community projects for tribes to stop them from damaging pipelines in Nigeria, for instance? This would appear to be a slightly less above-board albeit equally understandable decision. It would also, of course, be one step further down the slippery slope, the next being condoning extortion. There is a difference of degree only between this and paying so that your pipeline is not blown up every fortnight. And if one can justify paying terrorists in this fashion, then it becomes easier in turn to justify sweetening the dictator/despot/president/king of some country or other with nice cash payments.

The Brent Spar example is meant to convey the fact that para-economic payments form a continuum that spans everything from harmless (indeed, laudable) payments, at one end, to colossal bribes to kleptocratic rulers, at the other. After all, maintaining good relationships with stakeholders in certain parts of the world will require only modest para-economic payments that will raise no eyebrows and ring no alarm bells (a couple of tickets to a ballgame, say, or the kit for a local team). In more imperfect parts of the world, though, there will be greater demands for anti-economic and unreasonable

payments as a way to secure minimally satisfactory working conditions. And the crucial point is that, because there is no outside requirement for companies to justify and rigorously report any para-economic payments (such as the cost of their government relations efforts), managers can easily find themselves going down the slippery slope mentioned above, starting at the clear end then seamlessly transitioning to grey and ending up in the murk. Indeed, in most cases, this process of mental cover-up appears sincere and subconscious, an entirely logical consequence of the fact that the majority of para-economic payments that any one manager will have to approve/review/make in his/her career will have nothing fishy about them, and will also have an endless chain of precedents.

It is not difficult for managers, then, to convince themselves that para-economic payments are part of their normal business prerogatives, of a routine legal and public relations effort to make themselves acceptable to stakeholders (sometimes very loosely defined). But this attitude needs to be challenged. There are reasons to believe that managements in developed countries have become too complacent and malleable in their supposed right to throw company funds at whatever worthy public cause they want to influence or co-opt. Indeed, publishing and itemising all paraeconomic expenditures looks all the more necessary because some managements seem to have developed very close relationships with certain actors that should really be their sternest objective watchdogs, like non-governmental advocacy organisations and external auditors.

Even if the credibility of big company managements were not at an all-time low, it would appear naive to entrust them exclusively with the truthful identification and the justification of all para-economic expenditures in their realm. Indeed, they should welcome an independent audit to put them beyond reproach on this score. After all, no one thinks that team managers in the Tour de France should be exclusively entrusted with the enforcement of strict anti-doping measures. Thus, the initiative of truthfully analysing, categorising and publishing corporate para-economic expenditures (for subsequent inspection by shareholders, the public at large and the independent watchdog of the press) would benefit enormously from the collaboration of independent actors fulfilling the role that anti-doping authorities have in sports. Amongst the more obvious candidates to fulfil this role are large banks. These banks have not exactly covered themselves with glory of late, and the torrents of bad loans and write-offs now crowding their books bear a direct relationship to the ease with which their management failed to carry out comprehensive due diligence on projects to which they loaned money. Some would say that this emphasis on due diligence undeservedly gives many bank managements the benefit of the doubt Quite a few banks have used their considerable talents to engineer kickbacks to politicians from large development loans brokered by themselves, and even supranational financial organisations have been known to do it (in Suharto's Indonesia, for example), after having succumbed to the lure of the "pragmatic" view of corruption. Be that as it may, it would be a step forward if banks' due diligence tasks were to routinely include an "anti-doping" dimension to them, where the banks could ask for random testing of company balance sheets by agencies of their choosing (not necessarily accounting firms) to make sure that everything is above board and transparent. Gradually, this type of certification could be extended to include underwriting for share issuance, for instance. This will by no means get rid of the problem: anti-doping controls have not got rid of drugs in sports and, if the sorry saga of Enron is a lesson about anything, surely it is that even the watchdogs of probity have a limit in the face of companies prepared to pay what it takes to buy pliability. Nevertheless, these additional safeguards will at least make it more difficult for those who wish to engage in this sort of practice.

In sum, the end of the road for codifying ever stricter "Business principles" and "Guidelines", seems to have been reached. Everyone can concur in abstracto that bribes are bad as well as illegal, but this is of little help in dealing with a fluid and fuzzy reality, not least because key actors cannot even agree on key definitions and approaches. It is therefore time to broaden horizons as much as definitions, to take into account the fact that there are many places in the world where oilfields coexist with paramilitary groups that live on extortion, and other places where oil operations will probably not begin unless companies first meet the demands of local acceptance (i.e. obtain a licence to operate from stakeholders), which will inevitably be articulated by influential outsiders, not always in pleasant ways. There is, of course, no reason not to call certain types of para-economic expenditures for what they are: bribes that may look excusable within a local social context but are now all too easily given. By the same token, though, there is no reason to expect that the promulgation of strict guidelines will lead to these practices evaporating. Again, open accounting of all para-economic expenditures appears like a more effective tool for combating incipient corruption than strictures no one really takes at face value (including, and this is a point that deserves to be repeated, the governments that promoted them). The publication of para-economic expenditures could be done in a categorised form, to avoid naming individuals directly, but they should no longer remain totally hidden from public scrutiny, as is now the case. Their magnitude, the tremendous amount of public relations spin applied to justify them, and their influence on costs, will certainly come as a shock to shareholders, and as more than a mild surprise to outsiders. Published league tables would exert powerful pressure towards moderation on all participants. Economics and democracy everywhere would benefit.

1 The CIA's involvement in the drug trade is extensively discussed in Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press, by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair (Verso, London 1998). Gulf's mea culpa appears in John McCloy's The Great Oil Spill: The Inside Story of Gulf Oil's Bribery and Political Chicanery (Chelsea House Publishers, New York, 1976). The on-going controversy surrounding Tenghiz appeared was meticulously described by Seymour Hersh in the July 9, 2001 of The New Yorker magazine ("The Price of Oil. What was Mobil up to in Kazakhstan and Russia?").

About the Authors Juan Carlos Boué is Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies.

Louis Wesseling served as CEO of Shell companies in the Middle East, Vietnam and South America, and collaborated on drafting the Shell Business Principles and the OECD Guidelines for Multinationals.

(c) Oxford Institute for Energy Studies August 2003 This document has been reproduced here by permission of Louis Wesseling, one of the authors of this paper

LW with Trung standing
on a bridge in Nhabe in August '02.

(click on thumbnail to see a larger picture)

TRUNG. At the fall of Saigon in 1975, Trung did not join the diaspora of Vietnamese fleeing from communist rule, nor the hundreds of thousands of “boat people” escaping in later years. By staying however and refunding to the employees of his bank their hard earned pension contributions, rather than let the new authorities grab those, he put his head above the parapet. This cost him the confiscation of all his worldly goods and 3 years in an isolated re-education camp in North Vietnam

Lam Quang Trung, ex-spokesman for
Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh diem,
former executive of Shell..

(click on thumbnail to see a larger picture)

RE-EDUCATION. Even here his organising ability stood out so clearly that the commander of the communist guards appointed him camp manager. There was no way to dodge the assignment. So he took responsibility for the survival of some 600 inmates, generals, ministers and officials of the old regime, as well as of the guards themselves. Construction of buildings, division of labour, cultivation of 20 hectares of ricefield with insufficient water, discipline and cultural activities, were all left to him. To get 4m3 per day of drinking water, they had to dig 20 m. deep wells at 3KM from the camp, each man carrying 2 tins of 20 litres on his back. Remembering Shell experience, Trung fitted a russian 3m3 bulktank on a Molotova chassis without engine to be pushed all the way by the convicts, thus saving half of the water team for other jobs. With the construction of a saw mill, they began to make money, but there was little food and no medicine to be bought. When an ignorant young guard shot an inmate point blanc in his chest, accusing him of trying to escape, Trung could only scream in anger. After contracting tuberculosis, he was discharged penniless and hitched a ride back to Saigon.

RECOVERY. After three years of forcing farmers into cooperatives, producing nothing but nationwide famine, the regime abolished the cooperatives. This gave the farmers a profit motive, which brought Vietnam back to rice exporting status within 2 years. But up to 1985 the communists still kept imposing their socialist dogma on a resisting urban population. Only when forced to loosen their grip and abolish subsidies, small business began to blossom.. After the end of the cold war in 1990 even the party cadres became eager for happiness and a brighter economic future. Foreign investores re-appeared and inevitably Trung was asked to lead the industrialisation in Saigon. He became wealthy again. (Saigon represents 75% of Vietnam’s national product).

He also used his influence to promote US/Vietnam relations, a.o. by bringing together the ex-commanders of the opposing forces, Admiral Zumwalt of the US Navy, a personal friend, with General Tran Van Tra, the supreme communist commander in South Vietnam. Honest combattants who respected each other. By contrast, he pours scorn over Robert Mc Namara’s later attempt in Hanoi to seek mutual apologies and healing. The Vietnamese do not expect, nor can be expected to give apologies.

General Tran Van Tra, Trung and Admiral Zumwalt and his son (from left to right)

COLONEL LE BAC UOC. We sought out our own former enemy, the commander of the elite 10th regiment of sappers, who for ten years tried by all means to halt the flow oil products into Vietnam and Cambodia, through our Nhabe installation. The conflagration he caused in Dec. 1973 graces the back cover of my book. Now a retired hero of the revolution, he received me in the dignified poverty of his rooms in Bien Hoa. We had tea. Out of his 1000 man regiment, 625 died attacking us, or from disease in the Rung Sat swamps. He proudly showed photo’s of a maquette of our installation used in his base camp. A born Southerner, Uoc had returned to the Rung Sat via the Ho Chi Minh trail in the sixties, after military training in Hanoi. At the time the Nhabe installation was defended by only one ARVN company, which we considered part of our own establishment. But communist commanders do not respect their fallen opponents of the South Vietnamese Army, who also fought valiantly. Instead they buldozed their graves and condemn survivors to anonymous disgrace.

Le Ba Uoc, embracing supreme general
Vo Nguyen Giap in Hanoi recently.

LW with Col. Uoc at his house
in August 2002

THREATS AND CHANGES TO THE SYSTEM. The police and security forces are what is holding Vietnam together. The central government itself seems irresolute, bereft of idealism and ideas and frightened of its own shadow. Recently, after suppressing a farmers revolt, it bowed to the farmers demands for more money, putting its own local party officials in jail. Vietnam now seems more corrupt than the South Vietnamese Republic of the seventies.

A top police official came to pay me a visit to share his organisation’s concern for the future. He was seriously preoccupied by attacks against the internal political stability, quoting the farmers revolt, an ethnic minorities revolt in the highlands and the landing of armed dissidents on the coast as recent examples. In two of these they detected the hand of the US government, or the émigré Vietnamese community in the US. When the US house of representatives passed a new trade agreement applicable to Vietnam last year, it attached a civil rights resolution as a conditio sine qua non for its implementation. A subversive campaign, started from outside Vietnam, to create a democratic opposition had been able to contaminate Hanoi politicians before being squashed. The police cannot be complacent with regard to local Buddhist and Catholic activities either.

WORLD TRADE ORGANISATION. Although steeped in communist political doctrine, my interlocutor smoothly admitted failure of the economic system. Government ownership causes such stagnation and corruption that privatisation had become attractive. The grand solution however was for Vietnam to seek WTO membership and all it implies, following the Chinese example. To achieve rapid entry and comply with WTO conditions, they are eager to negotiate with governments and multinationals the compensation of foreign properties taken over without compensation in 1975 and had already restituted some American assets as a goodwill gesture. However, so long as absolute power remains the birthright of one party, I for one cannot see an end to corruption, which is the favorite weapon of the disenfranchised.

FOREIGN INVESTMENTS. I toured the extensive foreign industrial parks outside Saigon. Well laid out but not very busy. Most executives complain of vaccillating government policies, arbitrary taxes and red tape which increase costs and above all of pervasive corruption. Some enterprises are leaving and the malaise is palpable.

In my own expertise of oil distribution, I noticed pre-communist installations and bulklorries still going strong, distributing low quality product from politically situated uneconomic supply points.

But rest assured, the country is still as beautiful and the population as hyper-active and welcoming as ever.

fishing vessels on the beach at Phan Thiet

On 22nd of January 2004 my friend Trung passed away after a hectic life lived to the full, with all its ups and downs, riches and deprivations, through the turbulent era of three regime changes in Vietnam. He is sorely missed by family and friends.

Peacekeeping in the Caucasus

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The southern borders of the former Soviet-Union, from Kazakhstan near China to the Balkan in Europe are straddled by ancient warlike peoples of different cultures, languages and religions, fiercely independent, but condemned by geography and history to live together.

The iron communist fist obliged them to keep their animosities under their fur hats, but the withdrawal of the Sovjet Empire, which left them grouped together in many artificial nations, allowed all the old internal faultlines between tribes to re-surface. Even the smallest tribes can now fight for freedom and independence. Without Soviet subsidies and security, income per head declined drastically and ordinary business and even agriculture suffered to the advantage of the local mafia. Un-surprisingly the common woman in the street therefore finds the advent of “freedom” and “democracy” a disaster compared to the “bread and security” of the Sovjet system.

Now add to this explosive combination international competition for large oil and gas finds and the planning of pipelines for political reasons through disputed territories and you have a recipe for serious war. When I visited the physically beautiful but governmentally dys-functional republic of Georgia in May ’03, the place was crawling with predominantly Russian and American spies, who try to turn the local troubles to their advantage. The Chechen terrorist incursions continue. American airfields and bases to project power in the Middle East are being built. May is not only the time for the fields to flower and the mountain snows to melt but for the traditional fighting to resume.

A stabilising and hope-giving factor in this dark picture is the presence since 1999 of a strong OSCE (Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe) mission, consisting of rather active European, Russian and American military observers under joint international diplomatic control. They control, observe electronically, by helicopter and on foot the high mountain passes from Chechnia to other areas of conflict, such as Dagestan. Operations have now been extended to cover the Osetian undeclared war and will shortly cover the Pankisi valley which is effectively “no-mans- land” at present.

As seen from a high OSCE outpost at Shatili, a mountain pass on the Chechen border, each valley seems to have its own fiercely separate clan, hating those on the other side. The outpost operates a clinic for the local village of less than a hundred people (heavily armed of course). The Norvegian oil firm, Statoil, provides the money for a small school. But even that insignificant village is split in two clans with a blood feud between them.

It appears that, in the absence of a reliable police and Georgian army (which is still being trained by the Americans) only the OSCE is able to fullfill an impartial peace maintaining role in Georgia and beyond. Ordinary people begin to understand that only if peace is maintained can economic investment take off and improve their lot. At an annual OSCE budget of 24 million Euro’s, cheaper than a handfull of Apache helicopters, that seems a good investment to me.

The OSCE observation post at Shatili.
Second and third from the right, LW and son,
together with OSCE officers in front of an old
but very fit Russian MIG helicopter
(maintained by Germans).

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Middle East Centre of Arabic Studies,
(MECAS). Memories of an Arabic language study and of the oil industry in the Middle East of the nineteen sixties

To enter the celebrated halls of MECAS in late 1959 for the first time as a student was scary enough, the more so for a Dutch national and an oilman to boot. I was thirty. My wife and two children accompanied me on “our sabbatical” in Shemlan and were looking forward to enjoying their holiday to the full. But reality quickly took over.

The main body of students with whom I had to compete (for that is how I saw it) were bachelors in their early twenties. The tone was set by a few cocky but brilliant students, straight out of university with firsts from Oxford or Cambridge, who fully expected to perform outstandingly in whatever assignment they undertook. Amongst them was the grandson of a famous British Prime Minister. A happy crowd they were too, hiding their hard work learning Arabic behind a façade of riotous partying, quoting Shakespeare when drunk at picnics in the mountains. Together we investigated some of the most enchanting Arab and crusader castles and ruins of dream houses near streams in blossoming orchards. At weekends we stayed for primitive skiing at the Cedars Lodge in the high Lebanon mountains and purely for the record went swimming in the Med at the end of the same day. My brand new coffee-and-cream-coloured Citroen with pneumatic suspension performed sterling transport services. (Even second hand, two years later, it looked still good enough to be bought by the “Black Prince”, a cousin of King Idris of Libya). The students themselves were much in demand for English- and French-speaking evening parties in the city of Beirut, which proudly upheld its reputation as the “Paris of the Orient”. We actually saw a Saudi Rolls Royce with gold fenders in the streets. Although everyone was fully aware of the well-established armed feuds between Druze, Maronite Christians and Sunnis, nobody had the least inkling that these could lead to the total collapse of the city and of the Lebanon as we then knew and rather admired it. Whenever, infrequently, a car with Druze youngsters raced through our own Christian mountain village, firing their guns into the air, we would merely say: “Oh well, they will never learn how to fight a proper war” and return to our irregular verbs.

Among the students there was, however, a small but influential contingent of men my age or older, diplomats destined to be posted in the Middle East, military men, business executives like myself and Neville Green of the British Bank of the Middle East, and some who perhaps partly justified the Arab nickname for MECAS “the spy school”. A future British ambassador to Saudi Arabia and his glamorous wife became good friends of ours and our children were taught by her sister in the same English kindergarten. He exerted a natural moderating influence on the students and was acknowledged as their unofficial spokesman. But one other man really stood out. By far the most proficient in Arabic studies, perhaps because of his Egyptian ancestry, and universally liked by all who met him: George Blake. Great was our consternation when he was arrested and unmasked as a spy for the hated Soviets. His young wife, living near us with two children, was clearly devastated. His young student friends even concocted, and naively signed, a petition to the Foreign Office to protest his innocence. So unimaginable was his double life to most of us. Yet he had never hidden his distaste for the crass commercialism of firms like mine, for the pomp and circumstance and injustice of public life and the Royal Family. But I thought that it was just this freedom and ability to discuss any contrary opinions, which were shared by many of the younger set, that was one of the outstanding features of MECAS.

Thirty years later, after the fall of the Berlin wall, with Gorbachov still in power, on a visit to the Dutch embassy in Moscow, shock and horror were still the only reaction to the mere mention of his name. I met him for lunch at the most decadently expensive restaurant in Moscow, opposite the infamous Lubianka prison. George, now a charming semi-retired general of the KGB, glanced wistfully out of the window and remarked that in the good old days Soviet citizens did not even dare to walk on the pavement next to it, for fear of being dragged inside never to be seen again. Now, inevitably, things had changed with Dzerzhinsky’s statue having been torn down, together with all the other Stalin cult icons. He firmly believed, however, that Communism, in spite of having been let down by Russian human error, still had a great future. He looked back on his Shemlan days as a very happy interval and his current private life, together with that of old friends like Philby (sadly alcoholic) seemed flat in comparison. They had been severely restricted, for instance he had only been allowed to holiday in East Germany, while what he really yearned for was to be allowed to visit his aged mother in Holland. I left with the advice that he should not even apply for a visa.

The very first day at the first introductory lesson, the Director of the school, Donald Maitland, led us through the scribbles of the whole Arabic alphabet, with a senior Palestinian teacher at his side to pronounce correctly all the impossibly sounding vowels and guttural consonants.(Tape recorders were not yet in use for this purpose.) The following day we would have to be ready to work with these in writing and pronunciation, he proclaimed. A famous dictum of his was: “There is no such thing as a smattering of Arabic. You either learn it properly or you don’t”. Now, with hindsight, I would like to comment on that. After finishing the nine months course “with distinction” I confess that I was distressed at not being able to speak fluent Arabic at all. Yes, I could more or less understand the radio news and read the papers, but truly colloquial conversation with our Lebanese neighbours continued to frustrate me.

To my simple mind there are three kinds of Arabic existing side by side: first, the classical language of the Koran, used by the prophet Mohammed. I later employed several bright Europeans who had studied it at famous universities for five long years, but who could not make themselves understood at all by the ordinary Gulf Arab. Secondly, at the other end of the scale are the many local Arabic dialects spoken by the semi-literate population (and by my wife in the market), which differ very widely from Morocco to Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Local intellectuals use it somewhat condescendingly, with apologies to the foreigner. And finally, there is Donald Maitland’s Arabic, the semi-classical universal language of the educated and half-educated, of press and TV, throughout the Arab world. I fully agree with the decision of MECAS (the most practical Arab language institute in the world of the day) to concentrate solely on that last category and on the spoken Palestinian as a useful by-product. But why did I, who speak four European languages with some ease (not including my own) not achieve immediate fluency in that kind of Arabic? Learning a language after infancy is mostly hard work, committing thousands of words and verbs to the brain by repetition. Apart from the intrinsic difficulty of the totally foreign structure of Arabic, the answer to our lack of fluency must be found in our lack of daily contact with real people who had to use it continuously, journalists, politicians, or women. Learning grammar and boring vocabulary can only bring you so far; to a take-off point, any further progress is up to the individual’s imagination, needs and experiences, from pillow talk to business deals. Ask the people who improved their Arabic afterwards. As for the Palestinian and English teaching staff, they were exemplary, performance-oriented in school and sociable outside the office and in the village of Shemlan. They created a sense of belonging to an informal association and that was a major benefit. In East Africa I had already experienced how effective the network of British Colonial administrators could be, but the Foreign Office network of Arabists, based on common study in Shemlan, was to be of far wider importance for me during later work in the region.

Soon after finishing MECAS, the first Arab Petroleum Congress was held in Cairo, which I attended together with a bevy of Shell International executives. The other Western delegates were Americans from Aramco, whose Arabic language school was nearly as good as MECAS. The Cold War was being fought in the Developing World and all our attitudes were infused by it. It is hard now to recall the atmosphere of fear, distrust and loathing which poisoned the official relationship between the West and the Arab world, symbolically led by President Nasser, with his many links to the Communist bloc. We literally sat with our heads down in the large conference hall under a barrage of vehement criticism and calls for socialism and the nationalisation of everything ever built by the West. During an interval I joined Sheikh Yamani, the Saudi Minister of Oil and one of the conference’s most passionate and flowery speakers, who had gone outside for a smoke and a calm look over the balustrade at the River Nile. I had really enjoyed his outrageous intervention, if only because I was happily surprised to understand every word of it. “How come” I asked him “that I can easily follow everything you say, while I have some difficulty with others?” Yamani was anything but modest. “Son,” he said, “It is because I speak straight from the heart”. Indeed, the official rhetoric was an obligatory flourish to create an atmosphere, but personal or business relations were conducted on a quite different wave length. Shell had of course been nationalised with great fanfare in 1956, but when I visited the old office I was embraced like close family. Nasser had picked the well-trained Egyptian ex-Shell executives to run the Suez Canal and other nationalised enterprises and they were all present at a lunch in honour of their former colleagues. At the time we thought we had been dealt an irreversible political blow, but within twenty years Nasser’s successors would invite us back in.

Cyrenaica, Libya was the first appointment to test the value of my MECAS education. It was a typical small commercial outfit with one expatriate assisted by the usual assortment of English-speaking locals and compliant Palestinians, with a Christian Syrian to keep at least the accounts straight. To avoid fruitless debate with the Palestinian staff, I had to declare Israel’s right to exist as a non-subject for conversation. They had heard my opinion and I had heard theirs and we had agreed to differ. Our local employees had forever been in cahoots with our independent dealers helping them to keep their debts unchallenged at stratospheric levels at the company’s expense, but even my smattering of Arabic was enough to be able to deal directly with the offenders and halve the outstanding debts. For dealings at the highest government and army levels, I was ably seconded by an ex-national football team captain, brother of the Petroleum Minister, who became a real friend and was well worth the salary, even if he worked only sporadically. One of his party tricks was to deliver authentic passages in loud, fluent Italian from a speech Mussolini had once given from a balcony in Benghazi during the colonial era. His brother was also the Fiat agent in the country. Their family name Ben Catu was proof, they said, of their claim to be descended from Cato, the Roman senator. One night, at a company cocktail for an important London visitor, a little Libyan clerk stood up and gave an impromptu imitation of my Arabic. Everyone was rolling with laughter, only I thought he was speaking it rather well..

On to more serious developments in the Persian (Arab) Gulf. With the discovery of oil in Qatar and exports by a Shell production company in the early sixties, Doha, Qatar was also the natural base for commercial trading activities throughout the Middle East. These had been invented and very successfully guided by MECAS graduates right from the start in 1957. From the many who contributed to this rapid development, many went on to significant achievements elsewhere, such as Ian Skeet, author on the history of Oman and on OPEC, and Peter Holmes, late Chairman of Shell International. When I took over the pioneering Shell commercial activities, Qatar as an oil exporter and Shell with it, were overshadowed in importance by neighbouring Saudi Arabia, which was Aramco territory, by Kuwait and Abu Dhabi, largely BP provinces, and on the other side of the Gulf by the great oil consortium of Iran.

As a ruler of one of the Trucial States, Sheikh Ahmed bin Thani of Qatar had his official contacts with the British Representative and depended for his security on a cranky British chief of police, but was astonishingly difficult to come to an understanding with as an ordinary foreigner. I hung around in his majlis, whispered occasionally in his ear, my wife visited his wives and discussed fashion with them, I saw him on ceremonial occasions and meals, but I felt him to be exclusively interested in tribal affairs, money, sex and absolute power. Our organisation reflected this virtual separation of our two worlds. We had very few Qatari employees. One of whom was my driver, who doubled as a labour consultant. There was no local work ethic. The real work therefore had to be done by Indians, Palestinians and immigrants of all stripes, including expatriates, who lived in separate cocoons. The sheikh’s tribal policy was really populism, distributing largesse from the oil revenues in return for personal loyalty. We reciprocated by bringing him large golden presents on ceremonial occasions. But our profitable company, which was weaving an interesting economic relations infrastructure throughout the Gulf, building fuelling depots at harbours and airports and transporting the products by tankers, thus reducing prices to the Trucial States’ population, was merely tolerated as an oddity.

The situation was by no means an exception. In Riyadh, our independent and well-connected Saudi dealer, who supplied a large part of the lubricant requirements of the whole Kingdom, only received us in his grandiose office for a friendly chat, interrupted by prayer, while we transacted the actual business with his Palestinian assistant. Our Kuwaiti dealer was an expensive, latest model, office chair behind a massive empty desk. In the next office sat the affable Palestinian who did the business.

Air connections between the states was by the turbojets of Gulf Air. Once, before a flight to from Qatar to Tehran, where we had a small lubricating oil refinery, I found myself in the company of a local sheikh with his wives and full retinue, including several “slaves” holding hooded hunting falcons on their gloved fists. After takeoff some other retainers politely ordered the poor stewardess to stay in her seat, while they began to brew tea over the open fire of kerosene burners in the gangway in the middle of the plane. Then they insisted on serving each passenger themselves, with broad smiles, in a display of true desert Arab hospitality. The pilot did not dare to interfere, perhaps mindful of a similar earlier occasion in which a colleague of his had been shot in the leg.

Nearly all the Trucial sheikhdoms were governed by their hereditary rulers in the style of Ahmed bin Thani, but the most conservative of all was undoubtedly Shahbut bin Sultan of oil-rich Abu Dhabi, advised and, one suspects, strengthened in his prejudices by the legendary Political Agent Hugh Boustead. Travelling by Landrover over the salt encrusted hard sand of the sheikhdom with our local representative, we admired his old palace, but usually gave it a wide berth because in spite of its riches, there was little development. In fact, Dubai, without oil as yet, but with a traditional trading and gold smuggling role in the Gulf under the powerful free-market leadership of Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed al Makhtum, became the hub of our activities. Our tough, young, but non-Arabic speaking, English sales manager still lived in the old town with “air conditioning” provided by the traditional wind tower, a few of which are now carefully preserved as ancient monuments amidst the skyscrapers.

Because our participation in the tremendous potential of Dubai depended on personal relations with Sheikh Rashid, we promoted one of the few high-flying Palestinians to be our permanent representative. At first, it worked amazingly well; our depot at the Creek, supplied by purpose-built shallow-draught tankers, soon had to be expanded. But then our man, Tufiq, overreached himself, by threatening to rival Sheikh Rashid’s old principal advisor Mahdi Al Tajer’s predominance at court. He lost that battle and I had to relocate him hurriedly from Dubai to Sharjah. Tufiq remains an interesting phenomenon however. When, despite his excellent performance, eventually our organisation could not accommodate his aspirations, he left to become principal advisor to Sheikh Saqr of Ras Al Khaima, one of the poorest Trucial States. Besides rapidly developing that state, by capitalising on its potential as a port at the entrance of the Gulf (in the image of Dubai), he made his own private fortune - apart from taking the usual percentage on construction contracts- by issuing postal stamps of Ras Al Khaima and other Trucial States which have considerable rarity value in the philatelist trade. The last time I met him in London, he had, with partners, just bought the Dorchester Hotel.

Nowhere did modernisation encounter more obstacles than in Muscat and Oman. Once, when travelling by landrover in its dusty interior, I received the greatest compliment for an Arabist, from a man who was repairing a deep well. “Who the hell are you talking to?” shouted his mate, who was working ten metres below the surface. “never you mind” was the answer, “just another Arab up here”. Our company used to supply old Mina al Fahal by tipping fuel drums into the sea as close to shore as our dhows dared to get. They had then to be captured by swimming labourers with ropes and dragged onto the beach. But inland, in spite of non-existent infrastructure and poor security, Shell was developing serious oil production for export. It already used a spectacular mountain-locked airstrip at Azeiba. New harbour and bunker facilities were urgently needed in the immediate future, but everything waited for the personal approval of the Sultan Said Bin Tamur, who almost never left the isolation of his palace in Salalah, some 500 miles to the South West on the coast and who was permanently preoccupied by internal rebellions, aided by Egypt and Saudi Arabia, whom he could only defeat with British aid. Ruling his vast country exclusively by telephone, he spoke infrequently to only three people in Muscat: the British Political Agent, my colleague in charge of the oil production and a local trader, also our commercial agent, Omar Khimji Ramdas. On visits I slept in Omar’s historical stronghold on the beach, which nowadays seems backed away into a corner by new developments and elevated road systems. From 3 hours after sunset, after the firing of a canon, pedestrians still had to carry the old hurricane lamp when walking about in the night. One day Omar informed me that the Sultan had invited me to Salalah to hear of our plans for the coastal depot. Flying from Azzeiba over the storm-lashed desolate coast, we landed on the Salalah strip. The palace was low, mud coloured and unassuming. The Sultan himself, who seemed almost shy, insisted on showing us around. Noticing my interest in a parrot in a large cage, he warned me that the bird, in spite of its beautiful appearance, could be very vicious. “I will show you” and he called a servant: “Ahmed put your finger in that cage.” Ahmed did and was savagely bitten without twitching a muscle in his black face.

Unfortunately I remember little beyond the lunch, my humble presentation of our project and the Sultan’s benevolent acceptance of it. But ever since I have been reflecting on the quiet success of British military and diplomatic assistance (before and after 1970), which helped protect such vulnerable traditional rulers and their ancient governing structures throughout the area against too rapid a pace of change and against all rapacious outsiders, until the vast revenues of oil kicked in and a quick change of ruler here and there could safely herald the peaceful transition to a more modern era. And even that era now looks outmoded and headed for further basic changes. If anyone had told me at the time that the Arab world could become even more complicated after the fall of Communism, I would have laughed in disbelief.

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Lessons from Iraq.

The creation of modern Iraq.

Upon the collapse of the Ottoman empire in 1918- after its defeat in the first World War- the “liberated” indigenous populations (Arabs, Druzes, Turkomans, Kurds, Jews) with differing religions (Sunni and Shia Islam, Christianity, Tudeism) were thrown together into new and theoretically free European-type nations. The brand-new League of Nations graciously allocated the supervision of the nation building process to the victors: To France the “mandate” over Lebanon and Syria. To Great Britain the “mandate” over Palestine, Jordan, Mesopotamia (now called Iraq) and Kuweit. The Ottomans had always administered Kuweit from Basrah in Iraq, but the British, remembering their relations with local sheikhs of the Sabah family, kept it separate. The borders between these nations were drawn by European surveyors as straight lines in the sand, taking into account as far as possible natural boundaries like mountain ranges, traditional trade routes, tribal camel grazing rights, etc, but those borders still remain artificial and contested to this day.

The state of Iraq, formally created in the British image: complete with parliament, a prime minister and a constitutional Hashemite monarch, king Faisal, never worked even remotely as a democracy. Centrifugal forces always made for a harsh dictatorship by the king or the prime minister in order for the State to survive.

Iraq oil was discovered in 1927 in Kirkuk (the Kurdish North) and its exploitation concession awarded to a British, Dutch, American and French consortium, the IPC. A decade later, the worlds largest oilfield was discovered in Kuweit to be exploited by a British oil company, later joined by one American partner. A powerful argument for Britain to keep its oil separate under the submissive Kuweit regime rather than in one basket with unpredictable Iraq.

When Iraq gained full independence in 1932 one of its first official actions was to lay claim to Kuweit and to parts of Iran. Saddam Hussein did not have to invent these claims.

Aftermath of the second world war.

Iraq has a genius for picking the wrong enemies. In 1941 it unfortunately chose the side of the Axis powers against the British. The latter landed an army at Basrah and easily re-occupied the country. The Iraqi government fled to Germany leaving the British free to install a friendly new government under prime minister Nuri Said.

The 1948 war against Israel (lost again) gave rise to a vehemently pro-Arab backlash in Iraq, causing 120.000 of Iraq’s long standing resident Jewish community to flee for their lives to Israel. Ten years later, in 1958, king Hussein of Jordan proposed to join his country with Iraq and Kuweit to form a united Hashemite kingdom. The British, with their oil interests in mind, opposed this plan and declared Kuweit independent. In the turmoil, general Qassem seizes the opportunity to overthrow the now unpopular government and crowds hang and dismember the bodies of the king Faisal 2 and Nuri Said. Iraq becomes a military dictatorship dressed up as a republic. When Qassem then confirms Iraq’s claim to Kuweit, the British respond by sending troops to the tiny emirate, preventing a military takeover.

Qassem, after suppressing a revolt by the Kurds under Barzani, is murdered by members of the Baath party in 1963. Saddam Hussein, a Baath party member, rises to become a power in the land, first under president Al Bakr, but in 1979 assuming the presidency of Iraq himself.

Due to the quadrupling of the oil price in the 1973 energy crisis, Iraq, with an oil export capacity of 2,2 million barrels per day is now in position as one of the richest and most developed countries of the Middle East. Oil income is well above 20 billion dollars a year. Per capita income is 15000 dollars a year. Education and health care are on the increase. Agriculture flourishes and under-nourishment is unknown. But Saddam Hussein in Bagdad has to lean heavily on the mukhabarat, the secret police, and on the army, to keep the Sunni’s in power over the 60% majority of the Shiite population, who live in relative poverty in the South as well as over the restless Kurds in the North. (But at least, Iraq always allowed them to use the Kurdish language, which is still mercilessly suppressed in neighbouring Turkey). To any outside visitor, Iraq feels like a paranoid police-state. I was arrested in 1966 in Bagdad airport for speaking Arabic “with a Jewish accent”.

The following outlines the dramatic “de-development” of this prosperous Iraq and the decline of per capita income to barely $500 a year.

The Iraq-Iran war, 1980-88.

1979/80 marks the turbulent overthrow of the Shah of Iran by the Islamic fundamentalist, ayatolla Khomeini. The oil price rises to an all-time high of some 50 dollar per barrel and both, Iran and Iraq, could have cashed in peacefully on this totally unexpected addition to their oil wealth.

Middle Eastern countries however always maintain a rich tinderbox of justifications for war with neighbours:
-Iran incites revolt by the Shiite’s in Iraq forcing Saddam Hussein to execute a number of their unruly ayatolla’s. Iran is behind an attempt on the life of Iraq’s foreign minister, Tariq Aziz. Both countries also incite each other’s Kurdish minorities to revolt.
-Saddam Hussein personally ordered the expulsion of Khomeini from Iraq (to Paris), for which Khomeini has sworn revenge.
-Territorial claims abound, some of them important such as the souvereignty over the Shatt el Arab, the only waterway over which Iraqi oil can be exported.

In 1980 the Soviet equipped Iraq army attacks Iran, whose American equipped army is hampered by the decapitation of their officer corps through the Ayatolla’s religious prosecution and by the prosaic lack of American spare parts and maintenance. Nonetheless, the Iraqi offensive soon grinds to a halt, having failed to take Abadan.

In 1982 Iran counterattacks by “human wave” offensives of “pasdaran”, relatively untrained zealots from the age of nine up to sixty, led by Mullah’s. They make some advances into Iraq. The rest of the tragic and fiercely fought war remains basically a stalemate. Iraq suffers an estimated 375.000 killed and Iran perhaps as many as a million by the time the armistice is imposed on the exhausted combattants in August 1988 by UN Security Council resolution 598. The vast majority of the recently unearthed mass graves contain the victims of Iraq’s many inconclusive wars.

The most important lesson of this war is however that Iraq avoided defeat against a much larger Iranian enemy only by deeply indebting itself to obtain massive technological, financial and diplomatic support from its Western backers who considered fundamentalist Iran the bigger evil of the two.

The USSR re-supplied Iraq as from 1982 with billion dollars worth of the latest T55 and T62 tanks, rocket launchers, Mig 24 gunships and helicopters and Sam missiles.

The French in 1984 delivered 30 Mirage ground support fighter aircraft and the latest super etendard fighter bombers for attacks with exocet rockets against Iranian oil shipping (as a result of hundreds of air attacks by both combattants on shipping and installations, oil exports from the area dropped by 50%, keeping world oil prices high).

In 1981 the US supplied 5 Boeing air tankers to Iraq to enable it to bomb targets deep into Iran. In the same year Iraq was removed by the US senate from the “list of nations supporting terrorism”. In 1983, Donald Rumsfeld, at US president Reagan’s instigation, offered Saddam in Bagdad billions dollars worth of munitions and weaponry, which specifically included biological and chemical weapons, bothulin toxins, anthrax, nile fever virus and mustard gas and the technical means to produce maintain and deliver these products. A 2 billion dollar credit for the purchase was routed through the Banca de Livorno to conceal the source. At the same time satellite and electronic intelligence was routinely passed to Iraq.

Curiously, the “Iran contra scandal” reveals that the Reagan administration simultaneously kept supplying modern weapons and equipment to Iran through Israel. “Arms for hostages” was operated by the CIA, who even seem to have supplied Iran with lists of plotters against the regime, who were later executed as a result.

The occupation of Kuweit and operation “Desert Storm” 1990, 1991.

Perhaps misled by the strong American support during his war against Iran war and by verbal re-assurances of non-interference from the American ambassador in Bagdad, president Saddam sent his army to occupy Kuweit.in 1990. But Kuweit being a friendly key supplier of oil to the West and Japan, the UN security council wasted no time in condemning the occupation and imposing drastic sanctions on Iraq.

The US-led military re-action, blessed by the UN security council, started out by first bombing Iraq and its infrastructure “back to the stone age”. 140.000 tons of high- precision guided explosives, the equivalent of 7,5 Hiroshima bombs, destroyed 75% of Iraq’s water, electricity, sewage, bridges and petroleum installation capacities as well as its armed forces establishments. The bombing killed perhaps 100.000 Iraqi’s turning the subsequent allied ground invasion into a walkover. It was halted as soon as the military objective of the UN resolution was achieved. Later this prudent decision has been much criticised by the neo-conservatives in the Pentagon. But to have followed up military success with an enforced unprepared “regime change” in Bagdad at the time, without endorsement by the UN, probably would have been the worst option. It would have de-ligitimised the operation in the eyes of the Arab neighbours and of the world and in any case, no credible blueprint for a brave new Iraq existed then or at any time later. Look at the resulting chaos today.

Incidentally, the US received handsome repayments for its military exertions. Kuweit alone is reported to have versed 16,5 billion dollars to the American treasury, whilst Japan, Germany and Saudi Arabia paid in similar amounts. The world oil price returned to the 20 dollar range and below. All was well again. Saddam was merely a wounded animal, presiding over an impoverished and deeply divided country with a defeated army. The repayments of of Iraq’s debts (including for weapons bought during the Iran war), on instructions from the UN security council, would take all of Iraq’s oil income for many years to come.

To keep him in that powerless situation, the Security Council ordered, in its resolution 687 (April ’91), the destruction of arsenals and means of production and delivery of all weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq under international supervision by UNSCOM. But it was justly criticised for “over-kill” when it left the punitive wartime sanctions of its resolution 661 (August 1990) in place during the following “peace”.

Enforced No-fly zones, 1991-2003.

Meanwhile, the US and UK, without United Nations blessing, instituted military “No-Fly zones” for Iraqi fixed wing aircraft over more than half of Iraq. Over the Kurdish area north of the 36th parallel, ostensibly to protect the Kurds from reprisals by Saddam Hussein and over the southern area below the 33rd parallel, to protect the Shiites. (The protection of the Kurds however did not extend to interdiction of the Turkish Airforce, which was allowed to bomb Kurdish fighters on the Iraqi side of the border).The enforcement by the two allied airforces, operating out of Turkey and Saudi Arabia, over the twelve year period up to 2003, soon settled into a fixed pattern of harassment and cat and mouse games with Iraqi radar and anti-aircraft positions, which had little to do with its original purpose. By 1995 the US State Department admitted that the no-fly zones did not protect the minorities at all. But the political message comes through loud and clear: we prefer to cut Iraq into three separate ethnic/religious zones rather than allow Saddam to hold it all together by force. (But the allies could hardly object when in 1996 the Kurdish KDP themselves invited Saddam’s army to help them defeat their rivals of the PUK, the patriotic union of Kurdistan.).

The UN sanctions regime (UN security council resolution 661)

Before “desert storm”, Iraq imported over 70% of its food, medical, chemical and industrial supplies. Without these imports it was unable to survive and the “human catastrophe”, as the New York Times called it, was therefore unavoidable. “Medecins sans frontieres” quote some random figures: Infant mortality rose from 600 deaths in 1989 to 6700 in 2000. The percentage of registered birth weights of under 2,5 KG rose from 4,5% in 1990 to 25% in 2000. Malnutrition in children under five rose from 8500 in 1990 to 190.000 in 2000. Former US attorney general, Ramsey Clark warned in his visit report to the UN against the “genocidal effect” of the sanctions. As late as 1998, humanitarian co-ordinator for Iraq, Dennis Halliday, wrote: “We are in the process of destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that.”

Those who died were of course mainly the cannon fodder of Saddam Hussein’s army. The regime itself remained intact and profited from evading the sanctions, as did the smugglers in neighbouring Jordan, Syria and Turkey. Through an efficient food rationing system, Saddam controlled his impoverished population more efficiently, than before when using his police.

In 1996 under pressure from the French and Russians and over US and UK objections, the UN tried to mitigate the horrible effects of sanctions by starting the “Oil for Food program”. Iraq was allowed to export from 1997 to 1999 over 20 billion dollars worth of oil. Some 70% earmarked for food imports, the rest for repayment to Kuweit and US/UK for war damages. But the extensive delaying tactics by some UN members in the approval of food and other essential imports made that a large part , some 5 billion dollars, of the humanitarian money available under the program was never spent.

Unscom inspections and search for weapons of mass destruction. (UN security council resolution 687, 1991)

The UN resolution, stating that the Middle East should be free of nuclear weapons, (-but hey, what about Israel?-) forbids the existence in Iraq of any nuclear weapons or weapons programs. The international atomic energy agency (IAEA) under Mohamed El Baradei is charged with carrying out this instruction by inspections on the spot and by the destruction of any offending nuclear materials and facilities it may encounter. Iraq’s only nuclear reactor under construction at Osiris having been totally destroyed by Israeli jets back in June 1981, the IAEA finds during the twelve years of their search no evidence of ongoing programs and concludes that Iraq can no longer present a nuclear danger. The Iraqi authorities co-operation was total. This conclusion, unwelcome to the US and UK governments, has been vigorously contested by their intelligence agencies, however without ever being able to produce any contrary evidence.

The UN resolution also orders the destruction, under Unscom supervision, of all chemical and biological weapons together with their means of manufacture and delivery. UN inspectors accordingly supervise over the years the destruction of existing stocks, of any doubtful “dual purpose” facilities which could either produce agricultural chemicals or chemical weapons. Madeleine Albright, president Clinton’s Secretary of State, is on record as saying that even a shoe factory can be considered “dual purpose”, because it could well make combat boots. Unscom continues diligently to destroy Scud missiles and any rockets it can find with a range superior to 150 KM. Until in 1997 weapons inspector Scott Ritter can declare: Iraq is disarmed in the nuclear, biological and chemical fields; it has no ballistic missiles and no capacity to rebuild. In WMD it is a threat to no one.”

But the expectation of most UN members, shared by the Iraqi government and the reason behind their submission, was that the sanctions would be lifted as soon as unscom gave the all-clear. Or, Richard Butler, the Unscom director, although he declared that 95% of the inspections went unhindered, was annoyed by being disallowed access to Saddams palaces. Moreover, there were problems with the accounting for destroyed stocks of chemicals. How could he ever be 100% sure that he had verified every possible nook and cranny? Iraq accused the US of including full time CIA agents as inspectors. A claim that was never denied. And so, the inhuman sanctions regime which helped to keep Saddam in power was allowed to be perpetuated.

The inescapable conclusion from all of the above, it seems to me, is that the twelve years of UN sanctions, following the ravages of the “just” war “Desert Storm”, did more lasting harm to the Iraqi population and infrastructure, including education and medical care and caused more Iraqi deaths than the repression of his own people by Saddam. His repression of minorities was no more harsh than that of the Kurdish minorities in Turkey and Iran. Only the Iran-Iraq war caused more human suffering, but in that senseless conflict and in his chemical warfare he was powerfully enabled and urged along by the same nations who now accuse him. Saddam is their creature. By the time President George W. Bush, after 9/11, took the unilateral decision to eliminate him, in spite of no links to international terrorism like El Qaida, Saddam presented no longer a threat to his neighbours and could have been contained at far lesser cost by applying UN security council resolution 1441. The prolonging of the sanctions and the subsequent war seem based on a major failure of the “politicised” US and UK intelligence services.

An interim report presented by David Kelly of the CIA in October 2003, on the intensive search for WMD throughout occupied Iraq, admits that WMD may never be found. To salvage his agency’s reputation however, he has asked for a 700 million dollar budget to continue the search and will surely have to come up in future with some evil Iraqi conspiracy to acquire such weapons.

“Operation Iraqi Freedom”

The massive US/UK military invasion in March 2003 succeeded in overthrowing Saddam Hussein and finishing off what remained of the civilian infrastructure. The subsequent failure to maintain security and restore order and services quickly soured the “liberation” aspect and the US command had to admits its involvement in a continuing guerilla war.

“The Iraqi governing council”

After initial confusion, in which general Jay Garner (from the Pentagon) noticeably failed to establish some sort of civil order in April and May, he was succeeded by Paul Bremer (from the State Department) as the highest civil authority, who now says that he wants to hand over power to an Iraqi government, as soon as possible, after the establishment of a constitution and the holding of national elections..

A governing council was duly “elected”. Although its president, Ahmed Chalabi, was an unreliable CIA informer and has been prosecuted for fraud in Jordan and two other council members have either resigned or been murdered, the idea of a council appears sound. As a precursor of a real elected government.

Points for the future.

1. History shows that a centralised Iraq, governing its 24,5 million inhabitants from Sunni dominated Bagdad, can only be held together by brute force. Therefore, if the state of Iraq is to be kept whole and governed by law and common interests, a Federate structure with considerable delegated powers of government to the Kurds (up to 20% of population) and the Shia muslims (50%) and the Sunni muslims (30%), including regional parliaments, must be a first option.

2. Following the peace imposed by the victors and by the UN, a regional conference (Syria, Jordan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuweit, maybe Israel) should decide on armament limitations, border, water and pipeline disputes. The UN cannot continue to impose solutions. There is considerable educational value in face to face contact at international conferences between former enemies for a common benefit.

3.Although the government is entitled to maximum income from its main source of revenue, oil production, the creation of a State Oil Corporation (as suggested by the governing council) would be a most disastrous solution, like anywhere else where it has been tried, especially for under-developed Iraq. Instead concessions to private companies should be granted soonest after open bidding procedures, to explore, develop and market Iraq oil and help it regain its rightful place in the world (3 or 4 million barrels a day?) within 3 years.

4.Contentious agreements made by the Saddam government to be declared null and void, but any bona fide debts to be scheduled for re-payment out of oil revenues.

L. Wesseling, 3rd October, 2003.

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A trip through Central Asia (October 2004)

Kazakhstan.

Traveling with the “Royal Society for Asian Affairs” from London we arrive at the efficient new Almaty airport with its hyper modern security equipment. Half an hour later we can enter the city. A presidential election is in progress, which the incumbent, Nazarbayev, will win with his usual 90% of the vote. Election irregularities raise no eyebrows here. After the traumatic economic downturn in the early nineties, Kazakhstan finds itself lifted by an economic boom and a 9% real GDP growth rate, of which the benefits however have not yet filtered down to the bottom. While the highest authorities pocket million dollar bribes, the salary of an educated Kazak (teachers, doctors) stagnates at 200 dollar per month. Industrialised cotton production is in disarray and ecological disasters from ill considered irrigation schemes abound. Nevertheless, we find Almathy ringed by expensive brandnew housing estates, at a million dollar plus per ostentatious modern villa for Russians and local elites of international oil.

The boom is based on oil and gas investments. Tenghiz oilfield is piping its rapidly rising production through the CPC (Caspian Oil Pipeline) to Russia. BP is engaged in building an alternative 3 billion dollar pipeline (heavily favored by the USA) to Turkey for its new oil. The Chinese are in the market to finance gasfields and the strategic pipeline which may one day connect the Caspian with China. With oil production rising more than 50% this year the vast unexplored steppes of Kazakhstan are at the centre of the world oil and gas play. Kazakhstan is resolutely free-market oriented. But internally, with the apparent approval of its 16 million population, 30% of which are Russian, it remains a tight police state, closely allied to Moscow, hunting down terrorists and muslim fundamentalists, while heroin transports from the East pass unhindered to Russia and Europe. Russian remains the official “inter-ethnic language”.

Kyrgistan.

A young nation (1924) of 5 million souls, whose fortunes nose-dived after the collapse of the Soviet Union, hurriedly tried to re-invent itself by replacing all Lenin statues by monuments for Liberty and its mythological hero Manas. However, serious troubles with Uzbeks, of Turcic origin, and Tajik minorities, whose language is Persian, darken the outlook. All these states, arbitrarily created by Stalin across ethnic boundaries and forcibly alienated from their Muslim roots, are now jealous guardians of their frontiers whilst re-creating their faith. We see many shiny new almost identical mosques being built, although not much activity within them. It is said they are built with help of Turkish or Saudi money. And in spite of the slaughter of the monks in the nineteen twenties during the muslim basmachi revolt against the Soviets, the Russian Orthodox churches seem to make a come-back.

From my Soviet hotel room in Bishkek, looking out over the asbestos covered roofs of the hovels below, I observe a nomad woman cooking breakfast at first light in a little open space, in all dignity, over a small efficient fire. Passers by greet her politely.Urban life is hard. Schooling is no longer free and parents pay teachers extra for their children to pass the exams. 50% of the population live below the poverty line and even the middle classes are poor. This exceedingly beautiful mountanous country has few agricultural resources; its mineral mining has fallen in dissarray and abandoned Soviet industries stand broken and rusted as testimony of a discarded past.

The hope for the future rests on tourism, the establishment of ski resorts and spa’s on the shores of warm mountain lakes like Issy Kul, once used by the Soviet Navy to test its torpedo’s away from prying eyes. But above all it rests on its enormous potential for creating hydro electricity, some of which it is already exporting. Despite all difficulties, sentiment seems upbeat, the economy is free and local markets are overflowing with fresh produce. (although older farmers still regret the disappearance of the kolchozes where they worked for a fixed salary).

Leaving, I counted 15 drab olive coloured Boeing 707’s of the USAF transport command on the Bishkek civilian airport, being serviced by uniformed Americans with an abundance of American materiel. Are they needed for the continuing Afghan military operations, or to impress Russia, Iran or China?

Uzbekistan.

Tajikistan being deemed too dangerous for innocent tourists, we bypass it and travel to the capital of Uzbekistan, Tashkent, by air and are lodged in the usual Soviet style hotel. In Uzbekistan Stalin still lives. His Kolchoz system of wasteful agriculture (cotton) with irresponsible irrigation disasters and overuse of insecticides (causing the drying-up and poisoning of the Aral sea) is still going strong. Private landownership does not exist. President Karimov rules his 24 million underlings with an iron hand through a ruthless police regime of prosecution of religious minorities, opponents and militants.

The Fergana valley with its capital Kokand seems out of bounds due to Islamic fundamentalism. But Samarkand is one of the wonders of the world. In spite of Ghengiz Khan’s attentions in the 13th century, the old Sogdian capital, once also Timurlane’s residence, is resplendent with monuments scrupulously rebuilt. No romantic ruins here, but painstaking tile by tile restoration of the old glory. As a result the Timurlane (Guri Amir) mausoleum with its powerful male beauty now rivals the feminine perfection of India’s Taj Mahal. The observatory of Ulughbek, with its 30 meter high astrolab and the madrassa’s are testimony of scientific top achievements at the time (1420). Shakhrisabz, Bukhara and Khiva, though less “restored” than Samarkand, all rival it by the splendour of madrassa’s, minarets and mausolea. On the other hand, we also pass on our way over mud hills, the rectangular shape of which indicates, referring to our books, that they once were flourishing centres of learning and commerce on the Silk Road, until Ghengiz Khan got the better of them.

At night, driving North through the Kyzilkum desert, the horizon is lit up by the flames of oil production. The country produces just enough for its own needs, some 145000 barrels per day. For gas exports, a pipeline is being built to Russia, its only possible market and ally of necessity. Further South, near Qarshi lies the major American army and airforce base through which the war in Afghanistan was conducted and which is still in full use.

President Bush welcomes president Karimov in the Oval Office as an essential ally in the war on terror and is giving bilateral aid without too much questioning the human rights abuses. Accusations fly that the CIA benefits from torture of prisoners using Uzbeki personnel in Uzbeki territory.

When we first come face to face with the expanse of the Oxus river (Amu Darya), one of us, to celebrate the occasion, reads aloud some relevant passages out of the love poem “Sohrab and Rostum” of Matthew Arnolds.

Later, at the British embassy in Tashkent, we learn that ambassador Craig Murray is in London to denounce the systematic use of torture by Uzbek officials in hundreds of cases known to him, to obtain (flawed) information for US and British intelligence. Uzbek authorities have a vital interest in exagerating prisoners links with Al Qaeda. “We are selling our souls for dross” he claims. According to CIA estimates there are some 6500 political prisoners in country. Although the embassador has since been sacked over his candid revelations, which are not denied, NATO Secretary General de Hoop Scheffer (a failed but pliable Dutch politician) visits Karimov, at US instigation, to strenghten cooperative ties between NATO and the regime. This may be a short sighted policy, but a fact is that Uzbekistan has so far escaped civil war and that it does form a solid barrier against fundamentalist contagion from Afghanistan. The US and to a lesser extent Russia with its strong military presence in the region are trying to keep it that way.

Turkmenistan.

From the evil to the tragi-comic. The 4 hour border crossing in the mid day sun from Uzbekistan to Turkmenistan is the most horrendous I have witnessed in a life-long of crossings between underdeveloped countries. Formalities were arbitrary, faulty and slow, while groups of people were beaten back by soldiers with guns. There was a half hour tug of war between soldiers and a phalanx of women about a bale of contraband. Relais of children swam the river with contraband only to be beaten with canes by the soldiers on the other shore. A woman headbutted a soldier so hard that he fell back on one of ours. President-for-life, Niyazov maintains absolute control of legislative and executive branches of government. As self-syled “Turkmen bashi” (ruler of Turks) he does not tolerate opposition amongst the 5 million people in his large desertlike country. Human settlements cling to the valleys around rivers and canals.

Konje Urgench in the North is less impressive than Bokhara, but it was once the centre of the muslim Seljuk empire, before Jenghiz Khan utterly destroyed it, is . One needs a vivid imagination however in the desolate landscape, punctuated by half restored mausolea, dusty caravanserais and isolated minarets, when walking over sandhills possibly containing the walls of ancient cities.

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We fly to Merv, its 7000 year history the epitome of Central Asian history. A vast landscape of half buried remains of no less than five successive important cities, each destroyed by conquerors (beginning with Alexander the Great), then resettled nextdoor only to be destroyed again. The Sultan Kala mausoleum was the only building surviving Ghengis Khan, because its walls were 3 meter thick and its foundations 6 meter deep. Why is Central Asian history so often expressed in those megalomaniac mausolea, rather than in any other structures ? Even the modern rich erect very impressive mausolea for themselves.

Nisa, the capital of the Pathian empire, which at one time rivalled Rome itself is now a great deserted elevated plateau containing palaces and Zoroastrian temples in the beginning stage of excavation by Russian and Italian archeologists. Its art discoveries, now in the national museum, are stunning examples of 2000 year old ornamental craftmanship.

Ashgabat, the current capital, is getting a multi billion dollar face-lift. We admire the revolving gold statue of Turkmenbashi on the highest monument on the hill, surrounded by goose-stepping guards. HIS images are of course everywhere. French contractor Bouygues is building the most prestigious and generally empty ministries and even a luxurious mosgue along the monumental empty boulevards. Meanwhile, Turkey, with its democratic face eagerly turned towards European Union membership, displays its other less atractive fundamentalist and imperial face towards Turkmenistan. It has just completed a hundred million dollar Mosque as a gift to the nation and is financing other activities.

Also, together with Arab Muslim nations, it finances the building of cheap “prefab mosques” in the countryside.

With Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and the World’s Superpower actively taking sides in local armed conflicts, there is all likelihood that these will continue in the region, if not escalate. On the face of it, Russia, as harshly as it has acted in the past, now seems a moderating influence through its economic policies and through the minority Slav presence in the local populations of each state.

Flying home, Westward from Tashkent over the vast desert landscape with ribs of windblown sand and circular craters, we see human cultivation clinging precariously to the few rivers and mountain sides. Then the sad remains of the Aral sea in the North, no longer fed by the once mighty Oxus river. Then the Kaspian Sea and the snowy Caucasus mountain range and finally the Black Sea, where Asia truly ends and “normal” European cultivation begins.

L. Wesseling, 3rd October, 2003.