OxBlog

Monday, March 01, 2004

# Posted 5:41 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

TOO MUCH GOOD NEWS: What is going on in Iraq? The NYT reports that oil production there is poised to surpass prewar levels. The NYT article on that subject is climibing the charts over at Memeorandum thanks to posts by Rob Tagorda, Greg Djerejian, Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Reynolds and Rantingprofs.

I think it's worth taking a look at the NYT article in detail, since it contains so many surprises that run against the grain of conventional wisdom. Correspondent Neela Banerjee reports that
With additional production increases expected, oil exports this year could add $14 billion to Iraq's threadbare budget, compared with a little more than $5 billion last year, said a senior official with the Coalition Provisional Authority, the occupation government.
I don't know that the total Iraqi budget is, but I have to imagine that $9 billion will make a big difference in the books. This suggests, moreover, that American support may be fall back to more moderate levels and/or focus on institution-building rather than basic services such as santiation. Next up, consider this:
The revival of the oil sector is a result of the $1 billion in repairs undertaken by the Americans and Iraqis as well as some dogged ingenuity by the Iraqis in keeping their badly damaged industry running.
Usually, we hear that the American reconstruction effort is overwhelmed by chaos and getting little back in the way of results. On a related note,
The top American civil administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, appeared on Iraqi television on Friday to announce that electricity generation, a major source of discontent for this country of 25 million, had been restored to prewar levels and was expected to rise rapidly as summer approaches.
Assuming that Bremer knows what he's talking about, that's pretty impressive, especially the part about a rapid rise this summer. Of course, even silver linings have clouds:
In the north, [oil] exports have been stymied by attacks on the pipeline leading to an export terminal in Turkey. But the Northern Oil Company recently tested the pipeline and shipped a few million barrels of oil to Turkey.

Attacks on the pipeline dropped to 8 in January and February from 47 in the last three months of 2003, according to coalition officials ? a sign, they said, of the success of a new Iraqi oil police trained under an American contract.
Perhaps the reduction isn't all that surprising given that
The American military commander, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, said last week that attacks on coalition soldiers had been cut by half in the last three months, even as attacks on Iraqis had increased.
Accordingly, the Coalition's casualty and fatality figures fell in February to a level considerably below even that of last summer. (NB: It's not just because February is a short month. The per-day figures fell dramatically as well.) Finally, if you look at the print version of this morning's NYT, you find an interesting sentence that has disappeared from the online version of its article:
American efforts to restore Iraqi oil have been led by the Army Corps of Engineers and its principal contractor, Halliburton.
Halli-who? You mean those guys who overcharged the government for gas? Are we really supposed to believe that they do anything right or good? Well, if the NYT says so, who am I to disagree?

Anyhow, the good news isn't limited to the oil sector. The front page story about Iraq actually concerns its new interim constitution, which, if approved,
Would be the most progressive such document in the Arab world. Even before the hard bargaining began, there was wide agreement on many of its major features, including the freedom of speech, press and assembly and the free exercise of religion.

The constitution provides for an independent judiciary, equal treatment under the law regardless of gender or ethnicity, as well as civilian control over the military.
As if that weren't enough, Sunni clerics are now calling on anti-American forces to put an end to their attacks against both Iraqi civilians and security officers. The clerics' fatwa begins as follows: "Dear sons of our nation, we call upon you to close ranks and elevate yourselves above your grudges so that we may open a new chapter in the life of our country. We condemn any act of violence against Iraqi state government workers, police and soldiers, because it is aggression under Islamic law."

The document issued in Ramadi declares that killing fellow Iraqis not only runs counter to the idea of holy war, but also constitutes what is known in the Muslim world as haram, the unpardonable act of killing another Muslim.
You might even say that America has won over the Sunni clerics' hearts and minds. Last August, the big names in the liberal half of the blogosphere jumped all over those of us who said that the suicide bombings in Iraq were a sign of our enemies' desperation. Five months later, it's hard to see things any other way.
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