Sunday, December 11, 2005

Iraqi liberation?

The press release issued today Oxford Research Group's report of this title contains a call, among other things, for “build[ing] legitimacy in the Iraqi political process” post election by:

Reach[ing] agreement among the communities on key constitutional provisions, in particular on the equitable distribution of future oil reserves, and establish a genuinely inclusive political process enabling a negotiated end to the nationalist insurgency.

But if the analysis in Crude Designs from Platform et al is correct then something that will appear to Iraqi eyes to be the equitable allocation of future oil revenues may prove especially hard. According to this study, at least 64% of the country's oil reserves have already been allocated for development by multinational (US and British) oil companies.

(see also The Washington Post's Iraq and Consequences: six specialists say what to expect if U.S. forces leave or stay in Iraq, and It takes a Potemkin village from Frank Rich in the NYT.)

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