A COUNTRY FLOATING ON OIL
بــلــدٌ يَــطــفــو عـلـى الــنــفــطِ
It may be of interest to highlight the difference between
the oilmen who built the successful Iraq’s oil and gas industry over the
decades and the politicians who came after 1958 to squander the precious
revenues as detailed in the following extract from my book IRAQ : OIL : OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY IN THE TWENTIETH
CENTURY:
The irony of all this is that, though the oil and gas
industry had been and continues to be the life blood of Iraq, those who had
participated so successfully in building and running it had been marginalised
and overshadowed by other historical events, political upheavals and intrigues
which were hatched by the power hungry politicians. These included the never
ending political and social unrests, the numerous coups and counter coups, the
futile revolutions, the destructive and tragic wars, the inhumane United
Nations sanction, and finally the vengeful invasion of Iraq in 2003 which sent
the county back to the (Stone Age) almost exactly as threatened by James Baker
the former US Secretary of States in 1990 after the invasion of Kuwait.
It is with sadness that one can look back now to see how
such a heavenly sent blessing of abundance revenues from the export of crude
oil, which could have been spent wisely on the development of the country and
the welfare of its people, could have been so grossly wasted on the very
destruction of the country and the killing and impoverishment of its people.
It is such tragic and
disastrous events that prompted me to reflect back and sum it all up in the
following short poem.
Iraq
A country floating on oil
Some oil was set on fire
To get the whole oil boil
To brew a fatal stew
Of war, blood and toil
Courtesy of Chefs greed,
Ignorance and broil
It is unbelievable if not maddening to see that nothing has
changed and no lessons seem to have been learnt since, even today in 2011,
these very ugly master chefs and many others like them are still hard at work
preparing their new and more sophisticated recipes for even deadlier stews. As a result and since
the invasion of Iraq in 2003, hundreds of thousands more people have been
killed, tens of thousands have been left homeless, hundreds of thousands more
people have fled the country to bring the total to some three to four millions.
Poverty and diseases are more widespread than before, law and order have broken
down completely with people disappearing, being murdered in daylight, or bombed
in the streets or their own homes. Basic services such medical care, clean water, electricity,
drainage and more amazing, in the country floating on oil, it is becoming
difficult to secure ones need of the essential products of that oil. This is despite
the fact that nearly two and a half million barrels of that oil is still
flowing every day as it has been doing so for decades.
In the meantime the
huge revenues which are being generated by the export of the oil are still
going to waste down the drain through the funnels of mismanagement, greed and
corruption.
Will we ever learn,
will we ever stop and think rationally, will sanity ever prevail, will Iraq
return to normality and when? The answer must be yes since this great county
had experienced similar if not much worse tragedies throughout its history and
came out triumphant. We must remember that this is the same country that is
known as the cradle of civilisation, the land of Babylon and its hanging
gardens. It is the same country of the golden civilisation of Haroun Al-Rasheed and his fabulous capital
Baghdad and its legendary tales of the one thousand and one nights. It is the
home of a great nation, it will, it must stand back on its feet with its head high
amongst the nations of the world and very soon at that.”””””””
غانم العـنّـاز
January 2013
**************
Akhi Ghanim
Beautifully said. May God bless you. We all should act, each
in his own way to get Iraq back to its glory. You have done your bit in the
book you produced and been saying with words in musical rhythm.
Tariq Shafiq
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