How the colonialists divided up the Gulf

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... Imperialism and oil leaving aside which side ultimately comes out on top, the costs of this military adventure alone can tip the American economy into a crisis.

The estimated numbers of U.S. troops involved went, in a matter of days, from 5000 to 50,000, then to 100,000, and by Aug. 10 as high as 250,000!

Moreover, media analysts are guessing that this intervention, unlike the lightning swoops in and out of Grenada and Panama, will go on for an unforseeable time period.

These speculations are not without foundation. Even though as of this moment Bush's intervention seems to have come off better than expected, serious observers know that successes can quickly turn to ashes. This will be the result if the masses, who are already stirring from northern Africa to Iran, throw their weight into the battle shaping up.

The capitalist news media also know that if shooting starts, the present uneasy and cranky support of the American people for President Bush's intervention will start to go in reverse as their sons and daughters are sent back from the Gulf region in bodybags.

During the Vietnam War, American imperialism's allies (South Korea, New Zealand, and Australia) committed a relative handful of troops to the conflict. If shooting starts in the current crisis, we can expect deep opposition to the Gulf war to grow in all countries sending invading forces, in proportion to their casualties.

Finally, it should now be clear that there will be no "peace dividend" from the ending of the "Cold War." The real decision-makers never once believed this myth. They well knew that the need for U.S. imperialism to continue to play its role of world policeman has not diminished.

On the contrary, when account is taken of the accumulating evidence of world capitalism's developing economic crisis, revolutionary eruptions loom on the horizon in In 1961, when Kuwait attained formal independence from Britain, the Iraqis laid claim to the territory and gathered an army on the border. The British immediately sent troops to Kuwait to threaten the Iraqi "invaders," just as the United States and its allies are doing today.

Few people in this country realize that the boundaries between Kuwait and Iraq were not set by the people or governments of those countries but by the imperialists who ruled the area.

For centuries, the countries of the Persian Gulf had no fixed borders. Most of these small emirates and sheikhdoms were incorporated into the empire of the Ottoman Turks.

A handbook for British colonial officials in the early 1900s observed: "The boundaries of the Kuwait principality are for the most part fluctuating and undefined; they are, at any given time, the limits of the tribes which then, either voluntarily or under compulsion, own allegiance to the Sheikh of Kuwait."

The area of Kuwait Bay was settled by nomadic clans from the Arabian peninsula in the early 18th century. In the 1750s, the head of the Al-Sabah family was elected ruler (his descendants continued to rule until the recent Iraqi invasion).

Nominal allegiance was paid to the Ottoman Turks, who considered Kuwait part of their Basra province in Iraq. The British, in order to protect their own trade interests, did what they could to assure the autonomy of the Kuwaiti sheikhdom against the Ottoman Empire.

By the late 19th century, however, the British saw the need to take stronger measures; Germany and Russia, their imperialist rivals, had plans to build rail lines and ports in the region.

In 1896, Sheikh Mohammed of Kuwait was assassinated by his half-brother, Mubarak, who seized the title of Emir for 'Just as the British subdivided the Gulf region behind the backs of the Arab people, the United States seeks to impose its own solution today.

himself. Though the British denied having anything to do with the coup, official documents show that Mubarak spent a month in company with the British chargé d'affairs just before the assassination.

In 1899, Mubarak signed a secret agreement making Kuwait a British protectorate. As part of the pact, the British promised to pay a yearly subsidy to the Emir in order to keep him in power.

During the next few years, Kuwait was integrated into the colonial system that made the Persian Gulf a virtual British lake. Native handicrafts and industry were suppressed, as they had been in India in earlier times. The subject peoples were forced to buy British goods that were transported on British ships.

Kuwait, like other "one-crop" colonial Commissioner in Iraq, was entrusted with the job of settling the boundaries of the Iraqi and Kuwaiti puppet states and Saudi Arabia. After five days of heated negotiations with Ibn Saud (the Saudi king) and Iraqi representatives, a British official reported:

"Sir Percy took a red pencil and very carefully drew in on the map of Arabia a boundary line. ... This gave Iraq a large area of the territory claimed by Najd [a region of Saudi Arabia]. Obviously to placate Ibn Saud, he ruthlessly deprived Kuwait of nearly two-thirds of her territory and gave it 12) exploitation.

The rise of the Arab nationalist movement, which was responsible for imperialism's direct losses in the area, gained impetus in 1956 when Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal. With British and French backing, Israel invaded Egypt a few months later, only to be compelled to withdraw by the United States—which sought to use the incident to further weaken the hold of its oil competitors in the region.

The 1950s witnessed a realignment in the Middle East, as the various capitalist governments in the region sought to strengthen their positions against world imperialism through a series of regional alliances and by seeking military and economic aid from the USSR and Eastern Europe.

At the same time, the United States maneuvered with the help of Britain to create a series of military pacts with those regimes which leaned openly toward imperialism. This resulted in the 1955 Baghdad Pact, which included Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan in the pro-imperialist camp.

A centerpiece of imperialist strategy and military might in the Middle East is the Zionist state of Israel, forcibly carved out of the Palestinian nation in 1948 with the joint agreement of the United States and the Soviet Union. Since its formation, Israel has supported or led every imperialist intervention in the region, not to mention its covert but still significant support 10 U.S. intervention in the rest of the world.

The universal hatred of the Zionist state among the masses of the Middle East stems directly from the role it has played as imperialism's surrogate in the region. The nationalist movement nevertheless succeeded in ending most of the direct ownership of the oil resources of the region by imperialist cartels.

Still, the virtual monopoly of the pipelines, refineries, shipping, and markets exercised by the United States and its capitalist counterparts enables them to maintain still-unchallenged control over the oil-producing nations.

Thus with a pencil stroke, the British drew the boundaries of Kuwait. Yet the Kuwaitis weren't even in the room at the time!

Just as the British subdivided the Gulf region and set up borders in opposition to the wishes of the Arab people, the United States seeks to impose its own solution today. As in the past, the profits of the oil cartels take precedence over the interests of the people who live there.

The right of national self-determination, which the imperialists denied in the past, will not be affirmed by them today. This right belongs only to the Arab people, who must be free to settle their differences without the "assistance" of those who have oppressed them.

Sources used for this article include "Kuwait: Social Change in Historical Perspective" by Jacqeline S. Ismael. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, N.Y., 1982.

This stems from the fact that in spite of the billions of dollars in profits which today flow into the hands of the various sheiks and dictators of the region, no Middle Eastern nation (and for that matter, no underdeveloped capitalist nation on earth) has been able to emerge from its previous state of underdevelopment to compete on the world market. The monopoly established by imperialist finance capital in the major industrialized nations has precluded such a development.

All Middle Eastern oil-producing nations essentially remain "one-crop" economies. That is, virtually all state revenues are derived from their one resource, oil. If the spigot is turned off, the nation is brought to a halt.

Like all underdeveloped nations they also suffer from an unequal exchange with imperialism—forced to sell their single resource cheaply and import food and finished goods at monopolized prices.

The U.S. media, aping the words of the oil cartels, whine about the devastating effects of higher oil prices on the U.S. economy. But they are still silent as tens of thousands of people in the underdeveloped world starve because of higher prices the U.S. government is charging for food, of which it is the main exporter.

The road to development in the Middle East lies in the united and revolutionary actions of the masses themselves, aimed at the elimination of capitalism in the region and the establishment of a united socialist Middle East where the resources of the region can be rationally apportioned to meet the needs of the oppressed masses themselves.

Similarly, the job of ending the predatory imperialist system in the United States, which depends on both sending American youth to die for capitalist profit in foreign lands and on the exploitation of American workers themselves, lies with the U.S. working class.

U.S. intervention in the Persian Gulf benefits no one but the ruling-class elite, who are just as anxious to extract greater profits from American workers as they are to maintain control over the oppressed people of the Middle East.