ISSUE 76
SPRING 2003
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Comment


IRAQ- THE WAY AHEAD

For thousands of years water has been the strength of Mesopotamia. The land of the Twin Rivers was the cradle of civilisation and the home of powerful empires. The result was aggression on weak neighbours, alternately being the prey of other predators.
History has demonstrated that peace in the region will only prevail if Iraq is brought under control. For four hundred years relative peace existed in the region under the Ottoman Empire from 1516 to 1917.
Nowadays, the strength of Iraq is the vast oil reserves; its weakness is that water rises in Turkey, which increasingly needs the water of the Tigris and Euphrates for its own domestic use. Why should Iraq obtain its water free of charge but sell its oil at exorbitant prices?
The campaign to disarm Iraq must aim at establishing a new order for the whole region. In other words, we should try to reinvent the Ottoman Empire, which was broken up after the First World War, and the area was given wholesale to the Arabs excluding the many other nationalities.
I suggest that the first step in that direction would be to organise a Middle East water and oil 'authority' which would ensure that all the countries of the region -Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan and Arabia as well as the Gulf states share equally in the wealth of the region. Such an authority could later be expanded to include defence, foreign affairs, travel, trade, etc. A federal centre could be created at Mari on the Euphrates where Abraham once lived. What better name can be given to that centre than Abraham, revered by Arabs and Jews and most other people of the area as the father of the Middle East?
As the franchise holder of Coca-Cola in Iraq since 1949, and hopefully after liberation, if ever Iraq would be short of water then I would say, with apologies to Marie Antoinette; let them drink Coca-Cola!

 




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