Kurdistan: Brought to you by Exxon? Behind the scenes on a secret deal

The Globe and Mail ^ | Wednesday, Dec. 03 2014, 10:15 AM EST | DMITRY ZHDANNIKOV, ISABEL COLES AND NED PARKER

[Zhang Fei]

In January, 2011, Exxon hired one of the best connected men in Iraq: Ali Khedery, an American of Iraqi descent who had served in Baghdad as a special assistant to five U.S. ambassadors and a senior adviser to three U.S. generals.

At a meeting with Exxon a few months later to analyze Iraq’s future, Khedery laid out his thoughts.

Iraq under prime minister Nouri al-Maliki was moving toward dictatorship and civil war, he said he told the session. “We will see a rise in violence and a total paralysis in Baghdad,” he recalled saying. The gloomy scenario grabbed the attention of Exxon executives. Just two years earlier, they had signed a $25-billion deal with Iraq to develop West Qurna, one of the largest oil fields in the country.

“No one wanted to hear that they had negotiated a multibillion-dollar deal in a country which will soon implode,” said Khedery, who has detailed to Reuters the meeting and subsequent events for the first time. He suggested an alternative: Kurdistan, a semiautonomous region in northern Iraq that was politically stable, far from the chaos in the south, and had, by some estimates, oil reserves of 45 billion barrels.

[rstrahan]

Iraq should be partitioned since its boundaries are artificial and to relevant to its political,or ethnic identity.

[FreeInWV]

“Iraq should be partitioned since its boundaries are artificial and to relevant to its political,or ethnic identity.”

I agree. Forcing groups that hate each other to live together just causes more unrest. Hand picking one group to oppressively rule the others makes it even worse. They need to be autonomous states composing some kind of constitutional republic.

[StoneWall Brigade]

Agreed

[Sawdring]

Aren’t all borders artificial and only maintained by force?