Ghosts of Empire (14 page)

Saddam sat at the top of all this success, hailed by millions of his countrymen as an extraordinary man, a leader of great vision and stature. In his pomp and vanity, Saddam saw himself as a ‘new Saladdin', a Nebuchadnezzar or a Sargon the Great.
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The cult of Saddam began in those years, and he would enter the
Guinness Book of Records
as the world's most frequently painted head of state.
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The vast increase in oil revenues, the new possibilities which wealth offered the Iraqi people, stirred Saddam's ambition. On 17 September 1980, fully resplendent in the uniform of the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Saddam stood before the National Assembly of Iraq. He renounced the 6 March 1975 agreement which he had signed with the Shah relating to border and other disputes between the two countries. The Iranian revolution of 1979 had put into power a radical Shi'ite cleric, the Ayatollah Khomeini, a religious figure totally opposed to the secular Arab nationalism that Saddam and, before him, Nasser had espoused. Saddam denounced the Iranians as ‘racist' and ‘Persian' and launched a war against them.
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The Iran–Iraq conflict was a new manifestation of the age-old conflict between Ottomans and Safavids, between Arabs and Persians, which had shaped the region for many centuries. But in this act of aggression Saddam badly miscalculated.

The Iran–Iraq War was a disaster for Saddam and marked the beginning of the end of his power. It was a prime example of hubris, of overreaching
oneself and bringing about one's ruin. Like Agamemnon, or many other heroes of Greek tragedy, worldly success had pushed Saddam too far. In taking on new projects and fulfilling new ambitions, he would lose everything. The Iran–Iraq War left him crushed by debt. When the ceasefire came into effect on 20 August 1988, he presided over an Iraq that ‘had seen most of its major oil exporting capacity destroyed, blocked or closed'. The war left him owing US$65 billion to Western creditors and to the Soviets. The Arab states, particularly Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, had lent Iraq US$80 billion.
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Kuwait was pressing for repayment and, by February 1990, Saddam faced another problem–the collapse of the oil price. In January 1990 the price of oil was US$21 a barrel. By the summer it was US$11. At such a low price, Iraq would be bankrupt. Saddam believed that some OPEC producers were flooding the market, not sticking to their assigned quotas, and that Kuwait, in its refusal to keep production down and thus raise the oil price, was the prime culprit. While refusing to decrease production, the Kuwaitis also declined to write off a US$40 billion loan they had granted Saddam during the Iran–Iraq War.

Saddam needed a dramatic boost to the oil price by which he could obtain more money to pay off his enormous debts, but the Kuwaitis still refused to cut their production. The conquest of Kuwait was the most attractive solution to the Iraqi dictator. Saddam's thinking was brutal but pragmatic: if he annexed Kuwait, he could cut back its production of oil and thereby increase the oil price, enabling him to obtain more revenue.
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It was the United States' invasion of Iraq, accompanied by its allies, in 1991 that prevented Saddam's dreams from being realized.

In 2002, the year before the second Gulf War, Iraq was exporting nearly 2 million barrels a day under the UN's ‘oil for food' programme. This brought in US$12 billion of revenue, on an annual basis, but was still well short of the 1980 figure. No one knows how much oil there is in Iraq. Since Saddam Hussein's forcible removal from power by the Americans in 2003, the country has not been stable enough for proper geological surveys to be carried out. Under Saddam, Iraq had never been open for such surveys, and no adequate one had been carried out there for more than forty years. Even though the exact amount of oil remains unknown, Iraq still has a huge potential source of wealth. The Iraqi government in 2008
announced that it could be sitting on the largest oil reserves in the world, with 350 billion barrels.
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This figure is much greater than Saudi Arabia's 264 billion barrels. The official figure of 115 billion barrels still ensures that Iraq is sitting on the third largest oil reserves behind Saudi Arabia and Iran.

The damage done by the second Gulf War has meant that any Iraqi government is desperate to develop its oil reserves. To do this effectively, foreign capital and expertise will be required. The old problems could re-emerge. In June 2008, Iraq threw its doors open to international investment in its oil sector. It announced two bidding rounds for oil- and gasfield development service contracts.
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Iraq is desperate to boost its production, after the ravages of both Gulf Wars, not to mention the terrible dislocation and suffering caused by the Iran–Iraq War. Interestingly, the Chinese National Petroleum Company has been the first foreign company to begin a project in an Iraqi oilfield.
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The unsettled state of Iraq, its lack of stability, was deterring foreign investors at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century. Undoubtedly, the development of Iraq's oil resources remains one of the great questions in the global economy in the coming decades.

But what of the British Empire? To what extent was the settlement in Iraq after the First World War responsible for the wars, the chaos and the confusion that have bedevilled Iraq for many decades? The establishment of the Hashemite kings was a disaster; to set up a monarchy without any antecedent foundation in Iraq was irresponsible, and it may also have been a product of a besetting sin of the British Empire, its snobbery. The IPC, as an institution, was a purely commercial enterprise, and had no political legitimacy or expertise. Its sole aim was to extract crude oil from Iraq, without having any real regard to the welfare of the Iraqi people.

The Hashemites were thrown out in a bloody coup, after which the IPC's days were numbered. The governments that succeeded the monarchy were of an aggressive, nationalist kind which barred foreign companies from Iraq's oil. It was perhaps inevitable that the reaction to the IPC's failure, when it came, would be severe.

Saddam, in his reckless self-regard, used Iraq's newfound oil wealth to build up his army and invade the lands of his neighbours, Iran and Kuwait. In this sense, he was more akin to a conqueror from the ancient or
medieval worlds than a sophisticated, modern political operator. The problem can be simply expressed: how can a stable regime be established in Iraq, on the basis of the popular will, while at the same time allowing foreign capital a chance to develop its abundant oil resources? The Hashemite kings did indeed allow foreign capital to exploit Iraq's oil, but they were grotesquely out-of-touch, almost pantomime, figureheads. Saddam and his nationalist predecessors who overthrew the Hashemites were undoubtedly more popular in their appeal; they had come from the people and were more in tune with what the average Iraqi citizen felt and thought. They did not, however, allow foreign expertise to develop Iraq's oil. Saddam abused his abundant oil resources by pursuing a reckless foreign policy that led to war, bankruptcy and the death and ruin of his family. It remains to be seen how the problem of oil and power in Iraq will be resolved. How can Iraq and the international community balance the legitimate aspirations of the Iraqi people with the natural desire of foreign capital to exploit Iraq's native wealth?

The battle was over. The Sikhs had been defeated. They would now have to agree terms with the British, in the form of the East India Company. The company, like any modern company, existed to make money. It had only got into politics, making war and signing treaties, to promote its commercial activities. Until 1858, however, it basically governed India. Now, in 1846, it had defeated the Sikh Empire in the Punjab; this meant that the ‘English were masters of Cashmere', according to contemporary reports.
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Kashmir, or Cashmere as it was spelt until the second half of the nineteenth century, was a beautiful and much prized place. It had been contested by the Afghans and by the Mughal emperors. The physical grandeur of its environment, with its high mountains and stunning valleys, was such that the Afghans, who often invaded, thought of it as a ‘mistress'. They enshrined this feeling in a proverb: ‘Unto every man his own country is Kashmir.'
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Kashmir had been conquered in 1819 by Ranjit Singh, the Sikh Raja. He died from a ‘stroke brought on by excessive drinking' in 1839, aged about sixty. He had had many wives and concubines, but no strong heir had been found to take over his legacy. With his death the Sikh Empire he had built up over forty years ‘began to unravel'.
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The sons he had were killed and a little boy, aged eight, was now the maharaja. His forces had just been humiliated, so the East India Company, whose job it was to make money, imposed an indemnity of £1 million on the Sikhs for all the trouble they had caused.

They could not afford this sum outright, but a sly cunning man called Gulab Singh, Raja of Jammu and a courtier of Ranjit Singh, came up with a plan. Why didn't the British allow him to rule Kashmir in exchange for
a proportion of the money the Sikhs owed? Gulab had served at Lahore, the capital of the Sikh Empire, but he owed little loyalty to the Sikhs. A payment of £500,000 was suggested and then he would be the proud possessor of Kashmir. How he acquired the money for this is still a mystery. At a time, in the 1840s, when the richest men in England, the Duke of Devonshire and the Marquess of Westminster, had an income of £100,000 a year, £500,000 was a huge amount of capital. It would be the equivalent of about £50 million today. Henry Hardinge, the Governor General, was clearly impressed by Gulab's resources and by his cunning. The Raja's income was £600,000 a year
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–six times, it should be added, the income of the richest peer in England. Like the military men of this period, he was a practical man who once said that he didn't mind enlisting ‘native' soldiers since the ‘colour of the face cannot be ascertained at 60 yards', the range at which a rifle would be fired.
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This was how the Treaty of Amritsar came about. The treaty was signed on 16 March 1846, and is one of the more bizarre documents in the history of the British Empire. It stipulated that Kashmir would be given to Gulab Singh and ‘his heirs' in exchange for £500,000 sterling, or 75 lakh rupees, in the Indian currency (a lakh was 100,000), and an annual token tribute of ‘one horse, twelve goats (six male and six female) and six pairs of shawls'.
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The deal was a strange one but it made sense for the East India Company. The company didn't want to have the expense of running Kashmir, so why not get a local feudal lord to govern the province? The local lord could then act as a buffer, a watchdog keeping an eye on the troublesome Sikhs. As a Kashmiri acidly pointed out at the time, ‘the grant of Kashmir to Gulab Singh was purposely to create enmity between him and the Sikhs'. Had Gulab refused to take it, the English would have given it to someone else ‘to prevent its being in the hands' of the Sikhs.
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The company needed the money and Hardinge, the Governor General, was ‘short of powder'. He didn't have the resources to keep Kashmir.

Sir Charles Napier was in no doubt that selling Kashmir to Gulab was a mistake. ‘It is a crime', he thundered, ‘to have left the Punjab and Kashmir in the hands of such murdering villains as Gulab Singh and the other ruffians who torment the poor.'
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Napier was a no-nonsense imperialist of the old school. Now in his sixties, he had been a soldier since the
age of twelve. He was now a general, famous for his great hook-nose, his brusque arrogance and his quickness to take offence. He also loathed Gulab Singh and didn't understand why Britain had ‘adorned his head with a crown'. His view of the empire was simple and pragmatic. ‘It is true we have won that empire most unjustly, but it is now impossible to abandon our position. We may not retreat, and can only hold our ground by skill and courage.'
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Everyone, even his best friends, acknowledged that Gulab Singh, the new Maharaja of Kashmir, was a difficult man. He had been born in 1792 and so was in his mid-fifties when he bought his kingdom. He had no formal education, couldn't read and write, but he could shoot and wield a sword. He was savage–he liked, it was said, to flay his enemies alive–but he was also courteous. He knew about power. He recognized that the British were strong and he was perhaps the most obsequious servant the British Empire ever had. The elegant Lord Dalhousie, who took over as governor general after Hardinge in 1848, would laugh at Gulab's cringing sycophancy. In a letter thanking Queen Victoria for his marquessate in July 1849, Dalhousie reported a conversation with Gulab, in which the Maharaja had expressed his delight that ‘the British flag has for ever been planted in the sky'. Gulab went on and on, saying that if ‘the whole surface of the earth were to become paper, the trees pens, and the rivers ink; they would all be insufficient to express his unbounded pleasure'.
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By the time Queen Victoria received the letter, two months later, the Sikh kingdom had ceased to exist. After a series of battles which had taken place since the end of the previous year, Sikh ministers gathered at Lahore on the morning of 29 March 1849 and read a proclamation from Dalhousie himself which simply stated: ‘The Kingdom of Punjab is at an end. All the territories of Maharaja Dalip Singh are now and henceforth a portion of the British Empire.'
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The last Maharaja, the eleven-year-old Duleep Singh, was taken to England, where he later purchased the 17,000-acre Elveden estate on the border of Norfolk and Suffolk. The initial reason for creating the Kashmir state, as a buffer against the Sikhs, had vanished within three years. After 1849, there was really no reason to keep the maharajas of Kashmir. The kingdom could have been annexed outright. This didn't happen, with consequences which are still felt today.