Oil Company Near Settling Over Contract in Kurdistan
I came across this article as I was scanning the NYT this afternoon, and I thought I'd blog a bit about what's happening to hydrocarbons in Iraq (at least so far as my limited knowledge will allow me!)
Thus far a federal hydrocarbons agreement has not been reached. Yet weekly, we're seeing notices of oil companies staking out contracts in Kurdistan -- why? How?
Essentially, the way I see this, the northern Iraqi regional government (aka Kurdistan regional government aka KRG) is settling contracts as part of a stability move. By getting major companies from major companies (In this case Norway, but they've got companies from as diverse a mix as Korea, Turkey, UK, Australia, US...), the KRG is insuring that important and rich people have a stake in their continuity and stability. It seems like a pretty good strategy, except ...there's no federal hydrocarbons agreement! This article is just talking about oil in Dohuk, which is an "undisputed" KRG territory - but if the KRG starts trying to doll out contracts for say, Kirkuk...it will be chaos for everyone.
Until a federal hydrocarbons SHARING agreement can be reached - should the KRG be contracting with international companies, further mixing up the mixed up mess in Iraq oil interests? I'm skeptical.
On the other hand, investment needs to start ASAP because the country needs the revenue to start rebuilding. The KRG is, well, leading the way.
A last thought on something else that comes up in the article -- PETER GALBRAITH is getting quite a cut of the revenue. This is a little bit interesting! Galbraith has a long history with the Kurds - often being the only American diplomat advocating for them (in the gap years between Operation Provide Comfort and the Iraq War - as things were "touch and go" between the Kurds and the US)...Galbraith has been a strong advocate for Kurdish autonomy (sometimes, I stress, the only American advocate for Kurdish autonomy who spent long periods of time IN Kurdistan before 2003) and now, he's cutting a profit for it. Just some food for thought.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
My One Month Anniversary : Back in America
A couple of days ago, I realized that I've been back in the U.S. of A. for almost one month now. One month ago today, I packed up and left Istanbul, marking the end of a 6 month adventure in an amazing country.
So, what are my thoughts now? Of the past month, of those six, of the future...here's a slew of them.
On the past month: It's all just sort of "happened." Essays, work, sorority life...all just started happening and I got completely lost in it. It's been a rough adjustment, if you could even call it that. Almost nothing is as I expected it to be, and I've spent the past month in half a daze, going through the motions and completing all the tasks but my heart's been out of it for sure.
On Wednesday I had a strong and strange epiphany over a killer black tea at Peet's Coffee: it's time to get a move on now. Time to take control of my own damned life and make something with it! I'm here, this is how life is now and it is high time to move forward.
I flashed back to my birthday (was it only 4 months ago?) and the amazing feelings of empowerment that came along with my travels through southwestern Turkey. I tapped into those memories, reminded myself of how capable I am and briefly chastised myself for not doing enough with my life for a month.
So, I wrote myself a long letter and 10 succinct, important goals, packed up my stuff and started on my new adventure.
So, what are my thoughts now? Of the past month, of those six, of the future...here's a slew of them.
On the past month: It's all just sort of "happened." Essays, work, sorority life...all just started happening and I got completely lost in it. It's been a rough adjustment, if you could even call it that. Almost nothing is as I expected it to be, and I've spent the past month in half a daze, going through the motions and completing all the tasks but my heart's been out of it for sure.
On Wednesday I had a strong and strange epiphany over a killer black tea at Peet's Coffee: it's time to get a move on now. Time to take control of my own damned life and make something with it! I'm here, this is how life is now and it is high time to move forward.
I flashed back to my birthday (was it only 4 months ago?) and the amazing feelings of empowerment that came along with my travels through southwestern Turkey. I tapped into those memories, reminded myself of how capable I am and briefly chastised myself for not doing enough with my life for a month.
So, I wrote myself a long letter and 10 succinct, important goals, packed up my stuff and started on my new adventure.
Monday, December 28, 2009
Changing Views on Self-Determination
7 January 2010 edit to this post:
Read Eric Hobsbawm's Nations and Nationalism Since 1780, specifically chapter 5: "The Apogee of Nationalism," for a killer modernist perspective on the transformation and use of the self-determination principle in the post WWI period. an excerpt below:
"Given the official commitment of the victorious powers to Wilsonian nationalism, it was natural that anyone claiming to speak in the name of some oppressed or unrecognized people -- should do so in terms of the national principle, and especially of the right to self-determination...It was anti-imperial. Insofar as there were proto-national identifications, ethnic, religious, or otherwise, among the comon people, they were, as yet, obstacles rather than contributions to the national consciousness, and readily mobilized against nationalists by imperial masters...." (137).
I'm writing a final essay for my good ol' Theories and Case Studies in the Theory of Nationalism class in Turkey, and so I'm back in this whole nationalism thing. Specifically I'm looking at how modernists address something I judge to be the "contemporary reality" of "ethnonationalism." So far what I'm looking at is that modernists have focused their efforts on proving the emptiness of the "antiquity of nations" - ethnic nations, linguistic nations, and very importantly proving the recent invention of connecting the presence of a nation with the demand for a nation-state. However, when we look at contemporary separatist nationalist movements, many, arguably most of them are ethnic nationalist movements. I ask, so now what, modernists? Is it 'enough' for the school to write it off as an "imagined community," or part of the "inventing of tradition?" Essentially my first reaction is no. I think as theoreticians of nations, they have to address something that, while perhaps invented, is now "a reality."
Yeap, we'll see how this essay goes. Probably end up shoddy because I less than 24 hours to complete it...
_________
In my last spring quarter at UCSD, I began a research project on the King-Crane Commission (a.k.a the American Section of the Inter-Allied Commission on Syria) - an arm of Wilson's self-determination philosophy, born in the Council of Four meetings at the Post WWI Paris Peace Conference. A short history of the Commission: Wilson goes to Paris, finds out about all the Allied Powers' secret treaties and divvying up of the old Ottoman territories, gets disgusted and demands that they send in a "fact-finding" commission into the region and figure out what the people there want. The French and the British reluctantly agree, but never actually send anyone. So what's left of the "Inter-Allied Commission" is the American Section, headed but Charles Crane and Henry King...HENCE the King-Crane Commission.
I was infatuated with this commission because IF it and its report had been a bigger deal at the Paris Peace Conference, the state order in the Middle East, the construction of the mandates, of Israel, the partitioning of Syria -- all of it would have been different...but after a long time of not touching my research and just thinking about it, it's time to get real and admit that probably the reason I was so interested in this commission was because I believed so fiercely in self-determination. This became so clear every time I began to describe my research to my professors, family, friends, fellow students, etc., and I described this commission and its report as a failed opportunity for the United States. (I realize this is a little difficult to follow without knowing what happened, so another brief history lesson: The Commission was dispatched to Syria, conducted extensive interviews and research in the region and then produced a report and recommendations, all of which were later completely ignored. The consequences of this negligence were almost perfectly predicted in the Commission report, and well, "the rest is history."
Anyways let me get to the point of this post, which is that I've stopped thinking so highly of self-determination. It has ceased to be an uplifting idea, associated with freedom/independence. In the past semester, inundated with the study of nationalism and seeing the effects of a world order based off of nation-states, national self-determination, nationalistic factions, interests, obsessions...well, it's possible that nation-states were a mistake. nationalistic-ness...mistakes mistakes mistakes that possibly catapulted us into this century of "small scale endemic warfare" (see Joseph Jaffe's most recent article in Foreign Affairs).
Do I have an alternative world order? Meh, not really. I'm just doubting the viability of the one we've got now.
Read Eric Hobsbawm's Nations and Nationalism Since 1780, specifically chapter 5: "The Apogee of Nationalism," for a killer modernist perspective on the transformation and use of the self-determination principle in the post WWI period. an excerpt below:
"Given the official commitment of the victorious powers to Wilsonian nationalism, it was natural that anyone claiming to speak in the name of some oppressed or unrecognized people -- should do so in terms of the national principle, and especially of the right to self-determination...It was anti-imperial. Insofar as there were proto-national identifications, ethnic, religious, or otherwise, among the comon people, they were, as yet, obstacles rather than contributions to the national consciousness, and readily mobilized against nationalists by imperial masters...." (137).
I'm writing a final essay for my good ol' Theories and Case Studies in the Theory of Nationalism class in Turkey, and so I'm back in this whole nationalism thing. Specifically I'm looking at how modernists address something I judge to be the "contemporary reality" of "ethnonationalism." So far what I'm looking at is that modernists have focused their efforts on proving the emptiness of the "antiquity of nations" - ethnic nations, linguistic nations, and very importantly proving the recent invention of connecting the presence of a nation with the demand for a nation-state. However, when we look at contemporary separatist nationalist movements, many, arguably most of them are ethnic nationalist movements. I ask, so now what, modernists? Is it 'enough' for the school to write it off as an "imagined community," or part of the "inventing of tradition?" Essentially my first reaction is no. I think as theoreticians of nations, they have to address something that, while perhaps invented, is now "a reality."
Yeap, we'll see how this essay goes. Probably end up shoddy because I less than 24 hours to complete it...
_________
In my last spring quarter at UCSD, I began a research project on the King-Crane Commission (a.k.a the American Section of the Inter-Allied Commission on Syria) - an arm of Wilson's self-determination philosophy, born in the Council of Four meetings at the Post WWI Paris Peace Conference. A short history of the Commission: Wilson goes to Paris, finds out about all the Allied Powers' secret treaties and divvying up of the old Ottoman territories, gets disgusted and demands that they send in a "fact-finding" commission into the region and figure out what the people there want. The French and the British reluctantly agree, but never actually send anyone. So what's left of the "Inter-Allied Commission" is the American Section, headed but Charles Crane and Henry King...HENCE the King-Crane Commission.
I was infatuated with this commission because IF it and its report had been a bigger deal at the Paris Peace Conference, the state order in the Middle East, the construction of the mandates, of Israel, the partitioning of Syria -- all of it would have been different...but after a long time of not touching my research and just thinking about it, it's time to get real and admit that probably the reason I was so interested in this commission was because I believed so fiercely in self-determination. This became so clear every time I began to describe my research to my professors, family, friends, fellow students, etc., and I described this commission and its report as a failed opportunity for the United States. (I realize this is a little difficult to follow without knowing what happened, so another brief history lesson: The Commission was dispatched to Syria, conducted extensive interviews and research in the region and then produced a report and recommendations, all of which were later completely ignored. The consequences of this negligence were almost perfectly predicted in the Commission report, and well, "the rest is history."
Anyways let me get to the point of this post, which is that I've stopped thinking so highly of self-determination. It has ceased to be an uplifting idea, associated with freedom/independence. In the past semester, inundated with the study of nationalism and seeing the effects of a world order based off of nation-states, national self-determination, nationalistic factions, interests, obsessions...well, it's possible that nation-states were a mistake. nationalistic-ness...mistakes mistakes mistakes that possibly catapulted us into this century of "small scale endemic warfare" (see Joseph Jaffe's most recent article in Foreign Affairs).
Do I have an alternative world order? Meh, not really. I'm just doubting the viability of the one we've got now.
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