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The Lebanese have subsided the Syrians are more cooperative. Now the difficulty is the Iraqi themselves. Watching the rise of Mossadegh next door in Iran, I.P.C.'s alarmed management sped representatives to Baghdad last spring to negotiate a 50-50 split. Angry opposition rose from Iraq's right-wing Istiqlal (Independence) Party, led by Sediq Shenshal, an eloquently demagogic Anglophobe and the man most likely to become an Iraqi Mossadegh. For months the pro-ratification forces, led by perennial Premier Nuri es-Said Pasha, old and faithful henchman of the British, hesitated to force the issue in Parliament. The last time that Iraqi moderates brought back a treaty from Britain —the generous Portsmouth (England) Treaty of 1948 granting Iraq many benefits—they got not thanks but a series of anti-British riots that raged for two weeks, killing 34 and wounding hundreds. The government was forced to flee and the Regent had to repudiate the treaty before the rioters would subside.
Two weeks ago, canny old Nuri es-Said managed to push the new proposal through Parliament, by a vote of 89 to 7. Now oil should flow. Iraq badly needs the revenue. Nowhere in the Middle East, except in Iran's incredibly wretched Azerbaijan province, is there such misery—people dressed in patched-up patches, shoeless in freezing cold; fighting with the dogs for swill; violent, grasping beggars. By law, most of Iraq's oil revenues now go to the country's new Development Board, whose principal task is the Wadi Tharthar project to divert floodwaters into irrigation and make ancient deserts bloom.
SAUDI ARABIA
The British Empire moved in and made itself at home along the Persian Gulf coast before most Americans heard of the place. At a time when the Continental Congress in Philadelphia was fretting about King George III, the British were already sending desert mail through Kuwait. Their troops marched into Bahrein while Dan'l Boone was potting Indians. The British never gave up their hold. Today, they "protect" the whole west side of the Gulf—the oil-bearing region. The sheiks are treaty-bound to give concessions only to the British, and political advisers sent from London see that this is done.
Every oil company from the Trucial Sheiks north to Iraq speaks with a British accent. Though Kuwait Oil is half U.S.-owned, it is incorporated as a British company, and at the Ahmadi clubhouse, Punch lies on the tables, not The New Yorker. The Bahrein Petroleum Co. is 100% U.S.-owned, but is registered as a Canadian corporation, and employs more Britons than Americans. Iraq Petroleum belongs to four countries, but save for the indispensable drillers whose Texas-Oklahoma skill cannot be duplicated, there is not an American voice to be heard at the Kirkuk, Basra or Mosul fields.
In the whole Middle East there is only one truly U.S. company—the Arabian American Oil Co. of Saudi Arabia. Aramco is American-owned, American-operated, and entirely geared to the American way of doing business. Its bosses have deliberately tried to avoid the mistakes the British committed. The sahib manner is taboo; respect for Arab customs is required, and Americans who don't conform get a swift trip home. The first Aramco geologists in Saudi Arabia wore beards and Arab garb, to be as inconspicuous and inoffensive as possible.