NIGERIAN PERSIA

Nigeria is a large country in western Africa, more than twice the size of California with an enormous population of almost 130 million.  It is a make-believe country, a colonial construction of the 19^th century British cobbling together 250 ethnic groups for the imperial heck of it.  The northern half of the place is mostly Moslem, the southern half mostly Christian or animist.

Nigeria is the most corrupt country in the world.  Bottomlessly, hopelessly corrupt.  It is also one of the world’s biggest oil producers, pumping out 2.4 million barrels per day (bpd), providing the country’s greatest source of revenue.  An overwhelming portion of the oil billions are ripped off by government officials and their cronies.  The tiniest fraction goes to the people who live where the oil is produced.

That’s the Delta region of the Niger, the river after which Nigeria is named.  Inhabited by the Christian-animist Ijaw and Ibo tribes, there are almost no roads, schools, hospitals, or employment.  It should be no surprise that a full-on armed guerrilla insurgency has emerged among these people – and their target is the oil installations.

Production is currently down 556,000 barrels to below 1.8 million bpd.  The pipelines supplying gas to Nigeria’s power stations have been blown causing a drastic reduction in national electricity output from 4,500 megawatts to 2,500.  Large areas of the country are now experiencing blackouts.

Yesterday (Wednesday 3/16), Nigeria’s Power and Steel Minister Liyel Imoke announced that the power blackout will continue "for some time," because repair workers accompanied by military forces "have not been able to access the vandalized areas of the gas pipeline.  The situation is beyond our control."

Sounds just like Iran.

The fourth largest oil producer in the world (the first three:  Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the US), Iran cranks out 3.9 million bpd – 80% of which comes from one region:  Khuzestan.

Here’s a map of the Iranian province of Khuzestan.  Notice what country is right across the border.

As we all know, the kind of folks who live in that part of Iraq bordering Khuzestan are Shia Arabs.  The folks who live in Khuzestan are mostly Shia Arabs too – and they are discriminated against and impoverished by the Persian rulers of Iran as the Ijaw and Ibo are in Nigeria.

And sure enough, just like in the Niger Delta, an armed guerrilla insurgency has emerged among the Shia Arabs of Khuzestan.  Public protests and demonstrations started last April when a letter written by Iran Vice President Mohammed Ali Abtahi was leaked, disclosing "official plans" to expel Arabs from Khuzestan as a security risk and replace them with ethnic Persians.

A number of local government officials have recently been killed by bomb attacks.  Five Arab men have been hung this month after being accused of the bombings, and three more are scheduled for execution. Oil pipelines were damaged after the hangings and Katyusha rockets fired at the giant Abadan refinery.

A National Liberation Movement of Ahwaz (NMLA) has been formed to organize armed resistance to Persian imperialism in Khuzestan.  There are some 60 Arabic language radio and satellite television stations beaming news about the resistance into the province.  The NMLA is predicting the rise of an "Ahwazi Intifada (insurrection)" with the goal of shutting down Iran’s oil production and bankrupting the regime.

If this were to happen, oil would be in three digits.

But that’s only the beginning.  The geopolitical bottom line is that Persia is going to come apart at the seams, and Shia Arabs are going to get for the first time in history their own – very powerful – country.

I’ve outlined the coming redrawing of the map of the Middle East in The Persian Ratchet and The Map of the Middle East’s Future (both August 2005).  What we need to focus on here is the dominant force Shia Arabs are going to be playing in the Middle East, to the gross demoralization of Shia Persians and Sunni Arabs.

Both these groups have looked down upon Shia Arabs for centuries as rafida (Arabic for the N-word).  Shi’ism was an invention of Shah Ismail I (1487-1524), founder of the Safayed Dynasty of Persia.  In fact, Persia itself was an invention of Ismail I, who glued the country together from pieces seized from the Sunni Ottoman Turks, the Sunni Uzbek Khans, and various tribal warlords.

Ismail (who was ethnic Azeri, not Persian, and 15 years old, but that’s another story) invented Shi’ism (Shiat Ali, the Party of Ali, son-in-law of Mohammed) as a state religion in opposition to orthodox Sunni (the path) Islam as a unifying force. 

All the Shia mythology of Ali, his son Hussein’s defeat at the Battle of Karbala, the Twelve Imams, the last of which is the Islamic Messiah who will return to save the world, all of it Ismail made up.  There is no independent historical documentation or verification for any of it  — any more than there is for the life of Mohammed himself.

Ever since Ismail, mutual Persian-Arab hatred has been intense.  The only folks Arab Sunnis despise more than Persian Shias are Arab Shias, Arabs who adopted the Shia heresy.  Shias were treated like dirt by the ruling Sunni elite in Iraq.  Democracy in Iraq means a ruling Shia majority, as they are over 60% of Iraq’s population. 

This means that, as Iran breaks apart like we discussed in Yogi in Iran last month,  the secessionist Shia Arabs in Khuzestan will want to merge with their Iraqi brethren. 

And that means that a Shia Arab Iraq, even apart from the Sunni and Kurd regions of Iraq which may or may not go their own way, will own most of Iraq’s and Iran’s oil.

Iran is not going to colonize and dominate Iraq.  It’s the other way around.  That’s one reason why Tehran is so desperate to acquire nuclear weapons before this happens.

Then there are the despised Shias in Saudi Arabia – a minority in the country but the majority in the region where the biggest Saudi oil fields are.  But that’s another story.