The good oil

Last week I watched Half a Yellow Sun a fairly recent film based on the book of this title by Chimanda Ngozi Adichie. It is a story set against the background of the Biafran civil war in Nigeria. Also last week, Iran, the Americans and the Europeans confirmed that Iran abided by the agreement on Iran's nuclear program, the Americans and the Europeans freed Iran's frozen assets, assets that belonged to Iran, so freezing them was a dubious move in the first place. There was jubilation all round. The Biafran war and Iran's alienation from the rest of the world had common roots, namely oil. Two million people died between 1967 and 1970, must of them of starvation during the Biafran – Nigerian civil war, a war fought to ensure the uninterrupted flow of Shell oil. The fact that the British bequeathed a constitutional system to Nigeria that made the northern Feudal Islamic entities dominate over the more populous, largely Christian southern tribes was the cause of the war, but it was oil that prompted the British to step in and help to suppress the revolt. In Iran in 1951, the popular, educated Iranian politician Mohammad Mosaddegh was elected Prime Minister. His administration introduced a range of progressive social and political reforms such as social security, rent control, and land reforms. But most notably, he nationalised the oil industry to rectify the exploitation of Iraninan workers and Iran's natural resources by the oil giant BP. The British government found this intolerable, persuaded the American administration to commit the CIA to destabilizing the democratically elected Iranian regime while strengthening the autocratic ruthless regime of Reza Pahlavi, the Shah. Not surprisingly, the overthrow of Mosaddegh rankled for generations of Iranians, colouring the Iranian perception of the Western powers, a resentment that ultimately lead to the 1979 Iranian revolution and overthrow of the Shah by the religious fundamentalist Ayatollah Khomeini. Oil and the exploitation by rich countries and business interests of poorer countries lead to a lot of bloodshed. It is wonderful that there is a glut of oil around, the price of oil plummeted, and in the future it may not be worth the while of Western countries to overthrow the governments of other countries to safeguard their interests in oil.