Iraqi oil goes to China

Via Forbes we learn that a week after China was granted a license to develop Iraq's largest known oilfield, CNPC, Sinopec and CNOOC - three major Chinese oil companies - are already warming up to bid for 11 other oil and gas field contracts in Iraq that will be auctioned off later this year:

Chinese oil giants have turned to Africa and other developing countries to explore oil. With 115 billion barrels in proved remaining recoverable reserves, about 10% of the global total, Iraq has the world’s third-largest oil reserve after Saudi Arabia and Iran, and is China’s latest investment target.

To avoid unnecessary political pressure and to increase their chances to win the unprecedented oil projects, China Daily said Chinese companies might team up with foreign companies to form consortia to bid in Iraq’s second auction, continuing the strategy they used in the first round.

All the three Chinese major oil enterprises, paired with different overseas partners, took part in the bidding for all six oilfields and two gasfields contracts last Tuesday at Iraq’s first auction since the U.S.-led invasion.

Conflict and identity formation in sub-Saharan Africa

In earlier weeks I posted on the increasing patriotism among Iraqis and the extent to which this trend might be correlated with the scale of American military presence. A related paper by Doug Gibler, Marc Hutchinson and Steven Miller asks a similar question in sub-Saharan Africa. In their paper, they suggest that there is no straightforward relationship between conflict and identity formation. Rather, the tendency toward identity formation is contingent on the type of conflict and whether an individual belongs to the dominant ethnic group in a contested territory: 

Here we present the first cross-national, multi-level analysis of the effects of international and civil conflict on individual identity formation. Using Afrobarometer survey data from over 31,000 respondents in 16 separate sub-Saharan countries, we test our theory of how conflict affects the likelihood an individual will identify themselves as a member of their ethnic group rather than their nation. We find that international conflict exerts a strong influence on the likelihood and content of individual self-identification, but this effect varies with the type of conflict. International conflict leads the majority of individuals in targeted countries to identify themselves as citizens of their country. Individuals in countries that are initiating territorial disputes are more likely to self-identify as members of a particular ethnic group, however. Perhaps surprisingly, we find that the effect of civil conflict is inconsistent across models. Indeed, civil conflict only matters for individual identity formation when international conflict is fully specified in the multi-level model. That conflict has variegated effects on identity formation suggests the relationship between international conflict and identity formation is not endogenous. Further, the temporal controls we use to test the identity models confirm that self-identification with an ethnic group follows rather than precedes conflict. We discuss the importance of our theory and findings for the international conflict and identity literatures in some detail. 

[HT: The Monkey Cage]

Aid conditionality in the war on terror?

I applaud the idealism, but remain highly skeptical over the extent to which increasing military and civilian aid to Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan is going to facilitate progress in the war on terror. Yet, newly appointed Secretary of State Hilary Clinton seems to think it might:

Mrs Clinton [...] said that the administration’s plans to triple civilian aid to Pakistan to $1.5bn (€1.2bn, £1.1bn) a year were “not a blank cheque”. Under George W. Bush, former president, the US provided more than $10bn in military aid to the country amid complaints that funds were misused and subject to inadequate oversight.

The new administration is also taking a tough line with Iraq’s government. Mrs Clinton told Congress that Baghdad needed to do more to overcome political differences through the passage of national oil laws, the speedier release of prisoners under an amnesty law and action on not-yet implemented de-Baathification reform.

Mrs Clinton said: “We will certainly do our best to press the Iraqi government to combat sectarianism in their security forces and we will tie future training and equipping resources to progress on this front.”

The White House also emphasises pressing Iraq for “real political accommodation”, as well as diplomatic engagement with neighbouring states such as Iran and Syria.

Mrs Clinton also focused on corruption and government failings in Afghanistan: “We will tie aid to better performance by the Afghan national government, including anti-corruption initiatives and efforts to extend the rule of law across the country

This all sounds wonderful, but I strongly suggest Secretary Clinton take a crash course in (tied) aid policies (and their outcomes as regard government reform) in Africa, and elsewhere, before taking the plunge on this one. I could be mistaken in my cynicism, but I somehow don't think so.

Foreign occupation = Patriotism?

Interesting data produced by Mansoor Moaddel, along with Mark Tessler and Ronald Inglehart suggests that foreign occupation tends to breed patriotism (see their piece in Public Opinion Quarterly). 

[HT: The Monkey Cage]