By Peter Greste in Basra

03-08-04

Think of the numbers. Iraq's oil pipelines stretch for 5,418 km through the desert. There's another 1,739 km of gas lines, and 1,343 km for refined fuels, 8,500 km in all. Most of it lies on the surface, exposed, rusting, and ripe for attack. In addition, there are hundreds of storage tanks, refineries and pumping stations.

"Of course it's vulnerable," admitted Lieutenant Colonel Mazin Yousef. He's the commanding officer for the newly formed Oil Protection Force in southern Iraq.

"But the term of 'vulnerable', what does it mean? Everywhere anybody can do anything, even if it is protected by the Coalition Forces."

The oil pipelines alone carry 2.2 mm bpd out of the country. The vast bulk of that gets pumped onto ships through two vast, creaking off-shore terminals that over the past year have earned Iraq around $ 1 bn a month.

Until the handover of power, US and British forces were largely responsible for protecting the oil infrastructure. But now, they aregradually handing control to Lt Col Mazin's Force, a paramilitary security agency that already has 4,500 men across the south where most of the key oil installations lie.

"We are a security force, not an army," he said. "If we come across a situation that we can't handle on our own, we call in the multinational force, the British, for help. Eventually it will be the Iraqi National Guard, but we are improving our capabilities every day."

And that's the philosophy that underpins the coalition forces' exit strategy: train local security forces to take over, and fade into the shadows. Lt Col Mazin insists his men are capable, but he also admits that there are problems.

"We need more manpower, more vehicles, and more equipment. The time will come when the ministry or the Iraqi government will back us up. But for now there are some limitations to our efforts," he said.

So far they've been lucky. There have been dozens of small attacks on the pipeline and its infrastructure. Thieves have punctured the lines to smuggle oil; protesters have set explosives to draw attention to their complaints; and militants have attacked the national economy to undermine the interim Iraqi government.

But it all pales into insignificance alongside one attack that very nearly destroyed the single most important piece of infrastructure in the country: one of the two off-shore oil terminals that together account for about 80 % of Iraq's oil exports.

Three suicide boat bombers sneaked through a multi-national navy cordon last April. A traditional fishing boat blew up when a US navy patrol tried to turn it away. As attention focused on the smouldering wreckage, two other boats sped towards the terminal. They made it to within 30 or 40 metres, when Iraqi guards shot them and triggered the explosives without causing any significant damage.

Since then, the taskforce of US, British and Australian warships have been beefed up, and they've posted their own heavily armed sentries on the terminals. And they have their hands full.

A fishing fleet of almost 200 dhows regularly tests the patience of the warships, often straying just inside the exclusion zone before being chased out. It's a job that will, one day, be handled by the fledgling Iraqi Coast Guard. But the new recruits are still only learning how to handle their entire fleet of five unarmed patrol boats.

"It will be five or ten years before we have enough boats," said the coastguard's deputy commander Captain Thamir. "We need frigates, maybe 10 of them, and lots of equipment like radar and communications. But we are also learning fast, so God willing, we will be able to do the job soon."

The taskforce commander, the US Captain Jeff Niner, admitted that it will be a very long time, if ever, before the Iraqis could mount this kind of defence. But he insisted they may not have to.
"The hope and the expectation is that we will not always face this type of threat and feel the need for this degree of security," he said.

But implicit in that, is an understanding that the politicians have to do their jobs and take the heat out of the insurgency to ease the long-term pressure on Iraqi security services. Given the recent spate of bombings and kidnappings, the temperature only seems to be rising.

Source: BBC News