DNO Revelations: While Influencing Iraqi Constitution Peter Galbraith Held Stakes In Dahuk Oilfield

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DNO Revelations: While Influencing Iraqi Constitution Peter Galbraith Held Stakes In Dahuk Oilfield

New DNO Revelations: While He Was Influencing the Shape of the Iraqi Constitution, Peter Galbraith Held Stakes in an Oilfield in Dahuk

By Reidar Visser
10 October 2009

Ambassador Peter W. Galbraith, left

It is widely known that the former US diplomat Peter Galbraith has been one of the most prominent figures in shaping the state structure of Iraq in the period after 2003, especially with his vocal advocacy of various forms of radical decentralisation and/or partition solutions for Iraq�s political problems that are reflected in his books and numerous articles in the New York Review of Books, especially in the period from 2004 to 2008. Until now, though, it has generally been assumed that Galbraith�s fervent pro-partition propaganda was rooted in an ideological belief in national self-determination and a principled view of radical federalism as the best option for Iraq�s Kurds. Many have highlighted Galbraith�s experience as a former US diplomat (especially in the Balkans in the 1990s) as key elements of his academic and policy-making credentials.

Today, however, it has emerged that the realities were probably rather different. For some time, Norway�s most respected financial newspaper, Dagens N�ringsliv (DN), has been focusing on the operations of DNO, a small Norwegian private oil company in Kurdistan, especially reporting on unclear aspects concerning share ownership and its contractual partnerships related to the Tawke field in the Dahuk governorate. One particular goal has been to establish the identity of a hitherto unknown �third party� which participated with DNO in the initial production sharing agreement (PSA) for Tawke between 2004 and 2008, but was squeezed out when this deal was converted to a new contract in early 2008, prompting a huge financial claim of around 500 million US dollars against DNO which has yet to be settled. Today, DN claims to present proof that one of the two major �mystery stake-holders� involved in the claim was none other than Peter Galbraith, who allegedly held a five-percent share in the PSA for Tawke from June 2004 until 2008 through his Delaware-based company Porcupine. Galbraith�s partner was the Yemenite multi-millionaire Shahir Abd al-Haqq, whose identity was revealed by the same newspaper earlier this month. DN has published documents from Porcupine showing Galbraith�s personal signature, and today�s reports are complete with paparazzi photographs of Galbraith literally running away from reporters as they confront him in Bergen, where he is currently staying with his Norwegian wife. He refused to give any comment citing potential legal complications.

If proven correct, the implications of this revelation are so enormous that the story is almost unbelievable. As is well known, DNO has been criticised for the way its operations in the Kurdistan region interfere with Iraq�s constitutional process. To their credit, though, DNO are at the very least perfectly forthright about their mission in the area: They are a commercial enterprise set up to make a maximum profit in a high-risk area currently transitioning from conditions of war. Galbraith, however, was almost universally seen as �Ambassador Galbraith�, the statesmanlike former diplomat whose outspoken ideas about post-2003 Iraq were always believed to be rooted in idealism and never in anything else. Instead, it now emerges, he apparently wore several hats at the same time, and mixed his roles in ways that seem entirely incompatible with the capacity of an independent adviser on constitutional affairs.

It can be useful to briefly recapitulate the extent of Galbraith�s involvement in creating the institutions of government in the �new Iraq�. In fact, the best guide to this subject is Galbraith himself, who recounted his own role in the book The End of Iraq, published in 2006. It seems clear he got involved on the Kurdish side early on in 2003: �Two weeks after Saddam�s fall, I began discussions with the Kurdish leaders on the future of Kurdistan and what they could achieve in the new Iraqi constitution (italics added, p.159)�. Supposedly, according to a later book by Galbraith, he was at this point a consultant for ABC News! Later, he appears to have been a regular consultant for the Kurds. While his various books only make vague acknowledgement as far as payment is concerned (�for a few months at the end of 2003 and the beginning of 2004 I did some compensated work for Kurdish clients�, and in the second book from 2008 there is reference to unspecified �corporate clients with several of which I have an ongoing business relationship�), it seems pretty clear from the narrative in the book that at least some of this refers to consultancy work for the Kurdish political leaders in the period leading up to the drafting of the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL) which was adopted in March 2004.