Will the Real Peter Galbraith please stand up?

by: Maggie Gundersen

Fri Nov 13, 2009 at 09:17:38 AM EST

If one accepts verbatim the New York Times latest tirade, one would believe that Galbraith is the money hungry political operative painted in Wednesday's Times and berated further in yesterday's Times' update.

My research and my telephone conversation yesterday with former Ambassador Peter Galbraith paint an entirely different picture.  Galbraith began publicly advocating for the Kurds more than 20-years ago when, according to the website Kurdistan, the other Iraq:

Galbraith helped expose Saddam Hussein's murderous "al-anfal" campaign against the Iraqi Kurds. He documented Iraqi chemical weapons attacks on Kurdish villagers and the depopulation of rural Kurdistan in reports published by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. His work on the Kurdish issue led the US Senate to pass comprehensive sanctions on Iraq in 1988.

Since full disclosure on Galbraith's part has been called into question, I want to be clear about my interactions with Galbraith.  I first met the former Ambassador in December 2008 when he was contemplating a run for Governor of Vermont.  

I don't know Galbraith in a personal sort of way, but the Galbraith I have met several times has always been reachable, open to dialogue, and willing to disclose.  So who is this alleged new villain?

Galbraith claims that this new onslaught of negativity has to do with his recent revelations regarding election fraud in Afghanistan, and nothing to do with facts of his relationship to Kurdish oil which he disclosed five years ago, in his 2006 book, and to the UN before he was appointed as a special envoy.  Is he right?  All my research, interviews and discussions show that Galbraith was only targeted for his known financial connections after he spoke out against the election in Afghanistan.  Moreover, all the slander and innuendo, sadly began in Norway.  I say "sadly" because Galbraith's wife is Norwegian anthropologist Tone Bringa.  While the family predominately lives in Townsend, Vermont, Norway has always been a frequent destination.  

The first criticism of Galbraith, regarding his role with the Kurds in Iraq and Galbraith's alleged financial dealings came from Norwegian journalists who have played a significant role in vilifying Galbraith, in what I believe is a full-court press to obliterate his record.  The Norwegian journalists are claiming that their recently uncovered dirt has nothing to do with the battle between Norwegian UN envoy UN Kai Eide and Galbraith's blistering critique of the Afghanistan election.

Most people seem to have conveniently forgotten that Galbraith did not begin condemning the election.  He was asked to leave Afghanistan, and he did leave without any negative comments.  It is only after he was condemned for his work and criticism by some within the UN, that he made it all public.

What's at stake here?  The same thing that has always been at stake:  money and lots of it.  And it's not Galbraith who has the money or the power.  Will Galbraith get any money from his almost 25-years of trying to fight for Kurdish rights? Maybe and maybe not...  Contracts are not set in stone and business markets in volatile war-torn countries collapse every day.  The truth of the matter is that following his work for the US government and following the framing of the Kurdish constitution, Galbraith formed a company and participated, as a private citizen, in bringing business to Kurdistan.

One of Galbraith's more than 20-year crusade has been creating some sort of financial independence and viable economic future for the Kurds, a formerly nomadic culture without any industrial infrastructure of their own.  

The first criticism of Galbraith's role in Kurdistan came from Norway's financial newspaper, Dagens Næringsliv (DN).  The second onslaught was created by Reidar Visser a research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and editor of the website http://historiae.org which focuses on southern Iraq.  Visser, who earned his doctorate in Middle Eastern history at the University of Oxford on the subject of separatist movements in southern Iraq, published the book Basra, the Failed Gulf State: Separatism and Nationalism in Southern Iraq (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2006).  

Visser, an Iraqi supporter, and Galbraith, a Kurdish supporter since the mid 1980s, have entirely different scholarly opinions regarding Iraq.  Visser takes this opportunity to defend his Norwegian compatriots and, as he has also done previously, he uses this opportunity to advance his own scholarly analysis of the ethnic discord in Iraq among the Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds.  

Look at an excerpt from Visser's August 2006 review of Galbraith's book, The End of Iraq.

Galbraith seems to have scant interest in such examples of ethno-religious coexistence and reconciliation; instead he mocks anyone who shows interest in keeping Iraq unified. He roundly condemns the Bush administration for the heinous crime of trying to secure a "non-ethnic Iraq" (p. 166) and castigates them for speaking of an "Iraqi people, as if there were a single people akin to the French or even the American people" (p. 83). But he fails to provide any historically convincing justification for his own quantum leap from diagnosing a state of civil strife to prescribing territorial, segregationist solutions. That lack of historical perspective is a serious problem, because it precludes the writer from distinguishing between societies that are chronically unstable and those that experience a serious but reversible flare-up of civic violence. It should serve as a reminder to Galbraith that his claims about Kurdish leader's anti-Iraq attitudes cannot possibly be repeated with regard to Sunni and Shiite elites, and that, despite the ongoing horrific violence, large masses of Iraqis, certainly in the Arab areas, continue to demand a "national Iraqi" army, a "national Iraqi" oil distribution policy, and a meaningful role for Baghdad as capital.

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 Næringsliv (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.

Counter this onslaught of negativity by one writer and one newspaper in the small country of Norway, both with vested interest in selling their personal viewpoints, with the October 18, 2007 interview by Mother Jones with Galbraith.  

In Mother Jones, Galbraith stays true to the message he has given for more than 20-years.  Stop the bloodshed and protect the Kurds.

MJ: What is our moral obligation to the people of Iraq?

PG: Well, I think it is important to avoid confusing a moral obligation with an achievable mission. I mean, arguably we have a moral obligation to stop this civil war that is going on and which is taking thousands of lives, a civil war that was perhaps inevitable in some form when Saddam's regime collapsed, whether we were the agent of it or not. What was inherent in Iraq was untenable-that is, Sunni rule over a Shiite majority, which could only exist with great brutality. Once it went, there were going to be changes that were likely to lead to violence. I don't blame the civil war on the U.S., but our incompetence and our utter negligence in failing to plan seriously for the post war...beginning with not having any plan to provide security in Baghdad and stop the looting, has made this situation much worse, and you can argue that we have a moral obligation. But I would also argue that we don't have the ability to stop the civil war. We're not stopping it now.

Through out the Mother Jones interview, Galbraith continues to say what he has said since the 1980s, that the ethnic cleansing of the Kurds is why Iraq cannot continue down the same path.

Clearly in looking at Galbraith, he has been totally on message for more than 20-years.  Galbraith first broke the story of Saddam Hussein's attempt to wipe out the Kurdish people using chemical warfare back in the 1980s.

During the 1991 uprising, Galbraith traveled throughout rebel-held northern Iraq, narrowly escaping across the Tigris as Iraqi forces recaptured the area. His written and televised accounts provided early warning of the catastrophe overtaking the civilian population and contributed to the decision to create a safe haven in northern Iraq.

In 1992, Galbraith brought out of northern Iraq 14 tons of captured Iraqi secret police documents detailing the atrocities against the Kurds. Galbraith's work in Iraqi Kurdistan is chronicled in Samantha Power's Pulitzer Prize winning book, A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (Basic Books, 2002), and was the subject of a 1992 ABC Nightline documentary.

From 1998 to 1999, and from 2001 to 2003, Ambassador Galbraith was a Professor of National Security Strategy at the National War College in Washington, DC. In April 2003, he was an ABC news consultant, arriving in Baghdad four days after the first American troops. He is the author of numerous articles on Iraq, including four widely discussed articles in the New York Review of Books: "How to Get Out of Iraq" (April 2004) and"Iraq: Bungled Transition" (September 2004), "Iraq: Bush's Islamic Republic" (August 2005) and "Last Chance for Iraq" (October 2005).

None of what Galbraith is saying is new, nor has the way he is saying it changed.  Galbraith has been consistent for decades in his condemnation of Iraq and its abuse of the Kurdish people.  Galbraith's stance is in direct opposition to that of Norwegian author Visser.

Does Galbraith have a company with investments in Kurdistan?  Undoubtedly yes.  

Is he rich from those investments?  No.  

Did he inform the Kurds and others, including the UN, that he made these investments? Yes.

Was he specific about the exact nature of the contract? No, the non-disclosure agreement signed with the Norwegian oil company is a confidential corporate legal document.

During this whole fiasco, the biggest criticism made about Galbraith is that he allegedly negotiated his oil contract while advising the Kurds on their constitution.  Not true.

Galbraith advised the Kurds for months prior to the drafting of the preliminary constitution in March 2004. The company he owns with his son, named Porcupine was not founded until June 2004.

The Boston Globe claims:

In speeches, meetings with US officials, and articles in the New York Review of Books, Galbraith said Kurds should be given maximum autonomy and should have the right to develop their own oil fields, free of control by Iraq's central government.

But the same time, Galbraith was quietly entering into business deals that gave him a financial stake in the positions he was advocating. In late 2003 and early 2004, he worked as a paid consultant to Kurdish politicians, advising them on legal language they should seek to insert into Iraqi laws to keep future oil development under their control. Later, in 2005, he advised them again on an unpaid basis.

On June 23, 2004, Galbraith and his son, Andrew, registered a Delaware partnership called Porcupine, which entered into a business arrangement with DNO, a Norwegian oil company, according to company documents and a statement recently circulated by Porcupine.

Two days after Porcupine was established, the Kurdistan Regional Government signed a contract to develop Kurdistan's first oil field with DNO, ushering in a potential economic windfall for the semiautonomous region. DNO eventually struck oil, and currently owns a 55 percent stake in the Tawke field.

I believe there is a concerted effort to obliterate Galbraith's humanitarian record in an effort to make sure that no one in the world will ever again go near his work.

Michael Rubin, former Staff Assistant, Iran and Iraq, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2002-2004, is a current political pundit with the conservative National Review (NR):

the biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr. in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for Republican/conservative news, commentary, and opinion."

Rubin has picked up Visser's monologue and carried it forward as if it is the whole truth.  Rubin has even gone as far as to say that he knew Galbraith spoke to Paul Wolfowitz, former deputy secretary of defense under Donald Rumsfeld, because he was there, and accuses Galbraith, who still worked for the US government at that time, of trying to manipulate Wolfowitz for Galbraith's alleged oil money.  

Michael Rubin has his own agenda and Galbraith has been a harsh critic of the Bush War agenda.  Wolfowitz and Rubin would love to see their own record cleared and take down one of their harshest critics in the process.

Two things stick out in my mind.  First, to heed the advice from Deep Throat during the Watergate scandal: "follow the money".  Follow the money on this trajectory and one will see that it is the same old Bush war machine still behind much of this vicious attack on Galbraith.  

Look at current Wikipedia entries and notice that those on Galbraith have been significantly changed from archived entries.  Is this another attempt to erase Galbraith's credibility and thereby allow the discrepancies about the Afghan elections to totally disappear?  It is a hue of a different color and a patterned smear campaign that within two days of these fantastic stories about Galbraith, the entire tenor of the Wikipedia entries have been changed.  It reminds me of the changes made by the nuclear industry to many of the truthful Wikipedia entries about safety issues at various nuclear plants.  It seems that the nuclear industry regularly reinvents Wikipedia entries.

Undoubtedly, should one believe this new toast to "good journalism" by the New York Times?  When it comes down to it, the whole report goes back to several Norwegian journalists.  What is truth and what is embellished?  The single source of this story reminds me of Jayson Blair's meteoric rise to the top of the New York Times using slander, innuendo, poor research and actual fabrication.  Just as in many of Blair's New York Times stories, this one also does not hold up to scrutiny.

Much of what Galbraith said to me is similar to what he said to NPR yesterday afternoon.

The difference is that my further research substantiates the fact that Galbraith has been giving the same message on Kurdistan as he has for more than 20 years.

Galbraith favors the independence, real or de facto, of Kurdistan, and has worked with Kurdish leaders toward that end. In 2003, he resigned from U.S. government after 24 years of service in order to be able to criticize U.S. Iraq policy more freely.

Galbraith's criticism of the Afghan elections appears to have hit a raw nerve.  What else would make him such a target after almost 30-years of globetrotting humanitarian efforts?

Does Galbraith have an agenda in regards to the Kurds?   Undoubtedly.  Galbraith has a long history of defending the Kurdish peoples and Kurdish interests.