“Marrying a pretty woman has its disadvantages,” said a friend of mine once at a party. “Even the most virtuous of your friends,” he explained, “cannot resist the flirting instincts, and you must be on your guard all the time.”
His insecurity appeared to me to be analogous to the apprehension oil-rich countries experience. If you have oil under your carpet, you suddenly start finding your rightful place in the newspaper headlines. And before long, you become exposed to cleverly crafted machinations planned by the most malevolent of forces in today’s world. It is all because you have what they call the “black gold,” a liquid which powers the planet today, stored under your earth.
Cartoonist Hergé possessed such astonishing artistic intellect that fat volumes can be written about his ability to lampoon absurdities in international politics and interracial struggles. The reader might be wondering why I am departing from the subject of oil in such an abrupt manner.
There is of course a reason, and it should be clear when we focus on one of the most dynamic of the famous Tintin adventures: “The Broken Ear” (1937). The story of this fascinating comic is extraordinarily gripping, and it progresses with such celerity that it is clearly not a book meant only for children.
In fact, a critical analysis of the plot and its development reveals that children may not even possess the cerebral qualities required to comprehend the sentiments and observations revealed in the book. In “The Broken Ear,” Tintin travels to South America seeking to demystify the strange interest of two goons in a wooden statuette belonging to a tribe called the Arumbaya.
Hergé takes the liberty of creating two not-particularly-friendly Latin American nations which do not exist in reality, namely San Theodores and Nuevo Rico. After Tintin becomes, through an uproarious chain of events, a colonel and the aide-de-camp to General Alcazar, the autocratic ruler of the San Theodores, he is one day visited by one Mr Trickler, a representative of the General American Oil.
Notice the hilarious but very suggestive name Hergé chose for this character. Trickler tries to convince Tintin to persuade Alcazar to declare war on Nuevo Rico so that Gran Chapo, the oil rich territory of the neighbouring country could be safely drilled for black gold.
Tintin is astonished and he exclaims that it would mean bloodshed for oil. Mr Trickler asserts solemnly that “an omelette cannot be made without breaking some eggs!” The representative of the General American Oil is shown the door by the colonel, and Trickler, recognising Tintin could be an obstacle to his path, frames the latter for espionage.
General Alcazar ousts the protagonist who somehow manages to escape, but Trickler successfully coaxes the asinine military man to engage in an internecine campaign against the Nuevo Ricans.
Later it is revealed that Nuevo Rico itself was very interested in war because it was being incited by the British South American Petrol company so that the oil fields belonging to San Theodores could be exposed to their exploitation.
This extraordinary comic book, written and drawn over 70 years ago, reveals that the vile games of war played to decide who wins the rights over the oil fields are nothing new. The trend unfortunately continues today and the last casualty was Iraq.
Alan Greenspan, in his memoir, has acknowledged solemnly that even though it is “politically inconvenient,” it is an open secret that the sanguinary war was fought for oil. General John Abizaid, an Iraq war veteran, showed a nonchalant audacity by saying that it was “of course for oil.”
The truth that has transpired today is that the war was fought with the pretext of fighting terrorism, and it resulted in the killing and raping of thousands of innocent Iraqis. An Iraqi friend of mine, a devoted Muslim, used to recite from the Quran two very favourite lines of his whenever he would talk about the war: “And when you ask them why they are creating trouble on Allah’s land, they tell you that they have only come to set things right! Beware! They are the troublemakers themselves but they know not! (Baqarah 2:11, 2:12)”
King Faisal’s blunder of selling oil in the seventies continues to make the whole world suffer. Now the forces of evil are focusing their attention on Iran, the second nation to refuse to sell oil for just dollars.