伊拉克解体危机有望催生库尔德地区石油开采热潮

2014-06-24 14:44:44来源：可可英语

　　The horrific reality on the ground emerged on Sunday when ISIS posted macabre photographs and messages on Twitter (since removed) claiming that their fighters had executed about 1,700 Iraqi forces in Tikrit. Since there are almost no independent journalists working in the ISIS-held territory, the images are difficult to verify. But the gruesome scenes fueled calls for revenge among Shiites, thousands of whom have rushed to join militias in recent days.

　　上周日，ISIS在Twitter上发布了一组令人毛骨悚然的照片和消息(现已删除)，伊拉克的可怕现实终于浮现在世人面前。这个组织声称，他们的战士已经在提克里特处决了大约1,700伊拉克士兵。由于ISIS控制区几乎没有独立记者的踪迹，这些图像目前还难以核实。然而，受到照片中可怕场面的刺激，什叶派呼吁报仇雪恨。最近几天，数千名什叶派穆斯林争相加入了各地的民兵组织。

　　Seen from the prism of Kurdistan—Iraq’s mountainous northern region hemmed between Syria, Turkey and Iran, which enjoys some political autonomy from Baghdad, but which is forbidden to export its own oil—the stunningly quick implosion has been a potential godsend, in effect, sorting out years of deadlocked arguments with Baghdad.

　　群山环绕的库尔德自治区位于伊拉克北部，处于叙利亚、土耳其和伊朗之间，巴格达政府允许该地区享有一部分政治自主权，但禁止它自行出口石油。在库尔德人看来，尽管暴乱局势的演变速度令人震惊，但它实际上是一个天赐良机，有望解决他们与巴格达持续多年的谈判僵局。

　　As Iraqi forces abandoned the hugely oil-rich town of Kirkuk last Thursday, Kurdish soldiers, called peshmerga, moved in swiftly, seizing control of an area which on its own has nearly 9 billion barrels of oil reserves. That places Exxon’s new bloc solidly in Kurdish hands rather than in some fuzzy contested territory that both Kurds and Baghdad claim. Kirkuk has been intensely disputed since Saddam drove out the Kurds during the 1980s and 1990s in a brutal ethnic-cleansing campaign, and the Kurds have been determined to recapture it for decades.

　　上周四，伊拉克军队放弃石油储量充沛的基尔库克市之后，被称为“自由斗士(peshmerga)” 的库尔德士兵迅速行动，最终控制了这片石油储量接近90亿桶的区域。现在，埃克森美孚公司的新油田已经牢牢掌控在库尔德人手中，而不是处在一片库尔德人和巴格达政府都声称拥有所有权的争议领土之上。上世纪80年代和90年代，萨达姆通过一轮轮残酷的种族清洗运动赶走了库尔德人。数十年来，基尔库克的主权一直极具争议，但库尔德人重新夺回这座城市的决心从来没有动摇过。

　　Since the U.S. occupation ended in 2012, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has made it that the government would blacklist any oil company operating in territory the Kurds claimed was theirs, and shut it out of southern Iraq’s supergiant fields; Exxon effectively ignored the threat, calculating (correctly) that it was too big to shut out. And meanwhile, the Kurds have over the past months quietly opened its own export pipeline to Turkey, steadily putting in place the building blocks of a new country.

　　自从美军2012年撤离伊拉克以来，伊拉克总理努里o马利基已经明确表示，政府将把所有在库尔德人声称拥有主权的区域运营的石油公司列入黑名单，禁止它们开发伊拉克南部的超巨型油田。埃克森美孚公司有效地忽略了这一威胁——它揣测(非常准确)，作为全球最大的石油公司，自己不会被拒之门外。与此同时，库尔德人在过去几个月已经静悄悄地开启了通往土耳其的石油出口管道，正在一步一个脚印地搭建起成立一个新国家的基石。

　　Now that new state looks like a reality in all but name. Cunningly, the KRG is unlikely to declare real independence soon. With Iraq in havoc, it hardly needs to. “It’s become very clear to the Kurds that events in the past few days will enable them to declare independence at some point,” Ayham Kamel, Middle East director of the Eurasia Group, told Fortune on Monday. “We are definitely moving in the direction of statehood, but it will not be declared in 2014.”

　　现在，这个新的国家看起来已经成为现实，只是差个名分而已。KRG不太可能很快就宣布真正的独立，这是一种很高明的策略。鉴于伊拉克已经陷于动荡，它几乎不需要这样做。“库尔德人非常清楚，过去几天的事件使得他们能够在将来某个时刻宣布独立，”欧亚集团(Eurasia Group)中东事务主管艾哈姆o卡迈勒周一对《财富》记者这样说道。“我们正在迈向建国的方向，这一点毫无疑问，但我们不会在2014年宣布独立。”

　　When I traveled to Kirkuk last year, my Kurdish guide, Hoshang Ishmail, the community development manager for the United Arab Emirates-based Crescent Petroleum, told me that Kurds would readily fight if Baghdad every blocked them from drilling for oil. “Nothing binds us to Iraq except the status quo,” he said. Now that status quo has been ripped apart. And little binds the Kurds and their oil fields to the chaos raging around them.

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