Sleeping With The Devil Read Online Free PDF Page A

market for any oil. What Yuri was after, I had little
    doubt, was sanction-busting Iraqi oil, currently selling for a discount of ten to fifteen
    dollars a barrel in Syria. It was impossible to nail down the exact amounts involved - Syria
    obviously didn’t publish figures - but I’d seen estimates that put the total trade above $3
    billion a year, a business big enough to attract Yuri and lots of other vultures of the global
    economy.
        Iraq was glad to have another market for its illicit oil, even at a
    steeply discounted price. It was thanks to smuggled oil that Saddam Hussein had stayed afloat
    since the end of the Gulf War. Saddam used the revenues to feed and equip his elite troops and
    intelligence services - his brutal praetorian guard. The clandestine trade in oil had started
    as soon as the last American M-16 fired its last round in February 1991. At first the oil moved
    via small barges hugging either side of the Persian Gulf coast and traveling at night, thereby
    avoiding detection by the American fleet. Iraq then started smuggling it out by truck, mostly
    to Turkey and Iran. I had seen miles-long truck convoys when I was in Kurdistan in 1994 and
    1995. Syria came late to the game but was more than making up for that in sheer volume. Most
    oil went through an old pipeline to the Syrian port of Baniyas. Some came in by truck.
        With all the revenue from Iraqi oil sold outside the United
    Nations-imposed oil-for-food regimen, Saddam did quite nicely. Not only could he pay for the
    forces that kept him from being overthrown, he had even started reequipping his regular army.
    Shipments of new Russian goodies were arriving every day. There was also enough money left over
    to keep Saddam’s inner circle, including his vicious son Uday, who ran the oil business, from
    worrying about a shortage of Cuban cigars, sports cars, and prostitutes. The Iraqi in the
    street never saw a penny of it.
        Syria didn’t do badly, either. By selling the illegal Iraqi oil on its
    domestic market, Syria freed up the oil it pumped from its own fields to sell abroad at world
    prices. The country’s oil exports rocketed from 320,000 to 450,000 barrels a day. Syria, of
    course, denied that the increase had anything to do with Iraqi oil, insisting against all
    evidence that the extra 130,000 barrels were squeezed out of its own fields. The fact is, Syria
    was making hundreds of millions of dollars a year off illicit Iraqi oil. For a country whose
    economy had been about to crater, that was a godsend.
        As for the commission agents and traders - the WD-40 of this lovely end
    run around the United Nations sanctions on Iraq - there was plenty of money to treat themselves
    to new estates in Saint-Tropez or on Spain’s Gold Coast. Maybe that’s what Yuri was after: He
    seemed to have taken a liking to sweeping views of the Mediterranean.
        The problem with Iraqi oil wasn’t buying; it was unloading. Although
    the trade in Iraqi crude was an open secret, Syria didn’t want to give anyone the chance to
    make a case by seizing a tanker full of the stuff. Syria never knew when some powerful
    congressman might hammer the State Department and the navy, forcing them to do something about
    the oil. With the screws turned, it wouldn’t take the navy long to find a Syrian oil tanker on
    the Mediterranean. Sobered by such an ugly prospect, Syria wouldn’t allow a drop of Iraqi oil
    to be exported. Yuri would have to come up with a damn serious sweetener to change Syria’s
    mind. Illegal oil trading isn’t my thing, but curiosity is, so I played along. They’d taught us
    at Langley that involvement is the first step to understanding.
        “How are we going to make any money if we pay two dollars more
    than we have to?” I asked.
        Yuri cut me off before I could continue. “Leave the numbers up to me.”
    He didn’t say anything for a minute, probably deciding how much he could risk telling me.