14.04.2004

Victory to the Iraqi people

The war of liberation against the occupation has begun, writes Ian Donovan

Since the US-UK ‘coalition of the willing’ invaded Iraq a year ago, they have faced increasing resistance. By last autumn, more US troops had been killed as a result of acts of resistance than died in the period of the actual invasion and occupation itself.

Numerous roadside bombs, mortar attacks and suicide bombings harassed the occupiers. That the peoples of Iraq are not prepared to tolerate the occupation is of course to be welcomed by partisans of national rights and independence for oppressed peoples from the kind of neo-colonial ‘new world order’ that Bush and Blair are attempting to oppose. However, these attacks were carried out by obscure forces whose real mass basis is questionable. Many of their actions seemed as designed to kill as many Iraqi civilians as occupying troops. Some could only be described as outright atrocities: from the bombing of the Red Cross to the criminal attacks on shia pilgrims in Karbala who were commemorating the festival of Ashura at the beginning of March. The latter particularly indicated a sectarian motive; the culprits were likely sunni fanatics and/or elements loyal to or manipulated by the occupying forces aiming to turn sunni against shia, for the benefit only of the coalition.

From these bloodthirsty actions it was reasonable to deduce that the forces involved were remnants of Saddam Hussein’s regime, or else islamist elements whose complete contempt for the Iraqi masses was emblematic of their adventurist nature and lack of roots in these masses. Thus, though it was correct to welcome any military setbacks inflicted on our ‘own’ government and its US allies, which is an obligation for communists active in one of the occupying imperialist powers, nevertheless we could not commit ourselves to give any positive support for these so-called ‘forces of resistance’. But this period of low-level guerrilla activity, largely confined to Saddam Hussein’s home territory in the majority sunni districts of north-central Iraq, has now been transcended by a qualitative change in the configuration of, and mass support for, the forces confronting the occupiers.

In the last couple of weeks, as a result of molecular changes in that preceding period, the situation has been transformed. The entry of previously uncommitted forces - shia islamist forces with real mass support and roots - into open, armed opposition has produced a real confrontation of the Iraqi masses themselves with the coalition. The eruption of what amounts to a mass-based Iraqi intifada against the occupiers means that the phoney war is over. The real war of Iraqi national liberation has begun. This evident fact has resulted in a major crisis for the imperialists, which has shaken Bush’s presidency to the core.

In the US, imperialist veterans like senator Edward Kennedy openly talk of Iraq as ‘George Bush’s Vietnam’; indeed there are echoes of that conflict in this quagmire. Except that, owing to its oil resources, the Middle East region is much more strategic for the US than Vietnam ever was. While it is wrong to crudely state that the US invaded Iraq ‘for oil’, the implications of a major defeat for the US in the Middle East region are for this reason considerably more serious than over Indochina. The US bourgeoisie is therefore likely to fight harder, and be prepared to shed considerably more blood of the oppressed, in seeking to prevent such a defeat. It is the task of the international working class to find ways to intervene to stop them and help make such a blow against imperialism a reality.

The imperialist declaration of war against Muqtada Al-Sadr and his thousands- strong militia, the Army of the Hidden Imam - also known as al-Mahdi - was an act of incredible arrogance. It also decisively tore the veil of ‘democratic’ hypocrisy the imperialists have been using to try and camouflage their occupation. The banning of al-Sadr’s newspaper, which engaged in anti-occupation agitation, was followed by the issuing of an arrest warrant for Muqtadr al-Sadr by the US-puppet Coalition Provisional Authority for the killing of a pro-American cleric who was attacked by a crowd of opponents early after the invasion last year. One of al-Sadr’s close aides was then arrested and thrown into jail by the Americans. A demonstration against the closure of al-Sadr’s paper in Sadr City, Baghdad, was attacked with rockets by American Apache helicopters; 39 people died and over 100 were wounded. The result was open revolt, as the al-Mahdi militia went out into the streets in several cities and effectively took over power locally - including in the cities of Najaf and Karbala, shia islam’s holiest sites, overshadowed only by Mecca, which of course is common to sunni and shia.

The de facto popular uprising, led by al-Sadr’s forces, took the occupiers by surprise - and a very unpleasant surprise at that, as a whole swathe of towns and cities across the central belt of Iraq temporarily at least fell into the hands of insurgents from al-Mahdi. In fact, there was significant and undoubtedly under-reported conflict with British troops in the south of Iraq, centred in Basra, including the shooting dead of 15 people on a demonstration in the middle of last week.

Incredibly al-Sadr was declared an ‘outlaw’ - directly equating him with such other ‘outlaws’ as Osama bin Laden and of course Saddam Hussein (the US military announced, wild west fashion, that al-Sadr is wanted ‘dead or alive’). But, of course, there are glaring differences between him and the latter two figures - most clearly the fact that al-Sadr undeniably has the support of large numbers of Iraqi people. This is obvious from the fact alone that the mainstream leader of the shia majority, Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani, who has previously condemned acts of resistance against the occupation, refused to condemn the actions of al-Sadr and his followers, and instead condemned the coalition forces for their brutality and violence against the Iraqi population.

Elements of the imperialists’ own puppet Governing Council have felt compelled, evidently by mass pressure from below, to denounce the activities of their own masters in pretty scathing terms, one citing the US bombardment of the mainly sunni town of Fallujah as amounting to “genocide”. And an even more startling indication of the mass character of the current upheaval was the 200,000-strong joint meeting in the environs of a sunni mosque in Baghdad last week, in which large numbers of both sunni and shia muslims gathered to protest and denounce the brutality of the occupiers in Fallujah. Large numbers of Baghdad residents, including many shia, have been queuing up to donate blood for the victims in mainly sunni Fallujah, which is an extremely encouraging sign of cross-communal solidarity that points in exactly the opposite, progressive direction from the sinister atrocities perpetrated earlier at Ashura.

Fallujah has indeed become the front line in the past few days, with something of a pause in shia areas. American bombardments and attempts to take the city have - according to news sources such as the Arab television channel, Al Jezeera - caused the deaths of over 600 people, including many women and children. The US was compelled to negotiate with the insurgents who had taken control of the city, using their own Iraqi ‘Governing Council’ as intermediaries. The result was a series of very wobbly ceasefires over the Easter period. A bizarre form of imperialist hypocrisy was very much on display in the pronouncements of the US general who acted as press mouthpiece during this period. He demanded “the restoration of Iraqi control” of Fallujah, which only begs the question of just who the Bush administration thinks is running the place. The Martians?

In the meantime, the US is massing forces outside the city, seemingly ready to retake it under American control by force. However, the very fact that the US is prepared to negotiate with the rebels in this city of the ‘sunni triangle’, testifies to their own understanding of the mass nature of the opposition they are confronting now. Assuming the insurgents do not simply capitulate (an unlikely scenario), they will have to fight their way into it with land forces. Thus there is a real possibility of the coalition’s nightmare scenario - urban house-to-house and street-to-street warfare against an entrenched and determined enemy. This failed to materialise at the time of the invasion due to the capitulation of Saddam Hussein, but now may actually come about. The difference is that the coalition forces are not prepared for it and were not expecting to be fighting like this at this time. The imperial hubris of the neocons in Washington is now meeting its nemesis in Iraq.

The arrogance of the American high command is being relayed around the world on prime-time television. And that is what they are particularly worried about. One key demand the Americans are pressing the insurgents to accept in their ‘negotiations’, is the withdrawal of Al Jezeera’s staff and equipment from the city. A demand that is unlikely to be accepted; the stage would then be set for an out-and-out massacre without the presence of TV cameras to relay the resultant images around the world. This media presence has already led to major political problems for the US, as Al Jezeera news coverage of Fallujah hospitals filling up with civilian casualties, including large numbers of women and children, have already been broadcast in many Arab countries.

Western audiences have only seen a small fraction of this material, due to the self-censorship of the pro-imperialist media. In any case, it is necessary for all opponents of imperialism and defenders of the rights, and indeed the very lives, of the people of the core Arabic areas of Iraq, to demand the immediate withdrawal of the US armed forces and their British underlings, and rally to the defence of the people of Fallujah, and indeed Iraq as a whole, against the expected American onslaught. We must be for the defeat of our ‘own’ imperialist forces, which have no right to be in Iraq - none whatsoever. If they fail to withdraw from Iraq of their own free will, it is perfectly legitimate for the Iraqi people to send them home in body bags - that is the position that socialists should take regarding the war of resistance that has now broken out.

The Iraqi people need liberation - both national liberation from the coalition jackboot that has been imposed on them by the likes of Bush and Blair, and social liberation from the domestic bourgeoisie, and the various clerical and petty bourgeois social formations that play a major role in their relatively underdeveloped, semi-ruined capitalist economy. Given the situation that Iraq has been reduced to by decades of reactionary Ba’athist/military dictatorship - openly supported and propped up for many years (recent myths to the contrary) by the United States, Britain and the rest of the imperialist gang - it is hardly surprising that the leadership the masses are now looking to are of a clerical stamp. Oppression on that grinding scale and duration grinds down consciousness, and religion often seems the heart of a heartless world, to evoke Karl Marx. Though the working class movement in Iraq, with its secular, socialist traditions and aspirations, has undergone some signs of revival in the space created by the sudden absence of Saddam Hussein and his secret police, nevertheless they have been massively outpaced by religious forces, both sunni and shia, many of whom have social programmes that are deeply reactionary.

This is something that socialists have to take account of in evaluating our position on the war of national liberation that has now openly broken out. It means that we openly state that many of the forces that are leading the resistance today, if they were to achieve victory, could pose a serious threat to the secular, democratic and working class forces. The Iraqi masses deserve better leaders than those who look to create a state similar to that of present-day Iran, for instance, or - perhaps even worse - something resembling Saudi Arabia. Yet we cannot be neutral when the masses are mobilised, even behind such reactionary or potentially reactionary forces, against imperialist conquerors.

This is an extremely difficult situation for the Iraqi left, for communists and working class socialists. The masses are in motion against the main enemy, and yet they are influenced on a mass scale by forces that themselves are certain to prove enemies of the Iraqi workers if they get their hands firmly upon the levers of power in the future.

Socialists and communists in Iraq must participate in the struggle for national liberation as an independent force, raising a progressive banner, a banner of democracy and freedom of religion or non-religion (secularism), as well as a programme for liberation from capitalism and social oppression in all its forms. One thing is clear: anyone who shrugs their shoulders at the war of the masses against the occupation, who equates the clerical-led masses with the coalition occupiers and proclaims ‘a plague on both your houses’, in present-day Iraq would be signing their own political suicide note.

We socialists and communists in the outside world, meanwhile, also have a twofold task of solidarity - we have to demonstrate, in words and deeds, our ability to generate real solidarity for the Iraqi masses in their life-and-death struggle against imperialism. At the same time, we must do all in our power to promote the progressive forces in Iraq, to help tilt the balance within the liberation movement away from the clericalists and towards those forces that seek a working class solution to the manifold oppressions that beset not only Iraq, but the entire Middle East region.