28.04.2004

Assessing Iraq and mapping out our tasks

Two sets of theses on Iraq were circulated prior to the CPGB’s April 24 aggregate. The first, ‘Theses on the Iraqi intifada’, were drawn up by Ian Donovan, the second, and much longer, ‘The occupation of Iraq, the struggle against it and the tasks of communists’ is Mike Macnair’s alternative. In the event time overran and neither were discussed. Nevertheless, the question of Iraq is highly topical and in certain respects controversial. In order for the left to orient itself properly in relation to these events there needs to be a full and open debate not least in the pages of this paper

Theses on the Iraqi intifada

1. There has been a qualitative change in the configuration of forces engaged in armed opposition to the imperialist occupation of Iraq since the United States, as chief component of the occupying coalition, declared war on Muqtada al-Sadr, his al-Mahdi militia and their followers in general.

2. In the year prior to this, there was a molecular growth of discontent, which tended in the direction of passively supporting resistance. Yet the forces resisting displayed contempt for the Iraqi masses, and willingness to kill many of them, as part of an adventurist and nihilistic campaign to make Iraq ‘ungovernable’. These forces appeared to be mainly from the sunni minority, who have been accustomed to ruling in despotic fashion over the shia majority, particularly during the Ba’ath regime. It appears likely that elements formerly of that regime made up a significant portion of this ‘resistance’, along with sectarian sunni islamist types. Thus they were incapable of sinking roots into the shia population.

3. This retrograde ‘resistance’ reached its nadir in the sectarian massacre of shia pilgrims in Karbala in early March 2004.

4. The entry of al-Sadr’s shia islamist forces into the fray has transformed this ‘resistance’ into something that has the features of a national uprising. Its mass support is shown by the mobilisations it has given rise to, the mass popular sentiment for national unity against the occupation, transcending the sunni-shia division in Arabic Iraq, and pressure from below that forced ‘moderate’ clerics and even leading collaborators to condemn US threats and atrocities against both sunni and shia insurgents, who now have control of several cities.

5. Communists stand with the Iraqi masses against the coalition occupiers, now that a considerable section of them have entered the struggle. We do so in the knowledge that there is a serious potential danger from the forces currently leading this mass movement. We do not hide our criticisms and our warnings of the danger of an Iran-type theocratic development. But we also warn the Iraqi working class and socialist movement that if it does not participate and attempt to bring its own insights and strategy to the masses participating in the struggle, it will be handing over a monopoly of this struggle to the radical clerics.

6. However difficult this may appear at this point in time, the Iraqi left must find a way to participate in this movement as an independent force, as openly as circumstances allow. To proclaim a plague on both houses, or to hide away from the national struggle behind pretence of trade union purism, will not save the left from the possible consequences of a strengthened islamist movement. Only the growth of its own influence within the anti-imperialist movement can change this balance of forces.

7. The task of the left internationally is twofold: to generate genuine international solidarity with the Iraqi masses struggling against imperialism; and to find ways to assist the Iraqi left in shifting the balance of forces within the national uprising away from the various islamist currents that at the moment wield mass influence.