01.09.2004

Ending chaos and avoiding civil war

Mohsen Karim, a member of the central committee of the Worker-communist Party of Iraq, addressed the CPGB's Communist University 2004

The Worker-communist Party of Iraq sees the USA and political islam as two sides of terrorism. Thirty-five years of Saddam’s oppression did not stop us opposing the war against Iraq. We predicted the consequences of the war and we have unfortunately been proved correct: chaos, violence, the breakdown of society and the strengthening of political islam.

The war created opportunities for those islamists who did not want to take a stand against America to gain some power by joining the Governing Council. Three islamist groups have joined the GC, alongside tribalists and nationalists. On the other hand, other islamists, as well as Ba’athist remnants, have taken up armed resistance against the Americans, so that Iraq is now a battleground between islamists and nationalists on the one hand and the occupying forces on the other.

The war between these two forms of terrorism has caused immense damage to civil society in terms of the destruction of all forms of social services, healthcare and so on. The occupying forces have done nothing to maintain even the most basic levels of welfare provision. The resulting poverty and unemployment have created great anger against US forces - anger which the islamist resistance groups have taken advantage of. Those islamists who have joined the Governing Council are trying to impose their own reactionary ideas; those who are in the resistance also want to remove all freedoms from the people.

The laws operating under the interim government are as bad as those under Saddam: no separation of religion from the state; no recognition of women’s or children’s rights - things are just as bad for women and workers as they were before. When they interviewed Saddam, he told them, ‘You are using exactly the same laws as I did’, so nothing has really changed in that respect.

The islamists want to replace civil law with sharia law and they are attempting to impose it through violence and terror. In some municipalities of the south this has already happened. So at present the people of Iraq find themselves caught between the forces of the US military and the forces of political islam, whether in power or in opposition. It is a tragic situation.

Baghdad was a modern, civilised city but now women dare not go out without the veil - a reflection of the islamification of society. Women who do so face kidnapping, rape - even murder. On the streets there are large numbers of children living wild - orphaned, abandoned, abused. According to the Arabic Labour Organisation, more than 70% of the Iraqi labour force is unemployed. The level of life for nearly all Iraqis is very low. The desperation and pessimism which flow from the present chaotic situation have produced a marked increase in drug abuse. Part of the ‘army’ recruited by Muqtada al-Sadr is composed of drug-taking young people. Between them, the occupation forces and the islamists have deprived Iraqis of all hope for the future.

What the people of Iraq want is peace of mind, security, welfare and equality. The idea that the Iraqi people are islamic and that Iraq is an islamic country is completely mistaken. Of course, there are many people who consider themselves to be muslim, but they too want prosperity, freedom and a modern way of life. Even under Saddam they struggled for a modern life and they do not want to live in an islamic state. The islamists currently in government or in the resistance, who want to impose their views on the population by force, are not popular.

After all, if the people of Iraq were devout muslims, then these islamists would not find it necessary to impose their will by threats and acts of violence in the way they do. The people of Iraq are no different from anybody else in the world - they want to live in peace in a modern welfare state. We in the WCPI see ourselves as representing the demands of the people for such a life and we have offered a solution to get Iraq out of the current crisis. We condemn both the US occupation on the one side and the forces of political islam and nationalist forces on the other. We do not recognise political islam as representing the genuine opposition of the people to the occupation.

We want to return Iraq to civil society, and for this reason we have called a conference in support of our project, ‘Returning civil life to Iraq’. We are asking all organisations to take part and sign a common declaration, which should consist of the following:

- We demand immediate withdrawal of the occupying forces, because their presence only serves to strengthen islamic and fundamentalist trends, allowing them in the name of ‘resistance’ to bring chaos and further violence to the country. Self-evidently, the US is not in Iraq to bring ‘freedom’, but to preserve its own interests. Hence, we demand the withdrawal of the occupying forces as a precondition for freeing Iraq from chaos. We are calling for an international force to help protect Iraq from civil war, and for international solidarity from secular and progressive movements to help us achieve it.

- We call for a provisional government formed from a congress of all organisations in society, a provisional government that will create an environment of political freedom, to be followed by free elections. At the same time we say that the provisional government should respect rights and recognise them in law.

- We call for the complete separation of religion and state, to protect society from islamic law and the dangers of fundamentalism. People should not be recognised on the basis of their religion or national identity, but on the basis of their human identity.

- We demand full equality of men and women and unconditional freedom for political activity - a crucial demand at the moment - so that people can be brought into political activity as free citizens.

- Capital punishment must be abolished.

- The rights of the Kurdish people to independence must be respected and a referendum called. This issue is important in order to prevent the danger of civil war, for which Kurdish, islamic and Arab nationalist forces are already gearing up.

We are fighting for a workers’ state as our ultimate aim. But at present a provisional government is needed in order to return civil society to some kind of order and security. Whereas the forces of occupation, of political islam and the nationalists want to continue the present state of war and uncertainty, we want to rally people around the idea of a provisional government, to mobilise women and individuals. As a result, the WCPI is being attacked from both sides and recently one of our comrade’s has been killed in the city of Kut.

As regards the question of an international force, I want to stress that demonstrations in the west should be renewed in favour of a progressive secular government in Iraq. Anti-war movements and those organisations which defend women’s rights and human rights across the world can be a force for the demand for a provisional government in Iraq, bringing international support for the demands of the Iraqi people. When the US forces go, there is a real danger of civil war leading to even greater chaos and suffering. The purpose of having foreign forces would be to prevent such a development, to stave off civil war. We should look at the example of East Timor. As regards our own efforts, we have made a start by arming the people in those areas where we have a presence.

The sheer depth of political, economic and social dislocation means that the working class currently lacks all sense of direction in a very complex situation. The old methods cannot be relied on and new methods must be found. Some people say that we should identify our primary and secondary enemies in order to build our strategy. Obviously, the primary enemy is capitalism itself, but the idea of creating a hierarchy of enemies comes from Mao. As we see it, US imperialism and political islam are two sides of the same coin, both parts of the same terror system, contributing equally to the oppression of workers. That is why we would never consider any form of alliance with political islam. It is a mistake to categorise our enemies as primary and secondary. What we call for is an independent force to restore security. The policies of WCPI at this moment in this chaotic situation is restoration of civil society, freedom, welfare and security for the Iraqi people.