08.09.2004

Still the death toll mounts

Paul Greenaway reports on the situation in Iraq

Over a 1,000 US service personnel have now been killed since the fall of Saddam Hussein. Though it hardly rates a mention in the media, the figure for Iraqis is many times greater - perhaps by a factor of 20 or even 40.

And day by day the country is becoming more and more uncontrollable. Far from the Iraqi ‘government’ - with the “assistance” of US-UK forces - gradually imposing its will, “insurgents … are gradually securing enclaves across the country” (The Daily Telegraph September 7). Everywhere there are roadside bombs, bloody clashes, air strikes and assassinations, as US and ‘terrorist’ forces vie with each other for power. Adding to the international unease, daylight kidnapping of foreigners and threats to execute them are becoming increasingly common. George Bush’s promise to bring liberation and peace has turned out to be hollow. Instead the US presides over social breakdown and a descent into barbarism.

True, after three weeks the battle of Najaf finally came to an end. But it is Muqtada al-Sadr and his undefeated and unbowed Mahdi militia that claim victory. While having no truck with al-Sadr’s awful social programme, communists can only but welcome the setback this represented for the US.
When the fighting in Najaf erupted, the US vowed to “crush” Sadr’s “anti-Iraq” forces. Going into auto-Rambo mode, the US military told us that they were “on schedule” for “complete” victory, while interim government officials pledged that the Sadrists would be pursued “to the final end”. Of course, things turned out rather differently. After the 73-year-old Grand Ayatollah Sayed Ali al-Sistani led his march to Najaf, he brokered a peace deal between al-Sadr and the US. Al-Sistani’s plan called for Najaf and Kufa to be declared weapons-free cities, for all foreign forces to withdraw from Najaf and leave security to the police, for the government to compensate those harmed by the fighting, and for a census to be taken to prepare for elections that then should take place by the end of January 2005.

Al-Sistani described the deal as “a very positive agreement”, while the Allawi government also made welcoming, if not entirely convincing, noises. But in reality there can be little doubt that the biggest winners from the Najaf stand-off have been the Sadrists and of course al-Sistani himself - who “has proved he has a veto over significant change in Iraq” (The Guardian August 28).

This was certainly the view expressed by al-Sadr’s spokesperson, Sheikh Ahmed Shaibani. For him, the Najaf uprising confirmed that the al-Marji-a’ya - the committee of shia scholars headed by Sistani - were now the ultimate authority in Iraq, not US imperialism or the Allawi government. Not true. But US strategy certainly seems to be shifting to encompass the possibility of a deal with al-Sadr.

There is now talk that al-Sadr, the man whom US top brass openly threatened to kill in April and then “crush” in August, might take up a post in the successor government to Allawi’s - so long, as Shaibani put it, that next year’s elections were “honest”, that the Americans did not try to “manipulate” them and there was a “full return to Iraqi sovereignty”. The Bush administration quite clearly now wants an easy exit strategy and that could include arriving at an accommodation with the forces of islamism: not least Muqtada al-Sadr, who is now a significant political player in Iraqi politics - with the added advantage of being a healthy 31-year-old (not an ailing old man like al-Sistani) and thus the ability to play the ‘long game’.

Plainly, the Sadrists are sinking social roots amongst the urban poor - especially the young, unemployed and declassed. In a manner very akin to Hamas in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, the Sadrist movement is increasingly operating as an alternative ‘welfare state’ for the oppressed - providing services such as policing, garbage collecting and traffic direction, medicine and so on - filling in for the absence of the official state. Like Hamas, the Sadrists can help feed you and your family, and unlike the wretched Allawi government they offer some kind of seemingly coherent and now ‘battle-proved’ programme for society as a whole. In a society traumatised by Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist dictatorship and then wrecked by the tornado of US-UK conquest and occupation, it was the Mahdi militia which dared resist and stand up to the imperialists.

The ‘Hamasisation’ of the Iraqi national resistance movement was almost inevitable, given the virtual absence of any secular, working class alternative from below. Instead of democratic forces being at the vanguard of the burgeoning mass opposition to the imperialist occupation, the islamists so far have had a virtual free hand to stamp their imprimatur on it. This point was alluded to in the pages of The Guardian by the Iraqi political refugee, Sam Ramadani, when he wrote: “Most of the parents and grandparents of the young Sadri patriots were probably supporters of the once powerful Iraqi Communist Party, now in Ayad Allawi’s interim government, which is being widely compared in Iraq’s streets to Saddam’s regime” (August 24).

This was precisely the scenario that the Weekly Worker warned against and why we could not agree with our comrades in the Worker-communist Party of Iraq when they dismissed the Mahdi army as nothing but a “poorly organised gang” and optimistically claimed that the “vast majority of people see this group as a criminal gang rather than a political group” (WCPI website). If only this were the case.
Nor can it be agreed that it is correct to treat al-Sadr/al-Mahdi and US imperialism as if they were equal but simply opposite enemies of the working class: two sides of the same coin called ‘terrorism’. Surely under current circumstances US imperialism is the main enemy - it alone is superimperialist.
In his opening contribution to our Communist University, comrade Mohsen Karim, a member of the WCPI central committee, talked of “the war between these two forms of terrorism” - that is, the struggle we have just witnessed in Najaf between the Sadrists and US forces (Weekly Worker September 2). The comrade then went on to say: “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.”

But surely for most, if not all, of “the drug-taking young people” he talks about, al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army offers a way out of drug addiction and general hopelessness. Al-Sadr’s defiance of imperialism at Najaf, and the very creation and existence of the Mahdi militia, is acting to give these very same alienated youth some “hope for the future” - which is precisely why the Sadrists are far, far more dangerous than some mere “poorly organised” or “criminal gang”. They have that “vision thing”, to use the famous words of George Bush senior.

Significantly, comrade Karim also told us that some people say we should “identify our primary and secondary enemies” in order to build our strategy. But for him the primary enemy is “capitalism itself”, and the idea of “creating a hierarchy of enemies” come from Mao. For the WCPI, US imperialism and political islam are both parts of the “same terror system”, contributing equally to the oppression of workers in Iraq. That is why “we would never consider any form of alliance with political islam”. It is apparently a mistake to categorise our enemies as “primary and secondary.”

Leave aside Mao, Marx and Lenin, who for their part were quite ready to make or cut deals with all manner of individuals, groups, parties, classes, etc, if they thought it would safeguard, advance or promote the overall interests of the working class and the world revolutionary process. Taking advantage of divisions in the enemy camp is certainly vital and grouping them together as simply an undifferentiated reactionary mass is an elementary mistake. So yes, there are always primary and secondary enemies - and tertiary and quaternary enemies, for that matter. For the Bolsheviks the main enemy was clear - tsarism. That implied no softness on or illusions in the liberal bourgeoisie. But quite clearly here was a secondary enemy, with whom mutually advantageous deals could be agreed. Not to countenance such an approach is to disarm oneself tactically.

After the collapse of tsarism Lenin had no compunctions about working to undermine the provisional government of Alexander Kerensky. But, when faced with the threat of immediate and crushing counterrevolution in the form the army led by general Kornilov, the Bolsheviks knew the main danger. In its foreign policy too, the young Bolshevik government entered into all sorts of temporary alliances and pacts with reactionary governments in order to create a breathing space for the revolution - hence the peace deal with imperial Germany and cooperation with Atatürk’s Turkey (which was oppressing the newly formed Communist Party of Turkey at the time).

The notion that alliances and deals with secondary enemies are foreign to Marx and Lenin is mistaken - that does not necessarily make them right, of course. However, a refusal to distinguish between enemies must lead to a blunting of communist strategy and tactics. In fact, simply because they are in the front line, in the midst of a most complex struggle, the WCPI comrades do recognise that it is the US occupation that has produced the current bloody situation and led to the “strengthening of political islam” (Weekly Worker September 2).

We also note that the comrades no longer call for the United Nations to take over as occupiers of Iraq. However, what they have replaced it with is no better. According to comrade Karim, “We are calling for an international force to help protect Iraq from civil war.” Certainly if US forces were to perform a quick exit, there would be a real danger of civil war and “even greater chaos and suffering” (although that does not stop us calling for an immediate and unconditional end to the occupation - preferably enforced by a mass movement led by the working class). The WCPI’s “international force” is designed to prevent civil war and the example of East Timor is cited.

Unless this is a proletarian international brigade there is a problem here. And certainly no contingent of the working class is in a position to send off well organised fighting formations to Iraq. Unfortunately at this present moment in time that is impossible.

What then are we left with. The armed forces of the lesser imperialist powers? Germany? France? Australia? Countries like Jordan, Egypt and Syria? Are they now friends of the Iraqi people? Calling for them to intervene, if that is what the WCPI have in mind, certainly shows that the comrades do in actual fact have in their heads a hierarchy of enemies when it comes to international politics. The US is at the top, along with political islam, of course. But further down there are other countries who can be won - by popular pressure no doubt - to act as an “independent force”.

In reality none of them could move into Iraq without the say-so and helping hand of the US. Given today’s structures of economic power and the balance of military power, they could not act as an “independent force”. They would be agents of US imperialism.

Using the logic of the WCPI comrades, we communists operating in the United Kingdom during the late 1960s would have called for the intervention of British troops into Northern Ireland in order to stop the “civil war” against the catholic minority which had been launched by the Paisleyites and B specials. Of course, in 1969 British troops did intervene. And initially they were welcomed by many in the catholic-Irish population. The Socialist Workers Party (then called the International Socialists) took a similar view. However, opinions soon changed. British troops came not to liberate, but to stabilise the British state - and that meant conducting a drawn out military struggle, which certainly led to “even greater chaos and suffering” in the Six Counties.

Surely that would be the case in Iraq too. There are no imperialist solutions for the working class. We must look to our own strength.