15.02.2007
Heads in the sand
Yassamine Mather reports on the Stop the War Coalition's Scottish conference - which missed the opportunity to seriously discuss the question of Iran
The February 10 Scottish conference of the Stop the War Coalition was an ideal opportunity to discuss the current issues facing the movement. There could have been a debate on the implications of the current quagmire in Iraq for US-UK troops. Papers could have been presented to inform and educate activists on the current state of play in the Middle East, on the economic and political situation in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Syria "¦ The threat of an attack on Iran could have been analysed and the best ways of showing solidarity with the Iranian people could have been discussed.
Instead what took place can best be described as a one-day rally - with the usual large number of speakers, most of whom did their best to avoid any in-depth analysis, cutting down the politics to an absolute minimum. The young activists who had worked hard organising the conference were disheartened by the low attendance and the fact that Scottish anti-war campaigners had been so unimpressed by the title of some of the sessions and the speaking list that they chose not to attend. To be fair to the speakers, given the number of contributions in each session, it would have been impossible to deliver anything beyond the most basic slogans and soundbites in the time allocated.
Prior to the conference, attempts by supporters of the Hands Off the People of Iran campaign to encourage a discussion on Iran were ignored. However, the conference heard a number of references to the threat of war against Iran, most of them from uninformed contributors, many of whom seemed to think that the best way to defeat the imperialist threat was to act as apologists for the islamic regime.
In the session entitled 'War on truth and resistance in the ranks' a member of Media Workers Against the War, in countering TV and press disinformation about Iran, said: "Very few people know that Iran has a Jewish MP in its parliament" - so its regime could not possibly harbour feelings of anti-semitism, could it? Of course, the English-language media is responsible for the total failure to present events in Iran accurately: it has hardly attempted to explain the complexities of a society where, 28 years after the islamist regime came to power, the strength and secular radicalism of the growing internal opposition is a major force. It has given no indication that the best hope - not only for Iran, but also for the whole region - is to allow this internal opposition to bring about political and social change in Iran. And the media have obviously ignored the dangers posed for the future of the workers', women's and student movements of any attempt at regime change from above.
Of all the many issues one could have mentioned about Iran, the least significant fact is that there is a token Jewish MP in a powerless parliament. This is a country whose president and government sponsored a holocaust-denial conference, attended by fascists and racists, including a leading member of the Ku Klux Klan; a country where there are 60,000 Jews, but this is down from an estimated 80,000 in 1979) with many having emigrated to the US, Israel and Europe since the islamic revolution. I assume this comment was in line with the ridiculous claim, made last year at Glasgow University by Campaign Iran speaker Abbas Edalaat, that Iran and Israel are the "only democracies" in the Middle East.
To counter media falsification, it is futile for the anti-war movement to spread our own version of half-truth and misinformation. Iran and Israel have many points in common: they are both committed to nuclear weapons; both states were established on the basis of the domination of religious ideology in all aspects of political life; in both countries religious minorities face apartheid, economic and political discrimination; and, just as the presence of the odd Arab or muslim MP in the Knesset has made no difference to the apartheid and discrimination inflicted on Palestinians, the presence of one or two Jewish MPs has not alleviated the plight of Iranian Jews.
The only difference is that the Jewish community in Iran has been reduced to a tiny minority, while Palestinian Arabs who suffer under Israeli rule still constitute a large proportion of that country's population - and, of course, deserve unconditional support and solidarity. But let us not get into spreading misinformation about the plight of Jews in islamic countries, let us not become apologists for racist, anti semitic leaders such as Ahmadinejad.
The same speaker from Media Workers Against the War was also adamant that claims that Iran is supporting fighters in other Middle Eastern countries, not least Iraq, are total lies. There is no doubt that recent US statements 'exposing' Iran for supplying weapons to shia militias reminds us all of the build-up to the Iraq war and the 'dodgy dossier'. However, the way to confront this is not to deny facts but to remind everyone that Iran's support for shia militias loyal to the current occupation government in Iraq is nothing new and the US decision to choose this time to raise the issue is sinister and dangerous.
The Badr army, the armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), was set up in Tehran in the 1980s and based there for two decades. Iran has continued to supply arms to this militia, which is now part of the 'army' being trained by US-UK troops. The Iranian government also supports and arms militias close to the other faction of the occupation government, the Da'awa party. In the last two years, Moqtada al Sadr, who originally was opposed to accepting arms from Iran, has become a recipient of Iran's aid. The islamic government in Iran publishes details of its contributions to the above groups and Hezbollah.
The task of anti-war activists is not to confront lies with more lies: we should point out that the shia militias in Iraq are part and parcel of the current government in Iraq, which was put in power as a result of the illegal occupation of that country by US-UK troops. Of course, such complicated arguments are beyond the comprehension of the STWC leadership whose chosen speakers prefer simplistic slogans rather than any discussion of politics.
The STWC will fail the peoples of Iraq, Iran and the Middle East if it continues to deny the facts, if it refuses to recognise that the issue is not simply 'US v political islam' (and we must therefore take sides with the latter), if it will not admit that in the Middle East, as elsewhere, the only progressive forces are those involved in a class struggle against both imperialism and a reactionary islamic, capitalist states. It is pointless to deny Iran's role in the current chaos in Iraq: what we must do is emphasise that this was a predictable consequence of the invasion of that country by US-UK troops, which is its main cause.
Instead of burying our heads in the sand and denying the fact that shia and sunni groups are currently killing hundreds of Iraqis every day, we must expose the states that back either side of this civil war: Saudi Arabia leads a group of sunni countries arming ex Ba'athists and sunni islamists, while Iran's islamic regime backs shia militias (which some of the time have cooperated with the occupation).
Whatever anyone may preach in Birmingham or London mosques, in real life muslims are not united either in the Middle East or elsewhere. They are divided first and foremost according to class, then according gender and nationality. These factors often play a far more important role in the way ordinary people react to events than STWC speakers imply.
At times, instead of fighting their common enemy - imperialism and the region's capitalist regimes - their justified anger at the appalling political and economic conditions under which they suffer is diverted to fuel civil wars backed by reactionaries in power in the US, Saudi Arabia or in Iran's islamic republic. These states are doing their best to keep the fires of civil war burning amongst shia and sunnis, amongst Arabs and Kurds, in order to prolong their own rule.
Supporting the peoples of the Middle East means facing up to reality. It also means providing genuine solidarity to working class struggles, supporting the unconditional withdrawal of all foreign troops and calling for nuclear disarmament. If the anti-war movement fails to adopt such an approach a whole array of apologists for imperialist war - from the Euston Manifesto to the likes of Nick Cohen - will be allowed to get away with spreading their poison.