02.04.2008

Basra shows anti-occupation momentum is growing

What lies behind the spin about the Iraqi 'government' attempting to take back control of Basra? Mike Macnair examines the issues

The spurious ‘calm’ of the recent US ‘troop surge’ period in Iraq was broken last week by a failed attempt by the US-sponsored ‘government’ of Nouri al-Maliki to take control of Basra, leading to extensive fighting between the ‘Iraqi security forces’, backed by US and British air and artillery strikes, and the Jaish Mahdi Sadrist militia. In this context, the ‘Iraqi security forces’ means a mixture of a rebadged Badr Brigade, the militia associated with the pro-Iranian Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), and ‘economic conscripts’ who have joined up for the sake of a paying job.

Much about the events remains very obscure. For those who became victims of the attack and the usual ‘collateral damage’ they are yet more of the disasters brought by the US occupation. But they also have political messages.

Failed attempt

Maliki went to Basra on Monday March 24 to direct operations. The fighting began on March 25 with a large-scale move of around 30,000 ‘security forces’ into Sadrist ‘turf’ in Basra. Jaish Mahdi responded very rapidly with a counter-offensive in the form both of street demonstrations and military action - against the Green Zone in Baghdad, and in a series of cities across southern Iraq. The next day Maliki offered an amnesty to militiamen who surrendered their arms within 72 hours, threatening those who did not that they would be ‘outlaws’.

By Thursday March 27, however, it was clear that the offensive in Basra was bogging down, and that US and British fire support was needed. Reports began trickling out of ‘security forces’ troops refusing to fight or surrendering to Jaish Mahdi; Maliki extended his deadline for handing over weapons to 10 days (including the heavy weapons they had captured from the ‘security forces’), and offered money as an inducement.¹

On Sunday March 30 a deal of some sort - still unclear - was reached between the ‘government’ and Sadr, and Sadr called for Jaish Mahdi to stand down. The deal was allegedly brokered by the Iranian revolutionary guards, though this is disputed.² Most of the fighting tailed off rapidly. Whatever the deal was, it was clearly not a surrender: Jaish Mahdi remained in effective possession of its ‘turf’ and its weapons.

On Tuesday April 1 it was announced that “thousands” of police and soldiers, including officers, were to be sacked for refusing orders to fight the Sadrists.³ On April 2 Maliki plaintively asked Jaish Mahdi to return the ‘government’ armoured cars they had captured in the fighting.⁴

‘Not us, guv’

From the beginning, the spin coming from the US and British states has been that this operation was entirely Iraqi, the wholly autonomous decision of Maliki’s government. It had been Iraqi-planned and involved only Iraqi troops. By March 27 this story had been shown to be transparently false: US and British warplanes and troops were backing the ‘Iraqi government’ operations. But late outliers of it persist. Republican presidential candidate John McCain has claimed he, and the Americans, were surprised by the offensive.⁵

It is perhaps appropriate that this story was published on April Fools Day. On March 28 the British MOD announced that the logistics of the Basra operation were being handled by the British.⁶ You do not move 30,000 troops into position to launch an operation without logistical support, so the British military must have known in advance about the attempt to take Basra. Equally, the simple occupier control of Iraqi airspace means that the US and British military must have known about the assembly of large numbers of ‘Iraqi government’ troops in Basra in preparation for the attempt.

The US confirmed on March 30 that its special forces were involved with their ‘Iraqi government’ equivalents in the Basra operations.⁷ A British soldier was killed in a “fire fight” at an undisclosed location on March 26.⁸ The MOD denied this was in Basra, and “sources” used by sections of the press say that it was an SAS soldier killed in fighting with Jaish Mahdi in Baghdad.⁹

In other words, whatever this operation was, it was not some sort of stunt pulled by al-Maliki without US backing.

Why?

The attempt to spin this affair as a purely Iraqi operation tells us something fundamental about its purpose. Its aim was to assert the authority of the Maliki ‘government’ and that this ‘government’ possessed effective and coherent armed forces which could take territory away from the ‘militias’. To the extent that the operation succeeded, or could be spun as a success - and there are still attempts to spin it as a success¹⁰ - it would show that the ‘surge’ is working, and thus support McCain’s campaign for the US presidency. Moreover, an utter disaster for the attempt was unlikely, and has not happened. Sadr could be relied on, in the light of his conduct in previous confrontations, to make a deal (as he did) rather than calling on Jaish Mahdi to fight to the death.

Beyond this, there is a common view of Iraqi politicians reported by several bloggers and news media, most clearly soft anti-war blogger Juan Cole.¹¹ This is that the operation was intended as a pre-emptive strike to weaken the Sadrists before the Iraq provincial elections, which have been provisionally scheduled for October 1. The basis of this view has two aspects. The first is the political differences between the Sadrists and the ISCI-Dawa coalition which dominates the ‘government’. The second is the widespread perception that if the provincial elections go ahead without a change in the political relation of forces ISCI and Dawa will lose ground heavily to the Sadrists.

Cole makes the point that the US is committed to the elections going ahead: one of Cheney’s activities during his March 17 visit to Iraq was to twist arms to get the provincial powers law, necessary for the elections to be held, approved (it was, on March 19). The problem for the US is its new allies among the ‘sunnis’ boycotted the 2005 provincial elections, and the US’s current tactic in Iraq requires it to bring these forces on board politically. That requires new elections. But the Sadrists also boycotted the 2005 provincial elections, so any new elections will inevitably shift the overall balance in their direction.

The problem for the US with the possibility of the Sadrists winning the provincial elections in southern Iraq is the oil law, which is designed to allow regional confederations of provinces to lease oilfields to US companies. The oil law has not been passed by the occupiers’ Iraqi ‘legislature’, only adopted - after lots of US arm-twisting - by the Iraqi ‘government’. But the ‘government’ has decided to behave as if the oil law had been adopted; while the nationalist regime/s in Iraqi Kurdistan have been making their own deals with oil companies.¹² The Sadrists are opposed to this naked asset-strip. They are also opposed to the whole project of regional confederations of provinces (aka ‘soft partition’ of Iraq), which is part of the deal which unites the ISCI-Dawa coalition with the Kurdish nationalists in the ‘Iraqi government’. If they won provincial elections, the Sadrists would have a strong blocking position in relation to these elements of US-version ‘progress’.

More generally, the Sadrists have demanded that a timetable be set for the withdrawal of the occupiers. That was the basis of their withdrawal from Maliki’s government, in which they originally participated. A strong Sadrist performance in provincial elections would therefore inevitably be understood as a vote for early withdrawal of the occupying troops.

The Sadrists participated in the 2005 legislative election under the United Iraqi Alliance (UIA) banner, winning 22.3% of its representatives. The Fadhila (Virtue) party, which has similar politics but is separate, won 11.5%. Taking these weights together (which is admittedly questionable) amounts only to 34%. If the Sadrists are thought capable of winning provincial elections, they must either have been badly underrepresented in the 2005 slate, or have gained political support substantially relative to ISCI and Dawa since then.

That said, if the Sadrists did win, the US is perfectly capable of manoeuvring to create some sort of bloc involving them. After all, the US has since 2003 tried governing on its own; an alliance with ‘secular’ and ex-Ba’athist forces; an alliance with the UIA bloc of shia islamist parties, which originally called for a date to be set for US withdrawal, only to renege later; and, since the ‘surge’ the creation of ‘sunni’ ‘tribal awakening councils’ - ie, the re-integration of elements of the ‘sunni’ insurgents they were fiercely fighting in 2004-06. Trying to make a deal with the Sadrists would be merely yet another turn on this winding path.

Unions

The Naftana group (British support group for the General Union of Oil Employees in Basra) issued a statement in response to the attack on Basra, which was initially posted on the GUOE website on March 29 but has now been taken down.¹³ The statement, which claims to have been based on telephone conversations with trade unionists in Basra, argues that at least part of the motive of the attack was to crush the - relatively strong - trade union organisations in the city. It points out that a report in the New York Times indicated that military action would soon be forthcoming to crush ‘militias’ in Basra preparatory to the privatisation of the city’s docks.¹⁴ ‘Militias’, Naftana argues, refers to organised dockworkers who had opposed previous privatisation measures. More generally, Naftana argues the attack was designed to weaken opposition to the oil privatisation law: a point which ties in to the more general goal of weakening the Sadrists.

Though the Naftana statement has now been removed from the GUOE website, the analysis has some plausibility. Basra in a relatively intact condition is essential to the occupiers: both as a route by which their own logistics enter Iraq and as a route by which Iraqi oil is exported. To reduce it to the condition of Fallujah would be like sawing off a branch on which the occupiers are sitting. This is the underlying reason for the relatively ‘softly, softly’ approach of the British occupiers between 2003 and the present, which sources close to the US administration have recently been spinning as ‘British failure’.¹⁵ The corollary is that in Basra, Iraqi society and the working class are somewhat less pulverised than elsewhere - with the result, in turn, that the oil and dock workers have been able to organise to take action to defend their interests, in spite of the extensive militia protection rackets in the city.

However, the reason underlying the ability of the workers to take organised action in Basra is, as I have just said, that the occupiers need the port and oil terminals working. And this is precisely also a reason why the occupiers should not want to embark on a large-scale military confrontation in Basra, which would inevitably damage these facilities.

It is reasonably clear, in fact, that neither the occupiers nor their client ‘government’ expected what happened in Basra and elsewhere. On the contrary, their view, leaked into various media, was that the Sadrist movement was a declining force, and that Sadr had limited control and would be willing to accept the government taking down ‘rogue’ and ‘criminal’ elements, and that the ‘surge’ had allowed an effective build-up and training of the ‘government’ security forces. If this had been true, a quick operation with large forces to take control of the streets of Basra should have achieved the goals of strengthening the government and weakening both the Sadrists and the Basra workers.

Iran agenda

Not far below the surface is the US administration’s agenda in relation to Iran. A running theme of the past year has been the idea that the Sadrists are Iranian clients and Jaish Mahdi is armed and trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. For example, US General Petraeus announced on March 24 that rockets fired at the Baghdad Green Zone were Iranian-made.¹⁶ In this context, the extensive play made by the media of the allegation that the March 31 ceasefire was made after negotiations with Sadr in the Iranian city of Qom, mediated by an officer of the Revolutionary Guards, is intended to hammer the point home.

Tehran, of course, has no interest in denying these allegations. From the point of view of the Tehran regime, the US ‘belief’ that Jaish Mahdi is an Iranian tool means that this could be a diplomatic counter. Tehran has repeatedly offered the US help with ‘stabilising’ Iraq as part of a more general normalisation of relations.

The drip, drip, drip of allegations is ready to support a US turn to an open attack on Iran - if that is what it decides to do. But it is also reasonably clear that the US expected that this drip, drip, drip would, in Iraq, undermine the Sadrists. Historically, the Sadrists have been Iraqi nationalists, while ISCI and Dawa have been clients of Tehran. Now the US is representing ISCI and Dawa as Iraqi patriots (in spite of their recently welcoming Ahmadinejad’s visit to Baghdad), and the Sadrists as clients of Tehran, in the hope of taking away their nationalist support.

It may well be that Jaish Mahdi has taken resources from the Iranians (though, given the extent to which money and military materiel can ‘disappear’ in occupied Iraq, they may not need to). But even if so the idea that after the last 17 years of US blockade and air raids against Iraq, and five years of disastrous occupation, the US, or the immediate clients of the US, could pose as Iraqi patriots and defenders of Iraqi sovereignty is frankly ludicrous. Any idea that the Sadrists and Jaish Mahdi have been undermined by this policy was tested last week: and the answer is, they have not.

Politics

As Clausewitz said, war is the continuation of politics by other means. Sometimes the politics is very close to the surface, and this was clearly the case of the events in Iraq in the last week in March. The Americans’ Iraqi clients did not attack Jaish Mahdi because they are islamist sectarians and protection racketeers (the Iraqi ‘government’ is made up of islamist sectarians and protection racketeers backed by the US). They attacked Jaish Mahdi because they oppose the immediate politics the Sadrists claim to stand for: that is, against the oil privatisation law, for the unity of Iraq against ‘soft partition’, and for a date to be set for full withdrawal of the occupying troops.

The defeat of the ‘government’ offensive - for the time being - also reflected these politics. What it boiled down to was simple. Jaish Mahdi was able to mobilise significant forces in Basra and across southern Iraq. Conversely, ‘government’ troops were unwilling to fight: this was expressed in some cases by open refusal; in others by simple go-slow. In other words, there is broad mass support for the elementary ideas that the occupiers should get out, that the oil should not be privatised, and that Iraq should not be partitioned. Conversely, the tie to the occupiers destroys the political support the ‘government’ needs to build effective military forces. The same would be true of any Iraqi ‘government’ which was willing to play along with the occupiers.

Iraq, and the Iraqi working class in particular, badly needs an effective government to replace the de facto militia control of everyday life, and economic reconstruction - which also needs an effective government. The events of the last week demonstrate precisely that it can have neither until the US and British occupiers get out.

Notes

1. latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2008/03/iraq-not-quite.html
2. www.mcclatchydc.com/iraq/story/32055.html
3. www.juancole.com, posted 2 April.
4. See The Times April 1.
5. See The Guardian April 1.
6. www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/DefenceNews/MilitaryOperations/BritishTroopsHelpResupplyIraqiArmyInBasra.htm
7. www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSL30612974
8. www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/DefenceNews/MilitaryOperations/BritishSoldierKilledInIraqOn26March2008.htm
9. The Daily Mirror March 27; http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30100-1310791,00.html
10. Eg, Nibras Kazimi: talismangate.blogspot.com
11. www.juancole.com; Cole’s analysis of the Basra events is at www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/04/01/basra/index.html
12. See ‘Challenges facing Iraq, five years after US invasion’, Reuters, March 11, uk.reuters.com/article/homepageCrisis/idUKCOL728598._CH_.242020080311; www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=46540&sectionid=3510213
13. GUOE website: www.basraoilunion.org. The Naftana statement is still available at www.ukwatch.net/article/basra_siege_endangers_trade_unionists
14. New York Times March 13.
15. The Daily Telegraph August 24 2007.
16. news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7311565.stm