Weekly Worker 526 Thursday April 29 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.

Ian Donovan

The occupation of Iraq, the struggle against it and the tasks of communists

1. Against the occupation and British participation in it

1.1. The primary task of communists in Britain is to fight against the British state and its imperialist operations. We are defeatist in relation to these operations: that is, we would be willing to see Britain defeated in a war with an imperialist rival, let alone a colonial war, even if the enemy is pre-capitalist or reactionary anti-capitalist.

1.2. We therefore fight for the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of British troops from Iraq and an end to all direct and indirect British support for the US war effort. To the extent that the movement of opposition to the war in Iraq attains a mass character, we would urge mass action (strikes, etc) to sabotage the British war effort.

1.3. We recognise the character of the United Nations as an imperialist instrumentality and therefore warn against any illusions in the UN. We would oppose any British participation in any UN ‘peacekeeping’ operation in Iraq, and fight for the anti-war movement as a whole to do so. We should point out that the history of such ‘peacekeeping’ operations is to create new colonial protectorates (Bosnia, Kosova) and to promote communalism and the division of the working class.

1.4. Since our responsibilities as communists in Britain are primarily to fight the British state, the tasks outlined above are our primary tasks. In these tasks we can make temporary practical agreements with, in Bebel’s phrase, “the devil and his grandmother”; certainly, so far as possible, with islamist tendencies in Britain.

2. For solidarity with the workers’ organisations in Iraq

2.1. As communists we are proletarian internationalists; and this means that our tasks are not only to fight against our own imperialist state, but to give such support as may be possible to the proletarian movement in every country.

2.2. Given the concrete situation in occupied Iraq, this means developing work in the British workers’ movement for solidarity with the workers’ organisations in Iraq. The fact that these organisations may be, in our view, to some extent marked with sectarianism (Worker-communist Party of Iraq and organisations it leads) or have ambiguous relations with the occupying powers (Iraqi Communist Party and organisations it leads) or that we may have little knowledge of them (ICP central command, ICP cadre) does not alter this task.

2.3. At the same time, it is part of our duty as communists to develop our own analysis of the occupation of Iraq, the political situation in that country, and their strategic implications, and to discuss these as far as possible not only with wider forces in the British and international workers’ movement but also with militants of the Iraqi workers’ organisations. This flows from the sort of international proletarian movement we seek to create: one characterised by open, democratic collaboration in which there will be genuine differences of view. We should not give the impression of second-guessing the tactical judgments of comrades on the ground; but it is not genuine political solidarity to refuse to express differences, either with ‘those who are fighting’ (Socialist Workers Party on the ‘Iraqi resistance’), or with ‘our own comrades’ (Communist Party of Britain on the ICP; Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, albeit less clearly, on the WCPI).

The following theses, under heads 3 and 4, should be understood in this framework. They are not intended to offer a global programme for an Iraqi party, which is not our business, but to address (a) the immediate catastrophe and how to fight it and (b) issues currently debated on the British left on this question. They are therefore silent on such issues as women’s rights, constitutional design and labour law, which are prominent in, for example, the WCPI’s programme.

3. Defeat the imperialists through the common action of the Iraqi and international working class

3.1. The US-UK invasion and occupation of Iraq has destroyed the Iraqi Ba’athist state, which was in origin a neo-colonial ‘decolonised’ state regime. In its place it has put a condition of state failure characterised by incipient warlordism (like Lebanon before the Syrian intervention, Somalia ... and so on) loosely presided over by coalition troops. The coalition cannot build a state because it has no legitimacy within Iraq, because it systematically excludes from power those forces which could, potentially, create a state, and because its preferred Iraqi politicians are merely kleptocrats. But it has sufficient military power to prevent the construction of an Iraqi state.

3.2. It follows that resolution of the immediate crisis in Iraq in the interests of the Iraqi population as a whole has two strategic elements: (1) It is necessary for the imperialist troops to be driven out. (2) There is a need to create a state which can overcome the condition of state failure - which implies addressing the class, national and religious contradictions within Iraqi society that drive the incipient tendency towards warlordism.

3.3. Strategy for getting rid of the imperialist troops has to recognise the fact that a direct, head-to-head military defeat and expulsion or destruction of imperialist forces is impossible due to the imperialists’ total air superiority and effective monopoly of armour. The simultaneous commitment of Iranian, Turkish, Saudi, Syrian and Jordanian military assets against the occupiers might alter this position, but in the light of the Yom Kippur war probably would not, and is in any case most unlikely. Even if it occurred and did alter the military relation of forces, it would be met by US use of nuclear weapons.

A strategy for getting rid of the imperialist troops would therefore have to be founded on either the overthrow of the imperialist states by their own populations (not at present posed), or persuading the imperialists that the political costs of staying in Iraq outweigh the combination of (a) the military-strategic and political advantages of staying in Iraq and (b) the political costs of withdrawing without achieving any part of Bush-Blair’s ostensible goals.

3.4. US capital has no long-term strategic interest either in a permanent occupation of Iraq or in the exact character of an Iraqi state, provided that it is not a workers’ state. However, the ‘neoconservative’ group which forms the core of the present US administration has essentially staked its strategy and political future on the ability to construct in Iraq a state committed to neoliberal economics and ‘democracy’ as an alternative to islamism and Arab nationalism. Iraq was to be a stepping stone to war or the threat of war against Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia to force them to suppress the jihadis or go to open war with the US.

The neocons’ policy was wholly illusory and was seen to be so within the first months of the occupation, as it became clear that Chalabi’s INC and similar groups did not dispose of significant support within Iraq, with the result that Iraq cannot be a secure base for US operations against Iran, Syria or Saudi Arabia. Nonetheless, the neocons remain committed to the project, though faced with stiff resistance from traditional ‘realist’ strategists within the US state. This contradiction has produced US attempts to generate an ‘exit strategy’ (November 2003); its failure and the US’s inability to generate any sort of legitimacy for its Iraqi puppet; and the dependency on mercenary ‘private security’, etc, leading to attacks on foreign ‘civilians’ and so to the siege of Fallujah, and the provocations against al-Sadr, which have produced the April 2004 crisis. In the light of the last year strong factions of US capital and within the US state consider the Iraq policy of the Bush administration disastrous.

3.5. If the neocons’ view of the advantages of invading and ‘reconstructing’ Iraq was illusory, once the US had started on this course, for it to withdraw without getting anything at all would be clearly seen as a serious US defeat. The US state has a clear interest in not being seen to be defeated. The US thus has a strong objective interest in developing an exit strategy which can deliver some sort of ‘result’ in Iraq - most probably by handing over power to the traditional shia leadership round Sistani, coupled with a US diplomatic rapprochement with Tehran. But to achieve even this would require a wholesale clear-out of the neocons from the administration. The alternative is to follow through on the neocons’ project by raising the stakes (open war against Iraqi cities) until the neighbouring regimes either fall in the face of mass revulsion, leading to a more general war, or are forced to large-scale repression against islamists. US response to the April insurrection has vacillated between the two approaches.

3.6. There is thus a deep contradiction between the continuation of the neocons’ role in the Bush administration and in particular in the formation of Iraq and Middle East policy, and the objective interests of US capital and the US state. Opening up this contradiction, together with continuing military and other resistance to the occupiers, can change the calculations of the imperialist centres and lead to the end of the occupation.

The problem with jihadi strategy in this context (leaving aside for the moment the reactionary character of the jihadis’ general politics) is that it cannot take into account the military balance of forces (above 3.3) or exploit this contradiction. The more Iraqi resistance to the occupation becomes linked to the jihadi trend in islamism, the more the neocons will be able in the US to link it to 9/11, and thereby secure themselves electorally against the factions of US capital seeking their ouster. The drift towards jihadi politics thus makes getting imperialist troops out of Iraq less likely. The neocons and the jihadis are perfectly genuine mirror images of one another: both aim for a general war between the Middle Eastern muslim countries and the US, which, in the existing military relationship of forces, would be a bloodbath and an utter disaster for the working class of the Middle East.

3.7. In contrast, a leadership which opposed both the occupation and the jihadis - especially one which based itself on the interests of the working class, as opposed to the existing regimes in the Middle Eastern countries - could, like the Vietnamese Communist Party in the Vietnam war or the Chinese Communist Party in its response to the Japanese invasion, exploit the contradictions existing within the imperialist front. Such a leadership would threaten the US with a genuine repeat of Vietnam: with both a ‘domino effect’ spreading across the Middle East, and an inspiration (however deformed) to radicals around the world.

The present weakness of Iraqi communists and the Iraqi workers’ movement and of the communist and workers’ movement more generally through the Middle East is thus not a reason for succumbing to the lure of the apparent successes against the occupiers of the various forms of jihadi guerrillas. These remain, under present conditions, a dead end.

3.8. The present crisis has shown some tendencies (a) to increased mass support for the guerrillas fighting the US, (b) to cooperation across confessional lines (sunni and shia) and (c) to elements in Iraqi politics which have hitherto given support to, or tolerated, the occupation taking their distance from it (elements of the puppet ‘governing council’) or openly opposing it (elements of the traditional shia leadership). To break out of the dead end which jihadi politics currently represents in the struggle to drive out the imperialist troops, it would be necessary for these tendencies to be realised more fully in the form of an anti-occupation coalition political centre capable of including both (some) islamist and secular (communist, Ba’athist, etc.) tendencies.

Such a political centre does not yet exist. We would argue that communists in Iraq should promote the formation of such a coalition, calling for:

(1) the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of imperialist troops, and

(2) elections to a constituent assembly.

The hesitations of the ICP and WCPI on early elections, on the ground that the islamists would get a false mandate, risk playing into the hands of the islamists.

4. For a proletarian solution to the crisis in Iraq

4.1. As is visible from theses 3.7 and 3.8, the struggle for a political centre of opposition to the imperialists is central to driving their troops out of Iraq. But both this, and the everyday problems of the Iraqi masses, pose the problem of overcoming the tendency towards fragmentation and warlordism in Iraq. This, in turn, requires addressing the contradictions which drive towards warlordism.

4.2. Class contradictions. Ba’athist Iraq was a sub-Stalinist nationalist regime which enacted very extensive nationalisations. The Iraqi bourgeoisie as such, as distinct from the state bureaucracy, was weak. An emergence of a strong native bourgeoisie from a collapsing bureaucracy in the style of former Stalinist states and other sub-Stalinist nationalist regimes has been precluded by the sanctions war from 1991-2003. Under the occupation regime the US has tried to carry through and entrench large-scale privatisations and has brought in US corporations and a variety of cowboy operations, in an attempt to subject Iraq directly to US capital. The primary class contradiction in its ordinary sense, between labour and capital, therefore takes three forms: (1) resistance to foreign capitals and the scab labour they have brought into Iraq, which is immediately linked to the question of resistance to the occupation; (2) the enormous level of mass unemployment in Iraqi society (which contributes more or less directly to the formation of proto-warlord militias); and (3) the direct struggle in a lumpen form (gangsterism, etc) against the middle class and the bureaucrats formed under Ba’athism. A provisional government formed in the struggle against the occupiers or after they have been driven out would be urgently faced with problems (2) and (3). The critical elements in the solution are:

- an end to the occupiers’ privatisations and their reversal;

- work for all - ie, overcoming mass unemployment through a massive programme of reconstruction of Iraqi infrastructure using Iraqi labour; and

- for the short term, an effective system of rationing of basic goods in the cities.

4.3 A striking feature of the WCPI’s programme is the absence of any mention of rural social relations. Though Iraq is highly urbanised for a ‘third world’ country, and though the Karim Qasim regime and the Ba’athists carried out an effective land reform which destroyed the power of the shia aristocracy in the south of Iraq, this is a striking omission. Warlordism takes its natural basis from traditional rural social relations, and the problems of combating it and of feeding the cities necessarily raise the question of the primary agricultural producers and their relations with the cities.

4.4. Islamist perspectives address only the first problem: resistance to foreign capital and scab labour. For the rest, islamism can only suggest charity, since it has no perspective for active intervention in the economy, which appears to it as ‘natural’. The victory of any islamist trend would thus leave the disintegrative dynamics untouched, while providing palliatives to the believers.

4.5. Confessional contradictions. Iraq is very approximately between half and two-thirds shia and between one third and half sunni, with a small (2%) christian minority. The colonial and post-colonial puppet regimes rested to a considerable extent on the shia landlords, and the Karim Qasim and Ba’ath regimes, starting from a struggle against the landlords, were characterised by an increasing tendency to coercive dominance by groups of sunni origin over the shia under the cloak of secularism. Soviet support for the Ba’ath regime weakened the communists, already subject to severe Ba’athist repression.

Under these conditions it was natural for shia religious identification to become a form of political resistance to the Ba’ath regime, like catholicism in Poland. Conversely, the fall of the regime gives other religious groups real and not merely illusory grounds to fear shia dominance. In addition, ‘sunnis’ in religious terms include the large Kurdish national minority, whose politics are structured by competing secular nationalist perspectives. And both ‘sunnis’ and to a lesser extent ‘shia’ include significant urban groups, mainly from the intelligentsia and the skilled workers, committed to secular perspectives.

These facts rule out an Iraqi solution on the Iranian model of entrenching the authority of a particular version of islamic law and particular group of islamic scholars, unless it took the form of partition and ‘religious cleansing’. In practice, the underlying social conditions would drive even this solution towards warlordism and the creation of a large number of petty sheikhdoms.

4.6. Islamist perspectives are on their own impotent to deal with confessional diversity. If Iraq is not, in the end, to collapse into warlordism, some degree of separation of religion and state is unavoidable. But islamism, precisely because it makes a version of islam an immediate guide to political action, cannot from its own resources reach this result. It would be necessary to borrow from elsewhere, as the Mughals borrowed from Indian political thought, the Ottomans from Byzantine - and as the Iranian regime, since it took power, has borrowed silently but very extensively from the Pahlavi regime and from European constitutionalism.

4.7. The struggle for separation of religion and state is therefore essential both to creating a common front against the occupation and to combating the dynamic towards warlordism. This struggle has to begin, not from the ‘resistance fighters’, but from the secular parties. The ICP and WCPI (in their different ways) are therefore correct to view islamist ‘resistance fighters’ as an enemy as threatening as the imperialist occupiers. However, their policy towards them needs to be analogous to the Chinese Communist Party’s policy towards the Kuomintang in the 1930s: with them as far as they fight the occupiers, against them as far they fight to assert their own control.

4.8. National contradictions. The most obvious national contradiction in today’s Iraq is the occupation of the country by imperialist troops and the attempt to impose on it imperialist capital. However, even if immediate imperialist occupation is ended, two national questions remain pressing and form part of the dynamic towards warlordism. The first is the Kurdish question. WCPI comrades have correctly insisted that the Kurds must have the right to self-determination. The ICP, in contrast, subsumes the Kurdish question under general federalism.

4.9. Behind this question, however, is a larger one. The Kurds are split up between Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey. The state borders of the Middle East were almost wholly imposed by imperialism in the aftermath of the fall of the Ottoman empire. The struggle for a united workers’ federation of the mashreq (Arab Middle East from Egypt to Iraq) is the condition for providing self-determination to the oppressed nationalities within the existing states. It is only a proletarian ‘pan-Arabism’ which can really pose an alternative to the pan-islamism of the islamists, since this latter - like the old pan-Arabism of Nasser and the early Ba’athists - is grounded on and addresses this underlying body of national contradictions.

4.10. In this context, the pro-UN attitude of the ICP and the ambiguous formulae adopted by the WCPI fall into a trap of the imperialists. As was mentioned above, in thesis 1.3, the UN is an imperialist instrumentality (the present occupation of Iraq is UN-authorised!), and UN interventions elsewhere in practice have actually promoted religious and ethnic division. Further, the UN is committed to the sanctity of existing state borders. Within the framework of UN tutelage, therefore, the national contradictions of the Arab states cannot be resolved.

Mike Macnair

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