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Weekly Worker 543 Thursday September 9 2004
Still the death toll mounts
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.
Paul Greenaway
