Iraq

Defend Iraqi and Kurdish socialists!

On 5 September US president Barack Obama announced a “game plan” to wear down the “Islamic State” movement (ISIS), which has seized a large swathe of Syria and Iraq and imposed Sunni-sectarian ultra-Islamist rule. On 8 September US Secretary of State John Kerry hailed the formation of a new Iraqi government in Baghdad. The US will bomb more. (Obama ruled out ground troops). There is much less “breakthrough” than claimed. Although every government in the region fears and dislikes ISIS, so far the USA has only been able to sign up Turkey to its “core coalition”. US bombing may help the armed...

Sectarian impasse in Iraq

On 31 August, the Iraqi army, Kurdish troops (peshmerga), and the “peace brigades” linked to Iraqi Shia-Islamist leader Moqtada al-Sadr reached the town of Amerli in northern Iraq and lifted its siege by the “Islamic State” movement which has taken control of a big swathe of northern Iraq and of Syria. Amerli’s inhabitants are mainly of the Turkmen minority, but many had already fled the siege. It is reported that the Turkmen themselves had dug mass graves because they planned to kill their families and themselves if they lost their fight to defend the town. Otherwise they feared forced...

War and Virgin Birth

During the Gulf war it was hard to avoid the impression that Britain was a country in the grip of a mass psychosis. From the grey dull Thatcher-made Prime Minister, with his robotic voice and the grey metallic glint round the eyes, by way of no-guts Neil Kinnock translating John Major's pronouncements into a better class of sub-Churchilian rhetoric, all the way down into the sewers of the tabloid press, official society was caught up in a fierce fantasy about fighting a glorious war for freedom and liberty against great odds. The TV pictures of Iraqi cities being flattened might have been...

Bloody War and the Threat of Virgin Birth, or, Capitalism Drives You Crazy!

During the Gulf war it was hard o avoid the impression that Britain was a country in the grip of a mass psychosis. From the grey dull little Thatcher-made Prime Minister, with his robotic voice and the grey metallic glint round the eyes, by way of no-guts Neil Kinnock translating Major's pronouncements into a better class of sub-Churchilian rhetoric, all the way down into the sewers of the tabloid press, official society was caught up in a fierce fantasy about fighting a glorious war for freedom and liberty against great odds. It was nothing of the sort but not many seemed to notice. The TV...

Bloody War and the Threat of Virgin Birth, or, Capitalism Drives You Crazy!

During the Gulf war it was hard o avoid the impression that Britain was a country in the grip of a mass psychosis. From the grey dull little Thatcher-made Prime Minister, with his robotic voice and the grey metallic glint round the eyes, by way of no-guts Neil Kinnock translating Major's pronouncements into a better class of sub-Churchilian rhetoric, all the way down into the sewers of the tabloid press, official society was caught up in a fierce fantasy about fighting a glorious war for freedom and liberty against great odds. It was nothing of the sort but not many seemed to notice. The TV...

The Monthly Survey

Articles: European workers' unity is still vital Tories use government to sell death France: a second wave? Download PDF

Stop this war, start another one

The Stop the War Campaign is misnamed. To the naïve it is a happy, pacifist campaign. However the splinter of the SWP that runs it (called Counterfire) is very far from being pacifist, and it would be far more honest for the campaign to be renamed, “Stop this War and Start a Different One”. Counterfire — and unpleasant friends like Sami Ramadani, who writes on the Stop the War site — would be very happy if everyone in the Middle East ganged up and attacked Israel. Or the US. Apparently — according to Ramadani, and despite all known facts and common sense – Islamic State (ISIS/IS) is actually...

ISIS threatens the Kurds; US sends bombers

That the US has been pulled in was predictable. The details are unexpected. The US is bombing not to aid the Baghdad government's forces, but those of the (very) autonomous Kurdish Regional Government in northern Iraq. The US action was triggered by ISIS advances against the Kurds on 2 August, and announced by Barak Obama on 7 August. The conventional wisdom had been that the Kurdish armed forces were tougher than the ramshackle and demoralised Iraqi army. The Iraqi Kurds' first response to the ISIS advances in the north of Arab Iraq was not to fear an ISIS invasion of Kurdish areas, but to...

Impasse in Iraq

Patrick Cockburn writes in The Independent (13 July): "Since the capture of Mosul by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) on 10 June, Shia women and children have been killed in villages south of Kirkuk, and Shia air force cadets machine-gunned and buried in mass graves near Tikrit." "In Mosul, Shia shrines and mosques have been blown up, and in the nearby Shia Turkoman city of Tal Afar 4,000 houses have been taken over by Isis fighters as 'spoils of war'. Simply to be identified as Shia or a related sect, such as the Alawites, in Sunni rebel-held parts of Iraq and Syria today, has...

Justice for all ‘honour crime’ victims!

On 7 July, I attended a meeting at the House of Commons, hosted by Jeremy Corbyn MP, about honour killings in Iraqi Kurdistan. The meeting was called by the Kurdish and Middle Eastern Women’s Organisation (KMEWO). Before this meeting, I have to say that I knew very little about the plight of some of the women in the region. The statistics and stories I heard have inspired me to take action on this issue and to ask others to do the same. Women worldwide suffer structural and systematic oppression at the hands of men. We are beaten, raped, burned and killed by spouses, partners, family members...

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