Workers' Liberty

Another interesting article from the WCPI

Over the last week, many Iraqi cities became battlefields of fierce fighting between terrorists: the US-led coalition forces and Muqtada al-Sadr's group and other Islamic groups. The hallmark of this battle was recklessness toward human lives by both sides; the primary victims of this battle were women and children. Images of corpses lying on the street, innocent people displaced, homes and workplaces destroyed, tanks running over people, and humiliated, horrified hostages paraded on TV channels, all of these dominated the scene in Iraq.

Normal activities of daily living ceased. Every school, university, workplace, and shop was shut down, and in many places curfews were imposed. Looting and other crimes soared. Innocent people were caught in the crossfire between terrorist forces.

On the one hand, we see the Mahdi Army and the militiamen of other Islamic groups seizing residential areas as trenches for their "holy" fight. They turn women and children into human shelters. On the other hand, we see the US troops using Apache helicopters, F16 and F18, tanks, and other highly sophisticated weaponry to attack these residential areas.

The result of this conflict is intensification of a situation already beyond catastrophe. There is an increased possibility of an ethnic and sectarian war, greater hunger and misery, the collapse of all vital social services and necessities for life, and the elimination of all civil and political freedoms and rights. Moreover, every city now may become a battlefield like Falluja and other flashpoints of this conflict. The people's daily struggles and mass movements that were emerging and taking shape under Occupation Authority, the Governing Council, and the authority of other reactionary parties, sustained a setback. The events of the last week in Iraq highlighted many facts. They demonstrated for people in Iraq and worldwide the true nature and brutality of the two poles involved in this conflict.

They have shown that the US government is willing, as usual, to kill thousands and even millions if necessary to achieve its goal. The US troops have committed massacres, implemented the tactics of collective punishment, and terrorized the masses. In Falluja alone, more than 600 people were murdered, many of them women and children. In other parts of Iraq, hundreds of people were killed, again the majority being innocent civilians. These events have made clear the nature, the objectives, and tactics of the Islamic groups, and specifically Muqtada al-Sadr's group.

The atrocities committed by these groups in their conflict with the coalition forces were striking. Like the former regime, they deliberately transferred the fight to residential areas and workplaces, and took people's houses as shelter in their fight against the coalition forces. Barbaric tactics such as taking hostages, or forcing people to fight beside them, were also used. As soon as the militia of Muqtada al-Sadr seized cities, they looted governmental and public buildings and robbed private shops. They forced students, lecturers, workers, and shop owners to join the "general strike" announced by this group.

Muqtada al-Sadr's group and his Mahdi Army is the main group involved in this fight. The Mahdi Army, according to most reports, is estimated to be between five-and-ten-thousand members. A significant portion of Muqtada al-Sadr's group was formed from remnants of the Baath party, Saddam's Fedayeen, as well as other Baathist oppressive apparatus. By joining the al-Sadr's group, these criminals take shelter from the revenge of the people. Many criminals released by the Baath regime just before the war have also joined this militia.

The vast majority of the remaining portion is comprised of poor, deprived, desperate, and unemployed youth from the poorest slums of Baghdad and other central and southern cities. They have joined to secure a livelihood, since Islamists are masters at exploiting destitution and pay generously for the loyalty of desperate youth. These Islamists also exploit the superstition and reactionary thoughts that have been reinforced in society during last decade. Many members publicly state that they joined this militia because they are in need. Drug addiction and glue-sniffing is widespread among its members, and indeed, they control the drug traffic from Iran. The vast majority has good military training, either during Saddam's regime or recently through training by Iranian intelligence in camps close to the border. Iran strongly supports this group as part of its conflict with the US. Iran's main objective is to destabilize Iraq and to create enough problems in Iraq to keep the US busy there.

Despite the vociferous claims of this group, it does not have significant support among the people of Iraq. Furthermore, it is generally resented by the population - not only because it deliberately transferred its terrorist war with the US to residential areas, and thus embroiled innocent people in this fight, but also due to the deeds it committed during the last year. The vast majority of people see this group as a criminal gang rather than a political group. In Nasiryiah, for example, the people forced this group into compliance with their demands that they withdraw from all governmental institutions and transfer security to the Italian forces and local police.

These events also provide evidence that the US project in Iraq has failed. Undoubtedly, the US will triumph in this confrontation with Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, and against groups fighting in Falluja. However, full suppression is now in doubt. Even worse is the emerging links and cooperation between the al-Sadr group and terrorist groups belonging to al-Qieda and Osma bin laden. This will make the situation more unpredictable, and it is difficult to guess the potential consequences.

A year after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the coalition is struggling to control much of Iraq. In just a few days, the situation has so dramatically deteriorated that in many ways it is worse than the immediate aftermath of the war. The US failed to re-establish security throughout the country, which is the minimum service that any populace expects of the state. America's self-invented 'liberator' image is collapsing. Visions of regional democracy that would begin in Baghdad and spread to other Arab countries are vanishing. More important, the US mission in Iraq was never so nebulous. There is no clear formula for how to stabilize the country, or how the country might live in peace in the future. Iraq increasingly seems to be ungovernable under the coalition. Iraq today is a country with no future. Moreover, the US today has no viable exit plan from the situation in Iraq.

This time the fighting may subside precisely because the people have not participated in it. It is a war between the coalition forces and Islamic groups and remnants of the Baath regime. However, the hatred against coalition forces is mounting. Suspicion and mistrust toward US intentions are growing. Despair and fear concerning the future dominates. The patience of the masses is quickly running out. If the chaos and its attendant lack of security and rights continue, the coalition will have to fight a nationwide anti-occupation sentiment, and the coalition will sink with the people of Iraq in rivers of blood, bitterness, and hatred.

The proclaimed objectives of the two sides of this fight are completely different from the actual objectives. The objectives announced by the US are to bring Muqtada al-Sadr to justice because he killed Mr. al-Khoai (another reactionary cleric loyal to the West), and to impose law and order. This claim is hypocritical and deceitful. The US has been by all means supporting the Islamic groups. Even in regard to Muqtada al-Sadr, the US allowed the formation of Mahdi Army and tolerated all of its crimes against the people. It was the coalition forces who turned a blind eye to the atrocities committed by this group and other Islamic groups during the last year, and the coalition forces who facilitated the expansion of their influence in many areas in Iraq.

Among other things, the Mahdi Army imposed compulsory veils on women in the southern cities of Iraq. It also destroyed liquor shops and killed their owners. During Christmas of last year alone, this group killed 8 Christians accused of selling liquor in the city of Basra. They kill their opponents after accusing them of being members of the Baath party. Hardly a day passes without the killing of a few people and tossing their bodies into residential areas to terrify people and their opponents. The army also cultivates "pleasure marriage," which is another form of prostitution and now a very profitable business in the regions they rule. They oppress any form of freedom of expression, including the freedom to organise and demonstrate. They brutally repress any mass protest. This group, along with the Kurdish nationalist parties, has incited sectarian and ethnic frictions in Kirkuk, which claimed the lives of dozens of people and prepared the ground for a full-scale ethnic and sectarian war in this city. They kill workers who cooperate with the coalition after branding them "enemy collaborators".

Muqtada al-Sadr's paper, al-Hawza, has published fatwas to kill communists, secular people, women, and followers of other faiths and has incited violence against opponents.

It propagates extreme reactionary and inhumane traditions and values. It instigated sectarian conflicts in universities, so that they could gain a foothold there. They have stolen humanitarian aid packages and sold them in mosques. They loot government institutions. They occupy hundreds of governmental buildings. They were the actual rulers in many cities where they set up their own courts and prisons. They turned south of Iraq to another emirate for the Iranian regime where terrorist and espionage organizations act freely. They threaten anyone who does not support them, not only seculars and women, but even the followers of other Shiite clerics. All of these crimes have been committed in the presence of coalition forces who have done nothing to stop them. The coalition troops would not listen to thousands of complains from individuals and secular groups against al-Sadr's group. They do not even talk about these crimes against ordinary people. The single charge leveled against al-Sadr is the murder of al-Khoai.

Immediately after the war, America had much need for this group and other Islamic groups to play an active role in suppressing mass protest movements and imposing an atmosphere of reactionary dictatorship. Therefore, it turned a blind eye to Muqtada al-Sadr's group despite its knowledge that this group has been taken by the reeling Iranian regime as a tool to intervene in Iraq. It creates problems for the coalition forces and also prevents a secular regime from coming to power.

US policies have reached an impasse in Iraq. The terrorist activities of the Islamic groups in the name of resistance have surged. America's effort to "Vietnamize" the war in Iraq (i.e., conducting the war through Iraqis themselves under an American leadership) has failed. All of this motivates the US to restrict Iran's influence in Iraq and to destroy the tool of its intervention: al- Sadr's movement. The role for this group has ended from America's point of view, especially now that Muqtada al-Sadr is displaying a great appetite for seizing power. Therefore, today America has decided to kill hundreds, perhaps thousands of Iraqi people, to defeat al-Sadr, capture him, and bring him to justice.

On the other hand, Muqtada al-Sadr claims that he is fighting to liberate the Iraqi people from the coalition forces. However, despite all the rhetoric against the coalition forces and the concerns over the "urgent questions of the Arab and Islamic World" and support for the Hizbullah and Hamas movements, for al-Sadr and his group, this fight is a power struggle. Whatever this group may have done since April 10, 2003, it was fighting for a share in power.

This group did everything possible to eliminate other leadership from the Shiite movement. As we said, soon after the war they killed al-Khoai to eliminate him as a rival in the contest for Shiite leadership. It escalated its anti-American rhetoric to embarrass other Shiite leadership within the Governing Council, especially the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution of Iraq and the al-Dawaa party. It also attacked al-Sistani, the other high-profile cleric, and branded him as the "silent Hawsa." This group took other steps to consolidate its position as the sole leader for the Shiite movement, such as occupying the "holy" cities and shrines in Iraq to monopolize the huge cash returns from these places, and also the formation of a government to replace the coalition-formed government. They only abandoned these measures when they did not attract the support of the masses. All these practices and steps were attempts by this group to impose itself in the political equations of Iraq and to gain a share in the power that is now being divided by the coalition authority among various reactionary groups across the country.

A recent statement made by al-Sadr summarized his intention when he said that the authority must be handed over to "honest Iraqi men" like himself, of course. His main weapon is not Iraqism or Islamism but its shiaism-sectarism. Therefore, he not only cannot unite Iraqis, but also is incapable of bringing together the Islamists forces. Al-Sadr's has been an important key factor for the eruption of a civil war in Iraq. In contrast to the view depicted by Western media, this group is in no way radical, in the sense that it adheres to certain principles only in an extremely opportunistic manner.

This fight is reactionary and anti-human in the full sense of the world. Its continuation will lead to the imposition of an atmosphere of absolute oppression and darkness, and will transform the Iraqi society into a scary jungle where all features of civil society have disappeared. This is what the US and Islamic groups want. The triumph of any party in this conflict is not a gain for the masses in Iraq, but rather another setback added to their previous setbacks. Therefore, this fight must be stopped. Building a normal civil society in Iraq requires ending this reactionary fight and building a secular regime, one that secures basic rights and freedoms. This requires the withdrawal of the coalition forces and replacing them with international peacekeeping forces. The US not only cannot normalize and build a civil society in Iraq, but its very presence is a source of chaos, insecurity, and terrorism, and the US can do very little to improve the current situation.

This current bloodshed in Iraq will continue and the US will never be able to normalize the situation and fight its enemies. The challenges the United States now faces in Iraq did not emerge overnight, but actually are an accumulation of its reactionary policies, indifference to the urgent demands of people since Saddam Hussein's government collapsed a year ago, support for reactionary forces in Iraq, and its policies toward Islamic groups. The US is a reactionary state and will rely only on reactionary forces. One would think that the US and other Coalition forces would support secular organizations and institutions, to try to undermine the influence of the reactionary religious groups, but just the opposite is happening. The US is terrified of any sign of progressiveness and cannot support secular or progressive groups. It instead will heavily support the various reactionary groups. Appeasing some political Islamic groups while confronting others has been vital in expanding al-Sadr's movement.

America is unable and unwilling to build a secular regime because a secular regime does not serve its interests. Therefore, it deals with the Iraqi society as a collection of sets, ethnicities, and tribes, and not as a civil society like other societies worldwide. The make up of the Governing Council, ministries, public institutions, and all policies of the US rely on this principle. In addition, the US does not want to eliminate political Islam. These policies will push the Iraqi society toward a vicious circle of reaction and war.

Bringing the Iraqi society to normalcy and building a civil society also requires curbing the influence of political Islam. Groups of political Islamists, whether aligned with the US including those in the Governing Council, or with those fighting against America in the so-called resistance, are two faces of the same coin and they feed on each other. From the Iraqi workers' point of view they are a staunch enemy. The victory of the working class will happen only with the defeat of these groups.

Defeating the US and Islamic groups and ending the current catastrophic situation is the task of the Iraqi working class and progressive people. The Iraqi working class and Worker-Communism are the only forces which have the potential to achieve this task and create a more humanist alternative, which is the establishment of a secular and non-nationalist state. The Iraqi masses have to establish their own independent front and separate their rank from the ranks of America and political Islam. Achieving this task also requires the efforts of all civilized and progressive humanity worldwide who see the Iraqi society as a civil society seeking freedom, prosperity, social justice and the establishment of a secular regime.

By Toma Hamid and Jalal Muhammad

April 12, 2004