AWL conference notes
1. The rise of workers' struggles in Iran
2. The anti-worker repression of the Ahmedinejad regime
3. The much increased international clout of the Iranian regime.
(a) As an unintended consequence of the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Tehran has huge influence in western Afghanistan and southern Iraq.
(b) The rise in oil prices and the paralysis of the Iraqi oil industry strengthens Iran's position as an oil and gas exporter
4. The regional imperialist character of Iran. Tehran rules over substantial oppressed national minorities within Iran's borders (Kurds, Baluchis, Azeris, Arabs), has huge influence in western Afghanistan and southern Iraq, and aspires to dominate the whole Gulf region
5. The attempts by the US administration to beat back the rise of Tehran's power (sanctions, diplomatic pressure, etc.)
6. The possibility that a bunker-mentality Bush-Cheney regime will initiate war against Iran. 7. We characterise any realistically likely military conflict between the US and Iran as one between two imperialisms: an imperialist superpower and a regional "sub-imperialism". A conflict between Iran and Israel would constitute war between the two sub-imperialisms, with one most likely backed by the American superpower.
We further note:
1. The attempts by the USA to encourage and link up with national-minority dissent in Iran (with any success? we don't know)
2. That the national minorites' rights are not cancelled out by any flirtations they may have with the USA, any more than the rights of the Kurds in Iraq are cancelled out by their leaders' long-term collaboration with the USA
3. The wrongness of the response by Socialist Worker, which has loudly denounced "US plans to divide Iran": http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=8411
We believe:
Our basic slogans for now are "no to war, no to the Islamic republic, solidarity with Iranian workers". In the event of war, our line would be similar, i.e. a "Third Camp" one. We are for the right to self-determination for the national minorities in Iran (though not necessarily for separation). Full Iranian domination of southern Iraq would not be better than US occupation.
We resolve:
To develop a team of comrades who will take an interest in activity in relation to Iran; develop our links with Iranian activities; seek to organise, or organise our participation in, meetings and protests . We will encourage that team also to revive the London operation of Iraq Union Solidarity at least to the level of the activity of Iraq Union Solidarity Scotland in Glasgow and of AusIraq in Sydney, and to develop links and cross-fertilisation between the Iran and the Iraq activity.
We further note:
1. In the event of war, the main centre for anti-war protests will be the Stop The War Coalition and local Stop The War groups.
2. We strongly disagree with the pro-Ahmedinejad line pushed by the leadership of Stop The War.
3. In the event of war, however, Stop The War groups and demonstrations will draw in large numbers of young activists. In the event of war, we should intervene energetically in the Stop The War groups, as well as, of course, working energetically on our own independent basis in the workplaces, unions, campuses etc. where we have members.
4. In addition to criticism of Stop the War's pro-Islamic Republic stance, we would put forward an alternative policy for an anti-war coalition:
- Opposition to the popular frontist politics which have led to the invitation of straightforwardly bourgeois politicians onto Stop the War platforms. We want a working-class united front, ie a labour movement-based and oriented campaign against an attack on Iran.
- A critique of the related failure of Stop the War to seriously attempt to mobilise workers' action against war (eg action like that of the Motherwell train drivers who in January 2003 refused to move military supplies destined for the Gulf).
- A critique of the lack of democracy and bureaucratic marginalisation of leftist critics in the Coalition.
AWL conference further notes:
1. Our detailed assessment of Iraq since 2003, at AWL conference 2007, concluded: "In short, the US neo-cons' experiment in Iraq in their variety of imperialism, following on decades of economic and political pulverisation in the country (totalitarian regime since the late 1970s, war 1980-88, war again 1991, sanctions 1991-2003) has taken Iraq into the abyss".
2. It further reckoned: "A victory for the Sunni-sectarian 'resistance' - i.e. scuttling by the US - would predictably mean: a) Full-scale civil war, with great bloodshed; b) Probably, invasion by neighbouring countries such as Iran, maybe Turkey, maybe others; c) The carving-up of Iraq into a number of statelets, and, probably, the extinction of any possibility of democratic self-determination for the peoples of Iraq for a long time to come; d) The destruction of the new Iraqi labour movement and the limited press freedom and civil liberties which now exist".
3. We assessed the US military "surge" which started early in 2007 as follows: "George W Bush's new 'surge' policy in Iraq is a recipe for more bloodshed on the lines of the assault on Fallujah in November 2004 - but also, so it seems more and more, a botched compromise which makes no sense from any angle at all. It is a compromise between those in the US ruling class who argued for a big increase in US forces, and those who argued for winding down the US military presence. Between those who argued for 'betting on the Shia', focusing fire on the Sunni resistance, and those who wanted a simultaneous or fiercer push against the more militant Shia Islamists. Between those who want to boost the Maliki government, and those who want to push it aside. Between those who still want to seek a deal with elements of the Sunni 'resistance', and those who see no alternative but to try to beat down that 'resistance' by crude force. Between those who want to try to do a deal with Iran and Syria, and those who want a 'hard line' and exclusive alignment with Iran's enemies, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, etc."
Surveying events since May 2007, we note:
1. The assessment that the "surge" was a botched policy without clear strategic direction seems confirmed.
2. However, the USA has prudently avoided full-scale confrontations of the type of early 2004. The Shia-Islamist Mahdi Army has chosen to "duck" the "surge" rather than confront it, and the USA has been able to do deals with some Sunni-Arab groups to ally against the al-Qaeda "ultras".
3. Since about October 2007, violent deaths have dropped down to about the same level as before the Samarra mosque bombing of February 2006 set off slow-burning sectarian civil war.
The lower level is still horrifying: about 600 deaths a month according to the Pentagon (December 2007), which almost certainly underestimates. The Brookings report of December 2007 tells us, for example, that 79% of people in Baghdad have had a family member or friend murdered or kidnapped; and that Iraq now has less than half the number of doctors it had before 2003, 17,000 having fled the country and 2,000 having been murdered. Conditions are nightmarish; but it is a quieter patch in the nightmare.
4. US military casualties have fallen even more sharply. Thus, the US has achieved a lull that may well see Bush through until he can hand over the mess to a new President in January 2009.
5. This development has not been accompanied by a corresponding increase in the political base and capacity to deliver civil administration of the Iraqi government. Essentially, Iraq is quieter because it is more tightly and tidily controlled by local mafias.
6. The lull is unstable and may not hold through to January 2009. There are predictable flashpoints that will test it severely, and unpredictable disruptions are very possible, too. But it may hold.
7. Even so little as a quieter patch in the nightmare should eventually enable even an incompetent and corrupt government to increase electricity and water supplies, to create a few more jobs, and to make the Iraqi army more solid. It may open up what American politicians have hinted at as their preferred way out: a military coup, setting up a "soft" military dictatorship, which the USA could keep sufficient distance from to deplore but to support. But at present all substantive political stabilisation is speculation for the future.
8. Even a limited dampening-down of sectarian civil war should be good for the Iraqi labour movement. Generally, however, the labour movement still seems very harassed and on the defensive. If the relative quiet takes the form of a tightening of control by local militias - mostly sectarian and political-Islamist - over their respective areas, it may actually make things worse for the labour movement than the previous chaos. If an increase in the clout of the central government encourages it to enforce the Saddam-era anti-union laws still on the books from 1987 (notionally banning all unions in the public sector), decree 8750 from August 2005 (authorising government seizure of all union funds), or the oil minister's threats against the southern oil union in June/July 2007 (saying that unions have "no legal status to work within the state sector", and issuing warrants for the arrest of the union leaders), then, again, it will be even worse than the previous chaos.
9. The Federation of Workers' Councils and Unions of Iraq seems to be in difficulties and suffering from severe internal dissensions. The Worker-communist Party of Iraq, which initiated FWCUI, has turned its attention, as regards trade upnions, more to establishing ties through the Iraq Freedom Congress with elements of the leadership of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions.
10. The IFOU remains a genuine and very important union, as its stand-off with the government in June/July 2007 shows. Politically, though, its leadership seems to comprise a delicate balance between "soft Islamists" who cooperate with the IFC and the Fadila faction, which is also influential in the management and security team of the oil industry. Fadila (the Islamic Virtue Party) is a Shia-Islamist group, less sectarian than than the others. But in the struggle over the draft oil privatisation law the IFOU has not really, yet, established a position clearly independent from the Basra provincial governorate (controlled by Fadila) which also opposes the law for its own reasons.
11. The General Federation of Iraqi Workers, in which the Communist Party of Iraq has the leading influence, is also a genuine workers' organisation, but on the reformist politics typical of the CP. The CP announced its "Patriotic Democratic Plan" in August 2007. It features such items as:
- "Resolute implementation of national reconciliation
- Employing dialogue, flexibility and reciprocal concessions
- Support Iraqi security plans against terrorism
- Strive to build the broadest political alliance between forces, parties and blocs that agree on the principal points of the Patriotic Democratic Plan
- Rely on the masses of the Iraqi people and their organisations, including trade unions, federations, associations, civil society organisations, and various popular and mass frameworks, recognising that they have the main interest in achieving the aims of the Patriotic Democratic Plan".
12. The unions have issued some joint statements, including against the oil privatisation law. There has however as yet been little active joint campaigning by the unions.
13. It is our duty to build active support for the unions and political parties like the WPIraq, while maintaining and expressing our own political views and our criticisms. AWL conference calls on more AWL members to be active in organising solidarity with Iranian and Iraqi workers, as above.
14. In our discussions with Iraqi worker activists and leftists, we argue the case for a workers' united front in Iraq against both the occupation and the sectarian militias, against privatisation, for key positive working-class demands, and for democracy and secularism.
15. The fragmentation of Arab Iraqi socieity into a patchwork of control by more or less clerical-fascist local mafias means that the prospects, short of a big increase in the strength of the Iraqi labour movement, are grim. As analysed above, the occupation is strengthening the mafias rather than undercutting them. But if "troops out now" were somehow to happen, the result would almost certainly be full-scale war between different sectarian clerical-fascist militias and then the destruction of the labour movement; the chopping-up of the country; the probable liquidation of any chances of Iraqi (or Arab-Iraqi) national self-determination; and the destruction of any elements of democracy (free press, etc.)
16. Solidarity with the Iraqi labour movement against both the US/UK occupation and the sectarian militias remains the indicated policy for socialists internationally. We reject negative slogans like "troops out now" which the actual balance of forces would fill with a reactionary positive content.