are the reasons for this? The dominant Western media keeps repeating ad nauseam that Iraq is an “artificial” country and that the oppressive domination of Saddam’s Sunni regime over the Shias and Kurds is at the origin of the inevitable civil war (which only the continuation of the foreign occupation might be able to avert). The “resistance,” in this view, is thus limited to a few pro-Saddam Islamist currents of the Sunni “triangle.” It is difficult to believe that so many falsehoods can be assembled at one time.
After the First World War, the British colonialists had great difficulty in overcoming the Iraqi people’s resistance. Consistent with their imperial tradition, the British fabricated an imported monarchy and a landowning class to support their power just as they gave a privileged position to Sunni Islam. But despite their constant efforts, the British failed. The Communist Party and the Baath Party made up the main organized political forces that defeated the power of the Sunni monarchy detested by everyone: Sunni, Shia, and Kurd. The violent competition between these two forces, which took center stage between 1958 and 1963, ended in a victory by the Baath Party, hailed at the time as a relief by the Western powers. Yet the Communist project could potentially have led in a democratic direction. That was not true of the Baath. A nationalist party, pan-Arab and favorable to Arab unity in principle, it admired the Prussian model for constructing German unity. It recruited in the modernist, secular petite bourgeoisie and was hostile to obscurantist expressions of religion. As could be predicted, in power it evolved into a dictatorship. Its statism was only partly anti-imperialist because, depending on the conjuncture and circumstances, a compromise could be accepted with the dominant imperialism in the region, that of the United States. This “deal” encouraged the megalomaniacal excesses of the leader, who imagined that Washington would agree to make him its main ally in the region. Washington’s support of Baghdad (including the delivery of chemical weapons) in the absurd and criminal war against Iran from 1980 to 1989 seemed to lend credibility to this calculation. Saddam did not imagine that Washington would cheat, that the modernization of Iraq was unacceptable for imperialism, and that the decision to destroy the country had already been made. Saddam fell into the trap (the green light had been given to him to annex Kuwait, which was, in fact, an Iraqi province that the British imperialists had detached to make one of their oil colonies), and Iraq was subjected to ten years of sanctions aimed at battering the country to facilitate the glorious conquest by the U.S. armed forces over what remained.
One can accuse the successive Baath governments, including the last one during its period of decline under Saddam’s leadership, of everything except for having stirred up confessional conflict between Sunni and Shia. Who, then, is responsible for the bloody clashes between the two communities today? Certainly, we will someday learn how the CIA (and undoubtedly the Mossad as well) organized many of these massacres. But beyond that, it is true that the political desert created by Saddam’s regime, and the example he gave of using unprincipled opportunist methods to achieve his aims, encouraged candidates for government of all kinds to follow this example, often protected by the occupier. Sometimes, perhaps, these people were naive to the point of believing that they could make use of the occupier. The candidates in question, whether religious leaders (Shia or Sunni), supposed “notables” (quasi-tribal), or notoriously corrupt businessmen exported by the United States, never had any real political foothold in the country. Even the religious leaders respected by believers had no acceptable political sway over the Iraqi people. Without the void created by Saddam, their names would not even be known. Faced with this new political world made by the imperialism of liberal globalization, will other authentically popular and national, potentially democratic, political forces have the means to reconstruct themselves?
There was a time when the Iraqi Communist Party encapsulated and embodied the best of what Iraqi society could produce. It was established in all areas of the country and dominated the world of intellectuals, often of Shia origin (I note that Shiism above all produces revolutionaries and religious leaders, rarely bureaucrats or compradors!). The Communist Party was genuinely popular and anti-imperialist, not really inclined to demagogy, and potentially democratic. Is it now called to disappear from history once and for all, after the massacre of thousands of its best militants by the Baathist dictatorship, the collapse of the Soviet Union (for which it was not prepared), and the behavior of some of its intellectuals who believed that it was acceptable to return from exile as appendages of the U.S. armed forces? Unfortunately, this is not impossible, but not “inevitable,” far from it.
The Kurdish question is a real one, in Iraq as well as Iran and Turkey. But on this subject also, it should be remembered that the Western powers have always cynically acted with double standards. Repression of Kurdish demands in Iraq and Iran has never reached the level of continual police and military violence as in Turkey. Neither Iran nor Iraq has ever gone as far as denying the very existence of the Kurds. Yet, as a NATO member, Turkey should always be pardoned. NATO, you will recall, is an organization of democratic nations, or so the media constantly reminds us. The eminent democrat Salazar was one of the founding members, and the Greek colonels and Turkish generals were unconditional supporters of democracy!
Iraqi popular fronts were formed around the Communist and the Baath parties in the best moments of its stormy history. Whenever such fronts exercised power, they always found common ground with the main Kurdish parties, which were always, moreover, their allies.
The “anti-Shia” and “anti-Kurd” excesses of Saddam’s regime were certainly real: bombardments of the Basra region by Saddam’s army after its 1990 defeat in Kuwait and use of gas against the Kurds. Such abuses came as a response to Washington’s armed diplomatic maneuvers, which had mobilized sorcerer’s apprentices pressured to seize the occasion. Nevertheless, Saddam’s reactions were criminal and stupid, since the success of Washington’s appeals was quite limited. But should we expect anything else from dictators like Saddam?
The power of the resistance to the foreign occupation, unexpected in these conditions, would seem to be a miracle. This is not really the case because the basic reality is that the Iraqi people as a whole (Arab and Kurd, Sunni and Shia) detest the occupiers and are quite well aware of its daily crimes (assassinations, bombings, massacres, torture). We should then be able to envisage a “United National Resistance Front” (call it whatever you like) proclaiming itself as such, publicizing the list of organizations and parties that constitute it and their common program. Up until now, this has not been the case, mostly because of the destruction of the social and political fabric caused by the successive dictatorships of Saddam and the occupiers. But whatever the reasons, this weakness is a serious impediment that facilitates divide-and-rule policies, encourages the opportunists to become collaborators, and generates confusion about the objectives of the liberation.
Who will succeed in overcoming these barriers? The Communists should be well placed to do so. Already militants—on the ground—are differentiating themselves from the “leaders” (that is, the only ones known to the dominant media) who, not knowing which way the wind is blowing, attempt to give a semblance of legitimacy to their support for the collaborationist government by pretending to complement it with armed resistance! But many other political forces could, in the circumstances, take decisive action toward forming such a united front.
It remains the case that, despite its “weaknesses,” the Iraqi people’s resistance has already defeated (politically if not yet militarily) Washington’s project. This is precisely what worries the Atlanticists in the European Union, faithful allies of the United States. The subaltern associates of the United States today fear the latter’s defeat because that would strengthen the capacity of peoples in the South to force globalized transnational capital from the imperialist triad to respect the interests of the nations and peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
The Iraqi resistance has made proposals that would make it possible to get out of the impasse and assist the United States to withdraw from the trap. It proposes: (i) formation of a transitional administration with the support of the UN Security Council; (ii) immediate cessation of resistance activities, as well as military and police operations by occupation forces; (iii) the withdrawal of all foreign military and civilian authorities
