In GLW# 580, Rohan Pearce, a member of the Democratic Socialist Perspective and the Socialist Alliance, reported on the conflict in Fallujah and commended the Iraqi resistance there. In the following article, Toma Hamid & Jalal Mohammad, members of the Worker Communist Party of Iraq and also the Socialist Alliance, present a different view.
In early April many Iraqi cities became battlefields of fierce fighting between terrorists: the US-led coalition forces and Moqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army and other Islamic groups. Both sides treat humans recklessly: the primary victims of the first battles were women and children.
The atrocities of the US forces are well known by the left in Australia, and are not disputed. What is not acknowledged by the left is the atrocities and reactionary nature of the "armed resistance" — which 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly calls on readers to support following the first week of fighting in Fallujah and other cities.
The Mahdi Army and the militia of other Islamic groups seized residential areas as trenches for their "holy" fight, turning women and children into human shelters. On the other hand, US troops used 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.
Like the former regime, al Sadr's Mahdi army deliberately transferred the fight to residential areas and workplaces, and took people's houses as shelter. They took hostages, and forced people to fight beside them. They looted government and public buildings and robbed private shops. They forced students, lecturers, workers and shop owners to join the "general strike".
The Mahdi Army is estimated to have 5000-10,000 members. A significant portion is drawn from remnants of the former ruling Baathists. By joining al Sadr's group, these criminals take shelter from the revenge of the people.
Most of the rest of the militia are deprived, desperate and unemployed youth from the poorest slums of Baghdad and other cities. They joined to secure a livelihood. Islamists are masters at exploiting destitution and pay generously for the loyalty of desperate youth. Many members publicly state that they joined because they are in need. Drug addiction and glue-sniffing are widespread among them, and they control the drug traffic from Iran.
The majority have good military training, either by Saddam's regime or more recently by Iranian intelligence in camps close to the border. Tehran's main objective in supporting al Sadr is to destabilise Iraq in order to keep the US busy there.
Al Sadr's group does not have significant support among Iraqis. It is generally resented — not only because it based its terrorist war with the US in residential areas, but also for what it has done during the last year. This group is seen as a criminal gang rather than a political group. In Nasiryiah, for example, the people forced it to withdraw from all governmental institutions and transfer security to the Italian forces and local police.
Hatred against the occupying coalition forces is also mounting. Suspicion and mistrust toward US intentions are growing. Despair and fear dominate. The patience of the masses is quickly running out. If the chaos and lack of security and rights continue, the occupying coalition will face nationwide anti-occupation sentiment, and will sink with the people of Iraq into rivers of blood, bitterness and hatred.
The proclaimed objectives of the two sides of this fight are completely different from the actual objectives. The US claims its objectives are to bring al Sadr to justice for killing Abdel Majid 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 supporting the existence of Islamic groups, including al Sadr.
The US allowed the formation of the Mahdi Army and tolerated its crimes against the people, turning a blind eye to the atrocities committed by this and other Islamist groups. Coalition forces facilitated the expansion of their influence in many areas in Iraq.
The Mahdi Army actions include: imposing veils on women; destruction of liquor shops and killing their owners; killing opponents; tossing bodies of their victims into residential areas to terrify people and their opponents; cultivation of "pleasure marriage", which is a form of prostitution; publication of fatwas in their paper, al Hawza, appealing to kill communists, secular people, women and followers of other faiths and has incitement of violence against opponents; instigation of sectarian conflicts in universities, so that they could gain a foothold there, and theft of humanitarian aid packages and selling them in mosques.
All of this has been in the presence of coalition forces who have done nothing to stop them. The coalition troops would not listen to thousands of complaints from individuals and secular groups against al Sadr's group.
Immediately after the war, the US had much need for Islamic groups to help suppress mass protest movements and impose an atmosphere of reactionary dictatorship. The US turned a blind eye to al Sadr's group despite its knowledge of Iran's support. Now 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. Now the US wants to restrict Iran's influence in Iraq and to destroy the tool of its intervention: al Sadr's movement. Therefore Washington has decided to kill hundreds, perhaps thousands of Iraqi people, to defeat al Sadr and capture him.
This fight between the US and al Sadr must be stopped. Building a normal civil society in Iraq requires ending this reactionary fight and building a secular regime that secures basic rights and freedoms. The US not only cannot normalise and build a civil society in Iraq, but its very presence is a source of chaos, insecurity, and terrorism.
The US is unable and unwilling to build a secular regime because it would not serve its interests. It deals with Iraq as a collection of sects, ethnicities, and tribes, not as a civil society like others worldwide. The make-up of the Iraqi Governing Council, ministries and public institutions rely on this principle. And Washington does not want to eliminate political Islam. They are pushing Iraqi society toward a vicious circle of reaction and war.
Bringing Iraqi society to normalcy and building a civil society require curbing the influence of political Islam. From the Iraqi workers' point of view, political Islam is a mortal enemy. The victory of the working class will happen only with the defeat of these groups.
The Iraqi working class and worker-communism are the only forces which have the potential to achieve this task and create a humanist alternative, a secular, non-nationalist state. The Iraqi masses have to establish their own independent front separate from America and political Islam. Achieving this also requires the efforts of all civilised 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.
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, May 19, 2004.
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