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The occupation of Iraq
 SADDAM’S REGIME HAS crumbled (as we go to press, 11 April)
under the impact of the US-British invasion, though fierce, sporadic fighting
continues in Baghdad and other cities. Scenes of Saddam’s statues being torn
down have been beamed around the world to convey images of ‘liberation’.
But
covering the tottering monument with the US Stars and Stripes, however briefly,
also signalled the arrival of an occupying power. The crowds on the streets in
Baghdad, mainly young Shias from the eastern part of the city, have not been a
tidal wave of celebration. The majority of Iraqis have very mixed feelings.
Relieved at the end of the dictatorship, they are far from being pro-American,
and fear a foreign occupation. After years of deprivation imposed by Western
sanctions, they have paid a heavy human price during this intense, three-week
invasion.
Victory can appear to be its own justification, and Bush and
Blair will claim that their policy of pre-emptive military intervention has been
justified. Yet the USA’s relatively easy superpower victory over Iraq refutes
the claim that Saddam’s regime threatened military disaster, especially the
absurd fantasy that Saddam’s weapons posed an immediate threat to the US
homeland itself. No chemical weapons were used and it remains to be seen whether
useable weapons will be found. But the invasion brought death to thousands of
innocent men, women and children, and has inflicted horrendous wounds on tens of
thousands. Fiendish products of modern technology, such as cluster bombs, were
used with complete disregard for human life. The legacy of injury and
mutilation, especially of young children, will not allow Iraqis to forget the
US-British military action.
Basic services have collapsed. Millions are without water,
electricity, telephones and, most critical of all, basic medical facilities. In
Basra, Baghdad and no doubt elsewhere there has been widespread looting, both by
criminal gangs and hoards of poor people. "Understandably", writes Robert Fisk
from Baghdad, "the poor and the oppressed took their revenge on the homes of the
men of Saddam’s regime who have impoverished and destroyed their lives,
sometimes quite literally, for more than two decades". (Independent, 11 April)
The massive villas of Saddam’s cronies have been stripped bare, as have public
buildings and even some hospitals. The masterful Pentagon planners were
evidently not prepared for the social collapse that has followed the regime’s
demise. They have put in place no resources and personnel to provide even the
most the basic life support to the population they have supposedly ‘liberated’.
While the Western capitalist media deplore the ‘breakdown of
law and order’, US imperialism is already implementing plans to loot the
country’s oil wealth and profit from rebuilding what it has only just destroyed.
Bush and the Pentagon hawks will claim that their victory
vindicates their military tactics and demonstrates the USA’s unchallengeable
military supremacy. But their real problems in Iraq are only just beginning.
Over the next period they will face an incalculable blow-back from their
military aggression. A lethal suicide bomb attack on US marines and the
assassination of the leading Shia cleric, Abdul Majid al-Khoi, who was being
groomed by the US as a ‘moderate’ Shia ally, are just early symptoms of the
problems the US and Britain will face as occupying powers. Moreover, there is
growing opposition, even among some pro-US exiles and would-be leaders of the
new Iraq, to the role of Ahmad Chalabi, whom Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the
Pentagon hawks are backing as the Iraqi figurehead for their occupying regime.
Previously convicted in Jordan for a multi-million dollar fraud, Chalabi is from
the old landlord-capitalist ruling class that was displaced by the Ba’athist
regime. It would be hard to find a more discredited figure to front a
transitional government.
The liberation of Kirkuk and Mosul by the peshmerga forces
of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP)
is a great victory for the Kurdish people. Despite the apparent agreement
between the US and PUK/KDP leaders to withdraw the peshmergas, however, the
Kurdish takeover of these key cities, at the centre of Iraq’s second-biggest oil
field, has the potential to trigger armed intervention by the Turkish regime,
igniting a war within a war.
Will the world, after the military defeat of Saddam’s
regime, be any more stable or safer? The whole Middle-East region, for a start,
will become even more volatile as a result. The threat of terrorist attacks will
be multiplied. President Mubarak of Egypt, an ally of US imperialism, has
himself warned: "If there is one bin Laden now, there will be 100 bin Ladens
afterwards".
The lives of Americans, contrary to Bush’s claims, will now
be less secure and safe, and US agencies abroad will be even more vulnerable to
attack. A heavy economic penalty will be levied on the US working class,
moreover, as Bush’s policies aggravate US capitalism’s deep structural problems.
Even as Bush asked Congress for another $50 billion instalment for the war,
Republicans in Congress voted to cut $20 billion from the war veterans’ budget
over the next 20 years and Bush himself cut $172 million from school funding for
the children of military personnel. (Guardian, 2 April) At the moment, Bush may
be riding high on his military victory. The downward slide of the US economy,
with indications of a new recession, makes it far from certain that Bush can
translate military success into re-election for a second term in 2004. Despite
the feeble opposition of the Democrats, the Republicans’ rival capitalist party,
Bush junior may well suffer the same fate as Bush senior, who won the 1990-91
Gulf war but lost the 1992 presidential election.
The anti-war movement in the US (far stronger than at the
early stages of the Vietnam war) is an overture to the mass movement that will
erupt in the future against the big capitalist corporations and the USA’s
corrupt ruling class.
Pre-emptive military action by the US against Iraq (aided
and abetted by Blair) marks a turning point in world relations. But so too does
15 February – the unprecedented world-wide protests of perhaps 30 million,
followed by many more mass demonstrations throughout the world. They did not
succeed in stopping the war, but nevertheless shook capitalist leaders
everywhere (despite what they may say) and are a measure of the political price
that will be paid later by leaders, like Blair, Aznar, Howard, Berlusconi and
others, who have given their support to US imperialism. From this anti-war
movement, including from among the tens of thousands of radicalised school
students who took energetic protest action, will come a new generation of
working-class activists who fight against war and its capitalist perpetrators
and engage in the struggle for a socialist society.
A one-sided war
THE COLLAPSE OF Saddam’s regime followed from a very
one-sided military struggle. A mighty superpower, equipped with hi-tech weapons
and backed with immense material resources, confronted an isolated, third-world
regime with outdated, depleted resources. Iraq was militarily much weaker than
at the time of the 1990-91 Gulf war. Saddam had no operational air power, while
the US has a massive force of aircraft and missiles, much more accurate than in
the past though still causing horrendous civilian casualties.
The majority of Iraq’s 400,000 troops, including the elite
Republican Guard, were never deployed in direct engagement with US forces. The
Iraqi army did not even manage to destroy key bridges along the route to
Baghdad, an elementary step for any defensive operation. There has been no use
of biological or chemical weapons, and so far none have been found. The fierce
resistance to the US-British invasion was overwhelmingly from irregular forces,
mainly Saddam’s Fedayeen, with some volunteers from other Arab countries and
elements of the Republican Guard. These forces mainly comprised hardcore
supporters of the Ba’athist regime, loyalist strata of the state machine, the
army and security forces. They did not reflect a broad, popular resistance
movement. The regime’s lack of social base has been revealed by the mood on the
streets when it was clear on 9 April that Saddam’s power had crumbled to dust,
and crowds joined US forces in tearing down Saddam’s statues.
Yet the US-British invasion was not the expected ‘cakewalk’,
as US field commanders were forced to admit. Rumsfeld’s rosy scenario did not
work out. There was no military coup against Saddam when the invasion forces
first landed, nor an immediate collapse of the army. Above all, there was no
uprising to greet the invaders, even in predominantly Shia areas like Basra. At
one point (27 March) the leading US field commander, General William Wallace,
publicly stated that the resistance was much stronger than they had expected.
"The enemy we are fighting", he said, "is different to the one we’d war-gamed
against". Wallace called for a pause in the US advance on Baghdad to allow for
consolidation of the US forces’ overstretched and harassed supply lines. This
brought sharp behind-the-scenes exchanges between the field commanders and the
Rumsfeld leadership in the Pentagon. In the light of the US victory, Rumsfeld
and the hawks will no doubt triumphantly claim their tactics have been
vindicated against conservative generals. But the difficulties encountered by US
forces in their advance on Baghdad show the dangers in such high-risk military
tactics, which succeeded only because of the rotten character of Saddam’s
regime. It would be entirely different if the US was facing forces backed by
mass, popular support.
With no mass resistance, the military balance of forces
predetermined a US victory, with only the timescale in question – as well as the
cost in terms of human casualties. Once US forces reached Baghdad, the Iraqi
command system began to crumble, and serious resistance in the capital collapsed
within a few days.
Saddam’s irregular forces received little support from the
population. The majority adopted a passive, wait-and-see attitude. There was
deep hostility towards the regime, as later events showed. But there was a very
ambivalent mood towards the invading forces. One factor was clearly fear of
Saddam’s security forces. There was no question of openly welcoming US and
British forces until it was clear that the military-police regime was decisively
smashed. There was no uprising in the South to greet the invasion, contrary to
the Pentagon’s expectations. The Shia population still has bitter memories of
1991, when Bush senior called for an uprising and then stood back while Saddam’s
forces massacred the insurgents and resorted to even more systematic, vicious
repression.
However much the majority of the population may welcome
Saddam’s demise, there is deep suspicion of the US’s motives. The CIA, after
all, supported the coup which brought Saddam to power in the first place. The US
armed Saddam during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, and turned a blind eye at that
time to his use of chemical weapons against Iranian troops (mainly young
conscripts) and the Kurds in Northern Iraq. There is universal understanding,
moreover, that the US wants to get its hands on Iraq’s oil wealth. Weary with
two decades of war and deprivation, many will initially welcome the US role in
overthrowing Saddam. But there will also be resentment at the wounds inflicted
on the Iraqi people, with thousands of deaths and tens of thousands of serious
injuries. There will be no mass support for a prolonged US occupation and the
longer it lasts the stronger will be the resistance.
Already the relatively small forces used for the
‘blitzkrieg’ assault on Baghdad appear to be completely insufficient for the US
to establish control of the country following the shattering of Saddam’s state
apparatus and the collapse of the public infrastructure. World attention is
focused in Baghdad, Basra, Kirkuk, and a handful of the bigger cities, while in
many others there is little or no US-British presence. Moreover, while Rumsfeld,
Wolfowitz and their Pentagon advisers have spent years and years formulating
their plans for pre-emptive military strikes, they have apparently given little
or no attention to the immediate problems of post-war administration and
humanitarian relief.
Organising the occupation
EVEN BEFORE THE invasion began the US was drawing up plans
for its post-war occupation of Iraq. After its unilateral military action (with
the support of Britain and a handful of allies) to achieve ‘regime change’, US
imperialism is determined to decide the character of the new regime. There are
clearly some differences within the Bush administration over how to proceed. But
behind the diplomatic manoeuvres and blatant lies, the key strategic aims of the
US are quite clear.
The US wants strategic control over Middle East oil
reserves, still the world’s biggest and cheapest. Direct control of Iraqi oil,
the US calculates, will allow it to smash the power of Opec and undermine the
leverage of states like Saudi Arabia in world oil markets. This, they hope, will
open up a new era of cheap oil and, they imagine, revive the growth of the world
capitalist economy (though oil at $10 a barrel would spell disaster for most
oil-producing states).
Alongside oil, the US wants to open up Iraqi industries and
markets to US corporations. They have already begun by awarding ‘reconstruction’
contracts to a handful of US companies, mostly closely connected with the
Republican Party (see page 11). Under Saddam, large sections of Iraqi industry
were nationalised. This was not socialism but a form of ‘state capitalism’,
which Saddam developed as the economic base for his military apparatus and a
source of wealth for his family and the ruling clique. The US will enforce rapid
de-nationalisation, allowing US and perhaps some other Western companies to take
over large sections of the Iraqi economy.
US imperialism undoubtedly sees post-war Iraq as a key point
of military influence in the region. Part of any US-approved settlement will
almost certainly be a permanent US military base, or bases, similar to the bases
it has established in the Central Asian republics during the war against
Afghanistan’s Taliban regime, or the Guantánamo base (retained by the US in Cuba
since 1903). A key strategic aim of the hawks is to tip the regional balance of
power in favour of the US and its key regional ally, Israel. Washington is
already preparing to rearm a new Iraqi regime. In his proposed supplementary war
budget last month, Bush asked Congress for authority to sell munitions to Iraq
"if the president determines that the export of such items is in the national
interests of the United States". (Boston Globe, 7 April)
To achieve these aims US imperialism needs a ‘reliable’
pro-US regime. The aim of a transitional government, as far as the US is
concerned, is to lay the foundations of such a new regime. It should be no
surprise, therefore, that the so-called ‘Office of Reconstruction and
Humanitarian Assistance’ (ORHA) is headed by an ex-general and arms dealer, Jay
Garner. His administration will operate under the authority of the regional
military commander, Tommy Franks, with 23 US ‘ministers’ assisted by Iraqi
‘advisors’. The real proconsul of occupied Iraq will be the US defence
secretary, Rumsfeld.
The composition of the transitional government has brought
new divisions within the Bush regime, on the same lines as the pre-war split
between the Pentagon and the State Department. The Pentagon hawks, led by
Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, are pushing for their nominees to play the dominant role
in Garner’s administration. Their proposals include the former CIA director,
James Woolsey, as head of information. Wolfowitz is also pushing for Chalabi and
other exiles from the Iraqi National Congress (INC) to play a prominent
front-role in the transitional government. This is being resisted by the State
Department and even by the CIA, which originally created the INC but now
evidently has no confidence in Chalabi. Colin Powell and other more far-sighted
strategists of US imperialism fear that the appearance of a US colonial
administration and a stooge government composed of Iraqi exiles will actually
undermine the position of US imperialism in Iraq.
Role of the UN?
THERE ARE ALSO differences in Washington over the role of
the UN. This issue will once again bring the US into collision with powers such
as France, Germany and Russia, most Middle Eastern states, and probably a
majority of UN member states. France, Russia and Germany, in particular, are
using the UN issue as a lever for their own interests. France and Russia also
pursue imperialistic policies, attempting to maintain their own spheres of
political and economic influence. German capitalism, which has been extending
its economic influence in Central and Eastern Europe, is attempting to develop a
military capability more commensurate with its economic weight. These powers see
the UN framework as a means of checking the actions of US imperialism, fearing
its increased economic and strategic dominance. As always, when the major powers
follow divergent policies, the UN is paralysed. When the imperialist powers
agree on a common approach, the UN can be used to legitimise their intervention.
But Iraq shows that when the US cannot get Security Council support for its
policy it will sideline the UN.
Under pressure from Blair, who desperately needs UN cover in
order to legitimise his own support for the US, Bush (during his visit to
Northern Ireland) promised that the UN would play a "vital role" in the
transition. But the joint Blair/Bush statement was evasive, to say the least.
While welcoming the UN providing "immediate humanitarian assistance to the
people of Iraq", it spoke merely of seeking a new Security Council resolution to
"endorse an appropriate post-conflict administration for Iraq". This is simply
camouflage for the USA’s determination to dictate the form of the transition.
Even Powell, ‘the dove’, has made it clear that he considers "the coalition has
to play the leading role in determining the way forward". (Independent, 4 April)
The hawks, however, go further. Wolfowitz says the UN has
"an important role to play", but sees this as primarily providing food,
healthcare and so on. In other words, he wants a role for "the functional
agencies that the UN has run so successfully", but is implacably opposed to any
UN responsibility for a transitional government. In off-the-record briefings,
Pentagon officials go even further. "It is America’s own plan [for the
transition] to enact, as we see fit, with our coalition allies", said one
official. (Observer, 6 April) "This war proceeds without the UN", said another.
"There is no need for the UN, which is not relevant to be involved in building a
democratic Iraq".
The future government of Iraq, claimed Wolfowitz on TV
recently, would be "chosen by and run by Iraqis", and would "not [be] a colonial
administration or a UN administration or run in any way by foreigners".
(International Herald Tribune, 7 April) However, at the very time Wolfowitz was
saying this, the US was flying Ahmad Chalabi and 700 INC ‘fighters’ into
Southern Iraq, "to help with humanitarian liaison and to fight Saddam
loyalists". In reality, Chalabi has been sent to position himself politically
for a prominent role in the transition. In particular, Chalabi and his gang of
armed minders have been sent to An-Nasariyah to intervene in the conference of
‘free Iraqi’ leaders (selected by the CIA) to provide internal support for the
US administration.
The US’s attempt to sideline the UN, however, is likely to
sharpen the pre-war clash between the US and Britain, on the one side, and
France and other states that oppose the US-British invasion, on the other. Prior
to a meeting with Putin and Schröder in St Petersburg, Chirac said: "We are no
longer in an era when one or two countries can control the fate of another
country. Therefore, the political, economic, humanitarian and administrative
reconstruction of Iraq is a matter for the United Nations and for it alone".
There is clearly the possibility that France, Russia and other Security Council
members may oppose any attempt to legitimise a US-determined transitional
regime. In an unusually blunt statement for a UN official, Shashi Tharoor,
under-secretary general, warned the US and Britain against appearing as "people
dividing up the spoils of conquest". A US-led administration would lack
legitimacy, he said, and have no legal right to sell Iraqi oil. "The UN has no
desire whatsoever to see Iraq as some sort of treasure chest to be divided up".
(Independent, 9 April)
In spite of the many limitations of their relief operations,
UN agencies comprise an extensive apparatus with considerable experience in
administering humanitarian aid. If UN agencies stay out of Iraq (refusing to
take the ‘poisoned chalice’ of working under US control), and other
international relief agencies and NGOs follow suit, there could be a much more
serious, prolonged humanitarian crisis in Iraq. The Pentagon clearly has no
desire for its military forces to be tied up with humanitarian tasks, which are
low on its order of priorities. If there is a humanitarian disaster, however,
the US and Britain will bear the responsibility.
A new client regime
EVEN SOME OF the exiled Iraqi leaders promoted by the US are
now questioning the US’s approach to a transitional government. They fear that
they will be discredited by association with people like Chalabi, who comes from
a prominent ruling-class family under the British-installed monarchy and has not
lived in Iraq for well over 30 years. They fear they will be seen as quislings,
collaborators with an occupying power. One exiled Iraqi businessman was asked by
a senior US official for advice on how to recruit 250 staff for the transitional
regime. "I was appalled. I told him that all the 250 people, if he could find
them, would be regarded as spies by the rest of Iraqis. I told him he would be
better off thinking about the 500 soldiers he would need just to keep him
alive". (Independent, 6 April) Yet the US is clearly pushing ahead with this
approach.
The plan is to purge the top layer of Saddam’s regime,
members of his ruling clique and leaders of the Ba’ath Party and security
apparatus. The US is drawing up plans for US military war-crimes trials for
Saddam and other top Iraqi leaders who may be taken into US custody. The US
intends to bypass the international war crimes tribunals that have been used
after other wars, such as in the former Yugoslavia. Whatever the crimes of
Saddam and his ruling clique, a US-dominated process will be seen throughout the
Arab world as ‘victor’s justice’.
The US will try to salvage the bureaucracy and most of the
army and police as the basis for a new, reconstituted state apparatus. In
particular, it will build up the military under US direction. Favoured political
leaders will be supported, financed as ‘agents of influence’ for the US. In
time, the US no doubt plans to hold elections in an attempt to legitimise a new
regime. Financial support, business links, and control of the media would be
used in an attempt to ensure that US-backed forces win power through any
electoral process. US-backed personalities and parties, with US resources behind
them, will have an enormous advantage given the destruction of independent
parties and trade unions under Saddam’s regime, and the absence of information
and free discussion. Even the hawks have to recognise that, in this period, they
cannot maintain direct colonial rule. Chalabi himself has demagogically
proclaimed that Iraqis themselves and not the US occupiers must run Iraq.
Nevertheless, with the collaboration of stooges like Chalabi, the US will work
to establish a client regime behind the façade of parliamentary forms.
In trying to establish a client regime, however, US
imperialism faces the problem of the ethnic/religious make-up of the Iraqi
population. Saddam’s regime was based on the Sunni population, while the Shia
form the majority of the population. A straightforward, direct election would
result in a Shia government. That would strengthen the influence of the Shia-based
Iranian regime in Iraq, the last thing the US wants, as it regards Iran as a
second member of the ‘axis of evil’. A Shia government in Iraq would also be
seen as an extremely dangerous development by the Saudi regime, a reactionary
Sunni monarchy, which fears the strengthening of Shia opposition forces in the
region and within its own domain.
Kurdish autonomy
IN THE NORTH, the Kurdish minority has enormously
strengthened its position. As the US was refused permission by Turkey to bring a
major invasion force from the North, US special forces were obliged to rely on
the peshmerga, the paramilitary forces of the two main Kurdish parties, which
have now liberated Kirkuk and Mosul. Since the end of the Gulf war, the Kurds
have enjoyed a high degree of autonomy in the Northern zone under the protection
of the US-British-enforced no-fly zone. There is undoubtedly a deep desire for
permanent autonomy, including a control or at least a substantial share of the
Northern oil fields. This is widely seen among Kurds as a step towards an
independent Kurdish state. This is bitterly opposed by the Turkish regime, which
has threatened to invade if the Kurds take control of the Kirkuk oil field or
move towards the formation of even an autonomous statelet. The Iranian and
Syrian regimes also oppose Kurdish autonomy. Nor will any central Iraqi regime,
based on national landlords and capitalists, be willing to concede territory or
the oil wealth to the Kurdish minority.
The Kurdish leaders, it is reported, have agreed with the US
to withdraw their armed forces from Kirkuk and Mosul. A column of US forces is
on route to ensure this withdrawal. If it takes place, this would comply with
Powell’s recent promise to the Turkish regime that there will be no Kurdish
takeover of the Northern oil region. The leaders of the KDP and PUK, who
represent national Kurdish capitalist interests, have entered into a pact with
US imperialism. They calculate that this will secure both a permanent Kurdish
autonomous area in Northern Iraq and US protection from Turkish invasion. This
is far from guaranteed, however. How many times have the Kurdish leaders’ deals
with the US and regimes in Tehran, Damascus, Baghdad and Ankara resulted in
outright betrayal? The KDP/PUK leaders will come under enormous pressure from
the Kurdish workers and peasants for the reclaiming of the homes and land from
which they were expelled by the Saddam regime and for the establishment of at
least regional self-rule. What degree of Kurdish autonomy the Turkish regime
will tolerate is an open question.
In order to "preserve the territorial integrity of Iraq", in
other words to establish a national capitalist state based on the Sunni
minority, the US is likely to attempt to impose a federal constitution prior to
any elections being held. Like the post-World War II constitution of Lebanon, it
would attempt to maintain a balance between Sunnis, Shia and Kurds in the main
state institutions (the presidency, ministries, parliament, etc). Such a federal
set up would in reality be a power-sharing deal mainly between the traditional
clan and religious leaders of Iraq’s main religious and ethnic groups. It would
not satisfy popular aspirations – or even the sectional demands of the different
religious/ethnic groups. Resting on a weak national capitalism, dominated by
imperialism, a new federal state would not solve the social-economic problems
that underlie competition for power and resources. Even if it were initially
accepted, the changing demographic and political balance between
religious/ethnic groups would tend to undermine it. Moreover, Iraq, which was
the artificial creation of British imperialism, does not exist in a regional
vacuum. The regimes of neighbouring states – Iran, Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia –
will all try to exploit their influence over different sections of the Iraqi
population to push their own interests. The idea that Iraq, under US influence,
will become a model liberal democracy is a fantasy. New Iraq will continue to be
a country of crisis. The fate of Lebanon, where the ethnic balance broke down in
the horrendous civil war, which broke out in 1975, is a warning of what can
happen.
In the aftermath of its military victory, the US will try to
push through its plans for Iraq. The population is war weary and most Iraqis
face a daily struggle for survival. They are likely to face even more hardship
in the coming months, given the devastating effects of the war and the ensuing
social chaos. Nevertheless, the US will not have everything its own way in
trying to implement the crude schemes dreamed up in the Pentagon. They will
attempt to cultivate friends through bribery and create a client capitalist
ruling class. But there is no prospect of the US substantially raising living
standards for the whole population, or guaranteeing good healthcare, education,
and other support services. The US will face, over a period of time, growing
opposition to US domination and any pro-US regime that is installed. They will
face terrorist attacks, both from within the country and supported from other
Arab states, especially from right-wing Islamic organisations. The current
euphoria at the downfall of Saddam will be replaced by resentment at the price
exacted from innocent Iraqi men, women and children by the US-Britain military
assault. Anger will grow at the looting of oil and other resources by US
corporations and their Iraqi agents. A new generation of workers and youth will
begin to rebuild the workers’ organisations destroyed by Saddam’s regime and to
move into struggle to defend their class interests against imperialism, class
oppression, and religious reaction.
Growing Arab anger
THE INITIAL IRAQI resistance to the US-British invasion
aroused feelings of pride throughout the Arab states. "Very few, if any, are
under any illusion that Iraq could win the war", said Hani Shukrallah, of the
Cairo-based Al-Ahram Weekly. "All are outraged and grief-stricken at the death
and destruction being wreaked on the Iraqi people, and most people realise that
much more lies ahead. Yet none can help but feel a certain pride, a sense of
dignity restored. We are not, after all, mice". (We Are All Iraqis Now, 27
March) A young Egyptian Airline clerk explained why he had left his wife and
three children "to fight against the Americans and Zionists who want to go after
all other Arabs and Muslims". Arab people, he said, had to "answer the call,
especially since the Arab regimes are incapable of standing up and defending the
Arab nation when it is threatened". (Sunday Times, 30 March) Now there is a
sense of humiliation and rage at yet another defeat inflicted on the Arab
people.
The appearance, however briefly, of the US Stars and Stripes
on Saddam’s toppling statue in Baghdad sent out a powerful signal of colonial
occupation, with the US re-enacting the role played by British and French
imperialism in the past. The Moroccan daily, Al Bayane, warned that the world is
at the threshold of "a new colonial era". (www.arabicnews.com – 7 April) The
warning appeared to be reinforced by Rumsfeld’s threats against Iran and Syria,
which he accused of hiding Saddam’s chemical and biological weapons and helping
fleeing Ba’athist leaders.
Military action against Iraq, moreover, is seen throughout
the Arab states as a move to strengthen the Israeli state and its right-wing
Likud leadership. Bush pays perfunctory lip service to the latest ‘road map’,
while Sharon has, in reality, contemptuously repudiated it. Whatever the map
shows, the destination is clearly not self-determination for the Palestinians.
After the 1990-91 Gulf war, the US placated the Arab world with the Oslo process
which led to the setting up of the Palestinian Authority, supposedly a step
towards a Palestinian state. What is on offer today? More intense military
repression of the Palestinians by the Israeli state, with the offer of even more
circumscribed Palestinian enclaves run under Israel’s rules.
Many of the Arab regimes fear that they will come under
increasing pressure from the US, or even face the threat of US military
intervention. They are even more afraid, however, of the angry mood on the Arab
street. Mass anti-war demonstrations in the Arab states, which regimes in Egypt,
Jordan and elsewhere, were forced to tolerate (though still moving to control
them through violent military policing) were directed as much against these
repressive regimes as against US intervention. There appears to be no relief
from extreme economic and social crisis. There is outrage at the regimes’
collaboration with the US. Mubarak has allowed US warships through the Suez
Canal, the Saudi rulers have permitted the US to direct its air strikes from a
command centre on their territory (though this is carefully concealed from the
Saudi population).
Far from stabilising the region and inaugurating a new era
of free-market capitalism and liberal democracy, as the Washington
neo-conservatives imagine, the US occupation of Iraq will provoke instability,
social upheaval, and convulsive political changes. It has increased the
possibility of right-wing Islamic forces coming to power in states like Saudi
Arabia – the very opposite result from that intended by the Bush regime.
Neo-conservative strategy
THE BUSH HAWKS have made it clear that they regard the
invasion of Iraq, the first war conducted under their new doctrine of
pre-emptive war, as "a demonstration conflict, an experiment in forcible
disarmament". (David Sanger, Washington Hopes War Will Get Message to Other
Nations, New York Times, 7 April) James Woolsey, the former CIA director
(1993-95), who is the Pentagon’s choice as post-war Iraqi minister of
information, goes even further. The US, he proclaims, has (following the ‘third
world war’, the 1945-90 cold war) now engaged in a ‘fourth world war’. "More
than a war against terrorism, this is a war to extend democracy to those parts
of the Arab and Muslim world that threaten the liberal civilisation we worked to
build and defend throughout the 20th century…" Having dealt with the "Ba’athist
fascists", the US will now confront Iran, Syria, Sudan and Libya, which all
"sponsor and assist terrorism… [and] have sought weapons of mass destruction".
(James Woolsey, Welcome to the Fourth World War, The Guardian, 8 April)
More balanced bourgeois strategists are alarmed at the
simplistic, fanatical doctrine of the Bush hawks, which they fear can have
potentially disastrous consequences for the US ruling class. George Soros, the
financier and freelance bourgeois ideologue, writes of the "Bubble of American
Supremacy" (www.project-syndicate.org – March 2003). He makes a telling analogy
between Bush’s pursuit of military supremacy and the boom-bust process in the
stock market. "The dominant position of the US is the reality, the pursuit of
American supremacy [through exclusive reliance on military power] the
misconception". The overvaluation of naked power, he argues, is analogous to the
overvaluation of share prices relative to the actual value of company assets and
profits. International relations are ultimately relations of power.
Nevertheless, legitimacy, diplomacy, alliances, cultural and political influence
– all the elements of so-called ‘soft’ power – also play a part. "No empire
could ever be held together by military power alone". Already, as a result of
the Bush strategy, the major post-war alliances, Nato and the EU, are divided.
"The US is perceived", contends Soros, both by the European powers and weaker
states, "as a giant bully throwing its weight around".
The Taliban regime was overthrown, but Karzai is shaky and
Afghanistan is still torn by conflict. The conflict between India and Pakistan
could flare up again at any time, with the danger of nuclear exchanges. Bush’s
repudiation of the ‘sunshine’ policy initiated by the previous South Korean
president, Kim Dae-jung, has led to a confrontation with North Korea, which has
a massive conventional arsenal and possibly nuclear weapons. Even before
consolidating its grip on Iraq, Rumsfeld is threatening action against Syria.
Soros fears that a relatively easy US victory against Iraq
will reinforce the Bush regime’s misconceptions. "Military victory in Iraq is
the easy part. It is what comes after that that gives pause. In a boom-bust
process, passing an early test tends to reinforce the misconception that gives
rise to it". The strategy of coercive diplomacy and pre-emptive military
strikes, Soros says, should be abandoned before it gets out of hand. Otherwise,
he warns, the gap between the realities of world relations and neo-conservative
delusions will become ever wider – before the eventual, inevitable reversal.
"The later it comes, the more devastating the consequences".
This is Soros’s warning to the ruling class. It is sombre
enough even though he makes no mention of the unprecedented anti-war movement
and appears to take no account of the growing struggles of the working class,
peasantry and dispossessed as they strive to find a way out of the nightmare of
capitalism.
Soros’s focus is on the inter-imperialist and
inter-capitalist conflicts that will be provoked by the neo-conservative US
strategy, the national conflicts, civil wars and social collapse. On the basis
of the diseased economic system championed by Soros, however, we unavoidably
face growing barbarism on a global scale, not the ‘freedom’ and ‘liberal
civilisation’ promised by fanatics like Woolsey. Our focus will be on the
world-wide struggle by the working class for the socialist transformation of
society to lift humanity out of the mine-strewn quagmire of capitalism.
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