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 Bush’s
‘war on terror’ after Bali
THE BLOODY BOMBING of the Sari Club in Kuta Beach, Bali, on
12 October provoked shock and outrage around the world, especially in Australia,
home of most of the victims. Nearly 200 died and at least 300 were injured. This
was a completely indiscriminate attack against young people, from Australia and
Europe, clubbing while holidaying in Bali. Some local staff and bystanders were
also killed or injured. We condemn this indiscriminate bombing, which plays into
the hands of imperialism and local reactionary forces.
The attack was probably the work of a right-wing Islamic
group, possibly linked with the al-Qa’ida network. Strong suspicions have also
been raised about the involvement of Islamic elements of the Indonesian army.
Such is the intense anger against imperialism throughout the neo-colonial lands,
however, that many are convinced that the CIA was behind the Bali and other
attacks, seeking to create a pretext for US intervention. But Bali will
complicate the situation for the US, cutting across its immediate strategic
priority – military intervention against Iraq.
There are several reasons why the Sari Club should have been
targeted. In Indonesia’s sprawling archipelago of 17,000 islands (6,000
inhabited), Bali is remote from the centre of state power. Moreover, a majority
of the island’s population are Hindu. The Sari Club itself, with young men and
women dancing together and drinking alcohol, is no doubt seen by right-wing
Islamists as a symbol of ‘Western decadence’, for them a ‘legitimate target’.
Those behind the bombing undoubtedly knew that most of their victims would be
from Australia, whose government is closely associated with US imperialism.
Australian forces, for instance, went into East Timor before independence, and
big Australian firms now dominate its economy. After 11 September, Australia’s
right-wing premier, John Howard, fervently aligned himself with Bush’s ‘war
against terrorism’, sending special forces to operate alongside the US military
in Afghanistan. It is evidently of no consequence to the bombers that most of
the clubbers at the Sari come from working-class families and bear no
responsibility for the policies of the Howard government or Australia’s regional
imperialism.
Right-wing Islamic groups like Jamaah Islamiya and others
linked to the al-Qa’ida network are driven by reactionary theocratic aims. They
seek to establish states ruled under religious principles that prevailed in the
sixth and seventh centuries when Muhammad and his descendents ruled in the
Arabian peninsula. Right-wing political Islam has gained in strength, however,
not for theological but for social reasons – on account of the catastrophic
effects of globalisation – intensified capitalist exploitation of the
semi-developed and poor neo-colonial countries. Traditional forms of social life
have been thrown into a vortex of change producing extreme inequalities of
wealth and increased poverty. Bali itself illustrates the process. Near to Kuta
Beach whole villages are employed at a few dollars a month to make luxury
jewellery and designer silk garments which are sold at fabulous prices in Europe
and America. Land that once made Bali self-sufficient in rice has been
increasingly taken over for commercial development linked to the tourist trade.
A collapse of tourism as a result of the bombing will have a devastating effect.
Support for right-wing Islamic groups has also been
powerfully fuelled by increasing imperialist domination of the world economy and
military intervention. Muslims in particular will not forget the deaths of
innocent Afghans when US war planes dropped bombs on guests at a wedding party.
Well over 3,000 Afghan civilians have been killed since the US intervened in
Afghanistan. There is also burning anger at the support of the US and other
Western powers for the Israeli state’s aggressive policy towards the Palestinian
people.
Neither right-wing Islamic theology nor terrorist methods
offer a way forward. On the contrary, they will provoke an even more brutal
reaction from imperialism and intensified repression by national rulers.
Terrorist attacks also provoke further communal struggle. In Bali, for instance,
there could be a violent reaction by Hindu groups against Muslim immigrants to
the island whether or not they have any sympathy for Jamaah Islamiah or other
groups. Terrorist actions carried out by small groups, funded by sections of the
local ruling class and wealthy sponsors in Saudi Arabia, enormously complicate
the task of mobilising and organising a mass movement of workers and poor
peasants to fight against the ruling class of capitalists and landlords, and
against their imperialist backers. The promise of a new Mecca, a blessed social
order modelled on the prophet Mohammed’s seventh-century state, is a dangerous
mirage. The masses of Indonesia and the whole neo-colonial world need
progressive change, not a return to the past. The ‘earthly paradise’ will be
achieved only through socialist transformation, the end of landlordism and
capitalism, the establishment of a planned economy and workers’ democracy. Mass
working-class forces are required, not conspiratorial groups. The weapon
required is mass struggle, not indiscriminate terrorist outrages. The appeal
must be to international solidarity, not the fomentation of religious, national
and communal differences.
Australia’s own 9/11
FOR AUSTRALIA, THE Sari Club bomb is their ‘11 September’.
This was the country’s worst peacetime atrocity. Though Australian forces were
killed in overseas wars (62,000 in world war one, 40,000 in world war two, 339
in the Korean war and 520 in Vietnam), Australians had generally come to see
themselves as blissfully remote from international conflicts. Bali, only four
hours flight from Perth in Western Australia, was seen as the ‘safe abroad’, a
cheap holiday paradise, especially for young people. With a population of 20
million, there is hardly an area in Australia that has not been devastated by
the deaths and casualties at Kuta Beach.
People are angry that John Howard’s government issued no
warning to Australians travelling to Bali, despite the fact that the US State
Department had issued an advisory notice to Americans. Howard admitted that
there was a warning but said that it was too ‘general’ to warrant any action.
But the bloody event has not had the same effect as 9/11 in
the US. Prime minister Howard and his right-wing government have not been
automatically strengthened by anger at the Bali outrage. Many people are asking
the obvious question: are Australians paying the price for Howard’s hard-line
support for Bush’s policy on Afghanistan and Iraq? His foreign minister,
Alexander Downer, dismissed opponents of an attack on Iraq as ‘fools’. "Get the
message", responded a letter writer to the Sydney Morning Herald. "We don’t want
you to suck up to George Bush. We don’t want your phoney oil war with Iraq". (15
October)
Even after the bombing, an anti-war demonstration went ahead
in Melbourne, with 35,000 participating. Demonstrators observed a minute’s
silence for the Bali victims, but their opposition to the war was in no way
muted. The consciousness of many sections of Australian workers is different
from the US, reflecting the greater weight of the labour movement.
Indonesian instability
THE BALI BOMBING will unavoidably plunge Indonesia into a
new phase of crisis. President Megawati Sukarnoputri has been under intense
pressure from the US for some time to clamp down on rightwing Islamic parties
such as Jemaah Islamiah and paramilitary groups like Laskar Jihad, which are
linked to terrorist groups throughout South-East Asia and part of the al-Qa’ida
network. Megawati, however, resisted taking action. This was partly because, as
a minority party in parliament, Megawati’s Indonesian Democratic Party of
Struggle, a bourgeois-nationalist formation, depends on the acquiescence of the
Islamic parties, particularly vice-president Hamzah Haz’s United Development
Party, the country’s main Muslim political group.
But Megawati has also avoided a confrontation with the
right-wing Islamic groups because they are still covertly backed by the
military, which is still a powerful force in Indonesia. Jemaah Islamiah, for
instance, originated under the dictator Suharto as an alliance between the
military and right-wing Islamic forces. Since Suharto’s overthrow in 1998, the
military has continued to give undercover support to groupings like Laskar
Jihad, who have played a murderous role in launching communal struggle against
Christian and other minorities in the Moluccas, in Aceh, Papua, and other parts
of the archipelago. A conspiratorial web links reactionary sections of the army
with paramilitary Islamic groups.
Since being elected president in 1999, Megawati has only
demonstrated her inability to resolve any of Indonesia’s deep problems. The
economy never recovered from the 1997 South-East Asian crisis, and the Bali
bombing will undoubtedly hit foreign investment and tourism. Elections provide a
flimsy cover for the continuation of state-sponsored repression and corruption.
Appealing to nationalism herself, Megawati cannot resolve the continuing
conflict or solve the explosive national question. The emergency powers adopted
by decree on 12 October will strengthen the military, the very force responsible
for decades of violent state terror. Bush was quick to denounce the violence at
Kuta Beach, but a succession of US presidents were silent about decades of
violent repression in East Timor.
Suharto installed a dictatorship, with US support, through a
bloody counter-revolution in 1965-67 that massacred up to a million supporters
of the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). Regrettably, the leaders of the PKI
prepared the way for this defeat, particularly through their mistaken policy of
support for supposedly ‘progressive’ nationalists led by the bonapartist
Sukarno, promoting the illusion that there could be a path to an
‘anti-imperialist, democratic national revolution’ without the overthrow of the
capitalists and landlords. The crisis-torn state of the country today is the
legacy of that counter-revolution. Neither the nationalists nor the right-wing
Islamic parties have any answers. The problems of the workers and the poor
farmers, together with national conflicts, can only be solved by a mass movement
of the working class for a socialist change of society.
Al-Qa’ida regrouping
BALI, THOUGH THE most devastating attack, was only one of a
series since 11 September 2001 linked to Islamic groups. In Pakistan, 14 people,
including eleven French submarine engineers, were killed in a suicide car-bomb
attack on a bus in Karachi last May. There was an attack in June on the US
consulate in Karachi (killing twelve Pakistanis) and several attacks on
Christian churches (in Islamabad, Karachi and Muree).
On 6 October a small boat caused an explosion on a French
oil tanker off Yemen (killing one crewman). In Kuwait, on 8 October, two gunmen
attacked US forces, killing one marine. These and other attacks suggest that
elements of al-Qa’ida have regrouped and changed their tactics. No longer an
organisation with a central core as before the overthrow of the Taliban regime,
it is operating as a widespread network, mounting local, small-scale operations.
Al-Qa’ida fighters who escaped from Afghanistan have in many
cases returned to their home or neighbouring countries, where they are working
with local right-wing Islamic groups. They have common objectives: attack
Americans and their allies; attack large economic targets symbolic of capitalism
or ‘Western decadence’; attack pro-Western rulers and non-Muslim minorities
(Christians in Pakistan and Indonesia, Jews in Tunisia).
A US military attack on Iraq would multiply the number of
attacks. Unfortunately, there would be many more Balis. As a result of Bush’s
‘war against terrorism’, moreover, the US itself would be more vulnerable to
terrorist attack. The director of the CIA, George Tenet, recently told a
congressional committee (18 October) that "the threat environment we find
ourselves in today is as bad as it was last summer, the summer before September
11. It is serious. They [al-Qa’ida] have reconstituted, they are coming after
us, they want to execute attacks". The CIA director, commented the New York
Times (21 October), was admitting that "in effect, all the national effort to
combat al-Qa’ida over the last year had left the country in as much danger of
internal attack as before the destruction of the World Trade Center".
War on Iraq
AFTER FIVE WEEKS of wrangling (as we go to press), the UN
Security Council is still deadlocked over the US-British proposal for a single
resolution on Iraq. Bush’s enforced detour via the UN has (as we predicted)
created serious complications for the US. Russia and France, two permanent
members of the Security Council with the power of veto, reject the US’s new
draft which warns Iraq of "serious consequences" for its "material breach" of
existing resolutions. "They [the US] are trying to smuggle in language that has
already been rejected", commented one French diplomat. Bush, moreover, continues
to threaten the Security Council itself with "serious consequences" if they do
not support the US line. "I believe", Bush said (25 October), "the free world,
if we make up our mind to, can disarm this man [Saddam] peacefully. But if not,
we have the will and the desire, as do other nations, to disarm Saddam".
The White House has been sending out apparently
contradictory signals. The US national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice,
reiterated Bush’s comment that if Saddam complied with all US demands that might
equate to the ‘regime change’ sought by the US, allowing Saddam to remain in
office. Yet the White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer (who previously openly
appealed to Iraqi officers to assassinate Saddam), said that the notion of such
total compliance was ‘the mother of all hypotheticals’. In reality, the US is
pressing for conditions that would be impossible for Iraq to meet to the US’s
satisfaction – and in any case they are not prepared to take ‘yes’ for an
answer. Paradoxically, it is now Saddam who is pressing for weapons inspections
and the US that is resisting. In a surprise move Saddam released all political
prisoners. This seems partly to disarm US criticism and partly to appease the
regime in Iran, with a predominantly Shia population, as most of the prisoners
were Shia.
What do the mixed signals from the US administration mean?
On one level they are undoubtedly a diplomatic ploy to try to win Security
Council support for a US military strike against Iraq. Despite his deep
impatience with the Security Council, Bush desperately needs UN legitimacy for
international and domestic political reasons. Opinion polls show that a majority
of those in the US who support war believe that the US should act with UN
support. Even though Bush received decisive support from Congress, which meekly
handed to the president its war-making powers, Bush has been forced to promise
that he will work through the United Nations. Even in his most belligerent
speeches Bush has carefully stated that war may not be necessary and that
‘regime change’ may be achieved peacefully. In reality, these are political
‘escape clauses’ which reflect the serious obstacles in the way of a pre-emptive
US strike against Iraq. A key factor will be the outcome of the mid-term
elections on 5 November. Because of the cowardly failure of the Democratic party
leaders to challenge Bush on Iraq, the deep mood of unease among broad layers of
workers and the middle class at the prospect of war and further terrorist
attacks in the US has not crystallised into a firm mood of opposition (although
there has been a growing wave of anti-war demonstrations). But it is far from
certain that Bush’s tactic of presenting himself as a ‘war president’ and
playing the patriotic loyalty card will produce Republican control of the Senate
and a bigger majority in the House of Representatives. Anger is also growing
among workers at the effects of the economic downturn and business scandals.
Apart from difficulties at the UN, the Bush leadership faces
growing complications internationally. The French government’s opposition to the
US is privately supported by many governments who dare not openly defy the US
for fear of the consequences. It is not just an issue of superpower bullying,
but fear of the catastrophic long-term consequences of US military intervention
in the Gulf. This has been reinforced by revelations of US plans to install a US
military government in Iraq. That would destabilise the whole region, and
aggravate the problem of international terrorist attacks. France also fears a
flood of refugees from Iraq and surrounding areas, and the impact of US
intervention in France itself (now home to five to six million Muslims and some
700,000 Jews). Moreover, the Chirac-Raffarin government is feeling the pressure
of a strengthening anti-war movement, with a demonstration of over 100,000 in
Paris on 4 October.
Russia is also holding out against the US’s draft UN
resolution, demanding (according to some reports) a guarantee from the US that
it will cover Iraq’s $7 billion debts to Russia as the price for support or at
least abstention in the Security Council. However, the seizure of a Moscow
theatre with over 700 hostages (and over 70 dead as special forces stormed in),
which pulled Putin away from UN negotiations, underlines the unpredictable and
horrendous threat posed by terrorist attacks. The Russian state’s prolonged
attempt to dominate Chechnya by military force has completely failed to solve
the problem.
The Bush leadership has also been shaken by the North Korean
regime’s open confession that it possesses nuclear bombs and missiles capable of
delivering them. This, of course, has long been an open secret. But a public
admission from North Korea poses the question of how the US should react, given
that Bush designated North Korea part of the ‘axis of evil’. The US has
indicated (with the approval of South Korea, Japan and other regional powers)
that it will seek a diplomatic solution to the problem. But if the US is
prepared to deploy diplomacy in relation to a state with a nuclear arsenal, why
is it threatening military invasion and occupation against Iraq, a state that
has no nuclear weapons? Bush’s claims that Iraq could be only months away from
producing effective nuclear weapons has been shown to be completely fanciful.
Only if Iraq acquired significant amounts of plutonium or weapons-grade uranium
or the sophisticated processing equipment required to produce it, could Iraq
develop deployable nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile, the US’s key ally in Asia, the Pakistan military
dictator Musharraf, suffered a setback in the rigged elections he called in an
effort to legitimise the effective continuation of his military rule. Making
gains in North-West Frontier and Baluchistan, the right-wing Islamic parties now
hold the balance of power in Pakistan’s parliament. This presages further
political upheavals in Pakistan.
Big demonstrations around the world are a foretaste of the
massive anti-war movement that will develop if the US launches a military attack
on Iraq. In the US on 8 October tens of thousands demonstrated opposition to a
war against Iraq, with over 20,000 in Central Park, New York, 10,000 outside the
Federal Building in Los Angeles, and rallies in many other cities throughout the
country. The anti-war demonstration in London on 28 September was the biggest
anti-war demonstration ever to take place in Britain, with around 400,000
participating. Huge demonstrations have taken place throughout Europe.
The Bush leadership still seems set on a course of military
intervention in Iraq. US and British air attacks have been stepped up since the
summer. Huge military forces are being mobilised, and plans are being drawn up
for US military occupation. Given the serious complications facing Bush
internationally and at home, however, it would be a mistake to conclude that war
is inevitable. It still seems likely, but nothing is more complicated or
unpredictable than war or the path to war.
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