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Resistance rises against U.S. and Iraqi puppets
by Gerry Foley [Socialist
Action, October 2004]
Although the political situation in Iraq has become more complex since
the negotiated end of the U.S. siege of the Shiite holy cities of Najaf
and Kufa, there seems to be no doubt that Washington’s prospects for
maintaining control of the country are continuing to fade. The
occupation and its local allies are still proving unable to maintain a
secure flow of oil out of the country, which after all is the essential
object of the operation.
And the U.S. military is being pushed out of more and more cities, to
such an extent that it already seems dubious that the Iraqi puppet
regime will be able get a credible result in the elections that are
scheduled for January.
In August, the average number of resistance attacks on U.S. forces was
87 a day, according to a Sept. 4 AP dispatch. The number has continued
to grow. In July, it was 52 a day, and in April, when the level of the
fighting had reached a point that threatened a national uprising, the
number was 60.
A news analysis in The New York Times, reprinted in the San Francisco
Chronicle of Sept. 5, pointed out: “At a recent meeting with a group
of tribal sheikhs, a U.S. general spoke with evident frustration about
the latest Iraqi city to fall into the hands of insurgents.
“Not one dime of American taxpayers’ money will come into your city
until you help us drive out the terrorists,” Maj. Gen. John R.S.
Batiste said in his base in Tikrit, tapping the table to make sure he
was understood.
“The sheikhs nodded, smiled and withdrew, back to the city that
neither they, nor the U.S. military, any longer control. … The place
under discussion was Samarra, a small city north of Baghdad. … In Iraq,
the list of places from which U.S. soldiers have either withdrawn or
decided to visit only rarely is growing.” The commander of the U.S.
ground forces, Lt. Gen. Thomas F. Metz, announced on Sept. 5 that his
command is considering assaults on three major no-go areas before the
upcoming elections, including Sadr City, the vast Shiite slum in
Baghdad, which is presently controlled by the Mahdi army of Moqtada Al-Sadr.
However, the fact that up until now the U.S. rulers have considered such
operations politically too costly raises the question of whether such an
escalation might not be disastrous.
Metz said that he considered the example of the destruction of Najaf as
a means of persuading local leaders to collaborate with the U.S. and
Iraqi puppet forces. That argument is indicative of the ruthlessness of
the U.S. occupiers, but also revealing of their very limited
understanding of the country in which they are operating.
Najaf had special characteristics that do not exist in the other target
areas. It is a city whose principal importance was religious, largely
living off the pilgrims that visit it. Al
Sadr tried to take advantage of its religious significance to
make it into a symbol for Shiites and Muslims in general. But his major
political base was not there.
A large proportion of his forces
came from outside the city, largely from Baghdad. They aroused
resentment among many of the local people, particularly those whose
livelihoods depended on the influx of pilgrims, which was stopped by the
fighting.
Najaf has a population of about half a million. The population of Sadr
City is four times that, and amounts to about a third of the total
population of Baghdad, which in turn holds about a fifth of the total
population of the country. Press reports during the siege of Najaf
indicated that the Mahdi army dominated most of Baghdad, not just Sadr
City.
In Falluja and cities like Samarra and Baquba, it appears that the bond
between the insurgents and the local population are very strong, as in a
lengthening list of smaller centers.
Metz did not seem to consider the political effect of staging a
holocaust on the eve of the upcoming elections in order to plant ballot
boxes in the ruins. In those circumstances, the vote would mean even
less than if it were not held at all. Any government emerging from such
an election would be indelibly stained with blood.
The siege of Najaf ended inconclusively. The most positive aspect of it
for the U.S. was that the conservative Shiite cleric Ali Al-Sistani
successfully outmaneuvered Al Sadr. Sistani left Iraq, ostensibly for
medical treatment in Britain, conveniently at the start of the
confrontation. That saved him from the necessity of either supporting Al
Sadr or pitting his prestige directly against the popular rebel cleric.
He waited until the U.S. forces were tightening their ring about Al
Sadr’s last stronghold in the city, the Mosque of Ali. Then he flew
back to “save the shrine,” and mobilized a “peace march” of
Shiites to end the siege of the mosque.
Al Sadr was obliged to turn the holy site over to to Sistani and remove
at least a large part of his Mahdi army from the city. Sistani emerged
from the crisis with his predominant religious prestige unimpaired, or
even enhanced. But Sadr escaped with his life and liberty and with
assurances of his security from the Iraqi government, and apparently
with his militia still basically intact. Politically, moreover, he may
have gained, as he clearly did from the April confrontation.
A Los Angeles Times news analysis of Aug. 15 noted that a poll
commissioned by the occupation authorities after the April clashes
showed that 68 percent of Iraqis had a favorable opinion of Al Sadr and
more than 80 percent said that they had a higher opinion of him after
the fight that his forces put up against the American military.
An article in the Sept. 3 issue of The Christian Science Monitor quoted
Juan Cole, “an Iraq expert at the University of Michigan,” as
estimating that if Sadr’s supporters participated in the January
elections, they could win a third of the Shiite vote. That would
represent a considerable increase in political support for Al Sadr.
The coalition-sponsored poll had shown that while a majority of Iraqis
admired him, only a tiny percentage were prepared to follow him
politically. The rebel cleric has identified with the view that there
can be no democracy as long as the country remains occupied and with
intransigent opposition to any U.S-sponsored regime.
Both the Iraqi puppet government and its U.S. backers have gone back and
forth between threats to annihilate Al Sadr’s movement and
blandishments to draw it into “the political process.” The outcome
of the Najaf standoff seemed to be that Al Sadr would turn to politics,
although without disbanding or disarming the Mahdi army. But the
negotiations between his representatives and the puppet government broke
down over the demand that the U.S. military withdraw from Sadr City.
Al Sadr’s people claimed that the Allawi government had initially
accepted this condition but then reneged, a shift that would suggest
that the U.S. vetoed the deal. That seems likely. U.S. commanders have
been quoted in the press as saying that they do not want to allow Al
Sadr to regroup his forces. That implies that they want to maintain
their military pressure on him, and it rules out an agreement by which
he would “join the political process.”
On the other hand, some commentators have speculated that Allawi
returned to a threatening stance toward Al Sadr because he fears the
political impact he could have. That could also be a factor. Obviously,
as the puppet government becomes more and more discredited, support for
Al Sadr as an alternative should grow.
The political advantage that the
occupation and its stooges continue to hold is the fact that the
resistance is divided, localized, and dominated by religious groups. The
two phenomena are in fact closely connected. Relibion in politics
typically means politically pointless sectarian divisions. In Iraq, they
are acute between the Sunni and Shiite schools of Islam. At the end of
August, a series of armed assaults on leaders of Sadr’s movement
threatened to provoke sectarian conflict.
On Aug. 31, a group of five of Sadr’s supporters were attacked on the
road to Latifiya, a Sunni insurgent stronghold. Four were killed,
including Basheer Al Jazairi, a leader of the movement. The day before,
another lieutenant of Sadr was assassinated in Baghdad.
The coalition authorities have claimed that foreign Islamists have a
strategy of provoking sectarian warfare between Sunni and Shiite in
order to radicalize the Sunni community.
According to a Reuters dispatch of Sept. 5, Al Sadr’s lieutenants gave
credence to this scenario: “A spokesman for Sadr’s office, Mahmoud
al-Sudani, said he doubted the Sadr movement was being singled out for
assassinations. ‘I don’t think we’re being specifically targeted.
I think there is a plot to kill Shiite leaders in Iraq, political or
religious,’ he said.
“Sudani points the blame at radical Sunni extremists who he says may
be trying to create civil war. ‘They behead innocents and give their
groups Islamic names when they don’t even know the principles of
Islam,’ he said.”
It is not impossible that some of the more irrational Islamists are
pursuing such a course, but it would certainly fit in with the political
interests of the occupiers and their stooges. And the divided, largely
local, character of the resistance opens the way for all sorts of
speculation about who is doing what and why. It opens up the way in fact
for calculated provocations.
In its September issue, the Italian left daily Il Manifesto published an
article arguing that one of the religious resistance groups, the Islamic
Army, which was responsible for the murder of the Italian journalist
Enzo Baldoni, as well as the kidnapping of two French journalists and an
Iranian consul, might in fact be a gang of provocateurs manipulated or
directed by the Allawi government:
“There is a peculiarity of the actions of the Islamic Army that is
becoming more evident every day. Its kidnappings have a disturbing
correspondence to the thought of the Iraqi premier, Iyad Allawi. Allawi,
as a former CIA agent, probably is quite well versed in provocation.”
Moreover, as the religious
groups set up what are in fact alternative governments in the areas they
control, they also impose their versions of Islamic law, which are
likely to arouse antagonisms, even if the population appears to accept
them at first.
Al Sadr in particular has
built his movement around offering services to the community that the
government and the occupiers cannot or will not provide. But after the
latest clashes, the
international press has been playing up stories about protests against
arbitrary decisions and death sentences by his Islamic courts.
Also, as long as the resistance
remains local, there is a danger that the occupiers can isolate the hot
spots and strangle them. More and more, there is a pressing need
for some kind of unifying leadership of the resistance, which is
unlikely to be religious in nature or even in form.
The resistance also needs a program that can inspire active support
throughout the region and an even broader sympathy. It is hard to
predict how and when that will come about, given the disorganization of
the Iraqi people caused by the Saddam dictatorship and the U.S. military
occupation. But it seems reasonable to expect that that experience will
push more and more forces in that direction.
This article first appeared in the September 2004 issue of Socialist
Action newspaper.
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