|
Iraqi Armed
Resistance Faces Political Isolation
by Gerry Foley /
March 2005 issue of Socialist Action
Militarily, the Iraqi resistance has continued to
strike against the U.S. and its allies since the election of the Interim
National Assembly at the end of January. However, it seems to face a more
serious threat of political isolation. The actions of the Iraqi resistance
that have been reported in the big business press since the national vote
have been basically confined to Sunni areas, and many of them have had an
anti-Shiite character.
For example, there were a number of suicide
bombings aimed at crowds of Shiites gathered to celebrate their principal
religious holiday, Ashura. Associated Press
reported Feb. 7 that “Islamic extremists” were
executing barbers to prevent Iraqi men from shaving off their beards.
At the same time, the U.S. military forces have
been staging sweeps of towns in Anbar province and western Iraq that have
been hotbeds of resistance. A report in the Feb. 24 Christian Science
Monitor indicated that the U.S. military is exploiting sectarian divisions:
“The Marines have also come in with about 20
members of an Iraqi special forces unit called the Freedom Fighters. Unlike
local Iraqi guard units, who are usually unwilling to fight, the freedom
fighters are Shiites from the southern city of Basra, where uprisings
against Saddam Hussein's regime were put down with the wholesale slaughter
of civilians. There's little love
between them and the Sunni Arab citizens of Anbar.”
The Washington Post had two features on Iraq in
its Feb. 15 and 16 issues. The first stressed the division between the
jihadist volunteers from other Arab countries and the local fighters. It
cited the views of the local fighters as follows:
“He complained about foreign fighters, whom he
blamed for Abu Shaiba's death. Well-financed, those men and Iraqi
guerrillas who subscribe to their ideology have the upper hand, he said. He
denounced the killing of Iraqi security forces, the car bombs that killed civilians,
and the kidnappings and beheadings for which Falluja became known before it
was retaken in November.”
The second stressed the demoralization of
residents of Falluja, the Sunni city destroyed by the U.S. military with a
condescension reminiscent of colonial days:
“’Saddam bad, George Bush good,’ one boy said,
repeating a phrase the Marines said he often uses to get candy from them.
It usually works.
“Another small girl has learned to follow the
Marines throughout their hour-long patrol, pausing to shed crocodile tears
when she does not get a piece of
‘chocolata, mister.’
When she tried to pick the pocket of a visitor
who was with the Marines, the visitor
swatted her hand. She simply smiled and ran to a
Marine ahead. ‘Chocolata, mister?’ she asked, peering up at him.”
The Christian Science Monitor’s accounts of the
U.S. military sweeps in western Iraq indicated that the troops were not
encountering much resistance, but they knew that the guerrillas would come
to dominate the areas as soon as they left.
There has been no lack of guerrilla actions since
the elections. Dozens of people are being killed almost every day, mostly
Iraqis. But there are no reports of the large number of small assaults on
the U.S. forces that have been the most effective resistance to the
occupiers. It is possible that this phenomenon continues. The imperialist
press, of course, prefers to focus on the spectacular strikes out of
sensationalism but also because they are associated with Islamists, who
represent an unattractive face of the resistance.
Overall, it is clear that the resistance has been
caught in a trap. If it is isolated to the Sunni minority, it can
eventually be ground down and demoralized. In order to escape from this
dilemma it needs to develop a political leadership that can appeal to all
Iraqis to resist the occupiers and their allies and stooges.
The elections, in fact, seem to have consolidated
a situation of latent civil war, which is the most favorable circumstance
for the U.S. imperialists. The attacks of the Islamists on Shiites and
Kurdish nationalists play right into their hands.
However, if the resistance is in a difficult
situation, the U.S. position is not without its
pitfalls either. The U.S. rulers are able to
exploit the sectarian and national divisions in Iraq to manipulate the
newly elected Interim National Assembly. The interim constitution adopted
under the aegis of the U.S. occupiers requires a two-thirds majority to elect
the premier, and so none of the parties can do it on their own.
The majority party, the Shiite United Iraqi
Alliance, which got about half the votes, and has 140 seats out of the
total of 275 in the Assembly, needs the support of the Kurds, who got about
25 percent of the vote and 75 seats. The “secular Shiite” party of the
outgoing premier, Iyad Allawi, a long time protégé of the U.S., has 40
seats and remains an important player, even though it represents a small
minority.
Clearly, the U.S. would prefer a government under
Allawi, but it is extremely unlikely that it expected him to win. It can
and obviously does take comfort from the fact that he won sufficient
support to remain in the game.
It was obvious that the Shiite alliance backed by
Ayatollah Sistani would win the predominant share of the vote. In fact, it
seems that the U.S. agreed to elections before the Sunni areas could be
subdued specifically to satisfy Sistani, who is impatient to see a
Shiite-dominated government and who is the decisive if ambiguous ally of
the United States.
It is also clear, of course, that the U.S. has
good reason to be wary of the Shiite clergy and does not want to see them
establish a strong government. In fact, Scott Ritter, a former U.S.
military officer and arms inspector in prewar Iraq, has declared that he has
information that the U.S. rigged the vote to reduce the Iraqi Alliance
total from a substantial majority of 56 percent to a relative majority of
48 percent.
The Shiite clergy is not any more pro-Western
than the Sunni clergy, and what is more, it has historic links with the
Islamist regime of Iran. Many of the parties in the Iraqi Alliance were
linked to the Iranian regime at the time of the Iran-Iraq war and many of
their leaders fled to Iran and lived there for long periods.
Ibrahim al-Jaafari, the premier designate of the
Alliance, for example, lived in Iran for 10 years, from 1980, the year
following the Iranian Islamic Revolution, to 1990, when he moved to London.
On the Feb. 23 “Democracy Now” radio program, Amy
Goodman interviewed Juan Cole, a professor of Middle Eastern history, about
Jaafari. He said, among other things:
“On a whole range of issues, there's likely to be
some friction between Jaafari and the U.S. government. Jaafari was opposed to
the Falluja campaign. He felt that peaceful means could have been used to
resolve those issues. He was opposed to the Najaf campaigns of the U.S.
military. He has good relations with Iran, and I think would not react well
to a U.S. attack on Iran. And so, on a whole range of issues from Islamic law
to domestic security policy to foreign policy, he is not on the same page
with the U.S. Embassy.”
The question of relations between an Iraqi
government dominated by the Shiite clergy and Iran is inevitably going to
become a very tricky one for the U.S. The Iranian regime, in fact, appealed
to Iraqi Shiites to vote, in the face of calls for a boycott from the Sunni
clergy and the resistance. It did not do this obviously for the sake of
supporting U.S. dominance of Iraq.
This question now threatens to become very acute,
as the U.S. rulers have stepped up their threats against Iran. Scott Ritter
claims that Bush has already approved a plan for bombing Iran in June.
On the other hand, the U.S. rulers have already
been discountenanced by some startling changes in color by chameleon Iraqi
politicians, such as the long-time protégé of the CIA and the Pentagon,
Ahmed Chalabi.
The occupation authorities even accused Chalabi
of being a spy for Iran and cast him aside. He has reemerged as an
important player in the Iraqi Alliance.
In order to keep the situation in Iraq from
getting out of control, the U.S. has to play a very complicated juggling
game, and it has not historically shown a great deal of agility. Once it
starts dropping pins, it can lose the game. And the big danger is that once
it starts losing, it will be tempted to step up the ante by widening its
military intervention and threatening a regional war.
----------------------------------------------------------------
Click here for info on how to subscribe to
Socialist Action newspaper.
|
