|
War Escalates Despite Iraqi Vote on New Constitution
by Gerry Foley / November 2005 issue of Socialist Action
newspaper
The
real import of the Oct. 15 referendum on the Iraqi constitutional
referendum was indicated by U.S. air strikes in the Ramadi area immediately
after the vote. The constitution
was ratified over nearly unanimous opposition from the Sunni population.
The U.S. military trumpeted that it had killed 70 “militants.” Local
witnesses said that most of the victims were
uninvolved
bystanders.
The
Oct. 17 Washington Post reported: “A U.S. fighter jet bombed a crowd
gathered around a burned Humvee, killing 25 people, including 18 children,
hospital officials and family members said Monday. The [U.S.] military said
the Sunday raid targeted insurgents planting a bomb for new attacks.
“In
all, residents and hospital workers said, 39 civilians and at least 13
armed insurgents were killed in a day of U.S. airstrikes in Ramadi, the
capital of Anbar province, a Sunni Arab region with a heavy insurgent
presence….
“At
Ramadi hospital, distraught and grieving families fought over body parts
severed by the airstrikes, staking rival claims to what they believed to be
pieces of their loved ones.”
Ramadi
was an area where the call of the most intransigent wing of the Iraqi
resistance for a
boycott
of the vote was generally followed, although it apparently was not in most
other predominately Sunni areas. It was also the scene of recent attacks on
U.S. soldiers.
It
seems likely that the U.S. military thought that the vote had isolated the
hard core of the resistance and opened up the way for indiscriminate air
strikes. That was the real danger
of the vote for the constitution for the resistance, that it would largely
isolate its support to a few majority Sunni areas of little or no economic
importance.
Of
course, even if the U.S. achieved its objective of politically isolating
the resistance, it is unlikely that the armed conflict would end. It is
obviously deeply rooted in the Sunni areas, and discontent and the
potential for subsequent explosions in other sections of the population
would not be removed. But the repression of the U.S. occupiers and their
allies could become more extensive and murderous.
The
vote on the constitution had the logic of an ethnic civil war. Kurds and
Shiites who voted backed the constitution almost unanimously, if the
announced results are correct. The “yes” vote in Kurdish and Shiite areas
was so overwhelming that it forced the election authorities to investigate,
following the international rule that any result over 90 percent is
suspicious.
But
the results among the Sunnis who voted were also over 90 percent, in that
case, against the constitution. Thus the ethnic and sectarian polarization
seems almost total.
In
the Shiite community, even Moqtada al-Sadr, a violent opponent of the U.S.
occupation and any political solution it supports, did not openly call for
a “no” vote.
Moreover,
al-Sadr’s essential base is in the Shiite slum of Sadr City in Baghdad,
which would not be benefited by the clauses of the constitution that grant
autonomy to the Shiite south and the Kurdish north. In fact, the clauses would
threaten them as much as the Sunnis, most of whom also live in the oil-less
center of the country. These clauses were the focus of the opposition of
the Sunni politicians.
But
apparently the line of sectarian mass murder against Shiites followed by the
Zarqawi wing of the resistance, reinforcing the old grudges of the Shiites
against the discrimination and repression they suffered at the hands of the
mainly Sunni Saddam Hussein regime, inspired a circling of the wagons among
the Shiite population that even al-Sadr did not dare to oppose.
Most
of the reports of the election in the major U.S. and British newspapers
stressed that Shiite and Kurdish voters were uncritically following the
direction of their community leaders, nationalists in the case of the
Kurds, clerics in the case of the Shiites, to vote for the constitution.
In
this second election under the occupation, the U.S.-sponsored Iraqi
government has announced that participation was higher than in the first
election, essentially because this time a large section of the Sunnis voted
(perhaps a majority), whereas they virtually totally boycotted the first
election. They voted because they had a chance to block adoption of
the
constitution if they could muster a two-thirds majority against it in three
of Iraq’s 18 provinces, four of which are predominately Sunni.
They
did get a two-thirds “no” vote in two provinces. They failed in the other two majority Sunni provinces. But it is there that the question of
vote fraud assumes a special importance.
It
is possible that the Sunni politicians came close to their goal. However,
blocking the aspirations for autonomy of the southern Shiites and Kurds
would be a Pyrrhic victory. With the central state machinery and army
destroyed by the U.S. invasion and occupation,
there
is no way that Sunni politicians can force the Kurds and Shiites to accept
a new unitary state. These formerly repressed groups will inevitably go
their own way in the parts of the country where they predominate.
The
only force that could compel the Kurds and Shiites to accept unitary rule
is the U.S. Army, and it is hardly likely to do that since its ability to
sustain the occupation depends on a tactical alliance with Shiite and
Kurdish leaders.
On
the other hand, the U.S. rulers do not want to turn the Sunni leaders away
entirely empty handed, because they need them as a counter-weight to the
Shiite religious parties that are oriented toward an alliance with the
Islamic Republic of Iran, and to the Kurdish leaders—whose real objective
is an independent Kurdistan that would be an anathema to Turkey, the
most
important ally of the U.S. in the region. So, the U.S. rulers play a
juggling act, and the Kurdish leaders have to play one too.
The
Washington Post reported Oct. 13: “Many Kurds believed the January
elections marked the first step toward establishing Kurdish independence
and separating their region from Iraq. Instead, some Kurds complain that
their political leaders have sold them out by pushing for a federalist
system of government.
“In an interview Wednesday in the village
of Salahuddin, the headquarters of the KDP and its
leader,
Massoud Barzani, the Kurdish regional president, Merani, said political
leaders were well aware of what they were up against. ‘I know every single Kurd
wants independence,’ Merani said. ‘This is a goal you have to struggle
for—but when the time comes.’”
The
political forces most committed to a tactical alliance with the occupation
are the Kurdish
nationalists,
because after the U.S. allowed Saddam to defeat the Kurdish uprising in
1991, it did interpose its power between the Kurdish populations and the
Iraqi dictator’s genocidal intentions. But the Kurdish leaders’ experience
should have taught them that they could not trust the U.S. rulers, who abandoned
them in 1975 and exposed them to the worst defeat in their history.
However,
the Kurds make up only 20 percent or less of the population of Iraq.
Washington’s most important tactical allies are the Shiite religious
leaders, since the Shiites make up 60 percent of the population. But these
leaders want religion to be the main force in Iraq and they are,
dangerously from the U.S. point of view, drawn toward the theocratic
populist regime in Iran.
The
U.S. rulers have repeatedly warned the Shiite clerics that they will not
accept clerical rule in Iraq or an alliance with Iran. But in order to
maintain their alliance with the clerics, they
accepted
Islamist features in the constitution that dismayed secular Iraqis, and in
particular those interested in women’s rights.
The
constitution’s bows to “Islamic principles” create perilous ambiguities
about what sort of law is going to be followed in the state being set up
under the aegis of the U.S.-led occupation. There is already abundant
evidence, for example, that Islamist rule has been imposed on the Basra
region in the south. On the other hand, the election results point to a new
problem for the Shiite clerics allied with the occupation. No major forces
in the Shiite community opposed their calls to vote “yes” but the Shiite
vote was notably less than in the January elections.
Analyses
of the low Shiite turnout in the international press pointed to a growing
disillusionment
among Shiites with the government dominated by the Shiite religious
parties.
An
article in the Oct. 17 Washington Post noted that the dominant Shiite
cleric, Ayatollah Sistani, had not made as strong a call for voting for the
constitution as he did for voting in the January elections.
Interestingly,
the article quoted a local Communist Party leader for an explanation of
Sistani's apparent lukewarmness and the tepid response of the Shiite
voters: “Muhammed Hamuzi, secretary of the Najaf branch of Iraq's Communist
Party, one of the country's oldest political institutions, said he believed
the marjiya [Shiite religious authorities] were withdrawing from politics
because they feared their reputation had suffered from involvement in the
last election.
“‘The
government that came out of it has failed. I am not saying that people do
not still follow the marjiya, because they do, but clearly in this
referendum many people did not follow their
instructions,
even Sistani's,’ Hamuzi said.”
The
Communist Party opposes the armed resistance and participated in the
Governing Council set up by the U.S. occupation authorities. The CP has
historically been a major factor in Iraqi politics, and most of its members
have come from the impoverished Shiite
community.
Other
press reports quoted ordinary Shiites to the effect that the failure of the
government to respond to their economic problems made them indifferent to
the question of the constitution. That indicates the basic obstacle to the
success of the U.S. in stabilizing the country.
The
privatization forced on Iraq by the occupation authorities and the opening
up of the country to imperialist plundering is inflicting hardships on the
population for which no relief is in sight.
The
material distress of the population maintains seething discontent regardless
of the ups and downs of the attitude of different segments of the
population to the armed resistance.
It
remains to be seen even if the show trial of Saddam Hussein, postponed now
a month after its first session, will distract many Iraqis for long from
the day-to-day miseries inflicted on them by their imperialist overlords
and their local clients.
Moreover,
the Iraqi army and police forces, which the U.S. occupiers are building up
and which they tout as the solution to the problem of the resistance, seem
to be more and more identified by the Sunni populations as Kurd and Shiite
militias under a different uniform.
The
Oct. 13 Christian Science Monitor reported a conversation with a Sunni
merchant in the Adamiya neighborhood of Baghdad: “‘Really, I am afraid,’
says Iyad Ahmed, a Sunni who sells paint and hardware supplies in a shop he
is considering closing because of attacks on his street. … ‘The Iraqi
soldiers are not normal soldiers. They come from the [Shiite political]
parties ... they come in the clothes of police and kill people.’
“He
charges that his cousin's son was taken by Iraqi security forces, and that
he found him dead at a hospital with signs he had been beaten. ‘I asked the
neighbors what happened and they said he was always talking to people about
Sunni and Shiite. Only speaking!’ exclaimed Mr. Ahmed. ‘After this I
thought the problem [of Sunnis being targeted] in Iraq was very bad.’”
An
accumulating number of bodies of both Shiites and Sunnis, apparently
murdered execution style, fuels fears in both communities of sectarian
warfare. Among Shiites these apprehensions are exacerbated by the declared
policy of the Zarqawi wing of the Sunni
Islamist
resistance of targeting Shiite civilians indiscriminately.
In
fact, conflict has been growing between Zarqawi and the majority of the
resistance. Recently, the U.S. authorities contentedly watched a fight
between Zarqawi’s forces and Iraqi tribes in the area of Qaim near the
Syrian border. But it turned out, apparently, that the Arab tribesmen were
no match for the highly trained, dedicated, and well-equipped guerrillas of
al-Qaida.
With
the resources and determination it has, the Zarqawi group is a difficult
partner or rival for the Iraqi resistance groups. In fact, the murderous
attacks on Shiite civilians identified with al-Qaida have multiplied.
It
may be that even the bin Ladin leadership has become worried about their
political effect. The U.S. authorities claimed to have captured a letter
from Ayan al–Zawahiri, bin Ladin’s second in command, criticizing the
tactics of the Zarqawi group. The Iraqi al-Qaida has denounced it as a
falsification. But given the
disastrous effects of these attacks and
outrages,
it seems credible that the central al-Qaida leadership would be worried by
them.
Al-Qaida
does pursue a larger objective than the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty.
It aims at the
creation
of a pan-Islamic state in the Middle East, a new caliphate modeled on the
Baghdad caliphate of the Islamic golden age.
It
is possible that this objective has absorbed some of the aspirations for a
pan-Arab state that were a major factor in Iraq after the 1958 revolution.
The conflict between the immediate goals and interests of the anti-imperialist
revolution in Iraq and the aspirations for pan-Arab unity was never really
resolved.
The
aspiration for some sort of unity of the oppressed people of the Middle
East against imperialism is undoubtedly a powerful one. But neither
religion nor Arab ethnicity is likely to provide the solution. A more
effective formula would be based on economic interests—i.e., a socialist
federation of the Middle East, guaranteeing religious freedom and national
self-determination to all the peoples of the region. While the relative political success
that the U.S. and its allies have scored with the vote on the new
constitution will not dry up support for the resistance, it has increased
the dangers the Iraqi fighters and people face.
New
anti-imperialist and anticapitalist leaderships need to emerge, which will
find more effective political formulas for mobilizing resistance to the
projects of the imperialists in the region. One of them would be a perspective of regional unity against
imperialism based on common economic interests and not divisive ethnic or
religious identities.
|
