More than ever: Out with the imperialist troops from Iraq
Declaration of the IWL.FI for the 18 March demonstrations
On the forthcoming 18th March, three years after the beginning of the imperialist military occupation of Iraq, international mobilisation will be held demanding immediate withdrawal of the troops.
These demonstrations are called for a date shortly after the raid that destroyed the Askariya Mosque in the Samara city a place the Shii Moslem consider to be sacred. After this raid numerous attacks against the Sunni religious places were carried out and confrontations between sectors of both communities took place, claiming hundreds of lives.
Most of the world press presents these facts as a proof of the “sectarian religious violence” between the Sunni and the Shii and they talk of the “risk of a civil war” as a justification for further permanence of the occupation forces. It is, therefore, absolutely necessary to ask ourselves who would be benefited with this civil war. To answer this question we must first see what happened during these three years of imperialist occupation of Iraq.
The failure of a policy
In March 2003, imperialist troops of USA, Great Britain and their allies obtained a quick military victory, they defeated the Saddam Hussein administration and regime, and they dissolved the armed forces and instated a colonial regime resting on the invading troops. But Bush’s expectations that this victory would allow to establish a solid administration fully subservient to the foreign powers so that they might withdraw their troops quickly were soon belied by real-life facts.
A short time after the occupation, a veritable war of liberation of the Iraqi people began, and by means of attacks and raids the Iraqi resistance began to corner the occupying forces increasingly and prevented the invaders from actually dominating the country. The Chalabi and Allawi administrations did not succeed at obtaining practically any political support and the deceitful elections of January 2005 did not modify the scenario in any essential manner.
Neither could they revert the situation of the genocide attacks on civilian populations, as was the case of Falluyah in 2004, or the jailing and torturing and murder committed on thousands of prisoners in the infamous Abu Grahib jail and other similar to it. That is why, elements of crisis began to crop up among the invading troops, such as suicides, desertions and drug addition. The 150 000 soldiers sent by Bush proved insufficient to dominate Iraq but sending more troops (400 or 500 000) is impossible under current political circumstances in USA:
At the same time, the invading coalition began to come apart. Spain had to withdraw the troops after Aznar fell; Berlusconi is almost sure to lose elections in Italy and only Blair is surviving, but much weaker. Many other smaller components of the coalition withdrew or are with a deadline for withdrawal. On the other hand, inside the USA, the opposition to the war accrued and support for Bush is plunging.
This is how the possibility that American imperialism may be defeated militarily in Iraq by the heroic resistance of the Iraqi masses just as they were in Viet Nam in the 1960s and 70s is coming into view. This is something that even the American press and politicians have had to admit.
Divide to rule
Faced with the different failures of their policy, the American imperialism is betting more and more firmly on the agreements with religious Shii hierarchy and the bourgeoisie as well as the Kurdish bourgeoisie of the north of the country, trying to legalise all the agreement with new elections. For this policy, they have now received the support from the French and German imperialisms that have been against the invasion but now “legalised” the occupation.
As part of this agreement, on the one hand, a new constitution was approved which, with the excuse of “federalising” the country, advance towards its virtual division along the religious and ethnic lines, creating “autonomous zones” with administrations of their own: the Kurdish oligarchs Talabani and Barzani in the north of the country and the Shii collaborators from the CSRI (Superior Council of Islamic Revolution) ad the Dawa, in the south of the country. Precisely the areas that possess the oil fields. The 2central government” in Bagdad, predominantly Sunni zone, would have its real jurisdiction limited to a great desert. In this way, Bush intends to apply the old principle of “divide and rule”. At the same time, imperialism has started to launch a plan of Iraqi-fy the war. That means: prepare native armed force totally obedient to the foreign power and get them to confront the resistance, control the country and so allow a part of the troops of occupation to go back home.
Death squadrons
Part of this policy of “Iraqi-fying” the war has been the creation of the “death squadrons” linked to the government to harass those suspected to sympathising with the resistance and to encourage confrontations between the Shiis and the Sunnite. The best known among them is the one that is known as Badr Army, related to the CSRI (main Shii party if the colonial government). The Badr is responsible for numerous attacks on the Sunni and Shiis who oppose the occupation, with hundreds of casualties, among them the murder of 47 passengers of a bus carrying demonstrators on their way back home from a demo demanding unity of the Iraqi people a few days after the raid. It is also accused of running a secret prison in the undergrounds of Home Ministry.
The creation of the “death squadrons” in known in the USA under the name of “Operation Salvador” because of their similitude to the policy applied in that Centro American country in the 80s in order to fight against FMLN (Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation.) It is no coincidence that Bush should have sent to Iraq a former ambassador to Honduras in those days, John Negroponte, a man of great experience in such operations.
The raids
It seems obvious, then, that such raid as the one against the mosque of Askariya aim as strengthening the logic of “Iraqi-fying” the war and lead the Iraqi people to fratricide confrontation instead of gathering them all together against the occupation troops and their local agents, such as the administration of the current Prime Minister, Ibrahim al.Ja´fari.
For example, some reports have it that even the militias of the Mehdi Army (commanded by the Shii clergyman, Nuqta el-Sadr, opposed to the imperialist occupation reacted after the raid and attacked Sunni sectors, something that forced their leader to return quickly from his trip to Iran and deliver his correct address “to all the Iraqis, Sunni and Shii, Moslem and non-Moslem, to a demonstration in Bagdad to demand that the troops of occupation should go.”
For all the above reasons, the IWL-FI (International Workers League – Fourth International) condemns these raids as provocation in the service of the imperialist occupation. Many of them are directly carried out by imperialism itself, a fact that was evidenced last year when two British secret agents were arrested in Basora dressed the Arabic way and carrying bombs and detonators. They were later on violently released by the British army. In the case of the Askariya mosque, re reduction of soldiers on duty from a permanent 35 to 5 soldiers on the very day of the raid is conspicuous and so is the fact that the highly professional of those who fitted the explosives was unobserved by the American and Iraqi patrols permanently present in the zone.
Even the USA ambassador in Iraq, Zalmay Jalilzad actually admitted the imperialist responsibility for this dynamic of civil war when he said, “The invasion on Iraq has opened a Pandora’s box of ethnical violence that may lead the country to a civil war. The question is, how do we go on?” (Los Angeles Times, 8/3/06)
Our repudiation for this type of raids would not change in the least if it were committed by a group like that of Al Zarkawi-Al Qaeda, because the character of the provocation against the Iraqi people and benefits only the occupants.
Unity to confront the occupation and its agents
Imperialism has a lot at stake in Iraq: a withdrawal in the present conditions would mean admitting a defeat and abandoning the objective of controlling directly the second oil reserve on earth. On the other hand, this fact poses the need that the Iraqi nationalise the oil and recover sovereignty over it. If imperialism leaves Iraq, it would mean a dangerous antecedent of helplessness that would encourage the struggle of the peoples of the world. They would be especially weakened in the Middle East, strategic because of its oil wealth, where situation of crisis also accrue in Palestine and with the Iranian administration.
The only way out, then is to throw out the occupying forces and their local agents just as the Vietnamese did in 1975, The attack on Askariya should not mislead us so as to forget that the central issue is that in Iraq there is a war of national liberation, a struggle to recover sovereignty and independence of the country and that they are beating the imperialist troops.
The IWL-FI considers that today the unity of the Shii and the Sunni and the lay population is more important than ever if the triumph is to be achieved. It is all about defending the territorial unity of Iraq against the attempts of the imperialists and their Shii and Kurdish agents in the current al-Ja´fari administration (Dawa), al Hakim (CSRI), Talabani (UPK) and Barzani (PDK). Consequently we condemn all actions that may jeopardise this unity.
The war of national liberation of Iraq is today the main confrontation between imperialism and the toiling masses of the world. A great part of the current American policy is at stake in Iraq. A defeat of Bush and the USA would inaugurate much more favourable conditions for a headway for the toiling masses all over the world.
That is why, the International Workers League – Fourth International we pledge our unconditional support to the military struggle of the Iraqi resistance (even while we do maintain our political criticism to their leaders) We stand for the political and military defeat of imperialism and its Iraqi collaborators an for their expulsion from the country so that a free and sovereign Iraq may be achieved.
14th March 2006
International Secretariat of the IWL-FI
(International Workers League – Fourth International)
