Over the last few months, Iraq has gone from the most hot-button issue in the country to a subject that barely makes the front pages. The Democratic front runners initially campaigned on an outspoken anti-war platform, albeit a vague and disingenuous one. Now, they stick to domestic issues such as the economy, and only address the war if asked directly about their positions.
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Iraqis of all sectarian and ethnic |
The shift in the discussion on Iraq occurred in the late fall, when General David Petraeus reported to Congress on the so-called “success” of the surge strategy. Tossed softball questions by the congressional Democrats and citing deeply misleading statistics, Petraeus gave the impression that the surge was working, and eventually—if not immediately—victory would be achieved, accompanied by a gradual withdrawal of troops .
The media ate it up, and the general thrust of virtually every mainstream article about Iraq since has been that progress is slowly being achieved.. McCain and Bush are currently bragging about the surge, while the Democrats are quiet about Iraq. They all hope the surge does “work,” although saying so is not politically prudent.
On the surface, the U.S. military may boast of decreasing U.S. and Iraqi casualties. However, more U.S. soldiers died in 2007 than in any other year. The occupation—with ground forces stretched thin—is currently intensifying aerial bombings of neighborhoods, which, like the Israelis in Gaza, are killing young children who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
According to the Oxford Research Bureau, 1.3 million Iraqis have died as a result of the war, excluding two of the most violent provinces. In addition, there are 2 million people displaced inside of Iraq, and 2.5 million who are refugees in neighboring Syria and Jordan. There are no figures available for the number of Iraqis wounded, but the most conservative estimate would be twice the number killed. Altogether, nearly one in three Iraqis have been killed, wounded or displaced since 2003.
One must dissect the “declining” violence in light of this context. It is comparable to committing a massacre one week and then killing the remaining population in ones and twos the following week. Summing up the present situation as a “decline in the violence” obscures more than it reveals.
The surge—the decision to send an additional 30,000 troops to Iraq—is actually a relatively minor factor in the changed situation. It is a convenient myth that the United States simply sent some more soldiers and captured the “bad guys,” and the result has been some measure of progress.
Divide-and-conquer strategy underlies sectarian conflict
In reality, the lower number of deaths in recent months has more to do with the consolidation of a classic divide-and-conquer counterinsurgency strategy. The overall U.S. strategy for the takeover of Iraq is worth reviewing.
The United States invaded Iraq in 2003, destroyed the central government, and banned the ruling secular Arab Baath (Renaissance) Socialist Party. Resistance to the invasion was immediate and of a national character, crossing religious lines. The vast majority of Iraqis thought of themselves primarily as Iraqis rather than Sunni or Shia.
In order to destroy national unity, U.S. strategists immediately began to arm and create a puppet government out of right-wing Shiite parties. These elements were not representative of the Shiite population as a whole; they reflected narrow, conservative, and religious interests.
These Shiite parties used the government apparatus and their own paramilitaries to carry out a “religious cleansing” in the Sunni neighborhoods that were strongholds of the resistance. Those communities formed armed units not only to fight against the occupation forces but to defend themselves from violent attacks from death squads and the police.
Shiite paramilitaries, the armed wings of the puppet government’s main parties, were a real and destructive feature of the occupation. The Mahdi Army, the one Shiite organization that offered a national resistance front in the early years of the occupation, was later given a major stake in the government.
Sectarian violence was greatly intensified by the indiscriminate targeting of Shia and other non-Sunni communities by the “Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia” organization.
Many neighborhoods and those cities of key economic importance were engulfed in armed struggle and ripped apart along religious lines. Shiite and Sunni mingled in many neighborhoods before the occupation.
The well-equipped and U.S.-backed right-wing Shiite death squads largely won this armed struggle, increasing the isolation of Sunni communities. While the resistance still continued its fight against occupation forces, the U.S. government exploited the fact that the fabric of Iraqi society had been violently torn apart.
U.S. forces came into the same Sunni neighborhoods that had been fighting the occupation and offered them money and weapons to help them in their struggle against the U.S.-funded death squads. They deputized them as police of their own neighborhoods, and promised that they, too, would become part of the new state.
By first funding right-wing sectarian death squads, and then funding both sides in order to accomplish a truce, the U.S. occupation was able to break up the national unity of the Iraqi people. The message to the anti-occupation strongholds was simple: You either work with us or the death squads will wipe you out. We are your protection.
The U.S. funded both sides—not to mention the two main Kurdish parties in the north—and as a result all sides are dependent on Washington and seek its favor. Parts of northern Iraq under the control of the Kurdish Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, both pro-U.S. organizations, have been autonomous from the central government since 1991.
U.S. planners succeeded in their strategy because, once the erosion of national unity set in, the program of the resistance came to be principally oriented around self-defense and developing control of their own communities. The resistance forces were not ideological movements.
National reconciliation: under whose terms?
A number of unofficial semi-states now exist in Iraq, with different political factions controlling different areas, none of the factions strong enough to contend for exclusive national leadership.
The U.S. media and bourgeois politicians claim that Iraq needs “political reconciliation.” In fact, political division is what got them where they are today.
To the extent reconciliation is desired, they wish it to be of a certain type. A Declaration of Principles agreed upon between the United States and the U.S.-installed Iraqi government allows U.S. forces to remain indefinitely in Iraq to facilitate and encourage “the flow of foreign investments [to] Iraq, especially American investments” and to “deter foreign aggression.” These unidentified “foreigners aggressors” clearly exclude U.S. troops.
Bush recently announced he would veto any legislation that forbids the United States from establishing a military installation or base for the permanent stationing of U.S. Armed Forces in Iraq. He threatens a similar veto on any legislation forbidding the United States from exercising control over Iraq’s oil resources. Construction work continues in Baghdad on the biggest embassy ever built, a building clearly meant to be the center of power in Iraq for decades to come.
The colonial character of the occupation is now abundantly clear. Washington’s objective remains control of Iraq and the entire oil-rich Gulf region as a key element in a strategy of global domination.
The old Iraqi constitution stated that oil and the means of production could only be owned by the state and Arabs—their version of a monopoly of foreign trade. This was established in 1972, not coincidentally the same year that the United States placed Iraq on the “state terrorism” list. The United States quickly scrapped that constitution after the invasion.
The New York Times and the Washington Post reported a recent study of the Iraqi population conducted by the U.S. occupation forces. The study claimed Iraqis do have some “shared beliefs” that could serve as the basis for political reconciliation. It further discovered that a sense of “optimistic possibility permeated all focus groups … and far more commonalities than differences are found among these seemingly diverse groups of Iraqis” from all over the country and all walks of life.
The Washington Post announced that the discovery of shared beliefs among Iraqis throughout the country is “good news, according to a military analysis of the results.”
This is the height of imperialist arrogance: to discover that a people with longstanding national and cultural traditions might have some “shared beliefs.”
In a startling admission, the report goes on to elaborate on beliefs shared by Iraqis. According to the Washington Post, “Iraqis of all sectarian and ethnic groups believe that the U.S. military invasion is the primary root of the violent differences among them, and see the departure of [what they call] ‘occupying forces’ as the key to national reconciliation.”
Bring the troops home now!
As such, the United States still has an untenable situation in Iraq. They may buy out one group or another for the short-term, but Iraqis fail to appreciate the military power that has ravaged their country for 17 years. The United States has not earned permanent allies. The constituents of all Iraqi political organizations with any substantial base want the U.S. forces to leave. Genuine national reconciliation would make immediate withdrawal its first demand.
The surge is “working” only insofar as it is working to destroy a once proud and united nation, to take more innocent lives, to open up Iraqi oil fields for U.S. corporations, to divert tax-payer dollars away from needs here at home.
But the colonialist idea that Iraqis will accept foreign occupation and domination is refuted by the history of modern Iraq. During the era of British domination, 1920-58, the people of Iraq—Sunni and Shia Arabs, Kurds and others rose time and again in rebellion against colonialism.
Our call remains the same: end the occupation, bring the troops home now, reparations for the Iraqi people!
