20 March 2004 marked one year from the launch of the British armed forces’ twenty-ninth military intervention in the Middle East since the end of World War Two. Together with the US invasion force they are responsible for killing in one year over 10,000 Iraqi civilians and up to 6,370 Iraqi troops. The Royal Navy commenced shelling and burning down ports along the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf in 1819. In six of the nine decades of its existence the RAF has bombed Iraq. This repeated use of violence against Middle Eastern peoples is intended to control them, control their resources and break any resistance. This time the resistance in Iraq, like the resistance in Palestine, is not being broken. Trevor Rayne reports.
The ruling Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) does not keep figures of Iraqi casualties. The Independent’s Robert Fisk, unable to obtain reliable information, visited mortuaries. He concluded that in September 1,000 Iraqi civilians were being killed each week. Iraq Body Count estimates that during five months under CPA jurisdiction Baghdad alone had over 1,500 violent deaths. Using reports from 2003 it is estimated that Iraqi deaths from previously unexploded cluster bombs dropped by US and British planes ran at 300 a month from May onwards. Infant mortality has almost doubled from 57 per 1,000 live births in 2002 to 103 in 2003. Safe water was available to 85% of Iraqis before the war, now it is accessible to 60%. Unemployment is put at 70% of the workforce. Assorted meat and vegetable prices have doubled or tripled, cooking gas has increased in price ten-fold, petrol is scarce. 15,000 Iraqi and Palestinian prisoners are held captive by US and British forces; they have no legal rights. Desperate to portray the occupation as a success, sections of the media seized on an opinion poll conducted by Oxford Research International in February for the BBC which states that 60% of Iraqis say that life is better today than under Saddam Hussein. The poll sampled 2,500 people outside Baghdad.
On 17 January 2004 the number of US soldiers killed in combat since the start of the war reached 500. On 14 March 2004 the figure was 560 killed. This rate exceeds one US soldier killed in combat each day. Approximately 10,900 US soldiers have been removed from Iraq for medical treatment. 59 British troops have been killed in Iraq and approximately 2,200 have been evacuated for medical reasons. 37 soldiers from contingents supplied by 32 other countries to the occupation force have been killed. These are deaths and casualties in the service of imperialism.
Imperialist strategy
All talk of bringing democracy and freedom to Iraq and the Middle East, like the phoney mission to destroy weapons of mass destruction, throws dust in the eyes of anyone who wants to understand the purpose of the war. The war is part of a US ruling class strategy to dominate the world and prevent the rise of any would-be contender to its power. This class moved quickly to assert its global dominance after the collapse of the Soviet Union. US military spending exceeds that of the next 25 biggest military spenders combined. In a context of growing economic crisis for international capitalism and with growing resistance to US domination in Latin America, the US ruling class is determined to prevent opposition turning an economic crisis for imperialism into a political crisis and to use force if necessary.
Specifically, the US ruling class has identified the European Union (EU), Russia and China as potential rivals. Control of the Middle East, with 60% of the world’s oil reserves, is seen as crucial in maintaining their subordination. Assisted by Britain, the US has dominated the Middle East since World War Two. This domination is judged to be in peril. By occupying and controlling Iraq, the US and British states can reinforce their geo-strategic control over the Middle East and in particular target Iran, Saudi Arabia and Syria to enforce compliance.
With the 2001 war on Afghanistan the US established military bases from the Gulf to the Caspian Basin, across Central Asia on Russia’s southern flank to China’s border. In the past two months US troops have been posted into Saharan African states. The US ruling class has established a global belt of bases for operations combined with an aerial reach that can take their warplanes from Kansas to Kazakhstan in 13 hours. Oil and gas fields and transportation routes are all guarded. These are preparations for war. They are intended to extend US global power by military means; they are predatory and not defensive moves. The United Nations (UN), providing a forum for the exercise of rival imperial, Russian and Chinese interests, was not going to be allowed to get in the way of US plans and was consequently brushed aside in the drive to war.
Whatever one may think of Prime Minister Blair’s pose of evangelical sincerity, his sermons conceal a devotion to base financial calculations. British overseas assets are second only to those of the USA; two of the world’s three biggest oil monopolies are British and Anglo-Dutch (BP and Shell) and the City of London is Europe’s main financial centre. The British Labour government considers that in the event of growing inter-imperialist rivalry the interests of the British ruling class are best served at present in an alliance with the US, given its overwhelming military superiority. This ‘special relationship’ is used to elevate British interests relative to those of Germany, France and Japan. It is a risky strategy and real divisions exist within the British ruling class over whether to side with the US or EU in the event of their falling out, as they did over the war on Iraq. By pulling the Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Danish, Dutch, Polish and Ukraine governments into the war coalition the British Labour government was able to prevent its isolation in Europe and continue to play the role of bridge between the US and EU. French and German capitalism cannot be constrained to whatever the US and British ruling classes consider they can afford, consequently further confrontations will occur and a crisis of decision for the British ruling class will arrive. The prospect of a new Spanish government withdrawing its 1,300 troops from Iraq increases the pressure on the British government.
Coalition forced into retreat
Branded ‘shock and awe’ the assault started spectacularly enough. The explosive power and the display were intended to defeat the Iraqi army psychologically and materially without having to engage it on the ground. They were also warnings to any one else in the world considering defying US power. It took just three weeks to capture Baghdad. Pre-emptive war on the digital battlefield courtesy of the combination of electrical sensors, satellites, computers, missiles and guided bombs seemed irresistible: ‘winning is keeping the target in constant sight’.* The resistance dispersed, moved out of sight of the imperialist armies and began to fight back. The occupation forces were joined in guerrilla wars of hide and seek. Thus far the head of the CPA Paul Bremer, US Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz and the US Middle East Commander General John Abizaid have all narrowly missed being killed by resistance attacks. Intelligence superiority has reverted back from its electronic forms to that which is passed from house to house and street to street.
While the imperialists can claim success with their opening salvos and infra-red thermal imaging cameras for use at night, the resistance has continued to land telling blows with improvised explosive devices (IEDs) planted along road sides and exploded by command wires, remote controls and mobile telephones. Additionally, the use of shoulder-held missiles has forced coalition helicopters to fly fast and low, thereby reducing their surveillance function. The mobility of the coalition forces has been reduced and in order to reduce casualties they are either being restricted to forays from bases or replaced with Iraqis. Repeated bombings of police stations, army bases, hotels and prestige sites have contributed to the growing and increasingly apparent ineffectiveness of the occupation armies. This is creating political problems for the imperialist states and jeopardising the realisation of the US ruling class’s ambitions.
The US forces have cut the number of their encampments in Baghdad from 60 to 26, with a further reduction to eight planned: one to be in the centre of the city and the others on the outskirts. The US intention is to pass control of Baghdad’s security to 9,000 Iraqi police with 10,000 more to be deployed by 2005. US troops have vacated town centres in Sunni areas, having failed to suppress the resistance. The US Army pretends it is winning, reporting that the number of armed clashes its forces are involved in has fallen from 50 a day in November to 20 a day in February. However, it is retreating to key installations, seeking to retain its strategic control while forsaking more territory and hoping that collaborators will fight for the occupiers.
Since November, over 600 Iraqi police appointed by the CPA have been killed. On 10 February a suicide car-bomber killed 50 people at a police station in Iskandariya, south of Baghdad, and the following day 47 people were killed at an army recruitment centre in the capital by another suicide car-bomb. Half of the 40,000 Iraqi police and soldiers the US and Britain hoped to train have deserted. There is evidence that resistance fighters have infiltrated the police. The US has formed a secret police unit, Task Force 121, trained to target and assassinate Iraqi resistance, ‘man-hunting’ as US defence secretary Rumsfeld put it. This force is run by the US military and intelligence services with the help of Israeli advisers and includes Kurds, Shi’ite militiamen and senior intelligence agents from the former Ba’athist regime.
The British Army presents its occupation of the Basra region as a sophisticated and successful policing operation, distinct from the US effort. This will fool no one who has ever been subject to British policing. In mid-February The Independent reported that the British military are investigating the deaths of 37 Iraqi civilians killed by British forces since President Bush declared the end of the war on 1 May 2003. Six of them are described as deaths in custody. Plaid Cymru MP Adam Price said he wanted to visit Basra to enquire about the deaths but was warned off: ‘The Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, has told me that if I go I “will be killed.”’
A shift in tactics
Resistance in Iraq has forced the Bush administration to have second thoughts about taking on Syria, Iran and North Korea and caused opposition to the conduct of US policy within the US ruling class itself. Sections of the US establishment see the Bush presidency as needlessly provocative, expensive and creating too many opponents. Writing in the Financial Times on the ‘war on terrorism’ Martin Wolf expresses this view: ‘Western policy must be guided by the aim of securing…co-operation from the Islamic world, however difficult that task may be…success even in limiting terrorism depends on the closest possible co-operation among the largest number of countries. Given this, virtually all the rhetoric and much of the practice of the Bush administration have been nothing short of disaster. The administration might have secured support for the war in Iraq had it not first trampled on the sensibilities of its allies…The US cannot win this struggle on its own, or by military means alone.’ President Bush and his neo-conservative cabal are either to be reined in or replaced.
The recent installation in the White House team of former US Secretary of State James Baker indicated the change of tactic. Baker represents big oil companies. He opposed a unilateral war on Iraq; the big oil corporations feared it could destabilise the region – their fears are coming true. One of Baker’s first tasks was to tour Iraq’s main creditor nations, presumably to arrange debt write-offs in exchange for access to Iraqi oil. Among the countries he visited were France and Russia, both opponents of the war, whose companies had their Iraqi contracts torn up last year by the CPA. Now Russia’s Lukoil has been invited to renovate oil assets on the Iraqi West Qurnah oil field. In March Shell and the French oil multinational Total, moored off Ceyhan on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, received the first oil pumped from Kirkuk. Among the banks offered future oil revenue in exchange for short-term credit to the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council is BNP Paribas. French fries must be back on the menu. This is how US capitalism wins friends and influences people.
Democratic Party contender John Kerry voices US ruling class discontent with the methods used by the Bush presidency and also serves to constrain the neo-conservatives’ ambitions. However, Kerry does not represent an alternative strategy for the US ruling class, just an adjustment in the governance and style of it. Kerry voted for the invasion and has not called for an end to the occupation of Iraq. Indeed, he called for an additional 40,000 US troops to be sent to Iraq. Responding to the newly-elected Spanish prime minister’s pledge to bring Spanish troops back from Iraq unless they were under UN command Kerry said: ‘In my judgement, the new prime minister should not have decided that he was going to pull out of Iraq. He should have said this increases our determination to get the job done.’
The US and British governments claim some success in paving the way to democracy in Iraq by getting the Governing Council to agree an interim constitution on 1 March. The 15 November agreement on a constitutional committee and regional caucuses to elect an interim assembly was quietly shelved and we are now on the fourth blueprint for the future Iraq. After 30 June the CPA passes authority to the Governing Council and the CPA transforms itself, in the words of Paul Bremer, ‘into the world’s largest embassy… [with] thousands of American government officials from all our departments.’ The new authority’s first responsibility will be to invite the occupation forces to stay on. Elections are scheduled to take place before the end of January 2005. Major issues such as the degree of autonomy for the Kurds, women’s rights and the status of Islam as a source of law are left unresolved. Ayatollah Sistani and his Shia political allies oppose giving the Kurds veto powers over an elected assembly. Iran, Syria and Turkey, all states established on the denial of Kurdish rights, have voiced their opposition to Kurdish autonomy in Iraq and have increased repression of their Kurdish populations.
Thus far this war has cost the British government over £3.6 billion, rising an additional £200 million a month. This year the US government intends to spend $87 billion in Iraq, a sum over four times the size of the Iraqi economy. Iraqi oil production is now 1.9 million barrels a day compared with 2.8 million before the invasion. None of the major oil multinationals intends to operate in Iraq until there is security there. Iraqi resistance leaders have said that ‘a united resistance will soon be in action’. This war has been a deadly folly. Get the British and all foreign soldiers out of Iraq now.
* Paul Virilio, War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception
FRFI 178 April / May 2004
