FRFI 176 December 2003 / January 2004
The predicted attack on British interests and civilians came in Istanbul on 20 November killing 30 people, four of them British, and wounding 450 people. Scotland Yard said it was only a matter of time before people in Britain are similarly attacked. Labour Prime Minister Blair, with President Bush at his side, struck a Churchillian pose, ‘When something like this happens today, our response is not to flinch or give way or concede one inch. We stand absolutely firm until this job is done – done in Iraq; done elsewhere in the world.’ Let us be clear: the British government is leading us from war to war, endangering the lives of millions of people in Britain and around the world in pursuit of selfish, racist, imperialist and ultimately unobtainable goals. Trevor Rayne reports.
As US casualties in Iraq mounted and the debacle of the occupation washed against his White House door, Bush announced, ‘America will never run’. Run, no, but a brusque quick step, yes. US and British military strategy aims to destroy their opponents’ will to fight. A CIA report leaked in November described how the occupation forces could fail in Iraq. On 11 November the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) head Paul Bremer was hastily recalled to Washington. Within a week he was announcing new constitutional arrangements to allow the US and British authorities to hand over administrative powers to Iraqis by the end of June 2004. The US and British governments seek to retain smaller forces in Iraq, housed in well guarded camps, launching targeted forays against any resistance. This would reduce US and British casualties. As the Iraqi resistance grows this looks a forlorn hope. Missing is the essential ingredient which the US and Britain cannot provide: a legitimate Iraqi government accepted by the Iraqi people.
There were plenty of people and organisations that advised the US government on how it might respond after the 11 September 2001 attacks: you cannot stamp out this fire. That advice was not heeded and the US launched its war on terror chasing ghosts and destroying cities. If the US ruling class was to truly tackle the formations allied to Al Qaida (or for that matter the resistance in Iraq) it would have to divest itself of its existence as an imperialist ruling class. The war on terror and the invasion of Iraq conform to the strategies of the US and British ruling classes. These strategies are not reacting to some external threat; they are predatory, militaristic and racist and will inevitably provoke resistance under whatever banner it proclaims itself.
With the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union the US ruling class moved quickly to assert its dominant position in the world. It intends to control the world’s oil supplies and pipelines in order to prevent the emergence of any potential rival for at least 50 years. Central to this strategy is control over Middle Eastern oil reserves. The latest International Energy Agency report forecasts the Middle East producing 51 million barrels of oil a day by 2030 compared to 21 million today. This will constitute two-thirds of the overall increase in world oil production. The invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 was accompanied by the establishment of US military bases from the Caucasus to the borders of China. Oil routes from the Middle East to China and Japan were secured, Caspian Basin oil and gas supplies brought under US and British control, US forces occupied Russia’s southern flank and European fuel supplies were strategically dominated by the US. With US military spending exceeding that of the next 20 biggest military spenders combined the US ruling class was keen to demonstrate that it could not be resisted. This strategy was formulated in a context of a growing crisis for capitalist accumulation, driving it more desperately in search of markets and raw materials and turning the major capitalist powers against each other.
For the British ruling class the alliance with the US is intended to defend British overseas assets, second only to those of the US, and defend the international status of the City as a centre of international finance. British government willingness to commit British forces to fight overseas is intended to raise the position of British capitalism and influence in the world compared to Germany, France, Japan and other capitalist powers. Britain also has two of the three biggest oil companies in the world (BP and Shell) whose interests shape much foreign policy. With huge trade imbalances and the US current account deficit running at over $500 billion, tensions between the US, European Union and China are inevitably growing. The Labour government’s attempt to provide a bridge between the US and EU is looking less tenable and the alliance with the US is more exposed as the situation of the occupation forces in Iraq deteriorates.
The US and British ruling classes are committing their forces for big stakes. They cannot afford to be seen to be defeated and turned from their strategies without losing some of their power over the masses of oppressed peoples of the world and without encouraging rival imperialist ruling classes to confront them. The costs of the war are unnerving US and international capitalists: the US dollar continues to decline and foreign investment in the US has fallen steeply. Prospects of a mass sell off of dollars and the collapse of the currency are now discreetly mentioned in the bourgeois financial press.
Whatever its political character, the Iraqi national resistance, by defending the sovereignty of Iraq against the occupation armies, has joined the frontline of the struggle of the oppressed of the world against imperialism. The ferocity of the Iraqi resistance has tied US forces down and prevented the US government proceeding with its plans for overthrowing the governments of Syria and Iran. Indeed, the US now wants Iran to help it out in Iraq through the Shi’ite population. The resistance has also prevented multinational corporations descending to suck profits out of Iraq.
Spreading the fires
Sections of the US and British ruling classes are questioning the conduct of their governments and even the strategies for global domination. The Bush maxim of you are either with us or you are with the terrorists is proving counter-productive and is spreading the fires. The Financial Times reports findings by Control Risks, a UK-based international security consultancy, which says multinational corporations are ‘acutely worried’ about the business consequences of US foreign policy. ‘The company’s Risk Map 2004 report describes US foreign policy as “the most important single factor driving the development of global risk.”’ The number of countries in the report’s medium political risk category has risen over the past year from 64 to 81. Those countries in the medium security risk category rose from 58 to 71. These definitions are cautions to international capital against investing and operating in close to half the countries of the world.
On 5 October Israel made its first air strikes on Syria since 1973. It did so in the name of the war on terror. The US government said that Syria was on the side of terrorists and proposed sanctions. President Bush remarked, ‘We would be doing the same thing’. France and Germany condemned the Israeli raid. The European Union (EU) said that it opposed efforts to isolate Syria through sanctions: ‘The policy of isolating Syria is not the most productive,’ said Chris Patten, EU commissioner for external relations. The EU wants to embrace the ‘Euro-Mediterranean region’ through political-economic agreements. The British Labour government asked all for restraint and to act within the bounds of international law.
Turkey is a strategic ally of the US and Israel and has NATO’s second largest army. On 7 October Turkey’s parliament voted to send troops to Iraq as requested by the US government. Two weeks previously the US had said it would give Turkey $8.5 billion to help its International Monetary Fund-sponsored economic programme. Two synagogues were blown up in Istanbul on 15 November, killing 24 people and injuring 146. Five days later the British consulate in Istanbul and the offices of the HSBC bank were blown up.
During the invasion, despite announcing to the world that it would not allow US forces to use its territory to attack Iraq, the Saudi Arabian government allowed US bases to control 2,700 air sorties a day against Iraq. 200 US combat aircraft flew from Saudi air bases attacking Iraq, (Robert Fisk, The Independent). On 9 November over 17 people were killed and 120 wounded by a bomb attack on a residential compound for foreign workers in Riyadh.
Iraqi resistance to occupation is inevitable. The international health charity Medact says approximately 9,565 civilians have been killed from the start of the invasion in March to 20 October. Estimates of total Iraqi dead including military casualties range from 22,000 to 55,000. According to the Ministry of Labour 70% of the workforce, 12 million people, is out of work. The CPA has put up for sale all Iraqi state-owned industries except for oil. US companies serving the occupation hire Indian workers. The World Food Programme reckons that 60% of Iraqis depend on the oil-for-food rationing system. The CPA intended to end this system in January but has been forced to extend it until June 2004.
In October the CPA passed Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 37 reducing the highest tax rate to be paid on any individual or corporate income from 45% to 15%. Over 70% of Iraq’s population is under 25 years old, their country has seen its income levels fall from those of Spain 25 years ago to close to those of Bangladesh. US forces offer mullahs at the mosques $2,500 for information leading to arrests. The London Review of Books states, ‘US troops routinely tie up those they detain, force them to lie on the ground and put bags over their heads.’ This systematic humiliation and terrorising of the Iraqi people deserves resistance and a national resistance movement is what the US and British governments have now got.
The growing resistance
Since the Vietnam War the US military has operated on the understanding that the US people will not accept high casualties. On 21 September the number of US troops killed in combat in Iraq since 1 May when President Bush declared victory was 57. By 29 October the toll had reached 116 soldiers’ lives, exceeding the 115 US soldiers killed during the invasion. A further 62 US soldiers were killed in the first two weeks of November. These are the US military’s own figures. As of 13 November 52 British soldiers had been killed since the invasion began on 20 March, 19 of them since 1 May. The number of attacks on US troops has risen from an average of between 10 to 25 a day in June to 20 to 35 a day in October.
A US military study group based at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas says the US has 69 intelligence teams in Iraq but they produce only 30 reports a day; about a quarter as many as they should produce. There are regular complaints from the US military that they do not have sufficient competent interpreters. The invasion armies are having to fight a guerrilla war without the prime means of battle: intelligence – they have little idea whom they are fighting.
Resistance forces have combined attacks on prestige and strategic targets with constant harassment of the occupation armies. They are seeking to isolate the US and British forces in Iraq and disrupt their mobility. They target all those who collaborate with the occupation. The following are among the major strikes:
• 7 August: a truck bomb outside the Jordanian embassy kills 17 people and injures 60.
• 19 August: a truck bomb outside the UN headquarters in Baghdad kills 22 people including the special envoy.
• 29 August: a car bomb kills 83 people in Najaf including the Shia cleric Ayatollah Al Hakim.
• 9 October: suicide bombers kill eight Iraqis at a Baghdad police station. A Spanish intelligence officer is assassinated in Baghdad; (there are 1,250 Spanish troops in Iraq).
• 12 October: two cars packed with explosives are blown up outside a Baghdad hotel used by the CPA; six people are killed.
• 14 October: a car bomb is exploded outside the Turkish embassy, killing the bomber and wounding 10 people.
• 26 October: rockets are fired into the Rashid hotel where US deputy defence secretary Wolfowitz was staying, a US colonel is killed.
• 27 October: bombs kill 35 people in Baghdad at the Red Cross and three police stations.
• 2 November: 16 US soldiers are killed when their Chinook helicopter is shot down near Fallujah.
• 7 November: a US Black Hawk helicopter is brought down killing six US troops.
• 12 November: a suicide bombing kills 19 Italian soldiers at Nasiriya, the largest loss of Italian soldiers’ lives in a single incident since the Second World War; (there are 2,400 Italian troops in Iraq).
• 15 November: two Black Hawk helicopters are downed in Mosul killing 17 US soldiers, the heaviest US loss of life in a single day during the whole campaign.
• 21 November: 14 rockets are fired at the Palestine and Sheraton hotels in Baghdad used by foreign journalists and overseas business contractors. The oil ministry is also attacked.
• 29 November: seven Spanish military intelligence officers killed south of Baghdad.
Following the 27 October bombings President Bush said they were a sign of the progress being made by the occupation forces and the desperation of their opponents. After the first US helicopters were brought down on 2 November a resident said, ‘This is a new lesson from the resistance, a lesson to the greedy aggressors. They’ll never be safe until they get out of our country.’
No one should celebrate this carnage, but responsibility for it lies with the invading armies and the governments that sent them to Iraq. It is the right and duty of the Iraqi people to defend their homeland and to defend the right to govern themselves. How they assert this defence is for the Iraqi people to choose. Our job is to demand the withdrawal of all foreign occupying forces from Iraq and the Middle East and support the resistance of the Iraqi people against their occupation.
