FRFI 186 August / September 2005
On 28 June 2004, Iyad Allawi, Prime Minister of the newly inaugurated Iraqi interim government boasted, ‘In a few days Iraq will radiate with stability and security’. One year on and the average daily number of attacks by the Iraqi resistance has risen from 45 to 70 per day. The total number of coalition troops killed has almost doubled. At least a further 10,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed. All roads around Baghdad have been cut by resistance fighters and can only be travelled by Coalition and Iraqi government troops in armed convoys. Killings and the bombing of mosques have broken out between sections of the Shia community who support the puppet government and Sunnis who oppose it. The US and Britain invaded Iraq both to secure Middle East oil supplies and to maintain their role as the world’s leading imperialist powers. Any hope they had of quickly establishing a united and stable Iraqi government with strong Iraqi forces to police it has crumbled and with it an important plank of their global strategy is being undermined. The resistance in Afghanistan also gathers momentum. Dissent and division is rising within the US. JIM CRAVEN reports.
Iraqi resistance intensifies
The Iraqi resistance grew in strength and scope throughout the early summer. On 23 May Iraqi resistance fighters assassinated Major-General Waed Al Rubaye, head of an Iraqi government counter-terrorism unit. On 12 June the resistance launched a daring raid at the heart of the high security army headquarters in Baghdad aimed at the notorious Wolf Commando Brigade responsible for attacks on Sunni civilians. Between 11 and 18 June, 13 US troops were killed in Anbar Province. The following week six US marines were killed in Fallujah. The resistance killed the senior Iraqi police officer Colonel Riyad Abdul Karim on 25 June. A second member of the Iraqi collaborationist parliament, Sheik Dhari Ali ay-Fayadh, was killed on 28 June. Three members of the British forces were killed on 15 July. Altogether, resistance fighters assassinated 52 senior Iraqi government or religious leaders in the year following the institution of the interim government.
In the same period over 480 car bombings were carried out. The monthly average number of Iraqi military and police force members killed rose from 160 to 219. In June 2004, 42 US soldiers were killed. In June 2005 the number was 75. By mid-July, 1,956 Coalition troops had been killed, including 1,755 US soldiers and 92 from Britain.
Occupying forces in disarray
Desperately attempting to stem the rising tide of Iraqi resistance, US and puppet government forces launched a series of operations. Operation Lightning from 29 May involved 1,000 US troops and 40,000 Iraqi soldiers and police in raids throughout Baghdad. There were reports of mass arrests and torture. Those arrested were kept in barbed wire enclosures without food or water for 24 hours, but of the hundreds arrested only 22 were detained further. Operation Dagger was launched on 18 June in the Lake Tharthar region of central Iraq.
Several campaigns were carried out in the western provinces near the Syrian border. In Operation Spear on 18 June the US fired seven missiles killing 40 people including civilians. In response the local population threatened a general strike.
All these special operations have little long-term effect. Resistance fighters melt away and either relocate or return when the offensive is over. The US government admitted in June that they are trying to open negotiations with leaders of sections of the resistance. 15 Sunnis have now been co-opted onto the Shia and Kurdish dominated committee drafting a new Iraqi constitution. The aim is to divide the armed resistance by diverting part of it into the political arena.
The other fork of this attack is to terrorise the Sunni community, the chief stronghold of support for the resistance. Alongside the sweeping arrests of Sunni citizens the Iraqi security forces, consisting mainly of Shias and Kurds, is working in collusion with the Badr brigade, a Shia paramilitary unit accused of operating death squads against Sunnis. This is classic counter-insurgency strategy as proposed by British Brigadier Frank Kitson in his books Gangs and Counter-Gangs and Low Intensity Operations and as used by the British in Ireland.
Further indicating the desperation of the occupying forces, the US has announced a $50 million expansion of Iraq’s prison system, including the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, which the US had promised to demolish after the torture and atrocities they committed there had been uncovered. At present there are around 11,000 known prisoners, almost all held without formal charge, twice the number held a year ago. There are reports that some prisoners have been shot without trial.
On 22 June in Brussels the US called an international conference on Iraq. The aim was to rally political and economic support for the occupation. The conference, co-sponsored by the EU, attempted to demonstrate a united front among imperialist powers who in reality are manoeuvring to improve their own interests. Before it began an EU diplomat said, ‘There will not be much substance’ – and so it proved. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice railed against Syria and called on other nations to fulfil their promises.
Iraqi finance minister Ali Allawi admitted his government could not meet its capital or current expenditure without grants and loans from the imperialist countries. The US had promised to provide more than $18 billion in direct grants. But by the time the Coalition Provisional Authority gave way to the Iraqi interim government in June 2004 it had spent up to $20 billion of Iraqi money compared to just $300 million of US funds! According to US government monitors and auditors most of this money had been squandered through incompetence and corruption, much of it going to Kellogg, Brown and Root, a Halliburton subsidiary. US Vice President Cheney headed Halliburton until 2000. Japan told the conference it might delay its $3.5 billion loan agreed in Madrid in 2003 because of the lack of security.
So-called friendly countries such as Jordan still refuse to send their ambassadors to Iraq because it is unsafe. At the beginning of July the Egyptian ambassador was kidnapped by the resistance who claimed he was a US spy. Foreign nationals in Iraq may also find themselves the target of trigger-happy US troops. Their latest victim was a Swiss citizen shot dead by a US convoy in Baghdad.
Continuing misery for the Iraqi people
For the Iraqi people there is little sign of improvement in their daily lives. A quarter of all children under five years old are malnourished. 39% of the population has no access to clean water and for a further 28% supplies are interrupted. Only 37% of urban households have a sewage connection. This falls to 4% in rural areas. Primary school enrolment stands at 83% for boys and 79% for girls; educational standards and overall literacy are declining.
Unemployment remains the same as last year, around 40%. Electricity supplies, so important for cooling systems in such a hot country, are unreliable. People in Baghdad currently receive six to eight hours supply a day. Total electricity generation has fallen by 6% in the past year. In June all civilian air traffic was brought to a two-day standstill because of administrative chaos and because the British company responsible for airport security, Global Strategies Group, had not been paid.
The Iraqi police and army, riddled with corruption, increasingly operate in an authoritarian manner. In June, doctors in the main Baquba hospital went on strike in protest at the abusive treatment that they had received. Mohammed Hazim, a specialist at the hospital, said, ‘We want the governor to protect us from the organised terrorism of the police and army … they seemed drunk or medicated – they were crazed.’ Iraqi doctors are leaving the country in increasing numbers.
Disillusion spreads among US ruling class
In May Condoleezza Rice claimed the resistance had reached ‘a kind of peak … and so as Iraqis see their interests as represented in the political process the insurgency will lose steam.’ Cheney surpassed this particular piece of ostrich and sand activity in June when he claimed ‘the insurgency is in its last throes’. These are vain attempts to paper over growing divisions within the US. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel responded, ‘Things aren’t getting better, they’re getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality. It’s like they’re making it up as they go along. The reality is we are losing in Iraq.’ Even Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld admitted, ‘Insurgencies tend to go on five, six, eight, ten, twelve years’. Senator Edward Kennedy said the US was in an ‘intractable quagmire’ and called on Rumsfeld to resign. General John Abizaid, head of US Gulf operations, admitted, ‘More foreign fighters are coming into Iraq than six months ago.’
A leaked CIA report stated that the chief result of the present campaigns against the Iraqi resistance was to train a new generation of guerrilla fighters. Over a hundred congress members have backed a petition signed by half a million people demanding that President Bush explain the ‘Downing Street Memo’, which indicated that the Bush administration had decided to invade Iraq at least a year before the invasion and had fixed intelligence reports supporting that policy. However, the White House brushed aside the criticism and in a major televised speech in June President Bush announced there would be no change in direction. His poll approval rating is now down to 40%, the lowest for a second-term president since Richard Nixon in the early 1970s.
53% of the US population now believe the invasion of Iraq was a mistake and over 60% believe the US government has no clear policy for victory that would allow US troops to return home. Republican Walter Jones, a previously strong supporter of the invasion, is one of the sponsors of a congressional resolution demanding a timetable for US troop withdrawal. The fact that US troops know support for their presence in Iraq is dwindling is bound to damage their morale.
The crisis in US army recruitment deepens. The military planned to enlist 80,000 recruits this year but each successive month has shown dwindling results. By the end of May they were over 6,600 short of their target. Furthermore, in March 17.4% of new recruits failed to complete training and another 7.3% did not finish the first three years with their unit. In order to encourage recruitment and cut losses the army is reducing the standards required and piloting a 15-month active duty enlistment rather than the usual four years.
Afghan resistance flares
In June the US appointed a new ambassador to Iraq. Zalmay Khalilzad said he believed ‘the back of the insurgency can be broken within a reasonable period of time’. Khalilzad was previously the US ambassador to Afghanistan where, following presidential elections last October, the US had hoped they were achieving stability and claimed ‘the Taliban rebellion was finished’. But in the three months to the end of June there was unprecedented fighting both by the Taliban and other groups in which at least 45 US troops were killed. On 18 June the Taliban captured 30 Afghan police when their convoy was ambushed. At the end of June a US Special Forces unit went missing. Three of the four members were killed. A US Chinook helicopter searching for them was shot down, killing all 16 soldiers on board. US command admitted it was their worst week since 2001.
Australian special forces, who left in 2002, are to return to Afghanistan. The British Army plans to send 3,000 troops to Afghanistan before the end of next year, but this is contingent on equivalent reductions in the 8,500 strong force in Iraq. This will only be possible if the Iraqi security forces prove capable of taking over their role. Iraqi puppet foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari said coalition troop reductions would ‘take the country into hell’.
Global oil crisis
The deteriorating military and political situations for US and British imperialism in Iraq and Afghanistan are occurring against a growing crisis in world oil supplies that exacerbates inter-imperialist rivalries. In 2004 demand for oil grew by 3.4%. China accounted for more than a third of this rise. The price of oil presently stands at around $60 a barrel, more than twice its average long-term real price. Refineries are working so close to maximum capacity that the G8 countries are suggesting tax breaks to help companies expand.
It was intended that the invasion of Iraq would secure an extra two million barrels of oil a day. But Iraqi oil production is less than before the invasion and has fallen further since the creation of the interim government. Required foreign investment is withheld because of the security situation. Furthermore, the quality of oil produced is getting worse and oil fields are being damaged in an attempt to stretch supplies.
In May the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline opened, carrying oil from the Caspian Basin through Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey to the Mediterranean coast. BP has a leading 31% share in the project. To secure a corridor for the pipeline the US and British governments engineered a change of government in Georgia and befriended the notorious Azerbaijan leader, Ilham Aliev, widely condemned for human rights abuses. The pipeline ends near the US base at Incerlik in Turkey and the US is training rapid response teams to guard its length. The imperialists hope the pipeline will deliver one million barrels a day and reduce reliance on Middle Eastern oil. However, earlier forecasts of 200 billion barrel reserves have proved massively over optimistic.
All the imperialist countries and China and India are competing to secure oil supplies. Turkey, a close US ally, threatens to close the Bosphorus to tankers, an important route for Russian oil. Russia is building its own pipeline to Kazakhstan. China, India and Japan are forging new agreements with Iran and Latin American oil producers. All the imperialist powers are after African oil under cover of debt relief and assistance. The IMF has estimated that global oil demand will rise 68% by 2030: an extra 56 million barrels a day. The IMF says the Middle East will have to produce at least 32 million of those barrels, an increase of 120% in production. The Gulf holds 62% of known oil reserves. Its future is central to the gathering struggle between the imperialist blocs. The Iraqi people’s resistance to occupation is a major obstacle for US and British imperialism’s global strategy.
•As we go to press more than 50 detainees in Guantanamo concentration camp are on hunger strike against their conditions and their indefinite detention.
