Speaking of Iraq this summer President Bush claimed, ‘A significant reason for the sustained progress is the success of the surge’. It is thankfully true that casualties have fallen greatly in the past year, but that is only in comparison with the worst period of sectarian conflict. According to Iraqi government figures there were 851 Iraqis killed in July of this year, 300 more than in June. More than 3,000 people have been killed by Apache helicopter attacks alone in the past year. The imperialists launched 200 Hellfire missile attacks around Baghdad in the early summer compared with just six in the previous three months.
The imperialists claim Iraqi security forces have taken control of areas in Basra, Amara and the Sadr City district of Baghdad previously dominated by militias and that this is an indication of their growing ability to act independently. In reality, the Iraqi forces were deserting and being defeated until US and British forces came to their assistance in May. Even then, the outcome was only decided when the Iranians brokered a ceasefire and Moqtada Al Sadr agreed to take his Mehdi militia off the streets. By mid-August there were still 1,000 US troops in Basra and a battalion in Amara. If the ‘surge’ has been so successful, why are there still more US troops in Iraq than before the ‘surge’, long after they were supposed to go home?
With Iran’s help
The so-called progress that Bush speaks of has rather been due to three factors internal to Iraq. Firstly, the sectarian struggle between Shia and Sunni militias was decided in favour of the Shias. The struggle caused a virtual ethnic cleansing of much of the country. Over two million Iraqis had to leave their homes and another two million left the country. There are now few mixed neighbourhoods left. The process was facilitated by the occupying forces who first promoted Shia death squads into the Iraqi police and later divided communities in Baghdad and other major towns with concrete walls and armed checkpoints. Secondly, large sections of the Sunni resistance forces halted their attacks on the occupying forces and sought protection from the Shia death squads by joining Al Sawah, the Awakening Movement, in the pay of the imperialists. Thirdly, Al Sadr, whose Mehdi army had consistently opposed the occupation and which had defeated the British in Basra, called an extended and unilateral ceasefire.
As the outgoing head of US forces in Iraq, General David Petraeus, warned several times, any apparent improvement for the imperialists following the ‘surge’ is ‘fragile and reversible’. Sunnis in the Awakening Movement hate the Iraqi government and have made it clear they will resume their attacks on the occupying forces if their security and future prospects are not improved. The Iraqi government has drawn up a list of Awakening Movement leaders it wants to arrest. Al Sadr’s ceasefire tactics are to avoid a direct confrontation with US forces, which he believes he cannot win at present without the support of Iran. Such support has not been forthcoming because the Iranians, like the US, support the Iraqi government. As one Iraqi leader put it, ‘People fail to realise that the success of the “surge” was the result of a tacit agreement between the US and Iran.’
But the Iranians, like the Iraqi government, cannot afford to ignore Al Sadr and his followers. The Iraqi government is dominated by parties representing the interests of the Iraqi elite and merchant classes. They are fearful of Al Sadr’s support amongst the Iraqi poor and working classes. Consequently, the Shia middle class is waging a campaign of victimisation against the Sadrists. For the time being, Al Sadr is holding fire. As one of his spokesmen pointed out, Al Sadr is not someone ‘to pick his plums before they are ripe’.
Imperialists push for oil
Sadrist ministers and MPs have already withdrawn their support from the Iraqi government partly in protest at legislation aimed at privatising Iraqi oil. The legislation has since stalled but the US is keen to push for an oil law before Bush leaves office. The US admits that the Sadrists are set to win provincial elections scheduled for November in the southern region around the Basra oil fields. This would be a major obstacle to US plans.
In June, five leading oil multinationals – BP, Shell, Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Total – signed the first technical service contracts for Iraqi oil. At the end of the month the Iraqi government announced bidding rounds for medium-term contracts in six of its key oil fields. These would give foreign companies stakes of up to 75% for a period of seven to nine years and are due to be signed in June 2009.
However, these contracts still fall short of the production sharing agreements that the imperialists want in order to give them control of the oil. So, the US government is planning to broker a new agreement between the Kurds and some Shia parties who are keen to start signing oil deals, to offer political inducements for more Iraqi MPs to vote for legislation and to neutralise opposition, especially among the trade unions. Trade unions are banned in Iraq under legislation imposed by Saddam Hussein and still invoked by the new government. Trade unionists have been harassed, arrested and transferred to different parts of the country, along with oil managers who also oppose oil privatisation. As the Iraqi government attempts to assert itself, the prospects of a clash with the Kurdish parties, which enjoy relative autonomy, increases, particularly over Kirkuk and its oil reserves.
US want permanent bases
Last February, a poll by the BBC, ABC and other television companies showed that a large majority of the Iraqi people thought the presence of US troops was making security worse and wanted them to leave the country. This summer, however, the US tried to impose agreements that would have established permanent US bases in the country and control over military activity in the region (see FRFI 204 for details). These so-called strategic framework agreements were rejected by the Iraqi government following widespread opposition by the Iraqi people, not least by the Sadrists, who organised weekly protests against them. As one Iraqi leader pointed out, ‘What the Americans were offering us in terms of real sovereignty is even less than the British did 80 years ago.’ Even the Iraqi puppet Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki appeared to scorn the proposals.
However, the US has not given up on securing a deal to colonise Iraq. A US official quoted recently in the Washington Post said ‘[the idea is] to take the heat off [Maliki] a little bit, and to re-brand the thing and counter the narrative that he’s negotiating for a permanent military presence in Iraq. He is trying to figure out, just as we did, how you can set up an agreement … but not go through the legislative body’. The Bush administration labelled the deal ‘agreement’ rather than ‘treaty’ so it didn’t have to go before the US Senate for approval.
Present negotiations propose that US forces should withdraw from Iraqi towns and cities to around 20 bases by 30 June 2009 ‘if security progresses’. Combat troops should withdraw entirely by 31 December 2011, but final decisions would be made by a joint US-Iraqi ministerial committee leaving plenty of time and scope to establish permanent US bases. The US remains determined to maintain legal immunity for its troops.
Republican presidential candidate McCain has made it clear that he would keep troops permanently in Iraq until ‘victory’ was achieved. Obama, however, maintains that he would withdraw one combat brigade (roughly 6,000 troops) every month for 16 months. Of course, even this would still leave almost 50,000 US troops in Iraq in two years time. Obama visited Baghdad in the summer. Iraqis interviewed by Patrick Cockburn of The Independent were not impressed: ‘Why does he come here? What will he do for us? Will he fix the electricity?’ said one. ‘Obama and Bush are two faces of the same currency’ said another. A third Iraqi pointed out, ‘He says he’ll withdraw his troops from Iraq, but I don’t believe that. The Americans planned for a long time to take over Iraq to protect Israel from Iran and seize the oil here.’
Jim Craven
FRFI 205 October / November 2008
