Feature Page: What Next in Iraq?

By PAUL SIEGEL

Tariq Ali, “Bush in Babylon: The Recolonisation of Iraq.” Verso, 2003. 214 pp., $20.

Tariq Ali, a British-educated Pakistani, an editor of New Left Review, and the author of a dozen books on world politics, knows the Middle East as few people outside of it do. His object in “Bush in Babylon” is to illuminate the present through the past.

"Without knowing the past," he says, "it is impossible to understand what is happening today, and the history is presented here as a warning to both occupier and resister. The occupier will learn from it that Iraq has a very rich history of struggle against empire. The resister will, I hope, avoid the mistakes and not repeat the tragedies that permitted the occupation to happen."

The Ba'ath party was founded in the 1940s by Michel Aflaq and a small number of other Syrian intellectuals. Aflaq, who had studied in France, was at first an adherent of the French Communist Party but turned away from it when, as a member of the 1936 Popular Front government, it did not press for colonial freedom. This betrayal of proletarian internationalism turned Aflaq to nationalism.

The turn was confirmed when the Communist parties in the Middle East—with the exception of the Iraqi Communist party, then headed by a later-replaced militant who defied Moscow—approved the foundation of Israel at the behest of the Soviet Union, which at the time regarded the founding of Israel to be in accord with its diplomatic maneuvering against Great Britain. Tariq Ali recounts, incidentally, that many Jewish members of the Egyptian and Iraqi Communist parties opposed the establishment of Israel and fought against the adoption of the Moscow line.

When a radical faction of the Iraqi Ba'athist party that was active in labor unions and peasant organizations challenged the old leadership, that leadership called upon military Ba'athists to suppress it. The same took place in Syria.

"The end of all pretensions to inner-party democracy led inexorably to the military control of the state. ... From being a party committed to an Arab renaissance, the Ba'ath, incapable of resolving the rift between the two states it controlled, degenerated into a bureaucratic clique of power-hungry officers, increasingly buttressed by repression and dependent on tribal and clan loyalties." This was the system in which Saddam Hussein and the Syrian Ba'athist leader Hafez Asad came to power.

Intent only on maintaining their power, each, while continuing to use the old rhetoric of the unity of the Arab nation, was guided by narrow state interests and relied on the control of the local state. Likewise, each continued to use an anti-imperialist rhetoric but secretly made deals with the United States. During the height of his repressive dictatorship from 1980 to 1989 Saddam Hussein received American support in his war on Iran and in his crushing of opposition from the Communist Party and within his own Ba'ath party.

In the light of the anti-imperialist struggle he relates, Ali, writing in the infancy of the present occupation, anticipates much of what has happened since then that the Bush administration in its ignorance and arrogance did not foresee. The White House said that the Americans would be cheered as liberators, disregarding the Iraqi history of anti-imperialist struggle and the hostility engendered by the willful destruction of their water supply structures during the Gulf War and the subsequent sanctions that deprived them of water purification facilities and desperately needed medical supplies.

Ali, however, said that, no matter how much the Iraqis had suffered under Saddam Hussein, they were opposed to the American occupation. This does not mean, he added, that the whole country was ready to engage in a war with the conqueror. A regime similar to that of General Petain in the occupation of France under the Nazis would be possible in the absence of armed resistance, if only for a limited time.

But armed resistance was occurring even in the early days of the occupation in Baghdad and other cities in its region. Just as "it was the underprivileged social layers in the cities who led the resistance during the inter-war years," so today, "while the merchants and traders are prepared to live with the occupation, it is the poor, above all, who regard it as a national indignity." "The Ba'athists dominate this resistance," but "they are not the only people involved."

The American occupation authority has attributed the resistance to Saddam Hussein diehards, "foreign terrorists" from Syria and Iran, and common criminals hired by Saddam Hussein's henchmen. However, the American generals in charge of guarding Iraq's borders, apparently miffed at the suggestion that they were not being successful in their mission, recently stated that there have been "only modest foreign incursions into Iraq, in contrast to estimates by the Bush administration" (The New York Times, Nov. 19, 2003).

The administration, moreover, has presented no evidence that the insurgents include professional criminals.

"If there is no early resolution to the conflict," went on Tariq Ali, "we could see the emergence of a much broader national resistance," particularly if "the Shia hierarchy refuses ... to cave in completely." This assessment has been borne out by a top-secret CIA report whose existence was revealed by anonymous government officials who felt that its warnings should be made known. The report was said to present a picture "very different from the public view presented by administration officials."

"Among other concerns raised by the CIA report," the officials stated, "was the danger that Iraqi Shi'ite Muslims, who represent a majority of the country's population, could soon join minority Sunni Muslims in carrying out armed attacks against American forces" (The New York Times, Nov. 13, 2003).

The deteriorating situation has caused the administration to announce, despite its previously optimistic statements about how well the stabilization of Iraq was proceeding, an abrupt change of course. Instead of the American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council engaging in a lengthy process of drafting a constitution and holding national elections before an Iraqi government is formed, as the occupation authority had projected, an interim government would be put in place by next summer.

This revised plan has come about as a result of a deal with the Shi'ite Grand Ayatollah. Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA officer who is a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, has described the background for the working out of the plan, which is a reward for the Shi'ite hierarchy for cooperating with the occupation authority.

"The success" the occupation authority "has had in corralling radical Shi'ite forces loyal to the young cleric Moktada al-Sadr [who called on Shi'ites to oppose the occupation]," he writes, "has come in large part because Grand Ayatollah Sistami and the traditional clergy have calmed the Shi'ite masses" (The New York Times, Nov. 14, 2003). On the other hand, the increasing resistance may enable the Grand Ayatollah to secure a better deal for the Shi'ite hierarchy.

The establishment of a provisional government, however, would not mean a loss of control by the occupation authority. American officials "expect" that their troops will remain at the new government's "invitation." So much for the independence of the new government!

Not only will the troops be there, but the U.S. will have $20 billion for reconstruction to influence policy and will act as spokesman for the demands of corporate investors. "‘We'll have more levers than you think, and maybe more than the Iraqis think,’ said a senior White House official" (The New York Times, Nov. 16, 2003).

A puppet government of collaborators, however, may very well not be able to cope with rising Iraqi resistance. The fear of this and its consequences for the United States position in the Middle East has caused Democratic presidential candidates and others to propose that the job of reconstructing Iraq be under United Nations aegis.

What Tariq Ali has to say about the United Nations vis-a-vis Iraq and the United States is instructive. "Since the end of the Cold War," he says, the United Nations "has been little more than a disposable instrument of U.S. policy." It "either complies with the desires of the U.S., or rubber-stamps them after the fact. The one thing it cannot do is condemn or obstruct them."

The invasion of Iraq was a flagrant violation of the UN Charter, but no member of the Security Council called an emergency meeting or presented a resolution condemning it. Instead, after the quick military victory of the United States, the Security Council "capitulated completely, recognized the occupation of Iraq, and approved its recolonisation."

"Sharp international disputes," comments Tariq Ali, "are perfectly compatible with a basic unity of interests among the leading capitalist powers, which quickly reasserts itself." However, while the great powers on the Security Council may be willing to rubber-stamp the occupation of Iraq in order to seek the stability of the region and to obtain a share of the spoils of empire in the form of investment opportunities, they are not so eager to share the burden of empire in the form of contributing military forces and money.

Moreover, as Iraq scholar Dilip Hiro has pointed out, Iraqis will not take kindly to UN "peacekeeping" forces. "Most of them associate the United Nations with 12 years of economic sanctions that hurt them financially far more than Saddam Hussein" (The New York Times, Nov. 16, 2003).

The anti-imperialist movement, Tariq Ali concludes, should expose the attempt to have the United Nations provide cover for the occupation of Iraq.

"All attempts to dress up the recolonisation of Iraq as a new League of Nations mandate, in the style of the 1920s, should be stripped away. ... The only possible stance to adopt in anticipation of what lies ahead is summed up in the motto heard on the streets of San Francisco in the spring of 2003: 'Neither their war nor their peace.'"