Iraq Resistance Threatens U.S. Plans for Middle East: Gerry Foley

It was even before the uprising Moqtada Al-Sadr’s forces on Aug. 5 that there had been no letup in the resistance to the U.S. occupation of Iraq after the formal transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi government hand-picked by Washington. The move by Al Sadr toward all-out confrontation with the occupation probably reflects his judgment that the resistance has reached the stage where the U.S. could not contain it militarily or politically. So far, the events would seem to confirm such an assessment.

Mass demonstrations in support of the resistance led by Al Sadr erupted in a number of cities. Workers on the southern pipelines threatened to strike if the U.S. and the puppet regime did not call off their assault on Najaf. Sixteen out of 30 members of the Najaf provincial council resigned in protest against the assault of the occupation forces and their auxiliaries on the resisters.

Ten thousand demonstrators marched from a suburb of Baghdad to the Shiite sacred city to show their support for the resistance and pledged to serve as a human shield to defend the Shiite holy places. Most importantly, Al Sadr’s forces demonstrated that they completely controlled the giant slum of Sadr City in Baghdad, containing about 2 million and 40 percent of the population of the Iraqi capital. They also proved that they dominate the entire city politically by getting merchants throughout the urban complex to observe the curfew that they ordered.

The rebel Mehdi Army also went on the offensive in a half dozen other cities in the Shiite south, in particular in the vital oil-exporting center of Basra, and fought fierce battles against the occupation troops and their auxiliaries. The resistance has been sufficient to force the halting off and on of the oil flow in the pipelines that transport 90 percent of the country’s petroleum exports.

Testing the waters

The radical Shiite cleric had been oscillating since the April uprisings died down between calls for rebellion and offers to collaborate with the U.S. client regime. Then, after about three days of large-scale fighting between his supporters and the U.S. military and its Iraqi auxiliaries, he began saying that he was determined to fight to the death against the occupation, and that there could be no legitimate Iraqi government as long as U.S. troops remained in the country.

It seems that Sadr was testing the waters. In an analysis of the conflict in the Aug. 15 Los Angeles Times, Marc Mazetti noted that a poll commissioned by the occupation authorities in May showed that 68 percent of Iraqis approved of Sadr’s uprising and 81 percent had a higher or much higher opinion of him after it, although only 2 percent said that they would support him in a presidential election.

In April, Sadr apparently succeeded in crystallizing the hatred of the great majority of the Iraqi population for the occupation around himself and his rebel army. In the fighting in August, he consolidated an alliance with the Sunni rebels in Falluja, who sent food and other supplies to Najaf in solidarity with the resistance there. Thus, the early August events were a giant step toward the development of a general war against the occupation and the discrediting and destruction of all those forces prepared to collaborate with the occupation, at least among the Arab population.

The Iraqi National Conference, which was supposed to be the next step in establishing a U.S.-dominated government in the country, opened on Aug. 14 under the shadow of Sadr’s uprising. More than 100 of the 1300 delegates walked out in the first session in protest against the siege of Najaf.

U.S. backed into a corner

On Friday, Aug. 13, the U.S. and puppet forces were obliged to accept a truce and negotiations in Najaf, which was seen by Sadr’s forces as a victory; and it undoubtedly was a testimony to the political sympathy that the resistance had won. After about a day, the puppet government withdrew from the negotiations and announced that it was calling for a resumed military offensive on the reboubt occupied by Sadr’s forces. However, this was after the besieging troops had allowed 10,000 resistance supporters to enter the area and mingle with the fighters.

In these circumstances, an attack on the area held by the Mehdi Army will be politically far more costly even than before. Some leaders of the Mehdi have been warning that the U.S. and the puppet government are preparing a massacre in Najaf. The expulsion of all reporters from Najaf after the renewal of fighting could only increase fears of atrocities.

The upsurge of the resistance has backed the occupation and its allies into a corner. If they yield, their political plans can be decisively undermined; if they strike out ruthlessly, their political credibility in Iraq and internationally can be definitively erased. Either way, they would loose.

The credibility of the U.S. military and political leaders has already taken a beating unprecedented since the Vietnam War. The attempt to dismiss the resistance, in an Orwellian phrase, as “anti-Iraqi” has become grotesque in view of the demonstrated support of the rebels. In most reports in the serious press, the claims of the U.S. military commanders have been contraverted almost immediately by interviews with the rank and file soldiers and local observers. Claims that the opposition to the occupation represented only a minority or remnants of the Saddam regime have been blown away.

Before the new confrontation with Al Sadr, the reports of the resistance had been dominated by spectacular bombings, often suicide bombings, apparently carried out by radical Islamist forces linked to or similar to Al Qaeda. Nonetheless, these actions were only the tip of the iceberg of the opposition the U.S. and its client government face, and not representative of the great bulk of the resistance.

There were only occasional articles in the big press that give a picture of the true scope of the resistance. One such revealing article, entitled “The Little Fallujas,” was published in the July 13 edition of the Los Angeles Times. For the author, Falluja was the example of a town in which the resistance had achieved a standoff with the occupation troops. This article reported that there are actually many towns in central Iraq where insurgent control has to be more or less tolerated by the U.S. military.

Robert Fisk, correspondent for the British daily The Independent wrote in an article reprinted in the July 19 issue of the Mexico City daily La Jornada that the U.S. client regime controls very little territory outside Baghdad, in which in fact there are urban guerilla attacks almost every day against the occupiers and their supporters. Fisk’s conclusions were based on a long road trip through the country.

The beleaguered puppet government has began to try to isolate Sadr politically by claiming that he is an agent of the theocratic rulers of Iran. Sadr himself says that he seeks democracy in Iraq and a government that would minister to the needs of the poor. That does not fit in very well with the reality of the Islamic regime in Iran. In any case, with its back to the wall, the puppet government is certainly going to use any political club that it thinks is useful against Sadr.

One ominous sign in the present confrontation is that the alleged resistance organization has kidnapped an Iranian diplomat and is holding him as a hostage, demanding that Iran stop interfering in Iraq. On Aug. 14, it raised the demand that Iran release 500 Iraqi prisoners that it claims the Islamic Republic is still holding. There has also been a statement in the name of a group claiming to be an Iraqi religious resistance group threatening Al Zarqawi, who the U.S. claims leads a group linked to Al Qaeda.

The classic recipe for political division of resistance groups is the strategy of setting up “counter gangs,” as laid out in the book “Low Intensity Operations” by British counter-insurgency expert Major General Frank Kitson. Such “counter gangs” serve as instruments for political diversion, and they can also carry out kidnappings and assassinations that the regular repressive forces would find too embarrassing.

“Empire not affordable”

Despite their feeble attempts to hide behind their puppet government in Iraq, the present conflict has glaringly exposed the fact that the U.S. rulers are going to have to continue to rely essentially on their own armed forces to maintain their control of the country for the foreseeable future. They are certainly prepared to throw vast resources in this effort and to be as ruthless as they think they can get away with.

This stakes for them are enormous, highlighted by the developing oil crisis. But U.S. economic experts are more and more raising questions about whether the United States has the resources necessary to sustain the occupation of Iraq and the policies associated with it.

An article posted on the Business Week website on July 29 (Mark Weibrot, “The Unbearable Cost of Empire”) pointed out: “The U.S. is entering this new age of empire with a gross federal debt that is the highest in more than 50 years as a percentage of gross domestic product. For fiscal 2005, which begins in October, the U.S. gross federal debt is projected to be $8.1 trillion, or 67.5% of GDP. By the time 100,000 U.S. troops were in Vietnam in 1965, it was 46.9% and falling.”

The article went on to say: “The combination of unsustainable public debt and foreign debt is a deadly and explosive mix by itself. Rising real interest rates and a looming housing bubble bursting make it all the more dangerous. Financial markets will exert the necessary discipline if politicians refuse to do so, but either way the U.S. can’t afford even the $486 billion a year that it’s currently spending annually on the military and homeland security.

“And even these spending levels are a lot less than would be necessary to maintain American’s power in the world . . . The bottom line is that the American empire just isn’t affordable.”

The U.S. rulers are clearly in a tighter and tighter spot. With all its political weaknesses, the Iraqi resistance is pushing them into a corner. If a political leadership emerges from it that is able to mobilize the masses of the Iraqi people and inspire the other oppressed peoples of the Middle East to combat imperialism and its local agents, the U.S. ruling class may face an explosive crisis, one that can shatter its stability at home as well as abroad.

This article first appeared in the August 2004 issue of Socialist Action newspaper.