[Peace-discuss] Comment: Resistance is the first step towards Iraqi independence

[C. G. Estabrook]

[The following comment presents a persuasive general analysis of the
situation and bears on the uneasiness at the meeting tonight about the UN
flag at AWARE events. --CGE]


This is the classic initial stage of guerrilla warfare against a colonial
occupation

	Tariq Ali
	Monday November 3, 2003
	The Guardian

Some weeks ago, Pentagon inmates were invited to a special in-house
showing of an old movie. It was the Battle of Algiers, Gillo Pontecorvo's
anti-colonial classic, initially banned in France. One assumes the purpose
of the screening was purely educative. The French won that battle, but
lost the war.

At least the Pentagon understands that the resistance in Iraq is following
a familiar anti-colonial pattern. In the movie, they would have seen acts
carried out by the Algerian maquis almost half a century ago, which could
have been filmed in Fallujah or Baghdad last week. Then, as now, the
occupying power described all such activities as "terrorist". Then, as
now, prisoners were taken and tortured, houses that harboured them or
their relatives were destroyed, and repression was multiplied. In the end,
the French had to withdraw.

As American "postwar" casualties now exceed those sustained during the
invasion (which cost the Iraqis at least 15,000 lives), a debate of sorts
has begun in the US. Few can deny that Iraq under US occupation is in a
much worse state than it was under Saddam Hussein. There is no
reconstruction. There is mass unemployment. Daily life is a misery, and
the occupiers and their puppets cannot provide even the basic amenities of
life. The US doesn't even trust the Iraqis to clean their barracks, and so
south Asian and Filipino migrants are being used. This is colonialism in
the epoch of neo-liberal capitalism, and so US and "friendly" companies
are given precedence. Even under the best circumstances, an occupied Iraq
would become an oligarchy of crony capitalism, the new cosmopolitanism of
Bechtel and Halliburton.

It is the combination of all this that fuels the resistance and encourages
many young men to fight. Few are prepared to betray those who are
fighting. This is crucially important, because without the tacit support
of the population, a sustained resistance is virtually impossible.

The Iraqi maquis have weakened George Bush's position in the US and
enabled Democrat politicians to criticise the White House, with Howard
Dean daring to suggest a total US withdrawal within two years. Even the
bien pensants who opposed the war but support the occupation and denounce
the resistance know that without it they would have been confronted with a
triumphalist chorus from the warmongers. Most important, the disaster in
Iraq has indefinitely delayed further adventures in Iran and Syria.

One of the more comical sights in recent months was Paul Wolfowitz on one
of his many visits informing a press conference in Baghdad that the "main
problem was that there were too many foreigners in Iraq". Most Iraqis see
the occupation armies as the real "foreign terrorists". Why? Because once
you occupy a country, you have to behave in colonial fashion. This happens
even where there is no resistance, as in the protectorates of Bosnia and
Kosovo. Where there is resistance, as in Iraq, the only model on offer is
a mixture of Gaza and Guantanamo.

Nor does it behove western commentators whose countries are occupying Iraq
to lay down conditions for those opposing it. It is an ugly occupation,
and this determines the response. According to Iraqi opposition sources,
there are more than 40 different resistance organisations. They consist of
Ba'athists, dissident communists, disgusted by the treachery of the Iraqi
Communist party in backing the occupation, nationalists, groups of Iraqi
soldiers and officers disbanded by the occupation, and Sunni and Shia
religious groups.

The great poets of Iraq - Saadi Youssef and Mudhaffar al-Nawab - once
brutally persecuted by Saddam, but still in exile, are the consciences of
their nation. Their angry poems denouncing the occupation and heaping
scorn on the jackals - or quislings - help to sustain the spirit of
resistance and renewal.

Youssef writes: I'll spit in the jackals' faces/ I'll spit on their lists/
I'll declare that we are the people of Iraq/ We are the ancestral trees of
this land.

And Nawwab: And never trust a freedom fighter/ Who turns up with no arms/
Believe me, I got burnt in that crematorium/ Truth is, you're only as big
as your cannons/ While those who wave knives and forks/ Simply have eyes
for their stomachs.

In other words, the resistance is predominantly Iraqi - though I would not
be surprised if other Arabs are crossing the borders to help. If there are
Poles and Ukrainians in Baghdad and Najaf, why should Arabs not help each
other? The key fact of the resistance is that it is decentralised - the
classic first stage of guerrilla warfare against an occupying army.
Yesterday's downing of a US Chinook helicopter follows that same pattern.
Whether these groups will move to the second stage and establish an Iraqi
National Liberation Front remains to be seen.

As for the UN acting as an "honest broker", forget it - especially in
Iraq, where it is part of the problem. Leaving aside its previous record
(as the administrator of the killer sanctions, and the backer of weekly
Anglo-American bombing raids for 12 years), on October 16 the security
council disgraced itself again by welcoming "the positive response of the
international community... to the broadly representative governing
council... [and] supports the governing council's efforts to mobilise the
people of Iraq..." Meanwhile a beaming fraudster, Ahmed Chalabi, was given
the Iraqi seat at the UN. One can't help recalling how the US and Britain
insisted on Pol Pot retaining his seat for over a decade after being
toppled by the Vietnamese. The only norm recognised by the security
council is brute force, and today there is only one power with the
capacity to deploy it. That is why, for many in the southern hemisphere
and elsewhere, the UN is the US.

The Arab east is today the venue of a dual occupation: the US-Israeli
occupation of Palestine and Iraq. If initially the Palestinians were
demoralised by the fall of Baghdad, the emergence of a resistance movement
has encouraged them. After Baghdad fell, the Israeli war leader, Ariel
Sharon, told the Palestinians to "come to your senses now that your
protector has gone". As if the Palestinian struggle was dependent on
Saddam or any other individual. This old colonial notion that the Arabs
are lost without a headman is being contested in Gaza and Baghdad. And
were Saddam to drop dead tomorrow, the resistance would increase rather
than die down.

Sooner or later, all foreign troops will have to leave Iraq. If they do
not do so voluntarily, they will be driven out. Their continuing presence
is a spur to violence. When Iraq's people regain control of their own
destiny they will decide the internal structures and the external policies
of their country. One can hope that this will combine democracy and social
justice, a formula that has set Latin America alight but is greatly
resented by the Empire. Meanwhile, Iraqis have one thing of which they can
be proud and of which British and US citizens should be envious: an
opposition.

· Tariq Ali's new book, Bush in Babylon: the re-colonisation of Iraq, is
published this week by Verso

tariq.ali3 at btinternet.com

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