The Long Revolution of the Global South. Samir Amin

ally in the region with nuclear weapons: Israel.

      The developing attack has placed certain countries on the front line: Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, and Iran. The first three have been destroyed, and Iran is threatened with being so.

      The armed diplomacy of the United States had the objective of literally destroying Iraq well before the pretext given to it on two different occasions: the invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and then after the events of September 11, cynically exploited by the Bush administration with lies worthy of Joseph Goebbels: “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth.” The reason for that is quite simple and has nothing to do with any appeals for the “liberation” of the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein’s bloody dictatorship (which was real enough). Iraq possesses a large portion of the best petroleum resources in the world. What is more, Iraq had succeeded in forming a scientific and technical force that, due to its critical mass, is capable of sustaining a consistent national project. This “danger” had to be eliminated by a “preventive war” that the United States gave itself the right to wage when and where it decided, without the least respect for international law.

      Beyond this blatantly obvious observation, several serious questions need to be examined: (i) Why has Washington’s plan so easily appeared to be a dazzling success? (ii) What new situation has been created that now confronts the Iraqi nation? (iii) What responses have the different components of the Iraqi people given to this challenge? (iv) And what solutions can Iraqi, Arab, and international democratic and progressive forces promote?

      Saddam Hussein’s defeat was predictable. Faced with an enemy whose main advantage lies in its capacity to carry out genocide by aerial bombardment with impunity (pending the use of nuclear weapons), the people have only one possibly effective response: resist the invader on the ground. The Saddam regime had worked to eliminate all means of defense available to the people through the systematic destruction of all organizations, all political parties (beginning with the Communist Party) that had made the history of modern Iraq, including the Baath Party itself, which had been one of the major participants in this history. What should be surprising in these conditions is not that the Iraqi people allowed its country to be invaded without a fight or even that certain behaviors (such as its apparent participation in elections organized by the invaders or the explosion of fratricidal conflicts between Kurds, Sunni Arabs, and Shia Arabs) seemed to indicate that the defeat was possibly accepted (which is what Washington had hoped would happen), but that the resistance on the ground has strengthened every day (despite all the serious weaknesses that have been evident), that this resistance has already made it impossible to establish a regime of lackeys capable of maintaining the appearance of order, such that the failure of Washington’s project has already been demonstrated.

      Nevertheless, a new situation has been created by the foreign military occupation. The Iraqi nation is truly threatened because Washington, incapable of maintaining its control over the country (and pillaging its petroleum resources, which is its number one objective) through a government that is “national” in appearance only, can pursue its project only by breaking up the country. The breakup of the country into at least three states (Kurd, Sunni Arab, and Shia Arab) was, perhaps, Washington’s original objective, in line with Israel (the archives will reveal the truth of this in the future). It is still the case today that the “civil war” is the card Washington plays to legitimize the continuation of its occupation. A permanent occupation was—and remains—the objective. That is the only way for Washington to guarantee its control of the oil. Certainly, no one should believe Washington’s declarations of intent, of the type “we will leave the country as soon as order has been restored.” Remember that the British never said that their occupation of Egypt, beginning in 1882, was ever anything other than “provisional” (it lasted until 1956!). In the meantime, of course, every day, the United States destroys by all means, including the most criminal, a little more of the country, its schools, factories, and scientific capacities.

      The response of the Iraqi people to the challenge does not seem to be—at least in the short term—equal to the seriousness of the situation. That is the least one can say. What are the reasons for this? The dominant Western media keeps repeating ad nauseam that Iraq is an “artificial” country and that the oppressive domination of Saddam’s Sunni regime over the Shias and Kurds is at the origin of the inevitable civil war (which only the continuation of the foreign occupation might be able to avert). The “resistance,” in this view, is thus limited to a few pro-Saddam Islamist currents of the Sunni “triangle.” It is difficult to believe that so many falsehoods can be assembled at one time.

      After the First World War, the British colonialists had great difficulty in overcoming the Iraqi people’s resistance. Consistent with their imperial tradition, the British fabricated an imported monarchy and a landowning class to support their power just as they gave a privileged position to Sunni Islam. But despite their constant efforts, the British failed. The Communist Party and the Baath Party made up the main organized political forces that defeated the power of the Sunni monarchy detested by everyone: Sunni, Shia, and Kurd. The violent competition between these two forces, which took center stage between 1958 and 1963, ended in a victory by the Baath Party, hailed at the time as a relief by the Western powers. Yet the Communist project could potentially have led in a democratic direction. That was not true of the Baath. A nationalist party, pan-Arab and favorable to Arab unity in principle, it admired the Prussian model for constructing German unity. It recruited in the modernist, secular petite bourgeoisie and was hostile to obscurantist expressions of religion. As could be predicted, in power it evolved into a dictatorship. Its statism was only partly anti-imperialist because, depending on the conjuncture and circumstances, a compromise could be accepted with the dominant imperialism in the region, that of the United States. This “deal” encouraged the megalomaniacal excesses of the leader, who imagined that Washington would agree to make him its main ally in the region. Washington’s support of Baghdad (including the delivery of chemical weapons) in the absurd and criminal war against Iran from 1980 to 1989 seemed to lend credibility to this calculation. Saddam did not imagine that Washington would cheat, that the modernization of Iraq was unacceptable for imperialism, and that the decision to destroy the country had already been made. Saddam fell into the trap (the green light had been given to him to annex Kuwait, which was, in fact, an Iraqi province that the British imperialists had detached to make one of their oil colonies), and Iraq was subjected to ten years of sanctions aimed at battering the country to facilitate the glorious conquest by the U.S. armed forces over what remained.

      One can accuse the successive Baath governments, including the last one during its period of decline under Saddam’s leadership, of everything except for having stirred up confessional conflict between Sunni and Shia. Who, then, is responsible for the bloody clashes between the two communities today? Certainly, we will someday learn how the CIA (and undoubtedly the Mossad as well) organized many of these massacres. But beyond that, it is true that the political desert created by Saddam’s regime, and the example he gave of using unprincipled opportunist methods to achieve his aims, encouraged candidates for government of all kinds to follow this example, often protected by the occupier. Sometimes, perhaps, these people were naive to the point of believing that they could make use of the occupier. The candidates in question, whether religious leaders (Shia or Sunni), supposed “notables” (quasi-tribal), or notoriously corrupt businessmen exported by the United States, never had any real political foothold in the country. Even the religious leaders respected by believers had no acceptable political sway over the Iraqi people. Without the void created by Saddam, their names would not even be known. Faced with this new political world made by the imperialism of liberal globalization, will other authentically popular and national, potentially democratic, political forces have the means to reconstruct themselves?

      There was a time when the Iraqi Communist Party encapsulated and embodied the best of what Iraqi society could produce. It was established in all areas of the country and dominated the world of intellectuals, often of Shia origin (I note that Shiism above all produces revolutionaries and religious leaders, rarely bureaucrats or compradors!). The Communist Party was genuinely popular and anti-imperialist, not really inclined to demagogy, and potentially democratic. Is it now called to disappear from history once and for all, after the massacre of thousands of its best militants by the Baathist dictatorship, the collapse of the Soviet Union