"What's Next in Iraq?"

Tariq Ali

Tariq Ali is a veteran political activist since the 1960s, and a filmmaker,
novelist and author. His most recent books include The Clash of
Fundamentalisms and Bush in Babylon: The Recolonization of Iraq. Tariq
spoke
to Socialist Worker's Eric Ruder about the aims of the U.S. occupation and
the growing Iraqi resistance.

Q: What are the motives for the U.S. occupation? The Bush administration,
of
course, claims that it has removed an evil dictator and is promoting
democracy and freedom.

Tariq Ali: I don't think that very many people outside the U.S. believe
this. Even in countries that have troops there, the population is against
the war and occupation.With every passing day, it becomes clear that the principal aim of the U.S.
in invading and occupying Iraq had very little to do with democracy or even
toppling a dictator, and a great deal to do with exercising imperial power,
showing both the region and the rest of the world that this is how modern
imperialism works — that the U.S. cannot be defied, and if it is defied, it
reserves the right to punish defiance.

Iraq was meant to be the country where this would be demonstrated. Another
principal reason was to grab the Iraqi market — to grab Iraqi oil and divide
it among the West, as used to be the case long years ago when Iraq was
ruled by the British.

This occupation takes place now in a very changed international context.
This is a 21st century occupation. It takes place in the context of
neoliberal economics and a global offensive by corporate capitalism.

And another feature of this global offensive is a continuing effort on the
part of the U.S. not to allow countries in different parts of the world to
develop regional alliances, but to deal bilaterally with the U.S. That's
what they've done in the Far East, that's what they've done in South Asia,
that's what they've done in the Middle East, that's what they impose on
Latin America.

Any attempt to create a strong regional alliance that could challenge
neoliberal hegemony, they will crush. Iraq was a country outside their
control economically and politically, and they wanted to "set it right."

There is a subsidiary reason, though I don't think that it's a main reason.
The Israeli regime wanted Iraq out of the way because it felt that this was
the only country that had the potential to stop Israeli atrocities against
Palestine. Not that Iraq would have done this, but it could have done this,
and why not remove the risk altogether?

These were the principal reasons for the U.S. entry into Iraq. If you look
on the economic level, what's going on is very straightforward. The entire
Iraqi economy has been privatized. The American corporations are in.

The South Koreans and the Japanese have been promised concessions and
contracts if they commit troops. The South Korean president more or less
said that. After Korea won 100 odd contracts, he said, "You see, if we did
not send troops, we would not have gotten this contract." He's honest. But
that is the reason that a number of these countries sent troops — apart from
the East Europeans who had just wanted to be U.S. satellites.

But the Polish president is getting cross now — pretending to be irritated,
and saying that he didn't know there were no weapons of mass
destruction — because Poland got very tiny contracts. Even the British, who
backed Bush to the hilt, haven't gotten many contracts.

It's interesting that the British got the contract to redo the sewage
system, which is quite appropriate because that's the role that Blair
plays — as the sewage cleaner of the American Empire. It's quite
funny — whoever decided that in the Pentagon must have had a sense of humor.

This is the process that's now underway. Iraq's health system, Iraq's
housing, Iraq's educational system are all being privatized. They are
waiting to implant a puppet government, which they hope to do after
the"handover" on June 30. Then they'll start dealing with the oil as well.

There's no doubt that one of the big demands on Ahmed Chalabi and the
puppets will be to make the oil accessible to foreign companies. And the
argument that the puppets and the U.S. will use is that the amount of
investment needed to clear up the backlog in Iraqi oil and the mess in the
Iraqi oilfields can't come from an Iraqi state devastated by war, but can
only come from foreign companies.

This is the plan. But the question is: Is the plan being implemented in an
effective way? And you can read every day on the front page of the Los
Angeles Times and the New York Times that this plan is not effective. The
resistance is now targeting foreign businesses. This is going to pose
problems for political, military and economic planning by the U.S.

Militarily, they're in a mess. If the leaders of the southern part of the
country decide to go into rebellion openly, then that would be, in my view,
the end of the first phase of the occupation and the emergence of a big
national liberation movement. It hasn't happened as of yet, but all the
indications are that it could.

Q: THE BUSH administration said that the resistance was made up of Saddam
loyalists, and then foreigners, and then Islamists, and then foreign
Islamists. It also claimed that the capture of Saddam Hussein would
disorient the resistance. What's the reality?

Tariq Ali: THE RESISTANCE, as some of us argued, was there from the
beginning of the occupation. If you compare the Iraqi resistance — its
scale,
its size, its effectiveness — to the resistance in France or Belgium against
German occupation during the Second World War, or in Italy against the
fascist dictatorship, there's no comparison.

It took a number of years for the French resistance to reach the stage that
the Iraqi had reached from week one. The Iraqi resistance to pre-emptive
wars and foreign occupation has been on a much higher level in terms of
military planning than the French, Italian and Belgian resistance were
during the Second World War against German occupation.

I think the principal mistake that the U.S. made was to believe — if, in
fact, they believed it — that the resistance was being masterminded by
Saddam. All the information from Iraq right from the beginning showed that
Saddam was out of it — that essentially the resistance was decentralized,
based in individual cities, villages and sections of the country. There's
no way that any single person could control it.

I remember arguing, well before Saddam's capture, with Christoper Hitchens
on the Democracy Now! radio program, and I said the notion that the capture
of Saddam will end the resistance is just not serious. Hitchens actually
agreed with me on that, but most other supporters of the Bush regime didn't.
They thought that once Saddam was captured, that would be it.

Howard Dean, the former Democratic presidential contender, who said at the
time that Saddam's capture would not solve the problem, was denounced by
the mainstream press for having dared to say it. But he was right on that
particular question.

And so were all of us who argued that, in fact, Saddam's capture might
enhance the resistance, because lots of people who might not have wanted to
come forward, fearing that Saddam's wing of the Baath Party might emerge
again, would now do so. That's exactly what happened.

The resistance has grown, and we see attacks on occupation forces every
day — and not just the U.S. forces. In southern Iraq, there's been a growth
in the resistance, relatively speaking. British soldiers have come under
fire. They've been attacked on the streets of Basra by kids.

There's a real connection now with the occupation of Palestine and the
occupation of Iraq. The Israelis are advising the Pentagon to do what the
Israelis do — stay in their own military bases, and go out and hit when they
want to hit.

We'll see if the U.S. follows the Israeli model in punishing Falluja for
what happened last week, when the American contractors were ambushed. If
the U.S. follows Israel's advice, they will bomb Falluja and kill people to
punish them. But this would be very foolish — just totally
counterproductive.

This is what happens in a colonial situation — you're attacked, you go and
punish people who attacked you, lots of innocent people are killed, the
killing of Iraqi innocents then creates more anger, and more people join
the resistance. This is the iron law of resistance movements. So if the U.S.
follows Israeli advice and Israeli patterns, I'm afraid the situation will
escalate very rapidly.

Q: WHAT DO the killings in Falluja attack say about developments within the
resistance?

Tariq Ali: BASICALLY, THE number of resistance groups is growing. There are
two forms of resistance in Iraq today. There's an unarmed resistance, which
is being waged by Shiite religious leaders in the south.

The key leader here is Ayatollah Sistani. He is fighting politically and
sending messages — this is what we want, this is what we don't want. He is
demanding free elections to a constituent assembly, which he is not going
to get. So far, he asks for these things, some concessions are made, and he
retreats. But there's a limit to how long this can go on.

The U.S. handover at the end of June will be — to be perfectly frank — a
total
charade. The U.S. will hand over power to people they trust, appoint the
prime minister of the new Iraq, retreat to eight or nine key
bases — essentially the old bases of the Iraqi army — and let the puppets do
the bidding of the U.S. The very weak police and army units of the puppet
government will take the hits from the resistance.

But this is not going to change anything, in my opinion. The only thing
that
could change is that Sistani and some of the religious parties in the South
would see that the handover is a complete fraud and demand immediate
elections.

If these elections are denied, they could break from the governing council,
and if these groups break, there will be mayhem in Iraq — have no doubt
about
that. The U.S. is fearful of permitting an election because they know that
the puppets that they have brought over — the "house Arabs" they've
transported from the U.S. — will not win these elections.

The elections will be won by parties that want the U.S. out and that want
Iraqi control of Iraqi oil. Given that this wasn't the aim of the invasion
and occupation of Iraq, there's no way that the U.S. is going to accept
that.

So what I foresee is a continued struggle until there is a large antiwar
movement in the U.S., which puts sufficient pressure on senators and
congressional representatives to pull out of Iraq, like happened in
Vietnam.
These are very different times, and it won't be exactly the same.

But nonetheless, what is argued in the U.S. is of enormous significance.
The
tragedy is that the Democrats have picked a leader to run for president who
changes his mind every second day and who is not credible as a candidate.
He
hasn't come out staunchly against the war. He says that the war was wrong,
but instead of saying that they should pull out, he wants more troops to be
sent to shore up the occupation.

In this situation, until the election is over, the antiwar movement, I
think, will be on tenterhooks. But once the election is over, regardless of
who wins, the goal has to be to really up the pressure on the White House
and the officialdom in the U.S. to demand an end to the occupation.

I mean, you have a big growth in Iraqi civilian casualties, and you have
American soldiers and others being killed. There's no reason on earth why
these soldiers or Iraqi civilians should be killed. That is why an end to
the occupation is absolutely necessary.

And the notion that the Iraqi people are incapable of determining their own
future is a total joke. They are perfectly capable of doing deals with each
other — they've done so in the past, and they'll do so again.

And you can't exclude the Ba'ath Party from this. Purged of Saddam and his
factions, which were totally degenerated, the Ba'ath is a legitimate party,
just like the religious parties, just like the Iraqi Communist Party — both
the collaborationist wing that supports the U.S. occupation and the
non-collaborationist wing.

If these people get together at a convention — and there are signs that this
could happen — the U.S. won't be able to keep control of the country. And it
will be in the interest of Kurdish leaders to go along with this, because
if
the Kurds isolate themselves, there will be no one to defend them against
any Turkish intrusions.

Q: HAS THE U.S. attempt to win support for their plans from Shiite leaders
failed?

Tariq Ali: I THINK it's on the verge of failure in my opinion. I think that
once the handover takes place, you will have a jockeying for power. And if
Sistani and the groups that are allied to him are denied what they want,
they will break.

Bush's National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said in public, "We want
to change the Iraqi mind." This is a pretty disgusting statement actually.
It's a sort of semi-fascist statement. What she is saying is that we want
the Iraqis to support the occupation, and if they don't, we'll denounce
them as supporters of Saddam.

What this completely fails to understand — and this is what I argued at
length in my book Bush in Babylon — is that there are large numbers of
people
in Iraq who loath Saddam Hussein and his regime and everything it stood
for,
but who are equally, if not even more, hostile to the U.S. for occupying
their country.

The notion that Iraqi politics can only be divided into two — either you're
for Saddam, or you're for the occupation — is a joke. It's the same thing
that Bush said after 9/11 — if you're not with us, you're for the terrorists.
It's a completely false dichotomy. It was wrong in relation to 9/11, and
it's totally wrong in relation to Iraq.

The fact is that the war is going badly for them — and that's why you see
serious splits within the ruling elite itself — as you saw with Paul
O'Neill's
departure as treasury secretary and now Richard Clarke walking out of the
White House and basically denouncing the regime in quite sharp language for
invading Iraq. This would not have happened had there not been a resistance
in Iraq.

Q: THE MEDIA is playing up the killings of the U.S. contractors in Falluja
as evidence of the barbarism of the Iraqi "insurgents." How do you think we
should respond to this?

Tariq Ali: FIRST, IT'S very interesting that in the press conference about
Falluja given by the U.S. Brigadier Gen. Mark Kimmit, he said that there
are
two different sorts of violence in Iraq. One is that used by terrorists who
carry out suicide bombings, and this is largely the work of al-Qaeda — and
incidentally, I don't think that's totally true.

The second form of violence that he distinguishes from terrorism is
"insurgence." "Insurgence" is the code word that the American military uses
to describe the resistance. This is the word that they've instructed the New
York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the rest of the American media to
use.

Kimmit said very clearly that what took place in Falluja was an act by
insurgents. Obviously, what took place was pretty horrific, there's no
denying that. It was very brutal, which is not something I defend.

But what is equally interesting is that none of the real footage was shown
in the Western media. It was shown on the Arab networks, but not the
Western
media. They showed a car being blown up, but they didn't show the
atrocities.

The reason that they don't show it is that they don't want to demoralize
American public opinion. Because even people who support the war would say,
"My God, we didn't realize it was as bad as this."

I've always argued that when you have ugly occupations, you cannot have a
pretty resistance. It's the character and form of the occupation that
determines the nature of the resistance.