New Imperialist Aggression in Iraq

1) The latest missile attack against Iraq constitutes a new crime of US imperialism against the Iraqi people. It is a further manifestation of the extreme instability which now exists on a world scale, and particularly in the Middle East. The actions of Washington were designed to show the power of US imperialism; to terrify not only Iraq, but all the peoples of the region. But, in fact, even while flexing its muscles, the limits of American imperialism were exposed.

2) The Gulf War was fought under the pretext of defending the independence of "poor little Kuwait." The latest missile attack was carried out with the excuse of "defending the Kurds," and opposing the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. This is just so much stinking hypocrisy. US imperialism is the main enemy of the oppressed colonial peoples of the world. All its actions in the Middle East are dictated by the crude defence of its economic and strategic interests. The interests of oppressed nationalities are just so much small change used by US diplomacy to justify the attempt to rob and enslave all the peoples of the Middle East.

3) In reality, the problems of the Kurdish people are the direct responsibility of imperialism, beginning with British imperialism. During the First World War, Britain promised the French they could have Kurdistan, and its oil wealth at Mosul, in the Sykes-Picot secret treaty of 1916. By the end of the war, however, London decided it needed the oil for itself. During the summer of 1919 British troops were struggling to put down a rising led by the Kurdish hero Sheikh Mahmud. Then in 1920 Kemal Ataturk threatened to seize the region for Turkey. To rally Kurdish opposition to this attempt, Britain promised to back an independent Kurdistan (Treaty of Sèvres, August 1920). The intention was to manipulate the Kurds by promising them freedom. As Colonel T E Lawrence (of Arabia) put it: "Some day É we will be able to hold Kurdistan and bore there for oil" (Sunday Times, 30 May 1920).

4) By the end of 1921 the differences with Ataturk and with the Arabs in Baghdad had been all sorted. London tore up the Treaty of Sèvres and proceeded to deploy RAF aircraft against the Kurds in their mountain strongholds. In the Treaty of Lausanne (July 1923), the region was parcelled out between Turkey, Iran and Iraq, with no mention of the Kurds. The Kurdish oil fields were placed under Britain's Iraqi mandate and, on 15 October 1927, oil "in enormous quantity" was discovered at Baba Gurgur near Kirkuk.

5) The Kurds are sometimes described as the "world's largest ethnic group without a nation" or the "world's largest nation without a state". The four million Kurds of Iraq constitute at most one-sixth of the total Kurdish population in the Middle East. According to David McDowall, author of A Modern History of the Kurds, the total population of Kurds is probably in the order of 24-27 million. About half of those, at least 13 million, live in Turkey where they form about 23 per cent of the population. For the past 12 years, the Stalinist Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) has been fighting for control of south-eastern Turkey.

6) There are also about 5.7 million Kurds in Iran. There they briefly set up an independent republic in 1946, and organised themselves as an autonomous region after the fall of the Shah in 1979, only to be crushed by the forces of the late Ayatollah Khomeini. More than 2 million Kurds live elsewhere: in Syria, Europe and the former Soviet Union. But the great majority live in the mountainous region straddling Turkey, Iran and Iraq. They suffer national oppression in all these states.

7) In the case of Iraq, they have been involved in a bloody war for over three decades. Iraq's rulers formally recognised a Kurdish identity after the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958. But there has been a constant conflict between the Iraqi state, increasingly centralised and totalitarian since the Ba'ath party came to power in 1968, and the Kurds with their mountain tribal traditions and growing self-awareness as a potential nation.

8) In Turkey, government forces are engaged in a ferocious struggle against the PKK, and have carried the war into Iraq. Until recently, the Turkish state denied Kurdish identity in any form, describing the Kurds as "mountain Turks" (in fact, the Kurdish language has no connection with either Turkish or Arabic, but is an Indo-european language related to Persian). Even today, there is no education in Kurdish. Only now the Turkish government, in an attempt to undermine the PKK, has offered to recognise a Kurdish identity. If these concessions had been made 20 years ago, they might have been sufficient, but, as always, it is a case of "too little, too late". Half hearted measures will no longer suffice. But, on the other hand, the PKK also offers no solution.

9) The immediate excuse for the missile attack was the outbreak of fighting between the rival Kurdish factions, the KDP (Kurdish Democratic Party) and PUK (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan). Here we see the impossibility of solving the national question in the Middle East on the basis of capitalism. The establishment of a homeland for the Kurdish people is inseparably linked to the struggle for a socialist federation of the Middle East and Turkey.

10) US imperialism, in its usual cynical fashion, made use of the Kurdish people's struggle against Baghdad in order to establish its "protectorate" over the north of Iraq, the so-called "no-fly zone." This insolent act had nothing to do with the defence of self determination, but was aimed to cripple Iraq. US imperialism is the main counterrevolutionary force in the world. It was naive and stupid of the Kurdish leaders to expect it to uphold their interests. As we have seen on many occasions, especially in the Middle East and in the Balkans, the bourgeois leaders of small nations, under the guise of "self-determination" end up as the agents of one imperialist power or another.

11) By what right does US imperialism claim to decide what happens on the territory of another country? Having bombed and starved Iraq into submission, and forced it to its knees, Washington now wishes to destroy its territorial integrity. The latest armed incursion of Turkey into the allegedly "autonomous" Kurdish area of north Iraq cruelly exposes the real situation. Despite all the hypocritical protestations of the Americans, it is clear that Turkey would not dare to act without the tacit agreement of Washington. The threat to break up Iraq, using the services of the Turkish ruling clique, is completely reactionary, and opposed to the interests of Kurds and Iraqis alike. Moreover, it would inevitably be the pretext for new wars. Iran has its eye on the Kurdish part of Iraq, and has warned that it will not allow Turkey to walk in unopposed. This spells new horrors for all the peoples of the region.

12) Having gained nothing from the "protection" of US imperialism, one of the main Kurdish factions led by Massoud Barzani (the KDP) concluded that the establishment of an independent Kurdistan was not on the agenda, and appealed to Baghdad to help them against their rivals in the PUK, in exchange for accepting that the Kurds would remain within Iraq, on the basis of autonomy. This is, in fact, the best the Kurds can get, short of a socialist revolution. It is doubtful that Saddam Hussein would consent to a real autonomy for the Kurds. Nonetheless, he immediately seized a golden opportunity to regain his influence in the Kurdish area.

13) Clinton could not afford to remain passive in the face of Baghdad's actions. The presidential elections were undoubtedly a factor. But America's strategic interests were involved. The USA wants to limit Saddam's power, and, if possible, overthrow him. But this would only be possible by all-out war. The misslile attack on Iraq was vicious, but ineffective. It did not prevent Saddam from giving artillery support to the KDP forces besieging Arbil. This probably tipped the balance in favour of Barzani, who took, not only Arbil, but all the other key cities, forcing the PUK to flee across the Iranian border.

14) The conduct of US imperialism proves that its aim was not to help the Kurds, but to weaken and divide Iraq. The Independent, 4 September, pointed out: "With the choice of weapons and targets—command and control centres in southern Iraq—Mr. Clinton has signalled he has no wish to intervene in the north were the Saturday's incursion took place but where separate Kurdish factions are jockeying for control, backed respectively by Iran and Iraq. Instead, Washington wants to weaken Saddam's ability to cause trouble in the strategically crucial states of the Gulf. Hence the decision to extend the area where Iraqi military aircraft cannot fly in their own country from the 32nd to the 33rd parallel, in practice the southernmost suburbs of Baghdad itself".

15) The aims of Washington were expressed quite cynically by the White House Chief of Staff, Leon Panetta who said: "Rather than engage in tactical efforts in the north it is much more important for us and much more important a message to Saddam Hussein to extract a strategic price". US Defence Secretary, William Perry added: "We should not be involved in civil war in the north. We should focus our actions where our interests are". (The Independent, 9 September 1996).

16) It goes without saying that the Labour Movement is opposed to the brutal dictatorship of Saddam Hussein—just as we are opposed to the monstrous feudal monarchies of Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, who arrest, torture and murder oppositionists, or the reactionary regime of King Hussein of Jordan or Mubarak in Egypt, which oppress their own people. But the task of overthrowing Saddam Hussein cannot be entrusted to imperialism, which backed the Iraqi regime with arms and money in the past, and only began to oppose it when the West's interests were threatened by the invasion of Kuwait. The task of overthrowing Saddam Hussein is the task of the Iraqi people, and in the first place the working class, and nobody else.

17) In point of fact, the US failed in its main objective in the Gulf War. Despite the mighty display of firepower, with all the new technology and so-called "smart bombs," they did not succeed in overthrowing Saddam and installing a puppet regime in Baghdad. As always, "the first casualty of War is Truth." At the time of the Gulf War, there was a massive campaign of disinformation aimed to convince public opinion in the West that "pin-point" bombing would be sufficient to win the war, and that the accuracy of these techniques would mean that only military targets would be hit, thus minimising civilian targets. This propaganda actually fooled some self-styled "Marxists" at the time, but we rejected it completely. It is now clear that the number of civilian casualties was vastly more than admitted, and that the damage caused to the Iraqi forces far less than what was claimed. The indiscriminate nature of these so-called "smart bombs" was recently shown by the massacre of civilians in South Lebanon by Israeli bombardment.

18) The real reason for this insistence in the alleged effectiveness of air power is Washington's fear of committing ground troops in overseas wars. This is a legacy of the Vietnam War, when US imperialism was defeated, not so much by the Vietnamese as by opposition at home and among the American soldiers in Vietnam. One US general at the time compared the mood of the US troops to that of the Petrograd garrison in 1917. Had there been a genuine revolutionary party in America at that time, the USA would have been on the brink of revolution.

19) All history proves that it is impossible to win a war with air power alone. In order to win a decisive victory, ground troops are necessary. But this is something the US wants to avoid at all costs. Even now, despite the changed balance of forces brought about by the collapse of Stalinism, the limits of imperialist power were shown in Somalia, where the US marines were compelled to accept an ignominious withdrawal in the face of barefoot irregulars, who could not even be described as an army but were more like bandit gangs led by local warlords. Clinton agonised for a long time before intervening in tiny Haiti, and only did so when a deal was struck which ruled out fighting.

20) A similar position was the case in Bosnia. Iraq was different, because oil is the life-blood of the US economy, and the Middle East occupies a central place in the global strategy of US imperialism. For example, if the Saudi regime were threatened with overthrow—and this is a real possibility in the coming period—they would have no alternative but to invade. As a relatively sparsely populated country, consisting mainly of desert, they could occupy the oil fields, and leave the rest to the Saudis. But such a development would cause an explosive situation throughout the colonial world. Despite the overwhelming superiority of the US military machine, which is equal to the combined armies of the next six powers, they will not be able to hold down the movement of the colonial masses, once they begin to move. They are constrained by the fear of the US population, which does not want to be involved in foreign wars which would cost the lives of American soldiers.

21) Despite the US victory in the Gulf War, five years later, Saddam Hussein remains in power, and still possesses an army. The infamous blockade has mainly hit the masses, causing widespread hunger and suffering, but has not weakened Saddam's grip on power. Nor will the latest missile attack. On the contrary. It will only increase the masses hatred of US imperialism, and thereby temporarily strengthen the regime.

22) From a purely military point of view, the missile attack was a failure. But even worse from Washington's standpoint were the political consequences. The anti-Iraqi coalition painstakingly put together by US diplomacy at the time of the Gulf War has fallen to pieces. The Arab regimes are terrified at the reaction of their own people. At the time of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, it was possible to confuse Arab public opinion. But this is entirely different. The arrogance of America in extending the "no-fly zone" to a mere 30 miles from Baghdad has exposed Clinton's real intentions. The big majority of the population of the Arab countries support Iraq against the USA.

23) The fear of the Arab regimes is well founded. The whole region is now unstable. There is growing opposition in Saudi Arabia, reflected in splits in the ruling royal family. The monarchist regime in neighbouring Bahrain is threatened with overthrow, and, under Saudi pressure, is resorting to repressive measures. The 100% increase in the price of bread, the staple diet, has led to rioting in Jordan directed against the monarchy. Even more significant, the riots began among the Bedouin, the traditional base of support of King Hussein. As usual, the IMF was responsible for bringing about this situation, by forcing the government to cut budget spending. Mubarak keeps a shaky hold on Egypt. There have been riots of workers and students in the Sudan. Even in Iran, there is widespread discontent with the rule of the mullahs.

24) Under these conditions, the USA is compelled to base itself on Israel as its only firm point of support in the Middle East. (Turkey, its other main ally, is not really part of the Middle East, although it is an important player in the Iraqi situation, a fact which obliges Washington to take its interests into account). Arafat is now essentially a puppet of Israel. But the peace process has stalled on the basis of insoluble contradictions. Fearing the consequences of further instability, America has put pressure on Netanyahu to get the peace process moving again. But the whole area remains a powder keg.

25) The balance of power in the Middle East is extremely fragile. The situation is further complicated by developments in Russia. At the time of the Gulf War, America had an almost free hand in the area. Under Gorbachov, and, until recently, Yeltsin, Russia became virtually a puppet of the USA on the world arena. The shameful betrayal of Moscow was one of the main reasons why the Iraqi forces collapsed so quickly. But now the situation is completely different. The decisive sections of the Russian bureaucracy, especially the armed forces, are no longer prepared to play second fiddle to Washington. Primakov has threatened to veto the Americans in the UN Security Council, and would undoubtedly carry out the threat, if it were necessary. Russia is obviously aiming to rebuild its links to its old allies, and not only in the Middle East. The isolation of the US is shown by the reaction of its allies in the West. France came out against, and most of the others were of a similar opinion. Only Major was enthusiastic, thus underlining Britain's status as a third-rate power. Most significantly, the Arab League condemned the action.

26) In the wake of the US missile attack, Saddam apparently withdrew his forces from the immediate vicinity of Arbil. Subsequently, Washington played down Iraqi involvement in the Kurdish conflict. This is typical of his manoeuvres. He just leaves the Kurds to kill each other. This suits his interests very well. In the meanwhile, he has bound the winning faction to himself, and re-established his presence in the three northern provinces, at minimal cost to himself. The missile attacks have not undermined his military potential, but have pushed the population into his arms, at least for a time. Even better, it has wrecked the US-led coalition in the Middle East. Even in narrow tactical terms, the US has failed. The policy of an "exclusion zone" in the Kurdish north is in ruins.

27) The whole region is in a perpetual state of instability. On a capitalist basis, no solution is possible for the problems of the Middle East. For the whole of the post-war period, the masses have displayed extraordinary courage in the struggle against imperialism. But decades of nominal independence on a capitalist basis have cruelly exposed the inability of bourgeois nationalism to offer a way out. We are left with the permanent revolution as the only solution to the problems of the masses. The situation of the Kurds in Iraq is a case in point. Without revolution in Turkey, the idea of an independent Kurdish state in Iraq is a pipe-dream. It would be crushed by Turkey, which is now the main ally of US imperialism in the region, after Israel. Only a revolutionary class policy with an internationalist perspective can show the way forward, through the overthrow of the reactionary ruling cliques, and the establishment of a Socialist Federation of the Middle East, with autonomy for the Kurds, Palestinians, Armenians, Copts and Druzes with equal rights guaranteed by a regime of workers' democracy.

28) Even this would not provide a complete answer. That would only be possible with the victory of socialist revolution in the advanced capitalist countries and the establishment of world socialism. But the workers and peasants of the Middle East cannot wait. The problems are too pressing. In one country after another, the workers and peasants will move to transform society. With correct Marxist leadership it would be possible to begin to carry through the socialist transformation. This would be a beacon to the workers of the advanced countries of Europe, the United States and Japan, as was the October revolution of 1917.