Simon Cunich
The strengthening of Australia's "anti-terrorism" laws proposed by the federal government includes creating new offences for "those who communicate inciting messages ... including against Australia's forces overseas and in support of Australia's enemies". These new laws can be used to challenge our right to discuss the legitimacy of the armed resistance in Iraq and express solidarity with Iraqis who want to end the occupation.
In a May 19, 2004, speech to the Australia Club, PM John Howard described the resistance as "foreign Islamic militants and jihadists, former regime elements, disaffected Sunni nationalists and political opportunists". Occupation troops are protecting Iraqis from each other, according to Howard.
But to understand the resistance in Iraq, it is necessary to take a break from Howard's lies and the misinformation of the corporate media. In a speech in San Francisco in August 2004, Sydney Peace Prize winner Arundhati Roy challenged these lies: "It is absurd to condemn the resistance to the US occupation in Iraq, as being masterminded by terrorists or insurgents or supporters of Saddam Hussein. After all, if the United States were invaded and occupied, would everybody who fought to liberate it be a terrorist or an insurgent or a Bushite?"
The mainstream of the resistance represents a response to the violence of the occupation and condemns attacks on civilians, both by occupying forces and Al Qaeda-style opportunists.
In contrast to the frequent condemnations of Iraqis' armed resistance, the violent nature of the occupation is rarely reported. A study by Iraqi universities published this year estimated that the occupation was responsible for 40,000 Iraqi civilian deaths per year since the invasion.
According to Michael Schwartz, a professor at the University of New York, who has written extensively about Iraq, the occupation violently and fatally disrupts daily life with checkpoints, house raids, patrols and the brutal use of air raids.
The resistance is an ongoing response to operations like the siege of Tal Afar in September, which forced an estimated 90% of the city's 300,000 people to flee. Electricity and water to the city were cut and occupation forces prevented food and medical assistance from entering. Just days into the siege, 140 homes were reported destroyed and more than 200 civilians killed.
In January this year, General Mohamed Abd Allah Shahwani, the head of Iraq's intelligence service, told journalists the armed resistance was estimated to involve more than 200,000 people. He said that as well as full-time fighters, the figure included those who contribute to the resistance by providing everything from shelter to intelligence.
Estimates of the resistance's strength continue to grow while so-called counter-insurgency operations increasingly look like, as William Langewiesche described in the January-February Atlantic Monthly, "a running fight with a large part of the Iraqi people".
According to the February 6 Washington Post, a CIA report issued in January shows that the agency has "updated its analysis of the breadth of the Iraqi insurgency, including Iraqis that are not only former Baathists, 'dead enders', but also newly radicalized Sunni Iraqis, nationalists offended by the occupying force and others disenchanted by the economic turmoil and destruction caused by the fighting".
It is no surprise that ordinary Iraqis who have lost family members to occupying forces, who have seen their homes bombed, who have lost their jobs since the invasion, and still have not had running water and electricity restored, are willing to join the resistance.
In some cases the turn to armed resistance has been a last resort. The movement led by Shia cleric Moqtada al Sadr only joined the armed struggle after its weekly journal, agitating for the end of the occupation, was banned and its protests repressed by occupying forces. Since his movement took up arms, according to a May 2004 poll commissioned by the Coalition Provisional Authority, some 67% of Iraqis say they support Sadr.
In clear contradiction to claims of ethnic and religious sectarianism in Iraq, Sadr began collaborating with the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), an organisation of around 3000 Sunni clerics, in the lead-up to the January 30 elections. The aim of this coalition was to put pressure on the United Iraqi Alliance to keep to its election promise of implementing a definite timetable for the withdrawal of the occupation forces. After winning the election on that platform, the UIA quietly dropped the promise and has subsequently relied heavily on the occupying forces to maintain its authority.
Opposition to the occupation is not limited to the armed resistance. Since the invasion there have been ongoing demonstrations calling for troops out, involving Iraqis from all backgrounds. Weeks after the invasion, as the media filled our screens with images of the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis marched in Karbala chanting "La Amreeka, la Saddam" ("No to America, no to Saddam"). Protests continued. In April, tens of thousands of Iraqis marched through Baghdad demanding an end to the occupation.
Farouk Ismaal, international relations officer for Iraq's General Union of Oil Employees, who spoke at Sydney University in September, made this clear: "If you want to help us rebuild our country, help us end the occupation." To do this we have to demand our government brings the troops home now.
Iraq's unions "oppose the occupation absolutely", Ghassib Hassan, a member of the executive committee of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, told David Bacon in an interview published by Truthout.org on March 24. He added: "This is not liberation. It is occupation. It's led to the total destruction of the economic infrastructure of Iraq, with the aim of controlling its wealth and resources."
These claims are by no means unsubstantiated. In the September 24, 2004, edition of Harper's magazine, Naomi Klein reported that among the economic "reforms" promoted by the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority was a proposal to privatise 200 state-owned companies, a reduction of the corporate tax rate to 15%, and the introduction of laws allowing 100% foreign ownership of Iraqi assets with the exception of the oil industry.
Klein made the point: "All that remained of Saddam Hussein's economic policies was a law restricting trade unions and collective bargaining." Real reconstruction will not be possible until Iraq's resources are controlled by Iraqis for Iraqis, rather than being used to fund a war against them.
Despite claims of religious civil war in Iraq, the dominant lines of conflict remain between collaborators and opponents of the occupation. The argument that we have to stay and clean up the mess we have made turns reality upside-down. It is the presence of occupying troops that is the primary source of violence and instability in Iraq. The US training of a puppet Iraqi army is continuing to fuel this conflict, with many in the resistance viewing Iraqi troops as collaborators with the occupation.
Due to mass unemployment, the US has had some success in recruiting Iraqis, yet this has not been without major setbacks. For example, during the assault on Fallujah last year, a number of Iraqi battalions refused to participate and an estimated 40% deserted their posts. According to an April 18, 2004, Reuters report, when asked about their decision an Iraqi soldier said, "How could an Iraqi fight an Iraqi like this?"
In the face of growing resistance within the Iraq army, the US-led coalition is having to rely more heavily on pro-government militias and death squads to help counter the occupation's opponents. Militias such as the Badr Brigade, the armed wing of one of the ruling political parties, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, reportedly dominate the Iraqi police forces in some areas.
The United Nations last month raised alarm about growing violence, including systematic torture and executions, attributed to militias that the occupying forces have consistently turned a blind eye to. Sean McCormack, a State Department spokesman, has explained on June 8 that the Iraqi government's use of militias "is an Iraqi issue that they will decide and that they will deal with".
If, then, the resistance is popular, what are we to make of reports of indiscriminate attacks on civilians? Of course such attacks do occur and their devastation should not be downplayed. But while media reports give the impression that civilian targets constitute the majority of attacks, statistics suggest otherwise.
According to research conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and published in a December 2004 report, "The Developing Iraqi Insurgency: Status at End-2004", of 4300 attacks recorded between September 2003 and October 2004, 180 targeted civilians as opposed to 3227 targeting coalition forces. It is significant that attacks on civilians are not considered by Iraqis to be part of what is referred to as al muqawama al sharifa (the honourable resistance), according to a July 5 article in the British Guardian.
This view is often expressed by prominent figures linked to the resistance. AMS leader Sheik Harith al Dhari told a news conference in Baghdad in February: "We won't remain silent over those crimes which target the Iraqi people — Sunnis or Shiites, Islamic or non-Islamic." He went on to argue that Iraqis should unite "against those who are trying to incite hatred between us".
Those in the West who are genuinely concerned for the wellbeing of Iraqis and who advocate troops "staying the course" need to accept that the occupying forces cannot play a progressive role in Iraq. Their presence is the problem not the solution. Obviously all of Iraq's problems will not be solved the moment foreign troops are withdrawn, but only once this happens can Iraqis actually begin to address the challenges that their country faces.
Supporting the struggle of Iraqis against the occupation does not mean we need to endorse every act by groups claiming to represent the resistance. Arundhati Roy explained her solidarity with the Iraqi resistance, "This is not to say that we shouldn't ever criticize resistance movements. Many of them suffer from a lack of democracy, from the iconisation of their 'leaders', a lack of transparency, a lack of vision and direction. But most of all they suffer from vilification, repression, and lack of resources.
"Before we prescribe how a pristine Iraqi resistance must conduct their secular, feminist, democratic, non-violent battle, we should shore up our end of the resistance by forcing the U.S. and its allies government to withdraw from Iraq."
From Green Left Weekly, November 9, 2005.
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