Fred Fuentes
While the US is still facing a fierce Iraqi resistance and a disintegrating "coalition of the killing", and the Australian government is sending more troops to Iraq, all the polls show young people are increasing opposed to this war.
On Sydney University, Students Against War was formed at the end of last year and has already forced ANZ, whose blood money is used via the Iraq Trade Bank to fund the corporate plunder of Iraq, off campus during orientation week. The group is now planning to show footage of the US-led slaughter in Fallujah, inviting Donna Mulhearn, an Australian human shield who has since returned to Iraq, to speak.
At the University of Technology Sydney, a Students Against War collective has formed. It has already targeted war profiteers at the UTS career day and is planning a forum on Halliburton and the corporate plunder of Iraq.
At Melbourne University, anti-war activists have been collecting names of students interested in opposing the war and are helping to publicise a meeting with well-known British writer and anti-war campaigner Tariq Ali.
On other campuses, students helped build the March 20 protests, marking two years since the US-British-Australian invasion of Iraq.
Rather than being a "distraction" from campaigning against the Howard government's voluntary studen union (VSU) legislation, as some have argued, these on-campus anti-war activities are crucial not only to building opposition to the government's attacks against student unions and its moves to further privatise public education, but to rebuilding a fighting student movement.
Many students see the links between the occupation and corporate plunder of Iraq, and the push for greater corporate control over Australian universities.
Building opposition to the war helps to tap into a widespread opposition against what many agree is a key weak spot of the federal Coalition government.
The Liberals know that the occupation is unpopular among large sections of Australian society. They also know that at the moment the opposition on the streets does not reflect the real opposition in the community.
A big part of this gap is that the organisation of the movement is weak, particularly on campus. On the one hand, many of the student unions have not been active in opposition to the war. For some it was seen as a "distraction" from education issues. Others, including some left-led unions, have argued this year that because of the threat of VSU, student unions shouldn't campaign around "political" issues. They miss the point that the whole purpose of VSU is to weaken students' ability to politically organise against the Coalition government entire "reform" agenda. It's the student unions' very potential to carry out such organisation that motivates the Liberals' introduction of VSU.
The refusal of student unions to mobilise student opposition to this very unpopular war has weakened the ability of student unions to mobilise opposition to VSU.
Anti-war students need to play a role in turning this around by starting to organise on campus against the war. This lack of student anti-war organisation was a big part of the rapid decrease in street protests following the so-called end of the war in April 2003.
By building anti-war networks on campuses now — collecting lists of students opposed to the war, talking to other clubs and societies on campus that may also share an opposition to the war and pushing student unions to take a stand — anti-war students can not only strengthen the anti-VSU campaign and show the worth of political campaigning, but also tap into the widespread, if at the moment passive, opposition to the war among most students. They can prepare for the next round of mobilisations to bring the war and corporate plundering, in Iraq and at home, to an end.
From Green Left Weekly, April 27, 2005.
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