Iraq

[if gte

Is there any real long term trend towards stability and prosperity in Iraq? A recent upsurge in murderous suicide bombings, both in the Kurdish north and Baghdad, puts into question the idea that the US troop surge is having a profound impact on the ‘security situation' in the country. The British withdrawal from Basra is not at all an example of ‘a job well done' but of yet another retreat by declining British imperialism.

We are publishing here an article from the Turkish group Enternasyonalist Komünist Sol (EKS), which analyses the different imperialist interests and rivalries underlying the Turkish army's recent incursions into northern Iraq. We consider it important for several reasons: first and foremost, by offering a clear analysis on an internationalist basis, it strikes a blow against both Turkish and Kurdish nationalism, in a region where the propaganda campaigns of all the competing bourgeois factions are doing their utmost to stoke nationalist hatreds so as to use the workers and poor masses as cannon fodder in their own sordid struggles for power and influence; second, it gives a voice to the feelings of indignation and revolt among the workers in Turkey who have been conscripted into this bloody conflict, and gives the lie to the bourgeoisie's claims, in Turkey and elsewhere, about universal popular support for the war.

Five years after the USA, assisted by Britain and a few other countries, successfully invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam in only three weeks, nothing is going according to plan. Of course we can read about an improvement in the security situation following the troop surge... But events on the ground have well and truly drowned out any celebration of the original victory.

If we were to identify a vice that is characteristic of each epoch of human history, it would certainly be the hypocrisy of the ruling class that would fit the bill in the case of capitalism. The great Mongol conqueror, Genghis Khan, amassed piles of skulls when he conquered towns that had not submitted to him. But he never claimed to do it for the good of their inhabitants. It took bourgeois capitalist democracy to teach us that war is "humanitarian" and that it is necessary to bomb civilian populations in order to bring… peace and freedom to these very populations.

Between 16th and 19th December 1998, Iraq was hit by more cruise missiles than during the entire 1991 Gulf War. After threats which were not followed up in February and November 1998, the US has unleashed a new hell on an Iraqi population which has already been subjected to the terrible war of 1991 and the sanctions that followed, bringing in their wake famine, disease, and an intolerable poverty. When the Russian bloc collapsed in 1989, US President Bush announced "a new world order of peace and prosperity". Since then, we have seen increasing chaos, still more war, and an unprecedented chaos, still more war, and an unprecedented spread of poverty throughout the world. The recent bombing of Iraq has only added to the list. They also confirm what we wrote in the following article, which was completed before the last bombardment: "A bloody spiral of destruction in which the force employed by the US in defence of its authority tends to become more frequent and massive, the political results of these efforts more questionable, the generalisation of chaos and militarism more certain, the abandonment of common rules of the game more pronounced".

International ICC leaflet

War has always been a test for the working class and its revolutionary minorities.

The workers are the first to suffer the consequences of a war, whether through loss of life or through increased exploitation. At the same time, the proletariat is the only force in society capable of putting an end to its barbarity by overthrowing the capitalism which lies at its root.