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iraq is a minefield 4 imperialists
The U.S. occupation forces in Iraq continue to claim that they are
winning
what they have finally been forced to admit is a guerrilla war being
waged
against them. Their claims of success in their “search and destroy”
operations of course cannot be evaluated. But even the big American
dailies
have recognized that the logic of this war is politically more and more
damaging for the United States.
One of many symptomatic incidents was reported in the Aug. 4 Washington
Post. It occurred in Khaldiyah, a relatively small town about 45 miles
west
of Baghdad: “The troubles that swept through this rough-and-tumble farm
town
along the Euphrates River began with a grenade attack Monday on a U.S.
convoy parked outside the mayor’s office.
“A few hours later—after a staccato series of escalations compounded by
confusion, misperceptions and anger—a mob had ransacked the mayor’s
office.
Its newly painted white walls were scorched from fires still smoldering
today. At least two teenage boys were shot and wounded, and the mayor
and
police chief in charge of restoring order were nowhere to be seen.”
The U.S. military’s response to the grenade attack had been to fire
wildly
at anything that seemed suspicious and to carry out forcible searches,
including blowing up the iron gates on some shops. The population,
infuriated, rose up and forced the occupation forces to retreat from
the
town. According to the report, the crowds rallied behind Iraqi flags.
The mayor and the local police were considered collaborators with the
Americans. The Washington Post reported that local people were vowing
that
they would not allow the U.S. army to return. “We won’t accept anyone
who
comes on the back of a tank,” one was quoted as saying.
The commander of the U.S. military forces in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo
Sanchez,
acknowledged another such incident in Baghdad in a press conference
reported
in The New York Times of Aug. 1:
"‘It was panic, or the soldiers on the ground believed and made the
judgment
call that the vehicle was trying to run the traffic control points into
the
direction we were operating in,’ General Sanchez said. ‘That's when
they
were taken under fire and killed. We regret that, and we're working
through
those tactics.’
“The general also broke the military's silence on a raid Sunday night
in a
wealthy area of Baghdad that left as many as five Iraqi bystanders shot
dead
after they had driven through a neighborhood where troops believed Mr.
Hussein might have been hiding. The shootings, in the relatively
affluent
Mansur district of Baghdad, outraged local residents who said that the
troops had not adequately warned the drivers before shooting.
“The shootings, in the relatively affluent Mansur district of Baghdad,
outraged local residents, who said that the troops had not adequately
warned
the drivers before shooting.”
The U.S. military’s basic problem, however, is not “tactics.” Such
outrages
are an inevitable effect of their political situation. The soldiers,
according to numerous accounts in the European press, are deeply
demoralized. They do not know what they are doing in Iraq or how long
they
are going to be there. But they do know that at least a large part of
the
population hates them and that any one of the local people might try to
kill
them.
Virtually every day U.S. convoys are attacked, and virtually every day
a
soldier or two dies at the hands of Iraqi guerrillas. This leads to
“panic”
responses to attacks, in which innocent Iraqis suffer. In turn, these
human
tragedies exacerbate hatred of the U.S. occupation forces and lead to
more
guerrilla attacks and violent protests.
On Aug. 6, General Sanchez announced that his forces would reduce the
scale
of their repressive operations because of their negative effect on the
Iraqi population. But on the following morning, in central Baghdad, a
U.S.
military unit blew away an entire building after snipers fired on them
from
it. Despite being surrounded, the snipers continued to fire and killed
two
more U.S. soldiers.
The night before, two American soldiers were killed in an ambush in
central
Baghdad. The same day, Aug. 6, marked an attack on a British column
near
Basra, in the supposedly secure Shiite south.
Capitalists encounter difficulties
Most painful no doubt for the U.S. occupiers was that a U.S. technician
working for one of the big companies invited in to loot Iraqi riches
was
killed on Aug. 5, when the vehicle carrying him hit a mine. This
incident,
combined with numerous acts of sabotage on the northern Iraq oil
pipeline,
which is still shut down, put in question the possibilities of the U.S.
capitalists to get the material benefits for which their government
went to
war.
The Italian left daily Il Manifesto noted in its Aug. 5 issue that
under the
Hussein regime, even with the difficulties created by the
U.S.-sponsored
trade embargo, Iraq produced 2.2 million barrels a day. After three
months
of the U.S. occupation, it is only producing about 750,0000 barrels.
Estimates are, the report pointed out, that it would take $30 billion
to $40
billion to restore the productive capacity of the Iraqi oil industry.
And
while many U.S. companies are eager to drain the black gold, few seem
prepared to invest any money to get it.
Nonetheless, the Iraqi oil minister, under the control of Philip
Caroll, a
former chairman of Shell, has already signed contracts for delivery of
650,000 barrels a day, with the lion’s share going to American
companies,
such as Chevron, Texaco, Exxon Mobil, Conoco Philips, Marathon, and
Valero
Energy.
The U.S. occupiers are not waiting even for the formation of a
nominally
independent Iraqi government to launch a plan privatizing the country’s
economy and opening it up to imperialist investors. The privatization
plan
has been assigned to Bearing Point Inc. by Usaid. It is supposed to be
based
on “an international standard of production” and a “fiscal system
favoring
foreign investment.”
Il Manifesto commented: “It is no accident that at the head of the list
of
American companies that have gotten contracts is Bechtel of San
Francisco,
which is notorious in all the Americas for its drastic privatization
projects (such as the one that cut off water for Cochabamba in
Bolivia).”
That scheme touched off one of the most notable explosions of mass
protest
in recent times in Latin America.
So far, despite these projects for the private plundering of Iraq by
U.S.
big business, U.S. taxpayers (predominately working people, since the
rich
and the corporations are largely exempt from taxes) are paying the
rising
price of the occupation. The bill is now $48 billion a month, and it
has
been rising by $4 billion every month.
The estimated cost of “reconstructing” the country, originally, $90
billion,
has now been raised to $150 billion. And the U.S. companies are hardly
going
to pay that. It will be the U.S. taxpayers.
Blair under fire in Britain
The U.S. imperialists have been offering a jackal’s share of their prey
to
their British allies. In fact, because of the higher level of Iraqi
resistance in the north, the only oil exports are from the southern
region
controlled by British forces. But it all goes out of the port of Um
Qasr,
which has been put under the control of Stevadoring Services of
America.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, supposedly a Labour Party official
but
actually a new version of Thatcher with a smiling face, is having to
pay a
very high price for the British capitalists’ share of the loot and the
imperialist chauvinist fanfare. His “new” Labour Party is down to 34
percent
in the polls, its lowest score in 16 years.
The Conservative Party, which also backed the Iraq war, is down to 32
percent. The only gainers are the Liberal Democrats, a minor party,
which
has risen 4 points to 25 percent.
With the political roof coming down on his head, Blair is now having
the
ground dug out from under him by the growing scandal over the suicide
of
David Kelly, the respected scientist who committed suicide after being
exposed as the source of information that got into the press about
Blair’s
hyping up the dossier on the alleged threat of Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction.
The suspicion is that once his identity was revealed, Kelly came under
sufficient pressure from the government to drive him to desperation.
The
incident has increased the public’s view of the Blair regime as both
dishonest and ruthless. And the government’s image has been been made
still
more ugly by the attempt of a government spokesman to denigrate Kelly
as a
“Walter Mitty” on the eve of his funeral.
In all, the lies, the arrogance, and the corruption that were
crystallized
in the imperialist assault on Iraq continue to rebound against the
Blair and
Bush administrations. This is a minefield that cannot be cleared and is
going to continue to explode. It may eventually set fires bigger than
anything the imperialist leaders ever imagined.
The article above was written by Gerry Foley and first appeared in the August 2003 issue of Socialist Action newspaper.
