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NEWS & LETTERS, JUNE 2003
Editorial
Occupation of Iraq: What happens now?
The Bush administration is learning the age-old truth
that it is easier to defeat a country militarily than to occupy it and control
the population. It is not surprising that the U.S. government, a representative
of advanced capitalism, was able to employ advanced capitalist technology to
bomb Iraq into submission. We opposed the war and we opposed Saddam Hussein's
oppressive regime; we "take sides" only to support movements for
genuine liberation. Now everyone wants to know, what comes next? It's hard to believe that Bush's experts were as unaware
as it seems of the human problems that would follow the war--from the immediate
looting of hospitals and historical treasures, to the continuing lack of
electricity, water, food and medicine, six weeks after the bombing ended.
According to a UN warning issued May 14, more than 300,000 Iraqi children
currently face death from acute malnutrition, twice as many as before the
invasion. The Bush administration undoubtedly knew what could happen to the
people of Iraq; they just did not care. NO DEMOCRACY IN SIGHT The U.S. is now faced with the long-term problems of
restoring the economy and governing a diverse country that does not want to be
occupied, all the while arguing that its heinous war was justified in order to
bring democracy and a better life to the Iraqi people. No prospect of either
democracy or a better life is in sight. Rather, Iraq is sinking into chaos and
the rule of fiefdoms and mafias. People, especially women, are afraid even to
leave their houses due to the violence and destruction. The best organized mass movements at this time are led
by Islamic fundamentalist clerics, who stand ready to take the reins of
government while the U.S. government flounders about. The retired general who
had been sent to govern Iraq was replaced, as the State Department and Pentagon
argue over what to do. Current U.S. policy seems to be to let everything in the
country collapse. Whether or not the worsening conditions are intentional, they
seem designed to cause people to give up the hope for self-determination that
the fall of Saddam engendered, to eviscerate any nationwide political movements
by "divide and conquer," and to make an exhausted population grateful
just to receive handouts to keep them alive. At the beginning of the war, the U.S. seemed determined
to leave the Ba'ath party bureaucracy and police in place so as to prevent any
opportunities for social revolution. That was the reason the U.S. did not remove
Saddam during the first Gulf War. This time the plan was quickly rejected by the
Iraqi masses, who took matters into their own hands as soon as Saddam was killed
(or, as is now reported, fled the country at the start of the war with a billion
dollars in cash). Doctors and hospital workers demonstrated in Baghdad in
May against the U.S. attempt to re-install the Ba'ath commissioner of health,
forcing the U.S. rulers to reverse themselves and announce that no such
officials would be allowed back in power. Women have been completely ignored by
the U.S. overseers, but now are speaking out against the possibility of losing
the rights they had. Feminist groups are demanding a say in the new government
and denouncing U.S. attempts to court religious leaders by holding out the
possibility of an "Islamic democracy." Without women's rights and secular law, there can be no
democracy. But of course, the U.S. has no intention of allowing the Iraqis to
participate in deciding their future. Bush's experts had to give up immediately
their plan to install a puppet government of Iraqi exiles, so now they state
publicly that there will be no self-government for a long time. Iraq's likely future can be seen in Afghanistan, which
underwent devastating U.S. bombing a year-and-a-half earlier than Iraq did.
Although Afghanistan was a much poorer country and had an Islamic fundamentalist
government, we can expect the U.S. will act--and not act--in a similar manner in
Iraq as it has in Afghanistan. There the U.S. installed a puppet government and
some troops in Kabul, leaving the rest of the country in the hands of
fundamentalist warlords, whose tacit support it pays for with money and
permission to control their fiefdoms. Little U.S. aid has gone to re-building or
improving conditions. The U.S.'s claim that its war on Iraq will bring
democracy is as big a lie as its claim to have "freed the women of
Afghanistan." One Afghan group that has consistently opposed all wars,
occupations and fundamentalist regimes over the past 26 years is RAWA, the
Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. WOMEN'S STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM Tahmeena Faryal, a RAWA representative on tour in the
U.S., declared, "Little has changed in Afghanistan, especially for women.
We don't have democracy; student demonstrators were recently attacked and killed
for asking for water and electricity. The fundamentalists are gaining support.
Conditions for the 85% of women in rural areas are just as bad as they were
under the Taliban." Women's position everywhere is a measure of society's
unfreedom, and their struggles are beacons toward a new way of life for women
and men alike. As those kinds of beacons, two feminist organizations have been
operating in Northern Iraq--Defense of Women's Rights and Independent Women's
Organization (See page 2). Only social revolution by the masses themselves can bring freedom. RAWA and the Iraqi women's organizations arose from within two of the most oppressive countries in the world. Their ideals and practice can inspire our own movements, and help to put the issue of social revolution back on the world's agenda. |
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