| After 21 days,
the fall of Baghdad was a watershed in the military campaign, leaving
the capital in the hands of the invaders and accelerating the fall
of other cities, such as Mosul and Tikrit. The capitulation of Tikrit
–Hussein’s hometown and a stronghold of his inner circle-
without a fight exposed the extent of Hussein’s debacle.
What are the reasons for such an abrupt denouement? Without doubt,
the overwhelming military superiority of the imperialist coalition
over the Iraqi army is the first major reason. The latter was furnished
with obsolete equipment, which could hardly match the high tech
weaponry of the Americans, because it could not modernize itself
as a result of the sanctions imposed by the US, Britain and the
UN throughout the 1990s after the first Gulf War.
In spite of this abysmal gap, once the coalition troops were forced
into urban warfare in the streets of Baghdad –where their
technological superiority would be reduced- they might have been
expected to suffer heavy losses. This, on top of an international
context set against the invasion, might have pushed Hussein in the
direction of seeking a truce allowing the survival of his regime.
But against those expectations harbored by the regime, Baghdad fell
to the invaders with hardly any resistance.
This leads us to believe that there was some sort of negotiation
between the American troops and the upper echelons of Iraq’s
armed forces. What might have triggered the collapse was the capitulation
of the main commanders of the Republican Guards, the Special Republican
Guards and heads of the secret service. Although the quick demise
of the demise might have been provoked by an overriding push of
the enemy army, there are some clear signs leading us to assume
that Baghdad was surrendered without fight, negotiated in exchange
for money and guarantees for the main henchmen in the armed forces.
The secure march of the imperialist troops past Karbala, the first
defense ring around Baghdad; the seizure of the airport, which met
no resistance; the unbelievable fact that not a single bridge providing
access to the city was blown up, all these are clear signs pointing
to a negotiated surrender. The contrast with the first weeks, when
the resistance was being felt, dealing tactical blows against the
coalition forces –by resorting to guerrilla warfare waged
by local militiamen and the Fedayeen- and the sudden fall of Baghdad
makes us think of a retreat all along the way.
In the end, this is the result of the corrupt and bourgeois nature
of Saddam Hussein’s army, who kept the control through ceaseless
purges and terror over the rank-and-file soldiers and the command
echelons. The desertion of the Republican Guards –or even,
as some intelligence reports say, the likely assassination of Hussein,
his sons and his closest aides due to a conspiracy- shows that the
upper echelons of the regime might have tried a bit of their own
medicine in the face of the pressure and the blackmail exerted by
the US army, which placed its bets to such outcome right from the
start. The rottenness of the Bath party regime has been exposed
in full light. Its authoritarian control over the country, on top
of its inability to unify the whole nation in the face of the imperialist
enemy as a result of the national oppressed against the Kurds and
the social oppression of the Shiites, meant that it only relied
on the control of a crony army for support, which lead it to an
early grave. Those powerful social and political reasons are the
key factors that paved the way for a quick, relatively easy, military
victory of the imperialist coalition.
A non-consolidated victory
The debacle of the Iraqi state brought about a power vacuum. During
the first few days, the United States turned a blind eye on the
ongoing chaos in order to make the masses feel weary, while boosting
the sense that an occupation was ‘needed’ to uphold
‘order’ at one and the same time. While the American
troops gave looters a free hand to ransack hospitals and the archeological
museum –whose artifacts will be sold in the West- they were
busy guarding the Oil Department. After this first chaotic phase,
they got down to restoring the hatred police force of the old regime,
a move that might fuel distrust and spite among the masses towards
it and the ‘liberators’.
But this is a just trifle for the US, which will be confronted with
the complicated task of establishing a legitimate government. Iraq
was born out of an arbitrary carve-up by British imperialism after
the demise of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War. There
are nations such as the Kurds that are divided by artificial borders.
In the territory of Iraq, several groups coexist one along the other:
the Kurds in the north, the Shiites in the south and in major areas
of Baghdad (where they make up the most impoverished and marginal
quarters of society), and the Sunni minority. The ruling class was
always recruited among the latter, including Hussein himself.
The debacle of the regime unleashed a fight for position of power,
not only between all those groups, but also within each of them
–the occupation of Mosul and Kirkuk by the Kurdish permeshgas
and the assassination of pro-Western Shiite figures in the South
being two cases in point. The American attempt at setting up a centralized
government –a direct US administration first and a puppet
transitional regime later- might be reversed by the Pandora box
that has been opened now that Saddam is gone. The foundations for
a new power in Iraq will be laid by the killings, the street fighting
and the guerrilla warfare, rather than by the diplomatic rounds
sponsored by the so-called Iraqi opposition.
Last but not least, for the American occupation to succeed in the
long run, the masses should put up with it one way or another. So
far, no matter how deep the hatred of Hussein might be, this has
not been achieved, except for some token symptoms. Furthermore,
the demonstration held against the appointment of a governor for
the city of Mosul, which was brutally suppressed by the Marines,
with a death toll of ten and dozens of injured protesters, is showing
that the resentment of the population might grow as well. A drawn
out occupation might fuel more protests like this one, sparking
off a mass resistance.
Force, consensus and coercion
The doctrine of ‘preemptive war’ postulated by the
US has had a promising debut. But it might also lead the hawks in
the Bush administration to over-reliance in militarism. A journalist
of the Spanish daily El País puts it this way: ‘A relatively
easy victory, and with very low casualties of their own, might boost
a tendency in Washington to regard war not only as an instrument
of politics, in the sense that Clausewitz postulated it, but as
a privileged instrument (…) We might be in for a situation,
not of a diplomacy backed by force, but of force without diplomacy
at all on the part of the hyperpower’ (April, 14 2003)
But history shows that the use of military force is not enough to
uphold the world supremacy of a power, unless it goes hand in hand
with pacts and agreements to wrestle some sort of consensus from
other powers, via diplomacy, and through them, gain the acquiescence
of the mass movement. That is why, right from the beginning, we
said the belligerent course of the United States reflects a potential
weakness in the long run, a symptom of its historical decline. The
diplomatic defeat it suffered at the start of the conflict, when
it failed to gain the endorsement of the United Nations, bears testimony
to this.
After their tour de force in Iraq, the French strand of imperialism,
although cautious, did not retreat from their fundamental positions.
The leaders of France, Germany and Russia gathered at the Saint
Petersburg summit, and demanded a place in the future administration
of the country. China, regarded as a ‘strategic competitor’,
has restarted its flights monitoring US spy planes over the South
China Sea. Such move ended in the forced landing of a spy plane
and fueled a great tension with the US right at the beginning of
the Bush administration. In this way, the regime in Beijing is sending
a message to the latter, meaning that it will seek to curtail its
actions.
And the fundamental thing at stake here: the rejection of the masses
of the world towards a war that was clearly perceived as an imperialist
move is yet another constraint holding down American power. The
very same swiftness with which the United States prevailed over
Iraq has exposed the fact that this country posed no military threat,
as the imperialist propaganda said. And the weapons of mass destruction
are nowhere to be seen, which also adds up to the lack of legitimacy
of the war.
That is why hawks like Robert Kagan are suggesting Bush to ‘resist
the temptation of becoming a superpower’. They believe that
an overtly puppet regime along the lines of Rumsfeld’s plans
and his would-be viceroy Ahmed Chalabi (which has been out of Iraq
for the past 45 years!) is the least convenient choice. Such move,
they believe, would heap discredit for the ‘major success
of the President’. He recommends that ‘the US should
not pursue the division of Europe, let France do the work…the
more the US punishes the German government the more we push an anxious
and isolated Germany into the open arms of France’. And he
warns that ‘As the military campaign fades out, there is tendency
to downplay diplomacy (...) we should do exactly otherwise (…)
the Bush administration needs to work even more hardly to justify
the war. The US can win the hearts and minds of Europe, and even
so across the Arab world, convincing the people, in hindsight, that
the war was more just than they used to believe’. And he concludes
‘The ability of America to effectively give the lead in the
future will by and large hinge upon how this war is understood and
remembered throughout the world. That battle is just beginning,
and if the administration is as clever on the diplomatic field as
it is on the war front, it might win that as well.’ (Washington
Post, April 9, 2003)
Should they take heed to such advice, we cannot rule out that America
might try to get a delicate balance between keeping the belligerent
move rolling, combining it with reactionary pacts in the Middle
East and across the world. These would be backed by the threat of
a deployment of troops –i.e., coercion. For example, at the
same time that they were launching all sorts of aggressive accusations
against Syria, which might herald future military actions, they
are also starting to shape a pact for the Palestinian question that
is predicated upon the promise of achieving a fictitious state around
2005. And this entails resorting to coercion, because they are demanding
the Palestinian leadership to oust Arafat and make radicalized wings
such as Hamas toe the line, seizing upon the favorable balance of
forces achieved after the victory over Iraq.
The perspectives
Stabilizing Iraq is a top priority for the US, but in the medium
turn, the course not clear yet. Amid a crippling world recession
that is affecting the US in the first place, American imperialism
blows hot and cold between going down the road that leads to further
aggressions against Syria, or else try to heal the wounds with the
other powers. The more ambitious its imperial agenda becomes, the
stronger the likelihood of squandering its military victories, thus
fueling increased instability and imperialist divisions, paving
the way, in the end, for revolutionary developments.
For the Arab masses, and those in semicolonial countries, and also
for the antiwar movement that sprung up across the world, especially
in the imperialist countries, the victory of the US is a harsh setback.
The antiwar protest will no doubt languish from now on, but the
legacy of resentment in the Arab world and the anti-imperialist
hatred that spread throughout the world will shape an even more
radicalized vanguard. We need to draw the lessons to rejuvenate
a truly proletarian internationalism, which should start demanding
the withdrawal of all US and British troops out of Iraq and the
Middle East, while getting ready to defeat the coming campaigns
that the US government is planning now.
|
