------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the April 15, 2004 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
IRAQ UNITES AGAINST U.S. OCCUPATION BRING THE TROOPS HOME! By Fred Goldstein April 7--To the consternation of the Bush administration, the Pentagon and the entire U.S. capitalist political establishment, the inevitable has finally begun in Iraq. A section of the Shiite population in Baghdad and key southern cities has opened up a second front in the struggle against the brutal and oppressive U.S. colonial occupation. The resistance has taken a giant leap forward. Just as the U.S. was dispatching Marine regiments to try to crush the Sunni resistance in Fallujah, the followers of Shiite clerical leader Muqtada al-Sadr responded to outrageous provocations with a mass insurrectionary movement in Baghdad and elsewhere. L. Paul Bremmer III, U.S. viceroy in Iraq, had provoked a confrontation after a year of humiliation and repression by the occupation forces. This Shiite insurrection, coinciding with the full-scale urban guerrilla struggle of the Sunni population in Fallujah, Ramadi and other key areas, is an earthquake shaking the ground under the feet of the U.S. imperialists and their allies in Iraq. The U.S. military will try to drown this new wave of resistance in blood. There are already reports that U.S. helicopters have hit a mosque in Fallujah, killing 40 people. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmit has vowed to crush al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. Just before the U.S. offensive, a warrant was issued for the arrest of the cleric. How the insurrectionary forces will be able to withstand the counter- attack by the U.S. military and adapt to a major assault remains to be seen. But whatever the military outcome of this current phase of the struggle, it has sent up in smoke any prospects the Pentagon and the White House may have had of ever establishing a stable, pro-U.S. colonial regime in Iraq. It was only after the U.S. had committed atrocities in Baghdad and Najaf against peaceful demonstrators that Muqtada al-Sadr declared: "America has shown its evil intentions ... the proud Iraqi people cannot accept it. They must defend their rights by any means fit." The newly emerged Mahdi Army, along with other fighters, are reported to be in control of the south-central cities of Kut and Kufa, and are battling for control of Najaf. After having organized mass demon strations throughout the region, Sadr's forces seized government buildings, police stations, bridges and other installations in the Sadr City and Khadi maya sections of Baghdad as well as in Najaf, Karbala, Nasariya, Amara and other cities. These militants have engaged heavily armed U.S. military forces, in addition to British, Italian, Ukrainian, Polish and Bulgarian forces, in pitched battles against helicopters, tanks, armored vehicles and artillery. SUNNI-SHIITE UNITY EMERGING ON THE GROUND Most importantly, unity on the ground in the struggle is evident. On the morning that U.S. Marines began their attack on Fallujah, as the insurrection in the south was underway, a letter was read in Sadr City. "We send you this letter from your brothers in al Anbar governate and the city of Fallujah to say that we are with you under the banner of 'God is Greatest' and the mantle of Islam. We are all behind Sayyid Muqtada Sadr, may God give him victory ... on the subject of liberation." (Washington Post, April 6) The New York Times of April 7 reported what it considered to be an "ominous synergy developing between the Sunni and Shiite insurgents." The report described how Sunni forces from a Baghdad neighborhood of Adamiya and Shiite fighters from nearby Khadamiya joined forces in a battle against U.S. troops. "On a white sheet hung from the bullet-ridden [sic] walls of a Sunni mosque were the words: 'Our banner in Adamiya is the same banner as in Khadamiya. If they have a problem, we are their backup and their right hand.' "The two neighborhoods are linked by a bridge over the Tigris River. Rival Sunni and Shiite gangs used to cross the bridge to rumble. Now, people say, militants cross the bridge to coordinate attacks." BREMMER'S "BLOODY SUNDAY" AND SADR CITY'S RESISTANCE The insurrection was touched off by Bremmer, who at the beginning of April ordered the newspaper Al-Hawzah, published by al-Sadr, shut down for 60 days. Mass protest demonstrations were called. Bremmer then sent forces to surround al-Sadr's house near Najaf and arrested his communications officer, Mustafa Yacoubi. Protest demonstrations were organized. Writing about the demonstration in Baghdad's Firdos Square, British journalist Naomi Klein reported: "On Sunday, Iraqi soldiers, trained and controlled by Coalition forces, opened fire on demonstrators here, forcing the emergency evacuation of the nearby Sheraton and Palestine hotels. As demonstrators returned to their homes in the poor neighborhood of Sadr City, the U.S. Army followed with tanks, helicopters and planes, firing at random on homes, stores, streets, even ambulances. According to local hospitals, 47 people were killed and many more injured. In Najaf, the day was also bloody: 20 demonstrators dead, more than 150 injured." (zmag.org, April 5) Bremmer had opened up a campaign of terror against the Shiite followers of al-Sadr with this "bloody Sunday" massacre, and by the afternoon the insurrection was underway. A report in the April 6 Los Angeles Times gave details: "A U.S. military patrol was navigating the pitted streets of the Baghdad slum that is the stronghold of [al-Sadr] late Sunday afternoon when it ran into about 30 members of the cleric's personal volunteer army. "But militia members rebuffed orders to lay down their arms. They and supporters hidden in a maze of surrounding buildings showered the Americans with small arms fire, pipe bombs and rocket-propelled grenades. "The echoes of gunfire raining down from the rooftops sent Iraqi police fleeing their precincts and forced the American patrols to duck into an abandoned building. Two other patrols wound their way into the heart of the slum, and they were attacked almost simultaneously on all sides. Militiamen toppled market stalls into the narrow streets to create roadblocks, and combat continued ... as night fell." For hours, continued the report, "quick-response forces with Bradley fighting vehicles rolled into the area, only to be pinned down by heavy fire from black clad militia members hiding on rooftops and in alleyways." Maj. Gen. Martin Dempsey, commander of the First Armored Division, told the reporter: "There was constant pressure. There wasn't a time when the soldiers there could have simply stood up and said 'OK ... Let's leave now.' Whenever they moved, there was somebody trying to suppress them." Continued the article: "It took more than four hours and a dozen tanks to quell the fighting. When the bullets finally stopped, dozens of Iraqis and eight U.S. troops were dead, with more than 40 Americans wounded." FALLUJAH: "EVERYONE WHO HAD A GUN WAS OUT THERE" The U.S. military faced the same kind of determined resistance in Fallujah, despite the use of helicopter gunships, C-130 killer planes with rapid-fire heavy machine guns, tanks, armored vehicles and 500- pound bombs. The people prepared to meet the Pentagon's well-publicized Operation Vigilant Resolve with urban guerrilla warfare. "As soon as we pulled up, they started shooting at us," Lance Cpl. Jamil Alkattan told reporter Pamela Constable. "There were mortars, rockets and bullets flying everywhere. They were definitely waiting for us. It seemed like everyone in the city who had a gun was out there." (Washington Post, April 7) One company commander said that as the U.S. troops crossed the line from an industrial zone they had occupied, there was "a real uneasy feeling. Little kids made roadblocks." One commander noted that, unlike previous guerrilla engagements, where the fighters attack and melt away, this time the guerrilla units were larger and were standing their ground and fighting. The resistance carried out the same kind of aggressive guerrilla warfare in Ramadi, where 12 Marines were killed in a seven-hour battle after an attack on the U.S. base at the governor's palace. The battle raged in alleys around the area. Now a U.S. helicopter has been reported downed in Baquba. Fighters in Mosul have attacked U.S. forces as an act of solidarity with fighters in Fallujah. And a U.S. soldier has been killed in Kirkuk. Hundreds of Iraqis have been killed in the latest fighting. At least 30 U.S. soldiers were killed and many more wounded. Bush, Bremmer, "defense" secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. John Abizaid, are ready to fight to the last drop of blood of the Iraqi people and the U.S. troops. The U.S. military, which so feared the battle of Baghdad during the war, is now being drawn into the kind of urban guerrilla fighting it was able to avoid when the resistance in Baghdad collapsed in April a year ago. REPUBLICANS, DEMOCRATS WANT MORE U.S. TROOPS With this operation the Pentagon is actually resuming the war, complete with air power and heavy armor. The U.S. high command is firing into residential areas and destroying houses, schools and hospitals while it sends in U.S. troops to fight block by block, commit atrocities against the Iraqi defenders and the population at large, and be killed themselves. The Pentagon is trying to sound calm and confident as the fire of resistance spreads across Iraq. Nevertheless, Gen. Abizaid asked for options to increase troops in the area. Rumsfeld has said that the U.S. military will get whatever troops it asks for. Secretary of State Colin Powell made a futile mission to Brussels to try to get the NATO powers, especially France and Germany, to commit forces. Rumsfeld, who once decried the "Old Europe," has said he would be "delighted" if NATO got involved. The call for more U.S. troops on the ground is emanating from both Repub licans and Democrats. There are now 135,000 troops in Iraq on "rotation" and many may be held over. There are also at least 15,000 mercenaries--former Green Berets, Navy Seals, South African mercenaries left over from the days of apartheid, Chilean ex-soldiers from the army of the fascist Augusto Pinochet, and every variety of soldier of fortune. They can make up to $1,000 a day. These "private contractors," in the employ of private corporations, are not subject to any military codes. But this privatization of the military is just a way of hiding additional U.S. and British forces. It was the death of four of these mercenaries that provided the pretext for the attack on Fallujah. KENNEDY ON BUSH'S VIETNAM Along with calls for more troops, the demands to internationalize the occupation are growing louder and louder. More cries are going out to bring in NATO, the United Nations, and any other means by which the resistance can be stopped, defused, diverted or crushed. Typical is Sen. Edward Kennedy, who has denounced the war as Bush's Vietnam. His goal is to boost the Kerry presidential campaign. Kennedy neglected to mention that it was his brother, John F. Kennedy, who got U.S. imperialism into the Vietnam War in the first place. And it was Lyndon Johnson, JFK's vice president, who sent half a million troops there. But Kennedy would prefer that people remember the role of Richard Nixon, who came at the tail end of the war. Nor is Kennedy calling for the U.S. to get out of Iraq. He wants to succeed with the occupation, with the subjugation of the Iraqi people, but under international auspices. But he is right in several respects. Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon all lied to the people and the world about what was going on in Vietnam. They lied about their so- called "successes." They sent home reports of "body counts" to show that they were winning the war. They lied about the fact that it was a war of national liberation, which they were trying to suppress in the name of fighting communism--just as the Bush administration is trying to justify a war for oil and colonial subjugation in the name of fighting terrorism. The Vietnam analogy holds also in that this latest escalation of the resistance, whether or not it is militarily set back, has profound political implications. It shows the Iraqi people, the people of the Middle East and the entire world that Washington cannot turn Iraq into its compliant colony. AN IRAQI INTIFADA The battle of Fallujah, despite the atrocities carried out by the U.S. military, will not extinguish the spirit of resistance. It will only drive it deeper and wider, in the same way that no amount of repression can extinguish the Palestinian struggle for national liberation. It is no accident that the U.S. high command, according to Robert Fisk of the London Independent (April 6), has asked the Sharon government of Israel for the rules of engagement it uses in Gaza and the West Bank. It was inevitable that--after watching the Sunni fighters valiantly resist the occupation for a year, after experiencing the raids, the checkpoints, the killing and wounding of civilians, the utter disrespect of their culture and customs by the occupation--the Shiites would join the resistance. The pressure of the masses to fight back has become irresistible. It is true that this latest phase was set off by the arrogance of Bremmer and the Pentagon. In fact, it was Bremmer who laid the basis for building up the forces of Muqtada al-Sadr in the first place. The less resolute current among the Shiites, led by Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, had center stage when he made the elementary democratic demand for elections by June 30. But Bremmer and Co. stonewalled al-Sistani and forced him to back down. And there's more. Bremmer demanded and got outrageous provisions attached to the constitution that preserve U.S. command over the Iraqi military for five years. He got provisions to establish 14 U.S. military bases around the country. He forbade any new government from overturning the privatization laws he had illegally laid down. With all this, it became clear that there never would be even formal sovereignty for Iraq, elections or not, as long as the U.S. was running the show. This is what made the present insurrection inevitable. And this is what will make a stable U.S. imperialist rule in Iraq impossible. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. 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