BOTH American generals and ex-British ambassadors have been predicting that Iraq is either on the brink of civil war or that it has already begun, and that the country is set to fracture into three entities – a Kurdish state in the north, a ‘Sunni’ state in central and western Iraq, and a ‘Shi’ite’ state in the oil rich south.
Their conclusion has been that this will be ‘very messy’, meaning that large numbers of people will die as a consequence of such a break-up, but that this new form of ‘divide and rule’ could still turn out OK for imperialism.
In fact, this ‘messy’ situation is the solution of the US and UK leaderships to the insurrection that has defeated their military forces – no doubt, part of Rice’s ‘birth pangs’ of the ‘new Middle East’.
This is why the US is currently reinforcing its troops and not reducing them as it pledged.
It is also the imperialists’ answer to the fact that their alliance with the SCIRI and the Badr brigade organisations, that spent 20 or so years in exile in Iran before returning to Iraq in May 2003 has gone very badly wrong, now that the US and the UK are gunning for Iran.
Iran tolerated the imperialist invasion of Iraq, and as part of the deal with the US and UK, the SCIRI and the Badr Brigade, and the Dawa Party returned to Iraq from Iran in May 2003. They initially ran southern Iraq for the British imperialists, and then became major forces in the Iraqi puppet governments.
The imperialist conflict with Iran has changed all this.
Now a series of pro-Iranian militias run Basra, and they have very little time for the British imperialists, who are confined to their barracks awaiting transfer to Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, the militias attached to the different puppet ‘democratic’ government parties are wiping out their opponents, killing thousands of people in Baghdad and Basra every month, many of them being tortured to death.
The pro-occupation death squads are wiping out thousands, to the point where many tens of thousands of teachers, scientists, university lecturers and students have quit Iraq for Syria and Jordan.
However, the US forces last Monday were directing their fire at the Al-Sadr led Mahdi Army, with a major attack on Sadr City.
The spokesman for Al-Sadr said that the military attack was a payback for the over 200,000 strong demonstration in Baghdad, organised by Al-Sadr, in support of the Hezbollah and the Palestinians under attack in Gaza.
The popular slogans on the mass demonstration were ‘Death to Israel’ and ‘Death to the US’.
The Al-Sadr movement, and the millions of Shi’ite poor that it represents, remains opposed to the US and UK occupation of Iraq, and is opposed to all attempts to dismember Iraq. It is also for the liberation of Palestine and the ending of Israeli attacks on the Lebanon.
In fact, Hezbollah’s struggle, and its defeat of the Israeli ground forces in southern Lebanon, has evoked the same admiration in Iraq among all sections of society as it has in the rest of the Arab world.
Now is the time for the insurgents, who have fought the imperialist forces to a standstill, to unite all who are opposed to the occupation, including the Al-Sadr movement, to end it by driving the imperialists out of Iraq.
This will create the conditions for an election free from imperialist control, where the Iraqis will elect the government of their choice, and put an end to all aspects of the US-UK dictatorship, including the laws banning trade unionism.
Such a defeat for imperialism will create the conditions for the defeat of Zionism and imperialism throughout the Middle East, and the establishment of the Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, and a Lebanese state free from the constant threat of Israeli invasions.
