Mostrando entradas con la etiqueta irak. Mostrar todas las entradas
Mostrando entradas con la etiqueta irak. Mostrar todas las entradas
Proletarixs Internacionalistas desde Oriente Medio: De Bagdad a Beirut, la lucha continua...]
Texto en castellano: https://valladolorentodaspartes.blogspot.com/2020/01/desde-bagdad-hasta-beirut-debemos.html
[english]
The Iraqi government is made up of all bourgeois factions in Iraq, and it is accepted by regional forces and the world bourgeoisie, but the proletariat tried to bring it down…
The “Green Zone” in Baghdad is the centre of the world capitalism; the proletariat tried to occupy it and lost a lot of lives for it…
The port of Basra is a global corridor for oil exports and international trade and proletariat blocked it, and tried to control it.
The Iraqi police, security forces, special forces and military forces are forces of global capitalism (with the participation of Shia, Sunni, Christian, Kurdish, and Turkmen bourgeoisie, with a large numbers of regional and international forces, including troops of America and Europe, Turkey, Iran, etc.), but the proletariat attacked them, their centres and detachments in the streets, and as many as 650 proletarians have been killed by them and more than 20 thousand wounded (this is not
to mention the number of abducted and imprisoned…).
The proletariat in all rebellious areas of Iraq burned down the headquarters of the political parties (religious and national without exception), they burned down the houses of members of parliament and State officials and they also attacked security and police stations, media, judicial institutions and the Ministry of Justice, newspapers and television stations… By doing this, the proletariat attacked the whole State.
According to the prime minister Adel Abd al-Mahdi, this movement destroyed the national economy (capitalism) in all its aspects.
The proletariat in its struggle attacked without exception everything, any symbol, any person, any base attached to the history of the authority and repression including military, diplomatic institutions,
trade centres and secret services, internal as well as external. All the attacks on the repressive forces of Pasdaran in the city of Karbala are not really anti-Iranian as the media said, but it is a part of the class action against the repressive forces and centres in all their forms just like the attack on the Green Zone and the other places.
Isn’t it clear from proletarian united action and its slogans: “Down with all the thieves”, “From Baghdad to Beirut, we shall continue. No Sunni no Shia…”, “No country, no work, we all stay in the street!”, “No country, no work until the downfall of the system” – that the proletariat targets
counterrevolution in its totality, just like it did in Basra in September 2018!?
The bourgeoisie has always tried to distort the class path of our revolutionary movement. They have resorted to various methods to empty the revolutionary content of our struggle; they create stories of
conspiracy and call it names. All of this in order to cover up its bloody crackdown and the destruction of our revolutionary movement in bourgeois conflicts. The proletariat has risen up on a social level
against all the exploiters and it intends to terminate the whole of their power.
The proletariat understands very much that external and internal capitalists (Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds, Christians, Jews…), the wealthiest from all over the world are part of the State and they are all united in exploiting the humanity, therefore, proletarian struggle is without a doubt a united struggle against all of them…
The militant proletariat does not allow anyone to represent it; it has no demands and it does not negotiate. It is not attached to any political programme… Isn’t this rebellion a deep class struggle against the capitalist system in its entirety? The only programme of the proletariat is its determination to continue and direct the unified struggle against the dictatorship of Capital and State.
“We are against all of you, and we take everything.” That’s the autonomy of the class and the strength of the struggle of our movement… And therefore, it is not easy for the State to extinguish or to root out this movement.
The proletariat is not in a waiting situation or in a depressed mood… Since the beginning of the movement and until now, even with massive repression and murdering of the State, this movement continues and it is expanding the scope of its struggles and tactics day after day. For example, in Baghdad, the movement formed combat units and spread all around the city to interrupt the traffic, and take control of the bridges and important points. It set up its collective coordinating
activities to extend and expand its struggle to plan the next day and the next target, it published leaflets about its struggle, and it treated injured comrades… all of this is the coordination, organization and expansion of their struggle capacity.
The proletarian struggles in the past always took energy from each other. That is how the struggle continues and exercises its class interests and internationalism as well. By breaking the geographical
borders, ideological, economical and democratic frameworks and the national State… this movement targets the Capital and global capitalism. And today the exactly same struggle exists in reality.
The proletariat nowadays (from Haiti, France, Hong Kong, Egypt, Latin America, Lebanon to Iraq and Iran) is in the same struggle, we are fighting the same enemy, we have the same interests and the same hope: the overthrow of capitalism and the realization of community of human life without wage labour, exploitation, profit, Capital, work, pollution, injustice, wars and destruction.
This proletarian struggle is not an “anarchist” struggle, it is neither a “socialist” struggle, nor a struggle for the sake of democratic power, or the national State – it’s a revolutionary, class and international struggle against the capitalist dictatorship over life (over the Earth)…
It is a struggle to liberate life from all forms of human slavery…
If today young militants have come out on the street and they take a lead in the struggle and heavily participate in it, it is something natural!
Because this generation, while running daily from the catastrophe of capital, is dreaming of life. They are those who have no stability in life… what they have today may not last until tomorrow. What they feel was close to them today; tomorrow seems to be very far. The greed of capitalism, its wars, and its successive disasters left them in a constant struggle. This situation intensifies more and more at the
global level and becomes a hell that pushes the proletariat into the struggle… Their struggle is a struggle of life against this capitalist hell. The proletarians in the struggle understand capitalism and its catastrophe and they feel alive and they are happy in their struggle for life.
The proletarian struggle is the struggle of the exploited class against the world capitalism. It is a struggle for life, against the exploitative and deadly relations of the global Capital.
The proletariat continues to struggle: from France to Lebanon, from Iraq to Chile, from Hong Kong to Iran… and calls upon all other neighbouring areas where it is possible to unite and to co-ordinate class action in this struggle against capitalism.
From our region the participation of the proletariat in Turkey, Israel and Iran… blocks the possibilities of the capitalist war and pushes our international class war towards a better perspective.
Down with exploitation and oppression… Down with war… Down with capitalism…
For the continuation of the class war all over the World
From the comrades of international struggle
Internationalist Proletarians
Middle East
November 2019
International and Class Communication: internationalist@riseup.net
بە عەرەبى بۆ بڵاوکردنەوە [Ar] by Valladolor on Scribd
بەکوردى بۆ بڵاو کردنەوە [Ku] by Valladolor on Scribd
También en Irak, miles de jóvenes han estado protestando en las calles y
plazas durante más de un mes contra el desempleo, el coste de la vida, la
falta de servicios públicos y, en particular, contra la corrupción
generalizada a nivel político y gubernamental. Los jóvenes se manifiestan,
las fuerzas del orden burguesas disparan
Las protestas llevadas a cabo desde septiembre contra los gobiernos de Sudán, Argelia, Egipto, Jordania y Líbano también llegaron a Irak en octubre, especialmente a la capital Bagdad y a las provincias del sur del país, Basora, Maysan, Dhi Qar, Muthanna, Basora, Nassiriya, Hillah, Najaf, Amara y Diwaniya. En el sur del país, de hecho, a pesar de la presencia de las grandes compañías petroleras, el desempleo sigue siendo alto, los servicios sociales son penosos y los agricultores abandonan el campo debido a la drástica caída del nivel de los dos principales ríos, el Tigris y el Éufrates.
En
algunas ciudades como Nassiriya, Amara y Najaf, los manifestantes
incendiaron algunos edificios gubernamentales. En casi todas las ciudades se
produjeron enfrentamientos muy violentos: las manifestaciones comenzaron
pacíficamente, pero cuado los manifestantes entraron en los edificios
públicos para gritar su cólera, se convirtieron en enfrentamientos violentos
en los que las fuerzas de represión del gobierno, a menudo acompañadas por
grupos armados "desconocidos" y la acción de auténticos francotiradores, han
disparado sistemáticamente contra la multitud. En los primeros cuatro días
de protesta, 72 personas fueron oficialmente asesinadas, más de 3.000
heridas y 540 detenidas (1). No cabe duda: las manifestaciones contra el
gobierno de Adel Abdul Mahdi se enfrentaron desde el principio a una
violencia que no deja lugar a dudas sobre la voluntad política del actual
gobierno de aplastar por la fuerza un movimiento que desde su inicio ha
demostrado ser muy diferente al que en 2011 se presentó bajo el disfraz de
la "Primavera Árabe". Hasta la fecha, el 31 de octubre, hay más de 250
muertos y 8000 heridos; sólo en Karbala, la ciudad santa del Islam, el 29 de
octubre las milicias armadas chiítas han hecho una masacre: 18 muertos (2).
Pero las calles y plazas, desde Basora hasta Bagdad, siguen llenas de
rebeldes.
Todos los reportajes en los diferentes medios de prensa y radio-televisión
apuntan a esta diferencia. En 2011, el movimiento de revuelta que salió de
Túnez y luego llegó a Egipto, extendiéndose a casi todos los países árabes,
se identificó con un objetivo principal: derrocar al "dictador" del momento:
Bel Ali en Túnez, Mubarak en Egipto. El movimiento rebelde - basado en todas
estas ocasiones en las condiciones de extrema miseria de la gran mayoría de
la población- creyó que con la caída del tirano y la apertura de una nueva
fase democrática del país, se resolverían los problemas económicos y la vida
social y política. El verdadero poder, sin embargo, no estaba en manos del
tirano del momento y de su clan, sino de toda la clase dominante burguesa,
de la cual el tirano era ciertamente parte. Pero los imperialismos
euroamericanos que lo apoyaban, consideraron más conveniente para el
mantenimiento del poder económico y político la defenestración de un Ben Ali
y un Mubarak, fomentando intensamente la ilusión de que la nueva democracia
establecida con todo su aparato electoral y parlamentario tranquilizaría a
la población, restauraría la paz social gracias a la cual podría seguir
haciendo sus negocios y explotar a la clase proletaria como antes. De hecho,
más que antes. Que entonces el ejército desempeñó una función decisiva -en
los países con capitalismo atrasado es la única fuerza organizada y
concentrada en la defensa de los intereses del capital- lo ha demostrado
ampliamente que el Egipto de al-Sisi. Las ilusiones democráticas no podían
hacer otra cosa que chocar con la realidad de los capitalismos que, para
estar a la altura de sus relaciones con los imperialismos más fuertes y los
amos del mercado mundial, no pueden dejar de utilizar las mismas armas que
antes utilizaban los tiranos caídos: represión, encarcelamiento, asesinatos
selectivos, secuestros y desapariciones de figuras políticas que no se
someten al nuevo orden, etc.... Y en todo esto, las diferentes formaciones
confesionales-sunitas y chiítas, en particular, pero divididas entre sí por
intereses locales hasta el final de la guerra- juegan el habitual doble
papel: pacificadores del espíritu y partidarios de algunas facciones
burguesas e iniciadores de la imposición violenta de un fundamentalismo
islámico a través del cual controlar los territorios, los recursos y los
grupos humanos a explotar. La burguesía siempre lucha contra otra burguesía,
para hacer valer sus intereses de grupo, que lleva el uniforme militar, la
sotana, la chaqueta y corbata parlamentaria o el suéter de un empresario
moderno, pero todos juntos luchan sin duda contra el proletariado cada vez
que éste insinúa movilizarse en defensa de sus intereses de clase.
Los actuales movimientos de protesta y revuelta son, como hemos dicho,
diferentes, no tanto desde el punto de vista de las ilusiones democráticas -estas,
por desgracia, son difíciles de matar- como en su propia composición y
actitudes básicas. En Irak, esto ha demostrado ser más cierto que en otros
países. Son movimientos que, al menos hasta ahora, no han sido dirigidos por
los partidos de la oposición existentes, tienden a escapar incluso del
liderazgo de los imanes (en el Líbano en particular) y ya no confían en el
ejército. Las nuevas generaciones que salen a la calle no han vivido la
época de Saddam Hussein y su represión sistemática; tienen menos miedo de
las consecuencias de sus acciones, si se quiere son más "inconscientes",
pero gracias a su inconsciencia no tienen miedo de luchar con las manos
desnudas contra las balas y con sus acciones muestran aún más la brutalidad
de los gobernantes y del Estado. No luchan sobre la base de los principios
del Corán, sino como laicos; no luchan para llevar a sus líderes al
parlamento o al gobierno, sino para derrocar al poder político actual: no
ocupan los palacios de Goevrnative, sino que los prenden fuego. Este
verdadero “primitivismo”, una expresión de profunda cólera ante las
condiciones muy pobres de la existencia inmediata y la percepción de un
futuro aún peor, puede, por supuesto, canalizarse por diferentes caminos.
Una de ellas es sin duda la de una "democracia desde abajo", apoyada por la
fuerte demanda de la dimisión del gobierno de Abdul Mahdi, con muchos
muertos y heridos para obtenerlos, pero ante la cual no hay otra propuesta
política que la de confiar a alguna persona "del pueblo" la tarea de proveer
el cambio de guardia. Y esta es la verdadera debilidad de estos movimientos
de protesta y revuelta, en este sentido realmente popular, aunque los
proletarios estén ciertamente involucrados.
Irak es el cuarto mayor productor de petróleo del mundo (el segundo del
grupo OPEP, después de Arabia Saudí) y el duodécimo país más corrupto, según
Transparencia Internacional (3); una de cada cinco personas vive por debajo
del umbral de la pobreza y el desempleo juvenil se sitúa en torno al 25%;
estas son las cifras oficiales que, como sabemos, siempre fotografían la
realidad por defecto. Pero dos años después de lo que se considera la
derrota del ISIS y 16 años después de la invasión estadounidense de 2003, ¿cuál
es la situación económica y política en Irak? Desastrosa, es la respuesta
que dan todos los expertos burgueses. Un país rico en petróleo, y
extremadamente corrupto; una riqueza que se acumula en una pequeña parte de
la población -la burguesa y, como dijimos, no importa si lleva un uniforme
militar, la ropa de un político, un empresario o un religioso- y la pobreza
que se extiende sobre su gran mayoría. La revuelta, tarde o temprano, era de
esperar y, ciertamente, se esperaba. Lo que sorprendió a la burguesía árabe,
y también a la burguesía local, fue precisamente la duración de estas
revueltas y el hecho de haber escapado, y de seguir escapando, del control
por parte de organizaciones partidistas o religiosas con las que, obviamente,
siempre es posible, tarde o temprano, llegar a un acuerdo, incluso si
normalmente luchan entre sí. En realidad, el partido más importante de la
oposición en el parlamento irakí es el partido religioso encabezado por
Moqtada Sadr, el líder chiíta del Movimiento Sadrista, que, dada la duración
de las protestas, ahora está intentando dirigirlas dándoles recientemente su
apoyo "político" y también pidiendo la dimisión de Abdul Mahdi, por supuesto
con vistas a sustituir al Gobierno...
Pero las demandas de dimisión del gobierno actual, de nuevas elecciones,
bajo la ilusión de utilizar la democracia en beneficio de las masas
proletarias y pobres del país, chocarán con una fuerte desilusión, como ya
ha ocurrido después de Saddam Hussein, y como sucede cada vez que una nueva
figura política llega al gobierno. Hay demasiados intereses en conflicto
entre las diferentes facciones burguesas, entre sunitas y chiítas, entre los
diferentes líderes tribales y, no menos importante, entre las diferentes
facciones kurdas del norte de Irak. Irak, al igual que Siria, es un punto
estratégico en el mapa de Oriente Medio, no sólo por sus reservas de
petróleo, gas y minerales, sino también por su posición geográfica. Ambos
países constituyen una especie de vientre blando de Oriente Medio entre
Turquía en el norte, Irán en el este y Arabia Saudí en el sur, es decir,
entre las tres potencias regionales que tienen interés en extender su
influencia sobre Siria e Irak en detrimento de la otra. Y, como demuestran
las guerras del Golfo y las continuas guerras internas, los imperialismos
más fuertes del mundo insisten en toda la zona, desde los más antiguos, como
Gran Bretaña y Francia, hasta los Estados Unidos y los más recientes, como
Rusia y, por último pero no por ello menos importante, China, que se ha
convertido, entre otras cosas, en uno de los principales socios comerciales
de Irak, además de la India, Turquía y los Estados Unidos. Los intereses
conflictivos entre los capitalismos regionales están inevitablemente
entrelazados con los intereses conflictivos de los imperialismos que dominan
el mercado mundial, produciendo así una razón de permanente inestabilidad e
inseguridad dramática para todos los pueblos de la zona. El desarrollo
económico de todos los países de la zona, dependiendo de las relaciones con
el mercado internacional y del capital que se invierte o no se invierte en
la industrialización, es continuamente una tendencia poco clara: Durante
algunos años, las tasas de crecimiento pueden aumentar positivamente, como
ocurrió en Irak cuando, en 2011, el crecimiento económico aumentó un 11%
anual, gracias principalmente al sector petrolero (para el que había
superado la producción de 2,5 millones de barriles diarios), pero también a
la industria de la construcción y la agricultura y, muy importante en las
dos "ciudades santas" de Najaf y Karbala, también al turismo religioso y a
los servicios. Pero este crecimiento fue interrumpido en parte por la guerra
del ISIS contra todos y todos contra el ISIS. Luego se reanudó después de su
derrota, llegando a producir más de 4 millones de barriles de petróleo al
día. Sin embargo, el crecimiento económico, que sólo beneficia a las
compañías petroleras y a los capitalistas que se dedican a los sectores
económicos más lucrativos, no se corresponde con un nivel de vida más alto
para el proletariado y los campesinos pobres, porque la pobreza, el
desempleo, afecta a una gran parte de la población y las protestas y
disturbios que se vienen produciendo desde hace más de un mes son una clara
demostración de la explotación bestial a la que se ven sometidas estas masas
de trabajadores. Una gran parte de la población tiene entre 15 y 50 años, lo
que, para la capital, es la mano de obra ideal. No es de extrañar, por tanto,
que sean precisamente los jóvenes quienes llenen las calles y plazas, porque
son los más explotados y los más afectados por el desempleo.
A estos jóvenes no les falta valor para enfrentarse a la policía, al
ejército, a los francotiradores, a las milicias armadas, y el empuje que los
lleva a la calle cada vez tiene bases materiales muy fuertes: están sin
trabajo y no ven un futuro. Los gobernantes burgueses, los capitalistas, las
élites políticas y culturales no confían en ellos porque no son capaces de
proponer soluciones fiables e inmediatas; sin embargo, exigen democracia,
elecciones y que las mismas clases en el poder cambien al personal político
y gubernamental y les den esperanza de vida. Ponen ira, coraje,
inconsciencia, su propia sangre… y esto debería sacudir las conciencias de
los que tienen poder económico, político y militar.
Pero la realidad capitalista se desarrolla por caminos completamente
diferentes: las leyes del capitalismo guiron ayer a Saddam Hussein y a sus
aliados y enemigos, luego guiaron a todos aquellos que llegaron al poder en
un país atormentado por las guerras, y finalmente guiaron a los gobernantes
más recientes, antes muy apreciados por el pueblo y ahora considerados como
corruptos de una manera insoportable. Las mismas leyes guiarán a los nuevos
gobernantes que reemplazarán a Abdul Mahdi y mañana también a Moqtada Sadr o
a cualquier otro. Básicamente, nada cambiará; la economía seguirá creciendo,
la corrupción no desaparecerá, la represión de las protestas se repetirá de
diversas formas, el desempleo y la miseria seguirán apoderándose de los
estómagos y las entrañas de las masas trabajadoras. El camino parece no
tener salida.
Pero hay una alternativa y concierne precisamente a la clase trabajadora, a
la clase proletaria de cuya explotación sistemática obtienen sus ganancias
los capitalistas: una clase que debe reencontrarse, que debe esforzarse por
reconocer no sólo sus propias necesidades inmediatas, sino los medios y
métodos de lucha que por sí solos pueden dar una respuesta no temporal, no
efímera, a la cuestión social: los medios y métodos de la lucha de clases.
No basta con luchar valientemente contra un enemigo fuertemente armado y
falto de escrúpulos. Es dramáticamente ilusorio confiar en clases y fuerzas
sociales que tienen intereses completamente opuestos a los intereses de la
clase proletaria. Se trata de utilizar la propia fuerza, el propio coraje,
el empuje para rebelarse contra el régimen burgués que, de vez en cuando,
quizás con los rasgos socialistas reformistas más que con los rasgos del
predicador religioso, consigue cambiar su rostro para aplicar la misma
política antiobrera y represiva con el fin de salvaguardar los beneficios
capitalistas, organizarse como clase proletaria, de manera independiente, en
defensa exclusiva de sus propios intereses de clase, unificando a los
proletarios de cada sector, de cada categoría y de cada credo religioso en
una sola lucha anticapitalista, y por lo tanto antiburguesa. Para alcanzar
este resultado, los proletarios deben hacer lo siguiente
La perspectiva para los jóvenes y para los no tan jóvenes proletarios
irakíes, tanto como para los proletarios sirios, libaneses, egipcios,
argelinos, jordanos, sudaneses y de todos los países… se bifurca
inexorablemente: o luchar para llevar al poder a otros representantes de las
potencias burguesas, quizás menos corruptos o corruptibles al principio,
pero siempre representantes del capital dominante y prepararse para una vida
de incertidumbre y miseria poniéndola en manos de sus enemigos de clase que
la usarán para sus guerras o luchar por sí mismos, por su clase, por los
intereses de la clase productora por excelencia y que, en la historia,
representa el verdadero futuro de la sociedad: ¡la sociedad humana, no la
sociedad burguesa!
Sobre el terreno de esta lucha, los proletarios, superando el desahogo de
rabia, justificado pero inmediato, sacarán las experiencias que sirven para
su emancipación, experiencias prácticas, políticas y sociales. Y es sobre
esta base que surgirá la necesidad de ser representados políticamente como
una clase en general, por encima de las diferencias étnicas, profesionales,
de edad o de género; surgirá la necesidad de un partido que tenga un
programa político completamente opuesto al de todos los partidos burgueses,
un programa no nacional, sino internacional, en el que la lucha de clases
proletaria afectará tanto a la sociedad actual como a romper por completo
todo el aparato de dominación burguesa y capitalista, empezando por el
Estado. Este partido sólo puede ser comunista, revolucionario e
internacionalista y será más fuerte a medida que la lucha proletaria avance
sobre el terreno de la clase; un partido que es consciente del hecho de que
los proletarios luchan primero contra la burguesía de su propia casa, pero
que esta lucha tiene futuro sólo si es parte de una lucha internacional
porque la condición de obrero asalariado une a todos los proletarios de
cualquier país, por lo que los intereses proletarios de la clase son
intereses que van más allá de las fronteras de cualquier estado capitalista.
¡Contra cualquier solidaridad de objetivos e intereses entre proletarios y
burgueses!
¡La represión burguesa se combate con la organización de clase!
¡La lucha proletaria debe tomar la vía de la independencia de clase!
¡No a la bandera nacional, sí a la bandera roja!
¡Por la reanudación de la lucha de clase!
¡Por la constitución del Partido Comunista Internacional!
(1)
Cfr. www.ilpost.it/2019/10/05/irak-scontri-proteste/
(2)
Cfr https://nena-news.it/irak-la-repressione-non-ferma-i-giovani.
Ver
también https:// www. lemonde.fr/ international/ article/ 2019/10/28/
sans-pays -pas-d-ecole -la-jeunesse- irakienne-rejoint- le-mouvement- de-contestation_
6017200_3210.html
(3) Cfr.
www.ilpost.it/2019/10/25/sono-ricominciate-le-proteste-in-irak/
Partido Comunista Internacional
(El Proletario)
31 de octubre de 2019
www.pcint.org
[recibimos y publicamos]
Guerra Total contra el Proletariado
El capital International, en el contexto de lo que puede calificarse como la crisis económica más seria de su modo de producción de la democracia, por su amplitud, se ha embarcado en lo que sus ideólogos denominan “guerra total” contra el proletariado y la humanidad. El ajuste de la esfera financiera internacional ha profundizado y extendido el hambre y la miseria social por todo el planeta.
El cuentecito de los “derechos humanos” y las supuestas virtudes de la democracia es la coartada de los ataques simultáneos contra la humanidad. La miseria social ya desencadena por el ajuste financiero se verifica desde Yemen…hasta Haití. La burguesía mundial tiene en agenda desmontar los pilares de la economía en caída libre, o para ser más precisos, destruir capital y fuerzas productivas en competencia por el control del mercado y la gestión del Estado Mundial. En ese sentido, está provocando “insurrecciones controladas”, “disturbios” para que los ciudadanos respetuosos de la ley y el orden tengan “derecho” a canalizar la intervención militar de este o aquel Imperio.
La política de dominación de clase de la burguesía mundial está a la ofensiva, imponiendo las acciones de su inteligencia militar encubierta en todas las regiones, golpeando esferas de producción, práctica que agudiza la competencia entre facciones. Las estructuras militares de Coordinación Internacional se han adecuado a la modificación de la división del trabajo en el interior de los aparatos del Estado y señalado a Federación Rusa como el “agresor”, para justificar la guerra mundial.
Después del colapso del “bloque soviético” en 1989 y el ataque militar el 11 de Septiembre del 2011, el capital International invertido en los Estados Unidos está acelerando los pasos hacia la guerra. En Oriente Medio, Europa del Este, en el Sáhara Africano, Asia Central, en el Este Lejano, y ahora en América Latina, empujando a los ciudadanos a pedir “ayuda”. Ya la Federación Rusa y China han enviado sus primeras tropas que se suman a la inteligencia militar del fascismo castrista.
En ese contexto, la OTAN continua coordinando las acciones militares en Afganistán, Pakistán, Ucrania, Siria e Irak. Por ejemplo, el ataque contra el proletariado de Julio-Agosto del 2014 en Gaza fue consultado por Israel con la OTAN y los Estados Unidos, coincidiendo con las acciones en Ucrania.
La guerra económica contra la competencia asume diferentes formas, “sanciones”, y acciones deliberadas de desestabilización de la esfera financiera y la profundización del déficit del Estado, agravando el ciclo depresivo en que se encuentra la economía mundial, devaluando el dólar.
El capital internacional ha depositado su confianza en la facción norteamericana de la burguesía mundial, la cual financio a ISIS o “Estado Islámico” y lo usó en el 2014 como excusa para bombardear al proletariado internacional en Irak y Siria.
La guerra contra el “agresor” (Federación Rusa) está montada y su “marco legal” ha sido creado por la legislación norteamericana en el Senado a través del “The Russian Aggression Prevention Act” (RAPA), preparando el camino hacia una confrontación militar directa con Rusia en Ucrania. La competencia entre fracciones del capital mundial ha llegado al punto de ruptura, donde ninguna está dispuesta a aceptar la derrota..
En la agenda de los aparatos militares en pugna está contemplado un “ ataque militar preventivo* para destruir las fuerzas armadas enemigas; de ahí que los imperios Ruso y Chino estén cercados, les han tendido un “cerco de aniquilamiento”. Desde Yemen hasta Venezuela solo existe una fuerza con la potencia impedir que la burguesía mundial desate y gane la guerra:. El Proletariado.
Transformar la guerra civil en guerra social!!!
Class War 03/2016: IRAQ 1991 – Class war and bourgeois
containment
It was a quarter of a century ago, on March 7th,
1991, when the proletarian uprising in Iraq against war showed to the world
proletariat the only way forward to eliminate wars forever. As always, on the
other side of the social barricade, all the global forces of Capital acted as
one body to liquidate the autonomy of our class. Today, twenty-five years
later, the war continues to rage in the region (Iraq, Syria, Kurdistan, etc.),
and more than ever all the bourgeois and state forces which are allied to a
greater or lesser degree (Turkey, Iran, Gulf monarchies , USA, Russia, European
Union, Islamic state, nationalist organizations…) are mobilized to crush our
class, either directly and very prosaically under a shower of bombs, or more
indirectly while reducing its struggle against misery and exploitation to an
umpteenth reform of the capitalist social relations.
On the occasion of this anniversary we republish
two texts which look back to the extraordinary struggles that set Iraq on fire
and put an end to the so-called “Gulf War”. The text “Ten days that shook Iraq”
has been published in 1991 and represented then one of the first sources of
information in English on the uprisings in southern Iraq and Kurdistan. It was
later published in the magazine of the defunct group Wildcat. The second text “Additional notes on the insurrection of
March 1991 in Iraq”, published by the Internationalist Communist Group (ICG),
tries to draw some lessons from these struggles. By the way we recommend the
reading of the countless texts published by the ICG before, as well as during
and after the “Gulf War”, texts which contain and reveal the whole richness of
the class struggles in the region.
We especially insist on the lessons drawn from
the insurrection in Sulaymaniyah. What was at stake, as always, was how to
develop the revolution in all aspects of social life once this insurrection had
been accomplished, and how to avoid the confiscation of the social revolution
by its transformation into a simple political “revolution”, a simple change of
government. What happened in Iraq does not only show the reality of the contradiction
capitalism vs. communism, but also its future. Capitalist inhumanity is
developing everywhere. Everywhere war presents itself as an alternative to the
current capitalist crisis. And everywhere a communist response to the permanent
dictatorship of capitalist social relations will inevitably emerge and develop.
Let’s point out that these struggles in Iraq in
1991, in the north as well as in the south, have immediately been referred to
by all means of propaganda of the capitalist state, including its important Social
Democratic sector, as nationalist struggles (Kurdish) and religious ones
(Shiites). There is nothing new in this process of negation… Indeed many of the
struggles of the exploited were historically, still are nowadays and will
continue to be easily labelled as being “national liberation struggles” or struggle
“for reforms” not on basis of the deep breeding ground that nourishes them (the
struggle against misery and exploitation, against repression), but rather on
basis of capacity of certain bourgeois factions to exploit them for their own
ends, to contain the weaknesses and the lack of perspective of these struggles,
as well as their isolation, in order to bring them back in the framework of a
reform of the mode of production and exploitation, through here for example
“the liberation of the people and the nation”.
Yesterday in Iraq as in the current struggle in
Syria or in Rojava, once again, we want to emphasize the denunciation of
idolaters who mistake social revolution, destruction of private property and
economy, anti-capitalist and anti-state struggle (even at a minority and
embryonic level) on one hand, and on the other the bunch of Social Democrats,
reformers of the old world who repaint red (and black) the vile and revolting
exploitation of our class and who pretend thus to act as revolutionaries
whereas they are only emptying our struggle of its subversive substance in
order to better take over leadership of it.
For our part, we continue to denounce the
unconditional support given by the international leftism (including important
sectors of “anarchism” as well as all the Marxist-Leninist chapels that stand
on the same line) to reformist groups, organizations, structures they brazenly
and falsely present as being revolutionary, anti-state and anti-capitalist. We
can only display our deep contempt to all these charlatans of class struggle
and their countless impostures. But we also address all our militant solidarity
to proletarians in struggle against the current, in Rojava particularly, in
Kurdistan and in Middle East generally, and everywhere else in this disgusting
world of exploitation. We wish also to develop the communist critique together
with them. Because we know that behind sociological analyses and political
labels our enemies are sticking on our struggles, it’s still and ever class
struggle, class war that is materializing.
« Class War – March 2016 «
Ten days that shook Iraq
(Wildcat – 1991)
The Gulf war was not
ended by the military victory of America and the Allies. It was ended by the
mass desertion of thousands of Iraqi soldiers. So overwhelming was the refusal
to fight for the Iraqi state on the part of its conscripted army that, contrary
to all predictions, not one Allied soldier was killed by hostile fire in the final
ground offensive to recapture Kuwait. Indeed the sheer scale of this mutiny is
perhaps unprecedented in modern military history.
But these mutinous
troops did not simply flee back to Iraq. On their return many of them turned
their guns against the Iraqi state, sparking a simultaneous uprising in both
Southern Iraq and in Kurdistan to the North. Only the central region of Iraq
surrounding Baghdad remained firmly in the state’s hands in the weeks following
the end of the war.
From the very start
the Western media has grossly misrepresented these uprisings. The uprising in
the South, centred on Basra, was portrayed as a Shia Muslim revolt. Whereas the
insurrection in the North was reported as an exclusively Kurdish Nationalist
uprising which demanded little more than an autonomous Kurdish region within
Iraq.
The truth is that the
uprisings in both the North and South of Iraq were proletarian insurrections.
Basra is one of the
most secular areas in the Middle East. Almost no one goes to the mosques in Basra.
The radical traditions in this area are not those of Islamic fundamentalism but
rather those of Arab Nationalism and Stalinism. The Iraqi Communist Party is
the only bourgeois party with any significant influence in this region. The
cities of Basra, Nasriah and Hilah have long been known as the region of the
Communist Party and have a long history of open rebellion against both religion
and the state. The “Iraqi” working class has always been one of the most
troublesome in a volatile region.
In the North, there
is little sympathy for the Nationalist parties – the KDP and the PUK – and
their peshmergas (guerrilla movements) due to the repeated failure of their
compromises with the Iraqi state. This is particularly true in the Sulaimania
area. The inhabitants of the area have been especially hostile to the
Nationalists since the Halabja massacre. Following the chemical attack by the
Iraqi air force against deserters and civilians in the city of Halabja in 1988,
the peshmergas initially prevented people from fleeing and then went on to
pillage and rape those who survived the massacre. As a result, many villagers
have long since refused to feed or shelter nationalist peshmergas. As in the
South, the Communist Party and its peshmergas are more popular.
The uprising in the
North was not nationalist. In the early stages Ba’athist officials and secret
police were executed, police files were destroyed and the prisons stormed.
People were openly hostile to the bourgeois policies of the Kurdish
Nationalists. In Sulaimania the Nationalist peshmergas were excluded from the
city and the exiled leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Jalal Talabani,
was prevented from returning to his home town. When the Kurdish Democratic
Party leader, Massoud Barzani, went to Chamcharnal, near to Sulaimania, he was
attacked and two of his bodyguards were killed. When the Nationalists broadcast
the slogan: “Now’s the time to kill the Ba’athists!” the people of Sulaimania
replied with the slogan: “Now’s the time for the Nationalists to loot
Porsches!”, meaning that the Nationalists were only interested in looting.
A revolutionary
group, “Communist Perspective”, played a major role in the insurrection. In
their publication, “Proletariat”, they advocated the setting up of workers’ councils.
This provoked fear and anger among the Nationalists, as well as the Communist
Party and its splinter groups.
Faced with these
proletarian uprisings the various bourgeois interests in the region had to
suspend hostilities and unite to suppress them. It is well known that the West,
led by the USA, have long backed Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime. They supported
him in the war against Iran.
In supporting Saddam
the Western ruling class also recognised that the Ba’athist Party, as a mass
based fascist party, was the only force in Iraq capable and ruthless enough to
repress the oil producing proletariat.
However, Saddam’s
ultimate strategy for maintaining social peace in Iraq was for a permanent war
drive and militarisation of society. But such a strategy could only lead to
further economic ruin and the intensification of class antagonisms. In the
Spring of 1990 this contradiction was becoming blatant. The Iraqi economy was
shattered after eight years of war with Iran. Oil production, the main source
of hard currency, was restricted while oil prices were relatively low. The only
options for redeeming wartime promises of prosperity in peace were a rise in
the price of oil or more war. The former choice was blocked by Kuwait and Saudi
Arabia. Saddam’s bold leap to resolve this impasse was to annex Kuwait and its
rich oil fields.
This gave America the
opportunity to reassert its political hegemony, not only in the Middle East,
but also in the world as a whole. With the hope of exorcising the specter of
Vietnam, the Bush regime prepared for all-out war. The Bush administration
hoped for a quick and decisive victory that would evict Iraq from Kuwait but at
the same time leave the Iraqi regime intact. However, to mobilise the home
front for war, Bush had to equate Saddam with Hitler and so became increasingly
committed publicly to toppling the Iraqi leader.
With this commitment
the American government now sought to impose such a military defeat on the
Ba’athist Party would be obliged to replace Saddam with someone else. Indeed
the Bush regime openly invited the ruling circles in Iraq to replace Saddam
Hussein with the approach of the ground war in March. However, the mass
desertion of Iraqi conscripts and the subsequent uprisings in Iraq robbed the
American government of such a convenient victory. Instead they faced the
prospect of the uprising turning into a full scale proletarian revolution, with
all the dire consequences this would have for the accumulation of capital in
the Middle East.
The last thing the
American government wanted was to be drawn into a prolonged military occupation
of Iraq in order to suppress the uprisings. It was far more efficient to back
the existing state. But there was no time to insist on the removal of Saddam
Hussein. They could ill afford the disruption this would cause. Hence, almost
overnight, Bush’s hostility to the butcher of Baghdad evaporated. The two rival
butchers went into partnership.
Their first task was
to crush the uprising in the South which was being swelled by the huge columns
of deserters streaming north from Kuwait. Even though these fleeing Iraqi
conscripts posed no military threat to Allied troops, or to the objective of
“liberating” Kuwait, the war was prolonged long enough for them to be carpet
bombed on the road to Basra by the RAF and the USAF. This cold blooded massacre
served no other purpose than to preserve the Iraqi state from mutinous armed
deserters.
Following this
massacre the Allied ground forces, having swept through southern Iraq to
encircle Kuwait, stopped short of Basra and gave free rein to the Republican
Guards – the elite troops loyal to the Iraqi regime – to crush the insurgents.
All proposals to inflict a decisive defeat on the Republican Guards or to
proceed towards Baghdad to topple Saddam were quickly forgotten. In the
ceasefire negotiations the Allied forces insisted on the grounding of all fixed
wing aircraft but the use of helicopters vital for counter-insurgency was
permitted for “administrative purposes”. This “concession” proved important
once the uprising in the South was put down and the Iraqi state’s attention
turned to the advancing insurrection in the North.
Whereas the uprising
in the Basra region was crushed almost as it began, the Northern uprising had
more time to develop. It began in Raniah and spread to Sulaimania and Kut and
at its height threatened to spread beyond Kurdistan to the capital. The
original aim of the uprising was expressed in the slogan: “We will celebrate
our New Year with the Arabs in Baghdad!” The defeat of this rebellion owed as
much to the Kurdish Nationalists as to the Western powers and the Iraqi state.
Like all nationalist
movements the Kurdish Nationalists defend the interests of the propertied
classes against the working class. Most Kurdish Nationalist leaders come from
very rich families. For example, Talabani comes from a dynasty originally set
up by the British and his parents own luxury hotels in England. The KDP was set
up by rich exiles driven out of Kurdistan by the mass working class uprisings
of 1958 when hundreds of landowners and capitalist were strung up. As a result
of these disturbing events a meeting of exiled bourgeois in Razaeia, Iran,
organised nationalist death squads to kill class struggle militants in Iraqi
Kurdistan. Later they carried out racist murders of Arabs. During the Iraq-Iran
war very few deserters joined the nationalists and the PUK received an amnesty
from the Iraqi state in return for repressing deserters.
These Kurdish
Nationalists, like the international bourgeoisie, recognised the importance of
a strong Iraqi state in order to maintain capital accumulation against a
militant working class. So much so, in fact, that they merely demanded that
Iraqi Kurdistan be granted the status of an autonomous region within a united
Iraq.
In the uprising they
did their best to defend the Iraqi state. They actively intervened to prevent
the destruction of police files and state property, including military bases.
The Nationalists stopped Arab deserters from joining the “Kurdish” uprising,
disarmed them, and sent them back to Baghdad to be arrested. They did all they
could to prevent the uprising from spreading beyond the “borders” of Kurdistan
which was its only hope of success. When the Iraqi state began to turn its
attention to the uprising in Kurdistan the Kurdish Nationalists’ radio
broadcasts did not encourage or co-ordinate resistance but instead exaggerated
the threat posed by the demoralised Iraqi troops still loyal to the government
and advised people to flee to the mountains. Which they eventually did. None of
this is any surprise if we examine their history.
Although, as we have
seen, there was much hostility towards the Kurdish Nationalists, they were able
to gain control and bring to a halt the insurrection in Kurdistan because of
their organisation and greater material resources. Having been long backed by
the West – the KDP by the USA and the PUK by Britain – it was the Kurdish
Nationalist parties that were able to control the supply of food and
information. This was vital, since after years of deprivation, exacerbated by
the war, the search for food was an overriding concern. Many individuals were
mainly content with looting food, rather than with maintaining revolutionary
organisation and the development of the insurrection. This weakness allowed the
Nationalist organisations to step in with their ample supplies of food and well
established radio stations.
The War in the Gulf
was brought to an end by the refusal of the Iraqi working class to fight and by
the subsequent uprisings in Iraq. But such proletarian actions were crushed by
the combined efforts of the various international and national bourgeois
forces. Once again, nationalism has served as the stumbling block for
proletarian insurrection. While it is important to stress that Middle East
politics is not dominated by Islamic fundamentalism and Arab Nationalism, as it
is usually portrayed in the bourgeois press, but rests on class conflict, it
must be said that the immediate prospects for the development of working class
struggle in Iraq are now bleak.
The war not only
resulted in the defeat of the Iraqi working class but also revealed the state
of defeat of the working class in the USA, and, to a lesser degree, Europe. The
western anti-war movement never developed into a mass working class opposition
to the war. It remained dominated by a pacifist orientation that “opposed” the
war in terms of an alternative national interest: “Peace is Patriotic”. While
it expressed abhorrence of the Allies’ holocaust it opposed doing anything to
stop it that might bring it into confrontation with the state. Instead it
concentrated on futile symbolic protest that simply fostered the sense of
helplessness in the face of the state’s war machine.
Following the defeat
of the insurrection, the Western media’s misrepresentation continued. The
proletariat was represented as helpless victims, ripe for patronising by the
charities, grateful for the spectacles of pop stars flogging the Live Aid horse
once more. For those that remembered the uprising a “Let It Be… Kurdistan”
t-shirt was the obvious answer. Whilst the uprising was defeated we cannot
allow its aims and the manner of its defeat to be distorted without challenge
hence this text.
The failure of the
working class to recognise its own class interests as distinct from the
“national interest” and sabotage the war effort can only serve to deepen the
divisions amongst our international class along national lines. Our rulers will
now be that much more confident of conducting murderous wars unopposed
elsewhere in the world, a confidence they have lacked since the working class
ended the Vietnam war by mutinies, desertion, strikes and riots.
Opposition to the war in
Iraq
There has been a long
tradition of class struggle in Iraq, particularly since the revolution in 1958.
With Saddam’s strategy of a permanent war drive to maintain social peace this
struggle has often taken the form of mass desertion from the army. During the
Iraq-Iran war tens of thousands of soldiers deserted the army. This swelled the
mass working class opposition to the war. With the unreliability of the army it
became increasingly difficult for the Iraqi state to put down such working
class rebellions. It was for this reason that Saddam Hussein used chemical
weapons against the town of Halabja in 1988.
Following the
invasion of Kuwait there were many demonstrations against its continued
occupation. Even the ruling Ba’athist Party was obliged to organise such
demonstrations under the slogan: “No to Kuwait: We only want Saddam and Iraq!”
in order to head off anti-war feeling. With the dramatic rise in the price of
necessities – food prices alone rising to twenty times their pre-invasion
levels – there was little enthusiasm for war. The common attitude throughout
Iraq was one of defeatism.
Despite a 200% pay
rise desertion from the army became common. In the city of Sulaimania alone
there were an estimated 30,000 deserters. In Kut there were 20,000. So
overwhelming was the desertion that it became relatively easy for soldiers to
bribe their way out of the army by giving money to their officers. But these
working class conscripts did not merely desert, they organised. In Kut thousands
marched on the local police station and forced the police to concede an end to
the harassment of deserters.
Two days after the
beginning of the war anti-war riots broke out in Raniah and later in
Sulaimania. «
Additional notes on the insurrection of March 1991 in
Iraq
(Internationalist Communist Group – 1996)
Some notes on the shoras: proletarian
associationism and bourgeois recuperation
The shoras in Iraq, like all types of elementary
regroupment of the proletariat, are a necessary form of the process of centralisation
of the proletariat’s force. They suffer from all the contradictions that our
class contains within itself as a class and as a force antagonistic to capital
yet dominated ideologically by the bourgeoisie. Take, for example, the Soviets
in Russia. In 1905 as in 1917, they constituted structures of proletarian
struggle contributing to the insurrection without making, either in 1905 or
twelve years later, the necessary ruptures from the terrain of bourgeois
democratic socialism and without making themselves independent of the political
organisations which led them. This assured that, in the end, they were
completely recuperated by the capitalist and democratic organisation of the
State, under the reign of Leninism and post-Leninism. Apologists for the
Soviets always forget, as if by magic, that the Congress of Soviets approved
and implemented every level of Stalin’s policies. The same thing happened in
Germany with the workers’ councils between 1918 and 1921. Having effectively
emerged as structures of struggle outside and against the unions, the councils
ended up no less dominated by bourgeois democracy, incarnated in various social
democratic forces and transformed themselves into structures for the
organisation of the bourgeois State against the proletariat.
In Iraq as well (just as in Iran between 1979
and 1982) the shoras, rising out of the flames of the struggle, contained
enormous contradictions, the class oppositions between revolution and
counter-revolution being defined within them. This is why, contrary to the
councilists and the sovietists who make an uncritical apology of the shoras, we
have tried, in this process, to seize upon the strengths and weaknesses of the
proletariat by supporting and acting openly to assert the revolutionary pole.
As we can see from their slogans and flags, the
shoras concentrated the same type of strengths and weaknesses as the councils,
the soviets and other proletarian organisations characteristic of insurrectionary
moments. Side by side with democratic, nationalist and even openly conservative
demands, are slogans expressing the combativity, strength and class
determination of workers in struggle.
The shoras were structured within and for the
struggle. Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean that they appeared in a spontaneous
manner, as is always claimed by the adherents of spontaneism and councilism.
Historic spontaneous necessity, as in the case of the Russian soviets or the
councils in other countries, always concretises itself in the real flesh and
blood men and women who organise these structures in a conscious and deliberate
way. As we will show later, the appearance of the shoras was preceded by a “league”
or committee formed from a insurrectionist minority organised to prepare for
insurrection.
Some elements of the revolutionary conspiracy
and the insurrection in Sulaymaniyah
While proletarians prepared themselves, armed
themselves, in the various districts of Sulaymaniyah, a collection of militants
who had regrouped prior to the open struggle in a “League for an Insurrectionary
Uprising” called for the creation of shoras in neighbourhoods and factories. A
real committee of insurrection was thus constituted, thanks to which a unified
decision was able to be made to unleash the insurrection at a precise moment.
The committee was composed of a collection of existing political organisations
as well as independent militants. It planned the outbreak of the insurrection
simultaneously in 53 nerve centres of the town (key crossroads, buildings and
central points of neighbourhoods) which afterwards became the basis of the
shoras. At that time, the nationalists did not participate as such in the
committee and did not flaunt themselves in any of the centres of the
insurrectionary neighbourhoods.
Only a minority of proletarians was armed and
organised, and that is why the committee launched a set of appeals and
directives to seize arms where they could be found. At the same time, a
collection of revolutionary organisations assumed the indispensable role of
arming themselves and arming the proletariat. “Communist Perspective”, for
example, gave themselves the task of distributing grenades, guns and ammunition
at key points as well as arming some members of the committee. Other groups,
such as the “Communist Action Group” (CAG), who participated in the committee
as well as in various local structures and in the shoras, gave themselves the
task of expropriating the clan chiefs of their houses and their armed centres
so as to seize arms and to arm the proletariat. Without this preliminary
conspiratorial action of the organised avant-garde, it would not have been
possible to win the insurrectional battle of March 1991 in Sulaymaniyah.
This is what a comrade told us:
“The proletariat searched desperately for arms
but only the communist, Marxist forces armed the proletariat and decided on
insurrection. The nationalists did not participate. As for us, we organised
ourselves into groups to attack the houses of the clan chiefs. In general each
detachment only had one bazooka and some light weapons. The attack began with
the bazooka and we tried to seize the stockpiles of arms as quickly as
possible. We had made an inventory quite a long time beforehand and that’s how
we knew where to look for arms. Another important aspect of the preparation
carried out by revolutionary groups had been to make a collection of field
‘hospitals’ available to the insurrection for tending to the wounded.”
Despite all that, the organisation and arming
remained insufficient, which, in certain cases, was paid for on the part of the
proletariat by deaths and injuries and by partial defeats.
Another comrade gave us his version:
“I only realised that preparations were being
made for insurrectional action two days beforehand, when a revolutionary
comrade gave me various precise instructions: I had to go to a particular place
between 7 and 8 am, armed as best I could be. When I arrived at the gathering
there were only seven of us. At that moment I told myself that we could not
win. Later on, I heard that the majority of the committee had launched the
insurrection also thinking that it would not be able to triumph but that in any
case it would be an important step forward in the struggle and the autonomy of
the proletariat. A moment later, two comrades from ‘Rawti’ (‘Communist
Perspective’) appeared, calling on us to gather together for the insurrection.
They distributed some grenades. Together we went around the nearby streets
calling for struggle and in an instant we had gathered together some 50 or 60
people. It was at that time that two well-armed peshmergas arrived. The
insurgents appealed to them and shouted out to them to join us in the movement
but they didn’t[1].
Despite being a small group and completely inferior from the point of view of
weapons, we attacked the local barracks, but it was too well protected. We
fled, were repulsed and then pursued. Our comrade Bakery Kassab, a militant of
Communist Perspective, died during this attack. We dispersed in a completely
disorderly manner and ran as fast as we could. The enemy, better armed, chased
us and we were surrounded until we arrived on the main street. As soon as we
got there, a great surprise awaited us: the insurrection had gained ground and
now it was the Ba’athists who were retreating.”
These facts, along with so many others that
various comrades and organisations of struggle have reported, enable us to
assert that despite the existence of this insurrectional committee, initially
the driving force behind, then centraliser, of the shora structures, real
centralisation remained very relative. There were enormously chaotic aspects to
it and many proletarian fighters went out into the streets with whatever they
had to hand, without any structure of centralisation apart from what they “spontaneously”
encountered in the street, without any instructions apart from that a friend
had told them to go to such and such a place. Detachments of armed proletarians
formed themselves very rapidly to carry out some action then dispersed again:
often comrades on the same side of the barricades who had not known each other
previously forged strong links and, after the insurrection, went on to a
structure of political organisation. It is precisely the existence of all those
heterogeneous action groups participating in different actions which prevents a
global understanding of the movement: there are no two protagonists who have
experienced the same situation and even less who have perceived it politically
in the same way. Thus for example, certain versions strongly stress the
operational autonomy of little groups centralised by different combative
structures (Communist Perspective, GAC…) as a decisive element of the
insurrection, and others insist more on the strength of some 30,000
proletarians (only a few of whom had a weapon) who responded to a call from a
shora and gathered in their “headquarters”, the Awat school. According to the
latter, the assembly was to prove decisive in dynamising the whole process
because they went on from there to win important battles. To give an idea of
the consciousness which drove these proletarians (as much in its strength as in
its weakness) here are a few of the slogans which predominated in the
assemblies:
“Class consciousness is the weapon of freedom!”
“Here are our headquarters, the rank and file of
the workers’ councils!”
“Make the shoras your base for long term
struggle!”
“Form your own councils!”
“Bring expropriated food and goods, we will
distribute them here!”
“Exploited people, revolutionaries, let’s give
our blood for the success of the revolution! Carry on! Don’t squander it!”
Despite the contradictions, the insurrection
went on to impose itself, the repressive forces suffering numerous losses in
several confrontations. Often they were liquidated in their own homes. In an
attempt to save their own skins, the enemy concentrated themselves in the
famous “red building” and the surrounding barracks, and it was there that an
immense battle raged with numerous losses on both sides. The insurgents
attacked without any unified plan, firing in all directions, wounding and
killing numerous fighters in their own ranks (ours!).
The security forces were well aware that to
surrender would mean death. They also had everything to play for, knowing
perfectly well that, despite being armed to the teeth, their task would be difficult.
Up until the last moment they remained in permanent communication with Baghdad
which promised the imminent arrival of reinforcements. Profiting from the
terrible lack of weapons on the side of the insurgent proletariat, the soldiers
threw guns from the windows of the red building. Hundreds and hundreds of
proletarians threw themselves forward to grab them, thus making themselves easy
targets for the shots of well-armed and well-positioned troops. This increased
the number of victims on the side of the insurrection even further[2].
However, the rage and determination of the
proletariat was so great that finally resistance was crushed and it took over
the whole town. Step by step, the “red building”, all the barracks and the
houses in the military quarter were conquered. On the facades of buildings the
marks and holes left by bullets bear testimony to the class war. Soldiers
surviving the attack were taken out one by one and judged. Today some comrades estimate
a figure of 600 soldiers shot, others say 2,000, but without doubt they are
including executions which took place over those days across the whole of the
town.
It is important to understand that it is at the
heart of the action, in these very moments when proletarians are carrying out
exemplary acts, that the struggle for the autonomy of the movement is played
out. In effect, despite the fact that during all this time the nationalists did
not participate in the process in an organised manner, the insurgents could not
do without them, even less confront them openly as demanded by the
revolutionary internationalist nuclei of the region. Thus, the fact that
certain proletarian fighters went and consulted the bosses of the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in the mountains about what they should do with
captured soldiers and torturers, clearly reflects and expresses the
contradictions of the movement and the ambivalence of the shoras. Noshirwan,
the military chief of the PUK, insisted that the enemy should not be executed,
arguing that “we can use them later” (!?!). Similar events took place
subsequently, illustrating the ambivalence of some of the shoras. The
proletariat’s lack of confidence in itself incited it to ask its worst enemies
to take decisions and to direct operations. Several sectors of the proletariat,
unaware of their own strength, looked to the official opposition because to
them it seemed serious and effective. Other members of the shoras adopted the
exact opposite position: they wanted to kill the soldiers and drag their bodies
through the streets so that everyone will know “the kind of torture that these
bloodthirsty monsters are capable of inflicting on proletarians”. Finally,
except for certain torturers famous for their cruelty who were torn to pieces
by the insurgents, pure and simple liquidation imposed itself, but not without
problems and stormy discussions on the subject of who deserved to die. In
effect, as in many other towns in Kurdistan, the Ba’athist repressive forces
had lived concentrated in their districts: they had tortured there, killed
there… and, just a few yards away, the torturers’ families slept, ate and
lived. They were so hated that they couldn’t live elsewhere. What’s more, the majority
of families of the torturers (particularly the women) participated in the
tortures. The buildings (the central block, the interrogation rooms, the family
houses, the torture centres) were laid out in such a way that it is difficult
to imagine that anyone could live there without participating in some way or
another in the torture and murder of prisoners. When proletarians took over
these places, they didn’t waste time discussing or judging, the class hatred
was such that some groups executed all those that they found inside without any
criteria apart from the physical barrier. But, in the majority of cases, more
class criteria were imposed. Thus, in Sulaymaniyah, children and some women who
had not participated in tortures and executions of prisoners were spared. They
were allowed to leave the building before the massive execution of military
torturers and their family accomplices.
The insurrection spread itself like a lighted
gunpowder trail, with similar uprisings breaking out in other towns being
equally successful. In Irbil, 42 shoras were created and, in only three hours
of fighting, armed proletarians became masters of the situation. Then came
Kalar, Koya, Shaqlawa, Akra, Duhok, Zakho… The barracks close to the towns,
like the enormous military installations of Sulaymaniyah, strategic centre of
the whole region, were surrounded by deserters and other armed proletarians.
The central forces succeeded in saving a few army officers by taking them away
in helicopters. The rest, the mass of soldiers, surrendered without a fight and
the majority passed over to the side of the insurrection.
The limits of proletarian activity and the
counter-revolutionary activity of the nationalists
If the level of consciousness, organisation and
centralisation of the proletariat was sufficient to bring about the triumph of
the insurrection, the same was not the case when it came to assuming the essence
of revolution, knowing how to organise everyday life and to impose itself
dictatorially against capital in places where it had triumphed. As in other
historic circumstances in which the constitution of the proletariat into a
party is insufficient and not well centralised in a communist direction, in Kurdistan,
bourgeois forces took over the leadership of the action, liquidating the
autonomy of the proletariat and ended up by expropriating the revolution so as
to transform it into a bourgeois “revolution” (an exclusively political “revolution”),
or rather, into an anti-revolution, a face-lift for the State facade, a
changing of the fractions in power in order to preserve the essence of the
system of exploitation.
The nationalists only began to participate
actively in the direct action with an effective presence on the streets two or
three days after the victory of the insurrection. Their first acts consisted of
taking money from the banks and seizing military vehicles, occupying buildings
and other properties abandoned by the government, which proletarians had taken
and then also abandoned[3].
This abandonment of premises, of heavy artillery, of vehicles… showed that,
although capable of fighting against an enemy, the proletariat did still not
have the strength to fight for itself, to take over the direction of the
revolution which it had started. To put it another way, our class expressed its
conception of revolution: a purely negative negation of today’s world, a simple
rejection, a simple negation, without asserting that the revolutionary negation
of this world contains a positive negation. The proletariat has the force to
expropriate but not the force to reappropriate what it has expropriated nor to
transform it in a revolutionary way towards its universal revolutionary
objectives. As in Russia in 1917, politicism constitutes a dominant ideology
even amongst the most committed proletarians. They know what to do against the
Ba’athists but when it is a question of socially confronting capital, they are
lost. This general limitation results from a confusion (widespread in our
class) which systematically amalgamates the State and the Ba’athists, the
struggle against capital and the struggle against the government. This
generalised confusion that communist and internationalist fractions did not
have the force to liquidate was preciously maintained and developed by the
nationalists. It is still very useful to them today.
Once the nerve centres of the town had been
occupied, the heavy artillery and the military vehicles controlled by the
nationalists, the rest was just a matter of time. Over a few days (between the
7 and 20 March) the nationalists, who up until then had hardly been present and
had “followed” the masses, progressively took control of the situation. The
revolutionary groups and the most active proletarians were incapable of giving
and taking-on clear military directives. They did not know what to do with the
barracks, tanks and military vehicles. They made do with arming themselves with
ammunition and light weapons and, at the best, burning vehicles to prevent the
nationalists from taking them. Not only did they fail to give themselves the
means of controlling the production and distribution of the necessities of
life, but they didn’t even stock up with the indispensable minimum of food,
medicines, means of propaganda etc.
On their arrival in the town the nationalists
appealed for the dissolution of the shoras, but did not obtain any result.
Later, from a position of strength, after taking the strategic points, they
made use of the much more effective method of negotiation and wearing down the
proletariat. Although, as we saw earlier, there were shoras dominated or
strongly influenced by democratic and nationalist positions, the Central organ
of the shoras, despite the participation of bourgeois parties and organisations,
defined itself as being “for communism”, for “the abolition of wage labour” and
came out openly against the nationalists.
Little by little, as they structured their
effective power over the town with the support and blessing of the intervention
forces of the world bourgeoisie, the nationalists, who had still not succeeded
in destroying the shoras, attempted to take them over by integrating their
militants in them and imposing their own bourgeois leadership. It was at that
time that a collection of shoras which were nationalist, social-democratic,
populist and partisans of the great popular front against Saddam Hussein
appeared for the first time.
At the same time, the nationalists, wanting to
shatter the force expressed by the Central shora, proposed negotiations which
were to lead it to the tragedy of all assemblist-democratic functioning and
place it in the position of being incapable of adopting a single revolutionary
direction. The Central was divided: on one side, there were those who
considered the nationalists as enemies and who were opposed to all negotiation;
on the other, those who accepted negotiation and who concentrated a collection
of confusion and inconsistencies on the question of nationalism, embracing the
ideology of a great anti-Ba’athist popular front.
It is clear that the problem is not whether to
negotiate or not. However, the acceptance of negotiation with the nationalists
against the Ba’athists in such circumstances contains, as an implicit and
undeniable presupposition, the ideology of the lesser evil and, ultimately,
frontism. In fact “realism” triumphed, leading to the bulk of the movement
renouncing its own interests. From the moment when negotiation was accepted,
two decisive elements in the liquidation of the autonomy and interests of the
proletariat imposed themselves. Firstly, the fact of considering Saddam as the
main enemy and Kirkuk as an essential objective and, secondly, the necessity
for order against chaos.
As the proletariat had been unable to impose its
law, proletarian resistance and even expropriations necessary for survival came
to be considered as a form of chaos, such that the nationalists were able to
present themselves (and were perceived) as the only guarantee of the
maintenance of order. Immediately the peshmergas began to enforce respect for
capitalist order and bourgeois property. They arrested proletarians who “stole”
a sack of rice to eat, and, discreetly, disarmed isolated proletarians (at that
time the peshmergas had neither the strength nor the courage to interfere with
internationalist groups).
Here we must make an important digression on the
subject of the war to take Kirkuk. From the start of the insurrection in
Sulaymaniyah, the nationalists penetrated in force the Central shora, not
merely submitting to it, but formally taking over its leadership, obviously
using the proletarians who placed themselves under their orders as cannon
fodder. Working on the basis that, for proletarians, the extension of the
revolt and solidarity with the recently formed shoras in Kirkuk was a logical objective,
the nationalists pursued a completely different aim. It was a question partly
of submitting the proletariat to a structured war, attacking the Ba’athist
positions in a town where they were the best prepared military force, and
partly a question of taking a strategic role in imperialist war, by occupying
this petroleum centre of prime importance, something which would augment their
power of negotiation nationally and internationally. For us this constituted a
key moment in the transformation of the class war into imperialist war. From
the taking of Kirkuk the nationalists negotiated openly with the Ba’athists
under the benevolent eye of the Coalition forces. For the first time they were
recognised as a credible force, not just because they territorially controlled
a capitalist centre as important as Kirkuk, but also because, for the first
time, they appeared capable of contesting the proletariat’s control of the
situation in the insurgent towns, thus to be an effective fraction of international
bourgeois order, capable of controlling the proletariat, the central
preoccupation of the Coalition at the end of the war.
Of course, some shoras, like those of “Communist
Perspective” and others in which the presence of internationalist militants was
important, tried to participate in the action in a autonomous way, but the
nationalists rapidly gained the upper hand. Taking over everything, it was they
who held the money, the meeting halls, the indispensable heavy weapons, the
medicines and other equipment for treating the wounded, and therefore the
material force to impose their orders. Many internationalist comrades reproached
“Communist Perspective” and other groups for not having completely broken with
the shoras at that moment and for having continued to participate in the
committee. It was a key moment in which the programmatical weaknesses of the
avant-garde groups of the region were borne out. As some of them were to
recognise subsequently, it was not enough to define Kurdish nationalism and the
Shi’ite muslim movement as bourgeois social movements, it was also necessary to
correctly evaluate the possibility of these forces imposing themselves. It was
as indispensable to confront them in daily practical activity as it was the Ba’athists.
The present situation and perspectives: New
inter-bourgeois wars in the region and the tasks of the internationalist
proletariat
All the information which has come out of Iraq
in 1995/1996/1997/… indicates that the material, social and political situation
of the proletariat continues to worsen. Growing poverty, isolation, repression,
permanent military mobilisation, armed struggle between bourgeois fractions,
forced recruitment and all the rest. Survival is a matter of chance and
everyone is subjected to permanent danger. Every day proletarians are killed by
stray bullets or in confrontations between bourgeois fractions. To survive you
sell your furniture, your crockery, everything you have. The problem is that
there are no buyers. What’s more, it is not unusual for the peshmergas
responsible for maintaining order to want one of the objects on sale and to
have the seller thrown in prison so as to confiscate it legally.
In Kurdistan the situation is hellish: lack of
food, shortage of water, a violent deterioration in the level of hygiene. The
fear of looting has unleashed open warfare between bourgeois fractions, between
nationalists and between some fractions of the PUK and the islamists.
The conflicts between the Kurdistan Democratic
Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) are at such an explosive
point that Kurdistan is actually divided into two regions which are on a war
footing. For the first time in history the two regions have become an arena of
political rivalry. The development of regionalism, as everywhere, constitutes a
force for the disorganisation of proletarian struggle. So today, on one side
there is Soran with Sulaymaniyah as its “capital”, controlled by the PUK
(Talabani) and on the other, Badinan (region of origin of Barzani’s family)
where Zakho and Duhok are under the control of the KDP. Arbil is the only town
which is under the simultaneous and contradictory control of the two bourgeois
forces, also constituting a border between the two regions.
The inter-bourgeois struggle takes on very
violent forms. The two fractions of capital try to mobilise the proletariat
into their service and to channel all class contradictions, which would
normally develop against private property and the State, in its direction. One
example: after the war, many inhabitants of Sulaymaniyah and other towns in the
region departed for the countryside where they settled to build farms and
cultivate the soil. This land belonged to big bourgeois families (in this case
to Barzani’s KDP) who now want to take back the land and expel the occupants.
But some decided to refuse to be expelled, organising and defending themselves,
with guns at the ready. The fighting led to many deaths on both sides. The PUK,
profiting from this situation, presented itself as the spokesman of the
struggle against the KDP’s intended expulsions and, on this basis, contained
(and/or tried to contain) this elementary struggle for survival by attempting
to lead it onto the terrain of interfractional warfare. Nevertheless, the
conflict created contradictions on both sides. For example, during the armed
conflict, Talabani, who was in Holland at the time, did not dare to return to
Kurdistan from fear of being done in, including by his own troops.
The route to Soran was blocked by the KDP for
two months on the pretext of war. The direct consequence of this was that
supplies stopped coming into the region, the shops emptied and people died of
hunger. Movement between the two zones was difficult and dangerous because,
despite the fact that the frontier had been officially opened a short while
before, the situation remained so explosive that people from Soran no longer
risked venturing into the Badinan region and vice versa. There were dozens of
ceasefires and peace treaties but the confrontations didn’t stop. Officially,
the number of deaths in these battles is estimated at 2,500. The various
headquarters of the KDP in the Soran region were attacked and pillaged by the
PUK and vice versa in Badinan.
Daily life turned into a nightmare: while
skirmishes increased between the KDP and the PUK, prices tripled every three
months. This hell pushed many people to enrol with the peshmergas so that they
would be assured of food and money three or four times a month, as well as the
authorisation to keep the arms in their possession, arms which, if they were
not used against their own officers, enabled these peshmergas to defend their
own lives.
For quite a while now, neither the KDP nor the
PUK have been able to control their troops. They have become autonomous and are
imposing the law of the jungle to survive: they have invented new taxes and
indulge in all sorts of extortion in the name of their organisation without
informing it. Thus, in Arbil, the peshmergas plundered the shops in broad
daylight, which had nothing to do with the official policies of the KDP or the
PUK. It has been a common practice and people have to defend their homes with
guns at the ready.
Nevertheless, when elections were announced for
March 1995, the two main bourgeois fractions in Kurdistan tried to reorganise
their troops in the face of the enemy. At the same time, they tried to improve
their relations with the Western bourgeoisie and competed for the support of
the American State Department as well as various parts of the Western military
apparatus. The two parties oscillated between aggressive and peaceful policies,
depending on their respective capacity to control the proletariat and on the
state of their relations with the forces of the world imperialist order. Thus,
at one point, Barzani declared himself in favour of peace, of reuniting
families, of respect for trade and of arriving at a compromise which would
allow elections to be held and thus appeared to stand for Kurdish national
reconciliation. Talabani, although even less able to control his own troops,
undoubtedly appreciated the bourgeoisie’s incapacity of offering a viable
alternative to proletarian struggle more clearly (a bourgeoisie who only saw
the possibility for social peace in the repolarisation of the bourgeoisie and
in war) and presented himself more as a partisan of a military solution, as
much against Barzani as against the Ba’athists. He talked openly about a
military offensive and of the occupation of Kirkuk. But, as we have said
several times before, it is absurd to talk of one fraction of the bourgeoisie
being more aggressive, more militarist or more imperialist than another. It is
Capital that is militarist and aggressive and, generally, the fraction which is
strongest on the military plain, obtains the best results on that terrain and
makes the other fraction appear to be the most militarist (as happened in the “Second”
World War). It is no great surprise that the fraction which made a qualitative
leap in the hostilities found itself relatively isolated on the international
plane and strategically rather weak in controlling its own forces and imposing
its interests. (Despite various rumours that circulate to the effect that
someone or other “is supported by the CIA”, it is difficult to know what the
alliances and engagements actually are because they are shrouded in the
greatest secrecy).
Local wars, blockades, hunger and state
terrorism are the main perspectives that capitalism continues to offer in the
region. All fractions of the bourgeoisie, be they Islamists, Nationalists, Ba’athists
or whatever, implored the population to respect the lorries filled with
supplies coming from Turkey and crossing Kurdistan every day in the direction
of Baghdad. There is nothing more logical than their getting together to
deprive the proletariat of all property, including what is necessary for
survival. But fortunately, there are always proletarians who stick two fingers
up at such orders and confront sacrosanct Private Property. The following is a
real and exemplary story which dates back to 1993. Not far from Sulaymaniyah,
on a road which passes close to a remote district, several supply lorries had
been attacked and pillaged. In an attempt to put a stop to these attacks, the
authorities sent a number of delegations charged with renewing dialogue to stop
the looting. One after the other, each attempt failed. Later the organised
sectors who had carried out these expropriations took things a step further and
declared that, from that day on, they would, for their subsistence,
systematically seize one out of every three lorries. The nationalists from
Sulaymaniyah sent one of their most popular leaders, who had distinguished
himself in the struggle against the Ba’athists, his mission being to find a
solution with the people of the district. When he presented himself there,
surrounded by bodyguards, he was shot at. One of his guards lost his life, two
others were wounded and the district continued to pillage one lorry in three to
ensure its subsistence.
Attacks on lorries, taking supplies from depots,
expropriations from shops and other forms of pillage, along with social
explosions, attacks on local officials, the expropriation of humanitarian
organisations, strikes and violent demos are still common currency today. There
are also small armed bands all over the place who attack the property of the
bourgeoisie in the region.
For groups of militants defined by
internationalism, a period of splits, of the drawing up of balance sheets, of
new convergences, of clarification etc, began quite a while ago, resulting in a
permanent change which is impossible to summarise. The fusions which gave birth
to the Workers’ Communist Party, for example, were made on the basis of
important programmatical rejections by structures or fractions of organisations
which, up until then, had converged and had been incapable of offering a
revolutionary alternative to the imperialist war which was developing between
the Kurdish nationalist fractions: their meeting places emptied and the
militants of these groups dispersed.
Added to the ever greater difficulty of acting
publicly, the permanent insecurity of travel, the breakdown of communications,
is the need to draw a balance sheet and a self-critique of numerous errors. The
most interesting revolutionary nuclei with the most internationalist
perspectives have, in this phase, dedicated the best part of their strength to
the formation and realisation of a balance sheet of struggle, theoretical
discussion, as well assuming the difficult task of maintaining international contacts.
It is clear that this process also conceals dispersion, isolation,
discouragement and disorganisation. Many comrades are trying to leave the
region (which is very difficult because those who have escaped the repressive
forces of the nationalists in Kurdistan are not able to “disappear” in
neighbouring countries: in Turkey and Iran being a “Kurd” is enough to be
considered suspect and subversive by the police) but this has not prevented a
handful of comrades from remaining in contact and ensuring that the ever important
tasks of publishing manifestos and revolutionary tracts against war continue
(especially the group “Proletarian Struggle”, ex-“Communist Action Group” as
well as our ICG comrades on the spot). They have managed to make the theses and
positions of our group known in the region, in Kurdish as well as Arabic,
despite all the falsifications and provocations of which we have been the
target[4].
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