Are they building up for an attack on Iran? posted by lenin

Belligerent rhetoric about Iran's global status is business as usual. Plans for an attack of some kind are a frequent feature of Israeli gasconade, and the propaganda machine is constantly churning out new intrigues - with confections about the scale of Iran's putative nuclear threat now on the agenda of many pro-Washington reporters, as they attempt to efface the memory of the calamitous NIE. Incidentally, an attempt by MediaLens to check one of the journalists involved in reproducing such guff, one Bronwen Maddox of The Times, resulted in an absurd legal threat from one of Murdoch's lawyers. There is, detectibly, an escalation in the war rhetoric. Ehud Barak has indicated that Israel is ready to do to Iran what it did to Iraq in 1981 (which would actually be very difficult because Iran's nuclear energy programme - not nuclear weapons programme - is far better protected than Saddam's weapons systems).

The US is now permitting Israeli planes to use Iraqi air space and American air bases in Iraq - they presumably don't have to ask Maliki what he thinks about it. And though it has sort of slipped into the recesses of media memory, the recent Iranian missile tests were preceded by Israeli military exercises in the Mediterranean. The US is already escalating its campaign of subversion and terrorism inside Iran. Every major contender in US politics, including Barack 'sweetie' Obama, has to pay lip service to the supposed threat from Iran - about which something must be done.

So, is it serious, or are they just paper tigers? Are the running dogs of imperialism all bark and no bite, as Tom Engelhardt suggests? I must admit that I don't find myself reassured by his answers. Yes, oil prices could soar catastrophically, but so far the Bush administration has not demonstrated much concern about high oil prices, in part because the energy sector that backs them so heavily is making a killing out of this. Yes, Iran could retaliate, but if they really want to whack Iran they would be willing to risk that. It's small beer compared to letting that punk Ahmadinejad run his mouth whenever he feels like it. One possible counterargument is that Iran is a stabilising factor in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite the protestations of the US government and its Israeli ally. But this all depends on a calculation about Iranian behaviour in the event of a short, sharp attack. If they calculate that the Iranian ruling class is divided and that a substantial enough sector would prefer a Modern Right president to Ahmadinejad's 'populist' administration, then they might see a bombing raid as a perfect catalyst to open those divisions and weaken the Iranian president. There may indeed be substantial opposition within the US ruling class and the state apparatus to such an attack, but this adventurist administration not only ruled out reality - we create our own reality, remember? - but sidelined sizeable dissidence from within the state. One can talk about Bush being a lame duck, but neither he nor his confederates show any sign of being chastened (Bush has recently shared one of his little 'jokes' which roughly resembles a large, bony middle-finger to the world). Certainly they have had to deal with political realities that override their urge to radically restructure the global order, as in the removal of North Korea from the 'Axis of Evil', but Iran is far more geopolitically central to US designs than North Korea, and actually doesn't have the nuclear weapons programmes that North Korea does have, and openly states it has. The causes for trepidation in the case of North Korea, and sensible bargaining, are not necessarily present to the same degree in Iran. And while they are no longer threatening North Korea, they are threatening Iran, big time. Besides, it would be nice to leave Bush's successor with a little parting gift.

And if the belligerents can't force the policy through at a national level, they can always egg Israel on. Israel may be susceptible to counter-attack. It may have been humiliated by Hezbollah when it tried to subsume Lebanon as the basis for a proxy strike on Iran and Syria. But it is hardly the sort of state to simply absorbe defeat and sit on its hands. It likes to be in charge, and its military leadership would probably like to deliver a punishment beating to its most vocal and potentially most powerful opponent in the region. It wouldn't have to be major, just enough to let the world know they still mean business. And the political culture inside an increasingly crazed and bunkered state is such that most Israelis would probably cheer it on, and reward the government with renewed popularity.

I'm not saying they're going to do it, because how the hell would I know, but can you really put it past them?

Labels: george w bush, iran, Israel, stop the war coalition, US imperialism

Humanitarian cluster bombing posted by lenin

Following the recent banning of cluster bombs by a number of states (including, to my surprise, the UK), the United States government has been at pains to stress that it only wants to keep the humane cluster bombs. And so:

Faced with growing international pressure, the Pentagon is changing its policy on cluster bombs and plans to reduce the danger of unexploded munitions in the deadly explosives.

The policy shift, which is outlined in a three-page memo signed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, would require that after 2018, more than 99 percent of the bomblets in a cluster bomb must detonate.

Awfully sweet of them, don't you think?

Labels: cluster bombs, humanitarianism, US imperialism

The Story of 'O' posted by lenin

Barack Obama has animated commentators and polarised debate without necessarily leaving us any the wiser as to what to expect. A man who seems at pains to distance himself from much of black America, and yet needs to draw on the tradition of anti-racism and the Civil Rights movement. A man who needs to stimulate excitement about his campaign while reducing expectations as to what he might deliver (so as not to scare a constituency of white voters). A man who has spoken eloquently on the topic of racism in America, and yet often is all too willing to pander to the worst prejudices in America. Gary Younge's meeting at Marxism today sought to explain the apparent antilogies of BHO's campaign, both the irresistible allure for layers of hitherto passive voters and the inevitable ways in which he will disappoint. The strangeness of Obamamania was summed up as equivalent to the hysteria in the few weeks following the death of Princess Diana, in which rational discussion was suspended for several weeks. The temptation either to dismiss Obama entirely or embrace him so totally that there is no critical distance remaining is a temptation that eschews analysis, and it is analysis that we need.

Younge took pains to disrupt the fantasy of a racial nirvana signalled by the Obama campaign. An America whose ideology of 'opportunity' places undue weight on the symbolic, in which the token placement of an African American in a prominent position is used to override the horrible reality that most African Americans face in terms of poverty and incarceration, invites cynicism when it comes to claims that it has at last achieved colour-blindness. In fact, such putative colour-blindness can be seen as purblindess: it whitewashes everything, including racism. It is such colour-blindness, after all, that invariably sees a harsh racial hierarchy in which black people are allotted the bottom of every available pile, as a 'meritocracy'. And it comes after a generation in which 'white' America has been energetically re-ethnicised, in an effort at unloading historical 'guilt' or responsibility for white supremacy. (There is an anecdote in Matthew Frye Jacobson's Roots Too, about the re-discovery of 'ethnic roots' among white Americans in the post-Civil Rights era, in which a well-attended anti-racist meeting in New York sees several white participants noisily declaiming that they are in fact not really white but Irish, or Italian, or Polish, or Lithuanian. The instructor is left wondering where the hell all the white people went.) Younge reminds us that Hillary Clinton lost by a mere 0.4% of the popular vote; that her vote remained resilient long after her campaign was obviously lost; that Obama tended to lose in states where black voters were present enough to inject race into the conversation but not enough to swing the result toward Obama; and that Obama's own campaign was not multiracial but bi-racial, largely failing to win over Latino voters except by a narrow margin in his home state. This hardly epitomises a country in which 'race no longer matters'. Notwithstanding all this, and 'all this' counts for a great deal, Obama's candidacy is still a historical and symbolically important moment.

One cannot afford, in this instance, to "leave symbols to the symbol-minded" as the late George Carlin once put it. Symbols are efficacious in their own right, and in this case the striking thing about BHO is the extent to which he has generated enthusiasm and popular participation in politics of a kind that was depleted during the Bush years. The historical significance of the campaign, meanwhile, is manifold, and Younge has outlined this in numerous articles (for example). Obama's success, made possible by the civil rights movement, comes at a time when the movements that galvanised Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are exhausted. But this also gives us an insight into the 'dignity' that right-wing racists admire Obama for (why is it, Younge wonders, that black people in particular are supposed to have 'dignity'?). Republican commentators enthuse about a black candidate whose sensibilities appear so distant from the old church-formed radicals of the Civil Rights generation. Obama was able to benefit from access to an ivy league education because of the civil rights movement, but was not himself the product of a movement. Rather, his success had to emerge in a highly individual fashion (in his case by working his way up through the Democratic Party machine). And even if Obama's own situation is abberant - that is, his success comes in an era of growing stagnation for black Americans - it also comes at a time when it is possible for an African American to make a serious run at the White House. While once 56% of voters confessed that they would never vote for a black presidential candidate (and at least half of the rest were probably liars), today it is 6%. So that means Obama can appeal to a new potential constituency: "They're called 'white people'". Whereas previously, politics was seen as a step in the broader civil rights movement, it no longer is. And, as such, it has become necessary to cultivate new bases while not frightening off a crucial layer of white voters. And this means that the one thing we can be absolutely certain that Obama will disappoint on is race.

The one time that Obama made a positive and important statement about race in American politics was when he was cornered by the right over Reverend Wright. In that speech, he had to explain one part of America to another. "Every now and again, Obama has been 'outed' as a black man," Younge explained. "It's as if white Americans discovered a black friend they were comfortable with, but then it turned out that he had friends of his own...". As such, the more he attempts to closet himself, as he can be relied upon to do, the more the Republican attack machine will try to 'out' him, as they did with this ridiculous 'terrorist fist-jab' episode. Nonetheless, it is because Obama 'looks' like change, because he isn't just a member of the old dynastic political elite in the US, because every signal in his campaign points to the change promised in the civil rights movement (without being so vulgar as to explicitly reference it), that he taps into a mood among Americans. The nearly half of Americans who think its best days are behind it, the three quarters who believe the economy is getting worse, the two thirds who disapprove of the occupation of Iraq, the majority who are losing out because of stagnant wages and soaring food and energy prices - their enthusiasm for the Obama campaign which maintains such a commanding lead in the polls is not the same as Wall Street's enthusiasm for Obama. They are demonstrating, at least, that they hate war, recession and poverty more than they hate black people.

Much of the discussion from the floor was given over to the argument that the American left should in no sense simply second the Obama campaign, but rather should try and wean those enthusiastic new voters off the Democratic Party machine. There are concrete reasons for this. The sheer fact of the Obama campaign has apparently led much of the organised American left to shut down its campaigns for fear of making things difficult for Obama. My guess is that one thing that would indirectly favour Obama's campaign, even to his discomfort, would be an atmosphere of energetic left-wing activism. Turning off the politics is one sure way to send voters back to sleep. However, one can't second guess the effect that the campaign is having. Younge is certainly correct that one could not have expected such enthusiasm for a Gore or Kerry campaign. The question then is how to relate to the 'grassroots', the movement which is not yet a movement, the base which is hitherto rigidly confined to the single task of securing the election of the first black president of the United States. It will clearly not do to just point out the inevitable disappointment as the candidate most favoured by American capital gets to work intensifying the occupation of Afghanistan, sabre-rattling against Iran, coddling Israel and seeing to it that Jerusalem 'remains' its capital (though it is not actually the capital of Israel), and retreating on even his most modest proposals on Iraq. Corporate America is indeed anxious to rebrand American imperialism, and Obama is certainly a more plausibly salesman for 'humanitarian intervention' than an upper class white Texan conservative. However, we relate to those who wish to campaign for him because they are anti-war not pro-imperialist. So, there seems to be a real dilemma for the left here. Abstention is not an option, but neither is being seconded to 'Obamamania' in either its official or unofficial capacity.

Labels: barack obama, racism, socialism, US imperialism, us politics

Afghanistan under the knife and hammer posted by lenin

The procedure is quite simple. Choose a country in the world that seems to be suffering, in some way dysfunctional, ripe for 'intervention'. Perform some 'surgical' air strikes and, after a quick and painless stitch-up, auction it off to the highest bidders. Having done that, so the theory goes, you can return home and contemplate your good deeds. But, sticking with the medical metaphor for a second, you are not a doctor and you wouldn't know the hippocratic oath if it was printed in reverse lettering on your forehead. Whatever 'illness' you were supposedly dealing with has metastasized while the body is resisting your implants. In fact, the 'patient' keeps trying to kick your ass every time you come near him. Time to give up? Hell no. While Bush sends more troops to Afghanistan, Gordon Brown has insisted that there will be no 'artificial timetable' for British troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. Okay, but how about a real timetable?

Take a look at what's happening. The current propaganda, being widely repeated in various fora, is that the occupation - despite all the difficulties and the terrible burdens we must bear - is ameliorating the situation of Afghanistan. Thus, practically every commentator is repeating the incorrect claim, floated by Laura Bush, that infant mortality has declined by 25% since the occupation began. In fact, one study led by the World Bank, which is heading reconstruction and development programmes in Afghanistan, said last year that infant mortality had fallen - not by 25% or 26%, but by 18%. And that study excluded the worst-hit regions of Afghanistan, such as Helmand, Uruzgan, Kandahar, Zabul and Nuristan, because of security concerns. That is, it excluded 15% of the population from its scope. On the other hand, mortality among under fives has certainly risen. So, in 2005, 20% of the under-five population perished. In 2006, 25% died. Okay, so infant mortality in the least war-torn regions fell by 18% in five years, while in just one year, the rate of child mortality across the whole country increased by 25%. So, what are we supposed to be celebrating? More children get to live beyond their first 12 months before biting the dust from starvation, treatable diseases and, er, the odd bomb or bullet? As for the 75% who get past the age of five, if they do ever get to be grown-ups, they will at least have some interesting prospects - the torture chamber, rape, starvation, the destruction of their farms at the hands of DynCorp, murder at the hands of a local patriarch flush with dollars and self-regarding pomp, thermobaric bombardment...

There is no Lancet survey for Afghanistan. We have had some estimates of deaths in the first year of the war, the highest of which was supplied by Jonathan Steele of The Guardian, who estimated 49,000 direct and indirect deaths resulting from the war. There are occasional estimates of civilians killed, but the detection rate is likely to be extremely low - to my knowledge, there is no consistent effort to actually trace the number of deaths there. The UN provides figures, estimating the rate of deaths among civilians in the hundreds over the last six months. Frankly, that is just unbelievable (and, actually, I would like to know how they distinguish between a combatant and a civilian - presumably they rely on the occupation authorities for this kind of information). Consider just one facet of the war. In Iraq, between 50 and 100 Iraqis die as a result of air strikes every day. When the secret air war on both Iraq and Afghanistan was confirmed, the figures showed that the biggest spike in bombings was in Afghanistan where the number of major raids reached more than 800 per month. And we're supposed to believe that the death rate resulting from air strikes alone is lower than in Iraq, where the number of mass bombings - though very high - was less? In Iraq, in a period of three years, 78,000 violent deaths were caused by air strikes in Iraq (this was before the big spike in aerial bombardments). In Afghanistan, where the rate of aerial bombardment has always been higher, the figure must be higher. One informal estimate of deaths last year was carried out by Associated Press. It suggested that a total of 5,100 people had died violently in the first 9 months of 2007 (and most were killed by the occupation). Given that such passive surveys tend to massively underestimate the true scale of deaths, we are really talking about tens of thousands of deaths in that period, at least if we want to be realistic. Given the longevity of the war and its increasing brutality, if a Lancet-style survey can ever be carried out in Afghanistan, the total deaths may even be higher than in Iraq.

One index of the rate of destruction is the rate at which the insurgents are able to recruit and expand. Where the occupation is most bloody, the resistance is most concentrated. Until recently, south-west Afghanistan has been what the 'Sunni triangle' was in Iraq. It was where the US was most unpopular, and where attacks generally occurred most frequently. But now, the 'Taliban' - realistically, we know that most insurgents are not actually Talibs, and many of the actual Taliban leaders are on the receiving end of serenades from Hamid Karzai - are controlling more of the country than the US. The rate at which occupying troops are being killed has been rising year on year, peaking in June this year, and surpassing the rate of 'coalition' deaths in Iraq for the first time. The insurgency controls ever larger tracts of the country.

The verities of Afghanistan are poorly gauged, as I have indicated, but so far as we can tell what is happening, we know that the occupiers no longer command the support of most Afghans. The patience and forebearance of Afghans was and is enormous, despite the abuses, despite the torture chambers, despite the indiscriminate killings, the bombing raids resulting in massacres, and despite the obscene 'Green Zone' style luxury for occupiers and their auxiliaries in Kabul while much of the population is actually starving. Despite the obvious unpopularity of the Taliban, most people appear to want to negotiate a deal with them rather than prosecute a long and bloody war. Even the puppet administration of Hamid Karzai and the very meek and gentle General Rashid Dostum would like to cut some sort of a deal. Of course, there are those for whom the war is working out just swell. The warlords whom the US pays off to keep order are seeing their private armies expand greatly as they reap greater profits from the opium crop. Power is increasingly localised, and Hamid Karzai doesn't have a finger of real influence beyond Kabul. Contractors such as DynCorp are making out as well, because their role is to destroy the opium farms (those belonging to the poor farmers, not the big local rulers who are effectively under Nato protection). Curiously, DynCorp never seem to succeed in reducing drugs production wherever they are despatched to do so, yet they continually get the contracts. And as for Washington? The last thing they want is to get out. Both Democrats and Republicans are intent on increasing the commitment to Afghanistan, if necessary by scaling back the war in Iraq. They know they are in danger of losing the whole situation. Not only is the war in Afghanistan turning the population against the occupiers. In Pakistan, where the government is assaulting 'Taliban strongholds' with great ferocity, local populations are actually becoming more and not less supportive of the Talibs. The US is increasingly projecting its force across the border, and sabre-rattling against the Pakistani government (even Karzai is getting in on that act). The danger of a regional war is escalating in that "global Balkans" - as Brezinski, Obama's foreign policy advisor, dubs the region - and the United States government is raising the stakes.

Labels: 'war on terror', afghanistan, pakistan, taliban, US imperialism

How to run a counterinsurgency posted by lenin

US military guide, from Wikileaks:

The manual directly advocates training paramilitaries, pervasive surveillance, censorship, press control and restrictions on labor unions & political parties. It directly advocates warrantless searches, detainment without charge and (under varying circumstances) the suspension of habeas corpus. It directly advocates employing terrorists or prosecuting individuals for terrorism who are not terrorists, running false flag operations and concealing human rights abuses from journalists. And it repeatedly advocates the use of subterfuge and "psychological operations" (propaganda) to make these and other "population & resource control" measures more palatable.

Labels: 'war on terror', counterinsurgency, terrorism, US imperialism

What they have done to Somalia. posted by lenin

Compared to 4 million Iraqi refugees, only a tiny minority of which are actually taken care of by the countries chiefly responsible for their predicament, over 700,000 refugees from Somalia may seem relatively small. But this is the figure for Mogadishu alone, and the US-UK war on Somalia, waged through the Ethiopian client-state has been escalating, such that the UN has been compelled to declare the crisis there "worse than Darfur". There are some 2.6m Somalis on the brink of starvation and a further million is expected to be added to that figure by the end of the year. The Independent has found deep complicity between the UK government and war crimes in Somalia. For example, British aid to Ethiopia has doubled since 2005, presumably to held it cope with the burden of de facto occupation. And this Channel 4 documentary shows British support for many of those suspected of the worst crimes in the country. Aside from the spate of attacks on civilians, and the routine US air strikes (against 'Al Qaeda', don't you know), there is the usual run of looting from aid agencies and attacks on the deliverers of such aid. But the operations of AFRICOM, probably the main vector of US involvement in this combat, merely updates a more direct exertion by CENTCOM over fifteen years ago.

In the early 1990s, Somalia was a test-bed for 'humanitarian intervention'. This intervention did not involve overthrowing a dictatorship or stopping a genocide in motion. The early remit of Operation Restore Hope was, putatively, to overcome a famine which was attributed to political anarchy and state failure. The intervention notoriously ended in massive bloodshed, with US troops responsible for grave offenses against the citizens they were purportedly defending. In some popular accounts, (this is a representative sample), the reason for this is that the mission was turned over to the UN in 1993 and was broadened into a 'nation-building' exercise, which meant taking on General Aideed and other hostile forces in military combat. In another account, by Walter Clarke and Jeffrey Herbst (the former was Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Somalia during Operation Restore Hope) told Foreign Affairs readers that in fact the nation-building component was implicit from the beginning, and that it was forced on the UN as fait accompli by the United States government rather than forced on US troops by the idealistic UN (and at any rate, US troops were not under UN authority). Clarke and Herbst have it that the mission still "saved thousands of lives", regardless of the evident calamity of its later stages, and maintain that the real problem was the 'schizophrenia' of both Bush and Clinton administrations, who committed themselves to a humanitarian discourse without properly appraising the corollaries of such an enterprise. If this were the range of relevant debate - which seems to break down into the familiar dichotomy of 'realists' vs 'idealists' - we could just end the discussion here. But let's just look at what in fact transpired.

The political background is the breakdown of the Siad Barre regime which, though it had built up great popular momentum in anti-famine campaigns through the 1970s, had become straightforwardly a corrupt and authoritarian one by the time it lost the war against Ethiopia in 1978. Having previously aligned to the USSR, it sought the tutelage of the US, abandoned any nominal commitment to socialism and national unity, relied on clan affiliation as the base of its support, and was utterly ruthless in decimating the opposition. Given the divide-and-rule tactics of the Barre administration, the insurgency that developed was also organised along clan lines. International humanitarian aid sharpened the conflict, as the government was able to distribute it selectively to its allies in the combat. By 1991, Barre was overthrown, but several dynamics had already been set in motion by the war. For example, the agriculturally rich riverine areas, inhabited by historically oppressed and poorly armed minorities, had attracted warring parties who could sustain themselves by looting. So, there was a war economy in place. Those who overthrew Barre maintained equivalent power relations, so there were grounds for continuing war. And the minority clans were last to receive official aid. As those from 'ruling' clans such as the Darod fled in anticipation of reprisals and purges, the refugee population soared and villages found themselves inundated by populations they could not support. So, there were food shortages, and already a great deal of resentment and distrust of international aid agencies. And some social layers came to rely on the plunder that had developed in the war, so banditry became a prominent form of subsistence. Former government forces continued to counter the new ruling forces, divided between General Aideed and 'Interim President' Ali Mahdi Mohamed, and sometimes unleashed vicious 'vengeance' against 'disloyal' areas, which included campaigns of rape and murder. It is a cliche, but a roughly accurate one in this case, to say that no side in the war was virtuous. In fact, the depredations of 'both sides' contributed to the famine that struck for 18 months during 1991 and 1992.

Somalis did not wait passively for American or UN forces to arrive. They responded to the overthrow of Barre by setting up independent organisations to express their interests and manage relief. One such was the Somali Red Crescent Society which, together with the Red Cross, engaged in a massive aid effort. That aid was delivered to approximately 2 million people at the height of the effort. A huge portion of the aid was of course looted, and those delivering it were at risk of being attacked by armed forces. Aside from looting, rent extraction was rife as hauliers and others involved in the delivery process extracted high prices for their services. Notably, during the worst period of the famine, the UN declined to invest much aid in the country, and generally remained aloof from political efforts to negotiate a united government of some variety. When it did deliver aid, it tended to cut out or ignore Somali staff. As Alex de Waal points out in Famine Crimes, this tendency to simply overlook Somalis in operations supposedly designed to help them carried over from the food distribution efforts to the military occupation of the country by the US, who never expected General Aideed's war against the US to get the level of support that it did.

By December 1992, the UN had estimated half a million deaths from famine in Somalia, with 4.5 million people in desperate need. This state of affairs provided the backdrop for an experimental post-Cold War intervention by the first Bush administration, and it was in the last month of 1992 that the first of 25,000 US troops began to arrive. Among Americans, it was initially a popular intervention by an increasingly unpopular presidency, since it seen as a simple relief effort.
In truth, as Alex de Waal has written, the operation was launched as the famine was concluding. The main cause of death was increasingly disease, particularly malaria, but the occupiers turned up without any anti-malaria programme. The UN Special Envoy, Mohamed Sahnoun, wrote that the actual aid programme that the UN disbursed was so limited and delayed that it actually became counterproductive. The intervention had far more to do with testing out the emerging doctrine of 'humanitarian intervention' than relieving needful Somalis. This should be understood in the context of the US managing 'transitional' societies in the former USSR and of course its attempt to reshape the former Yugoslavia, which was taking place at the same time.

In a way, the aid operation - supposedly the purpose of the US dropping in - swiftly became auxiliary to the military one, in which rebels were attacked and Somalis disarmed by US forces on the streets. Similarly, the UN began in early 1992 to try and negotiate a political settlement, which resulted in a plan for a Transitional National Council (TNC) on 27 March 1993 - although if Clarke's testimony is accurate, this was all driven by Washington. The previous day, the US had pushed through UN Security Council Resolution 814, which gave the new UN authority extraordinarily wide-ranging powers and remit, without actually saddling the occupying forces with the status of occupation armies (which would burden them with the legal responsibilities of occupation, including building infrastructure and protecting civilians). The United Task Force (UNITAF), effectively a US occupation force with tiny contingents from supporting countries, ran the operation from December 1992 until May 1993, when authority was handed over to the UN mission, UNOSOM. When UNOSOM took control, all US forces aside from the logistical ones, were independent of the UN's command structure.

The US authorities had spent the first few months of their involvement siding with General Aideed, and even attacked his rivals on several occasions. They did allow General Morgan, a rival of Aideed, to attack and occupy the port city of Kismayo, which in fact led many to conclude that the US was supporting Morgan. When Somalis protested against the UN, by contrast, they were shot at and several killed. However, the US had changed tack by May, deciding to marginalise Aideed rather than rely on him as an ally, he was quickly the leading figure in an anti-occupation insurgency. As the UNOSOM mission came into increasing combat with Aideed and the Sudanese National Army that he represented, Aideed used Radio Mogadishu to broadcast against the UN. In June 1993, the UN raided the station, claiming that the place was a weapons depository, which resulted in 17 Pakistani soldiers being ambushed and killed. The response was a search-and-destroy operation by the United States, beginning in August with the arrival of Delta Force and Army Rangers. There followed three months of intense urban warfare by no means characterised by a humanitarian impulse. This culminated in a notorious battle near the Olympic Hotel in October 1993, in which the US lost severely - the topic of 'Black Hawk Down'. What is not usually discussed in the films and hit books is the fact that the occupation armies had been treating the civilian population with contempt. African Rights published reports of Belgian troops murdering and torturing civilians, which allegations were dismissed until soldiers started to issue blunt confessions. In fact almost every component of the patchwork UNOSOM force was implicated in such crimes. These were different in character from the war crimes of the US, however: the former were not planned or part of a military strategy, while the latter were. Among them were a US-led mission to attack a hospital where it was supposed General Aideed might be, which resulted in patients being slaughtered as helicopter missiles rained down. Another was an attack on a civilian meeting of Aideed's political movement, which resulted in 54 deaths. In fact, US helicopters regularly opened fire on crowds, not as a result of the intrinsic evil of the pilots or even their superiors, but as a necessary dynamic of a war in which the US found itself increasingly opposed to the majority of the Somali population. As de Waal writes:

One thing that the us and un never appreciated was that, as they escalated the level of murder and mayhem, they increased the determination of Somalis to resist and fight back. By the time of the 3 October battle, literally every inhabitant of large areas of Mogadishu considered the un and us as enemies, and were ready to take up arms against them. People who ten months before had welcomed the us Marines with open arms were now ready to risk death to drive them out.

Since it is always raised, it is worth addressing the argument that, at any rate, UNITAF was of some help in opening up supply lines and distributing food. Already, this is problematic because of the way aid interacted with the war dynamic, but even so the expectation created by the US at the time was that 2 million lives would be saved. In fact, the estimate of the US Refugee Council is that 25,000 lives at most were saved by the variety of food and medical aid that was actually delivered. A non-militarised aid operation working alongside, rather than against Somalis, drawing on their knowledge and relying on their leadership, would have achieved similar results - perhaps better results, and without the need for mass murder. It is certainly true that delivering food aid in a timely fashion and on the basis of local knowledge would reduce food prices and thus alleviate some of the problems contributing to the war. But any relief operation was always subordinate to ulterior concerns and ultimately thwarted by the chaos and brutality inflicted by the US on the country. The reason why Somalia is officially considered a failure is because the US did not succeed in creating a client-regime that would cheerfully implement IMF dispensations. The response to the emergence of the Islamic Courts Union, the first stable and relatively popular government Somalia had experienced in some time, has been to revive that attempt but this time without American troops in the line of fire, and with a narrative of civilizational contest rather than 'humanitarian intervention'. Instead of Belgian, Italian, Pakistani and Moroccan troops torturing and murdering and raping civilians under a US-led mandate, the Ethiopian Army has been charged with this vital task. Thousands have died already, and what was an improving situation has become a catastrophic one. That is what can be done to Somalia in relative invisibility, and in the high-octane racist climate of the 'war on terror'.

Labels: 'war on terror', africom, mogadishu, somalia, US imperialism

Bush Protest posted by lenin

Since I expect that the news isn't going to mention today's protest, I thought I'd post some pics and footage for you. I must admit, I was too tired to climb up on the railings and get a good panorama, so you'll have to check out the other sites. A few thousand turned up, not bad for a Sunday evening, but not enough to break through the police lines and get into Downing Street - although there was a brief attempt by some of the naughtier elements, culminating in the heinous theft of a steel barrier. Here's some pictures to begin with:






More later.

Labels: george w bush, london, protest, US imperialism

Herrenvolk culture posted by lenin

This is just a quick montage made up of pictures I gleaned from various books. First the imperial sales pitch:






Now, the pomp and majesty of the democratic-minded imperialists:



Now for humanitarian imperialism:



And who is fit for self-government?:



Clearly not the untermenschen:

Labels: british empire, imperial ideology, racism, US imperialism, white supremacy

The failure of 'Iraqification' and the colonial temptation. posted by lenin

I think it obvious that the US government would much rather have successfully imposed a client regime on Iraq than have to deal with a long-term military commitment to Iraq. As Immanuel Wallerstein has pointed out, 3 trillion dollars may not be a lot of money to George W Bush, but it is seriously draining on a national economy - even where, as has been the case, a great deal of that money funnels back into select US corporations. So, the strategy to date has been one of 'Iraqification': train up sufficient Iraqi security forces allied to the regime, itself a sort of klepto-bureaucratic elite uniting sectarians of all sects in a pact of national self-destruction. Into those security forces were elevated a combination of ex-Baathists, Badr Organisation militia members, and the most sinister criminal elements, all of whom were ready for a nationwide blitz of torture and executions. Various components of these security forces have been used in tandem with US troops to engage in 'pacification' operations, with the long-term goal of preparing them to control the country. The fallback position was that the US would maintain permanent bases in the territory, but somewhat more in the fashion of America's 'lily-pad' strategy than of straightforward colonisation I think. Nonetheless, we now know that the US plans not 14, but over 50 permanent military bases in Iraq. [Note: the SW article points out that documents leaked to Al Hayat suggest that the total number of bases planned is 400 - that's larger than the current total of 251. If the Al Hayat report is accurate, then the US plans not only a permanent occupation, but an expanded one.] That would be an unprecedented commitment, and no one could believe that it didn't amount to the complete, enduring occupation of Iraq. What else could you call it? It's a colonial commitment, quite different from the way the US has tried to exert power arguably since WWI and certainly since WWII.

A bit of background. Neil Smith's excellent work on Isaiah Bowman, "Roosevelt's geographer" as he was known, demonstrates some of the geo-economic intelligence that went into determining America's global posture in the era of WWII and after. Bowman had been involved in the imperial strategies of successive administration since Woodrow Wilson's, and under Roosevelt he helped devise the response to Hitler. One of his responsibilities after Kristallnacht was to find a way to deal with the huge refugee flow from Nazi Germany. America was reluctant to accept them, and Bowman's proposition was that America 'acquire' Angola from the Portuguese - whether in the way that Louisiana was acquired, or in the fashion that Cuba was, I can't say - and use it as the basis for a Jewish Homeland. This is not as bizarre as it may sound. The early Zionists had considered Uganda as a possible 'homeland', which underlines the colonial nature of the project. In part, Bowman's stance may have been guided by his scepticism about the idea of colonising Palestine - especially if it included what was then known as Transjordan, since this would result in a Jewish minority in perpetual conflict with an Arab majority.

Bowman was aware by 1942 that the Nazi regime was engaged in genocide, and the public outcry prompted Roosevelt to accept an immensely important project by Bowman, similar to his Inquiry during and after WWI, which had been intended to devise a settlement suitable for America's purposes. This undertaking was known as the 'M Project' and it sought to find a solution to the organisation of Europe and its populations. It has to be stated candidly that Bowman was not a humanitarian. He was a eugenicist and a racist (against Jews as well as others), and believed that certain populations would have to be separated from others to prevent these centrifugal forces from tearing Europe apart again. He certainly didn't think America should relax its immigration standards, or allow an even bigger surplus of labour to develop at a time when 12 million were unemployed. This was part of the intellectual basis, if I may speak loosely, for his proposals. His survey produced hundreds of documents, reports, memoranda, translated materials and so on, and he fed Roosevelt with ongoing advice. On Palestine, he initially advised him to make no promises beyond consultion with both sides after the war. He was concerned both about the prospects for conflict in Palestine if the US backed the Zionist takeover, and also about the idea that European states would see the US as interfering in its affairs and thus take the opportunity to disregard the Monroe Doctrine. But above all, Bowman believed that there had to be conditions for accumulation - land, labour and capital - for any territorial enterprise to work. And it was his focus on the economic dimension of the spatial order that was decisive in his plans for a post-war American hegemony. To the Nazi claim of "Lebensraum for one" he proposed "Lebensraum for all" - this was not because he didn't believe in empire, but because he knew that control of productive resources was far more central to a nation's global power than direct territorial control. America could exercise its dominance primarily through market relations: a new world order, in which the New World ruled by the profit margin. This did not mean no use of military power. On the contrary, America should be able to "police the world": "If we are expect to build a vast Navy and operate merchant ships on an unheard-of scale, we are not going to toss those things away at the end of the war on any theory of peace. We are going to keep them and make them work in the interests of the way that we set up". Further, "In the economic field we shall want to be in on everything the world around." Military action would conserve a global order shaped in America's interests - and as we have seen, that can involve a quite unprecedented frequency and intensity of global violence.

In his work for Roosevelt's territorial committee, he directed the committee members to frame all territorial settlements in terms of the economic and political objectives of the United States. One of the main issues that he had to deal with was the situation of Germany - some in the State Department believed that partition was the answer to the problem, while Bowman envisioned an expansive Germany surviving after the war, with generous eastern territories under an overall Allied military control, the better to act as a bulwark against the USSR. He had misgivings about the possibility of a resurgent German economic power competing successfully with the US, but still took the view that the USSR was a far bigger threat than Germany. He did not in the end win that fight with the administration - Cordell Hull, Anthony Eden and Vyacheslav Molotov all agreed that Germany would have to be partitioned. But where he was successful was in pushing for a programme of American expansion. Whereas the British were used to having material interests "everywhere", America had been "tentative, timid, doubtful" and would now have to "make a sudden shift into the new world order". But rather than rest on its colonial laurels (America's colonial possessions were comparatively meagre), the US should engage in a determined effort to shook loose the colonies and open them up to American capital. Bowman was no believer in independence, and held that colonial extraction from colonised territories was simply wise use, since the natives would have no use for the products thus extracted. Trusteeship was the alternative to direct colonial rule for those areas not annexed by the European powers, not independence. For example, not only Japan, but also Korea and Indochina, would become the subjects of trusteeship. (In fact, Roosevelt offered Indochina to Chiang Kai-shek at the Cairo summit in 1943, but the Chinese ruler was not interested). Resource-rich states should be exploited through the market rather than military occupation. If the British imperialists saw this as an attack on the Empire in the name of American economic expansionism, they were right. Bowman admired the British Empire and was fond of Churchill's racist shop-talk on the colonies, but he was as determined as his political masters to make America a truly global power. Bowman was also central to devising plans for a post-war international organisation that would replace the League of Nations, just as US planners were conceiving a 'Grand Area' in which the US would exert its hegemony - this would include the Western hemisphere, the Atlantic and Pacific economies, China, Japan and south-east Asia. Bowman fancied that the UN Charter should be modelled on the US constitution, and asserted that such an organisation should embrace a number of universal "self-evident" truths, including his own nationalist and racist assumptions about population control and immigration. And when, at the United Nations Conference on International Organisation in San Francisco in 1945, the USSR and China argued that any trusteeship should include independence as its eventual goal, Bowman foresaw an "inevitable struggle" with the Russians, whom he saw as trying to expand into the ex-colonies and muscle in on what he regarded as American turf. It was Bowman's lasting lament that the UN could not and did not become a global management system for the United States, because the national issue would not go away. The UN was gradually populated by recently liberated states who spoke the language of Third Worldism or socialism or national independence, and thus became the object of disapprobation and chastisement for American conservatives, from Goldwater to Perle.

Nonetheless, the world order conceived by Bowman and his confederates was roughly realised. America did have long-term military commitments, but this was usually in the way of creating client regimes. It has not been a formal colonial power since it gave up direct rule over the Philippines - you could argue about Hawaii and Puerto Rico, but these are annexed territories rather than colonies. So today, the United States ruling class appears to be divided between those who want to resuscitate 19th Century liberal imperialism, with extended periods of formal occupation, and those who want to stick with the Brzezinski 'realist' camp, managing a global system of vassals through bribery, cajolement, 'lily pads', economic blockade, and brief, effective demonstrations of violence. A number of things would make them more wary than they already are of anything that looked like a formal colonial posture. The first, of course, is that they have the best army in the world and yet can't beat the opposition in either Iraq or Afghanistan: these are unemployed workers, farmers and students in the main, not professional soldiers, and yet they have proven that the US cannot rule their respective countries. The second is that despite the temporary reprieve for the occupiers in Iraq, and the complicity of sectarian elites in the process of breaking the country up and subduing it in a long-term relationship of dominance, even sycophantic pro-US clerics are warning of a much wider uprising should the current plans proceed. Even participants in the puppet government are unhappy about what is proposed. Presumably, the US is not confident that without the presence of troops the advantageous oil contracts it has secured will be honoured - perhaps they envision the overthrow of the Maliki government if troops are even substantially reduced. Yet, what is proposed is such a sweeping and enduring state of occupation and - as a corollary - war against the Iraqi population that it is hard to see this as anything but a temptation to undertake 21st Century colonialism.

Labels: cold war, colonialism, fdr, imperial ideology, isaiah bowman, the geography of capitalism, US imperialism

Maliki & Co. Offer US Forces "A Permanent Home on Our Doorsteps" posted by Yoshie

General Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards of Iran ("widely described as a charismatic yet modest leader who never abuses his authority," according to McClatchy Newspapers), is right:

On Monday, the hard-line Iranian newspaper Jomhuri-e-Eslami accused al-Maliki of lacking backbone in alks with Washington, which include the long-range status of U.S. military operations in Iraq. The daily, which is considered close to Iran's ruling clerics, claimed Washington wants a "full-fledged colony" in Iraq.

It was a rare public jab at al-Maliki, a Shiite. But it was mild compared with the closed-door recriminations during the high-level Iraqi visit, according to accounts by Shiite politicians close to Iraq's prime minister.

The five-member delegation sought to pressure and cajole the Iranians into cutting suspected support for Shiite militias that have battled U.S. and Iraqi forces. But the Iraqis mostly received a scolding, the politicians said.

"The Iranians were very tough and even angry with us," said one of the delegates in the Tehran talks. "They accused us of being ungrateful to what Iran has done for the Shiites during Saddam's rule and of siding with the Americans against Iran."

The Iraqi politicians, five in all, spoke to the AP in separate interviews on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. Two of them took part in the talks with the Iranians. The rest were briefed on the meetings.

At one point, a key leader within Iran's Revolutionary Guards accused the Iraqi delegation and their leaders of being tools of Washington and showing ingratitude for years of Iranian support to Iraqi's majority Shiites, who suffered attacks and persecution under Saddam, the politicians said.

Brig. Gen. Ghassem Soleimani, commander of the elite Quds Force unit of the Guards, accused the Iraqis of offering U.S. forces "a permanent home on our doorsteps," the politicians told the AP. (Hamza Hendawi and Qassim Abdul-Zahra, "'Angry' Iran Sharpens Tone with Baghdad's Leaders," Associated Press, 15 May 2008)

Yes, Maliki & Co. are offering the empire "a permanent home" on Iran's doorsteps, against the interests of Iran¹ -- unlike Sadr, who "pledged to come to the defense of neighboring Iran if it were attacked."²

Common people of Iran, already preferring Sadr to Maliki by a substantial margin,³ would side with the general on his assessment of the dominant Shi'i factions in the "Iraqi government."

Now the general ought to build elite consensus on this fact and help the Leader, et al. effect a nuanced shift in Iran's policy toward the Shi'i factions in Iraq.

1 See Hussein Shariatmadari, "Iraq on the Edge," Kayhan International, 11 May 2008; Manal Lutfi, "Iranian Official Accuses al-Maliki of Surrendering to the US," Asharq Al-Awsat, 13 May 2008; and Shadha al-Jubori, "Strategic Agreement with US Is in the Interest of Iraq -- Official," Asharq Al-Awsat, 14 May 2008. Note that so-called hard-liners are far more vigilant on defense of Iran from the empire than reformists, Rafsanjanists, and technocratic neo-conservatives, which is the reason why the Western media promote the latter against the former.

2 Ellen Knickmeyer and Omar Fekeiki, "Iraqi Shiite Cleric Pledges to Defend Iran: Sadr, With Powerful Militia, Vows to Respond to Attack by West on Neighbor," Washington Post, 24 January 2006, A13.

3 Sadr is "viewed favorably by 56 percent [of Iranians] and unfavorably by just 12 percent" whereas "45 percent [of Iranians] have a favorable view of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki while 22 percent have an unfavorable view"(WorldPublicOpinion.org, "Public Opinion in Iran: With Comparisons to American Public Opinion," 7 April 2008, p. 29).

Labels: class, iran, iraq, US imperialism

The Mahdi Army Survives Undisarmed posted by Yoshie

A new truce between the "Iraqi government" and the Mahdi Army. Citing AFP and Al-Hayat, Juan Cole sums up the key points of the agreement between them:

The al-Maliki government and the Sadrists pulled back from the brink in Sadr City on Saturday. PM Nuri al-Maliki had demanded that the Mahdi Army militia that serves as the Sadrist paramilitary give up its arms and dissolve itself. The compromise simply states that the Iraqi security forces would be allowed in to Sadr City to search for suspected medium and heavy weapons. The implication is that the Mahdi Army may continue to exist and may keep its light weapons (e.g. AK-47s), though it has to pledge not to walk with them in public.

The siege of Sadr City is to be lifted and the major roads in and out of it are to be unblocked, according to the agreement.

Al-Hayat reports in Arabic that the agreement stipulates that the government should have a court order to come into Sadr City. Arrests of rogue commanders had to to be based on warrants and not just 'indiscriminate.' There is nothing in the agreement about the Mahdi Army disarming altogether, as Nuri Al-Maliki initially demanded. ("Maliki-Sadr Agreement on Sadr City; Al-Maliki Heads to Mosul," Informed Comment, 11 May 2008)

The truce is said to have been brokered by Tehran -- again.

While Washington has two enemies -- not just Sunni insurgents but also Shi'i Sadrists -- whom it can neither conquer nor coopt, Tehran has no determined enemy among the Iraqi Shia and has influence over all major factions of them. Ironically, it's Washington's desire to create "an anti-Iranian Iraq," as well as a front of Arab client states against the so-called Shia crescent stretching from Iran to large swathes of Iraq, Lebanon, and even the Gulf states,¹ that has augmented Tehran's influence:

It was the U.S. attempt to create an anti-Iranian Iraq that was to play into Iranian hands and produce the very situation that Washington was trying to avoid.

The more Washington threatened air strikes on Iran because of its nuclear program, the more the Iranians sought to make sure that it had the potential to strike back at American forces in Iraq. Before he was executed, Sadr I believed that he had been let down by Iran; Sadr II had bad relations with Tehran; and at first Muqtada denounced his Shia opponents in SCIRI and the Marji'iyyah as being Iranian stooges. But American pressure meant that the Sadrists had to look to Iran for help, and in a military confrontation the Mehdi Army saw Iran as an essential source of weapons and military expertise. (Patrick Cockburn, "Riding the Tiger: Muqtada al-Sadr and the American Dilemma in Iraq," Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq, Scribner, 2008)

Thus Tehran alone can help bring stability to at least the areas of Iraq predominantly inhabited by the Shia; and, together with Damascus, which has a certain level of influence over some factions of Sunni insurgents, it may eventually -- in sha' allah -- be able to help broker a government of national unity of sorts in Iraq² if and when Washington ends its occupation of the ruined nation. That's the point that Western leftists should emphasize to counter Washington's propaganda against Iran and Syria. It's the empire, not Iran and Syria, that is the force that perpetuates chaos in Iraq and ends up spreading it everywhere it goes.

1 Washington has, however, failed to move the hearts and minds of Arabs against Iran in particular or the Shia in general. The most admired world leaders among Arabs are Hassan Nasrallah, Bashar Al-Assad, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (in that order), according to Shibley Telhami's "2008 Annual Arab Public Opinion Poll."

2 In any such post-occupation government of national unity in Iraq, Sadrists will play a central role. The Iranian people, a majority of whom prefer Sadr to Maliki, correctly understand it:

A plurality [of Iranians] sees the government in Iraq as legitimate -- down from a modest majority in 2006. Asked whether "the current government is . . . the legitimate representative of the Iraqi people," 45 percent said that it is, while 33 percent said that it is not. This is down from December 2006, when 54 percent thought it was legitimate (31% thought it was not).

Similarly, 45 percent have a favorable view of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki while 22 percent have an unfavorable view. This too has drifted down slightly from 2006, when 48 percent had a favorable view.

More popular is Shi'a opposition figure Muqtada al-Sadr, who was viewed favorably by 56 percent and unfavorably by just 12 percent. Similarly, in 2006 58 percent had a favorable view and 12 percent were unfavorable. (WorldPublicOpinion.org, "Public Opinion in Iran: With Comparisons to American Public Opinion," 7 April 2008, p. 29)

Labels: iran, iraq, iraqi resistance, syria, US imperialism

Latest Iraqi Resistance Stats posted by lenin

The Brookings Institution provides regular updates on all statistics from Iraq in its 'Iraq Index'. It collates a range of different sources, and it isn't necessarily as authoritative as the official Department of Defense reports. However, it is more consistent in what data it presents and generally omits the Bush administration editorials. The latest report, dated 5 May 2008, is here. Here are some of the key results pertaining to resistance attacks (click to enlarge):








I already addressed the reported the issue of the 'surge' and its effects here and here. I noted that the main causes of a reduction in all kinds of attacks were: a) a brief cessation of the war between Sadr and Badr fighters; the near exhaustion of the sectarian war; b) Sadr's ceasefire; c) the co-opting of Sunni fighters in huge numbers. I also pointed out that the Bush administration had only succeeded in reducing the rate of anti-occupation violence by the precise amount that it had increased during the escalations in 2006-7. The statistics above more or less confirm this picture. (Gilbert Achcar, in an interesting discussion of the political background to the 'surge', also reinforces some of these points). They also suggest that US troop deaths fell to a very low rate in December 2007, and have been rising ever since (don't be misled by the drop at the end of the third chart, as that is the figure for the first four days in May). It is currently at a seven-month high. They confirm that the 'foreign fighter' contingent remains puny, about 2,000 at most - in a total insurgency that was estimated to be about 200,000 strong as early as January 2005, that is at most 1% of the total. As the US has been putting 'Iraqi security forces' in the frontline over the past couple of years - the strategy of 'Iraqification' - they are bearing the greater brunt of deaths. Those same 'Iraqi security forces' are, according to this report, carrying out a large number of the patrols - over half at some points, apparently. The pattern of 'Iraqification' has been maintained in Basra and Sadr City recently. The US is backing up said 'security forces' with air strikes that have contributed to the hundreds of deaths (this may actually be more bloody in the end than Fallujah). Partly because of this, the main cause of deaths among US troops is IEDs, rather than gun battles. Even with that in mind, the main gain of the 'surge' - a reduction in attacks on occupation troops - has been reversing for several months now. If the Sadrist militias have held out well enough to cause the government to want another truce, then the other expected gain - using a window of opportunity to smash the main anti-occupation forces - is unlikely to materialise.

Labels: 'surge', iraq, iraqi resistance, occupation, US imperialism

Two Kinds of Image Problem posted by lenin

This:




And this:



(Click on images).

Labels: haiti, iraq, orientalism, racism, the arab mind, torture, US imperialism

Kisses from Gitmo posted by lenin

Torture kitsch from the new American resort, 'Taliban Towers' in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba:

Labels: capital, guantanamo, torture, US imperialism

What Do Iranians Think of Their Own Government? posted by Yoshie

Contrary to what much of the Western media, leftist as well as capitalist, would have us believe, the Iranian government apparently enjoys a high level of popular support, according to the latest World Public Opinion poll, which also clarifies the class base of support for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Would-be regime changers ought to take a hint and stop the economic sanctions, covert actions, "democracy assistance," media propaganda, and other measures against Iran, all of which only undermine the Iranian people's attempts to further democratize their government and make it truly reflect the will of the people. The Iranian government, in turn, should take a deep breath and lighten up: the best defense against imperialism is the deepening of democracy, including industrial democracy, and improvement of the economic lot of working people, not the My Uncle Napoleon syndrome.

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What Do Iranians Think of Their Own Government?
by WorldPublicOpinion.org

Iranians largely express satisfaction with their government.  Two out of three say that Iran is generally going in the right direction, though a plurality is dissatisfied with the Iranian economy.  Half say they trust the government to do what is right most of the time, while another quarter say they trust it at least some of the time.  Two-thirds express satisfaction with Iran's relations with the world as a whole.  Large majorities approve of how President Ahmadinejad is handling his job at home and his dealings with other countries, though this support is considerably lower among more educated and higher-income Iranians.

About two thirds of Iranians make positive assessments of Iran's government and general direction.  Asked, "Generally speaking, do you think things in Iran today are going in the right direction or . . . the wrong direction?" 65 percent say things are moving in the right direction, while 24 percent disagree.

However, Iranians make an exception about the economy.  A 49 percent plurality said they were "mostly dissatisfied with Iran's economy," while 36 percent said they were mostly satisfied.

Three in four Iranians say that they trust the government to do what is right at least some of the time.  Respondents were asked how much of the time they "trust the national government in Tehran to do what is right."  Forty-eight percent said the government could be trusted most of the time, and another 26 percent said it could be trusted some of the time.  Just 14 percent answered "rarely" (11%) or "never" (2%).

In foreign relations, two-thirds (64%) said they are mostly satisfied with Iran's relations with the world as a whole; 28 percent said they were mostly dissatisfied.

Two thirds also approve of how President Ahmadinejad is handling his job at home and his dealings with other countries.  Sixty-six percent approved "of the way President Ahmadinejad is handling his job as president," while 22 percent disapproved.  To probe deeper into these sentiments of support, the study asked questions about "the way President Ahmadinejad has been traveling abroad and speaking about Iran's foreign policy."  Sixty-three percent said the president's activities have made "the overall security of Iran" "mostly better"; only 14 percent said this has made Iran's security mostly worse.  Similarly, 64 percent said Ahmadinejad's activities had made "other countries' views of Iran" mostly better; 16 percent said his work had made these countries' views worse.

Support for Ahmadinejad is stronger among those with low income and low education, and considerably weaker at the upper end of each scale.  Among low-income respondents, 75 percent approved of Ahmadinejad's performance; among high-income respondents, it was 41 percent, with 38 percent disapproving.  Among those with less than a high school education, 80 percent approved of Ahmadinejad; among those with some college or more, it was 49 percent, with 35 percent disapproving.  These differences suggest that the remarks of many observers, to the effect that Ahmadinejad operates as the Iranian version of a "populist," are not far off the mark.

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This article is an excerpt from "Public Opinion in Iran: With Comparisons to American Public Opinion," a WorldPublicOpinion.org Poll conducted in partnership with Search for Common Ground and Knowledge Networks, 7 April 2008.  "The poll of Iranians was conducted with a randomly selected sample of 710 Iranian adults, from rural as well as urban areas, January 13-February 9, 2008.  The margin of error is +/-3.8 percent.  Interviews were conducted in every province of Iran.  Professional Iranian interviewers conducted face-to-face interviews in Iranian homes.  Within each community, randomly selected for sampling, households were chosen according to international survey methods that are standard for face-to-face interviewing.  In some cases, a respondent did not want to be interviewed because the interviewer was of the opposite sex. Interviewers then offered to either reschedule the interview for a time when the male head of household would be present, or to have an interviewer of the same sex visit.  The poll questionnaire was developed in consultation with experts on Iran as well as the Iranian polling firm.  In addition to the poll, focus groups were conducted in Tehran with representative samples of Iranians" ("Public Opinion in Iran," pp. 3-4). The questionnaire and methodology is available at <worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/apr08/Iran_Apr08_quaire.pdf>.  See, also, "Iranians Oppose Producing Nuclear Weapons, Saying It Is Contrary to Islam: But Most Insist on Iran Producing Nuclear Fuel," WorldPublicOpinion.org, 7 April 2008; "Iranians Favor Direct Talks with US on Shared Issues, Mutual Access for Journalists, More Trade," WorldPublicOpinion.org, 7 April 2008; Jim Lobe, "Iranian Public Sees Reduced U.S. Threat," Inter Press Service, 7 April 2008.

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UPDATE

I posted a longer excerpt from the same poll in MRZine, which received a number of comments there as well. The excerpt and comments caught the attention of Clay Ramsay (Research Director, Program on International Policy Attitudes, University of Maryland), who was responsible for the poll. He wrote the zine and offered to answer readers' questions: mrzine.monthlyreview.org/iran140408.html. If you have questions for him, please click on the link above and ask the questions there.

Labels: class, empire, imperial ideology, iran, US imperialism, working class

The Sadr City crackdown. posted by lenin

Muqtada al-Sadr's scheduled protest for 9 April (yesterday) was, of course, called off in a hurry, as refugees were fleeing the city under bombardment. The air attacks continue to mount up, the latest reported attack killing ten Iraqis - in a "militia stronghold", of course. Loud explosions are being heard all over Sadr City as violence across Baghdad 'spirals'. It isn't hard to see why this is happening. Sadr City is, as I mentioned, a vast, populous area, larger than Basra or Najaf. It is the key area of Sadrist resistance, the base from which the movement's strengths emanate. But why now? Previously, when Sadr has humiliated the occupiers and their local chumps, there has been a period of backing off and a brief, negotiated peace. This time, having watched Maliki fail, the US is upping the ante.

Well, although Maliki was indeed humiliated, and had to run to Iran for a settlement before begging for fifty of his armoured cars back from the insurgents, he seems to have been told by the US to get back down to it. Gen. Petraeus expects the Basra crackdown to last for another few months. So, as America bombs from a great height, "Iraqi forces" are sent in to do the ground work. Presumably, the reasoning is that if the Sunni north holds, there is no reason to hold back in Baghdad and the south. Of course, there were still hundreds of attacks even in the relatively peaceful months since September 2007, mainly in Baghdad and the northern provinces of Ninewah, Diyala, and Salah-ah-Din. And in fact the number of attacks in Ninewah increased by 17% between November 2007 and March 2008. So, we shouldn't too carried away by the claims for the 'pacification' of Sunni Iraq. Nevertheless, the obvious and quite dramatic decline in the overall reported attacks since the co-optation of 'Awakening Councils' and the Sadrist ceasefire at the end of August 2007 has probably given the US army leadership a shot of confidence. So now they're giving Sadr City a taste of what Fallujah, Tal Afar, al-Qaim, Haditha, Samarra and Ramadi have each got in different measures over the past three or four years. In riposte, the resistance is raising the rate of its assault, as seventeen troops have been killed since Sunday.

With the oil laws still not signed into law, with social forces embroiled in a politico-military struggle for the future control of Iraq, and with intransigent unions resisting US designs, they have no plans of getting out of Iraq any time soon. Indeed, as Seumas Milne revealed, they plan an open-ended military presence in the country. It has to be open-ended, of course. Even McCain's Hundred Year Reich is too limiting. Even the current supine political leadership in Iraq isn't going to completely go along with that, for fear of being swallowed up by an angry revolt. Suppose the Sadrists were to 'arrive' in the next elections, with control of much of southern Iraq and Baghdad? Suppose, then, the 'Awakening Councils' were to start plugging their American overlords again? They clearly intend to take the initiative while they have a window: as the troops selected to speak to embedded NYT reporters insist, this "has got to be done". And the US has lost faith in the capacity of its political allies in Iraq to do the job.

Labels: iraq, iraqi resistance, occupation, sadr city, sadrists, US imperialism

Sadr's strange victory. posted by lenin

What did he have to do to win? Well, once again, he didn't start or provoke the fight. In fact, he had recently renewed his organisation's ceasefire, so anything short of his being decisively defeated is by default a victory for him. Maliki's stated goal was to disarm the Mahdi Army, and that clearly isn't going to happen. Maliki tried to use the 'Iraqi forces' in order to defeat the Mahdi, but found he couldn't. Some Iraqi police refused to fight, while others took their guns and went to fight for the other side. Basra was decisively in Mahdi control. In short order, Baghdad, Kut, Karbala, Nasiriyah, Hilla and several southern cities and towns were in revolt. Hassan Jumaa of Iraq's main oil union reported that there was a widespread popular revolt, and there is evidence that both the US and Maliki feared the development of a combined national revolt. While Maliki had pleaded with the occupiers to stay out of fighting, lest it be seen as a war of occupation versus resistance (and the Dawa Party will not look good in the upcoming elections if he is seen as the occupiers' puppet), it wasn't long before he had to call them in. Now, it looks like they're having to settle for an Iranian-brokered ceasefire that leaves Sadr's organisation intact and his political standing immensely enhanced. What's more, it seems the negotiations were instigated by Maliki's government: "We asked Iranian officials to help us convince him that we were not cracking down on the Sadr group", said an Iraqi official. From "worse than Al Qaeda" to "pwease lets be fwends" is a big shift. Sadr's order for his militias to get off the streets is a test of his control over the organisation, but it is hardly a white flag.

Consider the position of the occupiers in all this. There is now a story going round that US officials didn't know that the attack on Basra was coming. As Marc Lynch points out, this is hardly credible. It is highly unlikely that Cheney's recent visit to Iraq didn't involve some discussion of the Sadrists. Assuming what appears to be obvious, namely that this attack was ordered by the US, then what is the upshot? If the US is obliged to accept an Iranian-backed peace deal, it isn't because they were militarily defeated. The US was bombing from a great height, and could easily have destroyed Basra and its inhabitants and the Mahdi fighters. The fact that this is not Fallujah is not because of the superior rifle power or military training of Sadr's supporters. It is because of Sadr's currently unmatched political power.

All of this is evidence that the Sadrists are improving their act. Have a look at these snippets from Moqtada al-Sadr's recent interview on Al Jazeera:



Here, he positions himself as a leader of the resistance struggle and calls upon Arab states to lend the struggle political support. In reports of his wider remarks, he is said to have described the liberation of Iraq as the central strategic goal of the Mahdi, and predicted that the US will fall in Iraq as they did in Vietnam. Well, there's no doubt that this could happen, but for all that the similarities with Vietnam are rightly highlighted, there remains one staggering difference: there is no equivalent to the Viet Minh. There is not an organisation with the authoritative legitimacy, discipline, centralised power and political nous to even come close. The Mahdi cannot be that organisation, and of course Sadr is probably well aware of this, which is why he has been reaching out to Sunni resistance groups. Who could launch a Tet Offensive in Iraq today? That attack, a turning point which guaranteed the shortening of the American war, required a mass peasant army with fearsome self-control and a leadership with a sophisticated analysis of the domestic politics of the US and how the operation would impact on it. The army would not have been there for the fight had the Viet Minh not been able to offer a coherent strategy for national liberation and unite that with the declared goal of emancipating the peasantry. Any end to the American war in Iraq will result from the consolidation of a national federation of resistance groups with a singular political vision that offers something to the dispossessed Iraqi working class. Yet, for all the limits of Sadr's movement, he continues to rack up successes, to take his would-be terminators by surprise, and to consolidate his standing every time someone tries to take him down a peg or two.

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