An antithesis is not an alternative
Azmi Bishari, this article first appeared in
Al Ahram
Nine hundred and forty nine US soldiers
have died since the US launched its war against Iraq in March 2003. Of
these, 811 died since Bush officially declared the end of the campaign
on 1 May 2003. Of these, 94 died since the so-called transfer of
sovereignty on 28 June.
Although the majority of US public
opinion is now inclined to regard the war as a mistake perpetrated on
the basis of false evidence regarding Iraq's possession of weapons of
mass destruction and although opinion polls suggest that the war will be
a greater determinant of the outcome of the presidential elections than
the state of the economy and domestic policies combined, the elite that
dominates political life in the US in the form of two electoral leagues
that call themselves parties has yet to address the question of a
systematic withdrawal of US forces from Iraq. Instead of highlighting
the differences between the candidates, the "debate" has cast its
spotlight on Kerry's war record in Vietnam, his one-upmanship with Bush
over the Palestinian question and the fact that if he had all the
information currently available to him he would still have voted in
favor of the war against Iraq. Kerry needs to prove that he is
consistent, and in so doing he reminds us that all the major imperialist
wars America fought in the 20th century were waged under Democratic
presidents: the Korean War under Truman, Vietnam under Kennedy and
Johnson, and Afghanistan under Carter. The rhetoric in US electoral
campaigns is propelling strongly towards imperialist hegemony, which we
can take as an indicator that the dynamics of American democracy will
not lead to "global democracy". Americans cherish their democratic
system -- or at least regard it as obviously better than a dictatorship
-- but global democracy, if we can use this term, is another matter;
indeed, there is no connection at all between the two.
The American imperialist drive in Iraq
has so far given rise to three forms of resistance. The first is the
sustained bombing of occupation targets and of the officials and
institutions of its nascent puppet- like governing authority, especially
officials and recruitment and training centres of the new security
forces the occupation is trying to create. Iraqi civilians also
frequently fall victim to these systematic assaults. Information and
opinion regarding the perpetrators of these explosions are divergent,
but most converge on two sources: the first, holdouts from Baathist
cadres and security apparatuses of the old regime; the second, a more
recent phenomenon, partisans of nationalist and/or religious
organisations. Although available information remains vague, it seems
apparent that this is not a resistance movement that holds out the best
hope for Iraqi society and the Iraqi people. While it has succeeded in
obstructing America's immediate plans and demolishing any number of
theories about the relationship between the ruling regime and society in
states with a strong and wealthy public sector and a large army and
beneficiaries, neither the old regime nor the religious movements offer
the best prospects for the future of Iraq. Indeed, some of their actions
and beliefs are repellent to broad sectors of democratically minded
people, both inside Iraq and abroad, who nevertheless harbour a vehement
animosity towards the American occupation. But, when it comes to dealing
with the occupation, another set of calculations are in order, and in
this regard the resistance is preventing the occupation from imposing
its hegemony and advancing its political agenda, not only in Iraq but in
the entire region.
The second form of resistance is to be
found in those elements of Iraqi society whom occupation policies have
goaded into action, a classic illustration of which can be seen in the
people of Falluja who were driven to take up arms. The latent potential
for this form of resistance exists in many Iraqi cities and its growth
is contingent upon the inability of the current regime to accommodate
the interests of broad sectors of the public and the inability of the
occupation forces to cap it. In this instance, a strong element of
spontaneity blends with organised action in the process of unleashing
the suppressed energies of a population that have been kept under a
tight leash for decades by the nation state.
The third form of resistance, the most
notable example of which is Al-Mahdi Army led by Moqtada Al-Sadr, draws
its support from the Shia poor and their millenarian and
redemption-based beliefs. This form is radically different from the
first two. While undoubtedly part of the greater resistance movement, it
is distinguished not so much by its sectarian nature as by the fact that
it belongs to that legacy of oppression under the former regime and a
clerical style of leadership. Recently, Shia clerics have formed a
number of political parties, such as the Dawa Party and the Supreme
Council for the Islamic Revolution. Most of these parties have entered
the political fray under the current ruling system and are competing to
acquire a greater share of the 81 parliamentary seats available for
distribution among political parties. It may well be that the rebellion
of Moqtada Al-Sadr's party began in the context of this rivalry to
expand spiritual and political influence. However, the fact that this
party has its roots among the Shia poor who migrated to the cities and
among rural Shia clans, in conjunction with their ideological fervour
and particular willingness to recognise the legitimacy of the line of
succession to spiritual leadership from uncle to father to son, has
worked to pull this party outside the political process and propel it to
open rebellion against the entire status quo under the occupation.
Would you want to live under a
government ruled by Moqtada Al-Sadr? This question has been posed to
baffle and embarrass democratically minded persons opposed to the US
occupation of Iraq and the American project of global hegemony. Well,
firstly, the answer is an unambiguous no. But, secondly, the question is
not only rhetorical, it is also unambiguously demagogic. What is
important about the Al-Sadr movement at present is that it casts into
relief the nature of Iraqi social forces, especially among the Shia
poor, as shaped by the occupation and its alliances in Iraqi society. In
many senses, Moqtada Al-Sadr is a tragic inverse image of Iyad Allawi;
he is the antithesis not the alternative. The Moqtada Al-Sadr phenomenon
is not a political platform; it is a cry from the depth of the history
of the suffering of the oppressed and dispossessed in Iraq, as opposed
to the opportunists who change their allegiances from one regime to the
next and cannot be meaningfully categorised as a social force. Allawi is
a pragmatic secularist and expert player at power politics from the
remnants of the Saddam regime. Having allied himself with foreign
intelligence agencies, he obtained a British passport and returned in
the immediate aftermath of the war on the back of American tanks. When
he arrived, he had no social power base, whether in the regime or the
opposition, but he and his government now have the luxury to use this
interval granted to them to create such a base. Therefore, they have
been busy using their influence to confer position on cronies, to
rehabilitate officers of the former army, to grant amnesty to Baathist
elements, all in complete opposition to Pentagon theory and in full
agreement with CIA realism -- and in complete conformity with the
realism of Arab regimes, some of whose leaders they resemble. The regime
borne of the occupation will need an enormous quantity of corruption and
a heavy dose of repression, both expertly blended, in order to build the
social bases that will guarantee its reelection. It has met its first
major challenge at proving itself by rolling its tanks up to the Imam
Ali Mosque and threatening to undertake an action that people had once
thought only Saddam was capable of.
Governments like the one currently in
Iraq do not think in terms of tactical manoeuvres and they care little
about their humanitarian image. What concerns them is to pass the test
of sovereignty at home, which entails proving their ability to act
firmly and resolutely, regardless of the cost, in order to establish
their monopoly on the recourse to violence and the tools of violence.
Ordinarily, a government that hesitates in its resolve in such an
instance is moribund because it permits or engenders a dual authority,
which is an inherently unstable situation, lasting only until one
authority puts an end to the other. The tragic irony in the Iraqi
situation, however, is that it does not monopolise recourse to violence;
the Americans do. The Americans are busily building military bases in
Iraq and, in spite of the camouflage of withdrawing some American
soldiers from Asia and Europe on the eve of the presidential elections,
Washington still plans to keep some 160,000 troops in the coalition for
at least the next five years. The US is also in the process of building
the largest US embassy in the world in Iraq, and before leaving Baghdad
governor-general Bremer issued a range of laws and regulations that no
Iraqi government will be easily able to ignore or alter, at least in the
foreseeable future.
Iraq is under colonial rule. Therefore,
the government's attempt to resolve the challenge to its authority
through an assault on the Shia shrine in Najaf will create a gaping
wound that will not heal easily with time. This is a very dangerous
government at this juncture. It is acute to its crisis of legitimacy and
seeks to compensate for this by commanding respect through flexing its
muscles. Unfortunately, the muscles here are American forces and this
force does not create legitimacy.
Condoleezza Rice probably doesn't like
the possibility that the Iraqi government would entertain Moqtada Al-Sadr's
promises to lay down arms, which is why she has declared that she
wouldn't believe him if he accepted the government's conditions.
Undoubtedly, the government has taken her cue and one suspects that it
will upping its demands so that whatever conditions Moqtada agrees to
his assent can be construed as too late. This government will stand for
nothing less but Moqtada's complete submission to the humiliation that
it believes is his due. Then only the government will have the power to
forgive, which is the only trapping of power that can compare to the
display of force in occupying the Shia's most important shrine and
defiling other sacred edifices.
Has Al-Sadr changed his position?
Suppose that this is true, because he is manoeuvring to save his
movement without surrendering and without dismantling his militia.
Manoeuvring entails a considerable quantity of words that can be taken
in two ways and sometimes it entails outright lies. However, Moqtada's
credibility is not the issue in the eyes of the occupation. There is
only one issue: the American occupation of Iraq. One cannot help but
notice how desperately Washington wants to resolve the matter of Al-Mahdi
as quickly as possible and how closely its invective against Moqtada Al-Sadr
is connected to Bush's need for a breakthrough in Iraq before election
time. Whether this breakthrough wreaks havoc on the American occupation
is not important, since whatever disaster occurs will happen after Bush
is re-elected, which is the sole concern of Bush and of Karl Rove.
The current forms of the Iraqi
resistance do not offer an alternative. Some of these are directed
against the Americans, others express the contradictions in Iraqi
society after the dissolution of the one-party state and the breakdown
of security; contradictions that bring entire segments of the population
into collision with the occupation. Not that such a diagnosis would
trouble the Americans much. Resistance is a problem regardless. Only
some Arab neo-liberals insist on cornering us with these contradictions,
as though the Moqtada Al-Sadr platform is standing for election to the
government of Iraq. The elections, may we remind them, are taking place
in the US, not in Iraq, and there no one is voicing any alternatives. If
anything, criticism should be directed against the Democratic candidate,
Kerry, for not having taken the historic opportunity to offer an
alternative to neoconservative policies.
A major development elsewhere in the
world helps shed light on the Iraqi conundrum. Over the past two years,
Venezuela was the scene of another form of resistance against American
domination. It was waged not with arms but by force of democratic
processes and a public mobilised behind a social agenda. The US was very
disappointed in the decision of the democratic majority, even in the
absence of religious parties and an army of Al-Mahdi. It was so
disappointed that it was ready to conspire against it. But resistance
determined by the ballot box, as was the case with Venezuelan public
opinion's ability to impose Hugo Chavez over American objections,
presupposes an independent sovereign state in which broad segments of
the public regard Washington's dictates and the IMF's neo-liberal
austerity prescriptions an encroachment on their national sovereignty.
In 2001, the Americans and their allies tried to oust Chavez through a
coup. The masses of Venezuelan poor had him back in power two days
later. If the democratically elected government that was conspired
against had belonged to the American camp there would have been no
question of letting the conspirators have a second go through democratic
methods such as recalls and referendums. It is not difficult to imagine
what would have happened to the conspirators at the hands of such
democratically minded souls as Allawi and his fellow "democratic
leaders" who are America's allies in the Arab world. In all events,
Venezuela held a referendum and the results came firmly on the side of
public health insurance, eradicating illiteracy campaigns and other
social programmes. The American democratic establishment is incensed and
once again Kerry has aired his fear of the Venezuelan threat to the US.
Some journalists in the American royal court have suggested that the
only reason Chavez won was because of the rising prices of oil. Were it
not for all that extra money, they say, he would not have been able to
spend so lavishly on health care and education. An unpardonable crime.
He should have put the money in his own pockets and the pockets of his
friends and relatives as America's allies throughout the Third World do.
Experience has taught us the wisdom of
scepticism regarding the enthusiasm for charismatic Third World leaders
who play on the popular chords of anti-Americanism. Even in my most
optimistic Venezuelan moments, I can only caution against that tendency
towards personality adulation, which has created such pitiful instances
of Bonapartism in the Third World and fostered such boundless personal
corruption, to the strains of revolutionary rhetoric and leftist
romanticism in the West. Therefore, we cannot judge Chavez on the basis
of his being a nicer guy than, say, Moqtada Al-Sadr, or on the basis of
his democratic ways and means, since these were not so much his choice
as they were the political conditions that bred the Chavez phenomenon.
Nor can we compare his situation with that in Iraq. Violence was not an
option for Chavez. He, as the legitimately elected head of state,
represents legitimacy, and violence on his part would have given the US
a pretext for intervention. In all events, violence is the style of his
adversaries. Rather, Chavez passes the test because he offers a
socio-political alternative to the Venezuelan model of American
hegemony. Chavez represents the potential of an alternative, at least
for Venezuela, rather than merely an antithesis.
In Iraq, on the other hand, the
"democrats" are those who have hijacked the rhetoric of "democracy and
stability" in the bloody conflict against the "forces of terrorism" and
against the "radical cleric" or, variably, the "young", "ambitious",
"renegade", "rogue" or "populist" "rebel", and other such
not-so-very-democratic sounding epithets used to tar the image of the
resistance fighter brandishing his sword against the occupation. If
there is a juxtaposition to be made between Venezuela and Iraq it is
between a democratic discourse that has rejected American domination and
a "democratic" rhetoric that has appropriated democracy to advance the
project of American hegemony in the Arab world.
September 2004