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Workers’ Liberty opposes immediate withdrawal from Iraq

Into the camp of Imperialism

Chris Brooks

The recent conference of the Alliance for Workers Liberty (AWL) has voted to reject calls for the withdrawal of Western troops from Iraq. It concluded that the Iraqi workers’ movement could currently not survive without the occupation, because US and UK withdrawal would lead to civil war. The AWL minority which calls for troops out, including David Broder and Daniel Randall, also strongly opposes the call for immediate withdrawal. However, the occupying forces are the major force promoting civil war.

On Ireland, Palestine and now Iraq, the AWL view imperialism as the lesser of two evils: they refuse to support anti-imperialist movements when imperialism creates the problem. Echoing the AWL’s support for Boris Yeltsin, it suggests that only the dominance of imperialism can develop the working class, and that the local bourgeoisie and worker organizations are too backward to do anything progressive.

Strategy of tension

US policy in Iraq divides people into Kurds, Sunnis and Shias, and actively promotes division between them. The occupation armies have partitioned representative bodies, political parties and cities along those lines. By fostering communal divisions, and building walls and militias to enforce ethnic cleansing, US strategy divides workers against each other.

The US has shipped in large numbers of arms from Bosnia, and is arming and organizing Sunni militias. Most, perhaps all, of the ministries are used by one or another militia as organising bases. Occupying troops have been implicated in terrorist bombings of civilian areas, and have even been arrested carrying IEDs.

In Iraq, the results are brutal. In the first three years 654,965 additional deaths were caused by the occupation: 2.5 % of Iraqi’s population; overwhelmingly men of working age. Over 90% died violently. While Workers’ Liberty argues the occupation prevents a slaughter of trade unionists, thousands of those killed will have been trade unionists. While the AWL joins antiwar marches, in practice, the AWL wants the US and UK occupation to remain until its mission is accomplished.

Nation or class?

Class consciousness struggles to develop under colonial systems: the support for national independence not only crosses class lines, but also appears to be more urgent priority. Furthermore, the immense fear, violence, isolation, roadblocks, shortages and desperate living conditions have broken communications and discussions between Iraqis. Outside the oil industry, many of the most militant people are taking up arms against the Americans under whatever leaderships they are able to find - even Al-Qaeda. Only the Federation of Oil Unions has been able to win even modest victories, and even they face a puppet government which has banned strikes and re-introduced the death penalty.

Oil and Israel

The occupation also underpins a US strategic goal: to ensure that no power in the region can challenge the US and Israeli dominance over the region. Securing US oil super-profits reduces the possibilities of Iraq rebuilding itself and makes it an example for any other state that would challenge Israel. This is another challenge for the AWL: socialists should support the Iraqi resistance against the US. The AWL supports Israel, and opposes Muslim organizations that oppose Israel, even those with mass support - Hamas and Hezbollah.

Faith in capitalism

There is a strong parallel here between the crisis of the early socialist movement and the evolution of the AWL. For the AWL, Iraqi self-determination is put on hold until the West has helped stability and workers’ organisation to develop. In 1904, the Socialist International also started to link national development to independence. For example, it called for home rule for India, but under British control, until the working class developed. It gave colonialism a civilizing role, although they stressed that capitalist colonizers would not bring development, but terror and atrocities.

It believed that capitalism would give to the developing world some democratic, economic and social conditions essential for the emergence of a workers’ movement. In Russia, the Mensheviks developed this view - in opposition to Lenin’s Bolsheviks - to say that socialism could emerge only after capitalism had developed the workers’ movement. Similarly, the AWL shows little confidence in the ability of the masses in the developing countries to overcome the divisions that imperialism has fostered.

The AWL fails to admit that in Iraq today, the imperialist occupation primarily frustrates the development of working class leadership. Occupation makes it harder, and not easier, for the workers and other toilers to be won to democratic and socialist ideas.

As an alternative, Resistance is republishing Leon Trotsky’s strategy for fighting colonialism and under-development, The Permanent Revolution. Despite his old-fashioned language, Trotsky’s guidance remains powerful:

“The movement of the colored races against their imperialist oppressors is one of the most important and powerful movements against the existing order and therefore calls for complete, unconditional and unlimited support on the part of the proletariat of the white race.”