WHAT STEPS has the U.S. taken to try to get what it wants out of the Iraqi elections? Do you think the elections will accomplish what the U.S. hopes?

THE POPULAR hostility to the invasion and occupation has not given the U.S. administration time to breathe in Iraq. They have thus stumbled from one reactive “initiative” to the next. This hostility has thwarted most of the prewar plans. And here I disagree with those who think that the U.S. and Britain had no plans for Iraq after the invasion.

After more than a year of opposing calls for early elections in Iraq, the Bush administration relented, jumped on the bandwagon, and tried its best to draw capital out of the exercise. Domestically it helped the Bush reelection campaign. Internationally, the neocons appeared to be faithful to their agenda of spreading “democracy.” Much more importantly, they quickly saw an enormous value in starting an election process that could sow discord within Iraq, and for the first time create an important division of opinion among the anti-occupation organizations and among the mass of the people outside Iraqi Kurdistan.

However, Paul Bremer also made sure to enact enough laws, though internationally illegal, to dictate the process of the election and to ensure the reelection of a more acceptable version of the present interim government. He also appointed the ironically named “Independent Election Commission.” The nine-member commission is semi-secret and has absolute power to accept or veto candidates and organizations. With the exception of one list, people will be asked to vote for 111 separate lists of secret candidates. Those who see this exercise in the legitimization of imperialist conquest as a step forward, “even if a very small step,” are not only making a political error of judgment, but they are also obviously not familiar with the farcical election process.

THERE’S A lot of talk about the Iraqi resistance being “Islamist” or “fundamentalist.” Is that true?

THE DEFINITIVE article “the” tends to portray the resistance as a centralized, unified movement, while in reality it is extremely diverse and localized networks of mostly young anti-occupation activists. However, in the impoverished working-class districts of Baghdad, such as Sadr City, Najaf, Basra, and other southern cities, the Sadr movement is by far the biggest and most organized of the resistance forces. However, even this movement is based on neighborhood networks that give general support for Sadr’s militantly anti-occupation line. In the rest of Baghdad and cities and villages to the north there is no single dominant organization. There are Islamists (including small Kurdish groups too), Arab nationalists, and secular forces. The secular trends are strong but lack strong pan-Iraqi organizations. They range from left-wing trends to former Baathists who denounced Saddam for “surrendering” Iraq to the U.S.-led forces.

In the age of instant publicity, those organizations that have access to the Internet and manage to make videos of their activities have generally captured the headlines. These have been mostly Islamist organizations that have given an exaggerated impression of their strength within the broad resistance movements.

The biggest headlines, however, have been reserved for the terrorist and murderous acts of the Zarqawi-type organizations and Saddamist elements. Zarqawi, who has recently combined forces with bin Laden, is not an Iraqi, and to judge from their accents, nor are most of the kidnappers who produced the infamous videos of beheading their captives. Anti-occupation Iraqis invariably accuse the occupation forces (and the 50,000 foreign mercenaries they have contracted to operate in Iraq) of using these “fundamentalist” gangs and some of the Saddamist thugs to create confusion, besmirch the reputation of the resistance, target Shiite, Sunni, and Christian religious figures and shrines, and kill humanitarian organization personnel and journalists, who are mostly sympathetic to the cause of the Iraqi people.

In this respect, it is very important to closely examine the record and activities of John Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, who operates from Saddam’s Republican Palace. This massive complex is today known as the “green zone” and swallows about a quarter of the area of the six million strong capital city. It has come as a surprise to me that some left-wing and liberal commentators have been very ready and quick to accuse the Iraqi resistance of “hedonism” and “targeting” civilians. They have done this not only without producing any concrete evidence but have also tended to accuse the resistance in general. My own assessment is that their time would be much more fruitfully spent digging into Negroponte’s record of coordinating the activities of terror organizations that targeted trade unionists and others in Central America in the 1980s.

I think that these commentators are causing enormous damage to the right of the Iraqi people to resist the occupation. While not pretending that the Iraqi resistance movements are composed of angels, they are not peculiar monsters either. Nor are they the first resistance movement that has targeted collaborators and persons working with occupation forces. We only have to look at the record of the resistance forces in France and elsewhere in Europe in the fight against the Nazi occupation to see how bitter and bloody these conflicts could become. To those who say that the U.S.-led forces should not be compared to the Nazi forces in Europe, I say that this might be strictly true, but try telling it to the people of the neighborhoods of Fallujah, Najaf, and Sadr City, at the receiving end of bombardments by the most lethal death and destruction machine in human history. Try telling it to the relatives, loved ones, and dearest friends of the more than 100,000 Iraqis killed by the occupation forces.

Those who only see the Iraqi resistance through the prism of the spectacular terrorist operations are perhaps not aware that of the average of 3,000 military operations per month against the occupation forces across Iraq, while the terrorist operations that target civilians and grab the daily headlines are not many more than thirty per month.

WHAT ABOUT the split between the Shiites and Sunnis? How does this impact the resistance?

I THINK that this split is highly exaggerated and is often based on lack of knowledge and understanding of Iraqi society and history. There are Shiites living throughout Iraq, including Kurdistan, and similarly there are Sunnis, and Christians, who have peacefully co-existed with Shiites for many centuries. There is no history of communal strife or civil war in Iraq, and the degree of socioeconomic integration and unity of purpose amongst the Iraqi people is often underestimated. There is also a powerful secular tradition in Iraq that transcends all religions and sects.

American and British mainstream commentators were confidently predicting that large-scale attacks by Shiites against Sunnis would be unavoidable after the downfall of Saddam’s regime. To their embarrassment and dismay, millions of Iraqis of all sects (and none) marched in the streets denouncing the occupation and chanting “La Shia, La Sunna, hatha al-balad men-bi’a” (“No Shiite, no Sunni, this country we shall not sell.”)

It was also noticeable that people from most parts of Iraq were collecting aid for the peoples of Najaf, Fallujah, and Sadr City while the U.S. and British media were busy peddling sectarian myths.

Even at the level of tribal links, it also has to be stressed that nearly all Iraqi tribes have Sunni and Shiite “branches” within them. These traditional tribal links, though much weaker now than many decades ago, have also militated against any sectarian conflicts.

While recognizing that if something didn’t happen in the past doesn’t mean it would not happen in the future, it is important to also recognize that sectarian centrifugal forces, whether in the socioeconomic or ideological fields, within Iraqi society are particularly weak. One of the main reasons for this is that Iraqi identity has deep roots that go much further back than the foundation of the modern Iraqi state. And in modern Iraq, working-class struggles and national anti-colonial and anti-imperialist uprisings have often engulfed the whole of Iraq, cementing this identity and creating powerful social and political bonds.

This integration also applies to ties between Arabs and Kurds. There are, for example, more Kurds in Baghdad than any city in the whole of Kurdistan. However, Saddam’s mass murders and chauvinist policies, and the manipulation of these policies by the U.S. and Britain since 1991, has created greater political separation between Kurdish and non-Kurdish political forces in Iraq. One factor that was very important in creating a different outlook towards the U.S.-led invasion in Iraqi Kurdistan from that in the rest of the country is that Kurdistan was not affected by the murderous thirteen years of sanctions. The sanctions killed over 500,000 people in the rest of Iraq according to the UN.

The decline of the Iraqi Communist party (ICP), which was the most powerful mass-based political force throughout Iraq in the late 1950s and 1960s, has also weakened the strong political unity that existed between Arabs and Kurds, and contributed greatly to the weakening of secular Left organizations. The ICP leadership’s alliance with the Saddam regime from 1972 to 1979 was an important factor in strengthening the regime and weakening trade unions, women’s organizations, and other forms of struggle. Though not a great surprise, the ICP leadership’s decision to switch policy and join the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council and the Allawi interim government has dealt another blow to the secular Left. For the first time in Iraq’s modern history a secular Left organization has, in practice, allied itself with imperialism and occupation.

However, it is my assessment that the apparent retreat of the organized secular Left is of a temporary nature and that the underlying commonality of interests among the nationalities and different communities in Iraq and the wider Middle East will reassert themselves.

What will also reassert themselves are the irreconcilable contradictions between the interests of the U.S. imperialist policies and those of the Kurdish people in Iraq, Turkey, and Iran. In 1975, Henry Kissinger masterminded and mediated an agreement between Saddam and the Shah of Iran that was specifically directed at crushing the Kurdish nationalist movement, then led by the legendary nationalist leader Mustafa Barzani of the Kurdistan Democratic Party. Kissinger’s 1975 maneuver will sooner or later also inform U.S. policies towards the Kurdish people within a new context. The Bush administration, for example, is already keen on dragging the Iraqi Kurdish groups to cooperate with the Turkish government to crush the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey’s Kurdistan.

SOME IN the antiwar movement say that we should withhold our support from the Iraqi resistance because we may disagree with the politics of parts of it. What do you think?

THERE HAS always been disagreement with the programs, politics, and tactics of resistance movements. This was true of France, Algeria, Kenya, Cyprus, Vietnam, and all others. This is also true of Palestine and Iraq today.

My view is that one has to start from the principled position of opposing occupation and conquest, whether of the colonial or imperialist variety, and of supporting the struggle of the peoples for liberation. As a socialist, I would naturally be delighted if these struggles were led by socialist movements. But that is for the people in struggle to decide. The absence of such strong socialist movements should not be used as an argument to absolve socialists of their internationalist duty and fundamental task of backing the struggle against imperialist policies of hegemony and wars of aggression.

Criticism of, and dialogue with, all movements in struggle is obviously essential. But to withhold support from the people’s resistance to occupation because one disagrees with some of its sections or even of its leadership would seriously damage the worldwide struggle against imperialist domination.

One has to be extra vigilant and take a dose of anti-imperialist immunity, because the mainstream media attempt to constantly portray the resistance movements as a bunch of murderers is bound to affect us all. This is particularly so if we do not have easy access to alternative sources of news and analysis. I find my knowledge of other countries seriously colored by the mainstream media until I get access to those country’s alternative and authentic voices. Even on Iraq, with a fast developing situation, I find that even a few days detachment from sources emanating from Iraq, colors my view of the situation if I only have access to the mainstream media. The repetition of mantras and the drip, drip effect of intensive and prolonged media coverage can have a serious influence on our view of the world.

Sunni-Shiite “conflict” is one such mantra that has become so dominant that it has crept into antiwar and socialist analysis of Iraq. The class basis of some of these issues is completely ignored with no understanding that the top merchants of Najaf, Karbala, Basra, Baghdad, or Mosul in the north take a very different view of the conflict and the occupation from the workers, students and unemployed of those cities regardless of their sect. They have, for example, failed to see the class distinction between those supporting the Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr and those backing other Shiite clerics. As the conflict escalates this distinction will prove very important and undermine any notion of a deep Sunni-Shiite divide.

A false and damaging distinction is also sometimes made between “purely” working-class activity, trade union activity, in an occupied country like Iraq, for example, and the general struggle to end imperialist occupation and domination. The struggle of the peoples against occupation and for liberation is part and parcel of the struggle of the working people in Iraq, the United States, Europe, and the whole world for a better future. A future in which wars of aggression, exploitation of human labor for the benefit of the few, and the destruction of the earth’s environment are eliminated.

For without the active international solidarity and support of peoples across the world, particularly of the American people, the Iraqi and other peoples will not be able to achieve liberation from occupation and war. Nor will that brighter future for humanity in general be possible.