Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
12/06/2015
A year after ISIS captured Mosul, the jihadist group controls about
half of Syria and a third of Iraq more territory than ever before
Serge Jordan (CWI)
A year after the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq
and Syria (ISIS) captured Mosul and declared its
caliphate, it now controls about half of Syria and a
third of Iraq - more territory than ever before. The
legacy of imperialism, with decades of divide-and-rule
policies, power struggles, corporate plunder, support
for brutal dictatorships, flirtations with jihadist forces
and bloody military interventions, has left these two countries in
ruins, reflected in a rapid descent into sectarian fragmentation.
Existing nation States, creations of colonialism, are being
increasingly hollowed out, as the old map of the Middle East is
redrawn with the blood of the masses. The old imperialist order,
established after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire a hundred
years ago, is being radically reshaped in a sectarian battleground
that has engulfed much of the region. The advance of ISIS is
merely symptomatic of this general process. The fight against this
groupa common agenda that had supposedly united all nations
over the last year--is faltering as the competing powers have failed
to come up with any unified strategy.
On May 17, the Iraqi city of Ramadi fell into the hands of ISIS. The takeover
of Ramadi, capital of Anbar, Iraqs largest province, represented the biggest
military victory for the Sunni fundamentalist group since the fall of Mosul a
year ago. In a replay of the military debacle in Mosul, fleeing Iraqi elite units
abandoned a vast amount of their U.S-supplied equipment to ISIS fighters.
Over 100,000 people have fled Ramadi in the past few weeks. Stranded in
the desert, some of the displaced have died of heat and exhaustion. More
people are predicted to flee as anti-ISIS forces are preparing for a bloody
Shia militias
Reneging on its previous injunction, the Iraqi government has taken the
explosive decision of deploying Shia militias in an attempt to retake
Ramadia predominantly Sunni city in a predominantly Sunni province.
Known as the Popular Mobilisation Units, this umbrella organization of
Shia militias has at its core the Badr Corps, military wing of the Badr
Organisation, a Shia party founded as a branch of the Iranian Revolutionary
Guards in the 1980s.
Up to this point, Iraqi Prime Minister Haydar al-Abadi had ordered these
Shia militias to stay out of Anbar province. Yet the latest decision was made
necessary because of the ignominious collapse of the corrupt Iraqi Army,
that was armed and trained at a cost of $25 billion by Washington, and
assisted since last year by thousands of US trainers.
Journalist Patrick Cockburn, in one of his dispatches about ISIS, estimates
that now the Shia paramilitary forces in Iraq number between 100,000 and
120,000 men, while the regular army, that has suffered heavy losses due to
fighting and desertions over the last 18 months, has only between 10,000
and 12,000 combat-ready soldiers. Hence, the government had run out of
option.
Heightened sectarian tensions
Earlier campaigns launched by the Shia militia have been accompanied by
sectarian reprisals against the Sunni population, often indiscriminately
treated as de facto ISIS supporters. The Shia militias have played a leading
role in the governments effort to recapture the northern city of Tikrit, the
home town of Saddam Hussein, from ISIS hands earlier this year. However,
the city has remained largely a ghost town since then, with Sunni residents
afraid to return.
After the citys recapture, Shia militias engaged in widespread looting and
train Iraqi forces. Later on, the Pentagon said it was looking at creating a
lily-pad of sites that would re-establish a presence across Northern Iraq, in
locations used by the US army when it occupied the country.
When Obama took office in 2008, he had campaigned to end the war in Iraq
and keeping the U.S. out of new military conflicts. Hence his earlier
insistence on no boots on the ground. But for months now, some US
military leaders have been suggesting that they will need US troops on the
ground to play a more active role. In Britain, Lord Dannatt, the former head
of the army, called for a parliamentary debate on the dispatch of 5,000
British troops.
So far, such voices have remained in a minority. Obama and other western
leaders have to deal with their own populations that have no real appetite
for new military adventures in the Middle East, as past fiascos remain fresh
in public memory. While the frantic media campaign displaying the savage
violence of ISIS initially pushed a layer into thinking something needs to be
done and supporting some form of military intervention, opinion polls
indicate that this support has already waned. The developing quagmire is
unlikely to boost the number of interventionist-enthusiasts among ordinary
people.
That is why the US administration has tried to favour options that would
keep its forces out of the firing line as much as possible. This has been done
by sending new weaponry (such as anti-tank rockets) to the Iraqi
government, and by promising to lift all constraints on Iraqs access to
weapons -though much of the earlier acquired arms and ammunition have
ended up in the hands of ISIS.
A lot of noise is also heard about pushing the delivery of weapons and
assistance to Sunni tribes that would be prepared to confront ISIS, in a new
version of the Awakening movement -when some Sunni tribes grew sick of
Yet the CWI has warned from the beginning about the fault lines in the
strategy and methods of the leadership of the PYD (the political wing of the
YPG/YPJ). The dangerous expectations of the PYD leadership to get political
payback from Western imperialism should be opposed by genuine socialists.
We want to build good relationships with the US, commented one leader
of the PYD, Sinam Mohamad, last April. The YPG is in close contact with the
US-led coalition and sometimes asks for airstrikes targeting ISIS positions
after its fighters locate them.
Beyond the western powers disregard for the Kurds deep-rooted
aspirations for self-determination, if the initiative for the struggle against
ISIS is left in the hands of imperialist powers, who are now collaborating
with Shia death squads massacring Sunni civilians, the potential appeal of
that struggle to a wider working class audience will be totally undermined,
even more so among poor Sunnis, who constitute the pool which ISIS relies
for support and fighters.
Furthermore, Koban has been totally wrecked by the bombing. The level of
destruction of the city shatters any hope for a quick return to normal life for
the local population. This is partly due to the carpet-bombing tactics of US
military planes and their absolute lack of consideration for human lives and
peoples habitations.
Koban in ruins
A matter of greater concern are several recent reports that point to attacks
on Sunni Arab civilians perpetrated by YPG/YPJ fighters, and to the fact that
thousands of Sunni Arab civilians in northern Syria would have fled their
homes to avoid to be targeted in what has been described as an apparent
ethnic cleansing campaign. While these instances have remained isolated
and are certainly not widely endorsed by supporters of the Kurdish Spring
in Rojava, they point at a very dangerous development threatening to
destroy the progressive claims made by a movement that many workers
Assad and the Shia axis as more important than the campaign against ISIS.
The historic erosion of US hegemony in the region has left more space for
regional powers to assert their own political agendas, and the clashing
interests of all the actors involved has led to a Kafkaesque situation with
the US government engaged in a tightrope walk, not knowing where to
stand.
As the US administrations plan to arm and train a moderate rebel force
has collapsed (according to Pentagon sources, only 90 rebels have taken
part in this program so far), some Western analysts are trying to bridge the
gap by echoing the propaganda from Turkey and the Gulf, by laundering the
image of the supposedly more moderate jihadists of Al-Nusra, arguing that
this organisation, despite its notorious record and an ideological project
hardly any different from ISIS, can be a useful counterweight against both
Assads regime and ISIS itself.
As Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have stepped up the coordination of their
activities through such Al-Qaeda type proxies, the Iranian government has
reportedly decided on its part to send 15,000 regular army troops into the
country to support the Syrian regimes forces. These escalating moves will
aggravate the already charged sectarian tensions, that are not only carving
up the country and dragging Syrian people into increasing horrors, but also
ruining the future of the entire region with the threat of a wider military
conflagration.
Assad losing ground
In the last few weeks and months, different factions of the armed opposition
have won a string of battlefield victories against Assads forces; Irans
recent decision has taken place in this particular context. For instance, the
loss of a major military base in the Southern Daraa province on June 9, used
by the regime as a Launchpad to attack and shell many towns and villages
around the area, has exposed these weaknesses further. While Assads clan
is still strong on the Western side, he has been hit hard by losses in the
south, north and east of his country, not just to ISIS and al-Nusra, but also
to other Sunni armed groups.
This flows from four years of relentless war of attrition that is eating away
the pro-regime forces. Deaths or desertions have hit nearly half the
regimes soldiers, and an estimated one-third of Syrian Alawite males of
military age have already died in the fighting. This has led to a growing
difficulty to recruit new fighters among the local Alawite population.
These setbacks have compelled Assad to heavily rely upon fighters from his
regional allies to compensate for the losses: Iranian Revolutionary Guard
Corps, the Shia group Hezbollah from neighbouring Lebanon as well as
volunteer Shia fighters and mercenaries brought from Iraq, Afghanistan,
suicide bombings in the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia. In the wake of the
rise of ISIS, new repressive measures and legislations are also adopted
across the region and elsewhere, many of these laws will be also used to
target political and trade union activists and to stigmatise Muslim
populations in the West.
No genuine solution will come from the forces that have given birth to ISIS
and religious fundamentalism in the first instance. Of course, one cannot
totally rule out the possibility that the Western-led coalition might
eventually manage to impose some decisive military blows to ISIS and to
kick the jihadists out of some of the key territories they control. But even in
case this happens, if the underlying conditions that enabled ISIS to flourish
in the first place are not addressed, other similar or even more barbaric
organizations are likely to take its place.
It is the task of the Iraqi and Syrian people to counter ISIS and not that of
outside military powers. The developments of the last year have shown that
outside interventions will only aggravate the situation for the masses of the
region.
Some reports mention that the jihadists of ISIS have gone out of their way
to try and win over the local Ramadi residents by trying to restart the
providing of basic services in the city, handing out free food and
vegetables. In Mosul, road-paving, cleaning and lighting projects have been
witnessed. This seems to mark a conscious attempt by ISIS to try and
regain a fading popularity. Eventually, the barbaric rule of ISIS, which wants
to push history in reverse, stoning and beheading, enslaving teenage girls,
destroying history and culture, banning films, music, and any slightest
criticism to its suffocating and ultra-reactionary diktats, will inevitably push
many Sunnis into resistance and open rebellion.
Tackling the root causes
Capitalism and imperialism, feeding themselves on devastating wars and
mass poverty, are responsible for what is happening in the region. The
working people, small farmers, unemployed, the youth and women of Iraq
and Syria can only rely on their self-organisation to put an end to this
nightmarish situation. At present, united i.e. non-sectarian self-defence of
threatened communities and minorities is vital, and can be an important
lever through which a grassroots movement fighting for democratic,
economic and social change can be rebuilt.
By standing uncompromisingly against all imperialist forces, local
reactionary regimes and sectarian death squads, and supporting the rights
of self-determination for all communities, such a movement could find mass
support among the regional and international working class. In their turn,
workers organisations internationally need to spearhead movements
Cement workers in
Karbala, Iraq, protesting for better working conditions and union rights,
May 2015
In 2011, the popular reverberations in Iraq and Syria of the revolutionary
mass protests that shook North Africa and the Middle East have indicated
that war and religious extremism are not a fatality for the people of the
region. The long history and tradition of mass workers struggles in these
countries, as well as the previous existence of powerful Communist Parties
with mass bases of supporters across all religious and ethnic communities,
amplifies this argument. Regrettably, the failed policies and betrayals by
the Stalinist leaders of these parties, who collaborated with sections of the
ruling classes, led to the almost total annihilation and irrelevance of these
once mighty organizations.
Today, it is the lack of a mass left political alternative to right-wing religious
forces, corrupt authoritarian rulers and imperialist meddling which has
allowed the present nightmarish situation to unfold. But the horrific
experiences of war and the poison of sectarianism will not prevent the
workers movement from eventually re-emerging and rebuilding itself. For it
to be viable, it will need to attach itself to a program aimed at respecting
the right of all peoples and communities to freely and democratically decide
their own fate, but also work towards putting the vast wealth of the region
under peoples democratic control. A voluntary socialist confederation of
the peoples of the Middle East would provide a lasting basis to put an end
to war and barbarism in all its forms.