RESISTANCE
ISSUE 22
CLASS WAR HITS BAGHDAD
KURDISTAN SHORAS
MEDIA CONTROL
RECLAIM THE BASES
COPS RIOT AT THE DAIL
TIME BOMB - ITALY 1920
FRAGGING IN THE US
INSIDE INFORMATION
CLASS WAR HITS BAGHDAD
WARSAW
1944, GROZNY 1944, Berlin 1945, Stalingrad 1942, such
were the military metaphors conjured up by the media.
In the end it was more Los Angeles 1992. Yet again the
working people of Iraq have put their needs before the
siren call of patriotism.
It is clear that the American military had insufficient
force in place around Baghdad to conquer the city, and
that the Hussein government was demolished not because
it was defeated on an external battlefield – (where was
the battle?) but because almost its entire armed forces
deserted. Baghdad fell to looters, as armed mobs took
over the streets before the arrival of American armour.
Shops and government offices were striped bare by jubilant
crowds of families -wealth re-distributed in an exemplary
demonstration of socialism in action.
A glimpse of what was to come was seen in the early days
of the war, when British troops were drafted in to protect
the machinery of the southern oil fields from being liberated
by the locals. Likewise as disorder descended upon Baghdad,
Basra got a foretaste of a possible future. There the
British Army opened fire, “warning shots” they said, as
the local people re-claimed the goods that were produced
by their labour.
The footage of British troops being stoned by enraged
youths did not receive much media coverage.
A few days later and British soldiers in Basra put their
“Northern Ireland training” into action, murdering five
looters, in what they said was an “exchange of fire”.
All this represents a defeat for American Imperialism.
Washington’s strategy for the last 12 years has been to
attack the working people of Iraq, with sanctions, the
deliberate targeting of water and sanitation services,
and blanket bombing. A strategy whose goal was to inflict
so much misery and suffering that the Iraqi working people
would be incapable of resistance. The creation of a perfect
subject population for the day “regime change” would come.
The day the assets, and workforce, of the “old regime”
of the Iraqi National Petroleum company would be turned
over to the new regime of Exxon.
The Anglo-American propaganda was urging people to stay
indoors not to revolt. The only revolt they wanted was
a palace coup switching power from one part of the state
apparatus to another. Revolution is no stranger to Iraq,
and on each occasion rebels have taken the streets they
have faced the united opposition of all sections of the
ruling class.
In 1958 in the first joint Anglo-American intervention
in the Middle East troops were poured into Lebanon and
Jordan to prevent an Iraqi uprising from spreading. In
1962 the C.I.A. gave Ba’ath party death squads a hit list
of working class militants. In the 1980’s the West supplied
chemical weapons were used to massacre deserters from
the Iraqi army.In 1991 revolution had reduced Hussein’s
control to a pocket around Baghdad, it was beaten back
by a combination of the Iraqi state and the U.S. and British
military.
Firstly, thousands of deserting troops were massacred
on the road to Basra by the USAF and RAF.
Secondly, a ceasefire was then made with the Iraqi regime,
all thoughts of overthrowing Saddam forgotten, and crucially
the Republican Guard left intact to crush the uprising.
As part of the truce Iraqi counter -insurgency helicopters
were allowed into the ‘no fly zones’ controlled by the
American and British air forces. Now, a few days after
Basra’s “liberation”, and the guns of the British Army
are already being used to impose capitalist order.
Soon they will be joined in their efforts by a reformed
Ba’ath party regime (minus the name and the current top
ranks). Likewise elements in the anti-war camp, Clare
Short, Paul Rogers, Robert Fisk, are vociferous in their
condemnation of the Anglo-American bloc for failing to
sufficiently repress “chaos” and “disorder”. The only
division between Washington, the Ba’ath party, and born
again peaceniks like Putin and Chirac, is who gets what
cut of the spoils, their “order”, U.N. sanctioned or otherwise,
means violence and exploitation for working people worldwide.
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KURDISTAN
SHORAS
OUTBREAKS
OF RESISTANCE spread rapidly across the north of the Iraq,
towards the end of the Gulf war, and were completely spontaneous,
popular insurrections free from, and in spite of, the
influence of Kurdish nationalism and leftist splinter-politics.
What they would have achieved if they had been joined
by returning Iraqi soldiers massacred along the now infamous
road to Basra in the south of the country, and if the
too short-lived revolt there had lasted long enough to
link up the struggle, is another question.
The
Northern Uprising
The main centres of the northern revolt were in the regions
of Sulaimania, Kirkuk and Hawlia. As Iraqi soldiers deserted
the front in their thousands (30,000 in Sulaimania!),
thousands more took to the streets, organising themselves
into committees (shoras) across the region. Demonstrations
took place everywhere. Over 50 shoras sprung up in Sulaimania
and Ba’athist centres (Ba’ath being the ruling party in
Iraq), army bases and security headquarters were attacked.
Listed below are examples of some of the activites in
which the shoras participated.
1)
Every Shora had its own radio station.
2) Every shora set up medical posts.
3) Each shora had a number of committees dealing with
the media, the militia, medical matters, administration,
finance and general assistance and the law, as well as
a committee for relations between the shoras and a foreign
relations committee.
4) The building up of a militia for resistance purposes.
5) On the 16th of March, 1991, the anniversary of the
massacre of Halabja, the shoras incited the entire city
even threatening the Kurdistan Front (KF).
6) On the 17th, a general meeting of all the shoras took
place at the Majid Bug shora to elect a supreme shora
covering the city.
(Abridged from The Kurdish Uprising…)
It was at this point, on March 17th, that the shoras came
under attack, not from the Baathist regime, but from the
Kurdistan Front (KF).
Defeat
So frightened were the nationalists by the Shoras that
by March 18th they were openly calling for them to be
disbanded. Through a concerted campaign of misinformation
regarding a government backlash and other lies, but mainly
because of their large stocks of food supplies, the nationalist
parties were able to undermine the Shoras. After years
of hunger and conflict, people were, naturally enough,
desperate enough for security.
Given time the shoras could have created the building
blocks for a society organised along libertarian lines.
The ‘organised left’ and the nationalist parties preferred,
however, to pursue their own narrow agendas and set out
to destroy them with the twin tactics of propaganda and
food. Sufficient confidence had yet to be built up in
the shoras for the people not to be hoodwinked by the
duplicity of these methods.
If the shoras had spread, this confidence, the confidence
which, after all, had destroyed in the space of a few
days the institutions of Ba’athist terror that had stood
for decades, could have manifested itself into a completely
new system of social organisation.
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MEDIA
CONTROL
THE
MEDIA has reached an almost unparalleled level of servile
dishonesty in the last few weeks. Barely credible are
the early morning ritual of pictures of shelled Iraqi
positions and shrivelled Iraqi corpses strewn across the
desert sand. Completely absent among the euphemisms used
are words such as ‘murder’ and ‘death’.
The pro-U.S. frenzy whipped up by tabloids and broadsheets
alike is symptomatic of how consent has always been manufactured
by the establishment, but its attainment of new peaks
of obviousness may only prove self-defeating in the long-term.
While Blair was lauded for his fiery attack on the pink-eyed
liberals in the House of Commons, no mention was made,
strangely enough, about the comments of erstwhile foreign
minister Robin Cooks’ the day before when he claimed,
in his resignation speech, that “Iraq probably has no
weapons of mass destruction in the commonly understood
sense of the term”. Balance this against chief Blair’s’
later remarks:
We are asked
now seriously to accept that in the last few years, contrary
to all history and intelligence, (Saddam) decided unilaterally
to destroy these weapons. I say such a claim is palpably
absurd.
The B.B.C.,
meanwhile, under its director of news Richard Sambrook,
(who didn’t deign to permit any coverage of the recent
anti-war protests in London -confining it to small segments
in local news) are, like Blair and co., fully aware of
the truth. Their function is simply to conceal it from
us.
Take, for example, the charade involving Scott Ritter,
chief weapons’ inspector with UNSCOM and someone with
the obvious credentials to talk about weapons of mass
destruction (W.M.D.); someone with a lot to say, therefore,
about whether or not there are any W.M.D. remaining in
Iraq. Yes, he is allowed to say it. This is, after all,
a ‘democracy’, we are told. But unfortunately he is only
allowed to say it once, at 3.00 a.m., and on B.B.C.’s
digital news channel, B.B.C. News 24. Meanwhile, the usual
cabal of media-hawks are given ample airtime to set out
the U.S.-U.K. case.
‘Bad news days’,
full of stories of ‘friendly fire’ casualties and unexpected
Iraqi resistance are reported in lop-sided fashion as
more preferable reports suddenly arrive of chemical agents
being discovered by advancing ‘coalition’ forces. Basra
has fallen, this time definitely, and then it pops up
again like a film set in an old western movie. Resistance
in Umm Qasr was supposed to have collapsed days ago, but
Iraqi forces are still holding out. Iraq has not captured
American P.O.W.’s, and then it has. The war is ‘going
according to plan’ but ‘unexpected’ at the same time.
And as for the recent Basra uprisings? If they are anything
like the uprisings in 1991, rest assured that the U.S.
will allow Iraq sufficient time to turn their guns on
the people. The last thing anybody needs is to run their
own affairs, obviously.
And so, information is made public by U.S. Central Command
in Qatar (who should know what’s going on) and then it
is rescinded…but we are supposed to believe them next
time round! Previous events are thrown into the memory
hole of debunked history. All of this seems, however,
to work. And it works because the overriding currency
traded by media and military alike is fear.
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RECLAIM
THE BASES
"Support
Troops by Bringing Them Home demand protesters..."
TODAY (5 APRIL) AT 1400, as part of a UK-wide anti-war
day of action, activists from both sides of the community
in Northern Ireland picketed Palace Barracks in Holywood.
The activists, drawn from many walks of life, stressed
that the target of the protest was not the servicemen
and women but the politicians who had sent them into danger
under false pretences and against the wishes of the population.
The action takes place as part of the “Reclaim the Bases”
campaign taking place today across the UK, Germany, Italy,
Greece, the Republic of Ireland and other European countries.
“Men and women
from Ulster are going to be killed and injured solely
in order to allow America to extend it’s military influence
over the world’s richest oil producing region.”
“The pro-war politicians tell us to ‘stop undermining
our troops’ by which they mean ‘stop disagreeing with
pro-war politicians’. These same politicians are the ones
placing the troops in danger of friendly fire, depleted
Uranium and resistance from a population which will only
see them as invaders.” said one F. Fire.
“This illegal war has already dragged on too long. Relief
agencies are complaining of a serious lack of access to
the needy and funding for basic food, water and medicine.
If people are genuinely concerned about the plight of
ordinary Iraqi civilians they will be supporting relief
agencies and not a military onslaught.” said D. Uranium.
“Tony Blair and George Bush ask us to stop thinking and
just trust them. But it is our duty as concerned citizens
of a democracy to make our views known. Bring the troops
home, Tony, before more people die.”
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COPS
RIOT AT THE DAIL
In
what was meant to be a circling of the Dail by anti-war
activists the IAWM led a symbolic blockade of the front
entrance of the dail. As soon as the politicans wished
to leave their cardhouse of power though the offensive
arm of the state decided to split the blockade in two
to let the cars through.
Estimates of 1000 people reacted to the situation by sitting
down, linking arms and blockading the dail can be found
on www.indymedia.ie. According to the same report the
police called in backup of riot police who subsequently
began removing people by force from the blockade of the
Dail.As the line was pushed back activists removed from
the scene began reforming the line and the gardai eventually
came to the conclusion that this was a waste of time.
A standoff (or sitoff, depends how you look at it) ensued.From
here reports claim that the SWP (whom have been reported
to have fallen back to the back of the demonstration to
sing peace songs) and other elements of the IAWM negotiated
a deal behind the backs of most of the protesters to call
of the demonstration when the riot cops left the scene.The
demonstration was ended when the SWP/IAWM led people away
from the scene for speeches. Despite several arrests the
IAWM did not organise a support demo for the arresstees
at Pearse Street Garda Station.The positive side of this
action was the vast majority of the people at this action
acted on their own willingness. They didnt need to be
told what to doby the IAWM or the SWP. We need more of
these actions now, spontaneous, surprising and no negotiating
with the long arm of the government.
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TIME BOMB - ITALY 1920
Continuing
our series on the history of workers’ councils -the Italian
factory occupations 1920
The factory occuations and nascent workers’ councils took
root initially in the metal sectors of Italian industry.
Bureaucratic union hierarchies resulted in the imposition
of joint labour/management committees by a committed corporate-based
government only too willing to exploit the weakness of
unions and recoup financial losses after the war.
The Federation of Metalurgical Workers (FIOM) accepted
employers’ concessions on pay and hours in exchange for
greater control of the boss class over labour. As a result,
new shop organisations emerged independent of the General
Confederation of Labour (CGL). In Turin, the councils
were supported by the anarcho-syndicalist Turin Libertarian
Group since they were
...a movement
that had adopted the same goal as the anarcho-syndicalists,
that is the self-management of industry as part of an
integral socialistaion of the economy
In April 1920,
after the banning of in-plant organisations’ meeting during
working hours, a general strike was declared. The government
responded by locking out 80,000 workers. Instead of supporting
the strike, however, the CGL leadership and their counterparts
in the Socialist party (PSI) attempted to jump on the
bandwagon and set up their own socialist-dominated councils.
According to Antonio Gramsci who went on to see his soul
to Moscow...
...They went
on chattering about soviets and councils while in Piedmont
and Turin, half a million workers starved to defend the
councils that already exist.
Rising inflation
throughout 1920 ensured that labour ferment did not ebb.
The FIOM demanded a 40% wage increase, and decided on
a go-slow tactic to impose their will on employers. Workers
in the councils though had other ideas. They began factory
occupations all across the peninsular, and not just in
the industrial heartland of the north but in southern
cities like Florence, Naples and Palermo. By mid-September,
80,000 workers were participating in mass country-wide
occupations.
Unfortunately, and as usual, the incipient revolution
was checked by the petty machinations of socialist ‘leaders’
who held back from demanding complete socialisation to
a pathetic demand for ‘union control’. They led the CGL
rank-and-file down the garden path while the fascists
watched on gleefully...
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FRAGGING
IN THE US
THE CURRENT
WAR on Iraq has seen the return of a great U.S. military
tradition: soldiers throwing grenades at their own officers!
This practice known as “fragging” was a popular way of
getting rid of unwanted officers during the Vietnam war.
On the 23rd of March Army Sergeant Asan Akbar made a well
planned assault on the command centre of the elite 101st
Airborne Division’s 1st Brigade. He knocked out a generator
that supplied electricity to the three tents the command
centre was based in before throwing a grenade into each.
An officer was killed and 15 others wounded.
He is also alleged to have opened fire with his rifle
before he was tackled and detained when found hiding in
a bunker.
The attack
took place around just as members of the 101st Airborne
Division, a fighting force that specialises in rapid air
assault advances, was preparing to move into Iraq to join
the U.S. and British invasion force.
One military source, who did not wish to be identified,
said of Akbar: “He's a Muslim, and it seems he was just
against the war.”
An officer added:
“It is just unbelievable. It's terroristic, it truly is,
Everybody is a bit jumpy, edgy. You never want, especially
at a time like this, to have to think whether you can
trust the guy to your left or your right.”
A journalist
who witnessed the attack, described scenes of what he
called chaos and carnage when the grenades exploded, saying
soldiers thought they had come under Iraqi missile attack
and pulled on gas masks.
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INSIDE INFORMATION
EASTON RESIDENT
JOSH RICHARDS has been imprisoned after being accused
of attempting to enter RAF Fairford. He faces prosecution
for several alleged crimes including property damage and
possessing a mixture of petrol and detergent with intent
to endanger life, cause injury or damage property.
Write to:
Josh Richards JT5130, c/o Prison Governor, HMP Gloucester,
Barrack Square, Gloucester GL1 2JN.
More info from Bristol ABC : www.geocities.com/bristol_abc/
Shannon Solidarity
A
total of 18 people are currently facing prosecution out
of the October and March mass direct actions at Shannon
airport, a civilian airport in the west of Ireland being
used to ferry American troops and supplies to the Middle
East.
In addition five people are in the courts out of the Catholic
Worker/Ploughshares autonomous action, and four of them
are in Limerick prison. Also Mary Kelly is facing charges
for taking a hammer to a U.S. military transport plane.
Write to each prisoner individually:
Deirdre Clancy, Karen Fallon, Damien Moran, Nuin Dunlop
c/o 210 Le Fanu Road, Ballyfermot, Dublin 10, Ireland
Donate to the Ploughshares Defence Fund by making cheques
payable to “Peace and Reconciliation” c/o Ploughshares
134 Phibsborough Rd. Dublin 7 Ireland.
Donate to the 18 mass direct action defendants: Cheques
to Shannon Solidarity, and sent to Shannon Solidarity
c/o Ecology Society, Students Centre, NUIG, Newcastle,
Galway. Or money can be sent to the Bank of Ireland in
NUIG, Newcastle, Galway, Account Number: 89174196, Sort
Code: 90 40 18, Account Name: Shannon Solidarity.
Send a message of support to Mary Kelly c/o Shannon Peace
House, 19, Inis Ealga Shannon Co. Clare Ireland.
Subscribe to ShannonSolidarity by sending a blank email
to
shannonsolidarity-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Anti-militarism
prisoners
In
the beginning of February, 30 people were jailed in Finland
for total objection to military service.
The following would like to receive letters of support:
Pekka Kauhanen (7.10.02-24.4.03) Markus Mattsson (10.1.03-27.7.03)
Otto Miettinen (25.11.02-11.6.03) Henrik Murdoch (11.11.02-12.5.03)
Toni Maki (21.11.02-7.6.03) Timo Turunen (15.11.02-11.6.03)
Helsingin tyosiirtola PL 36 01531 VANTAA FINLAND
Heikki Ulmanen (30.9.02-17.4.03) Satakunnan vankila/Koylio
PL 42 32710 HUITTINEN FINLAND
Jussi Ollikainen (2.12.02-15.6.03) Kuopion vankila, avovankilaosasto
PL 7 70101 KUOPIO FINLAND
Mikko Saarinen (2.1.03-14.6.03) Naarajarven vankila PL
1 76851 Naarajarvi Finland
Ilkka Lipsanen (13.1.03-8.7.03) Sulkavan vankila PL 40
58701 Sulkava Finland
Markku Rintala (28.10.02-13.5.03) Pelson vankila Pelsonsuolinnantie
1 92800 Pelson vankila Finland
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