Understanding Iraq

UNDERSTANDING IRAQ SABAH ALNASSERI he war in Iraq can be understood neither as a sectarian nor as a civil Twar. The notion of the Iraq conflict as a sectarian conflict, which is propagated by the occupier, suggests that the spiral of violence is due not to the occupation, but is a manifestation of the internal logic of Iraqi society. Thus the responsibility is shifted to the victims of the war. At the same time, the notion of sectarian conflict implicitly refers to internal struggles for power within the governing and ruling classes and their opponents. There can be no civil war under the occupation. The idea that there is a civil war is put about by the occupiers and the governing cliques in Iraq to further legitimize the occupation and the presence of an ever-increasing number of troops and forces, on which the position of power of the governing cliques and the ruling classes relies. Rather than a civil war, the violence in Iraq today reflects the correlation of political power and economic interest between the Bush administration and the Iraqi ruling and governing classes. Historical prejudices are long-lasting. The Bush administration and the present ruling class in Iraq have learned from Saddam Hussein that just as in Babylonian times the people between the Euphrates and the Tigris can be ruled only by brute force: violence, terror, and humiliation. Abu Ghraib is thus neither a mistake nor an exception, but a consciously chosen method. Another central element in their strategic war scenario is the acquisition of land for the purpose of creating extra-legal, extra-territorialized zones, under direct control of the imperial powers, re-designed as prisons, intern- ment camps, and military bases. This scenario presupposes, however, that the collaboration of domestic forces will be forthcoming. In the context of the imperial war in Iraq, ‘democracy’ comes to mean a technique of control. The presence of occupying forces and troops, of private security companies and mercenaries, of international institutions and protagonists, plus the va- riety of political forces in Iraq, have contributed to fracturing the country’s political map – a socio-economic as well as a territorial fragmentation. The 78 SOCIALIST REGISTER 2008 division of the country into different zones of occupation, the dissolution of the state’s economic, ideological and security apparatus, the wholesale dismissal of civil servants, as well as the destruction of the communication, health, electricity and water supply infrastructure caused by the embargo and the war, have led to a re-traditionalization of relations of power and rule. The mass media representation of the conflict as a religious and cultural issue sensationally misrepresents the empirical reality and the actual struggles and resistances. In this way, ideas like Samuel Huntington’s famous ‘clash of civilizations’ are deployed to legitimate imperial control and rule over geo- strategically and economically important spaces in the South. The discursive construction of these spaces as dangerous, terrorist, and uncivilized areas is a necessary condition for ensuring and perpetuating such control and rule. To understand Iraq and situate the extreme violence and terror in their proper context, one must understand two specific moments: the Guantàna- mo-isation of Iraq, and the reactivation of colonial forms of rule and social forces under new circumstances. Although, to the misfortune of the occupier, there are two independent variables in this scenario – the ability of the ruling class to rule and govern, and the resistance of the subaltern – which could not be tested a priori and which could jeopardize the entire imperial project. Most of the governing parties in Iraq have no experience in governing, no experience of institutional politics and a narrow and instrumental understanding of the state, and remain divided and splintered. In terms of their relations to civil society, these political forces dispose of various power networks (tribal, confessional, local, familial), militias and paramilitary units.1 All of their leading figures were either privileged beneficiaries of Saddam’s regime (Allawi), or profited through an arrangement with the regime (Ta- labani and Barzani), or represent powerful families (clans) in Iraqi society (al-Sadr, al-Hakim, al-Chalabi). Each of these groups stresses its exclusive representation of a part of the Iraqi population and/or lays a claim to an institutional part of the state apparatus. The state becomes a mere conglomera- tion of particular interests. Gangsters, bandits, and militia groups have been organized through the occupation and the governing parties, and political alliances have been formed with some tribal forces in the hope that they will help secure the political and social dominance of these parties. What ensues are intra-parliamentary fights for political power, jockeying for key political positions – and political murders. Still, despite being backed by the most powerful country on earth, with its troops, spin-doctors and exorbitantly paid consultants, neither Allawi, nor al-Jaafari and even less al-Maliki have demonstrated an ability to govern effectively. The more the government showed its inability and helplessness, UNDERSTANDING IRAQ 79 the more backlash it provoked, the more violent the situation became, the faster were the changes of political camps and the shifts within political alliances. In the government equation there is a cumulative involution, to the point of collapse. The counter-tendency is the increasing reliance on armed force, and this, in particular, marks the present phase: more than 600,000 estimated dead,2 twice as many injured and mutilated, three times as many refugees and migrants. This is the result of four years of liberation imperialism and a democracy which was, literally, bombed into the people. The main challenges facing the current governing bloc – the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the Democratic Party of Kurdistan (DPK) and the Alliance (al-Da’wa, SCIRI, al-Chalabi’s INC, among others) – cannot be easily overcome due to the persistence of a fatal equilibrium of innumer- able particular interests and the continuation of the occupation, yielding what might be called a transition in permanence. Various changes in tactics such as the Baker-Hamilton Commission, the troop ‘surge’, and regional and international conferences, aim at reshuffling the political forces in Iraq and putting in place a new order in the region. The tactics of the neoconservatives in the Bush administration have not implied the maintenance of an effective Iraqi state but a weakened Iraq whose unity would be ensured by multiple regimes of control (military, economic, ‘democratic’). The transformation of the economic base of the state, oil, by the introduction of private property relations and redistribution in fa- vour of war-profiteers (Iraqi as well as British and American) would weaken and destabilize Iraq as a regional power. This would also be a sharp blow to OPEC. However, Iraq is increasingly beyond political and military control. In addition to the occupation troops, recourse to private security firms, local and regional militias and mercenaries is increasingly necessary in order to discipline the subaltern classes, above all in the urban centres. They are used against politically inconvenient opponents, as well as trade unionists, human rights activists, critical journalists, and to secure important natural resources, trade and logistical routes. In sum, the violence in Iraq must not be ascribed to fanatics or political extremists; rather the occupation has created a situation which provides a breeding-ground for all kinds of atrocities. The uneven development of the country, the precarious situation of the majority, the dramatic nature of the situation and uncertainty about further economic development, has thrown people back to a reliance on familial and local networks which are tied to particular patrons and institutions, or on corruption, or on crime. Once in- side the state’s apparatuses and institutions, protagonists take off their ethnic or religious veil if they want to survive and cement their political power 80 SOCIALIST REGISTER 2008 under the institutional constraints, selectivity and internal dynamics of the state. This is why presenting the situation in Iraq in cultural or ethnological categories is not terribly enlightening. The debacle of the current junta in Iraq is due to the fact that it inaugurated a political catharsis through en- couraging an imperial war of liberation, or what was really an imperial Trojan horse. But the new ruling class was unable to create a viable new state. Due to weak leadership, extreme corruption, and the increasingly lawless violence of the militias, the present al-Maliki government is under enormous pressure. Thus, the security issue – or more precisely, the insecuritization of the population – is the trump card in the transitional phase up to the next election, or putsch. So what is really going in Iraq? First, there is an occupation by imperial troops, private mercenaries, and public-private militias, all of which are act- ing without legal constraints. Second, there is a provincial political regime based on clientelist networks rather than citizenship and national consensus. Third, there is a government lacking in both authority and legitimacy, despite (or because of) the elections and the passing of a constitution. Since the dominant groups in the state represent the old social classes which are now celebrating a comeback, and taking control of state affairs, this represents a massive historical regression. Fourth, since March 2003 there has been a situation of war with enormous social, economic, human, environmental, and institutional destruction; a war not against the former ruling clique, but against the country as a whole. By means of the war economy and the propaganda about the war being a civil sectarian one, the governing parties and ruling classes appeal to their respective supporters to stand behind their policies.

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