“Islamic State” creature of the imperialisms

In Iraq, there is a war going on between the Shi’a and Sunni communities, that is, between the two most important bourgeois clans. According to official estimates, 4,500 people died in 941 terrorist attacks in 2012 alone.

The political system installed by the United States in 2003 has rendered the country hostage to its ethnic and religious divisions. The government is directed by the authoritarian Shi’a Prime Minister Nuri al-maliki, a member of the Shi’a Islamic party, Dawaa, which is strongly influenced by Iran. The presence in the government of a Kurdish vice president allows this significant ethnic minority to maintain its autonomy in the region of Iraqi Kurdistan, obtained thanks to the American occupier. The regime is still under the control of Washington, whose double-dealing diplomacy continues as before.

The United States is the main supplier of arms to Iraq: the government’s attempt to turn to Russia in 2012 failed due to American pressure. The war in Syria has aggravated tensions inside the country because the Sunni minority has lined up with the rebel forces, thus not only against Assad but also against Iran and the Shi’a power in Iraq.

The disastrous political and economic situation in Iraq is a fundamental cause of the chaos in the Middle East. Iraq, bled dry and in debt, is in ruins. The roads, hospitals, the transport system, are all to be reconstructed with oil revenues. But the political tensions at the heart of the government, the hostility between the oil and finance ministries, means any decisions are delayed. Legislative action hasn’t managed to resolve anything, and the oil law, which was supposed to regulate relations between the central State and the autonomous Kurdish region, is still under discussion five years later. Baghdad gathers the oil revenues and distributes them to the provinces according to their population density; thus Kurdistan only gets 17%. The Prime Minister, by favouring the Shi’a part of the bourgeoisie, just serves to aggravate the discontent of the Sunni part, and of the disinherited in general.

On 24 February 2013 in Fallujah, protests by Sunni Muslims against the government were harshly repressed and some of the demonstrators were killed by the soldiers, who had opened fire on a stone-throwing crowd.

Autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan has established itself as the indispensable ally of the United States in Iraq and throughout the region. Its government represents the keystone of the new Iraqi political system. In fact the rivalry between Barzani and Talabani (the latter occupying the office of President of Iraq until last July, when he relinquished it to another Kurdish politician) serves the interests of American imperialism, allowing its diplomats to manoeuvre between Iraqi Shi’as and Sunnis. The political institutions of autonomous Kurdistan are firmly in the clutches of President Masoud Barzani, head of the KDP (Kurdistan Democratic Party) while the vice-presidency rests with the PUK (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan).

Furthermore Talibani, head of the PUK, and other Kurds have been given important posts in the administration, the secret services and in the Kurdish army. Barzani’s arrogance and demands for independence are increasing as he exploits the increasingly acute divisions between Shi’as and Sunnis, which the war in Syria has only accentuated.

The assault in Kirkuk serves as a reminder that the nationalist Kurds are still active. Kirkuk, with its multiethnic Arab, Kurdish and Turkish population, is outside the perimeter of the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan but the Peshmerga are present there. The Iraqi president Al-Maliki is relying on Arab nationalism to counter Kurdish nationalism in the city, and in September 2012 he installed a military command which provoked clashes between Peshmerga and Iraqi soldiers.

In 2014, adding to the social and political chaos generated by the continuous clashes between various militias and by the daily bombings, bands of Islamic terrorists formed during the Syrian conflict arrived and sided with the “resistance” of the various religious and nationalist groups, such as the Ba’ath party supporters, who were already active in the region.

For years now Syria has been one of the focal points of the struggle between global and regional imperialist bourgeoisies; but rather than the major states intervening directly with their armies, they prefer to use mercenaries, who are armed materially and ideologically as the need arises.

The so-called Islamic State, which emerged from the desert and mountain wastelands of Syria, falls into this category. The group has a lot of money which it obtains by robbing large banks, selling oil, given that it controls a number of oil wells, and power plants, and from the ransoming of kidnap victims; but it also receives financial help from some of the Sunni states in the Persian Gulf and from Turkey. It is equipped with small arms and heavy weaponry, and with tanks and armoured cars taken from the Iraqi army, mainly after the capture of the great arsenal in Mossul in north Iraq.

These guerrilla fighters, who are also recruited in the West, have found support in Iraq from ex-soldiers of Saddam Hussein’s army and from militants in the Baath Party, as well as from amongst the Sunni bourgeoisie and from the many desperadoes and rejects who have multiplied in this country after the victorious invasion of “democracy”.

The decomposition of Iraq’s central state reached a point where the insurgents were able to cut through the territory like a hot knife through butter, seizing possession of most of the northern part of the country in just a few days, striking terror into the population in the process, and only halting at the gates of Baghdad, the doorway to the southern regions, in order to concentrate their attacks on the oil-rich Kurdish zone.

It’s a case of one gang of brigands fighting against another, one lot in the name of radical Islam, the other lot in the name of the anti-terrorist crusade to defend the civil population. In actual fact this no holds barred struggle is a contest to see who can get their hands on “the black gold”.

After dismissing the legitimate, although contested, head of government, Al-Maliki, from office last August, once he started to prove obstructive, the United States and Iran, in an unprecedented joint action, replaced him with another Shi’a, Haïdan al-Abadi, who is also a member of the Al-Dawaa party, but one who has studied in Great Britain and seems to offer greater guarantees of overcoming the country’s political crisis.

Will this al-Abadi manage to hold the Iraqi state together by yielding to some compromise or other between the various religious and political factions? Or will he move towards partitioning the country into three regions, Sunni, Kurdish, and Shi’a, the solution the United States prefers apparently, and probably Iran as well, although it is strongly opposed by Turkey?

On 11 August Robert Fisk wrote in The Independent that the real reason for the intervention of the USA in Iraqi Kurdistan, allegedly to save the indigenous population from the invasion of the Islamic State Guerrillas, was actually to protect the interests of the multinational oil companies who are operating in the area. He stated that of the 143 billion barrels of crude oil reserves in Iraq, at least 43.5 billion of them are to be found in Kurdistan, not to mention the natural gas reserves. Mobil, Exxon, Chevron and Total, all of them multinational oil companies with a major presence in Kurdistan, pocket 20% of the total profits. The journalist remarks that the income from oil extraction in this case is particularly high because the cost of extraction is amongst the lowest in the world: 4 dollars a barrel, whereas for the last four years it has been sold at 110 dollars a barrel! Indeed, the oil that is the most costly to extract tends to dictate the market price.

The Kurdistan government, the journalist continues, sells the oil to Turkey which in its turn, without the agreement of the central government in Baghdad, then sells it on. A Turkish company has constructed a pipeline which skirts the Syrian border and links the refinery at Tak Tak, near Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan, to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, also the outlet for the pipeline running from Baku in Aserbajan, and from here onto the international market.

For the arms industries in the United States, Russia, France, Germany, England and Italy, the conflicts in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Gaza are veritable manna from heaven.

But in this chaotic situation what has become of the Iraqi workers? It seems that years and years of repression and bloody terror have got the better of their trade union organisations, and today most of them will need to start from scratch in a country which is still ravaged by war.

The Iraqi workers can expect neither the imperialist countries, nor its own bourgeoisie, which is murderous and corrupt, to bring peace to the country. Only the revival of international proletarian struggle, established on a sound class basis, can resolve this tragic situation, which exists not only in Iraq but throughout the Middle East. Once again the protagonists of this revival, along with the proletarians in those regions, will have to be their brothers in the western countries, in Europe, the Balkans, and in Israel.