We must confront both these two terrorist poles.
Over last few days, an armed fight has erupted in many Iraqi cities between Muqtada al-Sadr’s group and the US troops. This conflict has so far claimed the lives of tens of innocent people in the residential slums of Baghdad and the Iraqi southern cities.
Muqtada al-Sadr’s group is infamous for its policies and attacks on the rights of the ordinary masses. It is one of the groups of political Islam, which presents a grim alternative for Iraqi masses and seek to impose their policies by terrorizing the masses. The current situation has offered them an opportunity to conceal this reality behind the fight against the US presence in Iraq. Obviously this fighting is another bloody outcome of the situation brought about by the US war on Iraq.
Our party foresaw the dangerous outcomes of the US war and ongoing occupation of Iraq, and therefore stood firmly against the US policies. Events we are witnessing everyday prove our predictions that Iraq would slip into the swamp of continuous wars, insecurity, and political chaos.
We warned against appeasing political Islam and unleashing their terrorism against the masses and the basic rights of Iraqi people. From the very beginning, after the US forces entered Iraq, we stressed the importance of freedom, human rights, and secularism for Iraqi society and the importance of restraining political Islam’s movements and prevent them from setting up reactionary emirates where they implement their reactionary policies and rule. However, the occupation forces appeased religious reaction, hoping that they can be subdued. As usual, the creature turns against its master and once more the deprived masses have to pay the price for the war of terrorists.
Undoubtedly, Islamic terrorism has become a nightmare for humanity. It must be repudiated and defeated and its dangers removed from the life of humanity. However, the way to do so is mainly politically rather than militarily. It is impossible to fight the terrorism of political Islam on the one hand and cooperate with it on the other. Whoever wants to eradicate the main sources of Islamic terrorism must think about negating its political role rather than taking its groups as partners in power. Obviously, the US strives only to restrict terrorism when it is directed against the interests of the US government. The security and the lives of Iraqi people are not on the list of its priorities.
From the first issue, al-Sadr’s newspaper “al-Hawza,†has published threats and incited violence against freedom-loving people, communists, and the defenders of the masses’ rights. However, it was only viewed as a danger to security by the American authorities, when it targeted American forces. Political Islam has practiced terrorism, killed women, youth, defenders of freedom and equality, and followers of other faiths in Baghdad and the southern cities from the very early days of their inception. All these actions were not considered by the Coalition Authority, as violations against law. These Islamic groups did not become outlawed until they used their swards, stained with the blood of the ordinary people, against the Coalition Authority and coalition forces.
The latest events prove that the US project to build a state in Iraq has failed. This failure is the outcome of building the state and government on the basis of sects, ethnicity and recruiting the most reactionary groups antagonistic to the aspirations of people. The project of building a state on this basis in Iraq is only materializing the grim scenario, which will constantly reproduce war and strife.
We repeat the demand of the masses for immediate withdrawal of the US forces from Iraq. We call for transfer of the task of security and stability to a government formed of the representatives of the masses in collaboration with multinational forces, excluding the US and other countries, which participated in the war coalition. This interim government should disarm all militia forces and ensure security, freedom and the requirements of a decent life and also provide suitable situation to enable people to choose their government freely and consciously.
The pain and sorrow of the Iraqi masses grows in the middle of the fire between these two poles of terrorism. We call on the masses eager for freedom and security to rally around this humanist and liberationist alternative, to end the grim scenario and defeat the forces that created it and rebuild the pillars of civic life in Iraq society.
Worker Communist Party of Iraq April 4, 2004
Michael Pugliese