Unable to claim military victories following the “surge” of US troops, the occupation forces have nevertheless claimed improved security in Iraq. Economic life has picked up; fewer soldiers and civilians have died. Sectarian militias are less conspicuous and Iraqi refugees are returning from Syria.
This, however, may prove merely to be the calm before the storm. The chief cause of the improved situation is a political realignment in Iraq, motivated by a response to a US drive to war on Iran, which, once it begins, will bring more violence and instability.
Many of the refugees in Syria have returned due to restrictions and poverty. Jordan, the favoured asylum of more wealthy Iraqis, has seen no such mass return, while a million remain internally displaced.
The key intended target of the “surge” was Shia leader Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, seen as a source of resistance to the US and an ally of Iran. Hoping to reduce prime minister Nuri al-Maliki’s dependence on Sadr, the occupation forces attempted to provoke an intra-Shia conflict. But Sadr’s unilateral ceasefire neatly sidestepped this.
Indeed, for all his radical talk, Sadr seeks a political role within the new Iraq and is willing to do deals with the US. He has 30 MPs and a handful of ministers in the American-backed government.
On the other side of the equation, formerly insurgent Sunni militias, like the 1920 Revolution Brigades and the Islamic Army in Iraq, have also shown their willingness to collaborate. They have accepted American arms and training, as well as government support to fight al-Qa’ida’s hated and reactionary Islamic State in Iraq.
Workers can end divide and rule
The calculation of the Baathists, who run many of these militia, is that a war with Iran will bring the occupation into conflict with the Shia, and open the way for them to become America’s chief ally, just as sectarian Shia militias were in the period after the 2003 invasion.
This “divide and rule” strategy may have short-term results, but creating a balance of power between rival sectarian militias will strengthen the tendency towards civil war in the longer term.
Only the working class – drawing in the new trade unions, civil society and resistance fighters, but organised in its own party – can unite the Iraqi masses to drive out imperialism. Sectarian forces – Shia or Sunni – cannot. Workers and youth need to organise an independent force to expel the US, mobilising the women as well as men in their fighting units.
They should link this to the struggle of the unions against the new oil law, and bring the working class to the head of the liberation movement, so that the working class can establish a socialist government, based on direct democracy and the armed people