US imperialism and Iraq’s descent into civil war

by Bill Van Auken

US Soldiers prepare to enter a building in Fallujah, Iraq. Author: Johancharles Van Boers (source: Wikimedia Commons)

A decade after the US military waged two barbaric sieges of Fallujah, the Iraqi city is once again facing a bloody armed conflict.

The army of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has massed artillery and tanks on Fallujah’s outskirts and has already bombed and shelled civilian neighborhoods, inflicting an unknown number of casualties. Thousands have fled the city in fear for their lives, and the United Nations has warned that the cut-off of water, food and fuel is creating a humanitarian catastrophe. Maliki has vowed to launch a full-scale assault on the city unless its inhabitants succeed in persuading armed insurgents to surrender.

In April and again in November-December of 2004, Fallujah was turned into a killing field by the US occupation. From the air it was pummeled by AC-130 Specter gunships, F-16 fighter jets and Apache attack helicopters. On the ground, a force of over 10,000 US troops backed by tanks and artillery was assembled to attack the city. Bombs, missiles and white phosphorous shells—chemical weapons banned under the Geneva conventions—were unleashed against the population. Hospitals and ambulances were targeted.

In the end, fully one out five buildings in the town were destroyed, while two-thirds of what remained were damaged. Hundreds of thousands were turned into homeless refugees. At least 120 US troops were killed in the two sieges, while no accurate count of how many thousands of Iraqis were killed has ever been made.

Much of the US media coverage of the current situation in Fallujah, Ramadi and elsewhere in Iraq’s western Anbar province, has begun from the standpoint of what a shock and disappointment these events represent, given the enormous “sacrifice” made by the US occupation to pacify the area a decade ago. The Iraq war is once again being cast as a humanitarian venture aimed at fighting terrorism and bringing democracy to the Iraqi people.

The barbaric attack on Fallujah constituted a war crime. In its aims, scope and ferocity, it was comparable to the kind of collective punishment meted out by the Nazis against resisting populations in occupied Europe. It was emblematic of the criminal character of the entire US war. Foisted onto the American people with lies about non-existent “weapons of mass destruction” and ties between Baghdad and Al Qaeda, the war was a premeditated act of aggression launched to further US imperialist aims to assert hegemony over the Middle East and its vast energy reserves.

Having failed to secure a guarantee of legal immunity for remaining US troops, Obama ordered the last of them withdrawn from Iraq little more than two years ago. The Iraqi people, however, have been left to deal with the bitter legacy of nearly nine years of US military occupation. Meanwhile, Washington’s quest for hegemony in the region has continued, most notably through the war to topple Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and its fomenting and support for a war for regime change against the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. In Fallujah and Ramadi, the consequences of the crimes of US imperialism, both past and present, have come together in an explosive form.

The confrontation, presented by the corporate media as a struggle against Al Qaeda terrorists, has deep roots in the sectarian divisions that were instigated by the US war and occupation as part of a deliberate divide-and-rule strategy. They succeeded in pitting Iraq’s majority Shi’ite population against the minority Sunnis, while the Kurdish minority in the north has been allowed to pursue regional autonomy, while conflicts over borders and rights to oil wealth threaten to erupt into civil war there as well.

The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, installed under the US occupation, has pursued an openly sectarian agenda, ruthlessly purging leading Sunni political figures, using the security forces to crack down on the population of Anbar and branding protests against these abuses of power as acts of Al Qaeda terrorism.

At the end of December, the Maliki regime touched off the present conflict by moving to arrest Ahmed al-Alwany, a prominent Sunni member of parliament in Ramadi—killing his brother and five bodyguards in the process—and then on December 30 sending in security forces to break up a protest encampment that had existed in the same city for months, killing at least 17 more.

Amid seething popular anger, armed groups, including both the Al Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) and local tribesmen, seized control of police stations, drove out the security forces and set up local checkpoints, effectively taking over Fallujah and much of Ramadi.

The Obama administration has responded by declaring its full support to Maliki and rushing weapons, including Hellfire missiles, drones and other equipment to his military. It is exerting maximum pressure on Congress to end its delay on shipment of Apache attack helicopters and F-16s to the regime. That this weaponry, in the hands of a regime that has become ever more sectarian and authoritarian, may soon be used to massacre civilians has presented no obstacle to the Obama White House.

Washington has presented its military aid as an imperative driven by the threat of Al Qaeda, with Secretary of State John Kerry describing those who have seized Fallujah as “the most dangerous players in that region.”

The reality is that such aid is one of the principal means of control and influence that Washington still exerts over Baghdad. While the troops have left, a 1,000-man Office of Security Cooperation-Iraq based at the US embassy remains, including both US military personnel and contractors. It has managed hundreds of military sales contracts amounting to over $9 billion since the end of the occupation. US contractors, most of them ex-special operations troops, remain “embedded” with Iraqi forces as “advisors.”

As for the supposed threat from Al Qaeda, that is also largely of Washington’s own making. The ISIS has been vastly strengthened by the US-backed war for regime change across the border in Syria, where it has been armed and funded by the US’s closest allies, particularly Saudi Arabia. The hypocrisy and cynicism of US policy in the region is summed up in Washington’s denunciation of Syria’s bombardment of ISIS forces in Aleppo, even as it rushes more missiles to Iraq so that Maliki can bomb them in Fallujah.

Embodied in this glaring contradiction is the dual use that Washington makes of Al Qaeda, employing it as a proxy where it suits is purposes—as in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and more recently in Libya and Syria—and then using it as a bogeyman to justify intervention, as in Afghanistan and Iraq a decade ago and once again in Iraq today.

The prospect that US imperialism may be able to further warm its hands over the fire it has ignited in Fallujah was indicated by the New York Times on Monday, in an article highlighting the “common enemies” shared by Washington and Tehran in Iraq. It suggested that the rapprochement between the US and Iran can extend beyond a deal on the Iranian nuclear program into turning Iran into a force for “stability” in the region.

Such a realignment, however, would hardly resolve the deep social, political and class conflicts tearing apart the Middle East, and would only be exploited by US imperialism to further its broader quest for global hegemony, particularly through confrontation with China.

This article first appeared on World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) on 9 January 2014, and was republished with permission.

Indringende beelden van de Palestijnse volkerenmoord

Photo: Abid Katib/Getty Images

Beelden beklijven. Beelden zeggen meer dan tekst. Bovenstaande foto maakt deel uit van de “Fuertes imágenes del Genocidio Palestino” van de Argentijnse historica Laura Lezcano.

Aan de hand van een reeks foto’s tekent de historica een analyse op van de systematische genocide van het Palestijnse volk door Israel. De slachtoffers van het nazisme zijn de volkerenmoordenaars van vandaag, aldus een kernachtige uitspraak van Lezcano.

     

Trans-Pacific trade talks fail to meet Obama’s deadline

by Mike Head

China Rising (Tianjin, China)

Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons, author Shubert Ciencia

Despite bullying and cajoling by the US, closed-door talks in Singapore this week on its Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact broke up without a final agreement, failing to meet the Obama administration’s deadline for a deal by the end of 2013.

It was a visible blow to the White House, which was intent on finally pushing through the agreement pact as a key part of its “pivot” to Asia to combat China’s rising influence. The TPP seeks to open the region’s markets and financial systems to unfettered exploitation by US banks and corporations, at the expense of China—which is not a TPP member—and America’s European rivals.

Negotiations will resume in January, but there is no guarantee of completion by April, when Obama is scheduled to tour the Asia-Pacific to reinforce his government’s “rebalancing” to the region.

The TPP, first conceived in 2003 by Singapore, New Zealand and Chile, was literally taken over by the Obama administration in 2009. The treaty’s 29 chapters now go far beyond traditional trade issues.

As a US Congressional Research Service report in August 21 stated: “[I]t is the leading trade policy initiative of the Obama Administration, and is a manifestation of the Administration’s ‘pivot’ to Asia. If concluded, it may serve to shape the economic architecture of the Asia-Pacific region by harmonizing existing agreements with US.”

Reshaping the “economic architecture” includes abolishing all tariffs that limit US exports and any curbs that affect American investment, particularly in financial services. The TPP also radically extends copyright and patent protections, especially for medicines, music, films and IT, thus boosting the profits of the pharmaceutical, media and technology giants. It aims to break up state-owned monopolies and gives US firms the power to sue governments whose decisions cut across their profit-making.

President Barack Obama, backed by Wall Street, has identified himself closely with the TPP, describing it as the economic centrepiece of renewed US engagement in Asia. But this is the second year in a row that his proposed end-of-the-year deadline has not been met.

Apart from the US and the original three members of the TPP, the other eight countries involved in the negotiations are Vietnam, Peru, Mexico, Malaysia, Japan, Canada, Brunei and Australia.

Leaked documents obtained by WikiLeaks, and published on the eve of the Singapore talks, show that the US adopted heavy-handed tactics in an effort to meet the 2013 deadline, while refusing to budge on its key demands. Two documents outlined the state of negotiations after earlier talks in Salt Lake City during November.

“The US is exerting great pressure to close as many issues as possible this week,” one memo stated. “One country remarked that up until now there had been no perceivable, substantial movement on the part of the US, and that is the reason for this situation.” The pressure would “increase with each passing day.”

The document also revealed that “600 ‘trade advisers’—lobbyists guarding the interests of large US corporations such as Chevron, Halliburton, Monsanto and Walmart—are granted privileged access to crucial sections of the treaty text.” These are just some of the corporate interests seeking to draw massive profits from the TPP. The US Trade Representative estimates that the agreement would boost US exports by $123.5 billion a year by 2025.

Because the contents of the TPP talks are highly-secretive—shielded from any scrutiny by ordinary working people—few details have emerged of the disagreements that led to the breakdown. An official statement claimed that “substantial progress” was made. Media reports suggest, however, that sharp rifts emerged with Japan, which had previously been working closely with US, as well as with Vietnam and Malaysia.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has closely aligned himself with Obama’s “pivot” and used the rising tensions with China to push for Japan’s re-militarisation, has been anxious to back the US on the TPP. Publicly, he insisted that “it is important for Japan to cooperate with the United States.” However, any agreement to scrap agricultural tariffs would shatter the rural base of his Liberal Democratic Party. During last year’s elections, the LDP pledged to retain existing high tariffs on rice, wheat, beef and pork, dairy products and sugar.

According to the Wall Street Journal, a “US-Japan impasse” dogged the Singapore talks. It noted that Japan initially made a series of concessions, including easing restrictions on US beef imports and allowing the US more time to phase out its tariffs on Japanese auto shipments. Yet, the US was “putting pressure on Japan to expand market access for US firms in as many industries as possible.” Vice President Joe Biden visited Tokyo this month, the newspaper reported, in part to press Abe to “open up sensitive markets, including rice and other farm products.”

Japan’s vice economy minister, Yasutoshi Nishimura, said negotiators in Singapore agreed on about 65 percent of the outstanding points. He pointedly asked the US for more “flexibility” on “certain sensitive issues” where “their stance hasn’t changed.”

Japan was not alone in voicing concern. In a media interview, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak threatened to walk out of the talks, rather than bow to US demands for the dismantling of state-owned enterprises (SEOs), which represent half of Malaysia’s stock market capitalisation. “That is the worst situation,” but “if people can’t accept it, we have no choice,” he said. Vietnam, where SEOs account for 40 percent of output, raised similar objections.

There are also fears in Asian capitals that Obama, whose standing was dented by not attending key Asian summits in October because of the US government shutdown, lacks the political authority to overcome opposition to the TPP from protectionist elements within the US Congress. Congress has so far not given Obama “fast track” authority to finalise the TPP, so any deal could be overturned by Congress.

According to the WikiLeaks documents, Australia—Washington’s staunch ally in the “pivot”—has stood almost alone with the US on some crucial TPP clauses, including to make people pay more for movies and software.

Together with Japan, Australia has also backed the US on extending pharmaceutical patents. Australian Trade Minister Andrew Robb insists that the Abbott government will not compromise the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme that subsidises many medicines. But Australia has worked behind the scenes with the US and Japan to reintroduce rejected clauses that would give the drug companies greater power.

The TPP’s membership does not include some major Indo-Pacific economies, notably India, South Korea and Indonesia. But even among the 12 countries that have signed up to the process, major differences remain, underscoring the tensions created by the Obama administration’s aggressive drive to reassert the domination of US imperialism in Asia.

This article first appeared on World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) on 14 December 2013, and was republished with permission.