[Marxism] A Vietnamese critique of the Iraqi resistance

["Michael Karadjis" <mkaradjis@xxxxxxxxx>]

Vietnamese Observations on the Iraqi Resistance

InterPress Service - Nov 10, 2005
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=30952

Viet Cong Advice for Iraqi Resistance

by Aaron Glantz

HANOI, Nov 10 (IPS) - Is Iraq another Vietnam? Tran Dac Loi should know.
The Secretary-General of the Vietnam Peace and Development Foundation
grew up in Hanoi dodging bombs dropped by the United States Air Force,
while his father fought in the successful guerilla war in the country's
central highlands.

Three decades later, Tran, now an important figure in the ideological
wing of Vietnam's communist government, has some basic advice for the
Iraqi resistance.

"Our struggle was well organised. We had an address and official
contacts, but with Iraq you never know who the resistance is and what
their objectives are," Tran said in an IPS interview.

"Sure, the fighters all want the Americans out, but there's no unifying
political programme," Tran said, pointing to what he sees as a serious
flaw with the Iraqi resistance.

In Iraq, the insurgency's appeal flows primarily from the pain of the
occupation. Much of its support comes from regular Iraqis who have
relatives who have been killed or imprisoned by U.S. forces and they
want to get even.

"This kind of resistance leads nowhere," he said. "Resistance has to
have a clear objective. Ours was independence and socialism; not
reaction but revolution."

Some of the occupation's opponents in Iraq do have developed
organisations, complete with spokespersons and ideological programmes.
But, Tran says, because all of them are built on ethnic or religious
lines, they'll never succeed in their objectives.

The movement of Muqtada Sadr, for example, appeals primarily to poor
people in the country's numerous Shi'ite slums. It provides services in
poor Shi'ite neighbourhoods, while advocating an Islamic state.

Such a plan of action has helped Sadr amass millions of supporters, but
has also caused him to be unable to attract a following outside his core
base.

According to Tran, the same can be said of Sunni fundamentalists. The
hardline Association of Muslim Scholars may have spokespersons who
appear regularly on the Arab satellite channels, but their appeal is
limited even within the country.

Tran thinks that the lack of a pan-ethnic political programme can cause
minority groups to ally with the occupier in order to ensure that their
cultural rights are protected. In Iraq, this has caused the Kurds, and
their more than 100,000 'peshmerga' guerillas, to side with the U.S.

"The absence of a clear political programme is in the interest of the
U.S.," Tran said. "Then, they can go above you and pretend like they're
solving the problems between you, when really they're lording over you."

While the occupying forces took care to ban the secularist Ba'ath
Party--which continues to function through independent cells within Iraq
and through exiles in Syria and Jordan--it has not been able to earn the
trust of minority groups.

It is a classic case of divide and rule. Indeed, from the start of the
occupation, the U.S. government actively encouraged the Iraqi people to
organise themselves along sectarian lines.

The U.S. administration even hired a company, Research Triangle
Institute
(RTI), and charged it with selecting local governments, based solely on
the ethnic make-up in each of Iraq's regions.

In March 2003, RTI was awarded a contract worth 466 million US dollars
to create 180 local and provincial governments in Iraq and obtain wide
public participation in a new political process but irregularities were
pointed out by government auditors.

As a communist, Tran suggests a programme in Iraq similar to Vietnam's
revolution which was based on a single political party, aimed at
throwing out the aggressor, defending the unity of the country and the
country's economic and political sovereignty.

The particular ideology, he said, is not the key. More important is
something everyone can believe in, regardless of religion or ethnic
background, said Tran, who, among other things, coordinates the
country's delegations to the annual World Social Forum, usually held at
Porto Alegre in Brazil.

Iraq, he said, needs a unifying political figure like Ho Chi Minh. "You
need a political figure who can introduce a long-term objective that's
in the basic interest of the majority of the people."

Tran doesn't think any of Iraq's current crop of political leaders fits
this mould. Moreover, he says the fighters' regular killings of innocent
civilians are sickening and counterproductive.

"They behave more like random rebelling groups," he says. "When we
fought, we only fought against the ones who fought us. Civilians were
never our targets."

Given the Iraqi resistance's bloody tactics and lack of a unified
political programme, Tran doubts it will be successful in forcing the
Americans out--at least in the short term.

He compares the Iraqi resistance to the many aborted attempts to end
French colonisation of Vietnam before World War II that were led by
small groups of the educated elite. "They were all patriots but they
were all suppressed because they could not appeal to the masses."

[IPS reporter Aaron Glantz is author of the book, "How America Lost
Iraq"(Tarcher/Penguin). Ngoc Nguyen also contributed to this report.]

(END/2005)



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