The Wrath of a Nation: Why They Can't Take Iraq. posted by Richard Seymour

Frederic Jameson once suggested that Marxists should develop the same dialectically subtle understanding of postmodernism as Marx had of capitalism itself:

"[A] type of thinking ... capable of grasping the demonstrably baleful features of capitalism along with its extraordinary and liberating dynamism simultaneously, within a single thought, and without attenuating the force of either judgement. We are, somehow, to lift our minds to point where it is possible to understand that capitalism is at one and the same time the best thing that has ever happened to the human race, and the worst." (Quoted, Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist Critique, Polity Press, 1989).

It seems we have had to pursue a similar understanding of nationalism, neither accepting it as a sufficient ground for political action, nor ignoring its emancipatory potential. Nationalism, in the 18th Century and early 19th Century, was a revolutionary movement, often associated with liberal ideals rather than reactionary ones. Hence Garibaldi, L'Ouverture and Kolokotronis. In the 20th Century, it assumed the dimensions of extreme right and left. Given the overwhelming socialist rejection of nationalism, with the assessment (correct, in my view) that there no specific shared material interest between people living in a defined land-mass speaking the same language, it has often been a point of controversy about just what stance to take on, say, Arab nationalism, Irish nationalism etc. It has not been so difficult to know what to say about Russian, German and Eastern European nationalism.

According to Benedict Anderson, nationalisms are rooted in "imagined communities", in which people who have never had any contact with one another are assumed to have a shared experience. What made this possible initially was the development of the printing press, the standardisation of language and the emergence of vernacular literatures. (Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, Verso, 1991). The growing interest in philology, and the languages spoken by other cultures, was an indication of this - Edward Said's Orientalism documents the considerable interest displayed by Orientalists in Sanskrit, and interest which was not always or merely patronising, but did involve the assumption that there was some unbroken bond between the civilisation of yester-year and the subjugated peoples of the time.

But, as Terry Eagleton argues, nationalism was and is "a piece of romantic mystification". He goes on:

There is nothing in the fact of being Irish or Tibetan which entails that you have a right to political self-determination precisely as Irish or Tibetan, other than that to be Irish or Tibetan is to be human, and so to enjoy a right to self-determination on those grounds. The Irish qua Irish have no more title to self-determination than have the freckled, red-haired or bow-legged. (Terry Eagleton, "Nationalism and the Case of Ireland", New Left Review 234, series 1, p 44).

Acknowledging this, however, one can always make the case - as in fact Eagleton does - that the Irish being entitled to self-determination as human beings can entail them being entitled to self-determination as the Irish. That is, it is not possible to create the conditions for the real autonomy and self-determination of individuals living in Ireland without first having created a united statehood independent of the British, who have denied such autonomy. This, broadly, is how I view Iraq.

And I'll slip now from this discursive mode and discuss what this means in practise, particularly concering the uprising in Najaf, the position of the coalition and their inability thus far to break the resistance. First of all, the situation as I write is that coalition troops and their Iraqi recruits are closing in on the Imam Ali shrine, apparently 400 metres away from the beehive of resistance activity. That sounds a lot closer than effectively it is, because the surrounding area is a labyrinth of alleys and blind-spots. I would not be surprised, however, to see al-Sadr killed and the bulk of his men either killed or arrested. This would not terminate the resistance (even as this happens, another outfit has detonated a car-bomb in Kadisea in southern Baghdad), but it would be a substantial defeat.

Why are we here? William Pfaff , who has himself authored an impressive study of nationalism (The Wrath of Nations, Touchstone, 1993) sees it as a failure of politics, in which the Marines have been allowed to act too ruthlessly:

After the several U.S. private security operatives in the city were murdered and their corpses mutilated, the Marines mounted an assault to search for and arrest the unidentified murderers.

The attack provoking armed uprisings against the American occupation elsewhere in Iraq. This did attract attention in Washington, and American forces were eventually ordered to make a thinly disguised handover of Falluja to some of the same people they had just been fighting. Most of Falluja has since been no-go territory for Americans.

In Najaf, in early August, commanders of another newly arrived Marine force decided on their own to end a four-month defiance of American and Iraqi governmental authority by Moktada al-Sadr and his so-called Mahdi Army of radicalized young Shiites.

The Marines violated the agreed "exclusion zone" around the Imam Ali Mosque, Shiite Islam's holiest shrine, setting off an eight-day battle. The Marines had to be reinforced by U.S. Army and untested Iraqi forces. Truces followed but failed to hold, and at the time of writing the confrontation remains unresolved.

Who is in charge in Iraq, if military initiatives of the highest political sensitivity are being left to gung-ho Marine commanders, with a career interest in demonstrating how much tougher the Marines are than the army units they replace?

Why then is Ambassador John Negroponte in Iraq? He is now building up what is to become a 3,000-person U.S. mission to a nominally sovereign Iraq, whose new interim government is supposed to be taking political control of the country.

It is reported that when the shooting started between the Marines and the Mahdi army, and Negroponte was informed that Sadr was summoning help, he "decided to pursue the case" - apparently meaning that he backed what the Marines had started, leading to the present stand-off in Najaf.

The human cost of this recklessness has been under-reported and considerable. It is not even a matter of debate that Sadr would be a marginal figure if it weren't for his resistance against the Americans. 81% of Iraqis have reported an improved opinion of Sadr, while 64% said that his acts of insurgency made Iraq more unified. At the same time, only 2% wanted him to be President. (In the same poll, the coalition gained the approbation of 2% of Iraqis.) In previous polls , 67% supported Sadr while 57% wanted the Americans to "leave immediately". The theme that will not disappear from Iraqi politics, besides the desire for security, is the intensifying opposition to the occupation and the increasing willingness to support anyone, whatever they think of their politics, who will stand up to the 'coalition'.

Similarly, even those Iraqis who have joined the new army have expressed considerable reservations about attacking fellow countrymen, according to Knight Ridder :

At the station last week, several recruits stood outside Majeed's office, debating their predicament. Some said they don't consider al-Sadr's militiamen true Shiites and have no problem facing them. Most, however, said they would turn in their guns rather than fire at familiar faces.

"The Mahdi Army is, after all, Iraqi," said Sgt. 1st Class Emad Ali, 26, who comes from Sadr City. "These are my cousins, my uncles, my brothers. This is not an enemy. This is family."

This is not an army of conviction, which is why the coalition are being forced to consider increasing pay as recruits leave in droves . What is more, if any of them needed persuasion from their co-religionists, they now have a clerical edict to contend with that states, "It is forbidden for any Muslim to cooperate with the occupation forces and killing their own brothers and fellow citizens". This religious element compounds the nationalism, indeed is part of it. Not only must they not kill their "own brothers" (other Muslims), but they must also refrain from killing their "fellow citizens" (other Iraqis). This is analogous to the way Shi'ism was used to sustain Iranian nationalism after the 1979 revolution. (See Sami Zubaida, "Is Iran an Islamic State?", in Joel Beinin and Joe Stork eds, Political Islam: Essays from Middle East Report, 1997).

Meanwhile, Sami Ramadani reports in The Guardian that Sadr is increasingly out-shining Ayatollah Ali Sistani:

Grand Ayatollah Sistani was being listened to attentively after the invasion. The number of his portraits on display was rising with every defiant statement. During the past few weeks, however, those portraits were fast disappearing to be replaced by Sadr's, and those of his father, his uncle, Ayatollah Khomeini, and those of another very potent and very popular junior, Nasrallah, leader of Hizbullah in Lebanon.

Again, we may assume that this is because of his willingness to challenge the occupiers in contrast to Sistani's pacific appeals. The consequence of all this is that it will be impossible, as long as the United States shall seek to exert its control over Iraq's destiny, for Iraq to obtain the much-desired stability, never mind self-determination. The movement which persists in Iraq is not, as President Bush claims, a few Ba'athist stragglers hoping to re-take the government. If they were that, they could have done so already by participating in the Iraqi National Conference and by collaborating with the occupation. But, as the conservative commentator Andrew Bacevich reports:

A year ago, when he assumed charge of United States Central Command and acknowledged that Operation Iraqi Freedom had given way to what he candidly called a “classical guerrilla war,” Gen. John Abizaid assessed the total number of insurgents to be 5,000. But according to a recent Associated Press dispatch all but ignored by major media outlets, official estimates of the enemy’s strength have risen to 20,000—this despite the fact that over the past year American forces have killed or imprisoned several thousand Iraqis and so-called “foreign fighters.” In short, enemy recruitment is easily outpacing our efforts to reduce his numbers.

There is a sense in which this hardly comes as a surprise. Despite periodic ebbs and flows, the fighting in Iraq over the past year has progressively intensified. Overall security has deteriorated. Bush administration efforts to portray the resistance as a last-ditch effort by a handful of Saddam loyalists have long since lost all credibility. The truth is that our adversary is shrewd, resourceful, and highly motivated. By and large, we find ourselves dancing to his tune: he blows up an oil pipeline, detonates a bomb in downtown Baghdad, or assassinates an Iraqi official—and we react after the fact.

The sympathy of Iraqis for Muqtada al-Sadr's fighters will continue to fuel the growth of an old-fashioned nationalist movement made even more combustible by a distinct religious element. This is not, obviously enough, without its dangers. it is possible that the unity now emerging could descend into factional rivalry the second US troops have been removed. It is possible that one or other demagogue may take control of the situation. It is also possible that Iraqis, having suffered enough to see Hussein overthrown and the coalition evicted, will be unwilling to accept anything but authentic democracy with real participation and the minimum of compulsion be it religious or secular. One must hope it will be the latter.