Iraqi National Foundation Congress: "The Iraqi resistance is a popular resistance". posted by Richard Seymour

The show of unity was organized by groups behind the Iraqi National Foundation Congress (INFC), a broad coalition of Iraqi political forces, which some see as a possible nucleus for the emergence of a united front against the occupation. Founded in May this year, the INFC is an umbrella group that includes leftists, nationalists, and Islamists from various tendencies who opposed Saddam’s regime and who refused to be part of any US-installed political body. Membership in the Congress is open to all who subscribe to its minimum bases of unity: an unequivocal call for the withdrawal of occupation troops and opposition to any possible division of Iraq’s territory and people on religious or sectarian basis.

Among its members include Dr Muthana Harith al Dhari from the Association of Muslim Scholars, Iraq’s largest network of Sunni clerics, Najaf-based Shia religious leader Ayatollah Ahmad al Baghdadi, and Wamid Nadhmi, an academic at the Baghdad University who also serves as the group’s spokesman. The al-Sadr movement has a representative in the general secretariat.

Conscious of the occupiers’ strategy of fomenting sectarian strife, the INFC is a deliberate project to bring together Sunni and Shia Muslims, Arabs, Kurds, Turcomen, Assyrians and other minorities. The INFC condemned both the US-led offensive against the mainly Shi’ite city of Najaf as well as against the mainly Sunni city of Fallujah. It has also been instrumental in defusing sectarian tension in highly charged Kirkuk and Mosul.

What are the Conference’s main political demands?

We have elaborated a political program and everyone who wants to join has to accept the points of the program declaration. First, we demand an immediate retreat of the occupation forces and a complete return of sovereignty to Iraq. Second, we insist on the unity of the Iraqi territory. Third, we support the legitimacy of resisting occupation by any means necessary. Fourth, we refuse any division of the Iraqi people on religious or sectarian basis.

You call for an immediate withdrawal of occupation forces. What do you say to those who argue that the troops should not be withdrawn yet because there will be chaos if the troops leave?

We are also afraid of a political vacuum in Iraq. When we say “immediate retreat of occupation,” we know that this will not happen in one day. But it’s necessary to set a timetable. During the intervening period, the Iraqi police and army can be built up. In any case, we don’t expect things can get much worse when the occupation troops leave Iraq than what’s happening today. What’s happening today is so bad that after the retreat of the occupation forces, the situation could not be worse.

What about those who are saying there will be civil war when the troops leave?

They are trying to legitimise a long occupation by the United States. They are puppets of the Americans.

US officials always say that those who are fighting the occupation forces are “anti-Iraqi” forces” or “Baathist dead-enders” or…

According to the US military, in Fallujah they captured 1,065 people. Among them. They found only 25 non-Iraqis. All the others were Iraqis. The resistance is an Iraqi resistance – a popular resistance -- which is spreading now. Among the resistance groups, there are former officers of the army who are using their expertise to help the resistance. But the main ideological current inside the resistance is a popular and moderate Islamic current – not a Baathist one. It is popular, patriotic, and Islamic ...

There are people in the anti-war movement, in the left, and even those in the right who also oppose the occupation who say that we shouldn’t support the resistance because they’re being led by either Baathists and “fundamentalists” and we shouldn’t allow them to take over Iraq in case the US leaves.

It is the occupation forces who are spreading this line. As one French deputy said a few months ago, the Iraqi resistance was like the French resistance: one day it will defeat the occupation forces and take power in Iraq.

When I say “Islamic current” inside the resistance, I mean moderate Islamic current. It is not the Islamic current portrayed in the media. It is an Islamic current that is defending it’s own culture and nation but which is not hostile to other cultures and other nations. It is not hostile to the American people but it is opposed to the project of American domination of our region and the world.