Iraq: Shiite resistance returns. posted by Richard Seymour

The 'keeping schtum' policy of the Shiite leadership during the run up to the elections in Iraq ensured that such resistance as did take place was largely the confine of Sunni guerilla groups, some of them Salafi extremists. The Shiite resistance has always been much better organised than the Sunni resistance, having as it does a set of nationally unified organisations, leaders and spokespeople. The Sunni resistance, by contrast, has been fragmented, dispersed, with no overall leadership and little clerical control. This has been both a strength and a weakness, the former because it enables groups to operate in a subterranean fashion, smuggling weapons through networks of supportive citizens and carrying out autonomous attacks on Bradley tanks, passing convoys etc with considerable flexibility. It has meant that no leadership has been able to coopt or contain the resistance, while at the same time it has not been possible for the US to simply destroy this or that headquarters or take out a leader or two. On the other hand, it has been a weakness because there has not emerged a coherent political programme with a consistent nationalist pan-Iraq appeal. Solidarity has cut across religious and ethnic boundaries, but in a more accidental and happenstance fashion than is really useful. Similarly, the extreme Wahabbi element has been able to carry out brutal attacks targeting civilians and Shiites with the intention of brewing a civil war, and claim that it is part of the 'resistance'.

It says something about the fragmentary nature of the Sunni resistance that while the US was able to isolate Sadr and his supporters in the centre of Najaf fairly quickly, they actually felt the need to obliterate the whole of Fallujah, creating hundreds of thousands of refugees and killing thousands of civilians. This is no time to rehearse old arguments, but it bears repeating because it is pertinent to the case that it was discovered upon conquering the city that the resistance groups which had stayed and fought were overwhelmingly local. The image of a top down 'command and control' structure in which some noxious collaboration of Baathists and Al Qaeda direct affairs from Syria via local delegates simply does not fit with the reality.

So, having heard so much about how the resistance was weakened by the elections, and how some conservative Sunni leaders are really grovelling, licking coalition arse, begging Sunnis to join the new Iraqi army and police force, it will surprise some to see a massive anti-occupation demonstration led by supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr in Baghdad, while Sunnis in Ramadi have also come out in their thousands to support the demo. The Association of Muslim Scholars had called for Sunnis to join the demonstration in Baghdad as well.

What is more, the Baghdad demonstration marched through Firdus Square where Saddam's statue was first felled by the US army. The BBC reports that they were Chanting "No to America" and "No to the occupiers", they pulled down and burned effigies of Saddam Hussein, US President George W Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.



This could hardly be a worse omen for the occupiers. Think about this. Sunnis and Shi'ites, arm in arm, marching under the same banners, and gathering in Firdus Square, the scene of the psyops campaign that effectively ended the war for domestic audiences. And they gather there to say things like :

“Oh God, cut off their necks, the way they are cutting off our necks and terrorizing us ... There will be no peace, no security, until the occupation leaves.”

I might as well mention, as no one else is reporting it, that a militant demonstration of some hundreds of Iraqis proceeded up the Edgware Road yesterday, more or less in concert with the events in Baghdad. In fact, there quite frequently are small rallies and gatherings against the occupation of Iraq here, as there must be in other areas and in other countries.