In mid-October Iraqi voters narrowly accepted the new constitution in a referendum and thereby opened the way to a general election in December. This was hailed by the invaders as a turning point - a clear signal that democracy was on the march in Iraq and the Middle East as a whole. The celebrations have, however, been somewhat muted. This is because the constitution is not the document the US would have liked to see emerge and indicates that the US has, to a certain extent, lost control of the way the situation is developing. The US had previously tried to avoid the break-up of the country as a unitary state, but this constitution is federalist and could pave the way for just such a break-up. In effect, the document legitimises the rise of radical Islam in the south and Kurdish nationalism in the north. Nevertheless, it is a document the US will have to live with for the present. In the period leading up to the referendum, two events showed the ability of the US to manoeuvre and override the decisions of the elected Iraqi government. Firstly, when the parliament passed a law reducing the majority required for acceptance of the constitution from 67% to 50%, the US insisted that this law was rescinded immediately. The law was revoked within days. Secondly, and more importantly, the US ambassador, who took part in all the constitution negotiations, got a law enacted which made parts of the constitution provisional. These sections could theoretically be revised by parliament after the December elections. The constitution is not therefore a final document. This measure persuaded one of the main Sunni parties to vote for the acceptance of the document and may have had a bearing on the fact that only two provinces rejected the document by a two-thirds majority, whereas three such rejections were required to reject the constitution.

Road to Balkanisation?

The federalist nature of the constitution reflects the ambitions of the Kurdish and Southern Shia bourgeoisie who wrote it. The ruling classes in these two areas of the country, areas which contain the oil wealth of the country, wish to retain this wealth themselves even at the price of becoming separate states. As we have argued in previous texts, any such break-up of the Iraqi unitary state is likely to cause great instability in the region. On the one hand, a Kurdish statelet would raise the banners of Kurdish nationalism causing immediate instability in the Kurdish minorities in Turkey and Iran. Turkey has said it would not tolerate such a development. On the other hand, an autonomous southern region, consisting of the nine predominantly Shia provinces, would become dominated by Iran and hence threaten Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. In the southern provinces Shia militants are gaining strength and creating a situation similar to that which existed in Iran in the early stages of the revolution after 1979. A version of Sharia law is being imposed by Shia militants, with beatings for improper dress, execution for drinking alcohol, etc. These militias are supported by Iran and if they were to gain control there is no doubt the southern statelet would be heavily influenced by Iran.

It is not surprising that the constitution has been denounced by the secretary of the Arab League. As a Saudi official recently stated:

The constitution will give the pro-Iranians an open hand in seven provinces in the south to bring together an autonomy which will create a Shia republic. ⁽¹⁾

The ex-prime minister of Iraq Allawi warned:

Religious rule... would not stop at the borders of Iraq. It will spread. Battles, problems, secret movements and chaos would prevail in the entire region. ⁽²⁾

Such developments were not, in any way, the intentions of the US. Through its incompetence and arrogance US imperialism has destroyed a secular regime opposed to Islamic fundamentalism and empowered the forces of Shia fundamentalism in the south and Kurdish nationalism in the north. The US is now having to adjust to living with the consequences. The instability will, for the present, provide the cover it needs to keep its forces in the area. The construction of four large and permanent military bases in Iraq indicates that the US intends to keep its forces in Iraq come what may.

The war continues

Two and a half years after Bush announced that the US mission was accomplished, the war still rages. The US is still bombing bridges over the Euphrates as it did in the early days of the war. It is still starving cities and razing them to the ground with enormous loss of Iraqi life. In the south, the British have succeeded in falling out with the Iraqi political forces which they themselves installed in power. The arrest of British troops out of uniform and disguised as Arabs while they were allegedly engaged in planting bombs, and the subsequent events which led to British tanks smashing down a police station to rescue them, have been a disaster for the British. They have resulted in the withdrawal of all cooperation by the local authorities, demands for the soldiers to be handed back to face Iraqi justice and demands for compensation for the families of those killed by the British in this escapade.

These events are simply further incidents in the ongoing saga of the Iraqi war which illustrate that things are going badly for the invaders. Most of the members of the famous coalition of the "willing" have pulled their forces out or are about to do so, showing they have become "unwilling." The only significant ally of the US that remains is the UK. Over 2000 US and almost 100 British soldiers have now been killed, the costs of the war continue to grow ⁽³⁾ and political opposition is strengthening in both the US and UK. Under these circumstances, the US/UK axis has mounted a furious campaign against Syria and Iran for causing the problems they are now suffering. Although the problems of the invaders are of their own making and the resistance they are facing is overwhelmingly Iraqi, both Syria and Iran have been put on notice that they are now the next in line for regime change. The real reasons for the manoeuvring against these regimes are obscured by the fictitious pretexts. In the case of Syria, it is the assassination of the Lebanese leader Hariri, and, in the case of Iran, it is the enrichment of uranium. In fact, these regimes stand in the way of the larger US ambition of controlling all the oil resources of the Middle East and the Caspian basin and it is for this reason they find themselves in the sights of the US military.

Oil

It is now freely admitted that the invasion of Iraq was planned long before the attacks of 9/11. 9/11 served as a useful smokescreen behind which US imperialism could launch the plans it had been preparing for the best part of a decade. Well before these attacks, the US government was being urged by US energy strategists to liberate Iraq and turn it into an oil protectorate. ⁽⁴⁾ A report, by the US energy strategists ESA in 2002 stated:

One of the best things for out supply security would be to liberate Iraq. ⁽⁵⁾

The US calculated that it could place exiles, such as the CIA favourite Chalabi, in power in Iraq, and, in return, they would hand the US Iraqi oil. The US now acknowledges that it had two conflicting plans for Iraq's oil in the period before the invasion. The first, which was drafted by the neo-conservatives and supported by the CIA, was to directly privatise the oil after conquering the country, and pass it to US companies. This plan aimed to massively increase production and undermine OPEC. The plan was shelved after the occupation began since it was thought that once the resistance understood that the oil was to be privatised sabotage of oil facilities would increase. The second plan, which the US oil industry favoured, was to create a state-owned oil company and give contracts for rehabilitation and future exploration to US companies and those of US allies. Control of Iraqi oil would thus be achieved by stealth. The US oil companies, not surprisingly, favoured keeping the price of oil high. This strategy, of course, suited the US need to sustain the value of the dollar, create a demand for dollars, and maintain it as the currency of commodity trade. The second plan was the one finally adopted. ⁽⁶⁾ It is now the policy of the Iraqi government to award contracts for future developments and contracts have started to be awarded on this basis. ⁽⁷⁾ The admission of these plans reveals, not only the predatory nature of bourgeois imperialism today, but its utter shamelessness.

The US quest for the oil of the Middle East is not by any means a new development. It is just that the critical nature of US supply has given this new urgency. A report to Bush by the US Council of Foreign Relations in April 2001 put the situation thus:

As the 21st century opens the energy sector is in a critical condition... The world is currently close to using all of its available global production capacity raising the chances of a supply crisis with more substantial effects than seen in the last 3 decades. ⁽⁸⁾

The US attempt to control the region's oil started with its rise as an imperial power. After WW1, the US, which was then the world's largest exporter of oil, demanded a share of Middle East oil. In 1928, US, British and French companies signed an agreement allowing for the sharing of the new oil developments in the area. However, when in 1947 massive deposits were discovered in Saudi Arabia, the US successfully evicted the British and obtained all the Saudi concessions while at the same time ending the 1928 agreement. A few years later, in 1953, the US, using the CIA, led a coup in Iran which installed the Shah in power and thereby gained 40% of the Iranian concessions. Previously these had been wholly British. The first Gulf War saw US companies extend their influence in Kuwait and the present Iraq war is aimed at gaining control of Iraqi oil concessions. The latest war is therefore just the latest chapter in a long history of US attempts to control the oil of the area.

Today, however, the stakes have been raised. The invasion of Iraq is only the western flank of a military movement to control the oil of the entire Persian Gulf and the Caspian Basin. The invasion of Afghanistan and the opening of military bases in the republics of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan represent the eastern flank. The intention is to bring Kazakhstan under US domination also and cut Russia, China and Europe off from the energy of this region. These ambitions cannot but raise opposition from those they are designed to undermine. It is no accident that the key countries of the EU have tried to frustrate the US thrust into the Middle East. It is no accident that China and Russia, in July, issued a joint statement calling on the US to abandon its bases in central Asia and to stop stirring up trouble in the area. These countries, much to the alarm of the US, also conducted joint military exercises in August. These moves are at present tentative, since no coherent military bloc opposing the US exists. However, they show the way the wind is blowing and point to future devastating wars.

Imperialism - the inevitable product of capitalism

All these moves spring from the demands of the US economy. Reduced profitability is forcing the US to use military means to achieve objectives which its economic might could have achieved in the past. The de-industrialisation of the US economy is forcing the US to protect the role of the dollar by force of arms. Thus, the destruction and savage bloodletting in Iraq are not aberrations in the normally smooth running of the capitalist system. They do not appear as bolts from a blue sky. They are the inevitable outcome of capitalism. Only with the ending of capitalist relations of production, which means the abolition of capitalist property relationships and wage labour, will imperialist wars be ended. All other schemes for ending imperialist wars are nothing more than childish illusions.

(1) Quoted in BBC News, 16th October 2005

(2) Ibid

(3) US costs are now $220bn and UK £3.1bn

(4) See Financial Times 11th April 2005, "US appears to have fought a war for oil and lost it."

(5) Report by ESA Inc (Boston), quoted in Addicted to oil, Ian Rutledge

(6) These plans were disclosed on the BBC News Night programme, 17th March 2005

(7) In Financial Times, 8th September 2005 it was reported that "Petrel Resources" was awarded contracts to develop the Subba and Luhais oil fields north west of Basra

(8) Quoted in Financial Times 11th April 2005, "US appears to have fought a war for oil and lost it."