A few considerations on the imperialist States, the Caliphate, nations without history, oil and proletarian concentration camps
We continue to discuss the Middle East, because it is affected by boundless violence on the part of the bourgeoisie, generalized violence that will sooner or later result in a world conflict between the great imperialist powers. For months the Turkish-Kurdish-Syrian area has been subjected to merciless attacks from the air, with towns and cities devastated, slaughter, the decimation and massacre of defenceless populations - the prisoners of criminal powers: a civil war which, according to all the news, has already caused 200 thousand deaths. This is organized war, fuelled and armed by the great powers, “politically and militarily contained” (so they say!), controlled by an agreement on the use of chemical weapons and with periodical truces. It is a civil war in which the forces loyal to Assad, supported by Iraqi, Iranian and Lebanese Sciites clash with the various “Jihadi” bands, in turn supported by western military forces interested in bringing down the regime and imposing their control over Syrian territory – all of them in headlong opposition to the armed bands of Isis, which have occupied half of Syria and a third of Iraq and threaten to bring ruin to the whole region. A war of all against all.
In the midst of this devastation, the bourgeois media speak in a tearful and hypocritical tone of a Biblical exodus of asylum seekers abroad and refugees at home: a variable mass of displaced people along the various fronts, between 8 and 10 million (out of a total population of 23 million in Syria!), which continues to grow, passing through various countries (Turkey, Greece, Hungary, Serbia etc.) and scattering. Authentic, permanent concentration camps (barracks, tent cities, makeshift camps) are establishing themselves over vast areas; from time to time these permanent camps are transformed into masses of desperate nomads, trekking across deserts, crossing borders under pressure from local interests or getting blocked, their routes channelled and deviated by walls or barbed wire. Here the imperialist bourgeoisie has left its own trace of violence, as always accompanied by charitable blessings: fuelling ethnic, religious and “national” differences”; exporting its own “humanitarian” and “democratic” wars during the many cycles of economic crisis; sparking off its own battles for oil.
Next, after setting up a financial basis of support (military training) and transit for the anti-Assad Jihadi and the Isis fighters, to block the Kurdish Peshmerga on the Syrian and Iraqi fronts against the so-called Caliphate, Turkey has entered the field: there was no delay in its intervention. The prime public enemy was, and continues to be, the Kurdish movement, the PKK (Workers’ Party of Kurdistan) with whom there is a mortal clash, as proven by the thousands of deaths amongst the Kurdish population over so many decades: at least 40 thousand over a thirty-year period.
By stopping Erdogan from obtaining an absolute majority in Parliament, the recent affirmation of the HDP (Peoples’ Democratic Party) at the Turkish elections, obtaining 13%, has aggravated conditions at home: during the victory celebrations terrorist attacks of Islamist (or Turkish) origin caused dozens of deaths. Over time the manhunts in the mountains, massive intervention by tanks, bombings, arrests have resulted in a huge toll of fighters for a national cause that no longer has a history, involved as it is in a mass of interests juggled by the many business groups and Kurdish bourgeois parties, always in conflict one with the other: for the umpteenth time the sacrificial victim is the proletariat, whether Kurdish, Iraqi, Turkish, Syrian, etc. The greater or smaller bourgeoisies that negotiate their miserable existence with the great powers hurl themselves against their own present – its defensive economic battles and political future – , hoping to prevent their own inevitable collapse. In this context, the siege of Kobani by Isis on the Turkish-Syrian border witnessed the emergence of a natural alliance between the Caliphate and the Turks against the Kurds: the protests that followed left 52 dead in clashes with the Turkish police, followed by searches, arrests and sentences for terrorism. The pretext that encouraged Turkey to intervene was the PKK’s participation in the war and the arrival of arms made available to it by western countries. The military offensive was launched after the NATO summit in Brussels at the end of July: 260 dead and 400 wounded were estimated amongst Kurdish and civilian fighters in a week of Turkish air raids that struck a series of villages in the whole of the border zone, making no distinction between Kurdish-Syrian villages, Isis positions and Iraqi villages. The offensive went hand in hand with the establishment, approved by the NATO, of a neutral area north of Syria (the first contribution towards the approaching carve-up of Syrian territory) and the permission for American aircraft to use the Turkish military base at Incirlik. Meanwhile, the theatre of war has moved to the neighbourhood of Aleppo, between the militia of the so-called Jaish al Fatah group and the troops belonging to Assad’s army, which stopped the group filtering into the province of Lakatia. More clashes occurred at a government military base north of Aleppo (see il Manifesto, 2 August).
In the Kurds’ “patriotic snapshot”, how could there fail to appear the categorical diktat of the PDK (the Democratic Party of Kurdistan), “not to offer the Turks an excuse for bombing the country”? What lies behind this? The explanation is quite simple. The old link between Al-Abadi’s central government in Iraq and Erbil’s independent Kurdistan, which always rested on a network of regional alliances and on selling oil to Turkey, has started to crumble with the disintegration of the State of Iraq itself, no longer able to nurture the Sunnite anti-Assad front. In reality, for the “Kurdish-Iraqi brothers” of Kurdistan, Ankara’s attack on the PKK is most irritating, since it is an obstacle to the sale of oil to Erdogan with the blessing of the UN. Whilst the NATO and the United States prepare to crush the Kurdish anti-Isis front that managed to halt the advance of the Caliphate, a packet of military aid to Baghdad (training, defence, security) thus endeavours to push what remains of the Iraqi army and officials (a purely mercenary U.S. force in the political and military field) towards a war that will complete the total destruction of Iraq’s remains. And while Al-Abadi bangs his fist on the table, Barzani in the north takes care to safeguard his economic relations with Turkey, which are far closer than those between Turkey and Baghdad – relations that have nothing to do with the struggle of the Kurdish-Turkish and Kurdish-Syrian “brothers” and even less so with defending the living conditions of the Kurdish-German “brothers”, who lost their identity years before, working in Germany’s factories.
The process of separation that is being prepared between Kurdistan and Iraq moves the mirage of what might once have been a Kurdish nation even further into the distance and no longer practicable: it makes it vanish once and for all. The point of no return derives from the economic development that has taken place in the northern part of what was once a single country, Iraq: with it, the regional identity called Kurdistan also disappears. Over the past years Barzani, taking advantage of the central government’s political crisis, has occupied Kirkuk (the richest oil-producing zone) and there the exploitation of crude oil has found a privileged transit route (the Turkish oil-line) towards Turkey, which is now one of the largest partners of this independent Kurdistan. The integration has increased constantly: today Turkish capital finances infrastructures, airports, oilfields, shopping malls. There are numerous agreements on the direct sale of oil, private Turkish companies are to be seen in all sectors, from agriculture to building, banks to telecommunications. The very dimensions of these agreements are urging so-called Kurdistan towards a political-strategic alliance with Turkey in an anti-Iranian vein: the real clash with Baghdad is, then, a part of all this and oil will once again stand at the centre of the action. All we can do is wait. What cannot wait is the prospect of the rebirth of the communist party on a worldwide scale: both at the imperialist Euro-American and Asian centre and on the “outskirts” increasingly attracted into the eye of the storm of contradictions in the capitalist mode of production.
***
Total Warfare in the Middle East
At the end of 2014 we left the whole of the Middle East in the midst of political and military convulsions and the price of crude oil at the 50$/b threshold, whilst in June we are right in the middle of a civil war, not only in Syria, where the clash between Assad’s army, ISIS and the anti-Assad groups supported by the American coalition proceeds, but also in Yemen, with bombings carried out by a coalition of States commanded by Saudi Arabia against the Sci’ite rebels. At the same time, we find the Syrian and Iraqi area filled with Iraqi divisions incapable of fighting and put to flight by the ISIS, which has occupied, Kobane, Raqqa and Ramadi along the Euphrates and, along the river Tigris first Mosul, then Tigrit just outside Baghdad and lastly Palmira, along the corridor leading to Damascus.
In the wake of the temporary rise in oil prices, the Italian economic daily Il Sole-24 Ore of 23th May ran these headlines: “Oil. The war in the Middle East does not halt drilling. Record exports from Saudi Arabia and Iraq.” Everything OK, then, war has its uses: in just a few months the price had risen to above $60 per barrel. Just speculation? Or are we still in a crisis of over-production with its peaks and dips?
Again at the end of 2014, we left chaos in Libya and the division of its territory between Tobruk and Tripoli, “governed” by political bodies totally incapable of prevailing one over the other and politically representing – one or the other – the State of Libya, joined in the meantime in the area of Bengasi, Derna and central Sirte by mercenary groups identical to the Jihadi forces of the ISIS – Islam militia from the Maghreb and from the Arabian Peninsula. Egypt’s support makes it possible to support the government in Tobruk, which fights the Islamists and the Muslim Brothers. In turn, the support of Turkey and Qatar makes it possible to support Tripoli, which, in order to demonstrate its political legitimacy and continuing to recognize the old Parliament and National Congress of Libya, receives aid from the Muslim Brothers. In the mountainous area on the border with Tunisia, supported by Algeria, are the Berbers of the Zintan brigades and finally, in the south and on the border between the Niger and Algeria, the tribes of the Taubous and Tuareg fight the jihadi.
The management, control and ownership of the oil-producing areas protected and open to traffic continue, in the meantime, to fuel the conflicts: there is no interruption of the legal sale and smuggling of oil, which produces huge profits. And obviously there is no end to the various channels of financing for the different bands at war and no halt in the arms trade (pick-ups, machine-guns, old tanks, artillery, rocket-launchers, armoured cars), or, generated by this generalized chaos, the immense flux of proletarians gathering in their masses on the African banks of the rivers to be sold to the European labour market. Charon’s infernal ferries sink with their goods in the middle of the Mediterranean with the help of the “deserving” European navy which, not being committed to pick up the desperados, has allowed a thousand or so to sink. The freedom of Capital, on which bourgeois democracy, the mobility of goods, money and labour are based is sacred and inviolable. In democratic Europe there is debate over whether to attack the boats on departure or whether to send land troops to stop the Islamists: but there is also debate over the quotas to be assigned to individual States and the proposals have been met with the answer that each country should take the wretches that the market – a great leveller, like death - assigns it.
The whole of the Middle East and Libya are in flames. What remains of the latter and of Iraq as state entities? As they decompose, their geopolitical maps shrivel under the strikes of the new barbarians. Parts of the territory in the area of the clashes are “conquered”, others abandoned, and so are the infinitely long and arid transit routes that cross Iraq and lead to Syria. The frontiers in this widespread area no longer exist. The three passes leading to Syria are supposed to be occupied: two by the ISIS (Tanaf and Al-Bukamal) and the northernmost by the Kurdish forces (Al-Jarrubia). The so-called Caliphate skilfully penetrates the contradictions created by two terrible American Gulf wars whilst those carried on by the NATO, sets one faction against the other, Sunnites and Sci’ites, attacking one or the other, where the level of contrast is more keenly to be felt. It controls, so they say, an area as large as Great Britain, through which eight million people are scattered. It is supposed to have already occupied around an half of Syria and a third of Iraq. Extending in patches, it is unifying its territory – cry the media in shocked tones. Tens of thousands of militia, mercenaries, soldiers, lay and religious volunteers are supposed to be passing from one front to another, as the cities are partly bombed and starting to become uninhabited with people abandoning houses and farms or trying to survive, as they always have, and where they have always lived in the deepest desperation, making room for new arrivals.
An Islamic State: based on what? They say: with an army, repressive forces, an administration with schools, government offices, public services and hospitals, taxes to collect, great economic resources (ground to cultivate, mineral resources to exploit, refineries) and the Islamic law, what is missing? Nothing. If we reveal the famous three-card gamble, a fictitious State is to be found in the Mediterranean in any case. The anti-ISIS front, composed of Sunnite militia, Iranian Sci’ite militia, Peshmerga Kurds and other groups held together by who knows what contrasting interests, is becoming more and more similar in appearance to the Islamic front. We thus have confirmation of the fact that on the war fronts the methods, means, organizations and military action tend to become more and more uniform.
The clashes between the Sci’ite majority and the Sunnite minority in Iraq continue to grow fiercer. At the time of Saddam Hussein, Iraqi society was made up not only of groups from different ethnic, but also different religious backgrounds and even tribe membership. By favouring above all the Sunnite minority (around 25% of the Iraqi population), exploiting the discrimination between different groups and containing the divisions (including those of Iraqi Kurdistan), it managed to hold together the country’s social and political structures. The majority of bureaucratic positions with some degree of responsibility (party chiefs, government officials, army officers, etc.) were given to Sunnites, possibly those with non-religious leanings, but the Kurds were guaranteed some autonomy and responsibility as well. In theory, by imposing on Iraq a lay, nationalist ideology under the guidance of the Baath party, Saddam Hussein’s regime ensured a fairly high degree of unity in the country, able to stand up to internal divisions. The opposition to Saddam was particularly strong amongst those who suffered discrimination, i.e. the Sci’ites (over 50% of the population) and the Kurds (around 20%). One thing is certain: oil drilling has returned to normal and is tending to increase; Saddam’s country no longer exists – the ethnic divisions have become deeper. To try and maintain a minimum of unity on the anti-ISIS front (whose weaknesses and inexpert fighting have been criticized by the United States), a huge sum in dollars is now in circulation. However, the generals stress, dismantling the Iraqi army, the country’s only symbol of unity, and dispersing the majority of the Sunnite officials after the second war with America, was a serious mistake: without them ISIS cannot be conquered. In the midst of discrimination and retaliation against civilians from the Sci’ite forces, the Sunnites tend to opt for Islam fundamentalism (especially after the recent ferocious Sci’ite retaliation at Tikrit), rather than a situation with no future prospects. Indeed, the masses of dollars are spent on convincing, arming and training Sunnite troops to fight ISIS, in exchange for a return to traditional privileges. This is a situation that can’t last for much longer.
The devastation of the Al-Qadeh mosque, caused recently by a kamikaze in Saudi Arabia in the territorial area belonging to the Gulf, where 15% of the population is of Sci’ite orientation, has been attributed to ISIS. Inevitably, by raising the level of the clashes between communities, these impromptu events also raise that of the clash with Iran and will take the war further into the Gulf area. Once the area of Basra around Shatt-al Arab at the confluence of the Tigris and the Euphrates has caught fire, the blaze will spread to the navigation and transport routes for crude oil: the point of no return.
By coming to agreements with the USA and Russia (on missiles and nuclear fuel) on lowering sanctions and normalizing relations in the area, Iran is already present unofficially in Iraq, ready to expand and reinforce its participation in the military clashes in support of Assad’s Sci’ite forces and probably Hezbollah from the Lebanon and Hamas from Palestine, which promise, in turn, to defend Syria and the Lebanon from the threat of ISIS. In the enormous confusion of roles, in Vienna the USA and Iran are negotiating on nuclear weapons, whilst fighting in Syria and being allies in Iraq. If the USA intervened using ground troops, chaos would reign sovereign, because in order to attack ISIS in Syria, Assad and Iran would have to become its allies: but in Iraq supporting Iran’s strategic orientation means having Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the Iraqi Sunnites as enemies. It is no coincidence that, by not fighting, the Sunnite-oriented troops are achieving a sort of political defeatism.
The threat of direct intervention by Turkey, which supports the Jihadi against Assad’s regime, has not yet been heard: under the advance of ISIS, 400 km. of its territory now borders on the Caliphate. What is more, when Kobanî was besieged by ISIS, Turkey found itself fighting the Kurdish forces, which had received military aid from several European States. In the meantime, having lost contact with the Muslim Brothers, dethroned in Egypt, and with the Libyan Salafis in Tripoli, Ankara no longer has territorial forces to rely on in North Africa, as in the past. The difficulties are becoming increasingly profound because of the war: since the beginning of the conflict, two million Syrian refugees have been gathering in Turkish territory and will be moving towards Greece. Kurdish intervention in the area of Iraq has also diminished and is limited for now to control of its immediate and future areas of interest between the Turkish-Syrian border and the towns of Mosul and Kirkuk (Iraqi Kurdistan). The Kurdish forces of the PKK, are, in turn, kept under strict surveillance by Turkey, so that the arsenal it possesses does not filter into Turkish territory. Be this as it may, the area where Iran, Iraq and Kurdistan come together is the area that fuels demand and offer in the military sector and that of oil supply: these are the routes along which the conflict gathers continuity. The recent victory of the pro-Kurdish party at the Turkish elections has increased internal contradictions (20% of the 77 million inhabitants are Kurds), contrasts which, over a period of thirty years, have caused 40 thousand deaths. Turkey is another of the regional powers, the NATO’s southern front, of strategic importance for the pipelines from Russia, the Caucasus, Iran and Iraq and from which no power can detach itself.
In the meantime, the Egyptian dictatorship is gathering strength with severe repression towards the Muslim Brothers. Only three years have gone by since the resignation of President Mubarak in February 2011 to the election of Al-Sisi on 28th May 2014 (with a majority of 96.9%). The whole of the territory from Yemen to the Gulf, has been shaken by fighting, civil wars and military action. First of all, came clashes and popular uprisings in the wake of the “Arab Spring”, in particular in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the Sultanate of Oman; next, the intervention of Saudi Arabian armed forces and from the Emirates in Bahrain; finally, the Gulf monarchies’ in Yemen, causing the Yemenite head of State to stand down and President Hadi to be put in his place. On 3rd July 2013 President Morsi, elected in 2012, was removed from power and then condemned to death. In summer 2014 began the bombing by drones and ‘planes under the guidance of the U.S.A. to support the anti-Assad Islamists and at the same time ISIS. The coalition (with Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Sudan) guided by Saudi Arabia sparked off an air raid against the Houthi rebels in the Saana area, which cost 1 849 lives. With these clashes the long battlefront running from Iraqi Kurdistan, through Iraqi territory to reach the area of the Persian Gulf, becomes even longer. From Mosul to Baghdad to Basra and Kuwait, all of the crude oil routes have come into the eye of the storm.
The clash between Saudi Arabia and Iran, not yet manifest in military terms, is a consequence of the economic and geo-strategic conflict (oil production and trade), masked by religious contrasts (Sunnites against Sci’ites) and ethnic ones (Persians against Arabs). The way out would make it necessary to create an alliance between the USA, Saudi Arabia and Iran against ISIS, to which Russia, China and Europe would have to be linked. So, they say, for the first time a common Middle-Eastern security system would be created, based on agreements and not exclusion. A great idea! A pity that the exclusions are material facts and not mental cogitation, religious fixations and warrior dreams! In this triangle, where would Israel, Egypt and Turkey fit in? The pawns, whether black or white, have the first move: let the butchery commence!
In the meantime, whilst the Arab armies fight amongst themselves (until the Iraqis come onto the scene), the Israeli army, perennially mobilized, threatens and prepares its rapid intervention forces, both resisting the American policy of renunciation and slowing down the legal recognition of the Palestinian State. The conditions for the start of a military clash between the great powers in the area – Saudi Arabia, Iran, Israel, Egypt, Turkey – are approaching. In this bloodbath not a trace will remain of the small and medium-sized political entities scattered through the Middle-East. And the sole victim, once again, as always, will be the Middle-Eastern proletariat.