Iraq: The tragedy of Sabah

I was very young, born in exile when he was taken in 1980. Sabah was a relative of mine who was taken by the Baathist police on February 2nd 1980. He was an economics lecturer at the university and a leading member in the Communist Party. His family was never informed about where he was taken, what charges they had against him. Official papers and government records that shed some light on his story have recently come to the possession of the Communist party…

Sabah was born in Baghdad in 1932. He joined the communist party during his years as a student (1949-1954). He was drafted into the Iraqi army to take part in the war against the Kurdish armed factions that was ongoing in 1956. Sabah was stationed in the Saadiya camp, where he was involved in a mutiny against the racist war on Kurdistan which failed.

Sabah and 15 comrades were sentenced to 15 months in prison. By the time they were released, the war was over. Sabah travelled to East Germany, only for the July Revolution to overthrow the monarchy. Sabah returned to Iraq and earned full membership in the party. He was sent again to East Germany where he gained a PhD in economics.

During his stay in East Germany (1959-1965) the Baathist coup of 1963 succeeded in its primary aim of defeating the communist party. Thousands of fighters and workers were liquidated. Once this main aim was achieved, the Baathist violence became unnecessary and they were pushed out of power once more. Sabah returned in 1965 to an Iraq unlike the one he had left, and he was quickly imprisoned once more.

In 1969 Sabah was released, and travelled to Hungary, where he played a role in the secretariat of the International Youth Union, an organ of the USSR.

In 1972 he was sent back to Iraq to participate in the Baghdad council of the popular front government. The Communist party had made a recovery since the defeat of 1963. Moscow had pushed the line of participating in this government with the Baathists and other forces. Sabah was arrested in 1979 (on the 2 of August) and interrogated:

Interrogator: “What is your opinion of the Communist Party, in light of their continued refusal to cooperate in an honest way in the Popular Front government?” (Here they are giving Sabah the opportunity to renounce Communism and denounce the party.)

Sabah: “The general direction of the communist party is to work within the Popular Front to oppose imperialism and to complete the national revolution. Any acts that deviate from this are mistakes that are to be criticised.”

Here there is a statement apparently prepared by the interrogator, to the effect that Sabah would be leaving the party and would participate in the “national project”. This line is struck out and Sabah’s signature appears underneath it.

Sabah was released two weeks later, and over the next period he was arrested and released a number of times, finally on the 2/2/1980. After that he was never heard of again.

There is a contradiction between Sabah who lived and fought for the cause of the socialist revolution, and Sabah who was a leading member of the Communist Party responsible for betraying the Iraqi working class into the hands of Saddam.

One the one hand, Sabah lived as a heroic fighter for the workers of Iraq and the whole world. He risked his life many times, and ultimately paid the ultimate price in circumstances that one can only imagine as being extremely difficult.

He was a victim of a compromise where the Soviet Union disarmed people like Sabah and placed them in front of monsters like Saddam Hussein as part of a cynical global game. In exchange, the Soviet Union was assured of an “anti-imperialist” government in Iraq.

On the other hand, Sabah never renounced the popular front and therefore has to take his share of the responsibility for the criminal policy of Stalinism. This policy led the workers into alliances with the national bourgeoisie resulting in the murder or exile of thousands of communists and the defeat and demoralisation of millions of workers.

The balance sheet of the Iraqi Communist Party must also include blame for the situation in Iraq today. The Communist Party is so corrupt that it is a member of the US stooge government of Iraq. And the breakaway Workers’ Communist Party is appealing to the UNO to remove the US invaders. A weakened working class has left a political vacuum into which the Islamic radicals have moved using nationalist and religious appeals to attract workers.

The personal tragedy of Sabah is a small part of the historic tragedy of the Iraqi working class misled and betrayed by the Communist Party. Today, this legacy can only be overcome by the rebuilding of an armed, independent working class movement. This is the only force capable of defeating the imperialist invaders and the treacherous factions of the national bourgeoisie and their allies in the labour movement, and opening the road to socialism!

For a World Party of Socialist Revolution!

From Class Struggle 58 October-November 2004

For Permanent Revolution in Iraq

As the US-led occupation faces increasing problems the international left is debating how to help free Iraq from imperialism. The position of the CWG and its allies overseas is that the international labour movement should give aid to workers’ organisations resisting the US, because it is the Iraqi working class which alone has the ability to defeat the occupation. Many on the left disagree, and are developing political illusions in the Islamist and ex-Baathist forces which represent the Iraqi capitalist classes. The argument for aid to working class Iraqi organisations is complicated by the fact that the most important Iraqi revolutionary group, the Worker Communist Party of Iraq, is pursuing some very bad policies. In this exchange from an international e-list, a CWG member answers an attack on the WCPI, and puts the argument for critical support for this group, and for permanent revolution in Iraq.
 
Dear Comrade S,

This is the part of the debate where I bow out, mainly owing to my utter contempt for the Worker Communist Party of Iraq. I remember well, a few years ago, when I was introduced to them. I was newer (obviously) at the practice and theory of Marxism and revolution and
extremely eager to get my hands on, as you say, genuine non first world socialist thinking. I discovered that Mansoor Hekmat (the recently deceased icon of the WCPI) was actually a Londoner; the WCPI (which "I" must always be qualified; Iran been used by these folks as
well), despite what your friend says, have no real base in these countries. This is not entirely their fault, under both Saddam and the Mullahs respectively there has been no opening to function. (PS the CPI have been refused membership in the ruling council, so they aren't part of it, though they applied and were rejected).

Nonetheless, they operate in a fantasy world. They also are among the worst sort of sectarians and exemplify why we must discard the notion of a central command somewhere in an 'international' party or amalgam of parties. In Canada, just before the bombing of Iraq, they took to the streets with slogans calling for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. On International Women’s Day, they took to the streets with calls for the overthrow of the Islamic republic. The Canadian and North American states do not need such encouragement—who the Hell is that demand targeting? It only means that yet more 'revolutionaries' in this county are doing the bidding of the imperialists, sorry to say.

After the 9-11 attacks, both WCPI's demanded that they wanted to join the anti-war coalitions. Their price was that we elevate denunciations of Islam and call for secular socialist state formations to the top of our demands, along with our calls for peaceful solutions based on international law, and this was in a coalition that included religious groups, moderate Muslim forces and the like.

Considering many of them as individuals have been tortured at the hands of the Mullahs or at the hands of Saddam, I accept their human disposition to have a visceral contempt for anything that smacks of going easy on Saddam Hussein. However, they also are currently more
concerned with making certain Baathists are 'removed from their influence' over all spheres of Iraqi life, schools, police, etc.

Fighting the imperialist occupation to them is secondary, or at least not clearly primary. However, as Trotsky said (since you like him) if 'democratic Britain attacked 'fascist' Brazil, we would side with Brazil'. Ironically, though I'm no Trot, I'm upholding that basic principle
and the Hekmatian bunch are simply opportunistically doing whatever the flavour of the month is. I'm not interested in anything they have to say, their political experience has been one that makes the Islamists in Iraq currently look far more principled-- not an easy task at all… They are not the genuine voice of anything but themselves.

Dear Comrade M,

I think your comments on the Worker Communist Party and the situation in Iraq contain some serious factual errors. I'm not for a moment suggesting that these inaccuracies are deliberate, but I think they are worth challenging, partly because they reflect what I think are problems with your general political perspective.

You say that I was wrong to claim that the Iraqi Communist Party went into the Governing Council, but the party itself has confirmed joining the Council. Here is an excerpt from an interview an Iraqi Communist Party central committee member gave in July, and which the party has posted on its official website:
"After properly and carefully evaluating the grave situation in the aftermath of war, which is truly a national catastrophe, the Party leadership decided to accept the invitation to join the Governing Council....It must be emphasised that the party's aim has not changed: to ensure that the Iraqi people exercise their right to determine their political future with their own free will, and to bring about a speedy end to occupation, restoring Iraq's national sovereignty and independence, and building a free and democratic federal Iraq. This will be the main criterion for evaluating and judging the Governing Council." 
[full text at http://www.iraqcp.org/framse1/0030721Interviewsalam.htm

I think your claim that the Worker Communist Party does not have a 'real base' in Iraq is also untrue. A Communist Workers Group of New Zealand member recently traveled to the Middle East to meet some members of the WCPI. Unfortunately he couldn't get into Iraq, but he did have a chance to talk to Iraqi communists (most of them pro-Governing Council and thus hostile to the WCPI) who had recently spent time in the country. He got the strong impression that the WCPI was a force to be reckoned with on the ground in Iraq.

When I put this comrade's information together with the wealth of information on the WCPI's website and the reports that have made it to left news sites like indymedia and in some cases even into the bourgeois media, then I find it hard not to believe that the WCPI as well as the Organisation for Women's Freedom in Iraq and the Unemployed Workers' Union are not organisations of some size playing a significant role in the Iraqi left and workers' movement.

Consider some of these reports: "A Forum Organized by the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq at General Railway Company in Baghdad. On September 9, 2003, the OWFI organized a forum at the General Railway Company in Baghdad, which has over 11,000 employees all over Iraq. Two hundred employees attended the forum, which was chaired by Yanar Muhammad, the head of the OWFI, and Layla Muhammad, the activist who returned from Australia to join the struggle of women in Iraq..."

"Hundreds of toilers from al-Huda suburb in Baghdad join the Worker-communist Party of Iraq. Al-Huda is a residential suburb in the center of Baghdad where hundreds of homeless families live. The inhabitants of this area are deprived of the basic requirements of making a living. On top of that they are pressured by the USA administration and local police to evict the area. Two weeks ago, the police forces attacked people in this area and arrested 8 of them.

They went to all parties and institutions seeking their release, with no yield. When the Organisation of Baghdad of the Worker- communist Party of Iraq learned about their situation, it decided to involve and solve their problem. The CWP Iraq was able to release the
arrestees..."

"The Worker-communist Party of Iraq’s Forces Clash with a Crime Gang in Baghdad. On September 19, 2003, while patrolling the neighborhood where the office of the Worker Communist Party of Iraq is located on Al-Rashid Street in Baghdad, the Party’s forces clashed with an armed gang. While shooting at the security guards protecting the governmental buildings in the area and injuring one man, the gang intended to loot shops and governmental buildings. Under heavy fire, the gang was forced to escape the area..."

"The Workers’ Council of the North Oil Company Leads a Protest against Police misconduct. On September 21, 2003, the workers of the North Oil Company in Kirkuk organised a protest demonstration against the abusive conduct of the Police toward the company’s employees.

.Muhammad Raadi Oraybi, an activist from the Northern Oil Company’s workers council, was detained for 6 hours for standing against the despotic practices of the police. Raadi’s arrest sparked off a protest action in which more 400 workers took part..." From the English-language section of the WCPI's site (http://www.wpiraq.org/english/)

More recently the WCPI has been involved in an important strike by armed workers at the Brickworks at Nahrawhan near Baghdad.

You try to use Trotsky's hypothetical war between Brazil and Britain to criticise the WCPI's call for the overthrow of the Iranian theocracy and (in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq) the regime of Saddam, but nothing Trotsky said can be used to justify political support for either regime.

Using a hypothetical extreme example to challenge his audience, Trotsky said that in the event of a war between near-fascist Brazil and bourgeois democratic Britain workers around the world should prefer the military victory of Brazil, because Brazil was a semi-colonial country whose government was ultimately a product of imperialism, Britain was the world's number one imperialist power, and a victory for Brazil would weaken imperialism.

But Trotsky never for a moment suggested that workers anywhere should give a modicum of political support to the government of Brazil, or to any other national bourgeois government or party anywhere in the semi-colonial world. Trotsky said that workers should aim their guns
in the same direction as the Brazilian bourgeoisie so that they could defeat this bourgeoisie in the process of defeating imperialism. Defeating the imperialists and defeating the local capitalists were not two distinct 'stages' - they were telescoped into a single task.

Trotsky's whole politics was built on his theory of combined and uneven development, which had as one of its corollaries the argument that capitalist classes in the colonial and semi-colonial world were too weak to stand up to imperialism. Colonies and semi-colonies could only be broken out of the circuit of global capitalism by socialist revolution. Brazil vs Britain was a hypothetical case, but Trotsky and his followers put his argument into practice during both the Russian and Spanish revolutions.

In 1917, for instance, Trotsky refused to give any political support to the national bourgeois Kerensky government established after the February revolution (before the war Russia was regarded by the Bolsheviks as an imperialist country, but by 1917 it was surely effectively a semi-colony of the West).

When White Russians in the service of imperialism attempted a coup to get rid of Kerensky's government the Bolsheviks gave Kerensky military support -pointed their guns in the same direction as the Kerensky government's - without abandoning their call for the overthrow of this government by the workers. Only months after crushing the White coup they crushed Kerensky's government and put the soviets into power.

I'm sorry to go on at such length about Trotsky and 1917, but I think it's important that Trotsky's strategy of permanent revolution is distinguished from the strategy which you appear to support and which he rejected, which is that of political support for and a political alliance with national bourgeois parties and governments.

The WCPI is right to call for the overthrow of the Islamic regime in Iran by the workers of Iran. The WCPI is talking, after all, about a brutal dictatorship that condemns half its population to a medieval existence as third-class citizens, and has locked up or simply executed tens of thousands of leftists and trade unionists. Who would want to support the continued existence of such a regime? Even the Stalinist left, which was deeply implicated in the coming to power of the Islamists, now calls for the overthrow of the regime.

Third Worldist politics have led you to adopt a position which no leftist organisation inside the real Third World country of Iran would today touch with a barge pole. The situation is no different when we turn to Iraq. In my experience, the Iraqis living in Auckland simultaneously wanted to overthrow Saddam and opposed the US invasion. There was no contradiction here – it was well-understood that US imperialism had put Saddam into power in the first place, and had kept him in power by collaborating with him to defeat the workers' uprisings that believe it or not saw soviets established in parts of Iraq after the First Gulf War. It was also understood that Saddam's rotting regime was completely incapable of stopping the US - only the mobilisation of the people who despised Saddam could defeat the US.

Where the WCPI goes wrong is in refusing to give any support at all to Third World capitalists resisting imperialism militarily. I quote from a recent CWG leaflet:
"The Worker-Communist Party condemns Islamist and Baathist fighters against the US as no better than the US itself. But by taking this attitude, the Party turns its back on tens of thousands of young workers who fight under the leadership of local capitalists. If US troops are shooting into a crowd, the people in the crowd have the right to shoot back, even if they happen to be Muslims. If a US chopper is shooting up an Iraqi village, an Iraqi has the right to
shoot it down, even if he belongs to the Baath Party. The rank and file of the resistance has to be won from its rotten leadership, not condemned for the policies of that leadership.

The bankruptcy of the Worker Communist Party’s position was shown after the US invasion in March – the Party refused to support the resistance to invasion and, desperate for some sort of ‘solution’, ended up calling on the UN to intervene to save Iraq."

I agree with you that the WCPI has a too-extreme attitude to Muslim groups in the anti-war movement, but I think you are quite wrong when you argue that the flaws in the WCPI's position 'exemplify why we must discard the notion of a central command somewhere in an 'international' party or amalgam of parties'. On the contrary, the WCPI is a screaming example of the need for an international party which can bring comrades from different regions
together to analyse and criticise each other's positions.

The WCPI is a prisoner of Iraqi history: it was formed as a reaction to the stagist politics of the Stalinist Iraqi Communist Party, but its founders never got a handle on the reasons for the political degeneracy of the ICP. In the 1970s they saw the ICP (encouraged by Moscow, Castro etc) go into government with Saddam, and were rightly disgusted. But they wrongly concluded that the ICP's Stalinist politics of political alliances with the national bourgeoisie was the
logical consequence of Leninism and 1917, and so they threw Bolshevism out with the bathwater and went for ultra-leftism instead.

Because of the isolation of Iraq and the immense power of the ICP-Moscow propaganda machine, the WCPI's founders never had access to the original rejection of stagism which Lenin and Trotsky made in 1917. They equated Stalinism and Bolshevism. The WCPI went into exile in Western countries where the self-described Trotskyist groups had mostly long since abandoned the theory of permanent revolution (it's no coincidence the WCPI is polemicising against a Cliffite group). It's not surprising the exiles didn't see much to alter their impression of Bolshevism.

But the WCPI's mistakes could potentially have been avoided by the criticism of groups that were still loyal to the politics of 1917. Now the WCPI's membership in the global anti-war movement provides the ideal opportunity for us to simultaneously work with them and criticise them in an effort to improve their politics. That's the idea behind our attempt to get international solidarity with the WCPI and the organisations it has founded going.

At the end of the day, the WCPI and the work it is doing in Iraq are surely important enough to deserve solidarity and assistance, even if the arguments get nowhere. It is surely perverse for a socialist of your obvious sincerity to have friendly words for Mugabe and Mahathir but 'utter contempt' for a socialist organisation on the frontline of the resistance to US imperialism.


From Class Struggle 53 November 03/January 04

WHO ON THE LEFT PASSED THE IRAQ TEST?

From Class Struggle 50, May-June 2003
War concentrates politics even as politics concentrates economics. The US/UK attack on Iraq has brought to the surface all the contradictions and deep antagonisms of capitalism today. Who saw the war as the outcome of imperialism in crisis forced to recolonise Iraq to get its oil? Who on the left understood this and took the next step to defend Iraq against imperialism? Those who did are the core of a new revolutionary international. Those who didn’t must be condemned as betrayers of the socialist revolution.

We can dispense with the reformist left who looked to the UN to deal with Iraq. These forces already conceded that the UN had the authority to impose sanctions on Iraq.They wanted a UN backed invasion. In other words they rejected the fundamental revolutionary position that Iraq is an oppressed country and must be unconditionally defended against imperialism. The UN is a ‘den of thieves kitchen’ and represents the deals that the imperialists make to advance their interests.

But the thieves fell out when the US/UK invaded Iraq unilaterally instead of backing the French and German imperialists plan of using the UN to disarm Iraq. So the reformist left championed the ‘peaceful’ imperialists against the US and UK. Thus the reformist left sides with one set of imperialist powers, with just as bad a history of colonial oppression, against another. In the event that the rivalry between these powers turns to open war, these reformist leaders would send their workers to war on the side of their imperialist bosses just as they did in 1914.

There was another more leftwing tendency however, which did not look to the ‘peaceful’ imperialists to deal with Iraq. This is the pacifist left who rejected the UN sanctions on Iraq as much as they rejected a UN backed invasion. They saw that the so-called ‘peaceful’ imperialists opposed the US and UK invasion because that would mean risking their own oil concessions in Iraq. This tendency therefore did not back the UN solution, but instead put their hopes in building a mass movement that would “stop the war”. They even attempted to mobilise workers in unions to take industrial action to prevent the ‘coalition’ military forces from being deployed in Iraq.

They saw that this was a war by the US and UK for oil. It was an attack by a rich and powerful country against a weak and largely defenceless country. Under the pressure of the war on Iraq, when millions marched against the war, and when thousands of Iraqis fought against the invasion, there was a move of some on the left, such as the CPGB, towards a ‘defence of Iraq’ position. But in practice the defence of Iraq was translated into ‘stopping the war’ at home. They said the best way to defend Iraq was to stop the invasion by a combination of sit-ins, marches and strikes. This fell far short of the necessary ‘defence of Iraq’ position of revolutionary Marxists. Why?

To turn the ‘defence of Iraq’ into ‘stopping the war’ at home fails to take the class logic of imperialist war to its necessary conclusion.The defence of Iraq means the ‘defeat’ of the imperialist oppressor not only at home, but also in Iraq. It means a ‘Victory’ to Iraq as an oppressed country.The responsibility of revolutionaries in the imperialist countries is to put their class before their country. They have to mobilise to smash the enemy at home, but they also have to try to smash the enemy wherever it goes to war against an oppressed country. Their duty does not stop at national borders. Class internationalism means that workers have no country.

The crucial test for revolutionaries in this war was to go beyond fighting the ‘enemy at home’ and to join with the oppressed in the trenches of Iraq. This meant entering a military bloc with the national leadership of Iraq, the Ba’athists, for the defence of Iraq. This meant worker volunteers siding with Iraq and being prepared to kill workers in uniform from the same oppressor country as themselves. And it meant doing so with a program that called for the workers to form an independent, armed force that would fight to take the lead in the defence of Iraq away from the Ba’athists and the Clerics.

Almost all the revolutionary left failed this test.Its ‘defensist’ position remained one that did not commit Western workers to class internationalism. The IST (SWO in NZ) took the opportunist position that Iraq should be defended by…its own people, which practically means under its existing leaderships. But should, or could, its ‘people’ defend it under such leadership? While the masses overwhelmingly wanted to defend Iraq, they did not have the means to do so.They were subordinated to a national reactionary leadership who disarmed them for fear that they would rise up against the oppressive regime.

That’s why revolutionaries do not sow illusions in clerical or bourgeois leaders being reliable anti-imperialist fighters. Their class interests are to compromise with imperialism not defeat it. Therefore, to call for the ‘people’ of Iraq to defend their country without putting forward any means of freeing the masses from their treacherous leaders, is not to defend Iraq at all.

Others, like Workers Action, took a defensist line that refused a military block with Saddam. They said that there was no “mass progressive nationalist movement” to support against Saddam. This made a united front to defend Iraq impossible. In other words revolutionaries should abstain from the struggle inside Iraq until Saddam was removed and some progressive nationalist movement came into being. How do these ‘revolutionaries’ think this was going to happen?

This is an ultra-left position similar to the Iraqi Workers’ Communist Party that was for the simultaneous defeat of Saddam and the US/UK forces. In effect this meant sitting out the war away from the fighting and waiting until history was ready for them to intervene.This ultraleft position is in reality no different from the opportunist one, imperio-centric, because ‘history’ by default is the victory of ‘democratic’ imperialism, overthrowing the Ba’athist regime and creating the conditions for the bourgeois democratic revolution.

What stopped these ‘revolutionaries’ from making a military bloc with the Ba’athists?The fact is that they are embedded in the racist, chauvinist,labour aristocracy or petty bourgeois layers of the labour movement.They will not side with the oppressed if this means that workers at home see them as unpatriotic or traitors. This means that their ‘internationalism’ is merely a mask for their ‘nationalism’.

In the case of the opportunists, their ‘internationalist’ tasks are defined to mean that they, the imperio-centric working classes alone, can defeat imperialism. Workers Action for example got completely carried away by the anti-war movement. “…we have seen the creation of a phenomenal political power across the globe that can start to challenge US imperialism. The anti-war demonstrations on February 15 have had an enormous impact throughout the world, and have opened up a new era in politics”.(Workers Action, 21, 2003 page 2). Shame this ‘new era’ in politics did not stop the war.

‘Talking up’ the anti-war mobilisation as a ‘serious challenge’ to US imperialism means ‘talking down’ workers going to other countries to kill workers in uniform from their own country and challenging colonial oppression as the material basis of the racism and chauvinism in the labour movement at home. If you cannot even confront racism and chauvinism in the imperialist working classes, how can you defeat imperialism?

The reverse side of this imperialist chauvinism is that it then becomes the national task of workers and peasants in the oppressed countries to resist imperialism. Why? Because that is their right to self-determination.

How, say the opportunists, can these peoples determine their own future if workers from other countries who are regarded as oppressors assert their duty to fight alongside them? Well, it doesn’t occur to these ‘internationalists’ that this is the surest way for workers from imperialist countries to prove that they are not oppressors but genuine internationalists.

In the case of the ultralefts, this is the flip side of the opportunist coin.Refusing to enter a military bloc with Saddam Hussein because he is a dictator is also a capitulation to the same imperialist racism and chauvinism at home that leaves the defence of Iraq to its own people. The fact that many in the IWCP are exiles in the ‘West’ and embedded in the same labour aristocracy as the Western left, underlines their ultraleft position. And it also explains why they then flipped to an opportunist line after the war calling for the UN to create a security force to allow Iraq to make the transition to democracy.For these pseudo communists, democratic imperialism is superior to an Iraqi dictatorship.

This is why in practice these ultra-lefts were prepared to leave the defence of Iraq to the Ba’athists and the clerical leaderships who would capitulate as soon as their class interests were threatened. This is exactly why these leaderships made the compromises they have made with the occupiers in the hope of doing deals with the US/UK to become the new rulers. This shows that, like the opportunists, the ultra-lefts are not serious about workers defending Iraq. They are prepared to leave the self-determination of Iraq to dirty deals between the Iraqi bourgeoisie, the Clerics and the imperialists.

The revolutionary way to fight the imperialist invaders was to mobilise the workers and peasants who were oppressed by the Ba’athists and Clerics to prove that only workers and poor peasants militias could defend Iraq. This meant calling on the Ba’athist and Clerical leaderships to arm the workers and peasants. When it became clear that the leaderships would not do this and instead would look after their own skins, workers could then decide how best to defend Iraq. But these questions of strategy and tactics could not even arise when the ultra-lefts did not offer any leadership to the masses under the oppressive control of the Ba’athists or Clerics.

Even those few groups that formally came out in ‘defence of Iraq’ such as Workers Power, and the International Bolshevik Tendency, did so in an abstract way.Workers Power quoted Trotsky on the “ duty of the international proletariat to aid the oppressed countries and their war against oppressors” but did not specify how that aid should be given.

(“The Left that Fails to Back Iraq” (http://www.workerspower.com/wpglobal/antiwarLeftfails.html)Not even a mention of arms to Iraq, and certainly no call for a military bloc with the Ba’athists.

The IBT, who condemn the Spartacists for ‘flinching’ in the face of charges of ‘treason’ at home, also took a defensist position. But nowhere in their statements on the war is there a call for a military bloc with Saddam, let alone a program for revolutionaries to take the leadership of the anti-imperialist struggle in Iraq (www.bolshevik.org).

We come to the conclusion that to our knowledge no Trotskyist groups other than the Group of 5 who signed the statement on Iraq lived up to their historic and revolutionary responsibility to fight for the defence of Iraq. (http://geocities.com/communistworker/iraq.html)

Who else called for the formation of a military bloc with the Ba’athists, with a program for workers to lead the defence of Iraq and for the formation of a Workers’ and Peasants’ state of Iraq in a Socialist Federation of the Middle East?If they exist and have put forward this position clearly, we want to contact them because they are principled communists.

Those who failed this test must be condemned as imperio-centric misleaders and betrayers of socialism. They are the rotten Stalinist and Trotskyist tendencies with opportunist/ultra-left positions that are a programmatic reflection of their integration into the racist, chauvinist labour aristocracy and petty bourgeoisie in the imperialist countries.

The healthy forces that blocked militarily with Iraq in its defence against imperialism with a program for permanent revolution have shown that they have the method and program to form the core of a new antiwar and anti-imperialist movement and open the way to the formation of a new revolutionary international.

MayDay Leaflet