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Stop US attacks on Iraq and Syria! Only the people can defeat ISIS and
end with these hated regimes!
Modificar el tamaño de letra:
http://www.uit-ci.org/index.php/english/news-a-documents/843-stop-us-attacks-on-iraq-and-syria
Since some weeks ago the government of the US, by order of Obama, has
started a military intervention on Iraq bombing zones occupied by the
so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) with the argument of
"protecting US Citizens" and to develop "humanitarian actions" defending
the Christian and Yazidi communities threatened by ISIS. Now Obama
announces he would proceed with a possible bombing of Syria, in
agreement with the dictator Bashar al-Assad, with the same argument of
"the battle against terrorism".
We call on the peoples of the world to condemn this new imperialist
intervention. With this intervention, and the argument of "the battle
against terrorism", imperialism wants to deal in one fell swoop with the
two central problems in the region: the sinking of the occupation
regimen in Iraq with a huge popular rejection and the existence of an
ongoing revolution in Syria. For imperialism the problem is not the
atrocities of ISIS against minorities. While ISIS was — and still is— an
instrument at the service of Bashar al-Assad's regimen to face the
revolution by the rear-guard, Obama not only has not said a thing about
its methods but has also supplied them through Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
The real motives for the imperialist attack have nothing to do with the
fight against terrorism or the defence of the people of Iraq, Syria and
their minorities. The US intervention has the aim of preserving the
sinking occupation regime in Iraq and to sustain the murderous Syrian
regime. Behind these aims are the interests of the oil multinational and
Israel stability.
Even more now when the Palestine people and its heroic resistance
achieved a partial victory, after 50 days of genocidal military attacks
by the Zionist state of Israel, backed by the US; after an enormous
suffering, with over 2,140 Palestinians dead (including 560 children)
and 84 percent of them civilians. The permanent cease-fire agreement
includes the reopening of the Rafah crossing, which means a significant
attenuation of the blockade of the Gaza Strip. The Rafah crossing
(connecting Gaza with Egypt) will be under control of the Palestinian
National Authority, which now has a unified government between Fatah and
Hamas. The agreement also accepts that Gaza fishermen can fish in a six
mile zone (instead of the three miles they had been allowed until now).
There are issues still under discussion such as the rights of Palestine
to have a port and an airport and the liberation of 100 Palestinian
prisoners. However, nothing is assured, moreover with the complicit role
of the Egyptian el-Sisi regime acting in the service of Israel and the
USA. The fight continues to ensure the respect of the agreement and to
demand the end of the Gaza Strip blockade.
This certainly is neither peace, nor the liberation of the Palestinian
people, nor the end to Gaza prison, but it does show that they cannot
break the resistance. This was why the Palestinian people celebrated and
the Zionist government went into crisis with several ministers
questioning the agreement.
Hence, the current and central dilemma in Syria and Iraq is not between
ISIS or the US and its allies. The issue is stand by the Syrian
revolution and the legitimate clash of the Iraqi people fighting against
their corrupt and illegitimate government. It is to stand against the
imperialist intervention and its bombardments, and next to the Iraqi,
Syrian and Palestinian peoples.
The world biggest criminal is imperialism
Obama, his partners of the EU, the Iraqi government and even the
assassin Netanyahu, rate the reprehensible actions of ISIS as the
"biggest threat to humanity". Their cynicism is boundless. In this way
they want to cover up and justify their own crimes to the world. This is
said by those who 70 years ago dropped atomic bombs in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, killing 200,000 persons in one day, when the war was already
over. The very same who killed over two million people in Vietnam; those
who endorsed dictators like Pinochet or Videla or starve the people of
the world with the adjustment plans of the IMF.
The role of imperialism in relation to the Arab and Middle East peoples
has been to colonize, to artificially divide the nations, to encourage
religious struggles and civil wars to steal the oil and other natural
resources. As part of this colonizing plan they installed the fictitious
Zionist state of Israel, supporting it militarily and endorsing Israel's
repeated bombings to mass murder the people of the Gaza Strip.
The current situation of Iraq, its political and social debacle, its
division between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds is the consequence of that
policy and of the Bush headed invasion in 2003, which led to the current
state of semi disintegration. The American invasion, with the false
"humanitarian" argument of overthrowing Saddam Hussein's dictatorship
and his supposed "weapons of mass destruction" had the real aim of
controlling the oil production and creating stability of "cemeteries" in
the Middle East in order to sustain Israel. The resistance of the Iraqi
people and the repudiation of people all over the world finally made the
American troops retreat in 2011 without achieving all those aims. They
leave a Shiite pro-Yankee Iraqi government, backed by the Iranian regime
that represses the Sunni people. Since then, there have been all kinds
of popular revolts. For example, the brutal detention of Sunni leader
Ahmed al-Alwani, in December 2013, in which two of his brothers were
killed, lead to protests all over Al Anbar governorate, mainly in the
cities of Ramadi and Fallujah. Imperialism has systematically violated
the right of self-determination of the people, so we must condemn this
new military intervention in Iraq and Syria. Nothing good can be
expected from it.
ISIS must be defeated by the peoples of Iraq and Syria
In Iraq, within the framework of the revolutionary process opened in
North Africa and the Middle East by the Tunisian revolution of January
2011, massive protests against the Maliki government take place which
are brutally repressed. The violence and sectarianism of the Iraqi
occupation government (supported also by Iran) is the fuel that
encourages ISIS. What imperialism wants to present today as an offensive
by ISIS fanatics actually has a triple component: an ISIS group which
has grown in Syria, Sunni popular sectors and the remnants of the Baath
Party (Saddam Hussein's party) which face the government in Bagdad.
Imperialism uses ISIS just as Bashar al-Assad does, to hide the popular
uprising and reduce everything to the "fight against terrorism".
In Syria, in three years of war Bashar al-Assad has focused all its war
machine (including dynamite barrels and chemical weapons) against what
really has worried him: the people's revolution, while allowing the ISIS
to consolidate its position as a fifth column in liberated areas. The
first ISIS fighters came out of the jails that al-Assad opened at the
beginning of the revolution to weaken it, and for three years he did not
fire a single shot at ISIS. Time and time again imperialism (the US and
also the EU) refused to arm the only group that faced ISIS: the Syrian
Rebels. Instead, they allowed the regime to continue arming themselves
to the teeth with the support of Iran and Russia. Blocking the Syrian
rebels reinforced ISIS military and politically and now, attacking them,
they will strengthen ISIS further as alleged "anti-imperialist".
For this reason our repudiation to the Yankees bombardments in Iraq and
Syria does not mean we give any political support or of any kind to the
so-called Islamic State (ISIS). It is a bourgeois Islamic organization
with a dictatorial theocratic counter-revolutionary proposal, which
seeks to establish a "Caliphate" in the region. Their militias act with
aberrant methods of ethnic cleansing in the service of this reactionary
program. It is claimed that they are financed by the pro-US Sunni
monarchist regime of Saudi Arabia, which means they are the creation of
a strong ally of the US. Their main goal would be to interfere in the
Syrian revolution to try to have a way out, given the possible fall of
Bashar al-Assad, with a dictatorial government allied to the Sunni oil
bourgeoisie of Saudi Arabia, enemy of any change process. In the Syrian
revolution they act confronting the Syrian rebels themselves to occupy
territories. From Syria they moved to the central-eastern provinces of
Iraq, with larger Sunni presence, taking the city of Mosul and others.
In all these territories they applied atrocities as mass executions of
opponents and the expulsion of religious minorities.
The imperative fight against ISIS must be supported by the arming of the
Syrian rebel forces (Free Syrian Army and the Kurds) and by the support
of Iraqi popular movements. Against sectarian violence, for a joint
struggle against the Iraqi occupation government and the assassin Bashar
al-Assad. For the achievement of an independent solution of true
national self-determination of the peoples where political, labour and
religious rights of each community are respected. For us this must be
framed within a socialist and workers solution.
For the national self-determination of the Kurdish people in Iraq,
Syria, Turkey and Iran
The Iraqi Kurds are also suffering the consequence of this complex
conflict. Kurdish people are the largest people in the world without a
state. Nearly 30 million Kurds are dispersed in Turkey, Iraq, Syria and
Iran. They share an identity, a language and culture of their own. But
they are a nation historically oppressed and divided by various
imperialisms (Ottoman, British, German and Yankee) and by the
bourgeoisie of each country in the Middle East and Turkey, always
preventing the existence of an independent Kurdistan, a single Kurdish
state.
Our international current has always stood by the historical slogan of
the right to national self-determination of the Kurdish people in
Turkey, Iraq, Syria and Iran, countries were Kurdish people are
persecuted and repressed, especially in Turkey. It is estimated that
there are about 15 million Kurds in Turkey, 6 millions in Iraq, 4.5
millions in Iran and 1.5 millions in Syria. Some of the nationalist
Kurdish leaders sought to compromise with imperialism and their
respective governments to get some partial autonomy status.
One of those cases was taking place in Iraq, where after the fall of
Saddam Hussein, American imperialism and its bourgeois Shiites allies,
supported by the Iranian regime, gave partial autonomy to the Kurds in
northern Iraq, for the support Kurdish bourgeois political forces of the
PUK (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan) of Jalal Talabani and the KDP
(Kurdistan Democratic Party) of Masoud Barzani gave to imperialist
occupation. Nowadays Barzani is the president of the Iraqi Kurdistan, an
autonomous region of Iraq. Since 2006 Barzani has supported and worked
with the Iraqi national government installed by the United States,
having its own armed militia: the Peshmerga. The Iraqi Kurdistan covers
the most important area of oil production, which is why in recent years
the area grew in the warmth of the oil multinational investments.
Moreover, Barzani has been a good partner of imperialism and of the
Turkish regime of Erdogan, enemy of Kurdish people, to whom they sell
oil and do business with.
The near disintegration of the Iraqi army in central-eastern Iraq
because of the advanced position of ISIS militias, led to the Kurdish
military forces being the only forces able to confront ISIS, along the
Iraqi army and since 8 August supported by US bombing.
As revolutionary socialist we support the right of Kurdish people to
defend Kurdistan and its limited autonomy of any attack from ISIS. It is
also fitting that the armed and popular Kurdish organizations defend
themselves against the attacks of ISIS in Syria. And also they have the
right to do so in their shelters in Iraqi Kurdistan if they were
attacked by ISIS. But this does not justify endorsing the imperialist
bombing. Kurdish people, their popular organizations and the peoples of
the world must condemn the imperialist attack and strengthen themselves
by fighting in an independent way against ISIS and for the unity and
self-determination on Kurdish people in Iraq and the entire region.
We repudiate the bombardments and any kind of imperialist military
intervention in Iraq and Syria
We call on the peoples of the world to repudiate the ongoing military
actions in Iraq and Syria. With the argument of "fighting against
terrorism" and using the cruel practices of ISIS, the US and the EU,
supported by Russia, Iran, Israel and now, with the approval of the
dictator Bashar al-Assad, they want to attack the people of the Middle
East. With this same pretext they want to drown the revolt of the Syrian
people. To the extent that the Syrian Foreign Minister "welcomed any
attack, including by the United Kingdom and the United States with
possible bombings" in his country to "fight ISIS". He only requested to
"coordinate" them (ABC.es, 25 August 2014). This means they are using
the madness of ISIS and their Caliphate to applaud Obama's bombing of
rebel positions. That is, the Syrian regime removes its mask of being
"anti-imperialist", defended by the world reformist left and especially
by Chavism, and now shows its true pro-imperialist and genocidal face.
The responsibility of the Iraq and Middle East crisis is the result of
the criminal and genocidal actions of imperialism. But there is also a
responsibility of the various Arab and non-Arab bourgeois leaders, who
act against their people, allying themselves with imperialism and
leaving alone the heroic Palestinian people who continue to give lessons
in fighting spirit in the Gaza Strip. This selling out of both the old
bourgeois Arab nationalism as well as the Islamic bourgeois forces and
their regimes have given rise to the emergence of ultra-reactionary
political groups like al-Qaeda, the Salafists and now ISIS. It is
necessary for the revolutionary left in North Africa and the Middle East
and the workers and popular sectors to unite and fight to build a new
revolutionary socialist direction for the peoples of the region.
No to US attacks in Iraq and Syria!
Russia and Iran out of Syria! Down with Bashar al-Assad's regime!
Support for the popular movements against the occupation regime in Iraq!
Arms for the Syrian revolution to defeat the regime and ISIS!
International Executive Committee of the International Workers Unity –
Fourth International
29 August 2014
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