Posted on 05/30/2003 7:21:05 AM PDT by knighthawk
ON the morning of April 10, a day after US tanks stormed the Iraqi capital and looters began to ravage government buildings, a group of young men laid claim to a military housing command in downtown Baghdad.
After ousting the looters, the newcomers unfurled and planted a red flag with a gold hammer and sickle on the building. The banner, unseen in Iraq in many decades, would have gotten them shot only hours earlier by Saddam Hussein's security forces.
"Even during Saddam's most savage repression we had an underground presence in Baghdad and other cities, mobilising the masses and fighting the dictator," said Shakir al-Dujaily, a member of the Iraqi Communist Party's leadership.
The communists, Iraq's oldest political party, now want to stage a comeback after spending decades in the political wilderness.
They intend to employ their core of committed activists and extensive network of party cells to re-establish influence in their traditional constituencies - politically or economically disadvantaged social groups such as workers, peasants and educated professionals.
And unlike some other emerging parties that have hailed the US role in liberating Iraq, the communists are unabashed in their opposition to foreign occupation, saying the Iraqi people owe nothing to the United States.
"The United States fully supported Saddam during his senseless war against Iran, in which nearly a million lives were lost on both sides," al-Dujaily said in his tiny office on the ground floor of the former army building. "After the invasion of Kuwait, it imposed sanctions that did nothing to harm Saddam but killed half a million Iraqi children."
The suspicion is mutual. An official of the US-led administration said there had been no contact with the party since consultations to forge a new, broad-based interim authority began.
"There have been no talks (with the communists) to my knowledge," the official said.
Still, US officials maintain close contacts with the Iraqi National Congress, an umbrella group of exiles led by Ahmad Chalabi who recently returned to Iraq. Although Chalabi is considered close to the Pentagon, he has co-operated closely with the communists, who have been part of his organisation for a decade.
As with the dozens of other parties appearing on the post-Saddam political stage, it is difficult to gauge the extent of influence and public support the communists enjoy. Even in their heyday in the late 1950s and 60s, they were never a strong enough political force to rule alone, and traditionally joined in coalitions with nationalist or religious parties.
Founded in 1934, the Iraqi Communist Party is the oldest in the country. It was banned by the British-installed monarchy and was later savagely repressed under Saddam's Baathist regime.
Historically, it has drawn its support mainly from the impoverished Shi'ites of southern Iraq, where the secular party had a strong presence. In the 1960s, its influence gradually spread through rural communities elsewhere in the country, and among middle classes in the Sunni-dominated central part of Iraq.
Iraqi communists have crossed swords with the United States in the past. In 1960, they supported the nationalisation of Iraq's vast oil resources - until then controlled by British interests - infuriating the administration of President Dwight Eisenhower.
In the 1970s, the party's leaders and activists took refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan, where they formed a militia force that fought Saddam's army alongside Kurdish guerrillas. In the meantime, they kept up efforts to mobilise party cells in urban centres, and particularly in Baghdad, where they existed in deep secrecy to avoid the regime's omnipresent secret police.
Al-Dujaily said the communists' strength lies in the fact that they now have a strong presence in all parts of Iraq - a boast no other political party can make. Members include Arab Sunnis and Shi'ites, Kurds, Turkomans, Christians and Assyrians.
"We're the only party in Iraq that has Jews as members," al-Dujaily said.
This has earned communists the enmity of other groups, particularly fundamentalist Muslim clerics in Baghdad's al-Thawra neighbourhood, where Communist slogans about workers' unity have been painted over or defaced.
The party has a long history of co-operating with other middle-of-the-road parties such as the National Democratic Party, the two main Kurdish political parties and Islamic groups like al-Dawa and the Iranian-backed Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
Although it used to be ideologically close to the Soviet Union, the two fell out over the issue of Moscow's continuing support for Saddam's regime. In 1989, the Iraqi party revised its Marxist roots and moved to a reformist platform allowing for political pluralism and liberal democracy.
The communists now advocate a government representing all of Iraq's political, ethnic and religious groups.
"The party's goal is to convene a national conference of all political parties and religious and ethnic groups without any interference from abroad to elect a democratic coalition government," al-Dujaily said. "This would represent the Iraqi people in any discussion with the occupiers and work to secure their withdrawal from our country."
I am so tired of hearing this...
This shows how much the Iraq education system is behind the times. The Belin wall fell in 1989.
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