Communist Back From The Wilderness! (IN IRAQ ELECTIONS!)

The Financial Times ^ | January 31, 2005 | William Wallis

[RetiredArmy]

Communists back from the wilderness

By William Wallis in Basra Jan 31 2005 17:18, The Financial Times

A quarter of a century after Saddam Hussein executed its leaders and drove their comrades underground or into exile the Iraqi Communist party has resurfaced and looks set to make a respectable showing once votes are counted in Sunday's elections.

The party has attempted to mount a secular challenge to the Islamists who dominate the main coalition appealing to the Shia vote in the south. In doing so they have rekindled a struggle for the minds of Iraq's historically marginalised Shia majority that stretches back to the middle of the last century.

There are few communist outposts left in the world (Mainly: North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Red China, Vietnam, parts of the former Soviet Union, parts of Washington, D.C. known as Democratic Headquarters, parts of Washington state, mainly Seattle, Ukraine County) after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ICP appears no exception when it comes to the lack of a powerful sponsor or consistent ideology tailored for 21st century challenges.

Their new headquarters in Basra have been fashioned from a dilapidated building with shattered windows, bare floors and a precarious staircase.

The only adornments are along the corridor where party officials have hung hundreds of photographs of earnest-looking, former comrades. These were the Shia communists martyred in the late 1970s when Saddam Hussein was asserting absolute control over the Iraqi state.

ICP leaders who have emerged today are mostly of a generation that survived in exile or in the obscurity of a secret, fearful fraternity.

Opinion varies on how successful they might be in staging a comeback in parts of Iraq where the ICP was once the dominant political force among young Shia opposed to the Hashemite monarchy in the 1940s and 1950s.

Their campaigning in the run-up to Sunday's elections was among the most open and vigorous. However, with no accurate exit polls, it is still anybody's guess.

"They were blown away with yesterday's winds," said Ahmed Qasim, an engineering student from Basra university.

Yet 29 per cent of callers to a radio show in Baghdad on the eve of the election said they would vote Communist.

A senior British diplomat returning from the province of Dhi Qar, north of Basra last week, said it would not surprise him if the ICP picked up 20 per cent of the vote there. "Everywhere I went there seemed to be someone quoting Marx or George Bernard Shaw."

In Basra, Abbas al-Fayed, an ICP candidate, outlined the party's priorities. These include equal rights for women, a strong civil society and a decentralised state, (the latter designed to appeal to the strong leftist following in Kurdish areas of Iraq).

There were brief mutterings from one member about being "pro-business", before the campaign manager, Ahmed Khodeiya said firmly that in Communist Iraq income would be redistributed with a "tax on the rich". (Democrats run loose and wild in Iraq??????)

Beyond that the ICP is appealing to secular Iraqis' very real fears of an emerging theocratic state where personal liberties would be restricted.

But the ICP's strongest selling point is probably its history. The party was on the receiving end of Saddam's bloodbaths, and had little association with Iran, where many of Saddam's Islamist opponents sought shelter, but communists were ruthlessly persecuted in the early years of Ayatollah Khomeini.

[RetiredArmy]

Better Red Than Dead????

[atomicpossum]

Communists, or Islamofascists?

Hell, I might have to go with the Commies.

[MRMEAN]

I wonder how Saddam did?

[adam_az]

Are they marxist/leninist/stalinist or more like fabian socialist euro-social-democrats?

[RetiredArmy]

I don't know, I cannot say all that in one breath!!!

[cwb]

As someone else put it: Better Red than Mohammed.

[monday]

"Yet 29 per cent of callers to a radio show in Baghdad on the eve of the election said they would vote Communist."

and the rest are voting for Islamic theocratic parties.

Anyone else notice that neither of these political ideologies are known for their democratic ideals? It always cracks me up when I hear someone say that Iraqi's want freedom. Their politics show just the opposite. They long to be enslaved.

I've said it all along. Iraqi's don't deserve better than Saddam, and thats surely what they will get if we let them have what they want.

[dirtboy]

Yet 29 per cent of callers to a radio show in Baghdad on the eve of the election said they would vote Communist.

Dang, I didn't realize that Air America had a Baghdad affiliate.