Iraqis making history

Friends, mark your calendars. Iraq’s people are these days, finally, becoming the subjects of their own history. It now seems clear that in the process they will strike fateful blows not only to the ridiculous “Rube Goldberg election plan” proclaimed by Washington and its quasi-puppets of the IGC in November but also, beyond that, to George W. Bush’s entire concept for a US-dominated Iraq that would lead the rest of the Middle East into a relationship of long-term servitude to US commercial interests.
Such are my conclusions after reading a wide range of reporting of yesterday’s 100,000-strong, Sistani-led demonstrations in the heart of Baghdad.
Anthony Shadid’s account in the WaPo has been by far the best reporting that I’ve seen so far. What he makes clear are four key aspects of the demonstrations:

    (1) The impressive organization behind them. They were announced thru the speaker systems of mosques around the city only one day before, yet they succeeded in bringing out those kinds of numbers, and from Shi-ite groups spanning many different trends.
    (2) The discipline of organizers and participants. I guess that if, as a Shi-ite religious organization you have succeeded in surviving 30 years of Saddamist rule including numerous anti-Shi-ite pogroms and other genocidal campaigns, then you know a thing or two about the need for strong internal discipline…


    (3) The power of nonviolent civilian mass action. In one day, these intentionally peaceable demonstrations did far more to “change” the minds of the Bushies than any number of violence-based attacks against US or other targets in Iraq. Keep it up! Give the world another great example that civilian mass action works!
    (4) The success of the face-down with the US military. As Shadid reported: “Throughout the protest, two U.S. helicopters passed overhead. A small convoy of U.S. military vehicles — three Humvees and an armored personnel carrier — moved down the broad avenue toward the protest, but turned around before meeting the crowd.” What a pivotal moment!

I don’t pretend to be able to predict how far and how fast matters will move from here. What I can predict, though, is that they will certainly move much further–in the direction of a “right world order”, and against US unilateralism– as well as much faster, than most people would have predicted even this time last week.
If you want to do a bit of quick background reading on some of the ways we might expect the Shi-ite religious/political movements to move forward in Iraq in the weeks and months ahead, you could look at the two pretty lengthy posts I wrote here back in May that looked at the precedent of Shi-ite religious/political organizing in Lebanon over the past two decades. In those posts I explained why I thought that experience was of direct relevance to the current situation in Iraq, and started to draw some lessons from it.
I put those posts up on the ‘Golden Oldies’ section just last week. If you want to read them, start here then go here. (In that second post I explicitly explored some aspects of the relationship between Shi-ite religious/political movements and the question of women’s rights.)
Meanwhile, savor the fact that today in Iraq you are witnessing history being made. We are at a pivotal point in the turning back of the tide of the Bushites’ campaign of force-based global bullying and unilateralism.

5 thoughts on “Iraqis making history”

  1. I’m all for nonviolence, too, but Iraq’s people are so diverse, ethnically and religiously, that I don’t see these demonstrations as a sign that “Iraq’s people” (too much of an abstraction) are becoming the subjects of their own history.
    If a direct election is indeed held, the Shi’ites will be the big winners — along with Iran.
    Whether the country could hold together after that is far from clear.

  2. I agree with Theo. Two thoughts:
    1. Since the “fall” of Baghdad, we have been witnessing the constant and steady push of various Iraqi parties — the exiles, the clerics, the resistance fighters, etc. — against the parameters set by the U.S. … which the U.S. in turn has steadily had to pull back. Our hand loses value as time goes on, since everyone knows we have to go back at some point, and we are not willing to install a puppet dictatorship (which rather surprises me, but I guess there’s been too much talk of “democratizing” the M.E., and too many neo-cons who really think that’s what they’re doing…)
    2. If it’s possible to avoid civil war, and Iraq can obtain some level of debt forgiveness, then the country as a whole might still have a chance to get back on its feet within a generation

  3. A fascinating article, that mentions the Iraqi Communist Party is the most organized in Iraq since the Ba’ath. But the bomb which is the subject of the report tells me we’re more likely to have a civil war than not….

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