The New Worker
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 16th June 2006
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Lead
Zarqawi
killed in action
IRAQI RESISTANCE STILL UNDAUNTED
by our Arab Affairs Correspondent
ABU MUSAB AL ZARQAWI is dead. Bush has flown in to Baghdad for
a lightening visit to his puppets and the imperialist media is once
again telling us that another “turning point” has been reached in the
“war against terror”.
But it was just another day in Iraq. The British army HQ in Basra was
rocketed on Saturday.
The northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk was blasted in multiple resistance
bomb attacks, partisan raids continued across the occupied capital and
the residents of the besieged resistance stronghold of Ramadi were told
that if they do not turn in the partisans by 15th June they will face a
massive American offensive.
Al Zarqawi’s death had been reported many times before but this time
there is little doubt that the leader of the most ruthless, feared and
sectarian resistance group in Iraq died last week. He was killed
by an American air-raid on a home in which he and seven aides
were meeting in the village of Habhab, north of Baquba at dawn on
Thursday 8th June.
Ahmad Fadil Nazal al Khalayilah known as “Abu Musab al Zarqawi” was the
bogeyman of US propaganda in Iraq. The leader of Al Qaeda in the Land
of the Two Rivers was blamed for many sectarian attacks on the Shia
Muslim community over the past three years.
denied
And while some were undoubtedly carried out by his men, others were
categorically denied by this fundamentalist group who in turn accused
the American special forces of committing these crimes themselves to
drive the Shia Muslims into the camp of collaboration.
Though the Americans portrayed Al Zarqawi as the paramount leader of
the resistance, his movement was responsible for only a fraction of
partisan attacks against the Anglo-American occupation. His movement
was opposed by underground Arab Socialist Renaissance Party (Baath)
supporters who see “Islamism” as a creation of the occupation and
denounce “imported sectarians” of the Iranian or Al Qaeda kind for
“ripping the nation apart”.
But Al Qaeda in Iraq started to seriously co-operate with other
guerrilla movements last year and this, no doubt, accelerated the
American drive to kill their leader.
George W Bush was quick to claim a cheap “victory” and secretly fly to
Iraq on Tuesdays to meet his puppet “premier”, Nouri al Malaki, in a
publicity stunt exercise designed to halt the slump in the US
President’s popularity ratings at home. The chief Iraqi traitor, who
was only given five minutes notice of the arrival of his master in
Baghdad, is under no such illusions.
Over 75,000 American and puppet troops have been deployed throughout
the occupied Iraqi capital with orders to crush the resistance
throughout Baghdad. A dusk to dawn curfew has been enforced.
Cars and the use of mobile phones have been banned in certain areas and
troops have launched hundreds of raids on the homes of suspected
partisans. American helicopter gunships prowl the skies while sectarian
Shia militiamen, who do the dirty work of the puppet regime, celebrate
Zarqawi’s death.
Bush slipped in and out of Baghdad like a thief in the night because
the strongest bases of the resistance are in the heart of the city. The
fortified “Green Zone” compound that houses the US HQ and the offices
of the puppet regime came under repeated rocket attack last week and
six American civilians and eight collaborators working for the
occupation were killed in a dawn resistance rocket attack on the
“Green Zone” last Friday.
Meanwhile the Iraqi underground’s own “war for oil” continued with the
kidnapping of a high-ranking official in the Iraqi puppet “Ministry of
Petroleum” last week.
The General Director for Oil Planning was seized at gun-point while he
was being driven home from work last Friday. He was taken by the
partisans to an unknown destination. The driver was released unharmed.
Iraq’s northern oil fields, now controlled by the imperialist
corporations, have only just resumed pumping four months after
partisans blew up the twin pipelines that carry Iraqi crude oil to
Turkey. A previous attempt to resume pumping in January failed
following further sabotage.
Only a trickle is getting through even now and it is only a matter of
time before the resistance strikes again. Partisan sabotage has brought
the northern export pipelines to a halt for most of this year and 2005.
Anglo-American imperialism dismisses countries it seeks to colonise as
“failed states” but it’s their occupation of Iraq that has failed and
it’s clear that the freedom struggle will continue until the Stars and
Stripes comes down for the last time in the Land of the Two Rivers.
*************
Editorials
Stop the persecution of Muslims
THE MASSIVE police
“anti-terrorist” raid and the shooting of a young man in a Muslim
neighbourhood of East London has ended with the release of the two
young Muslim brothers without charge. Mercifully, the wounded “suspect”
only suffered light injuries but that doesn’t excuse the cops or those
who ordered 250 of them in on a dawn raid based on “reliable”
information that turned out to be totally false. No bombs or chemical
devices were found and the two men were unarmed.
We’re told of course that there is a “war against terror” and London,
which was terror bombed last year, is undoubtedly still a target for
the followers of Osama bin Laden. But that doesn’t excuse the racist
hysteria whipped up by the bourgeois media against the Muslim community
in Britain that began when Anglo-American imperialism invaded Iraq in
2003. It has created a climate of fear similar to that fired up by the
ruling class against the Irish community in Britain during the IRA
campaign to free the north of Ireland that led to the victimisation and
wrongful imprisonment of Irish men and women during the 1970s and 80s
and the brutal murder of Diarmuid O’Neill in 1996.
This is the second time the Metropolitan Police have shot an innocent
man in the past 12 months in “anti-terror” operations. The first, the
young Brazilian mistaken for a terrorist and pumped full of bullets,
led to a police apology that will not bring a dead man back and the
second must lead to an inquiry to prevent any more innocent blood being
shed.
**********
Close
Guantánamo down now
Meanwhile back in the “land of
the free” the horror of the Guantánamo concentration camp
continues. Over 500 prisoners taken during the American invasion of
Afghanistan in 2002 have been held in inhuman conditions on the US
naval base in Cuba.
Last week three of them hanged themselves in despair. Initially it was
ludicrously dismissed by a top Washington official as a “good PR move
to draw attention”, and by the camp commander as an “act of asymmetric
warfare waged against us”.
International outrage has now forced the US authorities to issue
some mealy-mouthed expressions of regret at the deaths but not at the
illegal and inhuman conditions that these prisoners are held.
These prisoners are called “enemy combatants” and indeed some may well
have fought against the Americans in Afghanistan.
But they are not treated as prisoners of war and they are denied the
rights established by the Geneva Convention. Nor are they treated as
common criminals who are entitled to be formally charged, given the
right to defence and a trial under United States law.
Instead they are held in humiliating, harsh and isolated confinement in
camps on Cuban territory which itself is illegally occupied by American
imperialism. These prisoners don’t know when, if ever, they will be
released. It’s not surprising that 25 of them have attempted on 41
occasions to take their own lives.
Once again we’re told this is all part of the “war against terror” that
Anglo-American imperialism proclaimed to justify the invasion and
occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and currently uses as a pretext to
prepare the public for the isolation and possible invasion of Iran and
Syria.
The Guantánamo Bay concentration camps are a symptom of the
aggressiveness, arrogance and decadence of imperialism. Anglo-American
imperialism preaches “human rights” when it suits them but denies its
basic principles when it doesn’t. The camps must be closed now.
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