Why the Iraqi quagmire is no
Vietnam By Aaron Glantz
HANOI - Is Iraq another Vietnam? Tran Dac
Loi should know. The secretary general of the
Vietnam Peace and Development Foundation grew up
in Hanoi dodging bombs dropped by the United
States Air Force, while his father fought in the
successful guerrilla war in the country's Central
Highlands.
Three decades later, Tran, now
an important figure in the ideological wing of
Vietnam's communist government, has some thoughts
on the Iraqi resistance.
"Our struggle was
well organized," Tran said in an IPS interview.
"We had an address and official contacts, but with
Iraq you never
know
who the resistance is and what their objectives
are."
Pointing to what he sees as a
serious flaw in the Iraqi resistance, he added,
"Sure, the fighters all want the Americans out,
but there's no unifying political program."
In Iraq, the insurgency's appeal flows
primarily from the pain of the occupation. Much of
its support comes from regular Iraqis who have
relatives who have been killed or imprisoned by US
forces and they want to get even. "This kind of
resistance leads nowhere," Tran said. "Resistance
has to have a clear objective. Ours was
independence and socialism; not reaction but
revolution."
Some of the occupation's
opponents in Iraq do have developed organizations,
complete with spokespersons and ideological
programs. But, Tran predicts, because the
insurgency is built on ethnic and religious lines,
they'll never succeed in their objectives.
The movement of Muqtada al-Sadr, for
example, appeals primarily to poor people in the
country's numerous Shi'ite slums. It provides
services in poor Shi'ite neighborhoods, while
advocating an Islamic state. Such a plan of action
has helped Muqtada amass millions of supporters,
but prevents him from attracting a following
outside his core base.
According to Tran,
the same can be said of Sunni fundamentalists. The
hardline Association of Muslim Scholars may have
spokespersons who appear regularly on the Arab
satellite channels, but their appeal is limited
even within the country.
Tran thinks that
the lack of a pan-ethnic political program can
cause minority groups to ally with the occupier in
order to ensure that their cultural rights are
protected. In Iraq, this has caused the Kurds, and
their more than 100,000 guerrillas, to side with
the US.
"The absence of a clear political
program is in the interest of the US," Tran said.
"Then, they [the US] can go above you and pretend
like they're solving the problems between you,
when really they're lording over you."
While the occupying forces took care to
ban the secularist Ba'ath Party - which continues
to function through independent cells within Iraq
and through exiles in Syria and Jordan - the party
has not been able to earn the trust of minority
groups.
It is a classic case of divide and
rule. Indeed, from the start of the occupation,
the US government actively encouraged the Iraqi
people to organize themselves along sectarian
lines. The US administration even hired a company,
Research Triangle Institute (RTI), and charged it
with selecting local governments based solely on
the ethnic make-up in each of Iraq's regions. In
March 2003, RTI was awarded a contract worth
US$466 million to create 180 local and provincial
governments in Iraq and obtain wide public
participation in a new political process, but
government auditors pointed out irregularities.
Tran suggested that what would work in
Iraq would be a program similar to Vietnam's
revolution, which was based on a single political
party, aimed at throwing out the aggressor and
defending the unity of the country as well as its
economic and political sovereignty.
The
particular ideology, he said, is not the key. More
important is something everyone can believe in,
regardless of religion or ethnic background. Iraq,
he said, needs a unifying political figure such as
Ho Chi Minh. "You need a political figure who can
introduce a long-term objective that's in the
basic interest of the majority of the people."
Tran doesn't think any of Iraq's current
crop of political leaders fits this mold.
Moreover, he said the fighters' regular killing of
civilians is sickening and counterproductive.
"They behave more like random rebelling groups,"
he said. "When we fought, we only fought against
the ones who fought us. Civilians were never our
targets."
Given the Iraqi resistance's
bloody tactics and lack of a unified political
program, Tran doubts it will be successful in
forcing the Americans out - at least in the short
term.
He compares the Iraqi resistance to
the many aborted attempts to end French
colonization of Vietnam before World War II, which
were led by small groups of the educated elite.
"They were all patriots but they were all
suppressed because they could not appeal to the
masses."
Aaron Glantz is author
of the book, How America Lost
Iraq(Tarcher/Penguin). Ngoc Nguyen also
contributed to this report.
