One of the most contentious issues in the antiwar movement is the resistance of the Iraqi and Afghan people to the US and British occupations. What attitude should those of us, who oppose Bush and Brown's war, take to the people in Basra, Baghdad and Helmand, who are taking up arms against the occupying troops?

Some - especially supporters of CND - will tell us straight away that no support can be given to any form of violence. Communists reject this pacifist argument on moral as well as logical grounds. If this were true, then every national liberation struggle, every slave rebellion, every popular revolution in history should never have happened.

This helpless pacifist attitude only ever disarms the oppressed and never the oppressor. Communists judge our attitude to armed conflicts from an entirely different standpoint. We ask which side in a conflict - if any - is pursuing aims that take forward the struggle for genuine national liberation, for democratic rights and socialism.

How, then, should we view the specific conflict today in Iraq? We have to begin by assessing the big picture. The over-riding aim of the forces resisting the British and the Americans is to drive the occupying armies out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Is this a goal that the working class shares?

It is. The invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan were gross violations of the democratic rights of their peoples, of their self-determination. The fact that their regimes were dictatorial did not give another power the right to "liberate them" or "bring them democracy." In fact the imperialist occupiers have done neither, but have helped themselves to Iraq's invaluable oil reserves, and forcibly privatised the Iraqi economy, opening it up to exploitation by huge US multinationals.

Communists therefore not only support the right of the people of Afghanistan and Iraq to resist this rape and pillage of their countries, but also aim to help them. This does not mean engaging in stupid terrorist actions in Britain that only help the government whip up hatred for "the enemy" and bring in ever more repressive laws.

It does mean campaigning to mobilise a mass movement of working class people and youth to obstruct the government's war drive, to take direct action to cut off its arms supplies, to call on soldiers to refuse to fight for Bush, Brown and the oil barons.

At this point in the discussion, the reformists in the working class movement, like the Labour MPs and the trade union leaders, will start raising the spectre of radical Islamism. Turncoat ex-leftist journalists like Nick Cohen of The Observer, Christopher Hitchens and David Aaronovitch, in the violent language that they reserve exclusively for the left, will accuse communists of capitulating to right wing or even fascist Islamists, of disregarding the rights of women, of pandering to anti-Semitism, or even, as Aaronovitch wrote of this paper, of being "Taliban Trots".

Quite apart from the fact that communists fully expect to be denounced by such people, their argument wilfully misrepresents both the whole history of communist policy towards Islamist resistance movements and the tactics that communists propose today for the advance of the struggle in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In Iraq today the working class movement - the new trade unions and the communist parties - should be organising an independent force of workers and youth to participate in the resistance. That they have failed to do so leaves the initiative entirely in the hands of the Islamist forces.

Iraq and Afghanistan are awash with weapons; the working class organisations could create a militia, if they only had the will. Iraq's secular traditions, and its long history of communist organisation, would mean that the workers could provide a pole of attraction for those, who want to fight the occupation but are committed to democracy and socialism rather than to Islamist policies.

What approach would a working class force take to the other resistance organisations? It would maintain its independence, and it would also appeal for united action against the occupiers, to maximise opportunities for victory. It could frame its appeal for united action in such a way as to mobilise the greatest possible support from the working class and the youth, who currently look to the Islamists because they are the only forces struggling against the invaders.

They would appeal to the other resistance organisations to mobilise the women as well as the men, challenging the sexism and discrimination that Islamists can never challenge and wish to institutionalise still further. They would fight for trade union action against the imperialist multinationals and the puppet government.

They would fight to bring the working class to the head of the struggle to liberate Iraq, and to win greater support than the Islamist organisations, so that once the occupiers are expelled, the working class itself can establish a government of its own, a socialist government based on direct working class democracy. One thing is indisputable; whoever leads the movement against the Americans and the British today will rule Iraq tomorrow when the occupation is defeated.

This policy was first codified by the revolutionary Communist International in the early 1920s. It is called the anti-imperialist united front, and its necessity today is very clear in the case of Iraq. That is why, all around the world, communists of every country should support the resistance to the American and British occupation, and should work to encourage Iraqi and Afghan workers, poor peasants, revolutionary youth and socialists to form an independent component of the resistance, struggling to come to the head of the movement, to develop the rebellion against national oppression into a revolution against imperialism and the rule of the capitalists.

For the policy of the anti-imperialist united front to become once again a guiding principle of the working class around the world, we need one thing: a new Communist International, a Fifth International.