Iyad Allawi must be ruing the fact that his mate Tony Blair has been forced to retract his invitation to Labour’s annual conference. He certainly wouldn’t get a standing ovation in any assembly in his own country, following his unsuccessful attempt – the second in five months – to crush Muqtada al-Sadr’s insurgent Mehdi army.

On 26 August, in a last minute, bloodily botched attempt to do this job for his US masters, Iraqi police killed up to 110 unarmed supporters of Sadr and, more importantly, of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the moderate 75 year old spiritual leader of Iraq’s Shia majority. In the most bloody day of the stand-off, 501 others were injured and a mortar seriously damaged the main mosque in Kufa, also a revered Shia shrine. The attacks came as a peace deal was signed by Sadr and Allawi’s government.

How did it come to this? And what does the deal mean for the people of Iraq?

During the nationwide uprising against the US occupation this spring, Sadr’s movement played a central role. It was, alongside the Sunni insurgents in Fallujah, Ramadi and Samara, the most important force in the rebellion, and forced the the US colonial administration under pro-consul Paul Bremer to “transfer power” to the Iraqi puppet government of Allawi.

Robert Fisk accurately described Allawi as not so much the premier of Iraq as “the mayor of downtown Baghdad”. Once Saddam Hussein’s secret service chief, Allawi later crossed over to the CIA and M16. With such an dubious past it is surprising that he has no support among the people. As long as he has 137,000 American soldiers with their Abram tanks, humvees and Apache helicopters to keep him in power, he will not need it. The moment they go so will he.

The siege of Najaf by 2,000 US marines and 1,800 Iraqi troops was intended to crush Sadr’s heavily outnumbered and outgunned forces. For three weeks, the US threw in its most high-tech weapons, including cruise missiles and cluster bombs. The effects on civilian residents of turning a densely populated old city into a free fire zone can only be imagined.

Against this, the Iraqi resistance had only AK-47s, mortars and rocket propelled grenades. Thus they had to draw the occupiers into the warren of the old quarter. This equalised matters since the US army is still wary of risking heavy casualties. If it can’t be a “turkey shoot” then Uncle Sam doesn’t want to play.

Despite claims to the contrary, there is no doubt that Allawi and the US provoked this battle. According to the Financial Times: “US forces in Iraq went on the offensive against two Islamist political groups yesterday [2 August], arresting an influential Sunni cleric in Baghdad and breaking a two-month ceasefire with followers of Shi’ite radical Muqtada al-Sadr, based in Kufa. Reuters news agency quoted witnesses saying that US forces had moved into Mr. Sadr’s neighbourhood in Kufa, next to Najaf, and were exchanging fire with members of Mr. Sadr’s Shia militia, the Mehdi Army.”

Only, after the interim government refused to release Mehdi prisoners, did Sadr declare an end to the ceasefire on 5 August.

Allawi, posing as “strongman”, declared, he would “teach these criminal outlaws the lesson they deserve... Your government has decided to hit back with an iron fist [against] all these desperate criminals that are attempting to hinder the bright future of the people of Iraq.”

US Secretary of State Colin Powell backed him up, “Our forces in Najaf are squeezing the city, frankly, to help stabilise the situation and deal with [the] Mehdi army... The violence is being perpetrated by outlaws and by former regime elements and by terrorists who respect no truce, who respect nothing except force.”

Indeed, “former regime elements” were indeed employing their old skills – in the service of their old commander, Allawi. First, they expelled Arab TV reporters from al-Jazeera, and then tried to force all journalists to leave Najaf. When words failed to disperse the reporters, the ex-Baathist police officers used methods they had perfected under Saddam and started shooting at their hotel.

Later in the month, Allawi’s regime used other Saddam techniques, ranging from the comical to the diabolical. Like Saddam’s communications chief they pugnaciously announced that they had taken the Imam Ali shrine from Sadr’s men when the TV clearly showed they hadn’t. Then Allawi’s men fired on unarmed Shia protesters, marching on Najaf to support the peace deal. George Bush has often blamed the violence in Iraq on former Baathists; by a savage irony, for once he was right.

However, as in April and May, the US Marines faced a mounting crisis. As they edged closer to the Imam Ali mosque, where Sadr was based, thousands of Iraqis – some armed, some unarmed – rose to oppose them.

In Basra, protesters demanded the withdrawal of US forces from Najaf, while the Mehdi army seized control of all the major roads. In Diwaniya, thousands of demonstrators burned down the offices of Allawi’s Iraqi National Accord. From across the country, thousands of “human shields” marched to Najaf, to support the rebel fighters – or take up arms themselves.

Widespread demonstrations

Demonstrations were not confined to Shia areas. In Fallujah, around 3,000 protesters shouted, “Long live Sadr. Fallujah stands by Najaf against America.” A convoy of 40 trucks brought food, water and medicine to Najaf. Spokesman Ghalib Yusuf al-Eisawe explained: “We came here to express real brotherhood for the people of Najaf and to support the people here.” Protection for the convoy was provided by the Fallujah police.

Even delegates to the Iraqi National Conference – 1,300 hand-picked Iraqi leaders, designed to promote a US-controlled road to “democracy” – turned on the prime minister and his imperialist backers. Despite US tanks guarding the conference and a curfew, several mortar rounds rocked the conference building on the opening day. Delegates leapt to their feet, chanting “Yes to Najaf” and, raising their fists in the air, “As long as there are air strikes and shelling we can’t have a conference.” A group of delegates eventually led a peace mission to negotiate with Sadr.

Not surprisingly, this affected morale in the new Iraqi police and army. In an interview for al-Jazeera, the police chief of Sadr city in the capital, Kadim Muhammed, stated, “We are not ready to fire a single one shot against any Iraqi – whether he belongs to the Mehdi army or not.” More than 100 National Guardsmen and a battalion of Iraqi solders also refused to fight. A Defence Ministry official commented bluntly, “We expect this, and we expect it again and again.”

And so, the US and British occupation forces can also expect their plans to be defeated again and again.

This was yet another unsuccessful attempt to crush Iraqi resistance and make the country “peaceful” for imperialist exploitation. A military success would be a relief for George Bush and Dick Cheney, whose popularity is sinking ahead of the presidential elections in November. But that now looks more remote than ever.

But, no matter who wins the US elections, the entire US plans for the Middle East are at stake. Unless they are able to crush the resistance, they will be unable to exploit the Iraqi oil reserves, the world’s second largest, and establish US air bases and garrisons, from which to control the whole region.

The Iraqi resistance must now use this latest setback for the imperialists. The question is, what should they fight for?

The deal brokered by Sistani will not liberate the Iraqi masses from decades of suffering in this oil-rich land. Its “five points” hand power back to the Iraqi police and army, and call for a census of the Iraqi people in advance of elections in January. The extent to which it is intended to incorporate Sadr’s Mehdi army within the new Iraqi armed forces will become clearer in the days and weeks ahead. But the purpose of a census is immediately transparent.

It is designed to show that 60 per cent of the Iraqi population are Shia Muslims, and prepare the ground for Sadr, possibly in an alliance with Sistani or other Islamist leaders, to turn that majority into a landslide victory in the elections.

But to divide the people along religious – or ethnic or gender – lines would be to repeat the tactics of Saddam Hussein, and Iraq’s colonial ruler, Britain, before him. A gruesome display of what Sharia law under Sadr might look like was left behind in Najaf; daily life in Iran provides more horrors. The Sunni Arabs and Kurds, not to mention many thousands of Shia women and men do not have to settle for an Islamist state after such heroic resistance to decades of dictatorship and foreign occupation.

Another road is open

The resistance of local guerrilla struggles must be transformed into a national popular uprising. What is crucial is not so much the quantity or quality of the insurgents’ arms, but the attitude of the masses, first and foremost the working class, but also the urban poor and the youth. To make the US occupiers and their Iraqi stooges turn tail and run, they must change from being sympathetic observers of the fight into resistance fighters en masse.

Only by mobilising the people via democratic mass organisations – in the enterprises, in the workers’ quarters of the cities, among the urban poor and in the villages – will it be possible for the Iraqi working class to seize leadership of the national liberation struggle from the reactionary Islamist clergy. The organised working class must link the fight for jobs, basic services and democratic rights, including women’s rights and the rights of the Kurdish people to self-determination, to the armed struggle against Allawi and the occupation forces.

The creation of workers’ and peasants’ councils, democratically elected in the cities and villages, will be needed to carry through a general strike, which could then develop into a mass armed uprising. In such a way, national independence could be embodied in a sovereign revolutionary Constituent Assembly.

The Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions and the independent unions can play an important role in this, but only if they take sides in the armed struggle. Opposition to the Islamists is necessary, but so is a united front with them. The suspension of oil supplies to Baghdad by the workers in Nasiriyah on 10 August was an excellent example of such solidarity action. The oil workers’ statement read: “We stopped pumping in protest at the inhuman conduct of the interim government and its co-operation with the occupation forces to ransack the holy city of Najaf and insult the Shia, their symbols and holy places.”

But to carry the revolution from this starting point on to the social liberation of all the toilers and the oppressed, that is, into a socialist revolution, a political leadership is also needed. This must be a genuine Trotskyist leadership which says openly that without proletarian revolution there will be no national liberation or democracy.