Unlike Vietnam, Iraq Is A Religious War, Official Says

by Aaron Glantz

(IPS) -- 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 U.S. Air Force, while his father fought in the successful guerilla 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 analyzed the Iraqi resistance.

"Our struggle was well-organized. We had an address and official contacts, but with Iraq you never know who the resistance is and what their objectives are," Tran said in an IPS interview.

"Sure, the fighters all want the Americans out, but there's no unifying political program," Tran said, pointing to what he sees as a serious flaw in the Iraqi resistance.

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 U.S. forces, and they want to get even.

"This kind of resistance leads nowhere," he 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 says, because all of them are built on ethnic or religious lines, they'll never succeed in their objectives.

The movement of Muqtada 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 Sadr amass millions of supporters, but leaves him unable to attract 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 the lack of a pan-ethnic political program can cause minority groups to ally with the occupier to ensure that their cultural rights are protected. In Iraq, this has caused the Kurds, and their more than 100,000 "peshmerga" guerillas, to side with the U.S.

"The absence of a clear political program is in the interest of the U.S.," Tran said. "Then, they 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, it 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 U.S. government actively encouraged the Iraqi people to organize themselves along sectarian lines.

The U.S. administration even hired a company, Research Triangle Institute (RTI), and charged it with selecting local governments, based solely on the ethnic makeup in each of Iraq's regions.

In March 2003, RTI was awarded a contract worth $466 million to create 180 local and provincial governments in Iraq and obtain wide public participation in a new political process, but irregularities were pointed out by government auditors.

As a communist, Tran points to Vietnam's revolution, which was based on a single political party, aimed at throwing out the aggressor, defending the unity of the country and the country's 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, said Tran, who, among other things, coordinates the country's delegations to the annual World Social Forum, usually held at Porto Alegre in Brazil.

Iraq's opposition, he said, needs a unifying political figure like 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 says the fighters' regular killings of innocent civilians are sickening and counterproductive.

"They behave more like random rebelling groups," he says. "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 that 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."