Appeal to Fraternal and Friendly Communist Parties
The Iraqi Communist Party (Cadre)
Translated by Muhammad Abu Nasr
July 20, 2003
People of the resistance, wherever you may be found!
An appeal to Fraternal and Friendly Communist Parties from the Iraqi Communist Party (Cadre).
Before everything else we wish to congratulate ourselves and congratulate you on the activity of the heroic Iraqi national resistance, and to convey the news of an operation carried out Sunday morning in the city of an-Nakhilah in the area of Karbala where 19 occupation troops and officers were killed and no fewer than 40 wounded. We also want to bring you the news of the heroic battle waged by the resistance fighters on Thursday afternoon in the governorate of Dayala where no fewer than 70 American officers and men were killed. Four Iraqis were martyred in that operation, their pure souls ascending like flames to their Creator pleasing and well pleased, to take their places with Him in the gardens of paradise.
The Americans have been deceived by their own power. They madly rampage about attacking, threatening, and laying down conditions that contravene international political law. They have scoffed at and obliterated both divine and positivist legality and have set their soldiers as individuals standing above laws and customs to ravage and wreck with nothing to restrain them and no one to bring them to judgment before local or international justice.
But the cradle of civilization, legislation, and morality – the pure Land of the Two Rivers – has today risen anew to fulfill the role that its glorious Creator intended for it, and that is to make the occupiers taste woe, to cause them to wail like the sands blowing through the Baghdad streets. The Land of the Two Rivers will without fail send them back to their homes in coffins or with their defeated tails between their legs. It will thereby announce to the world the beginning of the end of American arrogance. It will proclaim America`s retreat – humbled, humiliated, and covered with wounds – so that it may never return to its haughtiness again.
If our noble Iraqi people appear to harbor feelings of hatred for America, this is not a hatred of the great American people, but only for American militarism and the band of tyrants who carry out the orders of the Anglo-Zionist right-wing lobby which has even begun to curtail the freedom of the American people themselves. For today it is sending them to die in defense of its monopolist interests and in defense of its rabid policeman – Israel.
Comrades!
In the midst of the deepening struggle of humanity against oppression, indeed as the oppression of the peoples by world monopoly intensifies, and on the basis of the human dream of achieving justice and equality among people, our Communist movement arose as one of those breakthrough torrents that history has a way of coming up with in times when oppression and enslavement are mounting and when there is no hope except for total, radical change.
Although it was preceded in this struggle for justice, peace, and freedom by Islam, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Mandaeanism, and the doctrines of Mt. Sinai, the Communist Movement has its own specific character. That is, it arose on the basis of the great legacy of human development, as has been most clearly seen in the prodigious upsurge in science; the acceleration of communications; the emergence of country and national borders between states; the prodigal concentration of capital with its rampant expansion for profit and its complete alignment with religion and on the side of monopoly against the people who are oppressed. Our philosophy became aware of the bases and reasons for exploitation and aligned itself totally with the oppressed, taking into account the fact that if those oppressed people came to power, that event would end the age of exploitation and replace it with fraternity, peace, and justice among the peoples. Based on this consideration, our movement has been one of the fiercest and most vehement opponents of the occupation of other people`s territory and of colonialism, whether those took place peacefully or by means of war: for occupation is the most intense form of national, ethnic, and class oppression all together.
It would not be superfluous to mention that the world Communist Movement has made great contributions to the liberation struggle of the peoples. The experience of Laos, Cambodia, Cuba, and Viet Nam bear witness to this. The experience of the Lebanese Communist Party during the Zionist rape of their country also bears witness to this, as the Communists raised the mighty slogan “To arms!” and fell as martyrs and in martyrdom bombings just as did their comrades in Hizb Allah and the rest of the Lebanese Patriotic Movement. If at times the Communist Movement has suffered reversals, these can serve as lessons for us on how to deal with mistakes and review our practice.
Neither is it superfluous to mention that the Iraqi Patriotic Movement, and within that our Iraqi Communist Party, have given martyrs to the cause of liberation.
Our slogan, as Iraqi Communists, is “A free homeland and a happy people.” Based on that, our position regarding the freedom, sovereignty, and independence of the homeland is of the utmost sensitivity and importance – so much so that even our philosophical convictions themselves must give up pride of place to them. This outlook was what led our Party`s founder, our Comrade forever, Fahd, to say, “I am a patriot before I am a Communist.” In accordance with this, the defense of national sovereignty is a principle that demands and compels us by our very nature to fight the occupier wherever he might come from. We must use every means to fight the occupier, and we must fight in alliance with patriotic Iraqi forces, whatever way of thinking they follow. Also in accordance with this principle, in times when our country falls under occupation or attack by an enemy, there is no room for what are called “tactics” or “accepting the status quo” or “reckoning with the facts of power and weakness” if these are not aimed at the basic goal of defense of the homeland. During the 1967 Zionist war of aggression, Iraqi Communists set aside their hostility to `Abd ar-Rahman `Arif and made an appeal from their prison cells – where some were on death row, while others were serving out long-term or life sentences. Those Communists set aside such matters and appealed to be released to take part in the fighting against the Zionist enemy, either on the front lines as regular soldiers or in guerrilla resistance outfits. They pledged to return voluntarily to prison after the enemy was driven off, and they offered the Iraqi government the right to chose whatever guarantees it wanted, including letting some of their members serve as hostages.
But today, oblivious to the time and to the consciousness of free people, the Communist Movement in Iraq has been deceived. It has suffered a reversal more intensely painful and more violent in its effects than the acceptance of the resolution to partition Palestine at the end of the 1940s.
The reversal today is the result of two full decades of retreats and backtracking led by the former Secretary Mr. Aziz Muhammad, accompanied by the financial and propaganda officer of the Party at that time, Mr. Fakhri Karim.
At the end of the 1970s Fakhri was subjected to a Party tribunal after it was disclosed that he had a relationship with agencies of the regime. His Party membership was suspended. But on the basis of an individual order from Aziz Muhammad, Fakhri was elevated to membership in the Political Bureau and put in charge of the Party`s finance, propaganda, and security apparatus. That is to say, in practice he was given keys to all decision-making in the Party. Since that time and on the pretext of the military situation in which the Party found itself, the democratic part of the principle of “democratic centralism” has been canceled. This has meant the mechanical implementation of orders, particularly since Fakhri held control of the comrades` livelihood in his hands. The best of the Party militants were sent into exile, as were the oldest Party members and thinkers. The Party Congress held in 1984 politically undermined the Party. The Party`s top concern then became the finding of an ally that would fight on its behalf. The ideological undermining of the party resulted in its becoming a mouthpiece for the chauvinist tendency within the Kurdish movement, while organizationally the undermined Party became an army of informers serving Fakhri, who spied on his comrades, searching out ways to bring them down should they try to expose him. A whole new discipline outside the bounds of normal organizational behavior emerged, namely the discipline of bringing people down. Fakhri used this, naturally, to divert attention from his own degeneration. In addition he usurped control over the Party`s supplies and over its propaganda institutions. He registered them as his personal property and he entered the world of wheeling and dealing. The inevitable result of all this was that he would ally himself with America, that he would find in America the best possible protector of his commercial interests. He therefore visited Washington in 1991 and gave them a down payment in the form of a statement he made on Voice of America in which he demanded that Bush intensify the embargo against the Iraqi people. By enticement and threat he attracted a group of Iraqi Communist Party writers and journalists to cooperate with the American Central Intelligence Agency to put out a newspaper called “Sawt al-Kuwayt ad-Dawli” or “The International Voice of Kuwait”.
This newspaper, edited by Communists, was one of the most important clarions calling for the mobilization of the 30-nation aggression against Iraq. Specifically, it was the first to publish the theatrical report about the young girl Nuwayra under the headline “Iraqis steal infant incubators from Kuwait”. As the battles raged, this newspaper, which was edited by Iraqi Communists, printed stories under giant masochistic headlines like “Coalition forces demolish Baghdad” and “Allied aircraft exterminate Iraqi military formation near Basra.” Even the Kuwaiti government with all its systematic hostility to Iraq could not bear the extreme vulgarity of such a paper. It came to regard the money allocated to it as a waste of public funds and finally shut it down. Thus in 1993 its editors began directly to work for the Central Intelligence Agency, becoming experts at bringing down people within the Party and the Iraqi and Arab patriotic movements. They set about publicizing the plan to occupy the country under the slogan “liberation of Iraq.” America announced some of their names, and an Iraqi lawyer living in exile lauded them. The writings of those editors are archived and available for reference to anyone seeking proof of their vociferous revolt against their own identities and customs.
By agreement with Fakhri, the renegade Hamid Majid ascended to the leadership of the Party, which plunged headlong into open activity with America against the Iraqi people. The Party newspaper “Tariq ash-Sha`b” published an article in July 2002 that reported that the Deputy Consul in the American Embassy in Damascus visited the offices of the Iraqi Communist Party in Syria and discussed recent developments with Party representatives. The Party`s internal publication, “Munadil al-Hizb” reported on a special meeting of the Party Central Committee to study how the Party would take part in the coming events, which some Party spokesmen termed “the liberation of Iraq.” During the invasion battles, the Party openly acknowledged that it had fighters on the front lines together with the “Coalition Forces.” In the last decade, the Party took upon itself the task of preparatory propaganda for what the Anglo-Zionists termed preventive air strikes on military targets during the period of the embargo. Hamid Majid himself entered Iraq via Kuwait together with the American Army. Last but not least, he has joined the Council of Opportunists which was declared and whose members were appointed by the American Military Governor of Iraq. The first decree of this Council was to declare the date of Baghdad`s occupation to be a national holiday. In addition, in order to secure his admission to this Council of Opportunists, Hamid Majid agreed to the conditions imposed on him by the Military Governor, among the most important of which are:
That Hamid Majid must not represent the Communist Party but the Shi`ite confessional community.
That the Communist Party should reformulate its program and internal rules so as to take out from them and from the Party`s publications, all references to “colonialism”, “imperialism”, “national independence”, “defense of the homeland”, and any concept that is related to these terms. In addition, Bremer must be referred to as “Mr. Bremer” and the occupation authorities must be referred to as the “Government of the Coalition”.
The Iraqi Communist Party must cooperate with the American Army against Islamist and other “saboteurs” who are now bearing arms against the occupation. The Party must immediately inform on any suspects, and it must actively participate in maintaining security.
No members of the Communist Party must carry any weapons unless licensed to do so by the government.
The Party must focus its celebrations on such occasions as the 9th of April, New Year`s Day, Christmas, American Independence Day, the anniversary of the foundation of the Iraqi Communist Party, and Nawruz.
The Party must work determinedly to reduce extremism among Shi`ite Muslims – the Sadr and al-Khalis Groups – while on the other hand working to strengthen the currents of Baqir al-Hakim and Bahr al-`Ulum.
Obviously, the implementation of these conditions means in practice the total elimination of the role of the Iraqi Communist Party in the political arena, on the one hand; and, on the other hand it will lead to transforming the mass membership of the Iraqi Communist Party into informers, collaborators with the enemy of Iraq, the enemy of the peoples, and of humanity – the Anglo-Zionist right-wing. The hands of this right-wing are stained with the blood of patriots from every part of the world. It is they who brought about the defeat of the glorious 14 July 1958 Revolution, and the defeat of the glorious 3 July Revolution. Indeed it is this right-wing itself that pushed and organized and is ultimately responsible for the bloodshed and loss of life associated with Baath Party coups of 8 February 1963 and 17 July 1968. In February 1963 alone 105,000 honorable Iraqis fell as martyrs at the hands of the putschists. After the Baathist leader, `Ali Salih as-Sa`di, and the man who planned and arranged a Baathist coup against the government of `Abd al-Karim Qasim had been arrested, the American Central Intelligence Agency took over direction of the putschists, making use of a radio transmitter in Amman, Jordan. According to the account given by Mr. Hanna Batatu [in his book “The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq”, pp. 985-986.] this radio station broadcast the names and addresses of Communists together with their secret hideouts enabling the putschists and agents of the Nationalist Guard to execute them on the spot or to arrest them and torture them to death.
The February 1963 coup was not its only bloody act. The American Central Intelligence Agency planned the murder of a million martyrs in Indonesia and of more than a million in Viet Nam in open genocide or in the course of what even enemies of the Left have called a “dirty war.” This is to say nothing about the massacres in Chile, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, and the 30-nation aggression against Iraq, the depleted uranium. And now our country is under occupation in contravention of international legal resolutions.
Comrades!
Our heroic Iraqi people and their courageous resistance fighters are up to the task of expelling the occupation. But we appeal to you for your solidarity with and support for the Iraqi people, not simply because our cause is just, nor merely as a matter of principle, but so that you may take part in this great event – the fall of America, enemy of the peoples – the initiation of which has been laid upon the Iraqi people who yearn for your support.
The crime that the renegade Hamid Majid has committed against the Party and Iraq is unpardonable. It inflicts damage on the entire Communist movement in Iraq and the Arab Homeland, and on you as well. Neither self-criticism nor apology will do any good in this case. The Party Rules have rejected this behavior in legitimate organizational ways, yet he and his gang have persisted in their behavior in spite of the Party`s internal system. Therefore we, the mass members of the Iraqi Communist Party and its base, declare as follows:
The renegade Hamid Majid, by collaborating with the American Administration prior to the occupation and by joining one of its institutions after the occupation, has committed the crime of high treason against the nation. In his activities he does not represent the Iraqi Communist Party nor Iraqi patriots.
The Iraqi Communist Party stands with the sons and daughters of their people against the occupation and is committed to the armed resistance and supports it regardless of which ideological currents are involved. The first and basic aim now is the expulsion of the occupiers from Iraq.
Shame and disgrace upon those who incited the invaders to attack his homeland!
Glory to the heroic Iraqi people!
Eternal glory to the July Revolution and its great leader `Abd al-Karim Qasim!
No to the government of “prize horses”! No to the Council of Opportunists! No to any international forces on the soil of Iraq!
May the hands of the courageous fighters be protected!
The Iraqi Communist Party (Cadre)
20 July 2003
