Interview with Sammi Alaa
Sammi Alaa, 38, is an Iraqi communist who had to fly from Iraq and took refuge in Denmark. Facing the support of the Iraqi Communist Party to the imperialist aggression on his country including the embargo and the wars, he broke with his party and joined the Iraqi Patriotic Alliance gathering different currents of the democratic and anti-imperialist opposition to Saddam. Recently he was on a two-week tour through Italy initiated by the Free Iraq Committees in support of the Iraqi resistance.
Q: Will the massacre of Falluja serve the strategic plans of the US occupation r might it backfire?
R: We have to take into consideration that the crimes committed by the US army in Falluja exceed all what we have seen so far. In fact they did not fight a battle to smash the resistance, but they just extinguished tens of thousands of inhabitants which remained in the besieged town. They bombed the residential areas from planes, helicopters and pounded it by heavy artillery while cutting off water and food supply as well as blocking medical treatment. When they entered and still met resistance they withdrew and bombed again using also Phosphor and nerve gas. It was no battle, but an outright mass destruction of humans, a little Hiroshima.
The occupants deliberately perpetrated this war crime for two political reasons: First to avenge the defeat the resistance inflicted on them in April which might be the most significant humiliation suffered since Vietnam. Second to silence the political forces which refuse to participate in what they call political process, that is to say their faked elections.
But this attempt will result in the exact opposite. The resistance will not only survive but consolidate its forces. We have seen this after the operation against Samarra in September. Today the resistance is back in the town. Also the ability of the resistance to strike in Mosul on the height of the massacre confirms not only its unbroken military force but also the popular support of the resistance. Otherwise it would be impossible to chase away the collaborationist armed forces from such a big city. The attack has furthermore provoked the election boycott of the influential Association of Muslim Scholars as well as of the movement of Muqtada al-Sadr.
Q: What does the IPA think of the elections?
R: Any institution installed by the occupying power is illegitimate. So is the election farce. We will boycott the elections and we will do our best to convince as many as possible to not give legitimacy to this operation of the occupation by going to the ballots.
Q: The IPA dedicated itself to build a political front comprising the main resistance forces. Apparently this did not work out so far. Even some forces claiming to oppose the occupation announced their participation at the election. How come?
R: We believe that the resistance has been advancing not only on the military but also on the political field. Many of the Pan-Arabist and leftist forces who intended to take part at the elections could be convinced to join the boycott campaign. Also the Association of Muslim Scholars joined in. These are good signs.
This tendency is paving the way for the political front. All those who called not to take part will be addressed to unify in the resistance front. Although our leader Abduljabbar al-Kubaysi has been kidnapped, our attempts on the ground continue. It is clear that without such a front there is no possibility to get rid of the foreign occupation.
Q: Are there some news about Abduljabbar?
R: The US occupation authorities continue to decline to give any information on his case neither to his family, nor to the Red Crescent and Red Cross let alone to journalists. So while the US claims to put on “democratic elections” their make the political representatives of the resisting people disappear. While they defame the Iraqi resistance to be all kidnappers and head cutters they themselves are the ones to kidnap, torture and violate all respective regulations of international law.
We will continue with the solidarity campaign for Abduljabber and we are grateful for the support we get from the different European forces in support of the resistance.
Q: Some Arab news outlets claim, however, that despite Muqtada´s public denunciation of the massacre of Falluja and his call to abstain from the elections, he is tacitly searching for an agreement with al-Sistani to participate at the US-sponsored ballots. Their suspicion is that there is a big international deal behind, namely that in exchange to a relaxation of the US aggression to Iran, Tehran will press on the Shia forces to participate in the elections.
R: Iran has been helping the US occupation from the very beginning. Thus the pro-Iranian forces have been in the puppet government right from the beginning. But these proxies of Iran are more and more isolated within the Iraqi people. So many influential Shia leaders have already called not to go to the elections. So I doubt that there are negotiations between al-Sadr and al-Sistani.
What is true is that al-Sadr is under big pressure form the US and their Iraqi proxy armed forces. Al-Sistani is promoting the elections by all means together with the Americans. Al-Sadr´s offices have been closed, his officials arrested and he is in house arrest especially after the butchery of Falluja.
To give you an instructive example: Al-Husseini is a Shia cleric from Kerbala who called for boycott. One of his supporters put up a banner on his shop reading “No to the elections”. He was killed in cold blood while al-Husseini went into hiding. So one can understand why Muqtada´s movement is adopting a low profile.
Q: How you view the call of the “Iraqi National Foundation Congress” led by the Shia cleric Jawad al-Khalisi to boycott the elections?
R: This inscribes itself in the tendency I explained before and we obviously welcome it. But we ask why they needed the American massacre in Falluja to withdraw from the so-called political process.
Q: The Western media pretend that the predominantly Sunni boycott might trigger a religious civil war with the Shia community?
R: They want to make believe that the Shia clerics really lead the people. In fact they just want to go to power by the means of the system of ethnic and confessional quotas introduced by the occupation. But on the popular level neither this divide nor the collaboration is being accepted. The clerics are under high pressure from the masses to call for boycott and some apparently already gave in. So the US attempts to apply the known strategy of divide and rule failed. There will be no civil war between Shia and Sunni. Instead there is already a war between occupants and their collaborators and the resistance backed by the popular masses which are united beyond confessional differences.
This talk of civil war is not only used by US imperialism and their allies to cover their failure to create what they call democracy and to justify the lawlessness they installed. There are also many European so-called leftists who use this colonialist argument.
Florence, Italy
End of November 2004
