Carsten Kofoed: “Peace plans” violate the right of self-determination of the Iraqi people

“Peace plans” violate the right of self-determination of the Iraqi people

By Carsten Kofoed, Free Iraq Blog of Denmark, September 10, 2007

On August 17, one could read about a ”peace plan” for Iraq in Arbejderen (The Worker, Denmark’s only leftist daily, translator’s note). The plan has been worked out by Jan Oeberg, who heads a so-called peace research institute in Lund, Sweden.

A main point in Oeberg’s “peace plan” for Iraq is that the current US-led occupation of Iraq should be ended within six months and substituted by “an international peace building mission for Iraq under UN leadership”. The same illusory position on the imperialist UN exists in the Socialist People’s Party and the Red-Green Alliance, parties that have also formulated various peace plans on behalf of the Iraqi people.

That any non-Iraqi at all formulates what should happen in Iraq today and in the future, except unconditionally demanding the immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraqi soil, is in itself a violation of the right of self-determination of the Iraqi people. But when you even recommend that the UN, which for more than twelve years – from 1990 until 2003 – murdered two million Iraqis due to the US-UK-led UN sanctions, then you are actually trampling on the Iraqi victims.

Anti-war people, whether they are “peace researchers”, the Red-Green Alliance or the Socialist People’s Party, must understand their task. Our task as anti-war activists in Denmark is two-sided:

1. To get the criminal Danish occupation forces out of Iraq and the politically responsible war criminals headed by Anders Fogh Rasmussen (Danish Prime Minister, translator’s note) brought to account.

2. To defend the right of self-determination of the Iraqi people, that is, its right to arrange Iraqi society according to its own wishes.

In defending this right of self-determination, the immediate end of the occupation is of course a precondition as the Iraqis cannot decide their own future under occupation. From this it is also imperative to support all Iraqi resistance working for ending the occupation. Here the armed resistance is by far the most important because it makes the occupying power suffer the most and has brought it to its knees.

Furthermore, defending the right of self-determination of the Iraqi people is independent of if we Danish anti-war activists agree politically with this or that resistance group. If you make the right of self-determination of the Iraqi people dependent of if you agree with this or that political ideology in Iraq, you are in fact violating this very right of self-determination and behaving both chauvinistically and undemocratically.

When people like Oeberg can produce a “peace plan”, which completely ignores the Iraqi Resistance – the only legitimate representative of the Iraqi people – and its legitimate right to shape the future of liberated Iraq, but instead puts the future of Iraq in the hands of the UN and various international conferences, then it is not just misleading the anti-war movement. It is also a direct and unacceptable attack on the heroic liberation struggle and resistance of the Iraqi people that has brought so many sacrifices for the freedom of the country. Objectively, it is a defence of US imperialism, a formalized attempt to try to cheat the Iraqi people out of getting its great victory: complete liberation.

As far as I know, there exists only one comprehensive programme for the liberation of Iraq and the time thereafter. It was published in October 2006 and is written by the biggest political party in Iraq, the Baath Party, which has been outlawed and is being heavily persecuted by the occupying power. It is a Pan-Arab and declared socialist party, which governed Iraq for no less than thirty-five years and build the country to that progressive regional power it became before sanctions, war and occupation ended this social experiment. Today, the Baath Party successfully leads the resistance struggle.

The programme of liberation is called “The Programme of Liberation and Independence of Iraq”. It can be read on the Free Iraq Blog of Denmark in Danish translation and has far more to do with the reality in Iraq than pro-imperialist “peace plans”.

Sent as a comment (740 words maximum) to Arbejderen (The Worker) on September 10, 2007. Published in The Worker on September 25, 2007.