Is Iraq Coming to the End of Forty Years of War?

Patrick Cockburn

There is a growing mood of self-confidence in Baghdad which I have not seen here since I first visited Iraq in 1977. The country seemed then to be heading for a peaceful and prosperous future thanks to rising oil revenues. It only became clear several years later that Saddam Hussein was a monster of cruelty with a disastrous tendency to start unwinnable wars. At the time, I was able to drive safely all around Iraq, visiting cities from Mosul to Basra which became lethally dangerous over the next 40 years.

The streets of the capital are packed with people shopping and eating in restaurants far into the night. Looking out my hotel window, I can see people for the first time in many years building things which are not military fortifications. There are no sinister smudges of black smoke on the horizon marking where bombs have gone off. Most importantly, there is a popular feeling that the twin victories of the Iraqi security forces in recapturing Mosul in July and Kirkuk on 16 October have permanently shifted the balance of power back towards stability. The Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, once criticised as weak and vacillating, is today almost universally praised for being calm, determined and successful in battling Isis and confronting the Kurds.

“I detect a certain jauntiness in Baghdad that I have not seen before,” says the Iraqi historian and former minister Ali Allawi. “Al-Abadi has hardly put a foot wrong since the start of the crisis over Kirkuk.” A recently retired senior Iraqi security official adds that “it was bit of luck for all Iraqis, that [Kurdish President Masoud] Barzani brought on a confrontation when he did”. People in the capital are beginning to sound more like victors rather than victims.

Life in Baghdad is abnormal by the standard of any other city: it remains full of blast walls made out of concrete slabs that always remind me of giant grave stones. Numerous checkpoints exacerbate appalling traffic jams. Bombings by Isis are far less frequent than they used to be, but there are memories of past atrocities, such as the truck bomb in Karada district on 3 July 2016 that killed 323 people and injured hundreds more. “Many of them were burned to death in buildings with plastic cladding on the outside that caught fire like Grenfell Tower,” observed an Iraqi observer as we drove past the site of the blast.

Violence will not entirely end: the Shia majority are about to celebrate the Arbaeen festival on 10 November when millions of pilgrims walk on foot to the shrine city of Kerbala to mourn the death of Imam Hussein in a battle in 680 AD. The road between Kerbala and the shrine city of Najaf, is already decorated with thousands of black mourning flags, interspersed with occasional green and red, ones, and there are thousands of improvised tents where the pilgrims can rest and eat.

The vast numbers involved makes it impossible to protect them all, so Isis may well bomb the vast multitude of pilgrims in a bid to show that it has not been totally eliminated. Despite this the long-expected defeat of Isis is very real, but the greatest boost to public morale comes from the unexpected crumbling, with little resistance and in a short space of time, of the Kurdish quasi-state in northern Iraq that had ruled a quarter of the country.

Iraqi history over the last 40 years has been full of what were misleadingly billed as “turning points” for the better, but which turned out to be only ushering in a new phase in Iraq’s multi-phase civil wars that have been going on since the Americans overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003. All sides have become, at different periods, the proxies of foreign backers, but this period may now be coming to an end primarily because the wars have produced winners and losers.

Communal politics are not the only determining feature in the Iraqi political landscape, but the Shia, Sunni and Kurdish communities are its main building blocks. The Sunni, a fifth of the population, have lost comprehensively because Isis became their main vehicle for opposition to the central government. Justly or unjustly, they share in its defeat. Their great cities like Mosul and Ramadi are in ruins. Sunni villages that line the main roads have often been levelled because they were seen as the home bases of local guerrillas planting IEDS. IDP camps are full of displaced Sunnis.

Shia-Kurdish cooperation was born in opposition to Saddam Hussein and was the basis for the post-Saddam power-sharing governments. But both sides felt that they were being short-changed by the other and Baghdad and Erbil came to see each other as the hostile capitals of separate states.

Great though their differences were, they might not have over-boiled for a few years had Barzani and his Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) not had the astonishingly bad idea of holding a Kurdish referendum on independence on 25 September. It was one of the great miscalculates of Iraqi, if not Middle East, history: the KDP now complains that it was the victim of Iranian machinations, but its real mistake was to confront the Iraqi government when it was politically and militarily much stronger than it had been after recapturing Mosul from Isis. Regardless of which Kurdish leader did or did not betray the cause, their Peshmerga would have lost the war.

Ironically, the Iraqi Kurds are now likely to lose a large measure of the independence they enjoyed before the referendum. They have lost not only the oil province of Kirkuk, but may also lose control of the borders of their three core provinces. Iraqi regular forces are pressing towards the crucial border town of Fishkhabour between Iraqi Kurdistan and Turkey. Al-Abadi last week turned down a Kurdish offer “to freeze” the referendum result, demanding its complete negation, though it now has only a symbolic value.

Iraqis in Baghdad are rightly wary of predictions of a return to normal life after 40 years of permanent crisis. There have been false dawns before, but this time round the prospects for peace are much better than before. The biggest risk is a collision between the US and Iran in which Iraq would be the political – and possibly the military – battlefield. Barzani and the KDP are promoting the idea of Iranian-backed Hashd al-Shaabi Shia paramilitaries being at the forefront of every battle, though in fact Kirkuk was taken by two regiments from Baghdad’s elite Counter-Terrorism Service and the 9th Armoured Division.

The success of the Iraqi regular forces is such that one danger is that they and the Baghdad government will become overconfident and overplay their hand, not making sure that all communities in Iraq get a reasonable cut of the national cake in terms of power, money and jobs. A golden rule of Iraqi politics is that none of the three main communities can be permanently marginalised or crushed, as Saddam Hussein discovered to his cost. The end of the era of wars in Iraq would not just be good news for Iraqis, but the rest of the world as well.

U.S. Commandos are a “Persistent Presence” on Russia’s Doorstep

NICK TURSE

“They are very concerned about their adversary next door,” said General Raymond Thomas, the head of U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), at a national security conference in Aspen, Colorado, in July.  “They make no bones about it.”

The “they” in question were various Eastern European and Baltic nations.  “Their adversary”?  Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

Thomas, the commander of America’s most elite troops — Navy SEALs and Army Green Berets among them — went on to raise fears about an upcoming Russian military training event, a wargame, known as “Zapad” or “West,” involving 10 Russian Navy ships, 70 jets and helicopters, and 250 tanks.  “The point of concern for most of these eastern Europeans right now is they’re about to do an exercise in Belarus… that’s going to entail up to 100,000 Russian troops moving into that country.” And he added, “The great concern is they’re not going to leave, and… that’s not paranoia…”

Over the last two decades, relations between the United States and Russia have increasingly soured, with Moscow casting blame on the United States for encouraging the Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003 and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine a year later.  Washington has, in turn, expressed its anger over the occupation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia following the Russo-Georgian War of 2008; the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine after pro-Moscow president Viktor Yanukovych was chased from power; and interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.  There have been recriminations on both sides over the other nation’s military adventurism in Syria, the sanctions Washington imposed on Moscow in reaction to Crimea, Ukraine, and human rights issues, and tit-for-tat diplomatic penalties that have repeatedly ramped up tensions.

While Zapad, which took place last month, is an annual strategic exercise that rotates among four regions, American officials nonetheless viewed this year’s event as provocative.  “People are worried this is a Trojan horse,” Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, who commands U.S. Army forces in Europe, told Reuters. “[The Russians] say, ‘We’re just doing an exercise,’ and then all of a sudden they’ve moved all these people and capabilities somewhere.”

Russia is not, however, the only military power with “people and capabilities” in the region. In passing, SOCOM’s Thomas also mentioned the presence of other forces; troops that he readily admitted the public might not be aware of.  Those soldiers were — just as he feared of the Russian troops involved in Zapad — not going anywhere.  And it wasn’t just a matter of speculation.  After all, they wear the same uniform he does.

For the past two years, the U.S. has maintained a special operations contingent in almost every nation on Russia’s western border.  “[W]e’ve had persistent presence in every country — every NATO country and others on the border with Russia doing phenomenal things with our allies, helping them prepare for their threats,” said Thomas, mentioning the Baltics as well as Romania, Poland, Ukraine, and Georgia by name.

Commandos and Their Comrades

Since 9/11, U.S. Special Operations forces (SOF) have grown in every conceivable way from funding to manpower, the pace of operations to geographic sweep.  On any given day, about 8,000 special operators — from a command numbering roughly 70,000 in total — are deployed in around 80 countries.  Over the course of a year, they operate in about 70% of the world’s nations.

According to Major Michael Weisman, a spokesman for U.S. Special Operations Command Europe, elite U.S. forces have deployed to 21 European countries in 2017 and conducted exercises with an even larger number of nations. “Outside of Russia and Belarus we train with virtually every country in Europe either bilaterally or through various multinational events,” he told TomDispatch.

The number of commandos in Europe has also expanded exponentially in recent years.  In 2006, 3% of special operators deployed overseas were sent to the continent.  Last year, the number topped 12% — a jump of more than 300%.  Only Africa has seen a larger increase in deployments over the same time span.

This special-ops surge is also reflected in the Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) program, overseas missions designed to prepare American commandos in a variety of warfighting skills while also strengthening relations with foreign forces.  In 2012, special operators conducted 29 JCETs on that continent.  Last year, the number reached 37, including six in Bulgaria, three in Estonia, three in Latvia, three in Poland, and three in Moldova.

The United States has devoted significant resources to building and bolstering allied special ops forces across the region.  “Our current focus consists of assuring our allies through building partner capacity efforts to counter and resist various types of Russian aggression, as well as enhance their resilience,” SOCOM’s Thomas told members of the House Armed Services Committee earlier this year.  “We are working relentlessly with our partners and the Department of State to build potency in eastern and northern Europe to counter Russia’s approach to unconventional warfare, including developing mature and sustainable Special Operations capabilities across the region.”

This year, U.S. commandos could be found in nations all along Russia’s borders.  In March, for example, Green Berets took to snowmobiles for a cold-weather JCET alongside local troops in Lapland, Finland.  In May, Navy SEALs teamed up with Lithuanian forces as part of Flaming Sword 17, a training exercise in that country.  In June, members of the U.S. 10th Special Forces Group and Polish commandos carried out air assault and casualty evacuation training near Lubliniec, Poland. In July, Naval Special Warfare operators took part in Sea Breeze, a two decade-old annual military exercise in Ukraine. In August, airmen from the 321st Special Tactics Squadron transformed a rural highway in Jägala, Estonia, into an airstrip for tank-killing A-10 Thunderbolts as part of a military drill.  That same month, U.S. special operators advised host-nation commandos taking part in Exercise Noble Partner in the Republic of Georgia.

“Working with the GSOF [Republic of Georgia’s Special Operations forces] was awesome,” said Captain Christopher Pulliam, the commander of the Georgia Army National Guard’s Company H (Long-Range Surveillance), 121st Infantry Regiment.  (That, of course, is a unit from the American state of Georgia.) “Our mission set requires that we work in small teams that gather specific intel in the area of operations. The GSOF understand this and can use our intel to create a better understanding of the situation on the ground and react accordingly.”

Special Warriors and Special Warfare

The United States isn’t alone in fielding a large contingent of special operations forces.  The U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency estimates that Russia’s Spetsnaz (“special purpose”) troops number around 30,000, a sizeable force, although less than half the size of America’s contingent of commandos.  Russia, SOCOM’s Thomas told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this year, is “particularly adept at leveraging unconventional approaches to advancing their interests and it is clear they are pursuing a wide range of audacious approaches to competition — SOF [special operations forces] often present a very natural unconventional response.”

Indeed, just like the United States and myriad militaries around the world, Russia has devoted significant resources to developing its doctrine and capabilities in covert, clandestine, and unconventional forms of warfare.  In a seminal 2013 article in the Russian Academy of Military Science’s journal Military-Industrial Courier, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov explained the nature of modern hybrid warfare, including the use of elite troops, this way:

“In the twenty-first century we have seen a tendency toward blurring the lines between the states of war and peace. Wars are no longer declared and, having begun, proceed according to an unfamiliar template… The role of nonmilitary means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness… [t]he broad use of political, economic, informational, humanitarian, and other nonmilitary measures… is supplemented by military means of a concealed character, including carrying out actions of informational conflict and the actions of special operations forces.”

Spetsnaz troops have indeed played a role in all of Russia’s armed interventions since 2001, including in Chechnya and the North Caucasus, Georgia, Ukraine, and Syria.  During that same span, U.S. Special Operations forces have been employed in combat in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Syria, Niger, and the Central African Republic.  They have also had a presence in Jordan, Kenya, Djibouti, and Cameroon, among other countries to which, according to President Trump, U.S. combat-equipped forces are currently deployed.

In an interview late last year, retired Lieutenant General Charles Cleveland, chief of U.S. Army Special Operations Command from 2012 to 2015 and now the Senior Mentor to the Army War College, discussed the shortcomings of the senior military leadership in regard to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the “bad national policy decisions… that shaped U.S. campaigns in those theaters,” and a reliance on a brand of conventional war-fighting with limited effectiveness in achieving political goals.  “[I]t is important to understand why SOF has risen from footnote and supporting player to main effort,” he added, “because its use also highlights why the U.S. continues to have difficulty in its most recent campaigns — Afghanistan, Iraq, against ISIS and AQ [al-Qaeda] and its affiliates, Libya, Yemen, etc. and in the undeclared campaigns in the Baltics, Poland, and Ukraine — none of which fits the U.S. model for traditional war.”

U.S. Special Operations Command Europe‎ failed to answer TomDispatch’s questions about those “undeclared campaigns” on Russia’s doorstep, but more public and conventional efforts have been in wide evidence.  In January, for example, tanks, trucks, and other equipment began arriving in Germany, before being sent on to Poland, to support Operation Atlantic Resolve.  That effort, “designed to reassure NATO allies and partners… in light of the Russian intervention in Ukraine,” according to the Congressional Research Service, began with a nine-month rotation of about 3,500 soldiers from the 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, who were replaced in September by 3,300 personnel and 1,500 vehicles from the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, which would be deployed to five countries.  Earlier this month, Russia’s Defense Ministry complained that the size of the U.S. contingent in the Baltics violates a Russian-NATO agreement.

Red Dawn in the Gray Zone

Late last year, a group of active-duty and retired senior military officers, former ambassadors, academics, and researchers gathered for a symposium at the National Defense University (NDU) in Washington, D.C., titled “Russian Engagement in the Gray Zone.”  Conducted via Chatham House rules — that is, in accounts of the meeting, statements could not be attributed to any specific speaker — the Americans proceeded to vilify Russia both for its bellicosity and its underhanded methods.  Among the assessments: “Russia is always at a natural state of war and it prioritizes contactless war”; “Russia de-emphasizes kinetic activities and emphasizes the indirect/non-lethal approach”; and “Russia places a priority on subversion.”

The experts at NDU called for a comprehensive campaign to undermine Russia through sanctions, by courting “disenfranchised personnel” and “alienated persons” within that country, by developing enhanced cyber-capabilities, by utilizing psychological operations and “strategic messaging” to enhance “tactical actions,” and by conducting a special ops shadow war — which General Charles Cleveland seems to suggest might be already underway. “[T]he United States should learn from the Chechnya rebels’ reaction.  The rebels used decentralized operations and started building pockets of resistance (to include solo jihadists),” reads a synopsis of the symposium.

“SOCOM actions will need,” the NDU experts asserted, “to be unconventional and irregular in order to compete with Russian modern warfare tactics.”  In other words, they were advocating an anti-Russian campaign that seemed to emphasize the very approach they were excoriating Russia for — the “indirect/non-lethal approach” with a “priority on subversion.”

In the end, Russia’s much-feared “West” war game, in which Spetsnaz troops did participate, concluded with a whimper, not a bang.  “After all the anxiety, Russia’s Zapad exercise ends without provocation,” read the headline in the military newspaper Stars and Stripes on September 20th.

For months, while Russia insisted its war game would involve fewer than 13,000 soldiers, the U.S. and its allies had warned that, in reality, up to 100,000 troops would flood into Belarus.  Of those Russian troop levels, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Möller, a Swedish military observer who attended Zapad, said, “We reported about 12,400.”  Of such exercises, he added, “This is normal military business as we do in all countries with armed forces. This is not training for attacking anyone. You meet the enemy, you stop the enemy, you defeat the enemy with a counterattack. We are doing the same thing in Sweden.”

Indeed, just as Möller suggested, more than 20,000 troops — including U.S. Special Operations forces and soldiers from Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Lithuania, Latvia, Norway, and Sweden — had gathered in his country during the Zapad exercise for Aurora 2017.  And Sweden was hardly unique.  At the same time, troops from the U.S., Bulgaria, Canada, Estonia, Georgia, Italy, Lithuania, Moldova, Norway, Poland, Romania, Turkey, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom were carrying out Rapid Trident, an annual military exercise, in neighboring Ukraine.

What message was the U.S. sending to Russia by conducting training exercises on its borders, Catherine Herridge of Fox News asked General Raymond Thomas in Aspen?  “That’s a fascinating question because I am — I try to appreciate the adversary’s optic to — I realize that a way to gauge a metric if you will for how well we’re doing,” the SOCOM chief replied somewhat incoherently.

Herridge was, of course, asking Thomas to view the world through the eyes of his adversary, to imagine something akin to Russia and its ally Syria conducting war games in Mexico or Canada or in both countries; to contemplate Spetsnaz troops spread throughout the Western hemisphere on an enduring basis just as America’s elite troops are now a fixture in the Baltics and elsewhere in Eastern Europe.

In the end, Thomas’s take was understated in a way that undoubtedly wouldn’t have been the case had the roles been reversed.  “I am curious what Putin and his leadership are thinking,” the special ops chief mused. “I think it was a little unnerving.”

Cambodian government expels opposition party from parliament

 John Roberts

The Cambodian Constitutional Council last Tuesday endorsed changes to four anti-democratic election laws approved earlier by the National Assembly and Senate. The changed laws pave the way for the expulsion from the parliament of all members of the main opposition party elected in 2013, plus thousands of its members elected to regional governments last June.

The measures will effectively wipe out the results of both elections and give the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) unchallengeable control of every level of government. The CPP is only waiting for a Supreme Court ruling, due by the end of month, to dissolve the Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP).

The CRNP won about 44 percent of the vote in 2013, giving it 55 parliamentary seats in the 123-member Assembly chamber. Prime Minister Hun Sen’s government plans to distribute these seats to minor parties whose total vote was just 7 percent.

The royalist FUNCINPEC party, an occasional CPP ally, will be handed 41 of these seats. This cynical manoeuvre by Hun Sen seeks to provide the veneer of a “multi-party” parliamentary democracy.

In the expulsion of CNRP representatives from commune councils, there is no attempt to disguise the naked power grab.

After the June commune election results, the CPP feared it could lose the scheduled July 2018 national election. The CNRP vote increased by more than 13 percent, whereas that of the CPP fell by nearly 11 percent.

The CPP will totally reverse the commune election results, taking over the posts of 489 commune chiefs and 5,007 commune councillors won by the CNRP.

Deep social tensions lie behind these measures. Feeding into this situation are the sharp geo-political pressures throughout the South East Asian region generated by Washington’s ongoing diplomatic and military challenges to Beijing’s influence.

Though the CPP has sought to improve ties with the US, it has a pro-Beijing orientation and has championed China’s interests within the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN). Like the CPP, the CNRP supports anti-working class, pro-market policies and the transformation of the country into a cheap labour platform, but is much more closely oriented toward Washington.

The crackdown on the CNRP began early last month when opposition leader Kem Sokha was arrested on treason charges. Since then, more than half of the 55 CNRP National Assembly members have fled the country, including deputy leader Mu Sochua. The rest are boycotting the parliamentary sessions.

Legislative changes this year include a provision to allow the government to suspend the activities of, or use legal proceedings to dissolve, any political party engaging in activities that may harm “national unity.” Non-government organisations and foreign entities are targeted, as is their collaboration with Cambodian political parties.

The regime has used these provisions to force the US-funded National Democratic Institute (NDI), which worked with the CNRP, to end operations in the country. It also has closed down media outlets connected to programs from Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, both set up to promote US foreign policy and propaganda.

Hun Sen’s regime formally moved to have the Supreme Court dissolve the CNRP on October 6. On October 10, the court gave the jailed Kem Sokha just 20 days to gather evidence to defend the CNRP against dissolution.

Interior Ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak said the government had received “21 pieces of concrete evidence to prove the party has intentionally sought to topple the government through a ‘colour revolution’.” Like the allegations against Sokha, these claims have not been substantiated.

A government propaganda video, broadcast last Monday on multiple TV stations, linked the opposition to US regime-change “colour” operations in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Footage included shots from Libya, Tunisia, Syria, Serbia and Ukraine.

The official US response has been muted. US Republican Senator Ted Cruz declared last Tuesday he would work with the US Congress and the Trump administration to ban some Cambodian government officials from travelling to the US, unless Kem Sokha was freed by November 9.

In a bid to shore up support for the government, Hun Sen has sought to stoke nationalist sentiment. Addressing 20,000 garment workers earlier this month, he accused the US and its allies of meddling in Cambodia’s affairs. These countries “always invade countries that are weak,” he said. “Unlike them, I have no weapons of mass destruction. So I urge you to stand up to protect peace and for the sake of future development.”

In 2013, the parliamentary opposition exploited the discontent over poverty among factory workers, many of whom financially support their families in rural areas. In 2013 and 2014, the regime violently suppressed wage struggles among the 700,000 garment and footwear workers.

On October 10, Hun Sen announced, following earlier concessions on wages and health care, that from January the lowest income tax rate of 5 percent will apply to earnings above $US300 a month, as opposed to the current $250. He also announced significant increases in compensation payments for public servants.

At the same time, Defence Minister Tea Banh warned that the military was prepared to deal with any opposition to the dissolution of the CNRP. “The army is ready to fight any person who wants to overthrow the legitimate government.”

Geo-political tensions are rising as US President Donald Trump threatens war with North Korea and places mounting pressure on China—militarily, diplomatically and economically. Trump is due to travel to Asia later this week and will attend the ASEAN summit in the Philippines, where he will try to lay down the law to the region.

All 10 ASEAN governments are deeply concerned over Trump’s threat at the UN to inflict “total destruction” on North Korea—a move that could drag Asia and the world into war. As one of the ASEAN members with the closest ties with China, Cambodia could find itself in the firing line at the summit meeting.

German military builds training ground for civil war

Johannes Stern

Beginning next year, German soldiers will be able to undertake house-to-house fighting and preparation for domestic Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) operations “in the most realistic environment” (Defence Ministry), on a mega-property costing more than 140 million euros. “Schnöggersburg”, as the urban environment is dubbed, “presents typical elements of an urban conurbation in order to optimally prepare soldiers for deployments in built-up areas,” said the Bundeswehr in its official invitation to the press.

The Bundeswehr took possession last Thursday of part of this artificial town north of Magdeburg, which will form the “Army Combat Training Centre” (GÜZ). Schnöggersburg is an “urban conurbation” with more than 500 buildings, 300 cabins, sports facilities, bridges, an industrial area, an old town with a marketplace, a government district, a slum and a sacred building. In addition, it includes an airfield, a sewage system, a two-lane highway and a 350-metre-long underground line, the only subway system in Saxony-Anhalt.

“What is being created here is certainly unique,” boasted the parliamentary secretary of state of the Defence Ministry, Markus Grübel, in his welcome speech about the enormous dimensions of the project. “These first parts of the urban conurbation, which today are being handed over to the Combat Training Centre of the Army on schedule, find nothing comparable in the type of construction and size, certainly in Europe.”

Lieutenant-General Frank Leidenberger left no doubt as to what the Bundeswehr is preparing in Schnöggersburg: “The missions of the past have taught us that the environment in which we may have to fight is no longer open space but urban areas.” So it is “only logical and consistent that if parliament sends our soldiers on a mission, we give them appropriate realistic training opportunities.”

What “missions” Leidenberger has in mind is shown by the most recent decisions of the outgoing federal government. After a one-week break, the Bundeswehr resumed training for Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in northern Iraq last week. Recently, the Peshmerga, with their German “instructors”, participated in the bloody battle of Mosul against ISIS, in which thousands of civilians were brutally murdered.

German imperialism is planning similar efforts to enforce its economic and geopolitical interests in Africa and Central Asia. In its last cabinet meeting, the current federal government initiated a short-term extension of the Bundeswehr’s foreign missions in Mali and Afghanistan. In addition, the ministers of the outgoing grand coalition decided to present the temporary extension of the Bundeswehr missions in Syria and Iraq, as well as in Sudan and South Sudan, to the newly elected Bundestag.

In addition to their brutal campaigns around the world, the ruling class is openly preparing to use the military to suppress social protests at home. For example, a document from the European Union’s Institute for Security Studies, titled “What ambitions for European Defence 2020”, sees the task of future military operations, inter alia, as “shielding the global rich from the tensions and problems of the poor.”

“As the proportion of the world population living in misery and frustration will remain massive, the tensions and spillover between their world and that of the rich will continue to grow,” it continues. “Technology is shrinking the world into a global village, but it is a village on the verge of revolution. While we have an increasingly integrated elite community, we also face increasingly explosive tensions from the poorer strata below.”

Since the paper was published in 2009 in English, with a foreword by then-EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Javier Solana, social inequality in Germany and Europe has continued to increase. While an ever-greater part of humanity fights for sheer survival, a small upper class lives in the lap of luxury. On Thursday last week, a study by the Swiss bank UBS and the consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) revealed that 117 billionaires live in Germany alone. Worldwide, the number of billionaires rose by 10 percent last year to 1,542 and their total assets by 17 percent to $6 trillion.

With their “lighthouse project Schnöggersdorf” (Leidenberger), the ruling class is preparing for the inevitable coming revolutionary struggles. Already in the spring, the survey ”Generation what?” carried out by the European Broadcasting Union revealed that a new generation of young people is being radicalized, is rejecting the right-wing policies of all established parties and is willing to fight against them. For example, 78 percent of young people in Germany complained that they could observe growing nationalism. More than two-thirds of young people said they were not prepared to fight for Germany in a war. More than half would, however, participate in a “major uprising against those in power.”

Under these conditions, the preparation for civil war against the population is supported by all parties of the ruling class. The governing parties in Saxony-Anhalt, a coalition of the Christian Democrats, the Social Democrats and the Greens, have handed over “Schnöggersburg” to the Bundeswehr with great ceremony. The Left Party is not demanding that the training grounds for civil war be closed, but that a “civilian aid corps” may be trained there that can be “deployed in natural or emergency humanitarian disasters. Already last September, the Left Party parliamentary group organized a joint meeting with the former Inspector General of the Bundeswehr and Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, Harald Kujat, who has long been an advocate of the deployment of the Bundeswehr at home.

Denim mill in Greensboro, North Carolina closes after 112 years

Keisha Gibbs

International Textiles Group (ITG) has announced it is closing Cone Denim’s White Oak Mill in Greensboro, North Carolina, resulting in job losses for 200 employees. The White Oak Mill opened in 1905 and has been manufacturing selvage denim since the 1940s.

Selvage denim is tightly woven denim created using shuttle looms. The denim produced is finished with a tightly woven band that prevents fraying, raveling or curling. The White Oak Mill Cone Denim plant used American Draper X3 looms from the 1940s and 17 oz. Denim fabric, which many clothing companies consider a great medium for jeans.

As a response to many textile mills moving overseas, Cone Denim began marketing their selvage denim as a high-quality and unique, made-in-America product. To meet the increasing demand for the rising trend of small-batch selvage jeans, which are marketed to wealthy customers and can range in price from $90 to $200, Cone Denim had to increase their production by 25 percent in 2013.

The company retrieved its underutilized looms from storage and even acquired additional Draper X3 looms from closed mills. In January 2016, Ken Kunberger, president and CEO of ITG, told Triad Business Journal, the high demand could be attributed to “our Made-in-America platform. … It’s settled into a nice pocket of what we consider a sustainable business to very niche-type customers. The demand is much bigger than we have capacity to produce.”

This success was short lived, however, and on December 31, 2017 the factory will cease all operations.

Spokeswoman for ITG, Delores Sides, told Triad Business Journal, a decrease in orders for selvage denim is the main reason for closure. “An increase in our customers that are sourcing for fabric needs outside the US has significantly reduced the order volume within the facility.”

North Carolina is the center of the textile industry in the United States, employing over 42,000 in approximately 700 textile facilities. To lure industry, North Carolina boasts of the lowest corporate tax rate in the US—3 percent—and the second-lowest unionization rate. Regardless, these measures have done little to nothing to prevent industries from leaving. According to Federal Reserve Economic Data, North Carolina employment in the textile sector has fallen more than 82 percent since the mid-1990s.

The fate of the White Oak Mill exposes the fraud of the Trump administration’s “America First” pretensions of rebuilding the domestic industrial economy.

International Textiles Industry was formed when W.L. Ross & Co. acquired the assets of Burlington Industries and Cone Mills Manufacturing in 2003 and 2004, respectively. W.L. Ross & Co. is owned by current US Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross. The billionaire Ross is known as the “bankruptcy king” and made his fortune by acquiring struggling companies, gutting pensions and wages, eliminating jobs, and then flipping the businesses for a profit. Ross offloaded ITG in late 2016 to Platinum Equity for $99 million.

Platinum Equity has a record of being just as ruthless to workers as W.L. Ross & Co. Since 1995, Platinum has flipped 155 of the 185 acquisitions it has made. Platinum Equity made a name for itself in the financial crisis of 2008 by acquiring 14 companies in the first 11 months of 2009.

The Southeastern United States has a rich history in textiles and became the center of the industry in the United States after the Civil War, when many companies moved their operations to the South to take advantage of cheap labor and the close proximity to cotton crops.

Business boomed for the textile industry during World War I, when many mills raked in huge profits from military contracts. Mills supplied soldiers with uniforms, tents and other necessary textile goods.

After the war ended, mills continued to produce at the same rate, but with less demand. Profits plummeted and many workers were laid off. The workers remaining were required to work more looms for less money. Workers began referring to this period as the “stretch-out.”

Small strikes during the stretch-out resulted in little success. The stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression only worsened working conditions. There were hundreds of small strikes during this time, but most were isolated and unsuccessful. Most notable was the Loray Mill strike of 1929 in Gastonia, North Carolina. During the dispute, striker Ella Mae Wiggins was murdered by a group of armed men who forced the pickup truck carrying her and three other men to pull over. Wiggins and the other passengers were headed to a union meeting. The Loray Mill strike collapsed soon after her murder.

In 1934, the Great Depression, the stretch-out, and increasingly horrible working conditions had taken its toll on most textile workers in the south. Workers had put their faith in president Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) to address the horrendous working conditions in the textile industry. Roosevelt’s National Recovery Administration (NRA), however, was a toothless agency unable to enforce even the most minimal regulations of the NIRA.

With the blessing of the NRA, mill workers were required to work even more hours with less pay. The United Textile Workers (UTW) union threatened a strike. However, mill owners were familiar with the empty threats of the UTW. When the NRA promised to give the UTW a seat on their board, the UTW called off the strike. Local workers, on the other hand, had lost all faith in the NRA and on September 3, mill workers began walking out.

On September 3, Gastonia mill workers began their strike while celebrating their city’s first Labor Day parade and traveled to nearby mills to encourage others to join the strike. Striking mill workers traveling by trucks, dubbed “flying squadrons,” drove from mill to mill calling for workers to walk out. Word of mouth traveled quickly, and within a week, over 400,000 textile workers were on strike, despite never receiving the sanction of the UTW. This effectively shut down the textile industry.

Not wanting to be left behind by the momentum of an independent strike, the UTW drew up a list of demands for the industry as a whole: a 30-hour week, minimum wages ranging from $13.00 to $30.00 a week, elimination of the stretch-out, union recognition, and reinstatement of workers fired for their union activities.

However, strikers received very little support from local governments and unions. Churches were unsympathetic to the struggles of the strikers. After a short time, workers found themselves without food and resources. The UTW officially called off the strike on September 22 and workers returned to the mills without receiving any of their demands. Ironically, the unions held victory parades for the end of the strike.

Labeled as “foreign agitators” and “reds,” thousands of strikers were blacklisted. Abandoned by the unions and President Roosevelt’s promise of reform, the 1934 strikers found themselves unemployed and unable to find a job. Those involved in the 1934 strike, and who were not blacklisted, did not speak of the strike and gave up hope of ever receiving better working conditions.

After World War II, textile companies began moving their US mills overseas to reap higher profits by taking advantage of lower wages. Many overseas factories began using more modern projectile looms to create their fabric, thereby further increasing profits for clothing companies.

Today, what few textiles mills are left in the US are increasingly using automated machines. This, according to the National Cotton Council of America, makes the United States the most productive in the world. But automation in a for-profit economy also means fewer jobs. The White Oak Mill Cone Denim plant was able to avoid updating their looms with automated machines by taking advantage of the nostalgia and nationalism associated with cotton grown in the United States being woven on antique looms.

Time and time again, workers have put their faith in trade unions and politicians promising to “bring back jobs to America” or improve working conditions, only to be met with betrayal. No amount of “made-in-America” or “America first” demagoguery will prevent the ruling class from unfettered profitmaking.

Textile workers—whether in the American South or in Bangladesh, Egypt, Vietnam or Guatemala—face the same fundamental enemy: the anarchy of capitalist production, which scours the globe for the cheapest sources of raw materials and human labor. Only an independent movement of the international working class, unified in a fight against the systemic source of their exploitation, can reorganize industry to meet human need.

Whitefish Energy profits in Puerto Rico from Trump administration connection

Rafael Azul

The Puerto Rican catastrophe, in its fifth week, has become a mixture of disinformation, inefficiency, and profound tragedy.

Last week it was announced that 900 bodies were cremated of people who died after Hurricane María swept through the island, without any forensic investigation to determine if their deaths were due to the storm. Doctors and nurses continue to report shortages of essential medications and electrical power that in hundreds of cases result in preventable deaths. The young, the infirm, and the elderly continue to be at risk.

The social devastation is compounded by brazen corporate profiteering. The $300 million no-bid contract between Whitefish Energy and the Puerto Rican Electric Power Authority (PREPA, or in Spanish AEE), the Puerto Rican government utility, exposes both the greed and corruption characteristic of natural disasters under capitalism, where human life takes a back seat to profit.

It was initially reported that Whitefish, a small Montana-based company, had not asked for any money up front and that it had been vetted by FEMA (the US Federal Emergency Management Authority). This agency initially indicated it would reimburse the cost of hiring Whitefish, a company with only two employees and absurdly limited experience.

The lack of transparency surrounding the Whitefish contract feeds the suspicion that the company took advantage of the political connections of Joe Colonetta, a big donor to the Trump presidential campaign and to the Republican Party. Colonetta heads HBC Investments, a Dallas-based firm that is the financial backer of Whitefish, while Whitefish CEO Andy Techmanski has a friendship with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.

As these connections have come to light, top Puerto Rican government officials have tried to wash their hands of the deal. Governor Ricardo Rosselló has belatedly called for the contract to be cancelled, as has San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz. FEMA has withdrawn its support as well.

None of the agencies connected to this scandal—FEMA, the Puerto Rican government and Whitefish Energy—have presented a credible explanation of how this entire process took place. Who was it that approached the Puerto Rican government or the Power Authority? How was Whitefish’s initial offer handled, and by whom? Under what circumstances was it decided to award the contract to Whitefish? Why did AEE decide not to activate the mutual aid agreements that exist nationwide between public utilities, particularly given a standing offer by the New York State Power Authority to send in crews and equipment?

The San Juan daily El Nuevo Día examined a document released by the Puerto Rico’s government house, titled “Emergency Purchases and Contracts Process Hurricane María” (exhibit 3807), originally elaborated by Ramon Caldas, AEE’s procurement division chief, who signed the Whitefish contract on September 27.

The Caldas report contains a table that compares the cost to AEE of thirteen categories of skilled labor from the different US firms that responded to an AEE request (PowerSecure, Cobra Energy, Southern Electric, State Electric and B&B), with little variation between them.

While the labor costs for the initial Whitefish contract of September 27 were in line with those reported on the Caldas table, an amended contract signed on October 17 raised the labor costs far above the original contract.

El Nuevo Día provides two examples: for a maintenance person, the amended contract is about $10.54 more per hour than what is in the Caldas table. In the case of “grounds men,” the hourly difference is $19.24. In addition Whitefish added charges for equipment and for housing and feeding each worker. There are additional charges per hour in the case of the contract workers that Whitefish utilizes.

Whitefish was selected on an emergency basis, following the issuance of executive order 2018-53 by governor Ricardo Rosselló, in anticipation of the hurricane. That order exempts government agencies from following the established transparent procedures for bidding in its purchases during the emergency.

Accordingly, Whitefish was hired on a no-bid basis, following “a careful evaluation of RFIs [requests for information] to each of thirteen companies contacted by AEE,” in the words of the report. This included a requirement that the selected company be required to mobilize 800 crews “immediately,” following the passage of the devastating storm. As of last week Whitefish had only 300 employees in its assigned region, with plans to have 1,000 in place in the near future.

Whitefish has been given the task of rebuilding the devastated transmission lines that link the southern part of the island, where the bulk of the generators are located, with the northern part, the region with the greatest demand. The contract is for one year. As it now stands, its cost to the AEE and to Puerto Rico is estimated at between $250 and $320 million in the first three months. It has been pointed out that this is by far the most expensive contract that AEE has signed.

The Whitefish contract, containing the now infamous clause (article 59-1) that it could not be questioned by any US or Puerto Rican government or financial agency, was signed on September 27 and amended on October 7.

Clearly the bidding process raises many questions. It is not clear what role Zinke or Trump administration officials played in the amended October 7 contract, for instance.

Puerto Rico comptroller Yasmín Valdivieso, whose auditors have been investigating fuel purchases by the Puerto Rico Power Authority said that her office will also investigate whether the Whitefish contract represents conflicts of interests, corruption and cronyism.

Also last week, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, in his second visit to San Juan since Hurricane María, declared the willingness of the New York State Power Authority to send work crews into the island and wondered out loud how it was that the AEE refused to activate mutual aid agreements with mainland public utilities, and instead turned to Whitefish.

Adding his voice to this chorus, Senator Bernie Sanders who arrived Friday afternoon to San Juan in a “fact-finding mission,” condemned the Whitefish contract, declaring himself “indignant” at a press conference with Mayor Cruz after a tour of la Playita, one of the worst-hit areas in San Juan.

The Whitefish contract also attracted congressional attention in Washington. Democratic Senators Maria Cantwell (Washington state) and Ron Wyden (Oregon) have sent a letter calling for the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to investigate this contract.

None of the Democrats has put forward any serious proposal for the type of massive federal aid that is needed to rebuild the shattered infrastructure of the island. Congress gave bipartisan approval this week to a hurricane emergency spending bill that offered a pathetic $4.9 billion in loans to Puerto Rico, for a disaster whose total cost is now likely to approach $100 billion.

Madrid moves to assert direct control over Catalonia

Alejandro López

Over the weekend, the Spanish government moved to assert direct rule over Catalonia. This followed Madrid’s announcement on Friday that it would apply Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution to seize Catalonia, dissolve its parliament and hold new elections. With Catalan nationalist officials in Barcelona announcing plans to defy Madrid after declaring independence on Friday, a crackdown by the Spanish security forces in Catalonia is looming.

A government notice was issued officially deposing Catalan regional Premier Carles Puigdemont and his deputy Oriol Junqueras, along with all 12 members of the Catalan cabinet. In their place, Spain’s deputy Prime Minister, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, will become the unelected head of Catalonia. Spain’s ministries will seek to seize control of their Catalan counterparts.

In a move to secure control of the Catalan police, Madrid sacked the director general of the Catalan police, Pere Soler. Soon after, Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido ordered the removal of the chief of the regional Mossos d’Esquadra police, Josep Lluís Trapero, who is considered too close to the separatists. Trapero is also being prosecuted on sedition charges for having allowed the October 1 Catalan independence referendum to go ahead. Trapero issued a statement saying he would comply with his removal.

Madrid is also purging hundreds of Catalan civil servants. Since Friday, the Catalan delegations in France, the United Kingdom, Germany, the United States, Canada, Mexico, Austria, Italy, Portugal and Denmark have been sacked. Hundreds more are expected to be fired this week.

The Popular Party (PP) government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is threatening all 200,000 Catalan civil servants with sacking if they oppose its attempt to seize control of the region. Rajoy has announced plans to discipline workers “without recourse to previous mechanisms regarding disciplinary measures.”

On Sunday, there was a mass protest of 300,000 in the streets of Barcelona in defense of Spanish unity. The rally was called by the antisecessionist right-wing group Societat Civil Catalana and supported by the pro-Article 155 parties: Citizens, the PP and the Socialist Party in Catalonia. Another pro-unity protest this month drew similar numbers. It included forces from working-class districts in the suburbs of Barcelona hostile to secession.

Thousands also demonstrated in neighboring Valencia against fascism and the attacks on October 9, when a peaceful demonstration in solidarity with the Catalans was assaulted by fascists.

The Spanish trade unions, while hostile to mobilizing the working class against the threat of a crackdown, are warning the political establishment of broad opposition among workers to Madrid’s threat of military intervention in Catalonia.

Marc Casanova of the IAC trade union said that “we will not recognize the violation of the Catalan institutions’ self-government… our union will not recognize the legitimacy of these authorities.” The spokesperson of the teachers union USTEC, Ramon Font, said that many teachers would not comply if Madrid attempted to change the Catalan education system.

Resistance is also expected from the firemen, who have opposed Madrid’s police measures since the October 1 referendum, when many, dressed in their uniforms, intervened to protect the ballots. One fireman told AFP, “If [pro-independence protesters] block a road and they [the Spanish authorities] ask us to unblock it, maybe we will not respond.”

On the judicial front, Madrid is preparing repression against the Catalan separatist movement on a scale not seen since the 1939-1978 fascist dictatorship set up by General Francisco Franco. Today, the Attorney General’s Office is expected to charge Puigdemont, members of the Catalan government and the parliamentary committee that authorized the vote on independence, including parliamentary spokesperson Carme Forcadell, with rebellion, a crime punishable by up to 30 years in prison. Other charges will include disobedience, prevarication and embezzlement.

The office is charging “all of those who have participated in the events”—a term vague enough to allow the prosecution of thousands of people and anyone who opposes Article 155. The Attorney General’s Office also said that it would charge not only those directly responsible, but also all “cooperators.”

Amid a looming threat of dictatorship in Spain, with the European Union backing Madrid, the only force that can offer a progressive solution to the crisis is the working class. The critical question is the mobilization of the working class, in Catalonia and the rest of Spain and across Europe, on the basis of a socialist and internationalist perspective against the threat of police and military repression by Madrid.

Any struggle requires determined opposition to the Catalan bourgeois nationalists as well as the political establishment in Madrid. The Catalan nationalist parties are bitterly hostile to a political intervention in the crisis by the working class.

The Catalan secessionists are ruling out any serious opposition to Madrid’s plans for a crackdown. Having for years run pro-austerity regimes in Barcelona, they are deeply hostile to any appeal to opposition in the working class. Instead, in a three-minute video issued on Saturday, Puigdemont called for “democratic opposition” to Madrid’s intervention. “We must do so resisting repression and threats, without ever abandoning, at any time, civic and peaceful conduct,” he declared.

The following day, the vice-premier and leader of the Republican Left of Catalonia, Oriol Junqueras, wrote a piece in the pro-secessionist daily El Punt Avui saying, “We cannot recognize the coup d’état against Catalunya, nor the antidemocratic decisions that are being adopted by the PP, remote-controlled by Madrid.” Junqueras added that “in the following days we will have to take decisions and not always easy to understand.” He called for a “shared strategy” and “a civil and peaceful attitude.”

Such comments show that the secessionists, driven by the bankrupt perspective of forming a new independent capitalist state in Catalonia, have no strategy for confronting the crackdown. They fear, above all, an independent intervention by the working class via strikes, workplace committees and appeals to workers internationally for support. Fearing the working class, they do not want to tap into deep-rooted popular opposition to Madrid’s return to authoritarian forms of rule.

They would prefer Spanish military occupation and possible foreign exile to the outbreak of mass workers’ struggles against repression by the bourgeois state machine, which they aspire to control.

The December 21 snap elections in Catalonia that Madrid is demanding are entirely antidemocratic, held under the threat of Spanish military intervention and with hundreds of Catalan politicians expected to be in jail. The only result Spanish Prime Minister Rajoy will tolerate is the election of an explicitly antisecessionist regional government.

Nevertheless, Puigdemont’s PDeCAT (Democratic European Party of Catalonia), Junqueras’s ERC (Republican Left of Catalonia) and the pseudo-left CUP (Popular Unity Candidacies) have not come out against these fraudulent elections. Former Premier Artur Mas defended the PDeCAT’s participation in the elections, saying that it would be “lethal” to leave the secessionist forces outside the parliament.

The Catalan crisis is also exposing the political bankruptcy of the Podemos party. Factional divisions are erupting inside the party, but they are over whether to orient to the Spanish state or the Catalan secessionists. On Friday, Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias approved Rajoy’s reactionary measures, saying that elections “should takes place without repression and with all the political options available.”

The Podemos leader in Catalonia, Albano Dante, implicitly criticized Iglesias on Catalunya Ràdio, saying that accepting these elections means “to accept [Article] 155,” which is an “immense contradiction.” He also did not discard a coalition of Podemos Catalonia with the PDeCAT, ERC and CUP.

The Pabloite Anticapitalistas wing of Podemos posted a statement recognizing the “new Catalan Republic” and calling for rejection of Article 155. It promoted the “democratic, peaceful and disobedient defense of the will of the Catalan people and their right to decide.”

While Iglesias orients to Rajoy to defend the Spanish nation-state, the Pabloites and the Catalan wing of Podemos are promoting Catalan nationalism. All these factions are united in aiming to suppress rising social opposition to Madrid and the threat of military rule.