Mexican president-elect promises one-time electricity debt forgiveness

Alex González

Mexican president-elect, Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), has announced a populist measure for a one-time debt forgiveness for households owing to the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), the largest electricity distributor in Mexico.

The move is aimed at concealing the right-wing character of his administration, while at the same time preparing for future utility shutoffs, attacks against electrical workers’ pensions and further moves to privatize the CFE under the pretext of fighting against “corruption.”

AMLO’s vague statement on July 31 made it appear as though millions of indebted households across the country would be granted much-needed relief: “From this July 1 going back there will be a new, just, and differentiated rate. The poorest will pay less, and electricity used for industrial purposes will be higher, but not more than they pay now.”

The one-time move made it clear that future debts would not be forgiven, while saying nothing about maintaining future subsidies or lowering electricity prices. But even this paltry measure was backtracked two days latter, when AMLO noted that, far from the national policy that his original statement had alluded to, the relief would only apply to the small southeastern state of Tabasco, his home state.

Thousands of people in Tabasco have carried out “civil resistance” against the state government since 1995, when AMLO lost the governorship of the state to future Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) presidential candidate Roberto Madrazo. Declaring the election fraudulent, AMLO advocated refusing to make payments to the state or federal governments as a form of protest. According to the CFE, about half a million users are behind on their electricity bills in the state.

AMLO’s limited “clean slate” avoids the political embarrassment of having to cut off electricity as a result of a maneuver that he formulated and advanced in a previous campaign. AMLO’s political stunt is also meant to provide a thinly-veiled “left” cover for his appointment for the new head of the CFE, Manuel Bartlett.

Bartlett is yet another figure in AMLO’s cabinet that will come from previous right-wing PRI administrations. He was a former public education secretary and secretary of the interior in successive Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) administrations in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Bartlett is infamous for his role in the 1988 elections, when he announced a “breakdown of the system” that was used to rig the elections against Cuahtémoc Cárdenas of Authentic Party of the Mexican Revolution (PARM) in favor of Carlos Salinas de Gortari of the PRI.

In 2009, former president Miguel de la Madrid told the New York Times that the PRI had in fact manipulated the elections to ensure its own victory. He added that three years after the election, all paper ballots were burned to eliminate evidence of fraud. In 2017, Bartlett himself acknowledged that Salinas had lost the election. As then-secretary of the interior and president of the Federal Electoral Commission, Bartlett was tasked with overseeing the rigging of the election.

AMLO is well aware of Bartlett’s political past. The incoming president is a former member of the Party for Democratic Revolution (PRD), which Cárdenas launched after the 1988 elections. For a politician whose stock-in-trade has been to rail against stolen elections, AMLO is mute when it comes to elevating a figure who was instrumental in carrying out massive fraud and trampling on the democratic rights of millions of people. When AMLO says that he means to fight “corruption,” he does not mean jailing and prosecuting the bankers, corporations and politicians who control Mexico’s economic and political system.

Rather, he means going after the salaries of rank-and-file government employees, workers’ pensions, and government debt held by households, states and municipalities. AMLO’s administration has vowed to continue the “reforms” that were supported by all major political parties as an effort to privatize oil, electricity, telecommunications and education. AMLO and Bartlett, who both previously postured as being against the legislation, have since sought to make all the necessary reassurances that the “rule of law” will be respected.

“I was against the energy reforms here in Congress, but the energy reform is working,” stated Bartlett shortly after he was named as new CFE director. “Andrés Manuel has already clearly stated that he will not take up any constitutional reforms, we are going to respect the existing structure that was set up by the energy reforms, and what is currently taking place which are market rules.”

The Peña Nieto administration told tall tales of how the energy “reforms” would lead to thousands of new jobs, lower oil and electricity prices and a new wave of economic growth. Five years later, the only real “growth” has been the fattening of the financial portfolios of the foreign and domestic financial oligarchy.

The “reform” has left consumers at the mercy of oil prices, since fuel is the main input for the generation of electricity. From the approval of the legislation in August 2014 to January 2016, CFE prices decreased by about 35 percent, mirroring a decline in oil and natural gas prices. Since then, however, they have increased by 54 percent and are now higher than before the legislation.

The CFE, which was created in 1937 as part of the nationalizations carried out by Lázaro Cárdenas, has been steadily privatized since the 1990s. Until five years ago, the CFE was the sole authorized provider of electricity across the country. Now, the CFE participates in an energy market with private companies and has awarded more than 25 contracts to private investors for the production of energy.

The CFE has over 14 billion pesos (over 750 million USD) in debt from states and municipalities and 36 billion pesos (over 1.9 billion USD) in debt from unpaid bills. Finance capital has made it clear that the CFE’s debts should come off the backs of workers through debt collections, an end to subsidies and slashing electricity workers’ pensions.

The CFE reported that it shut off electricity to 216 municipalities between December 2017 and January 2018 alone due to unpaid bills. Meanwhile, the federal government has stated that it would only back CFE workers’ pensions if the government could negotiate a new contract with the Mexican Oil Workers Union (STPRM). Pension liabilities for both Pemex and CFE amounted to 1.7 trillion pesos (over 91 billion USD), or almost 10 percent of GDP. The Mexican Supreme Audit of the Federation has noted that the number of retirees with pensions will increase by 28 percent during the next 15 years.

As with all major social problems, the demands for affordable electricity, an end to utility shutoffs and fully funded pensions cannot be taken up by any representative of the capitalist class. Even the most basic needs of working people require an expropriation of the wealth of the financial aristocracy, in Mexico and internationally, to guarantee that the resources and technology that humanity already has available can be used to elevate the living standards of the international working class to new heights. This will require the fight for socialism to unite all workers in a fight to overturn the source of their misery, the capitalist system.

Almost 100 confirmed dead after Indonesian earthquake

Oscar Grenfell 

The official death toll from an earthquake that struck the Indonesian island of Lombok on Sunday night was raised to 98 this morning.

With at least several hundred others still missing, the number of fatalities could rise over the coming days. Some 269 people were injured, some with severe head wounds and broken bones.

Residents told the media they are terrified that the ordeal may not be over. Lombok has been struck by more than 100 aftershocks, and another 5.2 magnitude earthquake last night.

The main quake, with a magnitude of 6.9, struck on Sunday evening. The hardest-hit areas were in the north and interior regions of Lombok, which has a population of roughly 3.2 million. The island was previously hit by a quake on July 29, which killed at least 16 people and destroyed dozens of homes.

The latest disaster flattened an estimated 13,000 homes and structures. Residents and journalists described frightening scenes. In towns and villages across the island, locals rushed from falling structures.

Government authorities initially issued a tsunami alert, prompting widespread fear and leading thousands to leave their homes in search of higher ground.

The full extent of the damage remains unclear, especially in remote areas. Zul Ashfi, the humanitarian coordinator for the Islamic Relief charity, told the Guardian that scenes on the island were “catastrophic.”

“I saw people fleeing for their lives, screaming for help into their mobile phones as they ran,” Ashfi said. “It was very traumatic. They are now sleeping in the open air and have nothing. We are now working against the clock to reach as many people in need as we can.”

Imam, a resident of Mataram, the largest city on Lombok, told Agence Presse France: “Everyone immediately ran out of their homes, everyone is panicking.” Large sections of the city, which has a population of almost half a million, were reportedly severely damaged or completely levelled.

Much of Mataram is without power, and numbers of patients have been evacuated from the main hospital. Elsewhere on the island, rescue crews have only begun to survey the damage. A number of areas have been cut off from all communications. There are warnings that the damage may have impacted upon water supplies, prompting fears of disease outbreaks.

In an indication of the possible scale of death and destruction, up to 40 people are believed to have died when a mosque collapsed in the village of Lading-Lading.

On the neighbouring island of Bali, numbers of buildings were damaged. Thousands of tourists, anxious to leave, have been stranded on both islands. Air travel and other means of transport have been affected.

Already, there are indications that the disaster’s impact has been compounded by inadequate planning and resources, despite the profits and revenues generated by tourism.

Between 20,000 and 80,000 Lombok residents have been displaced. The bulk of them appear to have been forced to fend for themselves. Others have moved to makeshift relief camps, with many living in tents.

Thomas Howells, a program coordinator for the Save the Children charity, told PBS: “People’s houses have been destroyed and they don’t want to leave their belongings. So they’re sitting outside their houses.”

The rescue effort is being hampered by limited relief equipment. Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a representative of Indonesia’s official disaster agency, told the Guardian yesterday that relief and rescue operations were restricted by a shortage of heavy-lifting and earth-moving equipment. As a result, Sutopo said, some rescuers had been forced to dig by hand.

In comments to CNN Indonesia, Sutopo pointed to lax building practices and codes as being a factor in the scale of the damage. He noted that the vast majority of the structures that had been destroyed in Lombok were residential.

“The problem is that Indonesians do not have houses that are earthquake resistant especially for people in rural villages with weak economic conditions,” Sutopo said. No government regulations required residential dwellings to be built to earthquake-resistant standards, he added, and many construction workers were not aware of building practices required to mitigate damage.

The lack of building safety is striking, given that Indonesia is one of the most earthquake-prone regions in the world, sitting atop the “Ring of Fire,” characterised by shifting tectonic plates.

The earthquake’s impact underscores the deepening social divide in Indonesia. Last year, Oxfam ranked it as the sixth most unequal country in the world. The four richest individuals have a combined wealth greater than the poorest 100 million people. Most surveys indicate that around a quarter of Lombok’s people live below the country’s meager poverty line.

On Monday, Indonesian President Joko Widodo announced he had ordered the coordination of all government departments for rescue and relief efforts.

Widodo’s government fears that the disaster could become a focal point of broader anger over social inequality and poverty, amid ongoing political instability. Widodo has ordered police and military officers to be deployed to the hardest-hit regions. They will inevitably clamp down on any opposition or anger from local residents.

Widodo declared that the victims would be compensated, but did not give any concrete figures. As in previous disasters, those worst-affected will likely be given a token sum that will do nothing to rebuild their homes, or their lives.

Indonesian government dignitaries and foreign representatives, including senior ministers from Australia, Singapore and elsewhere, were in Lombok for a regional conference on “counter-terrorism.” Along with the wealthiest layers in Lombok, they were shielded from the disaster in quake-proof hotel buildings and shelters. The vast majority of ordinary people, however, were trapped in poorly-built and dangerous dwellings.

Portugal: Left Bloc leader resigns over property speculation fortune

Paul Mitchell

Ricardo Robles, the Left Bloc representative on the Portuguese capital of Lisbon’s 17-member municipal council, resigned last week after revelations that he made a fortune from property speculation.

Robles and his brother took part in the get-rich-quick stampede to gentrify the capital’s oldest and poorest district, Alfama. They bought a prime run-down state-owned historic property for a paltry €350,000 in 2014 and then this year put it on the market for a whopping €5.7 million.

At first, Robles tried to ride out the criticisms, holding a press conference on July 27 at the Left Bloc’s headquarters where he declared: “There is nothing deplorable in my conduct.” Property speculator Robles was defended by the head of the Left Bloc, Catarina Martins, who insisted he had done “nothing illegal” and that he was victim of “a journalistic and political witch-hunt.” He was given a vote of confidence by the party’s leadership.

By July 29 and amidst mounting pressure, Robles was forced to resign. He made a pathetic attempt to explain that the huge profit he had accrued “revealed a real political problem” and “created a huge constraint” to his “work as a councillor.” He claimed that he had not evicted anyone and had maintained a low-income tenant. He then announced that he was withdrawing from the sale of his property and that he would take control of how it was rented.

Left Bloc campaign poster reading, “Stop Evictions, Change the Law, Fight Speculation”

The following Tuesday, Martins told reporters the Left Bloc leadership had made an “error of analysis” by backing Robles, claiming “the contradiction was very great” and created “a daily obstacle” between his business interests and his party work. The fact that Martins admitted, without batting an eye, that Robles’s real estate deal was “never a topic of conversation” between them speaks volumes about the opportunism of the Left Bloc.

The whole episode surrounding Robles stinks and reveals, once again, the hypocritical self-seeking nature of the upper middle class constituency that forms the social basis of the pseudo-left.

At the time of writing, the front page of the Left Bloc’s esquerda.net website was still promoting its fraudulent campaign, “Stop Evictions, Change the Law, Fight Speculation” (Parar os Despejos, Mudar a Lei, Combater a Especulação) on its front page. It claims the party “is on the streets with proposals to stop evictions, to make the law of fairer tenancy and combating real estate speculation.” Whilst he was busy nurturing his property portfolio, Robles was regularly contributing to esquerda.net.

Robles wasn’t just some lowly official tempted by a quick buck; he was a Left Bloc spokesperson and a Lisbon mayoral candidate. His speciality was railing against the eviction of the working class from central Lisbon in order to pave the way for gentrification.

Demonstrating Robles’s cynicism, in October 2015 he complained on esquerda.net about Lisbon’s housing crisis and the role of the then-Socialist Party (PS) mayor, António Costa, who is now prime minister of a PS minority government being kept in power courtesy of the Left Bloc and Communist Party/Green Party Unitary Democratic Coalition. As mayor, Costa set about deregulating and privatising the city’s administration for the benefit of capitalist entrepreneurs, the tourist trade and what was called “the global creative class.”

Robles said at the time: “In the last 30 years Lisbon lost 260,000 inhabitants. There are 50,000 vacant houses in the city. Enticing these people back to the city has been the priority of priorities. The strategy followed was precisely the opposite and failed. António Costa looked at the city as a financial asset. … No respect for those who live and work here and all respect for capital.”

On April 6, 2016, Robles returned to the subject, declaring: “The expulsion of residents from the city centre, whilst not being recent, has accelerated in recent years. The strategy of urban regeneration sustained by speculation and exploitation of tourism has consequences. The price of homes in the historic centre rose by 22% in 2015. The expulsion of tenants, mostly elderly and economically unprotected, for the installation of hotels has been the rule. … The process of gentrification of the city is spreading in the historic centre.”

Then, once again on April 15, 2017, he wrote “ten years of urban deregulation, a monoculture of hotels and record sales of municipal heritage” had become, “in terms of housing...a lost decade.”

According to António Machado, president of the Rental Association in Lisbon—a city of half a million residents that saw 6 million visitors last year: “We have seen a transformation of housing from residences for families to short-term rentals…private houses rented out for tourism that, in some areas, caused rent price to rise by 30-40% over the last few years, which is practically unbearable for local Portuguese people.” The phenomenon has led to the term “terramotourism” or tourism earthquake.

The growth of Airbnb rentals has been explosive, with one street in Alfama hosting 230 lets. The average daily rate of €85 is far more profitable than traditional, long-term rental solutions, which have also risen inexorably in price. The average monthly rent in Lisbon is around €900, or almost equal to the average gross salary.

The huge growth in real estate values also forces less well-off sections of the population to become part of the “gentrifier” process, as they seek to find a place for themselves in the face of rapidly rising rents and house prices. The young, flocking to the cities for work, also become part of this trend.

Gentrification or, more correctly, social cleansing, reflects the relentless growth of inequality. President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa was forced to admit as much earlier this year, declaring that poverty is the “national shame” of Portugal and that it is one of the “most unequal countries in Europe.” He trotted out the regular mantra that what was needed was an “autonomous national strategy to combat poverty once and for all.”

The current social cleansing of cities across Europe, the US and globally has accelerated in the years since the 2008 crash. This process has been aggravated by the vast sums of money that have been pumped into the financial markets by the central banks as part of “quantitative easing,” which has made cheap money available for speculation in real estate.

Growing inequality and social cleansing is inevitable as long as housing remains a market commodity rather than a social right. The right to a decent and affordable place to live can only be met through a socialist programme.

The role of the Left Bloc is to attempt to prevent the working class and youth adopting such a perspective. It has sought to channel mass disaffection that erupted after the 2008 economic crash—and expressed in the record-low 57 percent turnout in the 2015 general election—behind the discredited Socialist Party, while integrating its petty-bourgeois social base into official and, as the Robles case shows, lucrative bourgeois politics.

UK: Victims of state surveillance to take legal action against Undercover Policing Inquiry

Thomas Scripps 

Three victims of police spying are seeking to bring a legal challenge against the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UPI), in which they are core participants.

The three are John Burke-Monerville, “Jessica” (not her real name) and the family of Jean Charles de Menezes. They explain, “Our fear is that if it continues in its current trajectory that the Undercover Policing Inquiry will be a whitewash.”

Burke-Monerville’s son, Trevor, was held in Stoke Newington police station in 1987, where he is believed to have been beaten, suffering brain damage. A Justice for Trevor campaign was organised, for which he and his family members suffered regular police harassment. Trevor and his brother were later murdered, but those responsible were never found. It was only recently that Burke-Monerville discovered that the justice campaigns for Trevor were put under police surveillance.

“Jessica,” an animal rights activist, discovered last year that a fellow activist with whom she had had a sexual relationship—24-year-old Andy Davey—was, in fact, Andy Coles, a 32-year-old married undercover police officer.

Jean Charles de Menezes was shot dead by police at the age of 27 at Stockwell Underground station in 2005. His cold-blooded murder was justified on the grounds that he had been wrongly identified as one of the men involved in the London terrorist attacks the previous day. Justice campaigns in his name, run by his family, were spied on by undercover police.

The three complainants are trying to Crowdfund £5,000 to get a hearing on their case’s application, and then a further £50,000 to bring the full case to trial.

In a related development, environmental activist Tilly Gifford has challenged the UK government’s refusal to extend the UPI to Scotland—opposing the Scottish National Party’s failure to hold its own inquiry. The verdict on her case is still outstanding.

The UPI was set up in 2014 to investigate the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), active between 1968 and 2008, and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU), active between 1999 and 2011. The anti-democratic and morally degraded actions of these units included spying on over 1,000 organisations and campaigns—from animal rights groups to trade unions and socialist parties. They helped blacklist workers, provoked violent actions and their members formed relationships, sometimes sexual, and in at least one case fostered a child, while undercover.

Nearly 200 victims have been named as core participants, though the true numbers affected likely run into the thousands. From the outset, the inquiry did not require the police to reveal their operations and accepted as participants only some of those who already knew themselves to be victims. The SDS alone employed some 201 people over its 40 years of existence.

Four years later, the inquiry has still not formally sat and is still deciding on police demands to submit evidence anonymously and in redacted form. Chairman Sir John Mitting has, with little to no justification, granted roughly 30 percent of SDS police spies full anonymity, repeatedly telling victims that “you are going to be met with a brick wall of silence.” He has indicated that the percentage will be even higher for NPOIU officers.

Peter Francis, a former undercover SDS officer now turned whistleblower and UPI core participant, explained that the “level of redactions accepted by the Inquiry Team is so high, even I am often unable to decipher from whom the applications are made…” He complained, “Even when a risk assessment concludes that risks faced by an individual are ‘low,’ the Inquiry has refused to publish his or her cover name.”

Francis and dozens of other core participants walked out of the anonymity hearings in March and have since boycotted them in protest.

But while the criticisms of the inquiry’s anti-democratic nature by the various parties are accurate, the demands advanced by the new legal challenge are misconceived. They are based on an incorrect political appraisal of the inquiry’s purpose and, more fundamentally, the role of the state and its various arms—including the police and intelligence agencies—in society.

One demand is that the home secretary “appoint a panel with the skill and diversity required.” Another states, “Our aim is to restore public confidence in the Undercover Policing Inquiry and its ability to get to the truth.”

In Scotland, Gifford is being supported by the Scottish Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance, which seeks to establish a Scottish Inquiry, which can “learn from the mistakes” of its English and Welsh counterpart, i.e., one that “must be led by a panel of experts.”

The March walkout also focused on the need for a diverse expert panel. Phillippa Kaufmann QC, counsel for the victims, said that it must be composed of “individuals who have a proper informed experiential understanding of discrimination, both on grounds of race and sex—two issues that lie absolutely at the heart of this inquiry…” She went on to criticise Mitting as “someone who is both naive and old-fashioned and does not understand the world that [victims] or the police inhabit.”

Contrary to these arguments, the essential problem with the inquiry is not its particular chairman or the racial or sexual identities of its overseers, but its purpose in upholding the interests of the ruling elite. SDS and NPOIU operations were aimed at the wholesale surveillance and sabotage of every organisation that fell outside of a narrow band of state-sanctioned political activity. First formed in the midst of the fierce class struggles of the late 1960s, they were part of the concerted and ongoing repression of workers and youth. The same work is now carried out by the National Domestic Extremism and Disorder Intelligence Unit.

The terms of the inquiry were specifically designed to exclude any investigation of these issues. In 2015, the World Socialist Web Site noted in an open letter to Mitting’s predecessor, Lord Pitchford, that hardly any political organisations had been granted core participant status. Pitchford directly refused to investigate police surveillance of the Socialist Equality Party’s predecessors—the Socialist Labour League (SLL) and Workers’ Revolutionary Party (WRP)—despite evidence of police operations against them being publicly available in the testimonies of ex-MI5 agents, and despite the inquiry already listing three individuals who operated as spies in the organisations.

Pitchford refused because the government wanted to divert attention away from the fundamental class interests behind police repression and surveillance. As Lenin explained in his 1917 work The State and Revolution, the police are not neutral arbiters of eternal justice. They are essential components of the “special bodies of armed men” that exist to preserve the domination of the ruling class.

These class interests explain the course the inquiry has taken and will take whatever its composition. Its findings were never intended to reach the truth, let alone hold anyone to account.

Theresa May, then home secretary, announced the inquiry in 2014 only because investigations by activists and journalists were revealing damaging evidence of state surveillance and legal challenges had been launched for compensation. A government-run damage limitation operation was needed to control the fallout, while giving the impression that something was being done for the victims. As a result, anonymous police officers will give private evidence to a bought-and-paid-for judge, who will produce a final report in 2023 at the earliest.

Mitting was selected to perform the service of managing the inquiry in such a way as to cause as little damage to the state as possible. A panel, were it to be granted, would be selected in just the same fashion and composed of people—of any race, gender or experience—deemed suitably subservient to the authorities.

Public inquiries have a long history as the means by which the British ruling elite whitewashes its crimes. After years of cover-ups, including inquests and an inquiry, and bitter opposition from Labour and Tory governments, it took 27 years before an independent panel finally reached a verdict exonerating the 96 people who died in the Hillsborough football disaster of any blame.

The Grenfell fire inquiry has no powers to prosecute anyone under the 2005 Inquiries Act, and any discussion of a “social, economic and political nature” has been ruled out.

The UPI cannot be reformed to be what it is not. An independent workers’ investigation must be organised, alongside a political mobilisation to end all police surveillance and repression of working class communities.

Ecuador’s president issues new threat to Julian Assange

Mike Head

In a tweet and television interview, Ecuadorian President Lenín Moreno has declared he will “take measures” against WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange unless he stops “intervening” in the politics and affairs of countries.

Moreno’s tweet yesterday stated: “To Mr. Assange we have put a condition: That he stop intervening in politics and self-determination of the country. Otherwise, measures will be taken.”

These “measures” can only mean forcing Assange out of Ecuador’s London embassy, to be immediately arrested by the British police and imprisoned, pending extradition proceedings by the Trump administration.

Moreno’s talk about Assange “intervening” in the politics of other countries is absurd. The journalist has been totally gagged by the Ecuadorian government: he has been denied all visitors and has had his internet access blocked by electronic jammers. To talk about Assange “intervening” in the politics of other governments under these conditions is nothing but a cynical attempt to create a pretext for handing him over to the notorious war criminals in Washington and London.

These measures are aimed at denying basic political free speech to Assange and WikiLeaks, the best-known site in the world for exposing the war crimes, coup plots and mass surveillance of the US government and its allies.

The demand for “non-interference” essentially means to permit these crimes to continue, and worsen, under conditions in which the Trump administration’s belligerent “America First” trade war measures and military threats point to the danger of another world war.

It is also a violation of the very principle of the political asylum that Ecuador granted Assange in 2012 when he entered the country’s London embassy to avoid being extradited to Sweden and then to the US to face likely espionage, conspiracy and breach of secrecy charges.

The Ecuadorian president, who is desperately seeking close relations with Washington and US investment, seems to be trying to condition public opinion in Ecuador and internationally for Assange’s imminent eviction from the embassy.

Moreno elaborated on his threat in an interview broadcast on Sunday night by Univision, a US Spanish-language television network. On Assange’s possible removal from the embassy, Moreno said: “It is a problem that we inherited; Assange has problems with the English justice system, with the justice system of the United States. Our principal concern has been to protect his integrity, his human rights and fundamentally his life. Ecuador does not have the death penalty and we would be unable to deliver Mr. Assange to a country where he could be sentenced to death …

“We have placed Mr. Assange under conditions that stop him from intervening in the politics, in the economy, in the self-determination of every people and principally those of friendly countries,” because otherwise, “we will make a decision.”

These comments follow Moreno’s explicit statement last week that his government was willing to hand over Assange to Britain to be extradited to the US, provided only that the authorities in Washington offered what would be a worthless promise not to assassinate Assange or seek the death penalty against him.

While pretending to be trying to save Assange’s life, Moreno has made it clear since he was installed as president in May last year that he regards Assange as a “problem” he inherited from his predecessor Rafael Correa, who had adopted a more left-wing posture. For months, Moreno and his ministers have been conducting closed-door talks with the US and British administrations on ways and means to hand Assange over to them.

On Spanish- and Catalan-language news sites, Moreno’s Univision interview was placed in the context of Assange’s condemnation of the Spanish government’s repression of Catalan voters and leaders in March. Ecuador’s government cut off Assange’s internet and other communications with the outside world, placing him in solitary political confinement, after WikiLeaks denounced Germany for taking Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont as a “political prisoner” at Spain’s request.

Moreno made an official state visit to Spain last week, after a trip to Britain, seeking to forge ties to the European imperialist powers. However, his threats, and the now three-month-old isolation of Assange clearly seek to protect the governments of all the “friendly countries” that Moreno is trying to please. Above all, Moreno’s actions are aimed at accommodating himself to the requirements of the US ruling class.

Another inherited “problem” for Moreno appears to be that Ecuador’s previous foreign minister granted Assange Ecuadorian citizenship in a failed bid to arrange a way for the WikiLeaks editor to leave the embassy without being immediately detained by the British government.

In a recent podcast, Intercept journalist Glenn Greenwald reported he had been in contact with Assange’s lawyers as well as the Ecuadorian government in recent weeks, and said Ecuador has been under pressure for months from Spain, Britain and the US over Assange.

Greenwald said Moreno was ready to finalise an agreement to hand over Assange and withdraw asylum, but may be wanting to first retroactively rescind Assange’s citizenship, because the Ecuadorian-UK extradition treaty contains restrictions on “turning citizens over.”

There is no doubt as to why the Trump administration, like the Obama administration, is intent on silencing Assange and WikiLeaks for good. Before being granted asylum in 2012, Assange coordinated a series of highly-revealing document dumps through WikiLeaks, including the 2007 release of secret military hardware used by US forces in Afghanistan, the 2010 “collateral murder” video of US aerial killings in Afghanistan, and the 2010 release of 250,000 incriminating State Department cables, widely known as “Cablegate”. There was also the 2011 publication of Guantanamo Bay prison details.

Despite Assange being trapped inside Ecuador’s embassy since 2012, the damaging leaks have continued, including 400,000 classified files about the illegal invasion of Iraq and, more recently, huge troves of files exposing the computer hacking operations of the CIA.

Leading figures in the Trump administration have made no secret of their determination to get their hands on Assange. In April, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions again declared: “We are going to step up our efforts and already are stepping up our efforts on all leaks. We will seek to put some people in jail.”

Despite Assange being an Australian citizen, successive Australian governments, starting with Julia Gillard’s Labor administration in 2010, have colluded closely with the US authorities and refused to secure his release from the threat of extradition to the US.

In Australia, the Socialist Equality Party is the only political party campaigning for Assange’s defence, which is part of the broader fight necessary for the defence of all fundamental democratic rights. A globally-broadcast rally conducted by the SEP, with the support of investigative journalist John Pilger, in Sydney’s Town Hall Square on June 17, demanded that the Australian government secure Assange’s right to return to Australia, if he so wishes, with guarantees that he not be handed over to the US.

The Australian government’s refusal to meet its obligation to defend a citizen underscores the necessity to build a working class movement to secure Assange’s freedom, against the political, trade union and media establishment that has abandoned him. As part of this campaign, we urge our readers to join protests if Assange is forced from Ecuador’s embassy and then faces a protracted struggle against plans to extradite him to the United States.

US launches economic war on Iran, roils Mideast and world geopolitics

Keith Jones

US President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday re-imposing, effective today, sweeping US economic sanctions against Iran that had been suspended in January 2016 as part of the Iran nuclear deal.

The sanctions, which Washington is demanding all other countries join it in enforcing, are both illegal and tantamount to an act of war.

Moreover, they are accompanied by increasing US military pressure and threats of war against Tehran. Trump tweeted late last month that Iran would “SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED” if it ever “THREATEN[ED]” the US. In recent days there have been repeated threats, couched as warnings, from the Pentagon that Washington will take whatever military action is necessary to secure “freedom of navigation” through the Straits of Hormuz, the conduit for much of Iranian and Mideast oil.

Unlike the European Union, the US, under Obama, refused to rescind the brutal economic sanctions they had jointly mounted against Iran from 2011 through 2015, and instead agreed only to suspend them. It claimed the threat of the immediate “snap-back” of sanctions was needed to ensure Iranian compliance with the nuclear deal.

However, it is Washington that has brazenly broken the agreement. Trump has “snapped back” sanctions on Iran, even though the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the five other great powers that negotiated the nuclear accord, and even the US State Department are in agreement Tehran has fulfilled its obligations under the accord to the letter.

In May, when he announced the US was torpedoing the Iran accord, Trump still made an attempt, albeit a fatuous one, to argue that Iran was violating the “spirit” of the agreement. Yesterday he forsook any such pretense. He simply declared the agreement was not in the “national security interests” of the US and that Washington would wage economic war on Iran—what he called “applying maximum economic pressure”—until it was “renegotiated” to the US’ satisfaction.

The demands that Trump and the anti-Iran hawks he has elevated to top posts in his administration, National Security Adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have made for a new “agreement” would entail Iran’s bourgeois-nationalist regime effectively agreeing to unilateral disarmament, foregoing in perpetuity the development of a civil nuclear program, and accepting unbridled US domination of the Middle East. These include: scrapping its ballistic missile program; granting the IAEA the right to inspect any Iranian military facility at any time; withdrawing all Islamic Revolutionary Guard forces from Syria and otherwise ending its “malign” activities; and ceasing logistical support for Mideast groups perceived as obstacles to US foreign policy, such as Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

As he signed yesterday’s executive order, Trump also threatened the rest of the world, including Washington’s ostensible European and Asian allies. Those who fail to abide by Washington’s sanctions and continue to trade and invest in Iran “risk severe consequences,” he declared.

Under existing US law, companies and countries that do not adhere to the unilateral and illegal US sanctions against Iran face massive fines, exclusion from the US market and, no less menacing, exclusion from the US-dominated world financial system.

The sanctions that come into force today embargo trade with Iran of commercial aircraft, cars and car parts, gold and other precious metals, coal, aluminum, and steel, as well as Iranian exports of carpets and pistachios.

Yesterday’s executive order also fulfilled all requirements under US law for the automatic imposition of a second wave of even more punishing sanctions on November 5. These target all foreign transactions of Iran’s central bank, with the aim of strangling the country’s external trade, and Iran’s oil exports, which fund the lion’s share of the state budget.

Japan, South Korea and India have all sought waivers from the impeding US oil sanctions, similar to those that the Obama administration gave, under which they would steadily reduce, but not entirely halt, oil imports from Iran. The Trump administration, however, is refusing to give any waivers. It insists countries must wind down their oil imports from Iran between now and the beginning of November and that the US objective is to entirely choke off all Iranian oil exports, and do so as close as possible to the November 5 sanctions deadline.

According to the New York Times, “senior administration officials” boasted about the impact that the threat of sanctions has already had on Iran’s economy in a conference call with reporters yesterday. The Iranian currency, the rial, has fallen precipitously in value since Trump repudiated the Iran nuclear deal last May, and is now worth in US dollars terms about half of its April value.

Growing crisis in Iran

Facing mounting protests from widely disparate social layers, including the unemployed, teachers protesting low pay, and bazaar merchants and other better-off layers angered by currency controls, Iran’s government last week fired the head of the central bank and on Sunday abandoned its attempt to limit trading in the rial to a fixed exchange rate.

In a nationally televised appearance last night, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani appealed for “unity” while warning of further economic dislocation. He denounced Trump’s recent offer of “talks” with himself and other leaders of the Islamic Republic as a sham and a provocation, adding that the precondition for any meaningful talks must be the lifting of all sanctions and Washington’s return to the UN-backed Iran nuclear deal.

“If you stab someone with a knife and then you say you want talks, then the first thing you have to do is remove the knife,” said Rouhani.

“We are always in favour of diplomacy and talks,” continued the Iranian president, who came to power in 2013 as a proponent of a rapprochement with Washington. “But talks need honesty. Trump’s call for direct talks is only for domestic consumption in America ahead of elections … and to create chaos in Iran.”

The US drive to crash Iran’s economy is both a massive escalation of the four-decade-long campaign American imperialism has waged to return Iran to the type of neo-colonial bondage that existed under the Shah and the continuation of the series of ruinous wars Washington has imposed on the Middle East since 1991 in a bid to exercise unfettered dominance of the world’s most important oil-exporting region.

Democratic and Republican administrations alike have waged these wars and the associated campaign for regime change in Tehran, and both parties are united today in backing a more aggressive stance against Iran.

However, significant sections of the US military-intelligence establishment and Democratic Party oppose Trump’s scuttling of the Iran nuclear accord. This is because they believe that US imperialist interests would be better served by focusing on the US military-strategic offensive against Russia and preparing for conflict with China, and that a more limited escalation against Iran, particularly in Syria, would suffice.

Geopolitical shock waves

Be that as it may, the imposition of punishing economic sanctions on Tehran has placed the US on the fast track toward military confrontation with Iran and demonstratively put the geopolitical prestige and power of the US in play, sending shock waves around the world.

The various great powers must now weigh how they respond to Washington’s attempt to coerce then into imposing sanctions against Iran in flagrant violation of an agreement they helped negotiate and to the growing likelihood of a military confrontation between Iran and the US. Such a war would quickly engulf the entire Middle East and threaten—as the fate of much of the world’s oil reserves and dominance of the hinge that unites Europe, Asia and Africa would be at stake—to become the antechamber of a global conflagration.

Yesterday the foreign ministers of Germany, France and Britain as well as the European Union’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini reaffirmed their support for the Iran nuclear deal. In a joint statement, they said it was “delivering on its goal, namely to insure that the Iranian [nuclear] program remains exclusively peaceful,” and vowed to “protect European economic operators engaged in legitimate business with Iran.”

Also Monday, the German- and French-led EU said that it will activate today an anti-sanctions law that makes it illegal for a European company to comply with extraterritorial US sanctions and forbids European courts from enforcing US sanction penalties.

The EU’s anti-sanctions stand is belied, however, by the large number of major and politically well-connected European firms, including the oil giant Total, the shipping company Maersk and the auto manufacturers Peugeot and Daimler, that have already announced they are exiting the Iranian market for fear of facing US penalties. Just three years ago, the French bank BNP Paribas paid an $8.9 billion fine for violating US sanctions against Iran and Cuba.

What is incontrovertible is that Washington’s actions will further exacerbate tensions between the US and Europe and lend new urgency to the drive of all the major European imperialist powers to rearm so as to be able to assert their own predatory interests, independently of and, when necessary, in opposition to the US.

China, which is already immersed in an ever-widening trade war with Washington, has already let it be known that it will not reduce, let alone halt, oil imports from Iran. According to Bloomberg, the only concession China, Iran’s largest oil customer, would make to the US in talks last week was a promise not to ratchet up Iranian oil purchases as other countries reduce theirs in compliance with US demands.

Russia has denounced the US for repudiating the Iran deal, and US critics of Trump’s policy are warning that it could strengthen Tehran’s ties with both Moscow and Beijing. However, in recent months, Moscow has signaled that it is ready to assist the US and Israel in pushing Iranian forces out of Syria, including by giving a green light to Israeli air strikes on Iranian forces, as part of its own attempt to reach an accommodation with Washington.

Bankruptcy filings surge among older Americans

Kate Randall 

For an increasing number of older Americans, life in retirement is the diametric opposite of the “golden years.” Instead of being comfortably cushioned by a pension and Social Security, a significant section of the senior population faces dwindling income, vanishing pensions, inadequate savings, mounting health care costs and rising debt. Debt collectors are visiting them at their low-paying jobs or knocking at their door.

A new study by the Consumer Bankruptcy Project finds that this “perfect storm” of adversity is translating into desperation. “When the costs of aging are offloaded onto a population that simply does not have access to adequate resources, something has to give,” the study states, “and older Americans turn to what little is left of the social safety net—bankruptcy court.”

The research documented in “The Graying of US Bankruptcy: Fallout for Life in a Risk Society,” finds that the rate of people 65 and older filing for bankruptcy is three times what it was in 1991. The same age group also accounts for a far greater share of all bankruptcy filers. The study suggests that this surge in filings by seniors is being driven by a three-decade-long shift of financial risk from the government and employers to individuals.

Seniors must wait longer for full Social Security benefits (age 70 rather than 65), defined benefit pensions have been replaced with 401(k)s, and older people are spending more out of pocket for medical care not covered by Medicare. Stagnant and declining incomes, job loss and the inability to find a decent-paying job to make ends meet are compounding the problem. Many seniors are one illness, accident or income drop away from financial ruin.

The Consumer Bankruptcy Project, in operation since 1981, is currently led by the authors of the study: Deborah Thorne, University of Idaho; Robert M. Lawless, University of Illinois; Pamela Foohey, Indiana University and Katherine Porter, University of California, Irvine. The project, financed by their universities, collects and analyzes court records of bankruptcy filings. Their latest study is based on sample personal bankruptcy cases and questionnaires filled out by 895 filers, ages 19 to 92.

Excerpts from the questionnaires give a glimpse of the respondents’ precarious personal and financial situations.

* The consequences of inadequate retirement and employment income:

All things went up in price. Retirement never went up. Had a part-time job that was helping to meet monthly payments. House payment kept going up. Was fired from my part-time job that I had for over 10 years without any warning. Being 67 and having back problems, not many people will hire you even as part time worker.

* The financial risk from plans like 401(k)s, which individuals are left to manage on their own:

Mismanaged my retirement savings due to depression. Invested in stock market but over-leveraged my account. Tried to restructure my debts but creditors refused. Unable to find suitable employment to pay my credit cards. Filed bankruptcy.

* The impact of debt and debt collectors:

My wife developed medical problems and had to leave her job, resulting in a loss of income. About two years later, I developed medical problems and was not able to continue working. We got to a point where we simply could not handle the debt load. The constant calls from bill collectors forced us to contact an attorney for help.

* Forced to forgo medical care, exposing the inadequacy of Medicare and Social Security to cover health care costs:

I went without medical and dental. Even with Medicare and supplemental dental insurance, the co-pays were more than we could afford. I still need dental work. It will have to wait until I can save up the money. Our income is just over the limit to get [governmental] help.

The authors provide background to the rise and fall of the social safety net in America. “During the nineteenth century, only the wealthy could count on familial care in their final years,” they write. “Most others were shunted off to poorhouses, which were ‘dreary, vermin-infested, and laden with human waste.’ Elderly poor were regarded as ‘a burden on the local taxes’ and were ‘despised and often treated as outcasts.’”

In the wake of the Great Depression, approximately two-thirds of older Americans were impoverished, living the “stark terror of penniless, helpless old age,” the study says. The Social Security Act was signed into law in 1935 by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Following World War II, workers began to receive public pensions with defined benefits. Medicare and Medicaid followed, signed into law by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965. 

None of these reforms were granted out of the beneficence of the ruling elite—they were wrested from them in great struggles by workers. Conceding these social improvements bought time for the ruling class to hold back a movement of the working class. Now, with the plundering of the economy by the financial oligarchy—with the inflation of stock values serving as a mechanism for the upward redistribution of wealth to the super-rich—workers have seen their wages stagnate and decline in real value.

As the two big-business parties authorize trillions for the Pentagon budget and war, income inequality is soaring to new heights. Bankrupting the economy to enrich their bank accounts, the financial aristocrats are demanding that what’s left of the social safety net be dismantled.

The plight of growing numbers of seniors who are being forced to file for bankruptcy is a direct result of this process. The study quotes Stephen Katz, who describes the political establishment’s efforts over the past several decades to destroy Social Security, Medicare and pensions as pressure to “responsibilize a new senior citizenry to care for itself.”

As explained by the study, it is the poorest sections of the senior population that face the greatest financial squeeze. In 2001, about half of households headed by someone 60 or older had some debt. By 2013 this had risen to more than 61 percent. The median amount that older adult households owed more than doubled, from $18,385 in 2001 to $40,900 in 2013.

Since 1991, younger Americans’ rates of filing for bankruptcy have been steadily decreasing. During this same period, older Americans’ rates of bankruptcy filing have increased two- and three-fold, for those 65-75 and 75 and older, respectively. One in seven bankruptcy filers in America is 65 or older, a nearly five-fold increase over two-and-a-half decades ago. Among those age 75 and older, there has been a near ten-fold increase in filings since 1991.

The study says that financial problems facing seniors likely have resulted from “inadequate retirement income, job loss, or from jobs that pay older people less.” Seniors are also paying in retirement for student loans for their children.

The study also notes that “bankruptcy is not and never has been a panacea, especially for older people.” Compared to younger people filing bankruptcy, seniors were more likely to report “that their financial situations were either worse than or as bad as when they initially filed bankruptcy.”

Those filing for bankruptcy after age 65 had far more debt that their non-bankrupt peers—reporting median total debt of $101,560 compared to $1,000. Non-bankrupt older Americans also had an average $251,500 in wealth, compared to bankrupt seniors’ average net negative wealth of $17,390.

As in all of American society, a tiny fraction of the super-rich over-65s can pay out of pocket for whatever they need, while the vast majority of seniors struggle to get by. These conditions contribute to ill-health and even premature death under conditions where medical science has developed the ability to treat and cure all sorts of diseases and prolong life.

The study’s authors correctly point to the significance of the rise of senior bankruptcy filings for the greater population. As the World Socialist Web Site has often explained, the attack being waged by both the Democrats and Republicans on Social Security and Medicare is aimed at the working class as a whole. The attack on the right of older Americans to live a financially secure, healthy and dignified existence after a lifetime of work must be opposed by all workers and young people.

The Democrats have stood by in virtual silence as the Trump administration has pursued a ruthless policy ultimately aimed at privatizing Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The working class must adopt a socialist perspective, independent of the two big business parties, that fights for the social rights of the working class, including a secure retirement, high-quality health care, education and housing.

Washington allies with ISIS as great power conflict trumps “war on terror”

Bill Van Auken

The “National Defense Strategy” document released at the beginning of this year declared bluntly that the nearly two-decade focus by the US military on the so-called “global war on terrorism” had come to an end. In its place, a new strategic orientation was being introduced based on preparing for “great power” confrontation, i.e., war with nuclear-armed Russia and China.

This was the first such defense strategy to be issued by the Pentagon in over a decade and expressed the urgency with which Washington views the preparations for a third world war.

A particularly crude and criminal outcome of this policy shift is becoming increasingly apparent in three major theaters where US forces are engaged in active combat operations. Reports from Yemen, Syria and Afghanistan provide firm evidence that the US and its local proxies are allying themselves with and employing the services of elements of ISIS and Al Qaeda in the pursuit of Washington’s broader strategic interests.

In Yemen, hundreds, if not thousands, of fighters from Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), branded by the US government as the “most dangerous” affiliate of the loose international Al Qaeda network, have been recruited by Washington’s closest allies in the Arab world, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, to fight as foot soldiers in the near-genocidal US-backed war that these Persian Gulf oil monarchies have been waging against the impoverished country of Yemen since 2015.

According to an investigative report published Monday by the Associated Press, the Saudi-led coalition “cut secret deals with al-Qaida fighters, paying some to leave key cities and towns and letting others retreat with weapons, equipment and wads of looted cash... Hundreds more were recruited to join the coalition itself.”

It added that “Key participants in the pacts said the US was aware of the arrangements and held off on any drone strikes.”

“Elements of the US military are clearly aware that much of what the US is doing in Yemen is aiding AQAP and there is much angst about that,” Michael Horton, a senior analyst at the Jamestown Foundation, a CIA-connected Washington think tank, told the AP.

“However, supporting the UAE and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia against what the US views as Iranian expansionism takes priority over battling AQAP and even stabilizing Yemen,” Horton added.

This is a gross understatement. Washington is providing indispensable military support for a war that has reduced millions of Yemenis to the brink of starvation. It is prepared to wipe out much of the country’s population in order to bolster its strategic position and that of the reactionary Arab regimes with which it is allied against the perceived threat of Iranian influence to US regional hegemony.

The war has escalated in recent days in the ongoing siege of the Yemeni Red Sea Port of Hodeidah, which was green-lighted by the Trump administration. The UN has warned that a quarter of a million people could lose their lives in this operation, while millions more across the country may die of starvation if it shuts down the port, the sole lifeline for food, fuel and medicine for at least 70 percent of the population.

Recruiting Al Qaeda fighters to slaughter Yemenis in this immense and bloody war crime is entirely consistent with US policy.

In regard to Syria, meanwhile, Russia’s Defense Ministry last Thursday issued a statement warning that ISIS has increasingly concentrated its forces in the area around al-Tanaf, near the Syrian-Iraqi border, where the US military maintains a military base and has unilaterally declared a 34-mile exclusion zone around it. US troops there have provided training to so-called “rebels” opposing the government of President Bashar al-Assad and appear to be providing a security screen for ISIS.

Launched on the pretext of carrying out the “annihilation” of ISIS in Iraq and Syria, the illegal US military intervention in Syria has repeatedly seen the US and its local proxies facilitate the flight of ISIS from besieged cities. The most notorious incident was in Raqqa, where a column of vehicles carried 4,000 ISIS fighters and family members, along with their weapons, ammunition and explosives, into the eastern Syrian desert.

The goal was to turn these fighters against government troops and aid in the US operation to deprive Damascus of control over Syria’s oil and gas fields, which are vital for the reconstruction of the war-ravaged country. The US aims in Syria are bound up with wider preparations for war not only against Iran, but against Russia as well.

Finally, in regard to Afghanistan, where the US has waged war for nearly 17 years, the New York Times published an article Sunday titled “Are ISIS Fighters Prisoners or Honored Guests of the Afghan Government?”

The article reported how two senior commanders of ISIS, along with 250 of their fighters, had surrendered to the US-backed Afghan National Army to avoid being routed by the Taliban in northern Afghanistan.

“If they were prisoners, however, it was hard to tell,” the Times reported. “The government arranged for them to stay in a guesthouse in the provincial capital of Sheberghan. Guards were posted around it not to keep the insurgents in, but to keep their potential enemies out, according to the provincial governor. Although the fighters were disarmed, they were allowed to keep their cell phones and other personal possessions.”

The Times added that “The dubious nature of the Islamic State surrender has proved a propaganda bonanza for the Taliban.”

The newspaper does not provide any details on the nature of this “propaganda,” but it does report that the ISIS fighters “were ferried from the battlefield in Afghan Army helicopters, avoiding a potentially dangerous journey on the roads.”

The obvious conclusion from this account is that ISIS has functioned as a US asset in Afghanistan, attacking the Taliban and carrying out atrocities aimed at precluding any negotiated resolution of the conflict that does not serve US geo-strategic interests in the region.

This more or less open alliance between the Pentagon and ISIS, a supposed prime target in multiple US military interventions across three continents, is not so much a new policy as the revival of an old one that was never fully abandoned, despite the inflated rhetoric of that greatest of all “fake news” stories, the “global war on terrorism.”

Al Qaeda, the original supposed arch enemy in this unending war, was the direct product of CIA and US support for the Islamist mujahideen in Afghanistan against the Soviet-backed government in the 1980s. Since then, these elements have had a dual use for US imperialism, serving at one stage as proxy forces in wars for regime-change, and at another as a pretext for US interventions in the name of fighting terror.

Under the mantle of the “war on terrorism,” successive US governments, Democratic and Republican alike, have not only conducted wars whose victims number in the millions, but also carried out an unrelenting attack on democratic rights, from domestic spying to censoring the Internet.

The emerging international alliance between the Pentagon and ISIS only serves to expose the real interests underlying these policies, which are bound up with the waging of war to offset US imperialism’s loss of economic preeminence and defend its crumbling global hegemony, and domestic repression to sustain a social order characterized by the most extreme inequality in modern American history.

2018 Protests in Southern Iraq: Lessons for Iran’s Post-Conflict Strategy in Syria

Pieter-jan Dockx


In July 2018, mass protests swept provincial capitals in Shia-majority southern Iraq, demanding improvements in the provision of public services like potable water and electricity. While protests for better services are common in southern Iraq, the palpable anti-Iran sentiment witnessed during the recent demonstrations marked a noticeable shift from previous protests in the region. This antagonism towards Tehran is largely the result of the perceived association between the Iraqi political class that is held responsible for the said grievances, and Iran. Lessons can be drawn regarding vis-à-vis Iran’s consolidation strategy in Syria by comparing the growing anti-Iran sentiment in Iraq to Lebanon, where support for Iran’s ally, Hezbollah, seems to be increasing. Although both Iraq and Lebanon have inadequate governance systems, Hezbollah does provide its constituency with sufficient services, which leads to greater popular support. This analysis looks at the situation from Iran’s vantage point, and argues that Tehran would not want to omit this socioeconomic aspect in its strategy to entrench itself in post-conflict Syria.

The hostility towards Iran in southern Iraq is primarily caused by Tehran’s perceived relationship with the political parties that have governed Iraq for the last 15 years and have failed to provide sufficient and good quality public services. After the US invasion of Iraq, Iran was able to expand its influence in Baghdad to the extent that it now faces shared responsibility for the country’s ills. Iran has mainly focused on increasing its influence over ’Iraq’s security apparatus while largely neglecting socioeconomic policymaking, conveniently making Baghdad more dependent on Tehran. Recently, for various reasons, Iran cut electricity supplies to Iraq, further exacerbating the existing crisis in the country’s south. In the supposed absence of a unifying threat like the so-called Islamic State, all these grievances associated with Iran have now come to the fore.

This popular discontent threatens Tehran’s interests in the country. Southern Iraq is predominantly Shia and has long been Iran’s closest ally in the country. With Iraq’s Sunni population traditionally suspicious of Iranian influence, Tehran would want to avoid further alienating the country’s Shia majority as well. The protests also open the doors to actors that aim to reduce Iran’s influence in Iraq. Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr—who contested the general election with a nationalist and partly anti-Iran discourse—has made various attempts to capture the movement. The Iraqi government has also turned to Iran’s regional adversary, Saudi Arabia, to bridge the electricity supply gap created by Tehran.

The Iraqi case stands in sharp contrast to the popularity of Iran’s local Shia ally in Lebanon, Hezbollah, which safeguards Tehran’s interest in the country. In Lebanon’s May 2018 general election, Hezbollah and its (Shia and Sunni) allies won a majority of seats in the parliament. This was a notable improvement compared to their performance in the previous elections, and arguably, an indication of increased support for the group. While Lebanon and Iraq have equally ineffective state apparatuses, Hezbollah operates as a state within a state, providing its own public services to its constituents in sectors such as education and healthcare, more effectively than the state’s public service delivery systems. With the electoral campaigns in both Iraq and Lebanon primarily focused on these socioeconomic factors, Iran’s ally in Lebanon was able to demonstrate tangible results whereas its allies in Iraq rehashed the same old empty promises. Furthermore, while Hezbollah only had a minority stake in the previous failing Lebanese governments, Iran’s allies in Baghdad have been in power throughout the post-Saddam Hussein period of failed governance. Thus, unlike politicians in Iraq, Hezbollah has a credible narrative when it dodges the blame for central government failure in Lebanon.

These two examples demonstrate how Iran would not want to neglect this socioeconomic aspect in its efforts to consolidate its presence Syria. While Iran’s current activity in Syria is being legitimised by an existential ‘terrorist’ threat to the state, the current crisis in Iraq demonstrates that this situation will not last indefinitely. However, the nature of Syrian state and conflict means that Iran cannot emulate the Hezbollah social model to a tee. While Tehran’s allies in Baghdad have more or less captured the state and Hezbollah operates in Lebanon as a proto-state, Iran-linked groups in Syria have been integrating in the existing Assad regime. Thus, unlike in Lebanon and Iraq, Iran’s allies in Syria will be unable to act with the same degree of autonomy. Although this could potentially hamper Iran’s attempts to implement the strategy of providing public services, it also provides Tehran the ability to pass the buck if need arises.

The targeting of Iran during recent protests in Iraq’s Shia heartland has exposed the flaws in Tehran’s strategy towards its neighbour. Given the imminence of Syria’s post-conflict phase, Iran would want to avoid repeating the mistakes it made in Iraq. Although Tehran will have to take into account local power dynamics, Tehran’s consolidation policy in Syria will succeed only if guided by the socioeconomic aspect of the Hezbollah model.