How will the violent and non-violent resistance in Iraq affect the future of the US occupation?
First and foremost, it is the armed resistance that has made the occupation untenable. If there had been no resistance to the occupation of a sovereign independent Arab country, the West would have got a big victory and probably gone on to invade other countries, or used the occupation of Iraq as a pressure mechanism to bring about regime change elsewhere. That has failed. Then, you have growing political resistance by trade unionists, by ordinary people who don’t like the occupation and who also want to bring an end to the violence. People in the Western media talk about a specific situation where Shias and Sunnis are trying to divide Iraq into narrow religious ethnic groups. But it is important to remember that the Shia community in Iraq, which is very large and comprises 60 to 65 per cent of the population, has always been divided politically. They don’t agree with each other. One faction of the Shias is manipulated by Tehran and does their bidding, while you have other large groups
