Alliances and solidarity: Report on Beirut anti-war conference

from Iraq Solidarity Project - 18.10.2004 21:23

Report on the “Where Next for the Global Anti-War and
Anti-Globalization Movements?” conference in Beirut, 17-19 September 2004. Prepared by Iraq Solidarity Project, a grassroots collective based in Montreal, Canada.

(Note this report reflects our group’s focus on Iraq solidarity work and was written to raise issues of significance in the North American context. A more comprehensive report, from the conference organisers, as well as the conference declaration and participants’ list, is posted at www.focusweb.org.)

Below:
1. Background
2. Participation
3. Main Debates
4. Initiatives

1. Background

The Beirut conference emerged from a process that began at an anti-war conference in Jakarta in May 2003 and continued at an anti-war assembly at the Mumbai World Social Forum in January 2004. Very generally, the goal of the conference was to deepen ties of the groups involved in this process to groups and movements in the Middle East and Arabic regions, while developing a concrete plan of action against militarization and globalisation, with a special focus on the occupations of Iraq and Palestine.

Key conveners were Focus on the Global South (Philippines) and the Civilian Campaign for Protection of Palestinian People - CCIPPP (France), both of whom had people working out of Beirut for a number of weeks before the conference began. The rest of the working group which formed to organise the conference – from Argentina, South Africa, Japan, France, Nicaragua, India, Philippines, Italy, Brazil, Greece, UK, and US - reflects the broadly international, and south-weighted, character of the initiative.

While the realistic assessment of the global imperialist threat at the gathering was deeply refreshing to a North American, the conference was controversial locally. By accepting the sponsorship of three political parties close to the Lebanese government – the Lebanese Communist Party, Hezbollah, and the Socialist Party (PSP) – the conference entered into local politics. Grassroots organisers in Beirut and some Lebanese NGOs raised concerns about the potential negative impact of the conference on their work for local social justice and specifically on their efforts to define a progressive political current facing both local and global sources of oppression (for more, see www.beirut.indymedia.org).

2. Participants

Participation was rich – with groups from many parts of the world, bringing together not only anti-war/occupation solidarity groups, but frontline struggles against occupation and capitalist globalisation (delegates from Iraq, Palestine, as well as from peasants’ movements and anti-privatization struggles in Bangladesh, Brazil, South Africa).

On the other hand, participation from Africa and North America was generally weak. This suggests a need to build stronger links with groups in the North American region and may reflect the priorities of struggles in the African region.

3. Main Debates

The conference functioned almost entirely in plenary sessions, with the exception of three broad working group sessions (on Iraq, Palestine and Militarisation & Globalisation), as well as informal regional meetings. The accent was thus more on broad discussion of big questions and networking than practical planning. The discussion was nevertheless important, and threw light on several key debates facing groups working against (or struggling to survive) the current waves of militarisation and capitalist globalisation. This quick summary of several lines of debate is not comprehensive and does not do justice to the nuances and diverse perspectives expressed during the conference.

Local struggles, global movement. One thread of discussion throughout the conference revolved around the question of how a united front against a global threat can be reconciled with local struggles for dignity and justice in the Middle East. Those involved in frontline struggles for the basic rights of refugees, women, migrant workers, detainees and queers in the Middle East expressed their frustration at having been told, for years, that their struggles must take second place to the movement against US imperialism and Israel. Their arguments were taken up by delegates from other parts of the world calling for an approach of “localising the struggle, globalising the intifada”. It was argued on the other hand that, as it is not possible to fight on all fronts simultaneously, we must establish priorities for a united regional or global movement capable of seriously challenging imperialism in the strategically crucial region. The latter opinion tended to be voiced by those close to more traditional leftist groupings and parties, such as the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), the PSP and others.

Solidarity and Alliances. Walden Bello kicked off the discussion on alliances in his keynote paper, “Beirut 2004: A Milestone in the Global Struggle against Injustice and War” (www.focusweb.org). Saying “Let’s face it: the fact that a large part of the resistance in both Iraq and Israel is Islamic rather than secular in inspiration continues to bother many peace activists,” Bello argued for broad support for resistance in Iraq and Palestine as a matter of non-interference in the outcome of national liberation struggles: “Until they give up their implict conditioning of their actions on the guarantee that a national liberation movement tailored to their values and discourse will be the one to come to power, many peace activists will continue to be trapped within a paradigm of imposing their terms on other people.” His position was reinforced by other delegates, arguing that it was up to the people of Iraq to chose, according to the limited means available to them in their tremendously difficult situation, how they should fight the occupation of their country; and that the role of solidarity is to lend support, not offer critiques.
In the debates that followed, some participants, including organisers from the region, reversed the equation: according to this line of thinking, it is support for political Islam, nationalism, and an exclusive focus on armed struggle as the privileged form of resistance (as opposed to widespread, and often more democratic, civil and political resistance) which represents an unwelcome intervention. The counter-argument was less concerned with interference in “internal” Iraqi or “internal” regional affairs, wary of how this language has been manipulated in nationalist discourses – as well as the “clash of civilizations” paradigm - to justify oppression. Rather, the concern was more with upholding a principled basis for alliances. This was not only about reserving a right to criticize allies on their choice of tactics on moral and strategic grounds, but arose from the experience that not all resistance movements are liberatory or accountable to the people they purportedly represent. These views tended to rely more on a discourse of self-determination, with its ability to take into account diverse identities, than one of national liberation.
There was much discussion about the ways in which the latter stance risks lending - or how it can avoid lending - support for the occupation, which has sought to exploit differences in Iraq, and relied on a demonisation of Islam and the decontextualisation of tactics like suicide bombings, kidnappings and beheadings.
Participants were left with the urgent challenge of developing alliances across the frontlines of the global battlefield which escape the problematic “with us/against us” , “outside/inside”, and “clash of civilizations” frameworks and are instead grounded in our own concerns for justice, dignity, equality and well-being of people.

Concretely: support for independent Iraqi assembly? The debate around alliances became very concrete around a proposal to support an alternative, independent, constituent assembly organised by the Iraqi National Democratic Coalition (CONDI), by holding an international solidarity conference in Baghdad at the same time as the assembly. The proposal sparked debates over representativity (claims and counter-claims about where the initiative fits into the overall context in Iraq, which many participants did not have the context to judge and others argued was besides the point) and interference/non-interference (arguments and counter-arguments about whether supporting CONDI would constitute undue interference in Iraqi politics).
Beyond its particularities, the lengthy debate on the proposal suggested important questions about how we function together as a movement. What political purpose would have been served by having the conference as a whole lend its support for the assembly? What is the political vision informing the model of a unified movement getting behind a united national front of resistance in Iraq? In the end the conference was not able to come to consensus support for the proposal. Did this represent a failure or are there other ways of working together to support the resistance through diverse projects and different forms of solidarity? The compromise solution, that any group who wished to support the initiative should endorse it and get in touch with the organisers, perhaps modeled an alternative approach to working together.

Understanding the occupation. The larger debate about alliances and critical solidarity involved an exchange on who could be considered legitimate targets in the struggle against occupation. Largely through privatization, military functions are now often in the hands of apparent civilians within the fields of combat, security, intelligence, supply and even public relations. Even clearly civilian roles, such as construction work for civilian purposes, are often reinforcing the occupation or furthering the aims of the invasion by other means. This in turn led to debate about the need to refer to the larger context of exploitation, in which foreign workers and soldiers who are in Iraq have often been selected from the ranks of the economically and racially marginalised in their home countries.

Global priorities. The baseline assumption of the conference was the need to give global priority to the struggles in Iraq and Palestine in international solidarity work. Many delegates agreed that the resistance in Iraq and Palestine are, as one delegate put it, fighting for the rest of us on the frontline of the global war; thus they should be garnering our priority support as a matter of strategy. However, delegates from Africa, in particular, raised questions about the Middle East focus. Many areas in Africa are on the frontline of resource grabs; suffering the impact not only of devastating economic policies but also of proxy wars waged by powers battling over rival claims in the region. What is the strategic basis for the very minimal response to these “silent wars” in international solidarity work?

US elections. There was a fair amount of discussion on strategy around the US Presidential elections. The debate centred around whether removing Bush from the Presidency, through tactics such as globally coordinated shows of opposition to Bush immediately prior to the elections, should take priority over exposing the bankruptcy of the system which offers a choice between two slightly different strategies of global and domestic domination.

4. Initiatives

Many initiatives were proposed during the course of the three days; this is an attempt to summarise some of the proposals concerning Iraq and provide some follow-up information.

Iraq

· Launch of global campaign to send medicine and food to Iraqis (Sungur Savran,  ossavran@hotmail.com)
· International legal campaign to support prisoners in Iraq, particularly children and women (more info via  psi@riseup.net)
· Call for campaigns to protect civil liberties in Iraq, especially right to free speech and the right to assembly of journalists and activists
· Call for local campaigns against war-profiteers, using information from corpwatch (www.corpwatch.org)
· Call for campaigns against workers, security agents, and mercenaries going to Iraq
· Support for Iraqi refugees who are being repatriated to Iraq from countries in the region (www.beirut.indymedia.org).
· Elections in January as a strategic focal point (e.g. information campaigns, possible election monitors, etc.)
· Protest international donor's conference for Iraq's "reconstruction" in Japan on 13-14 October 2004 (Yoko Akimoto,  NAG00562@nifty.ne.jp)
· Global Days of Action: 30-31 October (just before US elections, in opposition to militarism and occupation); 20 March (anniversary of invasion)
· Support for an alternative independent constituent assembly organised by the Iraqi National Democratic Coalition - CONDI (Amir al-Rekaby:  wpi@no-log.org)
· Support for ongoing projects such as the Occupation Watch Center (Herbert Docena,  herbert@focusweb.org) and the World Tribunal on Iraq (Ayse Berktay,  ayseberktay@superonline.com)

Afghanistan

Call for actions to expose lies around US “elections” and more generally for greater attention to the ongoing devastation in Afghanistan. à Fariba Nawa, Institute for War and Peace Reporting,  faribanawa@yahoo.com

Palestine initiatives

Launching of an anti-Israeli Apartheid Campaign. à To join the committee, email the organizers at  rania@nc.rr.com,  palwound5@otenet.gr, and  jamal@stopthewall.org. (Coming up: 10 December March to Rafah!)

International Listserves

Two listservs were created after the Jakarta peace process, and emails from participants in the Beirut conference have been added.

· Organising list (global-peace-movement):
To subscribe, send mail to:  global-peace-movement-subscribe@lists.riseup.net
Info about the list:  http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/global-peace-movement

· Information sharing list (global-peace-movement-info):
To subscribe, send mail to:  global-peace-movement-info-subscribe@lists.riseup.net
Info about the list:  http://lists.riseup.net/www/info/global-peace-movement-info



Iraq Solidarity Project is a direct solidarity group based in Montreal (Canada). Contact the Iraq Solidarity Project at  psi@riseup.net. To receive updates on our work, occasional appeals and related articles, join our listserv by sending a blank email to  psi-news-subscribe@lists.riseup.net.