Movement split over Prodi’s governmental ticket
On the third anniversary of the US aggression on Iraq some 50.000 people demonstrated in Rome against the ongoing occupation in which Italy is implicated as the most important non Anglo-Saxon ally of Washington.
Since the very beginning of the occupation the main divide within the movement runs between those who support the centre left coalition longing to seize governmental office on one hand and the anti-imperialist forces refusing to lend support of whatever side of the pi-polar regime on the other hand. Although the centre left led by the former president of the EU’s commission, Romano Prodi, has promised to withdraw the Italian troops from Iraq they try to proceed without endangering the relations to the big brother in Washington. Actually the entire regime composed of the two poles is pro-American. As a matter of fact also the outgoing prime minister Silvio Berlusconi promised to withdraw the troops as the overwhelming majority of Italians wish it.
So the forces connected directly and indirectly to the centre left try to suppress any support to the Iraqi resistance as well as political attacks on US imperialism.
This is why the they did not help to make the peace conference in support of the Iraqi resistance possible, scheduled for October 2005 in Rome. The representatives of the Iraqi people resisting the occupation were denied entry to Italy including the prominent victim of US torture in Abu Ghraib, Haj Ali. Prodi, on his turn, even refused to receive a letter by the Iraqi representatives.
While the Committees Free Iraq, the main promoter of the support to the Iraqi resistance in Italy, invited Jabbar al Kubaysi, secretary general of the Iraqi Patriotic Alliance (IPA) to address the demo, the regime-bound left did whatever they could to bar him from speaking.
Eventually Kubaysi did address the final rally of the march in the very centre of Rome with several thousand people listening. The fact that the most renown mentor of the political front of the Iraqi resistance could speak up in the capital of a country participating in the war against the Iraqi people is a considerable success for the anti-imperialist forces.
This shows a consolidated influence of the anti-imperialists. While about the half of the demonstration was under the influence of the government to come the other half represented different shades of anti-imperialist positions whose basic line is to recognize the legitimacy of the resistance. At the same time the hard core anti-imperialist position of open support to the resistance cannot be any more suppressed and isolated as at used to be in the first years of the movement.
Anti-imperialist Camp
March 20, 2006
