Renegades in USAID may fund Iraqi Communist Party

Renegade mid-level officials in the US Agency for International Development are considering whether and how to fund the resurgence of the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) as a secular "anchor" against both Islamic political movements and the pro-American Iraqi National Congress.

One of the most active US-funded groups working with Iraqi political groups has been portraying the ICP as a benign organization committed to European-style social democracy. A top official of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs(NDI), headed by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, says "the ICP could anchor a secular democratic coalition that could rally some former Iraqi National Congress parties and the newly formed or reinvigorated parties of moderate, secular [Iraqi] Governing Council members."

The ICP, which condemned the US-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein, views its belated collaboration with the Coalition Provisional Authority and its membership in the Iraqi Governing Council as means of infiltrating the country’s new political institutions and expanding its power base. The ICP operated underground for years, and has a well-organized network of party cells, mass organizations, and front groups across Iraq and abroad.

In October, the ICP Central Committee notified its members that it was using its position on the Governing Council to wage political warfare from within, to complement its fight from the outside: "It is, in this sense, an arena of struggle because diverse forces and sides are influencing the political process both inside and outside the Council."

The ICP is telling its cadres that by joining the process it is really "resisting occupation." It tried to reassure its supporters that violence is not the only tool in its arsenal: "Resisting occupation is not limited to employing violent means in struggle, but rather includes various forms of peaceful political struggle."

Meanwhile, it is encouraging international "peace" movements to continue agitating against the US-led presence in Iraq: "Active solidarity by peace movements all over the world is therefore of great importance." Insight magazine has just published a report on the attempts in the bowels of USAID to help the Iraqi communists because they have good networks and lately opposed Saddam Hussein.

The news is likely to upset USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios, a Gulf War veteran who is trying to make the agency’s bureaucracy and contractors operate as instruments of national security policy.