The anti-war movement grows and shrinks according to the events and consciousness of the times. It is, among other things, subject to the attention cycle of politics and the media. There have been several peaks of anti-war mobilization in the past. In Europe, for example, there was the great anti-missile movement in the first half of the 1980s and in 2003 there was the mass mobilization against the war in Iraq. The fact that the latter movement was global made it unique in history. Twenty years later, many social and peace movements look somewhat nostalgically at this period, but also draw hope from it, ed.
The historic mobilization against the war in Iraq turned ordinary people into a ‘second superpower’ – something we desperately need today.
Twenty years ago – on February 15, 2003 – the world said no to war. People took to the streets in nearly 800 cities around the world in an extraordinary peace movement. The world was on the brink of war. American and British warplanes and warships – filled with soldiers and sailors and armed with the most powerful weapons ever used in conventional warfare – headed for the Middle East. They had aimed their arrows at Iraq.
Anti-war mobilizations had been going on for more than a year as the threat of war against Iraq swept Washington and the war in Afghanistan had only just begun. Resistance to the war in Afghanistan was difficult after the September 11 terrorist attacks. While none of the hijackers were Afghan and none of them lived in Afghanistan, most Americans saw the war as a legitimate response — a view that would change over the next two decades. The vast majority believed the war had not been worth fighting when US troops were withdrawn in 2021.
But Iraq was different from the start. There was always opposition. And as the activist movement grew, it drew on an expanding sympathetic audience. By the time February 15, 2003 arrived—a year and five months after the September 11 attacks—condemnation of the impending war was broad and vehement.
The plans for February 15 were international from the start. It started with a call for mobilization against the war at the European Social Forum in Florence in November 2002. After a few weeks of organizing, the first worldwide internet protest erupted.
On February 15 itself, early in the morning, protesters filled the streets from capitals to small towns around the world. The protests followed the sun, from Australia and New Zealand and the small islands of the Pacific, across the snowy steppes of Northern Asia, to Southeast Asia and the South Asian peninsula, through Europe and the southernmost tip of Africa, then across the ocean to Latin America and finally, finally, to the United States.
All over the world, the call echoed in numerous languages: “The world says no to war!” “Not in our name!” sounded from millions of voices. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, between 12 and 14 million people turned up – the largest protest in world history Noted British workers and peace activist, former MP Tony Benn, stood in front of a million Londoners that day and described it as “the first global demonstration, and its ultimate aim is to prevent a war against Iraq.”
What a concept! A worldwide protest against a war that had not yet begun, with the aim of stopping it.
Stand up against the scourge of war
It was a fantastic moment – a movement that encouraged governments around the world to do the unthinkable: resist pressure from the United States and the United Kingdom and say no to endorsing President Bush’s war.
Government opposition to the war included the ‘Uncommitted Six’, six then non-permanent members of the UN Security Council. Under normal circumstances, US-dependent and relatively weak countries such as Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexico and Pakistan could never have opposed Washington alone. But these were not ordinary circumstances.
With diplomatic support from ‘Old Europe’, including Germany and France, who had their own reasons for opposing the war, the thousands of people who filled the streets of their capitals enabled the Six to withstand Washington’s heavy pressure .
The US threatened to collapse a free trade agreement with Chile that had been in the making for seven years. (The trade deal was terrible, but the Chilean government considered it essential). Washington threatened to cut off US aid to Guinea and Cameroon under the African Growth & Opportunity Act. Mexico faced the possible end of immigration and border negotiations. Yet all these countries stood their ground.
On February 15, 12 to 14 million people demonstrated against a war against Iraq – the largest protest in world history.
The day before the protests, 14 February, the Security Council was convened again, this time at the level of foreign ministers, to hear the final reports of the two UN weapons inspectors for Iraq. Many had expected their report to somehow steer clear of the truth. That there would be something in it that Bush and Blair would use to try to legitimize their false claims about alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Or that the content would at least be ambivalent enough for the US to use it to justify war.
But the inspectors refused to distort the truth and unequivocally stated that no such weapons had been found. French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin responded with an extraordinary appeal. He reminded the world that “the United Nations must remain an instrument of peace and not an instrument of war”. In this usually stiff, formal and rule-bound body, his call was met with a thunderous ovation, which began with Council staff and quickly spread to the diplomats and foreign ministers themselves.
Enough governments said no to allow the United Nations to do what its Charter dictates and what political pressure all too often makes impossible: stand up to the scourge of war.
A new internationalism
On the morning of February 15, just hours before the massive march in front of the United Nations building in New York began, the wonderful actor-activist Harry Belafonte and I accompanied South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu to meet on behalf of the protesters. with then Secretary-General Kofi Annan. We were escorted by police through what the NYPD called the “frozen zone” – not because of the bitter freezing temperatures or the biting winds blowing off the East River, but because of the forced evacuation of the streets in front of UN headquarters.
In the Secretary General’s office on the 38th floor, Archbishop Tutu opened the meeting. He looked at Kofi from across the table and said, “We are here today on behalf of the people who are marching in cities all over the world. And we are here to tell you that those people who are marching in all those cities across the march all over the world, claim the United Nations as our own. We claim the UN in the name of our global mobilization for peace.”
It was an incredible moment. And while we couldn’t prevent the war in Iraq, global mobilization drew governments and the United Nations into a trajectory of resistance shaped and led by global movements. We created what the New York Times called “the second superpower” the next day. It was a new kind of internationalism.
Halfway through the marathon meeting in New York, a brief report from the Associated Press (AP) got through: “Shattered by the outburst of international anti-war sentiment, the United States and Britain began reworking a draft resolution … Diplomats , speaking on condition of anonymity, said the final product could be softer lyrics that don’t explicitly call for war.” Faced with global backlash against their desperate attempts to gain legitimacy from the UN and the world, Bush and Blair seemed to have thrown in the towel.
Someone relayed the text to the people backstage, including me. A quick debate: should we publicize the message? What if it’s not true? What does it mean? A quick decision: Yes, the people have a right to know. Someone pushed me back onstage to read the AP text. Half a million people or more, shivering in the cold, shouted their approval.
History written
Our movement did not stop the war in Iraq, but it did change history. While AP’s report was true, it reflected the US and UK’s decision to ignore international law and the UN Charter and go to war in violation of both.
The protests, however, proved the clear illegality of the war and demonstrated the isolation of the Bush administration’s policies. Later, they helped prevent war in Iran in 2007, as well as bombing Syria in 2013. And they inspired a generation of activists.
February 15 set the benchmark for what “worldwide mobilizations” could achieve. Eight years later, some Cairo activists, embarrassed by the relatively small size of their February 15 protest, would help lead the Arab Spring in Egypt. The country would then overthrow a US-backed dictator. The ‘Occupy’ protesters were inspired by February 15 and its internationalism. The Spanish ‘Indignados’ and others protesting against austerity and inequality would see February 15 as a model for moving from national to global protest.
In New York City that afternoon, the words of some of the speakers had a special resonance with those shivering in the monumental crowd.
Harry Belafonte, veteran of the progressive struggle for the past three-quarters of a century, addressed the rising American mobilization against war and empire, reminding us that our movement could change the world, and that the world was counting on us to do so. “The world has been very concerned and in great fear that we did not exist,” he said. “But America is a vast and diverse country, and we are part of the greater truth of our nation. We stand for peace, for the truth of what is in the hearts of the American people. We will make a difference – that is the message we are sending to the world today.”
Belafonte was followed by his good friend, fellow activist and actor Danny Glover. He spoke of past heroes, of Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman, and of the great Paul Robeson on whose shoulders we still stand. And then he shouted: “We stand here today because our right to dissent, and our right to participate in a true democracy, has been hijacked by those who call for war. We stand here at this threshold of history, and we say to the world, ‘Not in our name! Not in our name!’”
The huge crowd, shivering in the icy wind, took up the cry, and “Not in our name!” echoed through the streets of New York.
Our movement’s mission as “the second superpower” remains. February 15 inspired a generation. What we need now is a strategy to build again to the scale and intensity of that moment, to build broad enough to address power and to once again fight wars and militarism, poverty and inequality, racism and xenophobia and so much more oppression that people all over the world still face.
We have a lot of work to do.
This translated article previously appeared on Institute for Policy Studies.
