After the Iraqi government issued resolution 16 in 2004 which installed one federation as the official and legal representative of labour movement in Iraq, our Federation lodged a complain to the International labour Organization which accepted the complain and regard resolution 16 a violation of international standards and agreements. This committee addressed the Iraqi authority but never received any reply.
The above mentioned complain was attached with a report on the conditions of workers under the occupation and the fact that the current government continue to enforce the oppressive laws of Baath regime which consider workers public servants and deprive them of the right of formation unions.
Despite banning us from activity for being unofficial and unrecognized by state and despite many discriminative resolutions issued by prime minister Ayad Allawi which endorse resolution 16 and authorize the governmental federation to put hand on all property and assets of previous federation collected from workers over decades, which therefore belongs to the workers themselves and no government has the right to confiscate it or give it to its representatives and followers.
Despite all these obstacles our federation continued to organize workers and lead their daily struggle.
As the result of the prominent and sensible activity of our federation and after large numbers of workers join it in many sectors deserting the official union and establishing branches for the FWCUI in a democratic process to get rid of the traditions of past which severely restrict workers’ freedoms. The administrations in cooperation with official federation have threatened our unionist activists and carders. These threats included threatening workers who have joint the Federation of Workers’ Council and Unions in Iraq with sacking like what happened in the National Company for Petrochemical and Plastic Manufactures. Many unionist activists from General Company for Cotton Industry were also punished. The al-Najibia electricity office threatened Raad mahmood, and Haydar Abdulla that they will transferred to a remote place if they continue their unionist activity.
The federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions in Iraq is a labour organization which represents workers of Iraq in all provinces and has members from all religions and nationalities in Iraq and in this sense is a glimpse of hope and a step on the path of liberation and building a civil society.
We consider any threat and resolution against our federation a blatant violation of workers’ freedom and bringing to the force the practices of former regime.
We call on international Labour organizations and human right organizations to intervene and exert pressure on the Iraqi authorities and support our federation as a progressive labour organization.
Falah Alwan
President of the Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions in Iraq
Baghdad
April 25, 2005
Friday, April 29
Tuesday, April 26
British trade union delegation to Iraqi Kurdistan
Report by John Lloyd in the Financial Times.
Kurdistan, in north-eastern Iraq, is one of those AK-47 lands. All along its roads, shortish men in camouflage fatigues stop cars and peer in at the passengers, the AK clips on their shoulder straps scratching against the windows. Eventually, they wave the drivers on. Clumps of the same men sit in restaurants, scooping up rice and lamb, their AKs resting on the plastic table tops. These are the peshmergas, the guerrilla fighters who fought off Saddam Hussein's security forces and are now the Iraqi Kurds' army. Their name means, literally, "facing death". They are tense, watchful and looking for trouble - one reason why there is relatively little of it among Kurdistan's five million people.
At the end of last month, a small group of British trade unionists came here for a week-long trip. It was the first union delegation to travel through Iraqi Kurdistan since the 2003 war, although short visits had been made to Baghdad in the immediate aftermath. Officially at least, they have come to report for the Trades Union Congress, the umbrella organisation of Britain's unions, on the state of the Iraqi union movement. As it turns out, they have other reasons for coming as well.
There are five in the group, four men and one woman. And they are, in a word, uncertain. Each is accustomed to disputes and conflict, but the sort that can be bargained and negotiated over in meeting rooms. The Iraqi conflict - guerrilla warfare, bombings, men with assault rifles - is not their kind of struggle. Moreover, all five belong to unions that opposed the war. In the case of Keith Sonnet, the most senior member of the group, opposition to the war has led him to become one of several vice-presidents of the Stop the War Coalition, the militantly anti-war group that mobilised more than a million people on to the streets of London. Sonnet, an ironic man in his mid 50s, is deputy general secretary of the public service union Unison, the biggest and among the most left-leaning in Britain. He is also on the general council of the TUC, known - when unions were more powerful than now - as "the general staff of the labour movement".
Another Unison official, Nick Crook, the youngest of the group, with the mild manners that intellectuals adopt when in the service of unions, works in the international department. He is here to further Unison's assistance to the Iraqi unions - which, in an undemonstrative way, he appears to achieve by the end of the trip.
Mary Davis, the delegation's sole woman, is on the executive of the university and college lecturers' union NATFHE, as well as the TUC Women's Committee and the executive committee of the Communist Party of Britain. In her late 50s, with a sharp, humorous face, Davis is one of a vanishing world: that of leftwing East End Jewry, mostly East European immigrants, the quarry of Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts in the 1930s and now largely gone from the East End and from revolutionary politics.
The other two group members, Brian Joyce and David Green, are on the executive committee of the Fire Brigades Union, also traditionally on the left. I am here as an observer; unlike the officials, I had been in favour of the war, and remain so - indeed, I learn on my return that a book published by the Stop the War Coalition named and criticised me for my position, as one of a small number of journalists identified with the left - including David Aaronovitch, Nick Cohen and Christopher Hitchens - who had supported the war.
I have a couple of inconclusive arguments about it with my fellow travellers but my main purpose is to listen rather than speak. I had been invited by a remarkable man whose name is Abdullah Muhsin, a sturdy Iraqi of about 50, with thick curly hair and a ready smile, except when worried - which he had much cause to be. A student union activist, he fled Iraq in 1978 and settled in Britain. After the fall of Hussein, because of his fluency in English and contacts abroad, Muhsin was appointed international representative of the Iraqi Federation of Workers' Trade Unions (IFTU). This group was set up after the war by activists, mainly in the Communist party, who had been banned, exiled or repressed by Hussein, who permitted only his own, Ba'athist unions. Muhsin has worked indefatigably, with little money, to persuade the labour movements of the west to support Iraq's fledgling independent unions. Exhausting work, it is also dangerous. In January his friend and comrade, Hadi Saleh, the international secretary of the IFTU, was tortured to death in his Baghdad apartment by what Muhsin says was the remnants of Saddam's Mukhabarat (secret police). A trip to Baghdad planned for earlier in the year was cancelled after Saleh's death. In the end, it was rescheduled to Kurdistan, and Muhsin arranged for trade union leaders from Iraq proper to come to meet us at various points.
Although the members of the British delegation opposed the war, they feel themselves tugged by another loyalty - that of international solidarity, an old labour value. They reflect a conflict now common in the large anti-war constituency, as a dislike of the British-American action (and of George W. Bush) clashes with a realisation that a civil society is there to be built, and their help is being sought. None, including Sonnet, agree with the Stop the War Coalition's position of recognising the right of Iraqis to resist the occupation. A statement sent out to the news media in draft form last October, which said the Coalition recognised that the Iraqis had a right to resist "by any means possible", was later withdrawn, Davis and Sonnet tell me, because of fierce objections. Andrew Murray, Coalition chairman and also communications director of the Transport and General Workers Union, confirms that the statement had been pulled "because it could be misunderstood". He says the Coalition "was against the killing of civilians". I ask if that meant killing soldiers was permissible, and he repeats that Iraqis had a right to resist "an occupation seen by almost everyone as illegal".
Muhsin says he is continually under attack from leading members of the Coalition, who he says view the IFTU as pro-American stooges. However, Murray says the coalition takes no view on whether the IFTU or the General Federation of Iraqi Trade Unions (the successor to the Hussein-era Ba'athist unions) should be supported: "that's a matter for Iraqis". However, he says the coalition had criticised "an intervention" by Muhsin at the Labour party conference. According to Murray, Muhsin's speech at a fringe meeting and an article in the bulletin circulated to delegates, together with pressure from the Labour leadership, had helped defeat a motion demanding that the government set a date to withdraw troops. At one point in our trip, Muhsin shows me an e-mail he received from Australia on his borrowed Blackberry. In broken English, amid many insults, it calls him a poodle of American imperialists. In Iraq, it is much worse: if insurgents spotted him, they would try to kill him.
Only one of the five Britons - firefighter Brian Joyce - has been to Iraq before. Tall, with a head of snow-white hair, Joyce likes to call himself a "hard bugger" - a transparent ruse for a man whose generous emotions are deeply stirred by Iraq. He has been to Basra in the south, to Baghdad and Kurdistan, each time travelling with Muhsin. Everywhere he goes on this trip he is embraced and kissed as a trusted comrade, in scenes that see him and his welcomers speak words of endearment in mutually incomprehensible languages, none of which seems to dull his appetite for more and longer such encounters.
The rest of the group has no idea what awaits them in Iraq. What would solidarity actually mean in such a place? Could civil society, in which trade unions play a very large part, be reconstructed? They begin to find out at the end of their first full day in the country, in the northern Kurdish city of Dohuk, where we spend the night in the heavily guarded Zhian Hotel, Dohuk's finest. By Muhsin's arrangement, we meet four Iraqi union officials who have driven up the dangerous road from the nearby city of Mosul, where the insurgents are strongest. The four men are members of the executive committee of the Mosul branch of the IFTU. The group's leader, branch president Saady Edan, is a rotund, balding man in his 60s - a craftsman who, in spite of the prowling peshmergas out back, retains an anxious air. That is no wonder: soon after we settle into deep sofas in a lounge, he tells us the story of his kidnapping.
Edan had been driving from his home on January 26 when a car with two people in it suddenly stopped in front of him. Another car blocked him from behind. In it was a man armed with a heavy machine gun."I tried to get away, but realised they would have shot me. They forced me into the boot of the car and took me to a house in the Zingili district of Mosul - a section where the extremists are. They put me in a room. They told me very clearly not to work for the IFTU. I was told to leave or my life would be in danger. Now I no longer live at home - I live with my son. We have received many threats, often in letters." He says he thinks that his kidnappers were members of Ansar al-Sunna, an insurgent group strong in the Mosul area, made up of former Ba'athists.
Edan says his union's largest threat comes from the GFITU, membership of which had been compulsory under Hussein, as it seeks members again. According to Edan, they have far fewer supporters than the IFTU and haven't held elections. But they are funded by Syria and the Arab Federation of Trade Unions and make life difficult for the independent unions.
"These people have occupied trade union buildings with guns," says Edan. "They are defying the law, they are making threats in schools and hospitals. They don't have the membership we have but they do have pressures. They threaten the stronger people, the activists. The weaker ones they buy off with TVs or a fridge." Under Hussein, he says, workers in areas such as Mosul - where support for the regime was strong - had a lot of work and regular pay. This is not the case now: unemployment is between 40 and 50 per cent.
After listening to Edan, Sonnet asks if he wants the US-led occupation of Iraq to end - the question around which anti-war movements throughout the world have mobilised, all of them demanding rapid withdrawal. When the question is translated, there is an exchange of looks among the four Iraqi unionists, and tight, complicit, smiles. Both sides, it seems, know this is an awkward question. Edan replies: "We want the occupation to end. But if it ends now, it will bring chaos. Once the Iraqi security forces are capable, then the occupation should leave. But they are not yet." With that, the executive committee of the Mosul branch of the IFTU departs, going back on the dark and dangerous road to their dark and dangerous town.
The next day is Sunday and we are driven to the Kurdistan capital of Erbil. The road passes through vast plains that end in sudden eruptions of mountains: as we drive, lines of women and men dance by the road to music from car stereos, celebrating the Kurdish New Year.
Our hosts are leaders of the Kurdish unions - separate, as all things Kurdish, from the Iraqi unions - and they take us to a big restaurant out of town to meet five members of the executive committee of the IFTU, who have driven up from Baghdad. The restaurant is vast, full of men eating from big dishes of rice, lamb and chicken. The British delegation is taken to a private back room for the meeting. Sonnet, as the senior official, has assumed leadership of the group and opens with the speeches required by the formal courtesies of the hosts. On this occasion, he says the British labour movement was opposed to the war because it suspected the intentions of George W. Bush. "But we were always opposed to Saddam Hussein - we campaigned against him with no help from the Americans. Now he's gone, we're glad." He says there had been an important debate within the British trade union movement about working with the Iraqi trade unions. "Some people argue that we should work with the GFITU. I'm interested to know what you say."
He is given his answer by Hadi Ali, the vice-president of the IFTU. Ali is a weary-looking man of about 70, who was an active trade unionist before Hussein banned independent unions. He fled to Kurdistan in the 1970s, became a peshmerga and fought in the underground movement. After the 2003 war he became one of the principal founders of the new IFTU. Ali says the visitors need to understand that the GFITU does not represent Iraqi workers. "Unions were a transmission belt for the Ba'ath party. People must become aware of what free unions are. Our members don't know what negotiation is. We also need help from our brothers in the Arab federation of trade unions - we want them to understand us as well." When he is asked if he wants the occupying forces to go, Ali does not answer, but a leader of the Iraqi teachers' union steps in: "The infrastructure of trade unionism was totally destroyed by Saddam Hussein. The occupation was brought on us by the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. We are working to end the occupation; if terrorism goes, the occupation will too."
One day I show Muhsin something I'd read in a recent issue of the Wall Street Journal. The article, by neo-conservative writer Charles Krauthammer, is entitled "Arab democracy: not bad for a simpleton", and says "the left has always prided itself as the great international champion of freedom and human rights. Yet when America proposed to remove the man responsible for torturing, killing and gassing tens of thousands of Iraqis, the left suddenly turned into a champion of Westphalian sovereign inviolability. the international left's concern for human rights turns out to be nothing more than a useful weapon for its anti-Americanism." Muhsin reads it carefully, then says: "Very good. I have written something like that for Tribune (a leftwing British publication)." Would they publish it? I ask.
"I don't know," replies Muhsin.
Most of the people we met were not Shia or Sunni Iraqis, but the Kurds themselves. These are a people who, in the 14 years since the first Gulf war, have done what any leftwinger would, in the past, have venerated (and which the neo-cons now do). They have fought against a cruel dictatorship and, after years of struggle and what came close to genocide, they won. Their revolt against Hussein after the first Gulf war had been sealed by a no-fly zone, policed by Britain and the US. Afterwards, the region's two main political parties - the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan - patched up a bloody quarrel and made their own state, the first such state the Kurds have managed to keep going for any length of time.
Thanks largely to Mary Davis, who insists that "the woman's question" comes up at every meeting, Kurdish society gradually reveals itself to the group. At an early meeting in a hall of union members in Duhok, Davis says, with a severe tone, "I'm very sorry I'm the only woman here." There is some whispered consultation and, some time later, two women join the crowd of moustached men. They say nothing, though both speak to Davis afterwards and tell her they work in the IFTU office. Later, during a drive between cities, Sonnet tries to explain to Hangaw Abdullah Khan, general secretary of the Kurdish unions, that women account for two-thirds of Unison membership and, under union regulations, any future Unison delegation would be two-thirds female. He says the union has also set up special forums for ethnic minorities, gays and lesbians. The translator finally seems to convey the points. Abdullah Khan, normally hugely loquacious, keeps driving silently, his eyes fixed grimly on the road.
But these cultural incongruities seem to be the exceptions. We meet women who - though clearly living in a society more dominated by men than in Britain - are nevertheless independent and articulate. Indeed, this proves to be a source of some dissonance as Davis keeps emphasising their rights as women, and they their duties as Kurds. At a meeting with parliamentarians and KDP officials, Kamilla Ibrahim, slight and poised and just elected to the Iraqi parliament, says: "I don't like to speak about women only. There are many problems for women, but not only for us. Women were not free during the Iraqi regime. It's better here now - women can work and travel freely alone - that doesn't happen elsewhere in Iraq. Kurdish women now want their rights to be protected. We must fight not as women but as Kurds." Ibrahim emphasises that many Sunni and Shia women, including deputies in the new parliament, share a similar revulsion to being put under any law that restricts their freedom or dictates a dress code.
The woman who has the deepest effect, however, is a trade union organiser in the southern Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya, which we reach after many weary hours on bad roads. We stay in a garishly uncomfortable guest house in the mountains outside the city - for security, our hosts say - and meet a group of union leaders and activists over breakfast. One of these is Baher Osman, a reserved but forceful woman in early middle age, who introduces herself as a beautician and organiser of workers in the city's beauty parlours and hair salons. She is adamant that women have the same pay, the same access to jobs - and she wants it to stay that way. "Men and women work together in the salons," she says. "That's unheard of in the rest of Iraq."
Osman, however, has a particular past. Just before the Kurds expelled the Iraqi forces in 1991, she was arrested and taken to the main security centre in Sulaimaniya where she was tortured. The centre is known as the Red House, a 1970s complex that is now a "torture museum". Our hosts have added this to our itinerary. In the dank and windowless concrete rooms, some of them wood-clad to muffle screams, we are shown the bars placed about three metres above the floor, from which victims were hung, arms manacled behind their backs, and given electric shocks to the genitals (a wax model is suspended from one such bar to help us visualise the horror).
Prisoners could hear their wives or daughters or mothers being raped in an adjoining room. In cells meant for seven or eight, rough plastic bowls are stacked in towers to show there were sometimes more than 100 in each cell - and their bowls were used for their food, as well as their excretions.
In one cell, a hand has written: "I was brought in here at 10, and I am now 18." Some people, like Osman, got out. Most didn't. It is one of the world's most appalling places and the visitors - used to seeing torture in Iraq represented by images of US soldiers degrading prisoners in Abu Ghraib jail - walk about the bloodstained floors mutely and grimly.
The delegation realises, too, the limits of their mission. The union leaders they came to meet, Iraqi Kurds and Arabs, are absorbed in life-and-death, national struggles. The Kurdish leaders are clearly also officials of, or closely linked to, the two main parties, the KDP and PUK. Indeed, in a session with Imad Ahmed, the PUK leader in the region, he gives the game away by saying "the unions are weak: they are dominated by the parties. They need to become stronger and more independent." The visitors wonder why a union movement that is poor and needs funds as well as training is able to drive them about in big Toyota Land Cruisers and BMWs.
Many of the people we meet aren't trade unionists in the British sense - rather, they are from professional associations feeling their way into independent life. At a final dinner in Erbil, where some 20 representatives of every kind of union - blue-collar, white-collar and entrepreneurial - turn up, the teachers' unions ask for teacher training as well as union training; the representative of the medical practitioners asks for cardiac equipment and the representative of the country's dentists asks for modern dental training.
Everywhere the British unionists go, they are congratulated on the virtues of prime minister Tony Blair. They, of course, are not fans. The trade union movement, especially on the left, takes the view that this government, if possibly better than a Conservative one, is not real Labour. "It's all very well going on about Tony Blair," says Davis, half drolly, half irritably, at one of the group's lengthy feasts. "We don't think he's so wonderful." (Davis's British Communist Party and its paper, the Morning Star, are fiercely hostile to New Labour.)
The trip does seem to make a difference to the group's views on the war. During a meal in a restaurant towards the end of the week, David Green, the younger of the two firefighters' union leaders, says: "I was against the war. I thought it was a bad idea and it shouldn't have been done." I ask him about his thoughts now. "Well, you see a different perspective. You see what these people have done."
Green and Brian Joyce have been tremendously active in arranging for British fire authorities to donate equipment to the impoverished Iraqi brigades. Joyce, in conversation, frequently recalls visits elsewhere in Iraq where firefighters were expected to work with ancient machines and wearing just overalls. He says they showed him the burns and wounds they had suffered, which they accepted as part of the job.
I join Green and Joyce at a fire station in Dohuk to see what has become of the equipment they had sent over. We step into the tiny, impoverished office of station commander Colonel Abdul Mohammed Rashid, who calls in a tall fireman dressed in protective gear. The fireman stamps his right foot as a kind of salute, stands to attention and turns around to show the logo on the back of his coat: "Sponsored by Bristol - protecting the world's firefighters".
Exploring the station's engine shed, Green and Joyce find two brand new Mercedes fire trucks next to a much older vehicle of indeterminate make. They also discover that much of the new equipment they had arranged to send here has not been used and the firefighters have not been trained to use it. The two officials keep asking why firefighters (in common with the civil police, of which they are part) are not allowed to join unions. They are assured later by a group of parliamentarians that a labour code passing through the Kurdish parliament would permit membership. But what the Kurdish firefighters really need is efficient and protective equipment. Both the British firefighters say they will continue working to supply it.
Shortly after we return home, the long-expected British general election is called. Polls and focus groups show that Blair is trusted less and less, and the main reason given is the basis on which he took the country to war in Iraq.
This has become the crucial issue in the constituency of Bethnal Green and Bow in east London, where Labour party officials fear an upset. George Galloway, the former Labour MP, supported by fellow members of the Stop the War Coalition, is standing as a Respect candidate in the seat, which has a Muslim majority and whose sitting Labour MP, Oona King, supported the war. Galloway appears to be making good progress in a bitterly fought campaign.
"Trust", which Blair is deemed to lack, is defined almost wholly in terms of going to war in Iraq. If the Kurds see it as a war of liberation, the majority of Britons reportedly view it as a disgrace. But in the aftermath of their trip, the trade union delegation is determined to take a pragmatic approach. A report, drafted by Nick Crook, will recommend that the TUC and its affiliates help Iraqi unions through the IFTU with training in organisational skills, leadership and English, and give money for offices and equipment. It will recommend that unions should not work with the GFITU, because of its Ba'athist links.
There is a strong precedent for this sort of action. After the second world war, the British union movement helped rebuild the German unions - giving them (as many Labour politicians have ruefully reflected since) a structure much more rational and coherent than British unions have today. It was a parallel that occurred to several members of the delegation in Iraq, though all were born after the war. Through the decades, some deep imperative of solidarity seems to have asserted itself.
Kurdistan, in north-eastern Iraq, is one of those AK-47 lands. All along its roads, shortish men in camouflage fatigues stop cars and peer in at the passengers, the AK clips on their shoulder straps scratching against the windows. Eventually, they wave the drivers on. Clumps of the same men sit in restaurants, scooping up rice and lamb, their AKs resting on the plastic table tops. These are the peshmergas, the guerrilla fighters who fought off Saddam Hussein's security forces and are now the Iraqi Kurds' army. Their name means, literally, "facing death". They are tense, watchful and looking for trouble - one reason why there is relatively little of it among Kurdistan's five million people.
At the end of last month, a small group of British trade unionists came here for a week-long trip. It was the first union delegation to travel through Iraqi Kurdistan since the 2003 war, although short visits had been made to Baghdad in the immediate aftermath. Officially at least, they have come to report for the Trades Union Congress, the umbrella organisation of Britain's unions, on the state of the Iraqi union movement. As it turns out, they have other reasons for coming as well.
There are five in the group, four men and one woman. And they are, in a word, uncertain. Each is accustomed to disputes and conflict, but the sort that can be bargained and negotiated over in meeting rooms. The Iraqi conflict - guerrilla warfare, bombings, men with assault rifles - is not their kind of struggle. Moreover, all five belong to unions that opposed the war. In the case of Keith Sonnet, the most senior member of the group, opposition to the war has led him to become one of several vice-presidents of the Stop the War Coalition, the militantly anti-war group that mobilised more than a million people on to the streets of London. Sonnet, an ironic man in his mid 50s, is deputy general secretary of the public service union Unison, the biggest and among the most left-leaning in Britain. He is also on the general council of the TUC, known - when unions were more powerful than now - as "the general staff of the labour movement".
Another Unison official, Nick Crook, the youngest of the group, with the mild manners that intellectuals adopt when in the service of unions, works in the international department. He is here to further Unison's assistance to the Iraqi unions - which, in an undemonstrative way, he appears to achieve by the end of the trip.
Mary Davis, the delegation's sole woman, is on the executive of the university and college lecturers' union NATFHE, as well as the TUC Women's Committee and the executive committee of the Communist Party of Britain. In her late 50s, with a sharp, humorous face, Davis is one of a vanishing world: that of leftwing East End Jewry, mostly East European immigrants, the quarry of Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts in the 1930s and now largely gone from the East End and from revolutionary politics.
The other two group members, Brian Joyce and David Green, are on the executive committee of the Fire Brigades Union, also traditionally on the left. I am here as an observer; unlike the officials, I had been in favour of the war, and remain so - indeed, I learn on my return that a book published by the Stop the War Coalition named and criticised me for my position, as one of a small number of journalists identified with the left - including David Aaronovitch, Nick Cohen and Christopher Hitchens - who had supported the war.
I have a couple of inconclusive arguments about it with my fellow travellers but my main purpose is to listen rather than speak. I had been invited by a remarkable man whose name is Abdullah Muhsin, a sturdy Iraqi of about 50, with thick curly hair and a ready smile, except when worried - which he had much cause to be. A student union activist, he fled Iraq in 1978 and settled in Britain. After the fall of Hussein, because of his fluency in English and contacts abroad, Muhsin was appointed international representative of the Iraqi Federation of Workers' Trade Unions (IFTU). This group was set up after the war by activists, mainly in the Communist party, who had been banned, exiled or repressed by Hussein, who permitted only his own, Ba'athist unions. Muhsin has worked indefatigably, with little money, to persuade the labour movements of the west to support Iraq's fledgling independent unions. Exhausting work, it is also dangerous. In January his friend and comrade, Hadi Saleh, the international secretary of the IFTU, was tortured to death in his Baghdad apartment by what Muhsin says was the remnants of Saddam's Mukhabarat (secret police). A trip to Baghdad planned for earlier in the year was cancelled after Saleh's death. In the end, it was rescheduled to Kurdistan, and Muhsin arranged for trade union leaders from Iraq proper to come to meet us at various points.
Although the members of the British delegation opposed the war, they feel themselves tugged by another loyalty - that of international solidarity, an old labour value. They reflect a conflict now common in the large anti-war constituency, as a dislike of the British-American action (and of George W. Bush) clashes with a realisation that a civil society is there to be built, and their help is being sought. None, including Sonnet, agree with the Stop the War Coalition's position of recognising the right of Iraqis to resist the occupation. A statement sent out to the news media in draft form last October, which said the Coalition recognised that the Iraqis had a right to resist "by any means possible", was later withdrawn, Davis and Sonnet tell me, because of fierce objections. Andrew Murray, Coalition chairman and also communications director of the Transport and General Workers Union, confirms that the statement had been pulled "because it could be misunderstood". He says the Coalition "was against the killing of civilians". I ask if that meant killing soldiers was permissible, and he repeats that Iraqis had a right to resist "an occupation seen by almost everyone as illegal".
Muhsin says he is continually under attack from leading members of the Coalition, who he says view the IFTU as pro-American stooges. However, Murray says the coalition takes no view on whether the IFTU or the General Federation of Iraqi Trade Unions (the successor to the Hussein-era Ba'athist unions) should be supported: "that's a matter for Iraqis". However, he says the coalition had criticised "an intervention" by Muhsin at the Labour party conference. According to Murray, Muhsin's speech at a fringe meeting and an article in the bulletin circulated to delegates, together with pressure from the Labour leadership, had helped defeat a motion demanding that the government set a date to withdraw troops. At one point in our trip, Muhsin shows me an e-mail he received from Australia on his borrowed Blackberry. In broken English, amid many insults, it calls him a poodle of American imperialists. In Iraq, it is much worse: if insurgents spotted him, they would try to kill him.
Only one of the five Britons - firefighter Brian Joyce - has been to Iraq before. Tall, with a head of snow-white hair, Joyce likes to call himself a "hard bugger" - a transparent ruse for a man whose generous emotions are deeply stirred by Iraq. He has been to Basra in the south, to Baghdad and Kurdistan, each time travelling with Muhsin. Everywhere he goes on this trip he is embraced and kissed as a trusted comrade, in scenes that see him and his welcomers speak words of endearment in mutually incomprehensible languages, none of which seems to dull his appetite for more and longer such encounters.
The rest of the group has no idea what awaits them in Iraq. What would solidarity actually mean in such a place? Could civil society, in which trade unions play a very large part, be reconstructed? They begin to find out at the end of their first full day in the country, in the northern Kurdish city of Dohuk, where we spend the night in the heavily guarded Zhian Hotel, Dohuk's finest. By Muhsin's arrangement, we meet four Iraqi union officials who have driven up the dangerous road from the nearby city of Mosul, where the insurgents are strongest. The four men are members of the executive committee of the Mosul branch of the IFTU. The group's leader, branch president Saady Edan, is a rotund, balding man in his 60s - a craftsman who, in spite of the prowling peshmergas out back, retains an anxious air. That is no wonder: soon after we settle into deep sofas in a lounge, he tells us the story of his kidnapping.
Edan had been driving from his home on January 26 when a car with two people in it suddenly stopped in front of him. Another car blocked him from behind. In it was a man armed with a heavy machine gun."I tried to get away, but realised they would have shot me. They forced me into the boot of the car and took me to a house in the Zingili district of Mosul - a section where the extremists are. They put me in a room. They told me very clearly not to work for the IFTU. I was told to leave or my life would be in danger. Now I no longer live at home - I live with my son. We have received many threats, often in letters." He says he thinks that his kidnappers were members of Ansar al-Sunna, an insurgent group strong in the Mosul area, made up of former Ba'athists.
Edan says his union's largest threat comes from the GFITU, membership of which had been compulsory under Hussein, as it seeks members again. According to Edan, they have far fewer supporters than the IFTU and haven't held elections. But they are funded by Syria and the Arab Federation of Trade Unions and make life difficult for the independent unions.
"These people have occupied trade union buildings with guns," says Edan. "They are defying the law, they are making threats in schools and hospitals. They don't have the membership we have but they do have pressures. They threaten the stronger people, the activists. The weaker ones they buy off with TVs or a fridge." Under Hussein, he says, workers in areas such as Mosul - where support for the regime was strong - had a lot of work and regular pay. This is not the case now: unemployment is between 40 and 50 per cent.
After listening to Edan, Sonnet asks if he wants the US-led occupation of Iraq to end - the question around which anti-war movements throughout the world have mobilised, all of them demanding rapid withdrawal. When the question is translated, there is an exchange of looks among the four Iraqi unionists, and tight, complicit, smiles. Both sides, it seems, know this is an awkward question. Edan replies: "We want the occupation to end. But if it ends now, it will bring chaos. Once the Iraqi security forces are capable, then the occupation should leave. But they are not yet." With that, the executive committee of the Mosul branch of the IFTU departs, going back on the dark and dangerous road to their dark and dangerous town.
The next day is Sunday and we are driven to the Kurdistan capital of Erbil. The road passes through vast plains that end in sudden eruptions of mountains: as we drive, lines of women and men dance by the road to music from car stereos, celebrating the Kurdish New Year.
Our hosts are leaders of the Kurdish unions - separate, as all things Kurdish, from the Iraqi unions - and they take us to a big restaurant out of town to meet five members of the executive committee of the IFTU, who have driven up from Baghdad. The restaurant is vast, full of men eating from big dishes of rice, lamb and chicken. The British delegation is taken to a private back room for the meeting. Sonnet, as the senior official, has assumed leadership of the group and opens with the speeches required by the formal courtesies of the hosts. On this occasion, he says the British labour movement was opposed to the war because it suspected the intentions of George W. Bush. "But we were always opposed to Saddam Hussein - we campaigned against him with no help from the Americans. Now he's gone, we're glad." He says there had been an important debate within the British trade union movement about working with the Iraqi trade unions. "Some people argue that we should work with the GFITU. I'm interested to know what you say."
He is given his answer by Hadi Ali, the vice-president of the IFTU. Ali is a weary-looking man of about 70, who was an active trade unionist before Hussein banned independent unions. He fled to Kurdistan in the 1970s, became a peshmerga and fought in the underground movement. After the 2003 war he became one of the principal founders of the new IFTU. Ali says the visitors need to understand that the GFITU does not represent Iraqi workers. "Unions were a transmission belt for the Ba'ath party. People must become aware of what free unions are. Our members don't know what negotiation is. We also need help from our brothers in the Arab federation of trade unions - we want them to understand us as well." When he is asked if he wants the occupying forces to go, Ali does not answer, but a leader of the Iraqi teachers' union steps in: "The infrastructure of trade unionism was totally destroyed by Saddam Hussein. The occupation was brought on us by the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. We are working to end the occupation; if terrorism goes, the occupation will too."
One day I show Muhsin something I'd read in a recent issue of the Wall Street Journal. The article, by neo-conservative writer Charles Krauthammer, is entitled "Arab democracy: not bad for a simpleton", and says "the left has always prided itself as the great international champion of freedom and human rights. Yet when America proposed to remove the man responsible for torturing, killing and gassing tens of thousands of Iraqis, the left suddenly turned into a champion of Westphalian sovereign inviolability. the international left's concern for human rights turns out to be nothing more than a useful weapon for its anti-Americanism." Muhsin reads it carefully, then says: "Very good. I have written something like that for Tribune (a leftwing British publication)." Would they publish it? I ask.
"I don't know," replies Muhsin.
Most of the people we met were not Shia or Sunni Iraqis, but the Kurds themselves. These are a people who, in the 14 years since the first Gulf war, have done what any leftwinger would, in the past, have venerated (and which the neo-cons now do). They have fought against a cruel dictatorship and, after years of struggle and what came close to genocide, they won. Their revolt against Hussein after the first Gulf war had been sealed by a no-fly zone, policed by Britain and the US. Afterwards, the region's two main political parties - the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan - patched up a bloody quarrel and made their own state, the first such state the Kurds have managed to keep going for any length of time.
Thanks largely to Mary Davis, who insists that "the woman's question" comes up at every meeting, Kurdish society gradually reveals itself to the group. At an early meeting in a hall of union members in Duhok, Davis says, with a severe tone, "I'm very sorry I'm the only woman here." There is some whispered consultation and, some time later, two women join the crowd of moustached men. They say nothing, though both speak to Davis afterwards and tell her they work in the IFTU office. Later, during a drive between cities, Sonnet tries to explain to Hangaw Abdullah Khan, general secretary of the Kurdish unions, that women account for two-thirds of Unison membership and, under union regulations, any future Unison delegation would be two-thirds female. He says the union has also set up special forums for ethnic minorities, gays and lesbians. The translator finally seems to convey the points. Abdullah Khan, normally hugely loquacious, keeps driving silently, his eyes fixed grimly on the road.
But these cultural incongruities seem to be the exceptions. We meet women who - though clearly living in a society more dominated by men than in Britain - are nevertheless independent and articulate. Indeed, this proves to be a source of some dissonance as Davis keeps emphasising their rights as women, and they their duties as Kurds. At a meeting with parliamentarians and KDP officials, Kamilla Ibrahim, slight and poised and just elected to the Iraqi parliament, says: "I don't like to speak about women only. There are many problems for women, but not only for us. Women were not free during the Iraqi regime. It's better here now - women can work and travel freely alone - that doesn't happen elsewhere in Iraq. Kurdish women now want their rights to be protected. We must fight not as women but as Kurds." Ibrahim emphasises that many Sunni and Shia women, including deputies in the new parliament, share a similar revulsion to being put under any law that restricts their freedom or dictates a dress code.
The woman who has the deepest effect, however, is a trade union organiser in the southern Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya, which we reach after many weary hours on bad roads. We stay in a garishly uncomfortable guest house in the mountains outside the city - for security, our hosts say - and meet a group of union leaders and activists over breakfast. One of these is Baher Osman, a reserved but forceful woman in early middle age, who introduces herself as a beautician and organiser of workers in the city's beauty parlours and hair salons. She is adamant that women have the same pay, the same access to jobs - and she wants it to stay that way. "Men and women work together in the salons," she says. "That's unheard of in the rest of Iraq."
Osman, however, has a particular past. Just before the Kurds expelled the Iraqi forces in 1991, she was arrested and taken to the main security centre in Sulaimaniya where she was tortured. The centre is known as the Red House, a 1970s complex that is now a "torture museum". Our hosts have added this to our itinerary. In the dank and windowless concrete rooms, some of them wood-clad to muffle screams, we are shown the bars placed about three metres above the floor, from which victims were hung, arms manacled behind their backs, and given electric shocks to the genitals (a wax model is suspended from one such bar to help us visualise the horror).
Prisoners could hear their wives or daughters or mothers being raped in an adjoining room. In cells meant for seven or eight, rough plastic bowls are stacked in towers to show there were sometimes more than 100 in each cell - and their bowls were used for their food, as well as their excretions.
In one cell, a hand has written: "I was brought in here at 10, and I am now 18." Some people, like Osman, got out. Most didn't. It is one of the world's most appalling places and the visitors - used to seeing torture in Iraq represented by images of US soldiers degrading prisoners in Abu Ghraib jail - walk about the bloodstained floors mutely and grimly.
The delegation realises, too, the limits of their mission. The union leaders they came to meet, Iraqi Kurds and Arabs, are absorbed in life-and-death, national struggles. The Kurdish leaders are clearly also officials of, or closely linked to, the two main parties, the KDP and PUK. Indeed, in a session with Imad Ahmed, the PUK leader in the region, he gives the game away by saying "the unions are weak: they are dominated by the parties. They need to become stronger and more independent." The visitors wonder why a union movement that is poor and needs funds as well as training is able to drive them about in big Toyota Land Cruisers and BMWs.
Many of the people we meet aren't trade unionists in the British sense - rather, they are from professional associations feeling their way into independent life. At a final dinner in Erbil, where some 20 representatives of every kind of union - blue-collar, white-collar and entrepreneurial - turn up, the teachers' unions ask for teacher training as well as union training; the representative of the medical practitioners asks for cardiac equipment and the representative of the country's dentists asks for modern dental training.
Everywhere the British unionists go, they are congratulated on the virtues of prime minister Tony Blair. They, of course, are not fans. The trade union movement, especially on the left, takes the view that this government, if possibly better than a Conservative one, is not real Labour. "It's all very well going on about Tony Blair," says Davis, half drolly, half irritably, at one of the group's lengthy feasts. "We don't think he's so wonderful." (Davis's British Communist Party and its paper, the Morning Star, are fiercely hostile to New Labour.)
The trip does seem to make a difference to the group's views on the war. During a meal in a restaurant towards the end of the week, David Green, the younger of the two firefighters' union leaders, says: "I was against the war. I thought it was a bad idea and it shouldn't have been done." I ask him about his thoughts now. "Well, you see a different perspective. You see what these people have done."
Green and Brian Joyce have been tremendously active in arranging for British fire authorities to donate equipment to the impoverished Iraqi brigades. Joyce, in conversation, frequently recalls visits elsewhere in Iraq where firefighters were expected to work with ancient machines and wearing just overalls. He says they showed him the burns and wounds they had suffered, which they accepted as part of the job.
I join Green and Joyce at a fire station in Dohuk to see what has become of the equipment they had sent over. We step into the tiny, impoverished office of station commander Colonel Abdul Mohammed Rashid, who calls in a tall fireman dressed in protective gear. The fireman stamps his right foot as a kind of salute, stands to attention and turns around to show the logo on the back of his coat: "Sponsored by Bristol - protecting the world's firefighters".
Exploring the station's engine shed, Green and Joyce find two brand new Mercedes fire trucks next to a much older vehicle of indeterminate make. They also discover that much of the new equipment they had arranged to send here has not been used and the firefighters have not been trained to use it. The two officials keep asking why firefighters (in common with the civil police, of which they are part) are not allowed to join unions. They are assured later by a group of parliamentarians that a labour code passing through the Kurdish parliament would permit membership. But what the Kurdish firefighters really need is efficient and protective equipment. Both the British firefighters say they will continue working to supply it.
Shortly after we return home, the long-expected British general election is called. Polls and focus groups show that Blair is trusted less and less, and the main reason given is the basis on which he took the country to war in Iraq.
This has become the crucial issue in the constituency of Bethnal Green and Bow in east London, where Labour party officials fear an upset. George Galloway, the former Labour MP, supported by fellow members of the Stop the War Coalition, is standing as a Respect candidate in the seat, which has a Muslim majority and whose sitting Labour MP, Oona King, supported the war. Galloway appears to be making good progress in a bitterly fought campaign.
"Trust", which Blair is deemed to lack, is defined almost wholly in terms of going to war in Iraq. If the Kurds see it as a war of liberation, the majority of Britons reportedly view it as a disgrace. But in the aftermath of their trip, the trade union delegation is determined to take a pragmatic approach. A report, drafted by Nick Crook, will recommend that the TUC and its affiliates help Iraqi unions through the IFTU with training in organisational skills, leadership and English, and give money for offices and equipment. It will recommend that unions should not work with the GFITU, because of its Ba'athist links.
There is a strong precedent for this sort of action. After the second world war, the British union movement helped rebuild the German unions - giving them (as many Labour politicians have ruefully reflected since) a structure much more rational and coherent than British unions have today. It was a parallel that occurred to several members of the delegation in Iraq, though all were born after the war. Through the decades, some deep imperative of solidarity seems to have asserted itself.
Monday, April 25
Students, universities, occupation, and resistance
Yahia Said, a researcher at the London School of Economics who has visited Iraq a number of times since 2003, spoke to the April meeting of the Iraq Workers' Solidarity Group about the student movement, university life, and the resistance in Iraq.
Immediately after the fall of Saddam, the old student unions re-established themselves. There was the Communist Party's General Union of Students in the Iraqi Republic (GUSIR). There were unions that came in with the political parties arriving from exile - unions associated with the Shia Islamist Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), with the Dawa party, with the Kurdish parties...
Some of them were doing good work. I was a member of GUSIR for many years and part of their Executive Board. It was good to see them hit the ground running immediately after the fall of Saddam.
The unions helped address immediate student needs - fix student hostels and so on. For example, the main hostels at Baghdad University had been occupied by the Americans. The students had to negotiate to get them out of there.
But the unions represented very clearly divided political interests - Communists, Islamists, Ba'thists. The Ba'thist union, the National Union of Iraqi Students, is still alive and well, and it actually participated in the elections of 30 January 2005.
If you go to the campuses, people say that there are still lots of students who consider themselves Ba'thists, but I'm never been able to meet any of their members. This is a union which used to run torture chambers at the university.
Over the time since 2003, many small unions have emerged which cross the political boundaries. There are hundreds of them. They are more like what you would call in Britain student societies. But they do very interesting work. These are the people who are not after some political programme, but about protecting the students and making their lives better.
There are no big "good guys". The good guys are small groups. GUSIR are good guys, but they are in disarray now. They did very well early on, but they are much less visible now. Something went wrong, I don't know exactly what.
My knowledge is limited to Baghdad University. I've talked to out-of-town students in Baghdad, but I haven't visited other universities.
In the Political Science department at Baghdad University, for example, there is the Union of Students for Human Rights, which is a group of maybe 100 students. They have Shia Islamists, they have Sunni Islamists, they have Communists, they have people from Fallujah who are pro-resistance, they have people who are pacifist-oriented - but they are working together on issues they care about, especially for the right of students to organise and against corruption, which is rampant.
At the universities there are members of the faculty and the administration who are diverting funds, denying students services and hostels. Many of these small student unions are dealing with that sort of issue.
Before the transfer of authority in June 2004, the Minister of Education was an Islamist, and he tried to put restrictions on student life and intervene in favour of Islamist students. He was kicked out, and now the Minister of Education in the Interim Government is an ex-Ba'thist, and he's pulling in the other direction. When the new transitional government is formed, we'll probably go back to Islamist control.
Huge funds are being spent from donors, but misspent and misappropriated. Some scholarship money is trickling down. But the hostels are still in a dire state.
At Baghdad University they had three hostel buildings. They gave the students one building; one was occupied by the Americans, and the other by the National Guard. So the hostel was constantly being mortared by the insurgents. The students became a sort of human shield.
The management of the hostel steals the fuel that is supposed to go to generate electricity, so they don't have any electricity in the hostel.
It's a complete mess. Total corruption. The students went to the university authorities to complain about the fuel, and they were beaten up by university guards.
The students squatted a disused building at the university to accommodate out-of-town students. The security came and beat them up and threw them out. Now that building is being used for commercial purposes to the benefit of people in the university management.
Many of the out-of-town students have had to get money from their parents to rent a flat in the city. The Baghdad students have a very long and dangerous commute to the university. They have to leave university early each day so that they can get home before it gets dark.
The professors have not had access to new books and new journals for many years. There are no computer rooms, but private internet cafés at the university where you have to pay.
Curricula are extremely antiquated. After 2003 a quick clean-up was done on the political courses. It was not very thorough or rigorous, and a lot of stuff remains the same, nationalist and xenophobic. There is some discussion and agitation among the students about this, but not as much as you would expect.
The universities do function. They have been accepting new students. The campuses are full, and lively. People are graduating. There have been threats against women students, but at Baghdad University there is still a good proportion of female students.
There are no guns on the campuses. There are checkpoints at the gates, and you're not allowed to bring in guns.
There have been periodic scares when the insurgents have called a national strike and threatened everyone who goes to university with being blown up, but students have usually ignored those threats.
There is a state-owned university in almost every governorate, and Baghdad has two. There are number of small private universities established over the last ten years - Saddam had his own privatisation drive.
The universities are quite big. Baghdad University is huge. Iraq has a very young population, almost everyone wants to go to university, and education is free at the state universities. (The Americans have not suggested introducing tuition fees). The percentage of students who move on to do PhDs and postgraduate studies is huge.
Education is very highly regarded in Iraqi society. Until Saddam started fighting wars, oil money allowed many people to get into higher education. There were many students at the universities in Iraq, and Iraq used to send thousands of students to study abroad on state scholarships. In the current Iraqi government, most of the ministers graduated from British universities, and most of them have PhDs.
The emphasis is on technical subjects, which are very highly regarded - medicine, engineering, science. Those technical subjects are mostly taught at university level in English, not Arabic. There were some moves for Arabisation in the 1980s and 90s. Social sciences are in Arabic.
There is a huge urge among young people to leave Iraq, at least for a while - to get a scholarship or something. There is almost no chance of university graduates getting a job in Iraq. There was high graduate unemployment even before 2003. Before 1990 when you finished university you went to the war (with Iran), and in the 1970s you would get a job with the government.
From the very start the Islamist unions started intimidating women students and trying to prevent male and female students from sitting together or talking together. That has made them quite unpopular on campus. Even students who believe in Islam think it is too much interference. Iraqi campuses are usually much more liberal than the rest of society. On campus women are dressed quite differently than outside.
In Islam, the drive to veil women was a result of the poverty caused by the sanctions. It was a result of the degradation of the lean years after the war in Kuwait. Many Iraqis are looking forward to moving away from all that as soon as there is more prosperity.
Iraqi society has become more Islamic than anyone would have expected, but it has not gone so far as to accept what the Islamist student unions were trying to do, especially among the student body.
Lots of professors have been assassinated. But in Iraq, anyone who is doing something, who is successful in some way, or seen as successful, is seen as a target by the various terrorist groups operating in the country. Many of the successful and active people happen to be university professors, but the attacks are not limited to them. Many businessmen and government officials have been killed too.
There is no specific campaign against university professors - a successful surgeon or a successful engineer is equally at risk. There are a whole lot of nihilistically-minded gangs who are trying to paralyse society.
They have a political motive, which is to try to prevent change and stop society moving on, or trying to perpetuate a situation of instability which they can use to make money and pursue criminal activity.
Some of them are Ba'thists, some are al Qaeda people. But there can be different motives for different assassinations. A professor may be killed because he was a big Ba'thist in the past, or kidnapped because a gang thinks it can get a big ransom from his family. Some groups combine crime with political motives. They make money by demanding ransoms, or by smuggling, in order to fund the resistance, for example.
Until six months ago, overall, over ninety per cent of resistance attacks were aimed at military targets. They were legitimate, so to speak, because they were against the occupying forces. However, 80% of the casualties were Iraqi civilians. Even when the resistance groups attacked US forces, usually they killed Iraqi civilians.
The proportions have changed over time. An increasing proportion of attacks now is aimed at Iraqi civilians. The hard-line Islamists and Ba'thists are still a small part of the resistance, but they have become more active.
Many of the nationalists were unhappy about so many civilians being killed. And the biggest change came with the elections. Once they saw that most Iraqis don't want the violence - they want to vote and to end the occupation through peaceful means - many people who were in the insurgency got the message and stopped.
A lot of the resistance is nationalist-Islamist - Hamas-type groups. There are lots of tiny separate groups whose only authority is whoever happens to be their local cleric. Many of those clerics have been calling on them to stop attacks on civilians and on Iraqi military targets, or even to join the Iraqi armed forces.
It was reported that the Association of Muslim Scholars had called on people to join the Iraqi policy and army. They have denied that. But many clerics have been making that call.
Ba'thist ideology died twenty years ago. The last ideological, believing Ba'thists quit the party when Iraq invaded Kuwait. The Ba'th party became like one of the East European Communist Parties before 1989 - a way to access jobs and privileges and resources.
That didn't make it much prettier. Many people now feel very guilty about not doing anything - just keeping a low profile and trudging on. In 2003, when the regime fell, many people realised that they could have toppled it themselves ten years earlier, had they dared.
Everyone, if they felt safe enough, would tell you in private that they hated Saddam - that relatives or neighbours got tortured or killed - but they all kept a low profile, and some of them joined the Ba'th party so that they could get jobs.
There are maybe fifty to a hundred thousand people in the resistance, and of those maybe two thousand are Ba'thists. There is no overall leadership. The bulk of it is a collection of small groups. At the top of each group is typically an ex-special forces guy, or a former army officer, and then the group gets guidance from its cleric.
A big proportion of the Iraqi special forces came from Fallujah. Saddam Hussein trusted them. Fallujah is also home to many seminaries. Many of those special forces people embraced a very austere form of Islam, close to Wahhabism.
These guys are both nationalists and Islamists, like Hamas. But unlike Hamas, they don't have a developed political structure. And, although they are from Saddam's old special forces, these guys hate the Ba'th party. Saddam did not trust even the Republican Guard.
There's another bit of the insurgency which is mafia. Then there are the al-Sadr people, who are a different type. And then there are the al-Qaeda types and the Ba'thists. They are very effective, because they have lots of resources, but they are a very small part of it.
It's safer to be a resistance fighter than a student. If you're a student, when you go on the streets, the Americans may shoot you, or the resistance fighters may shoot you. If you are a resistance fighter, only the Americans are shooting you, and you can shoot back.
In terms of good guys in the resistance, a reference point is the Association of Muslim Clerics. But they are good guys up to a point. They are good in terms of their opposition to the occupation and to terrorism, but they are extremely conservative Islamists.
There are no good guys - or the good guys are very tiny groups. The Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions is largely good. It's an easy point of reference, but it's limited. And there are issues with IFTU. There's a need to drill down deeper and diversify contacts.
In some universities the administration has forced elections for student councils to negotiate with the administration, without proper preparation. Of course two years is not a short time. They should have had elections. The problem is that the authorities have never clarified the election procedures or what the rights and responsibilities of these student councils are.
The story about Saturdays is a typical stupidity from the Iraqi government. There are many people in the current government trying to build a modern, liberal, democratic, secular Iraq. That's good. But society has to "buy" these changes. And the modernisers have been trying to smuggle in changes from above as fast as they can, maybe trying to push them through before the Islamists come to power.
Iraq used to have only a one-day weekend, Fridays. The Interim Government said it should be two days, Friday and Saturday. Many Muslims object, saying that it should be Thursday and Friday if it is two days.
The Saturday weekend makes a lot of sense, because a Thursday-Friday weekend would mean that Iraq would be out of touch with Europe and the United States for four days.
Of course, those who want to throw stones at it say that people who want Saturday off are all Jews and Zionists.
But this is a caretaker government, which under the UN Security Council decisions should not do anything permanent or long-term, like changing the weekly holiday. Despite all the other pressing issues, they decided to go ahead with this Saturday decision. I think it's a correct decision. The wrong thing is that it was smuggled in without public consultation, pushed through by a government without legitimacy or a mandate.
Immediately after the fall of Saddam, the old student unions re-established themselves. There was the Communist Party's General Union of Students in the Iraqi Republic (GUSIR). There were unions that came in with the political parties arriving from exile - unions associated with the Shia Islamist Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), with the Dawa party, with the Kurdish parties...
Some of them were doing good work. I was a member of GUSIR for many years and part of their Executive Board. It was good to see them hit the ground running immediately after the fall of Saddam.
The unions helped address immediate student needs - fix student hostels and so on. For example, the main hostels at Baghdad University had been occupied by the Americans. The students had to negotiate to get them out of there.
But the unions represented very clearly divided political interests - Communists, Islamists, Ba'thists. The Ba'thist union, the National Union of Iraqi Students, is still alive and well, and it actually participated in the elections of 30 January 2005.
If you go to the campuses, people say that there are still lots of students who consider themselves Ba'thists, but I'm never been able to meet any of their members. This is a union which used to run torture chambers at the university.
Over the time since 2003, many small unions have emerged which cross the political boundaries. There are hundreds of them. They are more like what you would call in Britain student societies. But they do very interesting work. These are the people who are not after some political programme, but about protecting the students and making their lives better.
There are no big "good guys". The good guys are small groups. GUSIR are good guys, but they are in disarray now. They did very well early on, but they are much less visible now. Something went wrong, I don't know exactly what.
My knowledge is limited to Baghdad University. I've talked to out-of-town students in Baghdad, but I haven't visited other universities.
In the Political Science department at Baghdad University, for example, there is the Union of Students for Human Rights, which is a group of maybe 100 students. They have Shia Islamists, they have Sunni Islamists, they have Communists, they have people from Fallujah who are pro-resistance, they have people who are pacifist-oriented - but they are working together on issues they care about, especially for the right of students to organise and against corruption, which is rampant.
At the universities there are members of the faculty and the administration who are diverting funds, denying students services and hostels. Many of these small student unions are dealing with that sort of issue.
Before the transfer of authority in June 2004, the Minister of Education was an Islamist, and he tried to put restrictions on student life and intervene in favour of Islamist students. He was kicked out, and now the Minister of Education in the Interim Government is an ex-Ba'thist, and he's pulling in the other direction. When the new transitional government is formed, we'll probably go back to Islamist control.
Huge funds are being spent from donors, but misspent and misappropriated. Some scholarship money is trickling down. But the hostels are still in a dire state.
At Baghdad University they had three hostel buildings. They gave the students one building; one was occupied by the Americans, and the other by the National Guard. So the hostel was constantly being mortared by the insurgents. The students became a sort of human shield.
The management of the hostel steals the fuel that is supposed to go to generate electricity, so they don't have any electricity in the hostel.
It's a complete mess. Total corruption. The students went to the university authorities to complain about the fuel, and they were beaten up by university guards.
The students squatted a disused building at the university to accommodate out-of-town students. The security came and beat them up and threw them out. Now that building is being used for commercial purposes to the benefit of people in the university management.
Many of the out-of-town students have had to get money from their parents to rent a flat in the city. The Baghdad students have a very long and dangerous commute to the university. They have to leave university early each day so that they can get home before it gets dark.
The professors have not had access to new books and new journals for many years. There are no computer rooms, but private internet cafés at the university where you have to pay.
Curricula are extremely antiquated. After 2003 a quick clean-up was done on the political courses. It was not very thorough or rigorous, and a lot of stuff remains the same, nationalist and xenophobic. There is some discussion and agitation among the students about this, but not as much as you would expect.
The universities do function. They have been accepting new students. The campuses are full, and lively. People are graduating. There have been threats against women students, but at Baghdad University there is still a good proportion of female students.
There are no guns on the campuses. There are checkpoints at the gates, and you're not allowed to bring in guns.
There have been periodic scares when the insurgents have called a national strike and threatened everyone who goes to university with being blown up, but students have usually ignored those threats.
There is a state-owned university in almost every governorate, and Baghdad has two. There are number of small private universities established over the last ten years - Saddam had his own privatisation drive.
The universities are quite big. Baghdad University is huge. Iraq has a very young population, almost everyone wants to go to university, and education is free at the state universities. (The Americans have not suggested introducing tuition fees). The percentage of students who move on to do PhDs and postgraduate studies is huge.
Education is very highly regarded in Iraqi society. Until Saddam started fighting wars, oil money allowed many people to get into higher education. There were many students at the universities in Iraq, and Iraq used to send thousands of students to study abroad on state scholarships. In the current Iraqi government, most of the ministers graduated from British universities, and most of them have PhDs.
The emphasis is on technical subjects, which are very highly regarded - medicine, engineering, science. Those technical subjects are mostly taught at university level in English, not Arabic. There were some moves for Arabisation in the 1980s and 90s. Social sciences are in Arabic.
There is a huge urge among young people to leave Iraq, at least for a while - to get a scholarship or something. There is almost no chance of university graduates getting a job in Iraq. There was high graduate unemployment even before 2003. Before 1990 when you finished university you went to the war (with Iran), and in the 1970s you would get a job with the government.
From the very start the Islamist unions started intimidating women students and trying to prevent male and female students from sitting together or talking together. That has made them quite unpopular on campus. Even students who believe in Islam think it is too much interference. Iraqi campuses are usually much more liberal than the rest of society. On campus women are dressed quite differently than outside.
In Islam, the drive to veil women was a result of the poverty caused by the sanctions. It was a result of the degradation of the lean years after the war in Kuwait. Many Iraqis are looking forward to moving away from all that as soon as there is more prosperity.
Iraqi society has become more Islamic than anyone would have expected, but it has not gone so far as to accept what the Islamist student unions were trying to do, especially among the student body.
Lots of professors have been assassinated. But in Iraq, anyone who is doing something, who is successful in some way, or seen as successful, is seen as a target by the various terrorist groups operating in the country. Many of the successful and active people happen to be university professors, but the attacks are not limited to them. Many businessmen and government officials have been killed too.
There is no specific campaign against university professors - a successful surgeon or a successful engineer is equally at risk. There are a whole lot of nihilistically-minded gangs who are trying to paralyse society.
They have a political motive, which is to try to prevent change and stop society moving on, or trying to perpetuate a situation of instability which they can use to make money and pursue criminal activity.
Some of them are Ba'thists, some are al Qaeda people. But there can be different motives for different assassinations. A professor may be killed because he was a big Ba'thist in the past, or kidnapped because a gang thinks it can get a big ransom from his family. Some groups combine crime with political motives. They make money by demanding ransoms, or by smuggling, in order to fund the resistance, for example.
Until six months ago, overall, over ninety per cent of resistance attacks were aimed at military targets. They were legitimate, so to speak, because they were against the occupying forces. However, 80% of the casualties were Iraqi civilians. Even when the resistance groups attacked US forces, usually they killed Iraqi civilians.
The proportions have changed over time. An increasing proportion of attacks now is aimed at Iraqi civilians. The hard-line Islamists and Ba'thists are still a small part of the resistance, but they have become more active.
Many of the nationalists were unhappy about so many civilians being killed. And the biggest change came with the elections. Once they saw that most Iraqis don't want the violence - they want to vote and to end the occupation through peaceful means - many people who were in the insurgency got the message and stopped.
A lot of the resistance is nationalist-Islamist - Hamas-type groups. There are lots of tiny separate groups whose only authority is whoever happens to be their local cleric. Many of those clerics have been calling on them to stop attacks on civilians and on Iraqi military targets, or even to join the Iraqi armed forces.
It was reported that the Association of Muslim Scholars had called on people to join the Iraqi policy and army. They have denied that. But many clerics have been making that call.
Ba'thist ideology died twenty years ago. The last ideological, believing Ba'thists quit the party when Iraq invaded Kuwait. The Ba'th party became like one of the East European Communist Parties before 1989 - a way to access jobs and privileges and resources.
That didn't make it much prettier. Many people now feel very guilty about not doing anything - just keeping a low profile and trudging on. In 2003, when the regime fell, many people realised that they could have toppled it themselves ten years earlier, had they dared.
Everyone, if they felt safe enough, would tell you in private that they hated Saddam - that relatives or neighbours got tortured or killed - but they all kept a low profile, and some of them joined the Ba'th party so that they could get jobs.
There are maybe fifty to a hundred thousand people in the resistance, and of those maybe two thousand are Ba'thists. There is no overall leadership. The bulk of it is a collection of small groups. At the top of each group is typically an ex-special forces guy, or a former army officer, and then the group gets guidance from its cleric.
A big proportion of the Iraqi special forces came from Fallujah. Saddam Hussein trusted them. Fallujah is also home to many seminaries. Many of those special forces people embraced a very austere form of Islam, close to Wahhabism.
These guys are both nationalists and Islamists, like Hamas. But unlike Hamas, they don't have a developed political structure. And, although they are from Saddam's old special forces, these guys hate the Ba'th party. Saddam did not trust even the Republican Guard.
There's another bit of the insurgency which is mafia. Then there are the al-Sadr people, who are a different type. And then there are the al-Qaeda types and the Ba'thists. They are very effective, because they have lots of resources, but they are a very small part of it.
It's safer to be a resistance fighter than a student. If you're a student, when you go on the streets, the Americans may shoot you, or the resistance fighters may shoot you. If you are a resistance fighter, only the Americans are shooting you, and you can shoot back.
In terms of good guys in the resistance, a reference point is the Association of Muslim Clerics. But they are good guys up to a point. They are good in terms of their opposition to the occupation and to terrorism, but they are extremely conservative Islamists.
There are no good guys - or the good guys are very tiny groups. The Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions is largely good. It's an easy point of reference, but it's limited. And there are issues with IFTU. There's a need to drill down deeper and diversify contacts.
In some universities the administration has forced elections for student councils to negotiate with the administration, without proper preparation. Of course two years is not a short time. They should have had elections. The problem is that the authorities have never clarified the election procedures or what the rights and responsibilities of these student councils are.
The story about Saturdays is a typical stupidity from the Iraqi government. There are many people in the current government trying to build a modern, liberal, democratic, secular Iraq. That's good. But society has to "buy" these changes. And the modernisers have been trying to smuggle in changes from above as fast as they can, maybe trying to push them through before the Islamists come to power.
Iraq used to have only a one-day weekend, Fridays. The Interim Government said it should be two days, Friday and Saturday. Many Muslims object, saying that it should be Thursday and Friday if it is two days.
The Saturday weekend makes a lot of sense, because a Thursday-Friday weekend would mean that Iraq would be out of touch with Europe and the United States for four days.
Of course, those who want to throw stones at it say that people who want Saturday off are all Jews and Zionists.
But this is a caretaker government, which under the UN Security Council decisions should not do anything permanent or long-term, like changing the weekly holiday. Despite all the other pressing issues, they decided to go ahead with this Saturday decision. I think it's a correct decision. The wrong thing is that it was smuggled in without public consultation, pushed through by a government without legitimacy or a mandate.
Sunday, April 24
Union calls for "freedom congress" and UN forces
Interview with Felah Alwan, by David Bacon
April 18, 2005
t r u t h o u t | Interview
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/041905LA.shtml
On March 18, the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions of Iraq, one of Iraq's three trade union federations, announced the formation of the Iraqi Freedom Congress. The union called it "a borad organization committeed to establishing a free, secular and non-ethnic government in Iraq," composed of "political parties, trade unions, people's councils, associations and institutuions." The FCWUI sees the presnt situation as a "civil abyss," in which "the fabric of the civil society in Iraq has been torn apartr under the US occupation and the domination of the Islamic, tribal and political gangsters."
In the following interview, the president of the Federation of Workers' Councils, Felah Alwan, explains the way the union proposes to end Iraq's occupation, and the occupation's impact on workers.
Q: What political process can end the occupation?
F: Iraq is now in a state of anarchy. There are no civil institutions. There's nothing except the occupation forces and the government. The structure of the government imposed by the occupation forces has been divided along lines of ethnicity and religion. That makes some people believe that there is popular support for it.
Our society may be headed for civil war between religious groups. We call for the organization of a Congress of Liberation, including all the political powers in Iraq, to end the occupation and rebuild civil society. This Congress would include all groups, and would have the power to end the rule of the occupation. One way to end the occupation itself would be for the forces of the United Nations to keep the peace.
Q: So you think UN troops should replace the US military forces?
F: If the current troops withdraw, there may be a need for another military force, especially from countries that haven't participated in the occupation. They would supervise new elections, to help the Iraqi people elect their government, instead of the election that just happened. The main thing is to end the occupation, and all this would take place afterwards. But the occupation will never end until we can hold a congress of all the powers in Iraq that make up civil society.
Q: What was the attitude of the members of the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions of Iraq toward the January elections in Iraq?
F: Our federation issued a statement criticizing the way the elections were conducted. We said that for people to choose between more than one alternative, they would have to know the programs of the different political parties and groups. This hasn't happened in Iraq. So this was a violation of the right of the people. Most women in Iraq outside the capital in the rural areas can't read or write. So the supervisors of the election centers there themselves filled out the ballots for the parties they wanted.
As an example, one important Shiite cleric told people to participate, and said that those who boycotted the voting would go to hell. This was an intervention by religious orders, threatening people if they refused to participate. Sistani also threatened people with hell if they refused to vote for the electoral list of the group of Shiite parties. On the other hand, the party of the Prime Minister [Issad Allawi] waged a propaganda campaign telling people that if the election failed, everyone who boycotted or refused to participate would be punished. In the cities, in areas under the hegemony of the Islamist militia, people were threatened if they refused to participate or if they didn't vote for the list of the Shiite candidates of Sistani's party.
So the election took place without a real desire on the part of the voters. People were also afraid that the election centers would be attacked, and even that people would be beheaded. In this case, it is unfair to call this an election. It was a ridiculous thing.
We tried to enter one of the centers to take pictures, and the armed men there prevented us from doing that. They stopped people from going in to see what was happening. The supervisors and the supporters of the armed militia called on people to support their alternative, and no other, especially the list of Sistani. In Kurdistan, people were already announcing the result of the election before it happened.
So we called on workers to boycott these elections, because people were divided according to their ethnicity, language and religion. Its purpose was to impose the American project on Iraq, and give legitimacy to the government imposed by the Americans and the occupying coalition. The same parties we saw in the old Governing Council will remain in power, and the political balance will remain the same. They called on people to participate to give this legitimacy.
We do know that many workers in the State Leather Industry Factory, and in others, boycotted the election. But we don't know the exact number, because in Iraq we're prevented from knowing such things. I can prove that a large number of workers boycotted the elections. But the religious workers, especially those who follow Sistani, were given religious orders to vote. That is the main why a large number of religious people took part.
D: What is the economic situation of workers in Iraq today?
F: The large number unemployed forces people to work under very bad conditions, and for very low wages. For example, agricultural workers are paid less than 100,000 Iraqi dinars a month. That's about $70. The cost of fuel has increased very rapidly, and makes transportation very difficult. The conditions are very dangerous. Outside of Baghdad, workers in the other governates can only get jobs through political parties, especially those in the government. And they require workers to join their party. Before the election, some parties told people that if they voted for them, they'd give people jobs.
The large number of unemployed makes workers afraid to lose their jobs. Our workers struck a chemical plant in Baghdad. The administration, with another so-called union, threatened their jobs, and even threatened to arrest them. So the people abandoned their demands for higher wages and better conditions. In the State Leather Industry Factory, workers only make $100-150 a month. They do dangerous work, and some lose their fingers on sharp instruments, and are denied any compensation. It is a state-owned company, so the administration threatened to arrest workers, saying they had no right to organize a union. Buit the workers organized two strikes in January in spite of that.
In the villages, people work for $1 a day. On construction sites in Nasariya, 100 miles south of Baghdad, they get 6000 dinars, or $4-4.50 a day, in very bad conditions. They work seven days a week. When we called for one day of rest, the administration refused. "We need to finish the building," they said. And we found out that this building is for soldiers, so people were in danger of being killed at any moment by the armed groups. Four explosions took place while they were working. The workers were attacked because they were working on a building for the US Army. The gangs placed bombs on the site, and the Italians discovered three of them. But one exploded. Even there, the companies try to stop people from joining unions by threatening to fire them.
D: Has the economic situation gotten better over the past year?
F: The prices have gone up very rapidly. Kerosene rose so much that a worker can't buy it. Transport also increased a lot, because the price of fuel went up. Vegetables and food went up because transport went up, and because it's dangerous and expensive to transport it goods. All of this puts a lot of pressure on the wages of the workers.
Q: How was your union formed?
F: Our union came out of the Union of Unemployed of Iraq. We had an 18-day demonstration at the start of the occupation, for unemployment insurance or jobs. Workers started to organize themselves on their own. They were very courageous.
Our organization was founded in the electricity, textile railway, and services industries. The main problem has been how to struggle against the old administration in the factories, and to raise the wages. Our focus from the beginning has been on the daily life issues. We've held a lot of seminars, and prepared our own proposal for the labor coude. The tried to get the Minister of Labor to accept it, but the government already had its own agenda.
People are beginning to see the trade union movement as one made up of workers themselves, not related to the authorities. We have a weak trade union tradition among workers now, because workers see unions as part of the government. The authorities compound this problem by intervening in the trade union movement, with legislation that gives support to one organization and not others. Trade unions are being used by political parties to play a role in Iraq.
April 18, 2005
t r u t h o u t | Interview
http://www.truthout.org/issues_05/041905LA.shtml
On March 18, the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions of Iraq, one of Iraq's three trade union federations, announced the formation of the Iraqi Freedom Congress. The union called it "a borad organization committeed to establishing a free, secular and non-ethnic government in Iraq," composed of "political parties, trade unions, people's councils, associations and institutuions." The FCWUI sees the presnt situation as a "civil abyss," in which "the fabric of the civil society in Iraq has been torn apartr under the US occupation and the domination of the Islamic, tribal and political gangsters."
In the following interview, the president of the Federation of Workers' Councils, Felah Alwan, explains the way the union proposes to end Iraq's occupation, and the occupation's impact on workers.
Q: What political process can end the occupation?
F: Iraq is now in a state of anarchy. There are no civil institutions. There's nothing except the occupation forces and the government. The structure of the government imposed by the occupation forces has been divided along lines of ethnicity and religion. That makes some people believe that there is popular support for it.
Our society may be headed for civil war between religious groups. We call for the organization of a Congress of Liberation, including all the political powers in Iraq, to end the occupation and rebuild civil society. This Congress would include all groups, and would have the power to end the rule of the occupation. One way to end the occupation itself would be for the forces of the United Nations to keep the peace.
Q: So you think UN troops should replace the US military forces?
F: If the current troops withdraw, there may be a need for another military force, especially from countries that haven't participated in the occupation. They would supervise new elections, to help the Iraqi people elect their government, instead of the election that just happened. The main thing is to end the occupation, and all this would take place afterwards. But the occupation will never end until we can hold a congress of all the powers in Iraq that make up civil society.
Q: What was the attitude of the members of the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions of Iraq toward the January elections in Iraq?
F: Our federation issued a statement criticizing the way the elections were conducted. We said that for people to choose between more than one alternative, they would have to know the programs of the different political parties and groups. This hasn't happened in Iraq. So this was a violation of the right of the people. Most women in Iraq outside the capital in the rural areas can't read or write. So the supervisors of the election centers there themselves filled out the ballots for the parties they wanted.
As an example, one important Shiite cleric told people to participate, and said that those who boycotted the voting would go to hell. This was an intervention by religious orders, threatening people if they refused to participate. Sistani also threatened people with hell if they refused to vote for the electoral list of the group of Shiite parties. On the other hand, the party of the Prime Minister [Issad Allawi] waged a propaganda campaign telling people that if the election failed, everyone who boycotted or refused to participate would be punished. In the cities, in areas under the hegemony of the Islamist militia, people were threatened if they refused to participate or if they didn't vote for the list of the Shiite candidates of Sistani's party.
So the election took place without a real desire on the part of the voters. People were also afraid that the election centers would be attacked, and even that people would be beheaded. In this case, it is unfair to call this an election. It was a ridiculous thing.
We tried to enter one of the centers to take pictures, and the armed men there prevented us from doing that. They stopped people from going in to see what was happening. The supervisors and the supporters of the armed militia called on people to support their alternative, and no other, especially the list of Sistani. In Kurdistan, people were already announcing the result of the election before it happened.
So we called on workers to boycott these elections, because people were divided according to their ethnicity, language and religion. Its purpose was to impose the American project on Iraq, and give legitimacy to the government imposed by the Americans and the occupying coalition. The same parties we saw in the old Governing Council will remain in power, and the political balance will remain the same. They called on people to participate to give this legitimacy.
We do know that many workers in the State Leather Industry Factory, and in others, boycotted the election. But we don't know the exact number, because in Iraq we're prevented from knowing such things. I can prove that a large number of workers boycotted the elections. But the religious workers, especially those who follow Sistani, were given religious orders to vote. That is the main why a large number of religious people took part.
D: What is the economic situation of workers in Iraq today?
F: The large number unemployed forces people to work under very bad conditions, and for very low wages. For example, agricultural workers are paid less than 100,000 Iraqi dinars a month. That's about $70. The cost of fuel has increased very rapidly, and makes transportation very difficult. The conditions are very dangerous. Outside of Baghdad, workers in the other governates can only get jobs through political parties, especially those in the government. And they require workers to join their party. Before the election, some parties told people that if they voted for them, they'd give people jobs.
The large number of unemployed makes workers afraid to lose their jobs. Our workers struck a chemical plant in Baghdad. The administration, with another so-called union, threatened their jobs, and even threatened to arrest them. So the people abandoned their demands for higher wages and better conditions. In the State Leather Industry Factory, workers only make $100-150 a month. They do dangerous work, and some lose their fingers on sharp instruments, and are denied any compensation. It is a state-owned company, so the administration threatened to arrest workers, saying they had no right to organize a union. Buit the workers organized two strikes in January in spite of that.
In the villages, people work for $1 a day. On construction sites in Nasariya, 100 miles south of Baghdad, they get 6000 dinars, or $4-4.50 a day, in very bad conditions. They work seven days a week. When we called for one day of rest, the administration refused. "We need to finish the building," they said. And we found out that this building is for soldiers, so people were in danger of being killed at any moment by the armed groups. Four explosions took place while they were working. The workers were attacked because they were working on a building for the US Army. The gangs placed bombs on the site, and the Italians discovered three of them. But one exploded. Even there, the companies try to stop people from joining unions by threatening to fire them.
D: Has the economic situation gotten better over the past year?
F: The prices have gone up very rapidly. Kerosene rose so much that a worker can't buy it. Transport also increased a lot, because the price of fuel went up. Vegetables and food went up because transport went up, and because it's dangerous and expensive to transport it goods. All of this puts a lot of pressure on the wages of the workers.
Q: How was your union formed?
F: Our union came out of the Union of Unemployed of Iraq. We had an 18-day demonstration at the start of the occupation, for unemployment insurance or jobs. Workers started to organize themselves on their own. They were very courageous.
Our organization was founded in the electricity, textile railway, and services industries. The main problem has been how to struggle against the old administration in the factories, and to raise the wages. Our focus from the beginning has been on the daily life issues. We've held a lot of seminars, and prepared our own proposal for the labor coude. The tried to get the Minister of Labor to accept it, but the government already had its own agenda.
People are beginning to see the trade union movement as one made up of workers themselves, not related to the authorities. We have a weak trade union tradition among workers now, because workers see unions as part of the government. The authorities compound this problem by intervening in the trade union movement, with legislation that gives support to one organization and not others. Trade unions are being used by political parties to play a role in Iraq.
Resisting the economic war in Iraq
Interview with Hassan Juma ’ a Awad, head of Basra Oil Union
By Greg Muttitt of Platform.
(http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/newsletter/issue23/part13.htm)
Following the elections at the end of January, it seems the way may now be open to privatise Iraq ’ s biggest and most strategic asset: oil. But while the UK and USA are carefully playing the politics at a government level, Iraq ’ s occupiers may face a greater obstacle in the oil industry ’ s workers.
Two years on from the invasion of Iraq, it’s easy to feel cynical. Every day we are bombarded with new reports of violence in Iraq, of our government’s dishonesty, and of the rapid privatisation of the country.
Meeting Hassan Juma’a Awad, the head of the Basra Oil Union, was a perfect antidote to those feelings. In Hassan I found a source of hope, that things in Iraq could change for the better.
The Basra Oil Union – which is independent of any political or religious affiliation –has been a powerful force in Iraq's largest industry. Representing 23,000 workers in the oil industry in the south of Iraq, it grew out of the South Oil Company (SOC) Union, and now combines ten trade union councils in nine Iraqi oil companies in Basra, Amara and Nassiriyah.
“The opinion of all [Iraqi] oilworkers is that they are against privatisationâ€, states Hassan. “We see privatisation as economic colonialism. The authorities are saying that privatisation will develop our sector and be useful. But we do not see it as development at all; we view any plan to privatise the oil sector as a big disasterâ€.
Sovereignty over its oil reserves is key to Iraq’s future development, Hassan argues. “Oil must stay in the hands of Iraqis, because oil is the only national resource that we have which is of great value, and our economy depends on itâ€.
While this remains the trade union’s long-term focus, it has achieved some notable successes in improving conditions for its member oilworkers.
Established as the Occupation began in April 2003, the South Oil Company Union worked hard to organise oilworkers, in order to strengthen the power of workers to negotiate with management. On 10 th August of that year, the Union organised a strike, stopping oil exports for three days from Iraq’s largest oil company.
In September 2003, US Administrator Paul Bremer issued an Order setting the wage levels for all public sector employees. Bremer’s new wage levels not only reduced the levels of the Saddam era, they abolished the crucial allowances and weightings for work in remote locations or in dangerous conditions.
The lowest level in Bremer’s scale was just 69,000 Iraqi dinars (US $40-45) per month. “You can’t afford to eat on such a wageâ€, Hassan points out – just renting a cheap house generally costs 50,000 dinars a month. In response, the SOC Union issued its own recommended wage table, based on the true cost of living.
Fearful of another strike, the Governing Council (GC) entered negotiations with the Union, and in January 2004 the GC conceded. The three lowest wage levels in Bremer’s scale were abolished, leaving a minimum wage for oilworkers of 102,000 dinars. Furthermore, the risk and location payments were reinstated, adding a significant further amount for many workers.
The SOC Union also pressured the foreign oil companies. In 2003, Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) was appointed to rebuild Iraqi oil facilities. In the South, it subcontracted a Kuwaiti construction company Al Khorafi, which brought in 1,200 foreign workers with it, mostly from Asia – despite Iraq’s enormous levels of unemployment.
The Union organised a demonstration outside Al Khorafi’s offices, where the protesters were met with the Occupation forces’ tanks. Still, they bravely persisted, and in subsequent discussions the company agreed to replace 1,000 of the workers with Iraqis.
However, the struggle over the control and ownership of Iraq’s oil continues. Hassan is under no illusions about the reasons for the American and British invasion of his country. “When the British troops first came into Basra, they protected the oil installations, but left the hospitals and universities to be lootedâ€, he observes.
He adds, “There are two stages of this war. First, the military occupation. Then the economic war, and the destruction of Iraq’s economyâ€.
Iraq holds the world’s second largest oil reserves, but they have been out of bounds to western companies since the 1970s. Now, with declining opportunities elsewhere, the companies are keen to get back into Iraq.
Oil was the one sector excluded from the mass privatisations imposed by the Coalition Provisional Authority in 2003 and 2004. While Halliburton was contracted by the Occupation authorities to carry out short-term repairs to oil facilities, the prize of major oil production contracts was left for later.
Most oil companies stated that they would wait until after elections before signing any major contracts, in order to ensure that they had a legal legitimacy which could not be challenged in international courts. Indeed, in October 2004, Oil Minister Thamer Ghadban said in an interview with Shell’s internal magazine that 2005 would be the “year of dialogue with the international oil communityâ€.
The Occupation forces have consistently argued that Iraq needs the technology, expertise and capital of western oil companies in order to develop its oil, and hence its economy.
However, with Iraq’s long history in oil production, it has built up a considerable skills base within its workforce. “We are also fully able to reconstruct our own workplaces because we have a high level of expertise and technological skillsâ€, says Hassan. “We want to develop our workplaces and our skills, yes, but we can rebuild our country without privatisationâ€.
While Iraq has a strong skills base, twelve years of sanctions have left it without much of the modern oil industry technology. But Hassan believes this can be obtained by hiring foreign companies, under so-called service agreements, where the state (as client) remains in control. Indeed, such a model is commonly used elsewhere in the Middle East. “I’m not so afraid of foreign companies coming in and then leaving. In terms of redevelopment, a foreign company can provide some skills, some resources, but the administration of the development must be controlled by Iraqi peopleâ€.
But it is this last condition that clashes with the American and British plans. When they talk of oil companies providing “investmentâ€, they are referring to long-term production contracts.
Companies like Shell have been arguing throughout the Occupation for the use of a form of contract known as Production Sharing Agreements (PSAs). And it seems that so far they have been having some success.
In September 2004, US-appointed Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi tried to pre-empt the January elections and the subsequent writing of the Constitution, by setting Iraqi oil policy on his own course. In a set of guidelines designed to form the basis of future oil policy, he stated that all new Iraqi reserves should be developed by foreign multinationals through PSAs, and that the national oil company which manages existing fields should be part-privatised. In a sinister remark, he added that these issues should not be debated in the Iraqi parliament, as that would slow progress.
While such involvement of foreign companies might speed the development of Iraq’s reserves, it would also deny the country much of the revenue from those assets. Just as importantly, Iraq would lose control of the development, and even some of its power to legislate or regulate. PSAs fix the terms of who receives the oil revenues, generally for between 25 and 50 years, and restrict host governments’ right to introduce any new laws that affect the companies’ profitability during that period.
Although used in many smaller oil-producing countries, PSAs do not exist in any of the major oil producers of the Middle East. Meanwhile, in Russia (another major oil country), only three PSAs have been signed, all in the early 1990s, and they are so controversial that no more are likely to be signed. Internationally, PSAs are facing increasing criticism for the unfair deals they give host countries. If Iraq signs PSAs, it could be signing away its best chance for development.
Hassan Juma’a and his colleagues are certain to continue to oppose these moves. Indeed, given their effectiveness so far, the workers in Iraq’s oil industry may be the biggest block to the West’s plans to grab those reserves. But the oilworkers’ best chance of success will be with international support.
Hassan finishes with an appeal. “We hope that all the activists in Britain will stand with us in our struggle. By doing this, you would be doing a great service to the Iraqi people. We will remember this forever.â€
By Greg Muttitt of Platform.
(http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/newsletter/issue23/part13.htm)
Following the elections at the end of January, it seems the way may now be open to privatise Iraq ’ s biggest and most strategic asset: oil. But while the UK and USA are carefully playing the politics at a government level, Iraq ’ s occupiers may face a greater obstacle in the oil industry ’ s workers.
Two years on from the invasion of Iraq, it’s easy to feel cynical. Every day we are bombarded with new reports of violence in Iraq, of our government’s dishonesty, and of the rapid privatisation of the country.
Meeting Hassan Juma’a Awad, the head of the Basra Oil Union, was a perfect antidote to those feelings. In Hassan I found a source of hope, that things in Iraq could change for the better.
The Basra Oil Union – which is independent of any political or religious affiliation –has been a powerful force in Iraq's largest industry. Representing 23,000 workers in the oil industry in the south of Iraq, it grew out of the South Oil Company (SOC) Union, and now combines ten trade union councils in nine Iraqi oil companies in Basra, Amara and Nassiriyah.
“The opinion of all [Iraqi] oilworkers is that they are against privatisationâ€, states Hassan. “We see privatisation as economic colonialism. The authorities are saying that privatisation will develop our sector and be useful. But we do not see it as development at all; we view any plan to privatise the oil sector as a big disasterâ€.
Sovereignty over its oil reserves is key to Iraq’s future development, Hassan argues. “Oil must stay in the hands of Iraqis, because oil is the only national resource that we have which is of great value, and our economy depends on itâ€.
While this remains the trade union’s long-term focus, it has achieved some notable successes in improving conditions for its member oilworkers.
Established as the Occupation began in April 2003, the South Oil Company Union worked hard to organise oilworkers, in order to strengthen the power of workers to negotiate with management. On 10 th August of that year, the Union organised a strike, stopping oil exports for three days from Iraq’s largest oil company.
In September 2003, US Administrator Paul Bremer issued an Order setting the wage levels for all public sector employees. Bremer’s new wage levels not only reduced the levels of the Saddam era, they abolished the crucial allowances and weightings for work in remote locations or in dangerous conditions.
The lowest level in Bremer’s scale was just 69,000 Iraqi dinars (US $40-45) per month. “You can’t afford to eat on such a wageâ€, Hassan points out – just renting a cheap house generally costs 50,000 dinars a month. In response, the SOC Union issued its own recommended wage table, based on the true cost of living.
Fearful of another strike, the Governing Council (GC) entered negotiations with the Union, and in January 2004 the GC conceded. The three lowest wage levels in Bremer’s scale were abolished, leaving a minimum wage for oilworkers of 102,000 dinars. Furthermore, the risk and location payments were reinstated, adding a significant further amount for many workers.
The SOC Union also pressured the foreign oil companies. In 2003, Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) was appointed to rebuild Iraqi oil facilities. In the South, it subcontracted a Kuwaiti construction company Al Khorafi, which brought in 1,200 foreign workers with it, mostly from Asia – despite Iraq’s enormous levels of unemployment.
The Union organised a demonstration outside Al Khorafi’s offices, where the protesters were met with the Occupation forces’ tanks. Still, they bravely persisted, and in subsequent discussions the company agreed to replace 1,000 of the workers with Iraqis.
However, the struggle over the control and ownership of Iraq’s oil continues. Hassan is under no illusions about the reasons for the American and British invasion of his country. “When the British troops first came into Basra, they protected the oil installations, but left the hospitals and universities to be lootedâ€, he observes.
He adds, “There are two stages of this war. First, the military occupation. Then the economic war, and the destruction of Iraq’s economyâ€.
Iraq holds the world’s second largest oil reserves, but they have been out of bounds to western companies since the 1970s. Now, with declining opportunities elsewhere, the companies are keen to get back into Iraq.
Oil was the one sector excluded from the mass privatisations imposed by the Coalition Provisional Authority in 2003 and 2004. While Halliburton was contracted by the Occupation authorities to carry out short-term repairs to oil facilities, the prize of major oil production contracts was left for later.
Most oil companies stated that they would wait until after elections before signing any major contracts, in order to ensure that they had a legal legitimacy which could not be challenged in international courts. Indeed, in October 2004, Oil Minister Thamer Ghadban said in an interview with Shell’s internal magazine that 2005 would be the “year of dialogue with the international oil communityâ€.
The Occupation forces have consistently argued that Iraq needs the technology, expertise and capital of western oil companies in order to develop its oil, and hence its economy.
However, with Iraq’s long history in oil production, it has built up a considerable skills base within its workforce. “We are also fully able to reconstruct our own workplaces because we have a high level of expertise and technological skillsâ€, says Hassan. “We want to develop our workplaces and our skills, yes, but we can rebuild our country without privatisationâ€.
While Iraq has a strong skills base, twelve years of sanctions have left it without much of the modern oil industry technology. But Hassan believes this can be obtained by hiring foreign companies, under so-called service agreements, where the state (as client) remains in control. Indeed, such a model is commonly used elsewhere in the Middle East. “I’m not so afraid of foreign companies coming in and then leaving. In terms of redevelopment, a foreign company can provide some skills, some resources, but the administration of the development must be controlled by Iraqi peopleâ€.
But it is this last condition that clashes with the American and British plans. When they talk of oil companies providing “investmentâ€, they are referring to long-term production contracts.
Companies like Shell have been arguing throughout the Occupation for the use of a form of contract known as Production Sharing Agreements (PSAs). And it seems that so far they have been having some success.
In September 2004, US-appointed Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi tried to pre-empt the January elections and the subsequent writing of the Constitution, by setting Iraqi oil policy on his own course. In a set of guidelines designed to form the basis of future oil policy, he stated that all new Iraqi reserves should be developed by foreign multinationals through PSAs, and that the national oil company which manages existing fields should be part-privatised. In a sinister remark, he added that these issues should not be debated in the Iraqi parliament, as that would slow progress.
While such involvement of foreign companies might speed the development of Iraq’s reserves, it would also deny the country much of the revenue from those assets. Just as importantly, Iraq would lose control of the development, and even some of its power to legislate or regulate. PSAs fix the terms of who receives the oil revenues, generally for between 25 and 50 years, and restrict host governments’ right to introduce any new laws that affect the companies’ profitability during that period.
Although used in many smaller oil-producing countries, PSAs do not exist in any of the major oil producers of the Middle East. Meanwhile, in Russia (another major oil country), only three PSAs have been signed, all in the early 1990s, and they are so controversial that no more are likely to be signed. Internationally, PSAs are facing increasing criticism for the unfair deals they give host countries. If Iraq signs PSAs, it could be signing away its best chance for development.
Hassan Juma’a and his colleagues are certain to continue to oppose these moves. Indeed, given their effectiveness so far, the workers in Iraq’s oil industry may be the biggest block to the West’s plans to grab those reserves. But the oilworkers’ best chance of success will be with international support.
Hassan finishes with an appeal. “We hope that all the activists in Britain will stand with us in our struggle. By doing this, you would be doing a great service to the Iraqi people. We will remember this forever.â€
Saturday, April 23
Iraqi teachers' union
Mahdy Ali Lafta, an official of the Iraqi Teachers' Union, visited Britain in April 2005 for the annual conference of the NASUWT, and gave an interview to the Guardian.
Monday, April 18
News from Labour Friends of Iraq (LFIQ)
Thank you for supporting Nozad Ismail. Over 700 people have shown their support. Signers have come from: UK, Norway, Sweden, USA, Canada, Holland, Finland, New Zealand, Spain, Ireland, Japan, and Denmark.
Below is a message from Nozad, and update on the campaign and suggestions for further action.
1. Nozad Ismail sends message to signers of the Global Appeal
Abdullah Muhsin, foreign representative of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions recently met Nozad. He told us that "Nozad has seen copies of the LFIQ appeal and is very grateful for these solidarity efforts. He still receives regular death threats and says that he will not be intimidated. But he can never know when he leaves home each day if he will return. Democrats around the world must do their utmost to publicise this threat in the hope that it can avert Nozad's murder.
"As President of the IFTU in Kirkuk, Nozad is preoccupied with helping the new unions, which form the IFTU, to organise workplace committees, especially in the oil and electricity industries and in other public services, to negotiate pay increases and improved working conditions. He leads the IFTU's contribution to building a new civil society and helping to resolve the status of Kirkuk in the new Iraq."
Nozad is himself a mechanic by trade and a member of the Transport and Communications Union.
Gary Kent adds that "The status of the oil-rich and ethnically-mixed city of Kirkuk, as part of Iraqi Kurdistan or not, is one of the hottest issues in Iraqi politics, and one in which grassroots civil society organisations have an interest because its successful resolution can help determine the prospects for a united, federal and secular constitution and government."
2. The Parliamentary Campaign in the U.K.
MPs Harry Barnes, Mike Gapes, John Mann and Kevin McNamara were the first to support this Early Day Motion in the Commons backing the LFIQ appeal. (Note: EDMs can only be one sentence long…)
"That this House supports the Labour Friends of Iraq global appeal, which has been supported by numerous rank and file trade unionists and others across the world, to publicise the severe threat to the life of Nozad Ismail, the President of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions in Kirkuk, who has twice escaped assassins and who receives regular death threats; believes that the self-styled resistance in Iraq is deliberately targeting the leadership of the Iraqi labour movement and, therefore, the prospects for a united, secular and democratic Iraq, as was exemplified when Hadi Saleh, the International Secretary of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) was tortured and strangled before his house was ransacked for his comrades' contact details, when Ali Hassan Abd of the IFTU's Oil and Gas Union, was gunned down in front of his children, and when Ahmed Adris Abbas of the Transport and Communication Workers Union was also assassinated in Baghdad; and appeals for the widest possible support for the Labour Friends of Iraq initiative not only from supporters of the British Labour movement but from anyone with an interest in nurturing Iraqi democracy."
38 MPs have backed the motion: Mr Harry Barnes, Ms Diane Abbott, Mr Adrian Bailey, Mr Roy Beggs, Mr Martin Caton, Mr Tony Clarke, Mr Tony Colman,Jeremy Corbyn, Mrs Ann Cryer, Mr Andrew Dismore, Jim Dowd, Mrs Louise Ellman, Jeff Ennis, Paul Flynn, Dr Hywel Francis, Mike Gapes, Mr Win Griffiths, David Hamilton, Mr Mike Hancock, Mr Kelvin Hopkins, Dr Brian Iddon, Glenda Jackson, Lynne Jones, Mr David Lepper, Mr Calum Macdonald, John Mann, Rob Marris, Mr Kevin McNamara, Julie Morgan, Sandra Osborne, Syd Rapson,Mr Ernie Ross, Alan Simpson, David Taylor, Mr Mark Todd, Dr Rudi Vis, Mr Robert N Wareing, Tony Worthington.
Roughly equal numbers of pro- and anti-invasion MPs have backed the EDM. This symbolises a key aim of LFIQ: to unite Party members in favour of post-war solidarity.
Those who opposed military action and back this urgent appeal provide a good example to others who opposed the war but who haven't yet given sufficient priority to solidarity with Iraqi unions.
3. The next phase of the Global Appeal starts now.
The Election campaign is a great time to engage with comrades whose interest in politics is at its height.
We ask you to mail out the following to your CLP or Union branch members and help keep Nozad safe.
Defend Iraqi Trade Unionists
On behalf of Labour Friends of Iraq, I ask you to visit the LFIQ website to sign up to defend Nozad Ismail, the Iraqi Trade Union leader threatened with assassination. I also ask that you persuade other Party/Union members to sign up to the Appeal at:
hhttp://www.labourfriendsofiraq.org.uk/nozadappeal.shtml
Why you should sign up:
Hadi Saleh, the International Secretary of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) was tortured and strangled before his house was ransacked for his comrades' contact details.
Ali Hassan Abd of the IFTU's Oil and Gas Union was gunned down in front of his children. Ahmed Adris Abbas of the Transport and Communication Workers Union was also assassinated in Baghdad.
Whatever our original views on the war, the international labour movement must protest against the attempted liquidation of the Iraqi union leadership.
This is a suggested item for your website/newsletter:
( Name…) encourages you all to show your support for Iraqi trade unionists who daily face death threats form the reactionary insurgents. This week, xxx signed up to help save the life of Nozad Ismail the President of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions in Kirkuk who has twice escaped assassination attempts. Some of his colleagues have not been so lucky. Please show your support for Nozad by signing up to the Appeal on the Labour Friends of Iraq website:
http://www.labourfriendsofiraq.org.uk/nozadappeal.shtml
Background
LFIQ brings together Party members who took different views on the war but who unite to move on and support Iraqi democrats, socialists and trade unionists.
The LFIQ website is updated regularly with information about Grassroots Iraq and topical news and views.
LFIQ provides speakers for Party meetings and a helpful Solidarity Toolkit is available through the website:
http://www.labourfriendsofiraq.org
You may be interested to read about other campaigns to defend Iraqi Trade Unionists over at the IFTU website:
http://www.iraqitradeunions.org/en/
The IFTU site also carries the terrible story of the students in Basra who were attacked; one was killed, for breaking religious laws of gender association by organising a co-ed picnic:
http://www.iraqitradeunions.org/archives/000232.html
Jane Ashworth, Chair
Labour Friends of Iraq
Below is a message from Nozad, and update on the campaign and suggestions for further action.
1. Nozad Ismail sends message to signers of the Global Appeal
Abdullah Muhsin, foreign representative of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions recently met Nozad. He told us that "Nozad has seen copies of the LFIQ appeal and is very grateful for these solidarity efforts. He still receives regular death threats and says that he will not be intimidated. But he can never know when he leaves home each day if he will return. Democrats around the world must do their utmost to publicise this threat in the hope that it can avert Nozad's murder.
"As President of the IFTU in Kirkuk, Nozad is preoccupied with helping the new unions, which form the IFTU, to organise workplace committees, especially in the oil and electricity industries and in other public services, to negotiate pay increases and improved working conditions. He leads the IFTU's contribution to building a new civil society and helping to resolve the status of Kirkuk in the new Iraq."
Nozad is himself a mechanic by trade and a member of the Transport and Communications Union.
Gary Kent adds that "The status of the oil-rich and ethnically-mixed city of Kirkuk, as part of Iraqi Kurdistan or not, is one of the hottest issues in Iraqi politics, and one in which grassroots civil society organisations have an interest because its successful resolution can help determine the prospects for a united, federal and secular constitution and government."
2. The Parliamentary Campaign in the U.K.
MPs Harry Barnes, Mike Gapes, John Mann and Kevin McNamara were the first to support this Early Day Motion in the Commons backing the LFIQ appeal. (Note: EDMs can only be one sentence long…)
"That this House supports the Labour Friends of Iraq global appeal, which has been supported by numerous rank and file trade unionists and others across the world, to publicise the severe threat to the life of Nozad Ismail, the President of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions in Kirkuk, who has twice escaped assassins and who receives regular death threats; believes that the self-styled resistance in Iraq is deliberately targeting the leadership of the Iraqi labour movement and, therefore, the prospects for a united, secular and democratic Iraq, as was exemplified when Hadi Saleh, the International Secretary of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) was tortured and strangled before his house was ransacked for his comrades' contact details, when Ali Hassan Abd of the IFTU's Oil and Gas Union, was gunned down in front of his children, and when Ahmed Adris Abbas of the Transport and Communication Workers Union was also assassinated in Baghdad; and appeals for the widest possible support for the Labour Friends of Iraq initiative not only from supporters of the British Labour movement but from anyone with an interest in nurturing Iraqi democracy."
38 MPs have backed the motion: Mr Harry Barnes, Ms Diane Abbott, Mr Adrian Bailey, Mr Roy Beggs, Mr Martin Caton, Mr Tony Clarke, Mr Tony Colman,Jeremy Corbyn, Mrs Ann Cryer, Mr Andrew Dismore, Jim Dowd, Mrs Louise Ellman, Jeff Ennis, Paul Flynn, Dr Hywel Francis, Mike Gapes, Mr Win Griffiths, David Hamilton, Mr Mike Hancock, Mr Kelvin Hopkins, Dr Brian Iddon, Glenda Jackson, Lynne Jones, Mr David Lepper, Mr Calum Macdonald, John Mann, Rob Marris, Mr Kevin McNamara, Julie Morgan, Sandra Osborne, Syd Rapson,Mr Ernie Ross, Alan Simpson, David Taylor, Mr Mark Todd, Dr Rudi Vis, Mr Robert N Wareing, Tony Worthington.
Roughly equal numbers of pro- and anti-invasion MPs have backed the EDM. This symbolises a key aim of LFIQ: to unite Party members in favour of post-war solidarity.
Those who opposed military action and back this urgent appeal provide a good example to others who opposed the war but who haven't yet given sufficient priority to solidarity with Iraqi unions.
3. The next phase of the Global Appeal starts now.
The Election campaign is a great time to engage with comrades whose interest in politics is at its height.
We ask you to mail out the following to your CLP or Union branch members and help keep Nozad safe.
Defend Iraqi Trade Unionists
On behalf of Labour Friends of Iraq, I ask you to visit the LFIQ website to sign up to defend Nozad Ismail, the Iraqi Trade Union leader threatened with assassination. I also ask that you persuade other Party/Union members to sign up to the Appeal at:
hhttp://www.labourfriendsofiraq.org.uk/nozadappeal.shtml
Why you should sign up:
Hadi Saleh, the International Secretary of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) was tortured and strangled before his house was ransacked for his comrades' contact details.
Ali Hassan Abd of the IFTU's Oil and Gas Union was gunned down in front of his children. Ahmed Adris Abbas of the Transport and Communication Workers Union was also assassinated in Baghdad.
Whatever our original views on the war, the international labour movement must protest against the attempted liquidation of the Iraqi union leadership.
This is a suggested item for your website/newsletter:
( Name…) encourages you all to show your support for Iraqi trade unionists who daily face death threats form the reactionary insurgents. This week, xxx signed up to help save the life of Nozad Ismail the President of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions in Kirkuk who has twice escaped assassination attempts. Some of his colleagues have not been so lucky. Please show your support for Nozad by signing up to the Appeal on the Labour Friends of Iraq website:
http://www.labourfriendsofiraq.org.uk/nozadappeal.shtml
Background
LFIQ brings together Party members who took different views on the war but who unite to move on and support Iraqi democrats, socialists and trade unionists.
The LFIQ website is updated regularly with information about Grassroots Iraq and topical news and views.
LFIQ provides speakers for Party meetings and a helpful Solidarity Toolkit is available through the website:
http://www.labourfriendsofiraq.org
You may be interested to read about other campaigns to defend Iraqi Trade Unionists over at the IFTU website:
http://www.iraqitradeunions.org/en/
The IFTU site also carries the terrible story of the students in Basra who were attacked; one was killed, for breaking religious laws of gender association by organising a co-ed picnic:
http://www.iraqitradeunions.org/archives/000232.html
Jane Ashworth, Chair
Labour Friends of Iraq
Sunday, April 17
Hundreds of Unemployed People Marched the Streets to Denounce the Local Authorities' Inhuman Campaign
More than 700 unemployed people in Nasirya led by Union of Unemployed in Iraq (UUI) have organized a demonstration against the cruel campaign launched by the local authorities to move the sidewalk vendors from their workplaces to an unwanted remote place where there are no customers. The demo lasted for 4 hours and many media officials were notified however no one of them showed up.
A delegation of 5 members was formed chaired by the UUI Secretary in Nasirya (Ahmed Salim) to meet with the Mayor and discuss this issue.
The police tried to end that demo at any cost but the demonstrators refused to move and waited to see the end of the meeting, the police however reacted viciously and fired at the sky in an attempt to scare the demonstrators but they insisted of staying till the end.
Finally the meeting came to end by the agreement of both sides upon:
1. Registering all the protestors for any future job opportunity in the ministries of:
a. Defense
b. Interior
c. Labor and social services
2. The Mayor promised to find and discuss an appropriate alternative area for being a shopping place
3. Authorized to members of the delegation including the Secretary of UUI to speak on behalf of the unemployed people.
Ahmed Salim
Secretary of the Union of Unemployed in Iraq (UUI)
Nasirya Branch
7.4.2005
A delegation of 5 members was formed chaired by the UUI Secretary in Nasirya (Ahmed Salim) to meet with the Mayor and discuss this issue.
The police tried to end that demo at any cost but the demonstrators refused to move and waited to see the end of the meeting, the police however reacted viciously and fired at the sky in an attempt to scare the demonstrators but they insisted of staying till the end.
Finally the meeting came to end by the agreement of both sides upon:
1. Registering all the protestors for any future job opportunity in the ministries of:
a. Defense
b. Interior
c. Labor and social services
2. The Mayor promised to find and discuss an appropriate alternative area for being a shopping place
3. Authorized to members of the delegation including the Secretary of UUI to speak on behalf of the unemployed people.
Ahmed Salim
Secretary of the Union of Unemployed in Iraq (UUI)
Nasirya Branch
7.4.2005
Monday, April 11
Statement regarding the FWCUI second conference in Baghdad
Despite the security concerns and marshal law that have been exercised in the eve of the second anniversary of the occupation, the FWCUI have successfully held its second conference attended by more than 200 labor activists and representatives from all across Iraq.
Many subjects were put forward to the conference for discussion, and they are as it follows:
the role of the workers in deciding the fate of the Iraqi political future
the trade unions freedoms and association
the role of the workers in introducing progressive and contemporary labor law
the role of women in building trade unions
Heated discussions and debates were noticed around these areas, and then the vote regarding the conference resolutions, and a modification regarding the union slogan were held. Later on a new executive board was elected.
Finally the conference has come to an end after its resolutions have been adopted unanimously as ground work for the upcoming activities.
Long live Willpower of Working class
FWCUI
April 8, 2005
Many subjects were put forward to the conference for discussion, and they are as it follows:
the role of the workers in deciding the fate of the Iraqi political future
the trade unions freedoms and association
the role of the workers in introducing progressive and contemporary labor law
the role of women in building trade unions
Heated discussions and debates were noticed around these areas, and then the vote regarding the conference resolutions, and a modification regarding the union slogan were held. Later on a new executive board was elected.
Finally the conference has come to an end after its resolutions have been adopted unanimously as ground work for the upcoming activities.
Long live Willpower of Working class
FWCUI
April 8, 2005
What now for Iraq?
By Abdullah Muhsin, British representative of the IFTU.
The January 30 election was an historic breakthrough in the development of the new Iraq as a free, democratic and open society. Iraqis defied the totalitarianism of Saddam's loyalists and the fundamentalism of Al Zarqawi, and they refused to heed the advice of cultural imperialists on the hard left who said: 'we know what is good for you! Dare not to disagree with us or else!'
Both they and the Saddamists were simply wrong: 60 per cent of Iraq's population – 8.5 million people – voted. Without intimidation we would have seen an even higher turnout.
Of course, Iraq has not been transformed overnight. Half a million Iraqis in Mosul were denied the vote because of election irregularities and incompetence, and extremist forces are still working desperately to encourage the disintegration of Iraq. After decades of repression, sanctions and war, we are now facing a terrorist network that actually targets trade unionists.
A railway worker has been beheaded, his head placed in his stomach and prominently displayed. My friend and colleague, Hadi Saleh, the IFTU's International Secretary, was tortured and murdered, horribly, by remnants of Saddam's secret police. If Hadi had survived he would have been vindicated by the tremendous turnout at the elections, which defies the extremists.
This election will enable Iraqis to move forward in their battle for a new democratic, federal and united Iraq, governed by a secular constitution and the rule of law, parliamentary democracy and a proper separation of powers between the legislature, the executive and an independent judiciary. A new police force and army that are culturally different from Saddam's repressive apparatus are being trained and will be ready by the end of the year.
But the political key to defeating sectarian violence is to develop a secular constitution that accommodates the aspirations of all Iraqis, including the Iraqi Kurds, for autonomy within a federal structure. Will Islam be the main source for the new constitution? Compromise must be reached here. Iraq has many other religious communities and discrimination against non-Muslims would be unjust.
The success of Iraqi nation-building also lies with the growth of civil society. Genuine democracy cannot be imposed from above but must be built from below, through a strong social movement composed of free political parties, non-governmental organizations, environmental agencies and free unions.
Iraq's economy was abused by Saddam and pulverised by his wars, the consequent sanctions and then the invasion in 2003. It's a mess. All sectors need rebuilding with foreign investment but national assets must remain publicly owned. We urgently need to diversify – 95 per cent of our income currently derives from oil. We need to become part of the international community rather than the nasty and vicious backwater that Iraq was under Saddam. This is why we value being an integral part of the international trade union movement.
Yet many Iraqi workers remain suspicious of the very term 'union', because of the repression they endured at the hands of Saddam's 'yellow unions' – part of the state machine of terror. To remedy this, we will launch an Iraqi workers' touring theatre company to promote the basic tenets of trade unionism. Right now, the new unions have little or nothing. Some have buildings, but they are in severe disrepair after the war and subsequent looting. We need computers and fax machines.
The TUC has launched an appeal for Iraqi unions, and recently held a conference to boost solidarity and help us train our members and officers. Unison, Amicus, the RMT and the FBU have been at the fore of providing practical solidarity and we thank them from the bottom of our hearts.
We are growing in this more fertile political climate. The IFTU now represents 12 individual unions and has a membership of at least 200,000. The new and independent teachers' union has 75,000 members in Baghdad alone and 16 branches throughout Iraq. The Kurdistan Workers Syndicate Union has about 100,000 members. We all work together for a federal, democratic and secular Iraq. Perhaps most significantly to left-wing critics of the war, we are mobilising to persuade the incoming Assembly to enact a progressive labour code that will allow workers to challenge the economic occupation of our country.
Iraq is being reborn, at last. The road has been bloody and remains fraught with danger. A strong labour movement is vital to our goal of rebuilding Iraq on the basis of social justice and unity.
The January 30 election was an historic breakthrough in the development of the new Iraq as a free, democratic and open society. Iraqis defied the totalitarianism of Saddam's loyalists and the fundamentalism of Al Zarqawi, and they refused to heed the advice of cultural imperialists on the hard left who said: 'we know what is good for you! Dare not to disagree with us or else!'
Both they and the Saddamists were simply wrong: 60 per cent of Iraq's population – 8.5 million people – voted. Without intimidation we would have seen an even higher turnout.
Of course, Iraq has not been transformed overnight. Half a million Iraqis in Mosul were denied the vote because of election irregularities and incompetence, and extremist forces are still working desperately to encourage the disintegration of Iraq. After decades of repression, sanctions and war, we are now facing a terrorist network that actually targets trade unionists.
A railway worker has been beheaded, his head placed in his stomach and prominently displayed. My friend and colleague, Hadi Saleh, the IFTU's International Secretary, was tortured and murdered, horribly, by remnants of Saddam's secret police. If Hadi had survived he would have been vindicated by the tremendous turnout at the elections, which defies the extremists.
This election will enable Iraqis to move forward in their battle for a new democratic, federal and united Iraq, governed by a secular constitution and the rule of law, parliamentary democracy and a proper separation of powers between the legislature, the executive and an independent judiciary. A new police force and army that are culturally different from Saddam's repressive apparatus are being trained and will be ready by the end of the year.
But the political key to defeating sectarian violence is to develop a secular constitution that accommodates the aspirations of all Iraqis, including the Iraqi Kurds, for autonomy within a federal structure. Will Islam be the main source for the new constitution? Compromise must be reached here. Iraq has many other religious communities and discrimination against non-Muslims would be unjust.
The success of Iraqi nation-building also lies with the growth of civil society. Genuine democracy cannot be imposed from above but must be built from below, through a strong social movement composed of free political parties, non-governmental organizations, environmental agencies and free unions.
Iraq's economy was abused by Saddam and pulverised by his wars, the consequent sanctions and then the invasion in 2003. It's a mess. All sectors need rebuilding with foreign investment but national assets must remain publicly owned. We urgently need to diversify – 95 per cent of our income currently derives from oil. We need to become part of the international community rather than the nasty and vicious backwater that Iraq was under Saddam. This is why we value being an integral part of the international trade union movement.
Yet many Iraqi workers remain suspicious of the very term 'union', because of the repression they endured at the hands of Saddam's 'yellow unions' – part of the state machine of terror. To remedy this, we will launch an Iraqi workers' touring theatre company to promote the basic tenets of trade unionism. Right now, the new unions have little or nothing. Some have buildings, but they are in severe disrepair after the war and subsequent looting. We need computers and fax machines.
The TUC has launched an appeal for Iraqi unions, and recently held a conference to boost solidarity and help us train our members and officers. Unison, Amicus, the RMT and the FBU have been at the fore of providing practical solidarity and we thank them from the bottom of our hearts.
We are growing in this more fertile political climate. The IFTU now represents 12 individual unions and has a membership of at least 200,000. The new and independent teachers' union has 75,000 members in Baghdad alone and 16 branches throughout Iraq. The Kurdistan Workers Syndicate Union has about 100,000 members. We all work together for a federal, democratic and secular Iraq. Perhaps most significantly to left-wing critics of the war, we are mobilising to persuade the incoming Assembly to enact a progressive labour code that will allow workers to challenge the economic occupation of our country.
Iraq is being reborn, at last. The road has been bloody and remains fraught with danger. A strong labour movement is vital to our goal of rebuilding Iraq on the basis of social justice and unity.
IFTU leader speaks out against occupation and privatisation
Interview by the US journalist and activist David Bacon with Ghasib Hassan, member of the executive committee of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, and general secretary of the Union for Aviation and Railway Workers.
Q: What do you think about the elections that took place in January?
A: The IFTU supports democratic principles, and one of those principles is elections. So we supported them. The IFTU wanted to see a democratically elected and accountable government, mandated by the people, so we could raise our legitimate questions and concerns. Our members have voted for those secular candidates who support their right to join unions, their right to representation. The elections took place in a relatively free and democratic manner, after a long, long absence. Despite all the obstacles placed by the extremists who wanted to stop this process from moving forward, we saw Iraqis of all ethnicities and nationalities, from all sectors of Iraqi society, come out and vote. This election was also a way of facing head-on those extremists and anti-democratic forces who don't want to see Iraq a democratic and secure state.
Q: How will the political situation change as a result?
A: The election will lead to the formation of a national assembly, which will be representative of all the Islamist and secular forces, moving forward toward a stable and secure situation, where the institution of democracy will be allowed to go forward. We hope the incoming national government will take urgent steps to form secure economic and social policies, to give people jobs and hopes, especially on the issue of their insecurity. The incoming national assembly will appoint a president and two vice-presidents, an interim government, and write a constitution for Iraq, after which there will be elections.
Q: Critics of the elections in the US say it's not possible to have free elections under the occupation, and that they'd be used by the Bush administration to legitimize it. How do you respond to this?
A: We respect this view of our friends in the United States, and we understand the situation from reading the media. As a people, this is the first time we've exercised our right to have a government and assembly that are really appointed by the people themselves. The elections weren't perfect, but it should also be understood that the people who came out did so because they wanted peace and democracy and law. They don't want to see any more dictatorship. They don't want to see division. And this should be encouraged and supported. No election anywhere in the world is totally perfect or totally genuine. We live in a country torn by wars and dictatorship. As a people, we have been deprived of democracy. This is the first time we practiced it by voting for those who govern us. By voting we're saying yes to democracy. The incoming assembly will only be a transitional assembly for a short period, for only one year. Soon we'll have another general election to elect a permanent, accountable government, with a constitution. Then people will see what this government is all about. As a representative of the working class, we support the Iraqi people in their desire for democracy and the right to elect their own representatives.
Q: What is the attitude of the IFTU toward the occupation.
A: We oppose the occupation absolutely. We know they've said many things about it. One is that it's for the liberation of Iraq. This is what the American politicians and media tell us - that they've come to liberate our country. This is not liberation. It is occupation. It's led to the total destruction of the economic infrastructure of Iraq, with the aim of controlling its wealth and resources. Another disastrous policy was the dismantling of the Iraqi Army, which had a long nationalist tradition. There's been a deliberate destruction of our national and cultural heritage, like the looting of the National Museum, and stationing of occupation forces in historical places like Babel, Ur and Nineveh. That will lead to the destruction of these sites, and they can never be replaced. The Iraqi people are calling today, not tomorrow, for the removal of the occupation. US policy toward Iraq is not clear - it can change in a moment. The key political forces in Iraq are in discussion with the occupation forces in line with UN Resolution 1546, calling for the withdrawal of the troops and attaining the full sovereignty of Iraq. Bush and Rumsfeld have said that if the Iraqi government asks them to leave, they'll leave. It seems there is disagreement in the US administration - some want to stay and some want to leave. Their policy is unclear.
During the first few days of the occupation, the people were not so hostile to the US forces. They were happy to see the removal of Saddam Hussein. But because of the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and other abuses, they've found themselves in confrontation with the Iraqi people, who want them to leave. Their presence has impacted civilians, and the whole country. On a daily basis, at least 10-15 people die, and this can't be good. This is a result of terrorism, but terrorism wasn't present prior to the war. You can see that the US administration has imported terrorism into Iraq in order to fight it, but at the expense of the Iraqi people.
I want to talk about the brutality of the occupation. The war has resulted in extreme destruction of our country. Whole factories and workplaces have been destroyed. Some of those which survived were then destroyed later by the occupation forces. The occupation has increased unemployment, which has now become a major problem for Iraqi workers. It is very dangerous to have such high unemployment in a country with such wealth.
We call on your solidarity to end the brutal occupation of our country. At the beginning of the 21st century, we thought we'd seen the end of colonies, but now we're entering a new era of colonialization. We are campaigning to end the occupation of Iraq, to build a democratic, federal Iraq which will guarantee the rights and jobs of its people.
Q: Bremer issued orders allowing for the privatization of Iraqi enterprises, and published lists of enterprises which would be sold off. What is the attitude of the IFTU toward privatization?
A: We need investment, but we don't want privatization. Investment can bring us technology and skills and training. Privatization will take all of Iraq's wealth away. Iraqi publicly-owned enterprises should stay publicly owned.
Q: The IMF and World Bank have said they'd cancel a certain percentage of the national debt if Iraq accepted their reforms and privatization. Does the IFTU accept this?
A: If they're genuinely willing to cancel the debt, they should cancel it, without putting any conditions on it. The debt wasn't incurred because of construction, but destruction. If there are attachments to it, we need to know what they are. The World Bank has its own interest, and it's working for it. The World Bank has never done anything in Iraq until now.
Q: What about the oil? There have been recent proposals for private investment in the oil industry. Might this lead to privatization?
A: We support investment in the oil sector. We will never accept the privatization of oil. Oil must remain in the hands of the public. It is the only source of wealth we can use to rebuild our country.
We need training to equip Iraqis with new skills, appropriate to new technology, and we have to work to reduce the level of unemployment.
Q: There are a number of union federations in Iraq. What relationship should exist among them?
A: As a federation, our primary concern is with the needs of working people. Any Iraqi who works for that we're willing to meet and talk with. We have 12 unions, and we operate across Iraq. Working for better jobs and working conditions are the primary criteria for judging people. We don't try to veto the effort of any Iraqi worker to join a union of his or her own choice to advance their rights. Many of the people active in our union are very well known because of their struggle against the former regime of Saddam Hussein. They paid heavily. Our primary need is to create an independent trade union agenda and campaign on behalf of working people.
In the IFTU we campaign on these issues. We must build a trade union movement which is independent, democratic and pluralist. Workers should be free to join the union of their own choice. We campaign for social, economic and political advances in the interest of working people. We want a strong working class positioned to engage fully in building a federal, prosperous and democratic Iraq.
Women should take their place in society, government and trade unions. Their wages should be equal to those of men. We now have women who are leaders of national unions in the IFTU.
The IFTU was established soon after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Those who participated were trade unionists who had been in exile or prison, and who had suffered terribly. The IFTU is building free, democratic workers' committees. Our executive committee was formed in an open meeting on May 16th, 2003, in a convention of grassroots trade unionists who were all opposed to Saddam Hussein.
After that meeting, we initiated our work and began going out to factories. We formed committees in the workplaces, which were elected in meetings, and where we sent out notices two weeks beforehand. People could nominate and elect their representatives freely.
The IFTU supported the first struggle under the occupation, after the fall of Saddam Hussein, where 800 workers in a bicycle factory in Mamoudiya called for raises, and the management refused. The union for the printing and mechanical industry negotiated with the management, and gave them two weeks notice that if there were no raises, the workers would strike. After striking for five hours, the management agreed.
We've built 12 national unions, and six of them have held open conferences. We've held elections from the workshop level to the leadership - free and democratic elections, with competing candidates in an open process. In the next few months, we'll hold conferences for the other six unions.
Q: After the beginning of the occupation, the Coalition Provisional Authority decided to enforce sections of Saddam Hussein's old labor code which prohibit unions for workers in state enterprises or in public service, and the present government has continued this policy. What changes do you advocate in Iraq's labor laws?
A: We need to repeal the anti-union laws of the past, and write a labor code which adheres to the ILO standards. In particular, we need to repeal Law 150 from1987, which bans unions in the public sector. This law was designed to repress the labor movement, and deny workers their rights. The Saddam Hussein regime removed workers pensions, and stole billions of dinars, which it used to finance wars of aggression. As a result, the Iraqi unions were reduced from 12 national unions to 6. Unions were banned in railways and aviation, in the printing and mechanical industry, in oil, in electricity and power generation, and in textiles and leather products. We are now working to repeal this law.
We are faced with an extremely difficult situation. The existing government says it has no right to repeal this law. This recent election will result in an incoming, transitional assembly and government, which can take action.
But we didn't stop organizing workers because of the 1987 law. We defied the law, and organized in the public sector in areas where unions were banned. We have written to the Iraqi government, to insist that the government respect workers' right to organize, and to join the union of their choice.
We've been in dialogue about the new labor code. A draft was put forward in Jordan in October last year, and most federations were present. It was amended on many points, and has been printed with those amendments, and the draft given to the government. We hope it will be adopted by the transitional government.
Unions should have autonomy, and make their own decisions. Workers should be free to organize. We believe in a real democracy, where workers should choose their own leaders.
Q: What do you think about the elections that took place in January?
A: The IFTU supports democratic principles, and one of those principles is elections. So we supported them. The IFTU wanted to see a democratically elected and accountable government, mandated by the people, so we could raise our legitimate questions and concerns. Our members have voted for those secular candidates who support their right to join unions, their right to representation. The elections took place in a relatively free and democratic manner, after a long, long absence. Despite all the obstacles placed by the extremists who wanted to stop this process from moving forward, we saw Iraqis of all ethnicities and nationalities, from all sectors of Iraqi society, come out and vote. This election was also a way of facing head-on those extremists and anti-democratic forces who don't want to see Iraq a democratic and secure state.
Q: How will the political situation change as a result?
A: The election will lead to the formation of a national assembly, which will be representative of all the Islamist and secular forces, moving forward toward a stable and secure situation, where the institution of democracy will be allowed to go forward. We hope the incoming national government will take urgent steps to form secure economic and social policies, to give people jobs and hopes, especially on the issue of their insecurity. The incoming national assembly will appoint a president and two vice-presidents, an interim government, and write a constitution for Iraq, after which there will be elections.
Q: Critics of the elections in the US say it's not possible to have free elections under the occupation, and that they'd be used by the Bush administration to legitimize it. How do you respond to this?
A: We respect this view of our friends in the United States, and we understand the situation from reading the media. As a people, this is the first time we've exercised our right to have a government and assembly that are really appointed by the people themselves. The elections weren't perfect, but it should also be understood that the people who came out did so because they wanted peace and democracy and law. They don't want to see any more dictatorship. They don't want to see division. And this should be encouraged and supported. No election anywhere in the world is totally perfect or totally genuine. We live in a country torn by wars and dictatorship. As a people, we have been deprived of democracy. This is the first time we practiced it by voting for those who govern us. By voting we're saying yes to democracy. The incoming assembly will only be a transitional assembly for a short period, for only one year. Soon we'll have another general election to elect a permanent, accountable government, with a constitution. Then people will see what this government is all about. As a representative of the working class, we support the Iraqi people in their desire for democracy and the right to elect their own representatives.
Q: What is the attitude of the IFTU toward the occupation.
A: We oppose the occupation absolutely. We know they've said many things about it. One is that it's for the liberation of Iraq. This is what the American politicians and media tell us - that they've come to liberate our country. This is not liberation. It is occupation. It's led to the total destruction of the economic infrastructure of Iraq, with the aim of controlling its wealth and resources. Another disastrous policy was the dismantling of the Iraqi Army, which had a long nationalist tradition. There's been a deliberate destruction of our national and cultural heritage, like the looting of the National Museum, and stationing of occupation forces in historical places like Babel, Ur and Nineveh. That will lead to the destruction of these sites, and they can never be replaced. The Iraqi people are calling today, not tomorrow, for the removal of the occupation. US policy toward Iraq is not clear - it can change in a moment. The key political forces in Iraq are in discussion with the occupation forces in line with UN Resolution 1546, calling for the withdrawal of the troops and attaining the full sovereignty of Iraq. Bush and Rumsfeld have said that if the Iraqi government asks them to leave, they'll leave. It seems there is disagreement in the US administration - some want to stay and some want to leave. Their policy is unclear.
During the first few days of the occupation, the people were not so hostile to the US forces. They were happy to see the removal of Saddam Hussein. But because of the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and other abuses, they've found themselves in confrontation with the Iraqi people, who want them to leave. Their presence has impacted civilians, and the whole country. On a daily basis, at least 10-15 people die, and this can't be good. This is a result of terrorism, but terrorism wasn't present prior to the war. You can see that the US administration has imported terrorism into Iraq in order to fight it, but at the expense of the Iraqi people.
I want to talk about the brutality of the occupation. The war has resulted in extreme destruction of our country. Whole factories and workplaces have been destroyed. Some of those which survived were then destroyed later by the occupation forces. The occupation has increased unemployment, which has now become a major problem for Iraqi workers. It is very dangerous to have such high unemployment in a country with such wealth.
We call on your solidarity to end the brutal occupation of our country. At the beginning of the 21st century, we thought we'd seen the end of colonies, but now we're entering a new era of colonialization. We are campaigning to end the occupation of Iraq, to build a democratic, federal Iraq which will guarantee the rights and jobs of its people.
Q: Bremer issued orders allowing for the privatization of Iraqi enterprises, and published lists of enterprises which would be sold off. What is the attitude of the IFTU toward privatization?
A: We need investment, but we don't want privatization. Investment can bring us technology and skills and training. Privatization will take all of Iraq's wealth away. Iraqi publicly-owned enterprises should stay publicly owned.
Q: The IMF and World Bank have said they'd cancel a certain percentage of the national debt if Iraq accepted their reforms and privatization. Does the IFTU accept this?
A: If they're genuinely willing to cancel the debt, they should cancel it, without putting any conditions on it. The debt wasn't incurred because of construction, but destruction. If there are attachments to it, we need to know what they are. The World Bank has its own interest, and it's working for it. The World Bank has never done anything in Iraq until now.
Q: What about the oil? There have been recent proposals for private investment in the oil industry. Might this lead to privatization?
A: We support investment in the oil sector. We will never accept the privatization of oil. Oil must remain in the hands of the public. It is the only source of wealth we can use to rebuild our country.
We need training to equip Iraqis with new skills, appropriate to new technology, and we have to work to reduce the level of unemployment.
Q: There are a number of union federations in Iraq. What relationship should exist among them?
A: As a federation, our primary concern is with the needs of working people. Any Iraqi who works for that we're willing to meet and talk with. We have 12 unions, and we operate across Iraq. Working for better jobs and working conditions are the primary criteria for judging people. We don't try to veto the effort of any Iraqi worker to join a union of his or her own choice to advance their rights. Many of the people active in our union are very well known because of their struggle against the former regime of Saddam Hussein. They paid heavily. Our primary need is to create an independent trade union agenda and campaign on behalf of working people.
In the IFTU we campaign on these issues. We must build a trade union movement which is independent, democratic and pluralist. Workers should be free to join the union of their own choice. We campaign for social, economic and political advances in the interest of working people. We want a strong working class positioned to engage fully in building a federal, prosperous and democratic Iraq.
Women should take their place in society, government and trade unions. Their wages should be equal to those of men. We now have women who are leaders of national unions in the IFTU.
The IFTU was established soon after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Those who participated were trade unionists who had been in exile or prison, and who had suffered terribly. The IFTU is building free, democratic workers' committees. Our executive committee was formed in an open meeting on May 16th, 2003, in a convention of grassroots trade unionists who were all opposed to Saddam Hussein.
After that meeting, we initiated our work and began going out to factories. We formed committees in the workplaces, which were elected in meetings, and where we sent out notices two weeks beforehand. People could nominate and elect their representatives freely.
The IFTU supported the first struggle under the occupation, after the fall of Saddam Hussein, where 800 workers in a bicycle factory in Mamoudiya called for raises, and the management refused. The union for the printing and mechanical industry negotiated with the management, and gave them two weeks notice that if there were no raises, the workers would strike. After striking for five hours, the management agreed.
We've built 12 national unions, and six of them have held open conferences. We've held elections from the workshop level to the leadership - free and democratic elections, with competing candidates in an open process. In the next few months, we'll hold conferences for the other six unions.
Q: After the beginning of the occupation, the Coalition Provisional Authority decided to enforce sections of Saddam Hussein's old labor code which prohibit unions for workers in state enterprises or in public service, and the present government has continued this policy. What changes do you advocate in Iraq's labor laws?
A: We need to repeal the anti-union laws of the past, and write a labor code which adheres to the ILO standards. In particular, we need to repeal Law 150 from1987, which bans unions in the public sector. This law was designed to repress the labor movement, and deny workers their rights. The Saddam Hussein regime removed workers pensions, and stole billions of dinars, which it used to finance wars of aggression. As a result, the Iraqi unions were reduced from 12 national unions to 6. Unions were banned in railways and aviation, in the printing and mechanical industry, in oil, in electricity and power generation, and in textiles and leather products. We are now working to repeal this law.
We are faced with an extremely difficult situation. The existing government says it has no right to repeal this law. This recent election will result in an incoming, transitional assembly and government, which can take action.
But we didn't stop organizing workers because of the 1987 law. We defied the law, and organized in the public sector in areas where unions were banned. We have written to the Iraqi government, to insist that the government respect workers' right to organize, and to join the union of their choice.
We've been in dialogue about the new labor code. A draft was put forward in Jordan in October last year, and most federations were present. It was amended on many points, and has been printed with those amendments, and the draft given to the government. We hope it will be adopted by the transitional government.
Unions should have autonomy, and make their own decisions. Workers should be free to organize. We believe in a real democracy, where workers should choose their own leaders.
Monday, April 4
The Independent Union of Public Servants & Services Joins The FCWUI
Baghdad, Thursday March 2, 2005: The Independent Union of Public Servants and Service in Baghdad today announced that it is now a member of the Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions in Iraq.
The announcement followed a meeting between the leader of the Independent Union of Public Servants & Services (IUPSS) Mr. Abdul Zahra Abdul Hassan, his deputy Mr. Ali Hussein Jawad and the leadership of the federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions in Iraq represented by Samih Ashur deputy president. Mathi Aofi, a member of the FWCUI’s executive bureau and Falih Maqtof, FWCUI’s legal representative also attended.
The Independent Union of Public Servants & Services decided to join us after announcing its split from the Democratic Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions. The split was discussed and approved by a meeting of IUPSS members held on February 28.
Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions in Iraq
The announcement followed a meeting between the leader of the Independent Union of Public Servants & Services (IUPSS) Mr. Abdul Zahra Abdul Hassan, his deputy Mr. Ali Hussein Jawad and the leadership of the federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions in Iraq represented by Samih Ashur deputy president. Mathi Aofi, a member of the FWCUI’s executive bureau and Falih Maqtof, FWCUI’s legal representative also attended.
The Independent Union of Public Servants & Services decided to join us after announcing its split from the Democratic Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions. The split was discussed and approved by a meeting of IUPSS members held on February 28.
Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions in Iraq
Friday, April 1
Giuliana Sgrena on Iraq's new trade unions
An article on Iraq's new trade unions by Giuliana Sgrena, the Italian journalist kidnapped by a "resistance" gang, eventually released, and then shot by American troops on her way to the airport. It was written shortly before she was kidnapped, and is translated from Il Manifesto.
“$100 unemployment benefit now.” This is the demand that the Union of the Unemployed in Iraq (UUI) has been placing on the new Interim Government these last weeks since the “transition of power.” This is not to say, however, that the UUI has any illusion in the abilities of the new government.
The slogan appears on a banner on a wall in a room on the second floor of a dilapidated building on Rachid Street, in the historic centre of Baghdad. It was here that we met Qasim Hadi, the General Secretary of the UUI (which lists 350,000 members) and Falah Alwan, the President of the Federation of Workers’ Council and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI), initiated by the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq (WCPI).
Without electricity, the fans aren’t working and the windows that open onto the Tigris give some relief from the heat but also bring in the stench of sewage thrown into the undergrowth.
Unemployment is without doubt of one Iraq’s most dramatic problems after one and a half years of occupation. It’s difficult to get accurate figures in a country without any institute of statistics, and even census returns aren’t reliable. After the collapse of the former regime, a number of exiles returned and some people left. Estimations figure that there of around 25-26 million inhabitants, there are 12 million unemployed workers. In percentage terms, this means that 85% of the active population is without work.
“Even the International Labour Organisation (ILO) recognises this percentage,” says Hadi, “but it doesn’t count women in its figures, who also want work that they can’t find.”
If before the war 60% of the population survived solely because of the rations given by the “oil for food” programme, today this percentage has unquestionably increased.
Hadi says that because of “the politics of the former regime, antecedent wars, thirteen years of sanctions and the recent war, factories have been destroyed and infrastructure has not been rebuilt. After one year, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and the Governing Council (IGC) have done nothing to improve the situation.”
Negotiations of the unemployed workers with the CPA did not return any results.
“We pulled out of the negotiations after a meeting with the Council for Social Affairs of the CPA and a member of the Ministry for Labour, because they weren’t serious. They didn’t have any strategies for dealing with the problem of unemployment.”
The unemployed workers’ representatives, even in placing the demand for benefits to the new government, didn’t maintain any illusions after the 1st of July.
“Everything that happened after the 9th of April has been decided on the backs of the people, and we think it’s going to continue as before,” Hadi says.
“Perhaps the formal structures will change, but not the civil society destroyed by the war,” adds Falah Alwan, who raises another problematic issue – the labelling of his union federation as “illegal.” In effect, the IGC on the 28th January 2004, gave legitimacy to only one union federation – the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU). Alwan considers this a replication of the methods of the Ba’athist regime: “the result of an agreement which only took place between the government, and the parties represented in the government, without any of them being elected.”
The FWCUI presented a denunciation of this process to the ILO, which should reach a decision on the matter in November. The principal accusation of the FWCUI – the “illegal” union federation – concerns therefore the absence of democracy, which directly effects the FWCUI.
“Workers in Iraq still hold onto some habits developed in the Ba’athist era. They prefer a trade union linked to the government, because they believe this will give them greater advantages. We’ve had some difficulty, therefore, in recruiting members. The great majority of our members (16,000) are oil workers from the north, around Kirkuk,” Alwan told us.
The declared membership figures for both federations are interesting and not really comparable. The IFTU claims to have between 800,000 and 1,000,000 members (around 80% of employed workers), as opposed to the FCWUI membership which is in the tens of thousands.
As regards the election of leadership bodies, the congresses are in progress and the leadership of the IFTU will only be elected at their completion (whereas before it has been appointed).
These are figures that corroborate the decision of the government, according to the representatives of the IFTU. “It’s the workers who’ve given us legitimacy,” says Hadi Ali, Vice-President of the IFTU, who has an office in the headquarters of the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP).
The dispute over workers’ representation is therefore a dispute between parties of the left. “Even the European trade unions have recognised that our federation is the most representative. That’s why the IGC gave us legitimacy. But we don’t want to have a monopoly – all we want is to defend the rights of workers.”
But the problems of recognition don’t end there.
In the post-Saddam era, the structures of the old regime (state-unions and labour fronts) also claim to represent Iraqi workers through other organisations. The International Federation of Arab Workers, whose headquarters are in Damascus, continues to recognise the [state-run] General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU), defeated at the same time as Saddam’s regime, but whose officials – including its president, Jamil Salman al Juburi – can still be found in the Syrian capital.
“$100 unemployment benefit now.” This is the demand that the Union of the Unemployed in Iraq (UUI) has been placing on the new Interim Government these last weeks since the “transition of power.” This is not to say, however, that the UUI has any illusion in the abilities of the new government.
The slogan appears on a banner on a wall in a room on the second floor of a dilapidated building on Rachid Street, in the historic centre of Baghdad. It was here that we met Qasim Hadi, the General Secretary of the UUI (which lists 350,000 members) and Falah Alwan, the President of the Federation of Workers’ Council and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI), initiated by the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq (WCPI).
Without electricity, the fans aren’t working and the windows that open onto the Tigris give some relief from the heat but also bring in the stench of sewage thrown into the undergrowth.
Unemployment is without doubt of one Iraq’s most dramatic problems after one and a half years of occupation. It’s difficult to get accurate figures in a country without any institute of statistics, and even census returns aren’t reliable. After the collapse of the former regime, a number of exiles returned and some people left. Estimations figure that there of around 25-26 million inhabitants, there are 12 million unemployed workers. In percentage terms, this means that 85% of the active population is without work.
“Even the International Labour Organisation (ILO) recognises this percentage,” says Hadi, “but it doesn’t count women in its figures, who also want work that they can’t find.”
If before the war 60% of the population survived solely because of the rations given by the “oil for food” programme, today this percentage has unquestionably increased.
Hadi says that because of “the politics of the former regime, antecedent wars, thirteen years of sanctions and the recent war, factories have been destroyed and infrastructure has not been rebuilt. After one year, the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and the Governing Council (IGC) have done nothing to improve the situation.”
Negotiations of the unemployed workers with the CPA did not return any results.
“We pulled out of the negotiations after a meeting with the Council for Social Affairs of the CPA and a member of the Ministry for Labour, because they weren’t serious. They didn’t have any strategies for dealing with the problem of unemployment.”
The unemployed workers’ representatives, even in placing the demand for benefits to the new government, didn’t maintain any illusions after the 1st of July.
“Everything that happened after the 9th of April has been decided on the backs of the people, and we think it’s going to continue as before,” Hadi says.
“Perhaps the formal structures will change, but not the civil society destroyed by the war,” adds Falah Alwan, who raises another problematic issue – the labelling of his union federation as “illegal.” In effect, the IGC on the 28th January 2004, gave legitimacy to only one union federation – the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU). Alwan considers this a replication of the methods of the Ba’athist regime: “the result of an agreement which only took place between the government, and the parties represented in the government, without any of them being elected.”
The FWCUI presented a denunciation of this process to the ILO, which should reach a decision on the matter in November. The principal accusation of the FWCUI – the “illegal” union federation – concerns therefore the absence of democracy, which directly effects the FWCUI.
“Workers in Iraq still hold onto some habits developed in the Ba’athist era. They prefer a trade union linked to the government, because they believe this will give them greater advantages. We’ve had some difficulty, therefore, in recruiting members. The great majority of our members (16,000) are oil workers from the north, around Kirkuk,” Alwan told us.
The declared membership figures for both federations are interesting and not really comparable. The IFTU claims to have between 800,000 and 1,000,000 members (around 80% of employed workers), as opposed to the FCWUI membership which is in the tens of thousands.
As regards the election of leadership bodies, the congresses are in progress and the leadership of the IFTU will only be elected at their completion (whereas before it has been appointed).
These are figures that corroborate the decision of the government, according to the representatives of the IFTU. “It’s the workers who’ve given us legitimacy,” says Hadi Ali, Vice-President of the IFTU, who has an office in the headquarters of the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP).
The dispute over workers’ representation is therefore a dispute between parties of the left. “Even the European trade unions have recognised that our federation is the most representative. That’s why the IGC gave us legitimacy. But we don’t want to have a monopoly – all we want is to defend the rights of workers.”
But the problems of recognition don’t end there.
In the post-Saddam era, the structures of the old regime (state-unions and labour fronts) also claim to represent Iraqi workers through other organisations. The International Federation of Arab Workers, whose headquarters are in Damascus, continues to recognise the [state-run] General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU), defeated at the same time as Saddam’s regime, but whose officials – including its president, Jamil Salman al Juburi – can still be found in the Syrian capital.
IFTU states its case
The Alternet website has published an interview with Abdullah Muhsin of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions in which he replies to the charges that the IFTU are "quislings".
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