AI Index: MDE 14/009/2005 25 July 2005
Iraq - In cold blood: abuses by armed groups
Abdullah Muhsin
Trade union organizations are fundamental to the development of secure, prosperous and democratic societies. They are the bedrock of civil society. I strongly believe that a truly free and democratic society will not exist any where in the world without a democratic labour movement that can freely advocate and bargain for the interest of the working people. ‘The Union Makes Us Strong’ goes the old slogan. This is true but the ‘Us’ really refers not just to the union members but to the entire society. Democratic societies, not just workers, need free trade unions.
1. Democracies Need Unions
For parliamentary democracy to prosper independent, democratic and free civil society organizations must be encouraged to develop. I strongly believe trade unions are the driving force of democracy. For they are not the voice of an ideology or an ‘absolute truth’ but are the motivators for the promotion and improvement of the social, economic and political condition of working people. By that I mean improving social provision (housing, education and health), achieving fair wages and better working conditions and reducing unemployment.
Trade unions bring common folks together in organisations regardless of their race, nationality, religion or colour. The purpose of these organisations is the collective organised and peaceful pursuit of improvement in the social conditions and life chances of the members. As such trade unions are one of the key factors in ensuring social and political stability alongside the role of the state, the major economic actors, and the role of the international community.
In conflict-ridden societies trade unions are a vital means to bridge divides, unite the people, and ease the tensions. Unions are not organised on the basis of national, religious and ethnic and ideological identities but help construct a new identity: worker, citizen, Iraqi. It is in the DNA of trade unions to instil collective and non-sectarian identities and to pursuit collective advances not sectarian advantage.
In any society it is civil society organizations that are the link connecting the state with the people, not as a transmission belt carrying orders downwards but as one of those awkward positive forces, an independent centre of identity, opinion and resource, campaigning on behalf of their members, representing their interests, projecting their voice. It is the plurality and free competition of such centres of identity, opinion and resource that makes a democracy real. Without this interaction between state and a vibrant plural civil society we suffer the domination of the state. In such cases usually the state in question is a dictatorship and violence, leader-worship and demagogy is the groundtone of the culture.
In Iraq the unions can be one of the most important independent centres of identity, opinion and resource in the formation, development and consolidation of our democratic future. This is for two reasons: unions promote social partnership and prosperity; unions promote social unity and citizenship.
Social Partnership and Prosperity
Unions are the engine that propels the economy alongside capital. A prosperous economy is fundamental factor in the building and consolidation of democracy anywhere in the world. A healthy economy encourages social and political stability and help maintain strong sense of community.
Social Unity and Citizenship
Unions are the glue that binds together disparate identities and traditions on the basis of social justice, democracy and human rights. Recall how bitter divisions between Catholics and Protestants in many European societies – divisions that frequently led to riots- were overcome in the 19th and 20th centuries. The trade unions played a major role by bringing the sectarian combatants into the same rooms, members of the same organisations, to share the same dreams: a better life for their children, dignity at work, a fair share of prosperity. Unions were a great antidote against the sectarian poisons of extremism and I believe they can be in Iraq. Every time a dictator triumphed, whether Hitler or Saddam, the first thing they had to do was to abolish the free trade unions and create transmission belts controlled by the state.
I believe that the free trade unions in Iraq can play a similar historic role in the 21st century to the European unions of the 19 and 20 centuries. Other identities will remain, of course: Shia and Sunni and Turkoman and Assyrian Christian and Kurds. But like the streams meeting in the mighty rivers- Tigress and the Euphrates- they can join together to create something quite new: worker, citizen, Iraqi. And as Shia and Sunni and Turkoman and Assyrian Christian and Kurds unite in some spheres of their lives, then the meaning of their distinct historic identities can be transformed.
The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle said this about democracy: “If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost’. This is true but so is the reverse: democracy is found in liberty and equality. The Professor of Political Thought at Cambridge, John Dunn, has just written a book called ‘Set the People Free’. Part of his argument is that when the ‘egalitarians’ lose out to the ‘egoists’ – in other words when collective social provision and the public service ethic is entirely squeezed out by the dictates of the market - then democracy itself withers on the vine.
If we put the insights of Aristotle and Dunn together do we not arrive at the conclusion that trade unions are a society’s egalitarian insurance policy against the self-defeating triumph of egoism? Unions are the organisational form of what some French thinkers call equaliberty: the idea that equality and liberty advance best when they advance together.
Unions help to keep equality and liberty from separating too much. Unions ensure social cooperation and prevent vast unaccountable centres of economic power from translating too easily into uncontested political power. When that happens the basic social compact between the people and the government is in danger.
2. Unions Need Democracies
The Enabling State
However, in order for civil society organizations to perform these functions and so contribute to building a parliamentary democracy, the state has a responsibility to create the right political climate in which independent civil society organisations, including trade unions, can function and organise. But this state support must preserve the independence of trade unions. By state here I mean the executive, parliament, public bureaucracy and security forces.
Unions in liberal democracies pride themselves for being democratic and independent of the influence of the state and the domination of political party control. They pride themselves for being a watchdog: growling, fiercely independent protectors of their members’ interests, against the power of government and capital as well as being engaged in social partnership.
Without independence from the state, unions’ lose their legitimacy as the voice of organized and unorganized working people.
The Democratic State
The commitment of the state to parliamentary democracy is another key factor. Without the will of the state and its agencies to accept the values and virtues of democracy in practice, it is difficult to see how civil society organizations and trade unions can function to fulfil their role.
Independent civil society organizations are the umbilical cord that connects a democratic state with individual citizens. For this to work, working people must be free to organize themselves in legal and recognized unions.
The state in liberal democracies has the responsibility to create a political space, a legal framework, and resources (for example facility time for union representatives) for workers to form their organisations. I believe it is a fundamental human right that working people can pool their resources in a special legal entity (the union) in a similar way to the pooling of capital resources in the form of what is called today the corporation.
3. Iraq and the European Model
If we look around the world we see that the relationship between trade unions and the state varies widely, and with it the degree of autonomy enjoyed by the unions. Unions in America, Canada and Europe, much of Latin America, and in some African and Asian countries are founded upon democratic principles. Union leaders are selected by democratic and open election procedures. In many of the former socialist bloc in Eastern Europe, and in many third World countries, unions are controlled and run by the state or dominated by political parties.
The European Model
The Iraqi unions will develop in accordance with our own national traditions. But we do tend to look to the European model as an inspirational model. This is because in many European countries we see two qualities in the typical state-union relationship that we feel are good for workers and good for democracies.
First, and in contrast to authoritarian societies, European unions are usually free.
• Unions are not transmission belts acting at the behest of the state but wholly independent bodies controlled by their members. Though they often have historic links to the social democratic parties of the left they are free to lend their political support to whichever party they believe will best represent their interests or to give their support to none. The unions’ special relationships with friendly parties do give them one way to influence government. Unions mobilise during general elections and seek to influence their outcome. They urge all parties to promote social justice, fair standard of welfare and the adoption of social market model of running the economy. And the unions that advocate such policies are usually free, democratic and independent and are not tied to a government or political parties.
• Unions have a protected legal status and so are free to organise workers within a clear legal framework including recourse to the law when employers ignore that framework.
Second, and in contrast to those societies dominated by a raw free market model, in Europe unions are often respected social partners.
This status is the result of a mix of pressure from below and sanction from above, a combination that is only possible in a social democracy.
• Pressure from below. In part, to state the obvious, unions wield influence because they are powerful independent political actors. They have freely recruited large memberships and reaped the benefits of collective organisation. Union influence on government policy, and in the workplace, is greater when large memberships and high union density combine with progressive industrial law. Yes, union density has been declining across the private sector since the late 1970s while holding up better in the public sector. But there is evidence that this decline is being arrested as unions adjust to new industries and labour markets.
• Sanction from above. In Europe the unions exist under an umbrella unfurled by the state. It may be a tattered umbrella in some countries now, but it exists.
Democracies need unions
We believe that the European model enables unions to play a positive role in the consolidation of liberal democracies. It gives concrete form to the talk of ‘pluralism’ and ‘civil society’. Unions play a central role in persuading the polity to end the social exclusion of working people by forcing onto the policy agenda issues such as health, pension and jobs, housing and education. I would like to quote a remarkable man called Karl Marx, we might say trade unions impose something of the ‘political economy of the working class’ on an economic system that sometimes only cares for the ‘bottom line’.
And I believe that when democracies look after unions, unions look after democracies. Gaining tangible benefits from democratic politics, trade unions have also been the great defenders of democratic politics, mobilising popular social classes at moment of social crisis against extremist threats. The most effective opponents of totalitarians of whatever stripe has always been the progressive democrats.
Iraqi working people are set free after three and half decades of Saddam’ years of darkness. Saddam’s model of state-union relations is found (in more benign forms) across the authoritarian regimes of the Middle East: the union as an extension of the state.
In Saddam’s Iraq those who refused to accept the authority of the undemocratic state had to organize in illegal and underground forms.
Let me give you one story. On 11 March 1987, Saddam’s regime introduced a new Labour Code, which redefined public sector workers as “employees” and removed their right to form or join trade unions. He abolished the eight-hour day and handed over workers pension fund to the treasury without compensation. The Labour Law No. 151 of 1970 was also abolished.
Saddam actually announced these measures during a televised meeting with the yellow union leaders of the General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU). With the GFTU leadership and members of the "Central Workers Office" of the Ba’ath party smiling for the cameras Saddam said "From now on, the title 'worker' is abolished and all workers shall become official employees by the State. As everybody is now a government employee, there is no more need for trade unions. Workers in the private sector will have a special labour law decreed for them". The GFTU applauded all these measures! And, when Saddam launched his wars against Iran from 1980 to 1988 and his invasion of Kuwait in 1990 the GFTU, the yellow union, acted as Saddam’s recruiting sergeants
So today Iraq’s free trade unions, as with Iraq’s 30th January 2005 historic free elections, are blazing a trail for the entire region. This has its dangers. We have enemies within and enemies without.
Within Iraq the Saddam’s Ba’athist-Extremists Islamist fundamentalists so-called resistance hates the free trade unions. They have tortured and killed many of our members and leaders.
Outside Iraq there are many who are very fearful of Iraq’s free elections and free trade unions because of the dangerous example they offer peoples across the region. After all, think of it from the dictators’ point of view. What if workers in the region like the look of our free trade unions? What if they compare our IFTU to their Ba’athist- state run transmission belt model and decide they want a change?
Let me say a few words about the development of the IFTU in the last two years.
IFTU
The clandestine trade union movement, the Workers Democratic Trade Union Movement (WDTUM), organized an open meeting on 16 May 2003 attended by 350 Iraqi trade unionists (liberals, communists, and nationalists, both Arab and Kurds). It was at this meeting that the IFTU was formed. Some of these founding organisers had been in exile. Some had been imprisoned. Some had been working underground.
The IFTU has achieved some great things against the odds. 12 national unions in key sectors of the Iraq’s economy have been established. The IFTU now includes the following unions: The Oil and Gas Union, the Railway Union, The Transport and Communication Union, the Mechanics, Printing and Metal Union. The Textile and Leather products Union, the Construction and Wood Workers' Union, the Electricians' Union, the Service Industry Union and the Agriculture and Food Staff Workers' Union.
These unions organise in Baghdad and across Iraq’s 15 provinces such as Basra, Kirkuk, Mosul, Kurbala, al Najif, Babel and Mesan.
The IFTU has over 200,000 members.
The IFTU has good relations with international Labour movement like the ICFTU, with many European federations such as the CCOO, CGT and CGIL and the TUC and COSATO and AFL-CIO and with many other trade union centres around the world, such as the Korean labour movement.
The IFTU and the international trade union movement
The IFTU seeks affiliation to the ICFTU.
Internationalism is more important today than ever before in a globalised world in which the distinction between ‘domestic’ and ‘foreign’ policy is collapsing.
The first international trade union centre was called the International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), was formed in 1901. This I-F-T-U was established to bring trade unionists from different part of the globe to campaign with one voice for jobs and economic justice and for the promotion of universal human rights such as the right to organise and vote. (Here is an irony, the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, the newly formed free and democratic trade unions in the wake of Saddam’s dictatorial order, carries the same acronym: IFTU. We are proud of this).
The ICFTU is a democratic organization and is mainly controlled by its members and not governments or political parties. Today the ICFTU is the largest international union federation and the IFTU aspires to affiliation to the ICFTU.
There is also a World Confederation of Labour (WCL) a relatively small organization based on Christians social principles and values. The WCL is merging with the ICFTU to crate a new global trade unions center.
The European Trade Unions Congress (ETUC) was established on 1973, founded on the basis of independence, transparency and democracy. It is now one of the key trade union centres alongside the ICFTU.
Forgive me for the blizzard of initials. The point is this: the IFTU wishes to take its place alongside the democratic free trade unions inside the ICFTU.
Where now for the Iraqi Unions?
To finish, let me say that I think the union-state relationship must develop at two levels: national and international.
The National Level
Post-Saddam Iraq accepts trade unions as part of a democratic society. We urge and we expect that the new constitution will embrace a liberal-democratic model of state-union relations. We are arguing for the right of workers to join trade unions, and for unions to organise under legal protection, independent of the state. We want the new Iraq to embrace ILO standards, including an ILO-approved Labour Code. If the new constitution fails to embed the rights of Iraqi workers a tremendous opportunity to undercut the appeal of the terrorists will have been missed. For with those rights we will build a mighty union able to offer a real alternative to the nihilists.
International
Finally, let us not forget the elephant in the room, so to speak. When we talk about ‘democracy’ in Iraq, when we talk of ‘state-union relations’ in Iraq we must remember that my country is occupied by foreign troops. Iraqi democracy can only walk tall, and the unions can only take their place as social partners of a sovereign Iraqi government, when the UN-backed political process is successful and the phased withdrawal of foreign troops is complete. Security Council resolution 1546 sets out a process and a timetable for the total withdrawal of foreign troops. Upon the success of this process - no less than upon our efforts as trade unionists - hangs the future of free trade unionism in Iraq.
That’s why the international labour movement must embrace the UN political process under 1546 SC Resolution. Iraq is the hinge of our time and I’m afraid we Iraqi democrats do sometimes feel that this is understood rather better by the enemies of democracy than by its friends.
We Iraqi democrats wish that the international community would put aside old disputes and rush to Iraq with the urgency and determination and zeal of the poor deluded Islamist fundamentalists who cross the border seeking martyrdom and bringing only death and misery.
Drafting a constitution, holding fresh elections, training new security forces: all these tasks are immense and require the wholehearted support of the international community. We can’t bear these burdens alone.
If democracy fails in Iraq the world will be picking up the pieces for the rest of our lifetimes. If democracy succeeds in Iraq then we may be on the verge of a world historic process of democratisation throughout the region. That is what is at stake in Iraq. It is the hinge of our time.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 14 - Iraq is awash in carnage and politics, and Muayad Naama is on hand to help people laugh at it.
Using jagged lines and potato-shaped figures, Mr. Naama, a 53-year-old cartoonist, tells the story of Iraq today. It is a place where people have become inured to street violence; state corruption exists on a giant scale; politicians argue endlessly.
A dealer points out which vehicles are best for car bombs in a cartoon by Muayad Naama.
As violence has surged throughout Iraq, and in Baghdad in particular, over the last few weeks, Mr. Naama has sketched images that make light of the very dark situation, in which car bombings and killings tear through Iraqis' schools, and follow them to the market, to work and home. His cartoons appear in several daily newspapers.
In one recent cartoon, a sneaky-looking character in a dishdasha, the traditional men's gown, looks around a used car lot while a salesman points out which brands are best for car bombings. In another, a man drinking tea watches as an exploding car bomb sends heads, hands and steering wheels sailing in all directions. "Don't worry," he reassures his friend. "It's not our car."
Perhaps five other professional cartoonists of such note work in Iraq today, using wit to give Iraqis exhausted by war and dread an honest, if dark, moment of humor. One, Abdel Rakhim Yassir, showed the Iraqi under Saddam Hussein as a painter at an easel, surrounded by brick walls - and painting those walls on canvas after canvas. In another cartoon, two modern Iraqis, surrounded by the same brick walls, squabble and hit each other at the base of a single escape ladder. The next frame has each man standing alone, with the ladder sawed in half. Neither piece is tall enough to reach the top of the wall.
"Some people think the cartoon is only for fun," said Mr. Naama, sipping spicy Arabic coffee at a hotel cafe in central Baghdad, his cartoons spread before him. "But here we have the black joke. You may laugh at it, but it's painful."
Corruption crops up frequently in Mr. Naama's cartoons. Iraqis complain bitterly about theft by government officials, which they say has ballooned since the fall of Mr. Hussein. In a drawing published in March, a doctor operates on an obese patient labeled "Government Ministries." His arm deep inside the man's belly, the doctor declares the diagnosis: an enlarged pancreas from "too much public money."
Mr. Naama works in a small room in an apartment in western Baghdad. His paintings decorate the purple walls, and his tools - pencils, pens, erasers and a small desk - fit neatly into a corner of the tidy room. He prefers to work at night, when there are no distractions, he said. Mr. Naama is far more unassuming than his cartoons.
"They say that when he talks, you don't hear his voice," said Athir Haddad, a professor of finance at a private university and a fan. "But when you see his drawings, you feel he is boiling up inside. That he is someone who feels the people's pain."
Mr. Naama's fortunes have risen and fallen with Iraq's own painful history. He was born in 1951, almost two decades before Mr. Hussein's Baath Party took control of the country. At the time, Baghdad was a bustling, cosmopolitan city with lively cafes and bars.
But when Mr. Hussein began in the late 1970's to clamp down on political opposition, including by the Communist Party, of which Mr. Naama was a member, his life quickly changed. In 1979, he was arrested and beaten. He still barely hears out of one ear as a result of the beatings.
Now, after decades of dictatorship, a chaotic political scene has burst forth. And unlike Mr. Hussein's government, under which open criticism brought dire, often fatal, consequences, the new Iraqi government appears to be fair game.
For that, and many other reasons, Mr. Naama said, life is better now. People can speak freely and practice their religion as they like, he said. The chaos and lack of rules, he said, must eventually improve.
But democracy is slow going. Iraqis voted in nationwide elections more than three months ago, and it was not until May 7 that the government was fully formed. In a recent Naama cartoon, an Iraqi family huddles hungrily around a caldron, labeled "Iraqi Constitution." It is cooking over a pitifully small candle.
"People are hungry," he said. "They want rules. They want a government."
Zaineb Obeid contributed reporting for this article
Trajectory of violence
The new multi-ethnic, multi-religious political class in Iraq wishes to curry favour with voters not bombers, writes Faleh Jabar*
Two years have elapsed since the deposed president's statue crashed down at the Firdaws Square, at the centre of Baghdad. The Iraqi army had been defeated in the south and the middle of the country; military formations in the northern, predominantly Sunni, provinces negotiated surrender and went home. In the eyes of US planners the landscape seemed promising for a thorough liberalisation scheme to transform Iraq after the US experience in post- WWII Germany and Japan.
That hope proved wishful. As soon as the head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) began in May 2003 his twin track of dismantling the old power structures (viewed as a copy of Nazi Germany), and liberalising state, society and economy, opposition flared up, both violent and peaceful. The newly-born freedoms allowed and encouraged militant Shia groups led by the young Muqtada Al-Sadr, a conservative populist Islamist, to take power and install an Iranian type of mullarchy (theocracy). Old regime's commanders, officers and technocrats, who anticipated being reintegrated in the new order, reacted fiercely upon exclusion. The former indulged in peaceful street politics, but prepared for armed opposition; the latter imitated armed opposition but prepared for political action. Hopes (or fears) of these trends coming together were grounded in the false assumption that the two were fighting for a national cause of liberation. In fact, the former wished to go beyond the old system into a religious utopia of their own; the latter were in search of restoration, of the past regime or past privileges.
They were worlds apart. Since then these two major forces of violence adjusted their thinking, their composition, their tactics and their strategies.
ORIGINS OF VIOLENT MILITANCY:
With the demobilisation of an already defunct army and police force, the ratio of security forces to civilians fell overnight from a 34 per 1000 under the ancien regime, to less than three per 1000 under the CPA. The security vacuum was glaring. Worse still, the country was awash with arms. Some 4.5 million pieces, varying from anti-aircraft missiles to mortars and assault rifles, were available to civilians as old army depots were turned into free shopping zones. Another destabilising social element was the rise in criminal violence. In addition tribal war lords and private militias exacerbated volatility.
The political vacuum was also a crucial factor. The CPA was an occupying force with which the population could hardly think of cooperating. The absence of an Iraqi government was a source of bitterness and misgivings. The Governing Council (GC) of Iraqis (formed on 13 July 2003) had no powers, and was seen as mere appendage of the CPA. The GC's very structure, based on community quotas, was a driver of conflict. No government, no intelligence, no police, no army. This was a recipe for the civil war that was not.
Loss of sovereignty, however bitter, was one way or another less crucial in the eyes of various Iraqi players than the new distribution of power that empowered hitherto disenfranchised communities and groups (Shia, Kurds, or liberals and leftists), and marginalised the masters of yesterdays (the Baath lot). Bitterness expressed at national disempowerment was in essence resentment at this new redistribution of power.
Angry and suspicious neighbours made their contribution to violence. So did trans-regional networks of Sunni fundamentalists, who had now two emotive causes of mobilisation: Iraq and Palestine. A barrage of hostile Arab and Iranian media made things even worse.
WHO IS IN THE BUSINESS?
The first signs of armed militancy came in June, spreading over most Sunni provinces, including the mixed metropolis, Baghdad, and increasing slowly but steadily from few attacks per day, to an average of 25 a day in September 2003, then again up to an average of 65 per day by the end of that year. This was a systematic effort sustained by a multitude of forces. At least five different and sundry groups have been taking part in post-war armed conflict.
Old institutional forces (military commanders, intelligence and security officers, party and state high functionaries) and Sunni Salafi groups conceived of change as a zero sum game. With operational expertise and vast cash resources (an estimated $4 billion robbed at gunpoint from the central bank), the institutional groups were the driving force, hiding behind Salafi groups, native and alien. The whole movement relies on the new generation of the loyalists drawn mainly from tribal Sunni domains, who are united by ideological ties, kinship bonds, economic interest and community of guilt. While Salafis are minor allies, the loyalists allowed them to come to the forefront for tactical reasons. These networks soon recruited tribal warlords and mobilised tribal extended families. In addition, mafias of the underworld were also contracted to do the dirty business: kidnapping, assassinations and the like for as low payments as $200 per slain head. While Salafis have an ideological global war against the West (Crusaders), the loyalists had a political agenda: retrieving old privileges.
The focus of early attacks was the Multi-National Forces (MNF); gradually attacks broadened their scope to include economic targets (oil pipelines, power stations, water plants, etc). All foreign presence was also assaulted, including the UN offices. Not without a Salafi touch, Christian and Shia shrines and churches came under fire. So were all civil employees in service. The aim was to bring reconstruction to a halt, create an environment of intimidation that would paralyse life.
While the bulk of the population yearned for peaceful transition, they were not willing to come out against violence. Fears of retribution by insurgents or reluctance to serve under foreign administration (the CPA) were clear.
Falluja became a symbol of insurgency; so were Baquba and Mosul, all of which had strong tribal bonds and extensive old Baath networks. As the death toll of Iraqi civilians reached some 16,000 by mid- 2004, security became number one demand among them.
NAJAF AND FALLUJA:
Insurgency seemed to flourish with the rise of the Mahdi army of Al-Sadr. Benefiting form extensive mobilisation in shanty towns in Baghdad, Kut, Omara, Basra and Kufa towns, Al-Sadr intensified his oppositional efforts against all Shia competitors as against the MNF. Reaching a dangerous level of militarisation, confrontation flared up in April 2004, which increased Al-Sadr's popularity. In August he staged another insurgency, taking refuge in the holy shrines of Najaf. His adventure was opposed by a majority of Shia and the Al- Sadr's militia was successfully dismantled and decommissioned.
Exactly in the same period, Falluja staged two successive mutinies, first in April and second in August 2004. The first was a disaster for the US in military and political terms; the second was a military and political disaster for insurgents. The weakening of the insurgency was a crucial factor for the successful culmination of the January 2005 elections.
US RESPONSES:
It took the US diplomacy and military a year or so to adjust to the deteriorating situation. They first dismissed violence as sporadic and marginal; they admitted it was well-organised and well-coordinated. US policies shifted from thorough liberalisation to thorough stabilisation. Counter-insurgency replaced reconstruction; Iraqisation of security was accelerated, and legitimisation through the ballot was observed despite massive pressure from Sunni politicians. This signaled a desertion of the old plan to a slow transfer of law enforcement and defence to Iraqis over three to four years. With priority given to law enforcement (police) over defence (the army and the National Guard) this capacity building aspect was flawed. Police could not cope with heavily-armed insurgents. More often than not, police units deserted or surrendered to insurgents. Priority was also given to infantry as the best means for counter-insurgency condition. Iraqis (Iyad Allawi's government) wished to and, in the end, did have their own heavy armour to support their own infantry. This boosted morale as Iraqi infantry were seen by the public as patriots fighting for their own country rather than as an extension to the MNF. Indeed the first Iraqi armoured units deployed before elections were applauded by the public. Iraqisation of defence and security are still half way through.
INEVITABLE DECLINE:
Prior to the constituent elections, armed attacks decreased, largely due to increasing native security capacity, as well as improving living standards (basic monthly salaries increased from $3 to $90). After elections legitimacy of the political process was established. The failure of insurgents to derail this phase of transition triggered differences in their camp. Several Sunni groups that boycotted elections realise now their strategy of boycotting the ballot was self-defeating. Insurgents further alienated themselves by targeting Shia communities (the massacre of Hilla, Babylon in March this year).
No more were Iraqis willing to accept the term "resistance", let alone mujahid (holy fighter); they are now using the Western term "terrorists" to describe all insurgents. The icy wall inhibiting cooperation with the security forces also melted down. As a result, whole sectoral networks of insurgency have been dismantled, as was the case in the Haifa Street (Baghdad) which is quiet now.
Violence will definitely continue, but the majority of Iraqis believe it has no future. The new multi-ethnic, multi-religious political class wishes to curry favour with voters not bombers. This reflects both faith and readiness to come out against all those who oppose a Western-enforced democratisation by violent means. Palestinian elections, Egyptian reforms and pro-democracy mobilisation in Lebanon have also encouraged Iraqis that they are on the right track.
* The writer is an Iraqi sociologist and author of many books on Iraq. His latest publication is : The Shi'ite Movement in Iraq , London, Saqi Books, 2004.
Most readers of Tribune will, like me and my comrades in the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), have opposed the war. I don't regret doing so and I would do so again.
I believed that the Iraqi people had other ways to overthrow Saddam Hussein's despicable fascist-type dictatorship.
But things have changed for us Iraqis. Our new priorities are to keep Iraq intact (the risks of Iraq descending into civil war are still real), to build a strong independent and democratic trade union movement and to create a federal democratic and fully sovereign Iraq.
The election at the end of January represented an historic breakthrough. 60 per cent of Iraq's population – 8.5 million people – went to the polls to elect a 275-member Transitional Assembly.
Without intimidation, elections irregularities and incompetence, we would have seen an even higher turnout. But the bland expression 'went to the polls' hardly captures what happened on January 30 2005.
Even as lines of voters were being blown up by homicidal bombers from the so-called 'resistance' they cast their ballot. One family saw their son blown up, did their duty to his body in the morning, and then insisted they vote in the afternoon in honour of his memory. These are the martyrs of the new Iraqi democracy.
January 30 2005 was a triumph of democracy and the human sprit and humanity. Of course, the shadow of Saddam's brutal dictatorship is long. Iraq will not be transformed overnight. And now, 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 on 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. Rocket-propelled grenades have been fired at trade union headquarters.
The international labour movement has risen as one to condemn the killing of Hadi and to extend the hand of solidarity to the IFTU. If Hadi had survived he would have been vindicated by the tremendous turnout at the elections.
This election will enable Iraqis to move forward. Already the terrorists and ex-Saddam loyalists are in retreat. The great majority of Iraqis are battling 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 soon. They played a crucial role in providing security during the 30th January elections and should be commended. But the process of building new Iraqi security forces is slow. They are insufficiently trained and remain small in size. As yet they are incapable of taking full responsibility for securing Iraq’s large borders and protecting civilians and maintaining law and order. It is vital that efforts are redoubled until Iraq has security forces able to defend the country and the civilians. These forces must be beholden to no political party or individual but loyal only to the Iraqi constitution and its people.
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 organisations, environmental agencies and free unions.
Iraq's economy was abused by Saddam. Pulverised by his wars, bled by the consequent sanctions, devastated by the invasion of 2003, Iraq is crying out for emergency reconstruction. 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.
An emergency reconstruction of Iraq – a Plan for the people of Iraq – can kick start the economy, improve the quality of life of the people and dry-up the recruitment pool for extremists who feed on poverty. Such a Plan for Iraq would help cement the UN political structure put in place after the fall of Saddam with the aim of building a new, secure and democratic Iraq.
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, the IFTU will commence a cultural project. A bus will function as a travelling theatre visiting workplaces and communities to promote the basic tenets of trade unionism and dismantle the culture of fear.
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.
The IFTU is an integral part of the international trade union movement and has received support from international federations as well as many British unions.
Free trade unionism is 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.
The IFTU recently led a successful strike of Hotel Workers in Baghdad. In Basra the IFTU led a solidarity march with students, male and female, who have been beaten by the Islamic hardliners for holding a picnic.
Iraq is being reborn. The lengthy negotiations between the various parties eventually delivered a deal sharing out the key positions of the state. Hopes are high that a broadly based national government can be formed. This development would further attract those political groups, which initially boycotted the political process and the elections but are now looking to join in.
Please do not be fooled by the news. There is still too much intimidation and violence – and not only against the IFTU - but the so-called "resistance" is increasingly withering and the majority of areas in Iraq are now secure.
The UN should also take an active role in compelling neighbouring countries to guard their borders and to prevent the continued influx of foreign fundamentalist fighters into Iraq seeking to incite sectarian conflict.
A strong labour movement is vital to our goal of rebuilding Iraq on the basis of social justice and unity. We desperately need the support of progressives around the world if basic social democratic and labour values are to take root in Iraq. Progressives desperately need an example of social democracy in the region. We need each other.
United we understand
By John Lloyd
Published: April 22 2005
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.
John Lloyd is the editor of FT Magazine.
Tens of thousands of Iraqis demonstrated against the U.S. occupation, April 9, in Baghdad. Some estimated the numbers as high as 300,000. The rally reflected the virtually unanimous anger in Iraq over the U.S. military presence and the devastation it has caused. At the same time, it indicated the complexities facing Iraq’s democratic and progressive forces who are seeking to build a united, secular, democratic state. [... read more]
What now for Iraq?
Abdullah Muhsin
15 March 2005,
Fabian Review (quarterly publication of the Fabian Society)
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.
Iraqi democracy must be nurtured
Morning Star
Tuesday 22 March 2005
OPINION: ABDULLAH MUHSIN argues for support for Iraqi democracy and calls on its political leaders to show that Iraqis can solve their own problems.
A NEW democratic and open Iraq is being born. The road has been bloody and remains fraught with danger.
Success will not only bring peace and stability to Iraqis but could have positive implications for the democratisation project in the Arab world and the region. So its success is of enormous global importance.
The development and consolidation of this positive political and social momentum is a key factor in isolating both foreign fundamentalists and Saddamite loyalists in Iraq.
Iraqis have openly elected a transitional assembly with a mandate to form a transitional legitimate government to govern for a year till the next general election in December 2005 or January 2006.
This is a fundamental political development that needs to be supported if this political process is to continue to have the trust of the majority of Iraqis.
It is generally agreed that democracy is neither an executive gift nor is it a proxy formula imposed by foreign intervention - although it is also widely acknowledged that positive external economic, diplomatic and political pressures can help speed democratic changes.
Democracy is a culture that has to be nurtured against the forces of bigotry, despotism and darkness. And people must become accustomed to democratic values if democracy is meant to last.
The imposition of democracy must come from within the country concerned and may take different shapes according to internal circumstances, but its basic values are universal.
These basic tenets are tolerance, respect for human rights and fair, transparent and accountable government, which must adhere to international conventions and treaties and requires an independent judiciary.
A free media is another key building block of democracy. The media should inform society and educate people on the issues of the day.
Under representative democracy, the state apparatus of violence - police and army - are placed under civilian authority to prevent political forces or individuals using them to sustain authoritarianism and dictatorship. In democracies, their job is to defend borders and preserve law and order.
All this is possible in Iraq and is currently under popular construction, despite loud claims by those who say that democracy is a Western invention, Arabs do not want it or that Islam is not compatible with it.
Stable democratic leadership is a necessary but not sufficient part of Iraq's democratic process.
Wider civil society, including free unions, must assume a greater role, for, beside its vital political support, it can campaign to promote social provisions such as equal access to health, education and housing as well as how best to create the economic environment for the social market to develop.
In other words, democracy requires active participation from below, by civil society organisations, by the people themselves and by democratic institutions, which they create and maintain. Democracy needs their direct engagement. Without their participation, democracy will die.
The acceptance of the post-Saddam state and support for the current democratic process as sanctioned by UN security council resolutions 1483, 1511 and 1546 is vital for social and economic cohesion and for democratic principles to take hold.
There could be no more powerful sign of the potential of the Iraqi people than the January 30 elections, in which 8.5 million Iraqis openly demonstrated their desire to embrace democracy and to reject violence, tyranny and dictatorship and, at long last, to have a say in the decisions that will affect their lives.
However, the fragile flower of Iraqi democracy is endangered by the current uncertain stand-off in forming a transitional government.
More than a month has elapsed since Iraq's first democratic elections, but key Iraqi political parties have yet to agree on a transitional coalition government.
Iraq is at a dangerous crossroads and any unwise turn could lead to catastrophic failure and constitute a gross betrayal of the people of Iraq.
It could give unwarranted credence to the argument put forward by cultural imperialists and those opposed to democratic change that the election is just an exercise to legitimise the occupation of Iraq and allow the Bush administration strength to promote its expansionist imperialist domination of the region and divide Iraq on national and ethnic grounds.
It adds weight to the notion that the US and British governments will not allow an unfriendly government in Iraq.
Iraqis are being killed and blown into pieces by extremist forces using such fake arguments.
Iraqi political leaders need to urgently demonstrate that the elections, in which so many brave people died and risked their lives, can create a pathway to security and democracy or they may lose the trust of the Iraqis themselves in the whole political process and plunge Iraq into more bloody strife.
The political process would be further strengthened with the removal of both foreign troops and their military bases.
But this decision should rest with the new democratically elected legislative body. No other authority has the right to decide otherwise.
Iraq, after all these years of turmoil and wars, should embrace a political structure that sees the formation of a united, democratic and federal nation. But it requires internal discipline and genuine external support for democracy to grow and flourish in Iraq.
Faleh A Jabar* unravels the seeming paradoxes of the Iraqi election
Sunday's announcement, 13 days after the poll took place, of the results of Iraq's first contested elections in half a century, will determine the make up of local provincial government, the Kurdish regional government and, most importantly, the constituent assembly charged with drafting the permanent constitution.
Even before the votes were counted sundry interpretations were made. Salafis, like the Jordanian extremist Abu Musaab Al-Zarqawi, denounced the elections as a failure. US President George W Bush extolled them as a slap in the face of terrorism. Iran, top of Bush's second term hit list, viewed them as a rebuke to Washington. In the West the left dismissed elections held under occupation as little more than a conspiracy and they were quickly joined by Baath restorationists and their Arab supporters. Iraqi voters, rightly or wrongly, thought of them as a miracle of kinds, a feat of defiance on the part of the voter. Iraq's elections, at once a defeat and a victory, the vehicle of both honour and shame, for Iraq, the US, the Arabs, exhibited all the paradoxes of globalised liberalism.
Hardly had the polls closed before the event itself was overshadowed by interpretations of what it might portend. Iraq stands at a crossroads and, like Janus, the Roman god of doorways, faces in more than one direction. This multi-ethnic, multi- religious and multi-cultural nation is, under occupation, on the brink of breaking the sectarian monopoly of power and national wealth. The chronic divorce of nation and state could well be reaching an end. And it is a transition characterised by a tilt towards Islamist conservatism, with all its geopolitical consequences.
WHOSE FAILURE?
It was the Iraqis who pushed for elections. The Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), under US appointee Paul Bremer, wanted a 3-5 year period in which to restructure Iraq at will along radical liberal lines. What they had failed to factor in to their equation was Iraqi nationalism.
The transfer of sovereignty in June 2004, and last month's elections, came about because of Iraqi, and not CPA, demands.
That elections, symbol of a popularly mandated and peaceful transition, should so capture the imagination of the majority of Iraqis wrong-footed the media, taking regional commentators as much by surprise as it did those, hailing mainly from Sunni areas, driving violence.
Radical Sunni groups, Salafis and restorationists, abhor any peaceful or institutional political process. Sunni liberals, on the other hand, toyed with the idea of boycott but at the last moment took an active part in the process. The moderate Islamic Party -- the old Sunni Muslim Brothers -- adopted a different position: it pulled out of the contest while announcing it was prepared to take part in the post-election constitutional process.
Those forces, both Iraqi and regional, seeking to derail elections, failed miserably. The twin tactics of intimidation and boycott failed to prevent 8.5 of some 13-14 million eligible voters from going to the polls. Thirteen suicide bombers, one suffering from Downs Syndrome, were sent on their missions. A handful of poll centres were targets of mortar rounds and there were two reports of gunfire. And that, more or less, was that.
Voters had expected worse. Early birds showed up before 9.00am to avoid attacks. The more audacious ventured out at what many suspected would be the most hazardous time. The bulk waited. Then, by midday, voters rightly guessed Salafi attackers had deployed all they had. The masses poured into voting stations, amazing themselves and the world.
Violent opposition groups had singularly failed to grasp the depth of pro-election sentiments. More than two hundred political entities registered. Tens of thousands stood as candidates. Volunteers flooded to help the Independent Commission for Elections in Iraq, manning 600 registry offices and 9,000 voting stations nationwide in the face of threats, car bombs and assassinations. Their presence was a questioning of the legitimacy of such tactics. The majority of Iraqis viewed elections as means of restoring sovereignty. They could not understand how voting stations could become targets for paradise-bound Jihadists.
ELECT ME, ELECT ME NOT:
As expected the lowest turn out was in the Anbar province (two per cent). Diyala, another violent province, had 34 per cent of voters go to the polls. Baghdad, a mixed city, registered 45 per cent. The highest turnouts were in Kurdish areas, which recorded an average of 80 per cent, and in the Shia provinces of the south, where between 60-80 per cent of voters turned up at the polls.
That more than 150,000, many of them supporters of Interim President Ghazi Al- Yawar, voted in Sunni Mosul came as a surprise, while even Saddam Hussein's home province of Salahuddin (Tikrit) saw 29 per cent of the electorate casting its vote.
Iraq's first pluralistic ballot betrayed a crisis of identity. As grand ideologies -- Arab socialist-nationalism in its Baath or communist guise, radical Islamism -- wane so local identity politics came to the fore, either confessional -- Shia versus Sunni -- or ethnic -- Kurdish versus Arab, Turkmen or Assyrian. And these new aggregate identities, a protest against earlier exclusion, were themselves fractured from within by city, tribal and family loyalties.
Religious institutions, freed from state control, developed into centres of mobilisation and recruitment. Several blocks emerged, most significantly the Shia bloc and the Kurdish list. Beyond these two broad coalitions dozens of liberal, leftist, Iraqi nationalist, tribal, monarchist and ethnic and religious groups orbited.
The Shia and Kurdish blocs had considerable resources at their disposal, both financial and organisational and including extensive infrastructure -- mosques, offices and, in certain cases, private militias -- in addition to the symbolic capital furnished by religion and ethnicity. The Shia list could also draw on the charisma of Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, with Shia preachers repeatedly warning congregations of the wrath of God should they not vote for Al- Sistani's list.
The Shia bloc received 4,075,295, or 48.1 per cent, of votes. The Kurdish bloc secured 2,175,551, or 25.7 per cent. Interim Prime Minister Iyad Alawi, effectively single- handedly, secured 1,168,943 votes, or 13 per cent, appealing to the middle classes and stressing strong leadership and security, currently Iraq's most popular political commodities.
Dozens of other lists failed to secure the 30,000 votes required for a single seat in the constituent assembly. Only a few others survived, including the Iraqi Communist Party with 70,000 votes, the Al-Sadr faction, competing as Kawadir wa Nukhab (Cadres and Elites), with 65,000, and, on the back of his personal vote in Mosul, the list headed by Interim President Ghazi Al-Yawir.
Overall, Iraqis voted against the deposed Baath, for peaceful transition, for power sharing, for religious leaders, for an end to the monopolising of power and against chaos and violence.
MAJOR PLAYERS, NEW DYNAMICS:
The three successful blocs -- Al-Sistani, Kurdish and Alawi lists -- will determine the future of Iraq, while the failure of Sunnis opposed to elections to have them postponed has many repercussions.
It has strengthened the resolve of other groups to advocate legal ways of balanced power sharing and to restore Iraq's national sovereignty -- i.e. end the occupation -- peaceably. The dynamics of the Palestinian elections and national consensus-building have provided Iraqis with a strong case to cite and emulate.
The elections have legitimised national politics and created a momentum behind the constitutional process. Radical Sunnis, such as the Society of Muslim Ulama (Society of Doctors of Religion) led by Dr Harith Al- Dhari, an advocate of violent opposition, appeared stunned by the massive turn out and by their ensuing marginalisation. Their boycott of the process not only deprived them of any meaningful representation but allowed over representation of the Shia bloc. Had Sunnis gone to the polls the number of votes required per seat would have risen to 50,000. There are already signs that radical Sunnis are rethinking their position and searching for a face-saving exit.
While the success of the Shia bloc inevitably alarms secular and moderate players, domestic, regional and global, it should be remembered that it is an alliance of more than a dozen organisations and that half the list comprised independent candidates. The list encompasses trends in favour of Khomeinism, communalism and Islamic-liberal compromises. And while, for the time being, they will unite in their drive to elect a presidential council and form the transitional government, divisions will become apparent when the constitutional debate begins next month.
Already there is fierce competition between three candidates for the premiership -- the moderate Adil Abdul-Mahdi of SCIRI, the conservative Ibrahim Al- Jaafari of the Daawa Party and the notorious liberal opportunist Ahmed Chalabi. It is against such a backdrop that Sunni groups might stage a comeback, initially by involving themselves in drafting the constitution and then, should the outcome be unsatisfactory, by mobilising support so as to prevent the necessary quorum in the ensuing referendum. Should they succeed, then the elections that will have to follow in December 2005 will be far more inclusive.
Two days before the elections the first armoured Iraqi division was deployed and applauded by the public. If two other divisions can be combat ready by the end of this year, as planned, the confluence of political legitimacy and capacity building is likely to bring the insurgency to breaking point. At which time the possibility opens for a gradual reclaiming of the centre ground in Iraq's politics and the promotion of a more moderate trajectory.
* The writer is an Iraqi sociologist, research fellow at Birkbeck College, University of London, and author of many books on Iraqi state, religion, tribes and discourses. His latest publication is: The Shi'ite Movement in Iraq , London, Saqi Books, 2003.
Towards Democracy
The Iraqi Communist Party's newspaper (Tareek al-Shaab - The Path of the People) reports in Arabic on the Iraqi elections on 30 January here