Online at: http://politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/835/1/84/

Resistance Is Not Futile: Labor and the Struggle for Iraq

By Joel Wendland

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2005 – print

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3-23-05, 10:16 am

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Now that elections in Iraq have produced a representative interim government responsible for constructing new legal and political structures, there is no longer any excuse to postpone US troop withdrawal. While no one should have illusions about a perfect election or the transfer of full national sovereignty as yet, most Iraqis, burdened by 20 years of war, political repression, sanctions and occupation see these past weeks as the first steps in a political process to restore peace, democracy and sovereignty. If the election has produced progress, it is not attributable to the Bush administration or US imperialism. In fact, Bush’s goals and tactics have been antithetical to the interests of the people of Iraq. The illegal and deadly war, occupation and the disastrous failure to adequately aid in the reconstruction of Iraq have blocked progress. If democracy arises from the ashes of the Saddam dictatorship and the Bush occupation, it will be because of the concerted efforts and determined actions of the Iraqi people.

The broadest possible movement is still necessary to oppose the illegal war and occupation in Iraq. Some on the left, however, insist on the politically irrelevant tactic of fostering images of a militant Iraqi insurgency fighting the US military and its Iraqi collaborators as the reason for ending the occupation. Fantasies of armed bandits delivering military defeats to the US are unconvincing and won’t mobilize tens of millions of people needed to bring the occupation to an end sooner rather than later. Additionally, painting in broad strokes the victims of car bombings, assassinations, beheadings, and other attacks as collaborators who deserve death is futile and barbaric. Finally, representing the Iraqi people as completely dominated by US imperialism without the ability to resist – unless enacted as violent and destructive – is a paternalistic, and not helpful, portrayal of the Iraqi people. This distorted view of the situation confuses the true struggle for peace and sovereignty. While the Bush administration miscalculated Iraq’s determination to shed the occupation, critics of the political process underestimated the Iraqi people’s insistence on a peaceful and political struggle.

Most of the "insurgency" is motivated less by opposition to the occupation or US imperialism than by finding more advantageous positions within the political framework established by the occupation. It arose primarily as a political rivalry among factions working desperately to provoke ethnic conflict in the period before the election. Rather than an anti-imperialist or a democratic struggle, they sought to foment conflict between Sunnis and Shi’ites. Much of the insurgency originated in Sunni majority cities and is aimed at the security apparatus, other Sunnis who wanted to participate in the political process, civilians operating the infrastructure, and at Shia civilians.

Sunnis comprise about one-fifth of Iraq’s population and some expressed concern over an election that would create a Shi’ite-dominated National Assembly. Extremist elements – mainly Saddam-era Ba’athists and religious fundamentalists – turned this concern into violent attacks on the political process couching their fight in anti-occupation language. While the Shi’ite majority favored the election, many insurgents hoped that ethnic divisions and violence would dominate the political process and prevent the formation of a Shi’ite majority interim government. The basis for an ethnic conflict of this nature has little popular backing in Iraq.

Despite low rates of participation in the election in Sunni majority areas, leaders of 13 Sunni parties have agreed to participate in the political process. A large turnout by Kurdish Iraqis indicates that a much broader multiethnic national movement can be forged in the new political system than election observers on the right wanted and election critics on the left deemed possible. About 86 percent of Iraqi voters rejected the US-backed Ayad Allawi-aligned candidates, showing their determination to establish a legitimate and sovereign national government.

A more fundamental aspect of the situation that has received scant attention, from either the corporate or alternative media, has been the involvement of the organized section of Iraq’s working class in the political struggle for national sovereignty and reconstruction. The leading elements of this section of Iraqi society are the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP), the coalition that formed the People’s Unity List for the election, and the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU). The largest and most rooted is the 200,000 member IFTU. The labor movement’s size after only two years of existence suggests that Iraq’s working class intends to set the course for a democratic, independent and economically stable Iraq.

Background on Iraq’s Labor Movement

The Ba’ath Party came to power in 1968 and immediately launched a campaign to control the trade-union movement. Leaders and activists who refused to side with the Ba’athists were removed from power. At that time, the General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU) held elections that "took place without secret ballot and in an atmosphere of intimidation and reprisal," says a brief history of Iraq’s trade-union movement written by the underground Workers Democratic Trade Union Movement (WDTUM) in November 2003. (The WDTUM was formed in 1980 as an opposition underground union movement. It received widespread international support, and worked tirelessly to expose the corrupt GFTU. WDTUM activists would eventually surface after the collapse of the Hussein government to organize IFTU.)

When Saddam Hussein took power in 1979, he "ordered a series of purges within the ruling party to obliterate all potential rivals or critics." He installed his henchman in GFTU leadership positions, including former military commander Ahmed Muhsin Al-Dulaimy whose career was made in the fascist "National Guards" and other paramilitary groups with personal loyalty to Hussein rather than as a union leader loyal to workers.

Unions became Saddam’s tool for repressing workers and for domestic "security." Suspected subversives were subjected to spying, harassment, detention, interrogation, torture and killings. According to the Center for Human Rights, an arm of the Iraqi Communist Party, Saddam’s repressive measures would result in the deaths of tens of thousands and even more imprisoned and tortured at places like the now infamous Abu Ghraib prison. The WDTUM unearthed evidence in mid-2003 that shows "the horrors of physical liquidation, mass and summary executions of thousands of political prisoners and detainees, with lists including the names of scores of workers."

During the 1980s, GFTU leaders ordered support for the war against Iran and turned itself into an apparatus for quashing anti-war sentiment. It confiscated wages from workers and turned the money over to the government for military expenses. The union even forced many workers to enter military service. Some 60 percent of workers were conscripted for service at some point during the war with Iran. One million Iraqis are believed to have been killed.

An Independent Union is Organized

After two decades underground, WDTUM activists organized the Iraqi Federation of Workers Trade Unions (IFTU) in late 2003. Through its strong ties to the International Confederation of Arab Trade Unions (ICATU), International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), the influential Kurdish trade unions, the World Federation of Trade Unions, and through the association of its members with the Iraqi Communist Party, Arab nationalist and Kurdish democratic parties on the Iraq Governing Council (IGC), IFTU received the IGC’s recognition, though, significantly, not the Coalition Provisional Authority (the occupation’s political arm up to June 2004).

Among the first international delegations to meet with Iraq’s new labor movement was Britain’s Trade Union Congress (TUC). A TUC report published in April 2004 described a fact-finding mission to Iraq by representatives of the TUC, ICFTU, ICATU, the AFL-CIO and other labor organizations in February of 2004. This delegation, as the report says, "came across lively, muscular (even argumentative) trade union grassroots," even though many of the workplaces they visited had only been organized for a few months.

Since the Hussein government’s collapse, according to the report, "workers have thrown out managers ... and union leaders strongly aligned with the Ba’ath Party, and created more active trade union organizations, often breathing new life into formal legal provisions such as on industrial democracy." According to union spokesperson Abdullah Muhsin, dock workers in Umm Qasr, upon hearing of a visit from a delegation from the ICFTU in late 2003, gathered at the Port Administration offices to demand a union. Unions of professionals demonstrated similar militancy.

The TUC delegation’s report highlighted the successes of the new union movement. "Unions are dealing with problems of vandalism (...), unemployment (at over 50 percent...) and inadequate management – failure to pay wages on time and so on." In general, union members saw their wages growing faster than inflation.

The numerous organizing committees that sprang up in different parts of the country highlighted IFTU’s immediate organizing capabilities. According to Abdullah Muhsin, the Basra federation of the IFTU organized "10 trade unions in the Basra region including those for Mechanics, Construction, Transport, Oil, Railways, Dockers and Public Services, for workers in restaurants, hotels, hairdressers, public health and municipalities, water and cleaners" representing tens of thousands of regional workers.

Of great concern in that early period after the collapse of the Ba’athist regime was the continued role of Saddam loyalists in the competing parallel union, the GFTU. After an initial period of competition, Iraqi workers removed Saddam’s bureaucrats and demanded democratic unions. Some GFTU structures were dismantled and others merged with IFTU. There are important indications that the GFTU’s pro-Hussein leadership was removed or left.

The workers and union leaders whom the TUC delegation met in April 2004 indicated the need for "practical solidarity." Training, practical resources, material support, and information technology were high on their list. Workers also expressed a desire to restore a positive image of unions "tarnished by compulsory membership and slavish adherence to the [Hussein] government," says the TUC report. The delegation also spoke with union activists who were optimistic about greater leadership and participation by women workers in the movement.

While the Transitional Administrative Law, imposed by the CPA and adopted by the IGC, confirmed "the right to join trade unions and the right to strike and demonstrate, along with more general rights to freedom of assembly, of expression and protection from discrimination on the basis of race, gender, religion etc.," union leaders are concerned that legal structures created by the CPA will influence the National Assembly’s views on labor law.

The CPA refused to consult with Iraqi labor leaders about the labor law it imposed. It adopted provisions from the Hussein labor code of 1987 and appointed administrators to local and regional departments that have expressed interest in imposing and enforcing the 1987 code. This 1987 law prohibited unionization in the public sector and pillaged workers’ pensions to enrich the regime and finance its wars. Because most of Iraq’s economy is nationalized (in the public sector), the CPA’s use of this labor code signaled its intention to prevent any further organizing efforts in Iraq’s most important economic sectors and to block organized opposition from workers in those public industries slated for privatization. The international labor movement has rejected the 1987 code and calls for protections of the rights of Iraqi workers to organize.

The occupying authority’s antagonism to the IFTU and its organizing objectives surfaced during a US military raid on the union’s headquarters in Baghdad in December 2003, which according to one news account "involv[ed] 10 armored vehicles and dozens of soldiers. The U.S. troops ransacked and destroyed the IFTU’s possessions, removing documents including minutes of union meetings. They tore down union banners and posters that condemned acts of terror. They smashed windows on the front of the building and smeared black paint over the name of the IFTU." IFTU spokesperson, Abdullah Muhsin called the raid "an attack on Iraq’s working people."

Meanwhile, the IFTU continues to work closely with the International Labor Organization and other labor-related organizations to develop a code that adopts the major pro-labor provisions encoded in Iraq’s Labor Law No. 151 of 1970. This law, which guaranteed such rights as the eight-hour day, pensions, and the right of public sector workers to organize, appeals more to the interests of rank and file workers.

Present Prospects for the Future

The completion of the national elections intensifies demands for the withdrawal of foreign troops and a sincere effort to contribute to an Iraqi-controlled reconstruction effort. Despite attacks from insurgents and harassment from coalition authorities, the organized sections of the Iraqi working class continue to press on for worker rights, a secure and stable country, and end to the occupation and war.

Forces that want to maintain the status quo of instability and violence, according to both IFTU and ICP spokespersons, were behind this wave of attacks on Iraqi National Guard troops, police, and civilians in the months prior to the national election and since. Many civilians and workers killed are not affiliated with either the US or British occupying armies or corporations.

Among this rash of terrorist violence, numerous Iraqi trade unionists have been killed. Railway workers have suffered numerous terrorist attacks in the outskirts of Baghdad and on the railways into the southern part of the country. Over the last few months many have been killed and injured.

In a statement published in early January, the IFTU denounced "further attacks on its members on the railway line between Basra and an-Nasiriyyah and on union premises in Baghdad. These criminal acts designed to intimidate workers and trade unionists follow a well-established pattern of targeted campaigns of assassination and terror which have been waged by those loyal to the former fascist-type, dictatorial regime of Saddam Hussein against individual IFTU activists and ordinary workers in recent months."

Terrorists targeted numerous trade-union leaders including Nuzad Ismaiel, president of the IFTU in the Kirkuk region, who was nearly killed twice. Just days after the attacks on the railways, long-time union leader, founder member and IFTU international secretary, Hadi Saleh, was found strangled to death in Baghdad, his eyes blindfolded and hands tied with metal wire. This method was the preferred handiwork of the experts of the Saddam regime. Hadi Saleh was also a leader of the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP). His assassination sparked immediate international furor from the world’s labor movement.

IFTU praised the trade-union leader’s life and work in its official statement in early January: "Hadi Saleh opposed Bush’s illegal war against Iraq. He returned home to Iraq after the ignominious collapse of the disgraced Saddam Hussein dictatorship. Hadi worked tirelessly to end the occupation and set about the task of re-building independent trade unions in Iraq." Despite attacks directed against Iraqi workers, the IFTU expressed its commitment to "continue the struggle and fight to build a democratic trade union movement and participate in the rebuilding of Iraq."

In its statement the AFL-CIO remarked: "Hadi was a courageous trade unionist fighting for Iraqi workers.... Like all trade unionists, Hadi believed in peaceful solutions to working people’s problems." The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, the UK’s Trade Union Congress, the International Labor Organization, the Canadian Labor Congress, along with labor movements in Pakistan, Italy, Spain, Japan, Ireland, Australia the US Labor Against War organization, and other international unions and community organizations expressed outrage at the assassination of Saleh.

Just weeks after Saleh’s murder, IFTU leader Talib Khadim Al Tayee, the President of the Iraqi Mechanics’, Metalworkers’ & Printworkers’ Union (IMM&PU) was kidnapped and subsequently released.

Saleh’s assassination follows the murder of ICP leader Wadhah Hassan Abdul Amir, a member of Iraq’s interim National Assembly, last November. ICP spokesperson Salam Ali states that 16 Party members have been assassinated in the rash of violence. These people "were active on the grassroots level, elected to local councils and leading organizational work in poor and working class districts," Ali said.

Ali told the British newspaper Morning Star last January that terrorist attacks in general are committed with the aim of "strengthen[ing] the hand of those elements, whether in the government or within the political life of the country, who call for an iron fist policy – it’s not difficult to see that these forces are most closely associated with the Americans and also those who, lacking a power base, have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo."

The vast majority of the insurgency in his view is comprised of either loyalists of Saddam or religious fundamentalists. "These people want to regain their position. It has nothing to do with liberating the country or achieving progress or a democratic alternative. They are enemies of democracy," he contended. Ali told Political Affairs prior to the election that "some of these acts were aimed to stir up sectarian strife. They aim to alienate the people, marginalize them in the ongoing political process, and spread despair and fear among them. This agenda holds no prospects whatsoever for liberating Iraq and present no prospects or real hope for a better future for the people."The overwhelming majority of Iraqis, says Ali, oppose the agenda and tactics of these groups.

The Iraqi Communist Party along with other progressive organizations put together a list of 257 candidates known as "People’s Unity" for the January 30th elections. The People’s Unity coalition included communists, democrats and independent patriotic and social figures, included 91 women candidates and covered all of Iraq’s provinces. According to the People’s Unity platform, "The candidates represent the full social, ethnic and religious spectrum of Iraqi society."

Ali pointed out that the "ICP’s agenda, calling for eradicating the legacy of both dictatorship and occupation and opening up prospects for a truly sovereign, independent and democratic Iraq is diametrically opposed" to the real goals and objectives of insurgents who fought to undermine the election.

The tactic of spreading terror through killing "holds no prospects whatsoever for liberating Iraq," Ali added, "and present no prospects or real hope for a better future for the people."

In fact, the violence, insisted Ali, "only serves to perpetuate the occupation, provides a pretext for increased foreign military presence (as recent events have shown), helps to bring further death and devastation, and continues the vicious cycle of violence which clearly serve the schemes of extreme right-wing circles in the US under the cover of war against international terrorism."

Ali sees the elections preparing the next phase in the political process. According to UN mandate, the National Assembly will draft the country’s new constitution and prepare the groundwork for the general elections next year. Because the national assembly will represent a broader section of Iraq’s population it will be "more legitimate," Ali said, and will have influence and oversight on the current transitional government and representative.

Most importantly, the national assembly should not be timid about exercising real power and "should seize back control over security matters, as well as the economic policy and other sovereign powers, from the occupiers," Ali insists.

Iraq’s Communist Party proposes to be an important part of the process of regaining sovereignty and building a democratic society. "After decades of repression, fascist terror, wars, sanctions and finally foreign occupation," Ali concluded, Iraqis are longing for "freedom and a dignified life."

The People’s Unity platform calls for full civil rights, religious freedom, and equality for all members of Iraqi society. It envisions a federal democracy that guarantees the rights of minority nationalities. It calls for an end to the occupation and full national sovereignty and control over state apparatuses and policies.

The platform’s main focus, however, is on repairing the economy and recovering from the effects of dictatorship and Bush’s war and occupation. It demands the reduction of unemployment, adequate wages for working people, helping the disabled and pensioners, enforcement of workers’ rights, abolition of Iraq’s debts incurred by Saddam Hussein, full social security, a free health care system, and reforming the public education system. Additionally, the platform calls for the reconstruction of the public economic sector and development of the private sector.

As the election results trickled in and some reports of election irregularities and abuses marred the project, the People’s Unity candidates released a statement that described the election as an "historic event, when the Iraqi people defied the forces of terror, violence and crime." While People’s Unity won only a fraction of the national vote, its role in reconstructing a democratic society cannot be underestimated.

No one can, with certainty, say what Iraq’s future will be. In fact, peace and progressive forces outside of Iraq haven’t the right to try to determine that future anymore than George W. Bush does. But we can side with Iraq’s working class and with its broad democratic movements. As we work to end the occupation and for provision of adequate resources for reconstructing Iraq, we should also include the call for the protection of the rights of Iraqi workers. We should remember and echo the appeal Hadi Saleh made just weeks before his assassination:

We call our brothers and sisters in the international community to support us to make sure that our rights in organizing formal unions freely and openly is guaranteed and ensured. That our struggle for fair wages, better working conditions, is guaranteed. We consider ourselves as fledglings in the trade union movement, and we need support to build our union. The international labor movement has a lot of expertise, knowledge on this, they could assist us.

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