Debating Withdrawal from Iraq

Read (or listen or watch) Naomi Klein (author of Fences and Windows and No Logo) debate
Erik Gustafson (Education for Peace in Iraq Center) on strategies for withdrawal. Look at this extract. It reveals one of the oddities of the current debate: most of those apparently arguing for immediate withdrawal do not really want immediate withdrawal at all. They are playing with the slogan for effect or because they fear that to call for anything less is to endorse Bush. Note that Naomi Klein says two incompatible things, almost within the same breathe. First, ‘we want it to end now’. Second, and in response to Gustafson’s point that a precipitate withdrawal would create chaos in Iraq, ‘I mean, nobody believes there’s going to be withdrawal tomorrow’. That’s called shifting the goalposts. Would it not be better to stop playing with the slogan ‘immediate withdrawal’ and call instead for a speedy end to the occupation via the UN-backed political process and timetable, while making urgent solidarity with the Iraqi democrats? (AJ)

Extract:

ERIK GUSTAFSON: If you want to act in solidarity with Iraqis, you need to be for withdrawal, you need to be pushing for a major policy changes that need to continue in Washington, but you cannot say that immediate withdrawal is what Iraqis are calling for. That's not what they're calling for, and they fear what would happen.

NAOMI KLEIN: Erik, what you have just described is the position of the US peace movement. And I think you're setting up a straw man here. I mean, nobody believes there’s going to be --

ERIK GUSTAFSON: That’s not --

NAOMI KLEIN: -- withdrawal tomorrow. It’s that there has to be a clear policy demand, which is an end to the occupation. Iraqis have been extremely clear about this. A majority of Iraqis voted in the election for a political party, the United Iraqi Alliance. The second plank of their platform was calling for a timetable for withdrawal. Then you have all the people who boycotted the elections because they believed that a clear statement about withdrawal was the prerequisite for having elections, that you couldn't have elections before you had that commitment. So immediately after Iraqis have expressed this through opinion polls, through protests, through their votes, the first response from the Bush administration and from Blair is, well, of course, we have to honor the Iraqis who took this risk by staying the course and not having any timetable of withdrawal. That is the political context, Erik, in which you are working, total defiance from the Bush administration, talk of keeping 170,000 troops in the region until 2007. You need a very clear, unambiguous statement that we are against this occupation, that we want it to end now. That's the starting point for any actual anti-war movement.

AMY GOODMAN: Erik Gustafson?

ERIK GUSTAFSON: I think you're absolutely right. It has to be about ending the occupation. But as soon as you say immediate withdrawal, as a solidarity organization, I mean, EPIC is a solidarity organization, and I'm talking with Iraqis all the time. And they -- there's a disconnect going on in terms of the peace movement and the Iraqi community. And that disconnect needs to end. Every time you say immediate withdrawal, you strike fear in the hearts of so many Iraqis. So we need to be much clearer. We need to be talking about a major policy shift. And I think where all of the peace movement can get behind, as well as Iraqis, where there can be genuine solidarity, is demanding that the Bush administration make a declaration that it has no claims on the territory or the resources of Iraq and intends to withdraw. Then, I think you will start to see progress. But the other thing that's very -- that I need to make very clear is part of the confusion is as though we're still on the original script. We are not on the original script. If we were still on the original script that the Bush Administration may have had in mind, that Paul Wolfowitz and other ideologues had in mind, Paul Bremer would still be in Baghdad. We would not have had the elections that just occurred. Iraq's oil resources would be privatized. That's not what's happening. The Iraqi people are pushing back, and we need to be supporting them in pushing back and also understanding that there is a transition that needs to be supported, and if the institutions of Iraq are left weak, if there's a power vacuum that we leave behind, then we will have done the most irresponsible thing. You cannot fix a mistake with another mistake. (AJ)

Peter Beinart on the need for honesty on Iraq

The following is an excerpt from an op-ed by Peter Beinart of The New Republic: "President Bush and Democratic Rep. Lynn Woolsey of California deserve each other.” In his Sunday Washington Post op-ed, Beinart explains: “Woolsey is a founder of the newly created Out of Iraq Congressional Caucus. She recently told Roll Call that 'Success for us is two words: Troops. Home.'"

"That's breathtakingly irresponsible. Of course success means eventually bringing American troops home. But it also means ensuring that Iraq doesn't dissolve into civil war. Preventing Iraq from becoming a failed state that exports a new generation of jihadist killers is vital to American security. And making sure we don't abandon the Iraqi people to Lebanon-style slaughter is vital to American honor. Woolsey doesn't seem to understand that....But the Out of Iraq Caucus didn't come from nowhere. It's the result of President Bush's ongoing refusal to speak honestly about the war."

See Shake Up The War Room by Peter Beinart Washington Post June 26, 2005. (AJ) (hat tip, EPIC)

Education for Peace in Iraq Centre (EPIC) Director Statement

Erik K. Gustafson, Executive Director of Education for Peace in Iraq
Center (EPIC) gives President Bush a blunt message (AJ)

Dear Friends:

Tonight at 8 pm EST, President Bush will address the nation regarding Iraq. Most major television networks plan to air the President's speech live.

What are EPIC's hopes for tonight? We hope to hear the President level with the American people about what is required for security and democracy to prevail in Iraq, and why America's commitment to those objectives is essential to our national security. No more pep rallies. Our soldiers and the American people deserve honest answers.

We also hope that President Bush recognizes the need to address the widespread suspicions of the Iraqi people. Over the weekend, I met with members of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari's delegation and Iraqi Americans who had recently spent time in Iraq. Many of them expressed concern regarding the failure of U.S. and Iraqi forces to secure Iraq's borders, prevent repeated suicide attacks, and protect civilians. According to them, the popular perception in cities like Baghdad is that such failures are deliberate: a way to justify America's ongoing military presence.

To win back a measure of the goodwill and trust that has been lost over the past two years, Bush must unequivocally declare that it is NOT the mission of the United States to stay in Iraq, and specifically explain what the United States will do to better support Iraq in establishing their own democracy and security.

According to the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll: "…one in eight Americans currently favors an immediate pullout of U.S. forces, while a solid majority continues to agree with Bush that the United States must remain in Iraq until civil order is restored -- a goal that most of those surveyed acknowledge is, at best, several years away (Wa Post 6/28/05)."

At the same time, there is broad skepticism regarding the President's credibility on Iraq and wide support for further policy change. The Washington Post reports: "By a narrow margin, the public believes the United States is not making sufficient progress toward civil order in Iraq, and even more Americans, about six out of 10, doubt that country will have a stable, democratic government a year from now (Wa Post 6/28/05)."

EPIC supports further policy improvements to better safeguard Iraq's civilian population; improve electricity, access to clean water and other essential public services; build the institutions that underpin democracy and the rule of law; restore a functioning judiciary to address Saddam Era crimes and improve reconciliation; and increase the participation and representation of all Iraqis in their country's political and constitutional process.

Like so many concerned citizens, we will be listening tonight and hoping.

Sincerely,

Erik K. Gustafson
Executive Director
Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC)

Trade Union statement

Joint Statement by leaders of the Iraqi Labor Movement and U.S. Labor Against the War, June 26, 2005 Washington DC, USA (AJ)

The Education for Peace in Iraq Center

What is The Education for Peace in Iraq Center or EPIC? According to its website “The Education for Peace in Iraq Center promotes freedom, security, and genuine democracy for the people of Iraq. Founded in 1998 by American veterans and human rights advocates, EPIC is the only Iraq-focused organization of its kind in Washington, DC. We work closely with concerned Americans, policy analysts, Iraqis, and national veteran, religious, labor, and human rights organizations.

EPIC informs policy makers and the American public about political, economic and human rights conditions in Iraq. We promote policy options that can best ensure government accountability and a better future for the people of Iraq. EPIC believes a secure and democratic Iraq is also important for U.S. security and the safe return of U.S. soldiers.

Winning the peace in Iraq requires a responsibly engaged America, the support of the international community, and cooperation between Americans and Iraqis. Genuine democracy requires a commitment to the rule of law, an end to the violence, and political change through the ballot box rather than through military force”.
The stance taken by EPIC is summed up here:

Q. EPIC opposed the war. Why don't you advocate bringing the troops home now?

A. We feel strongly that the U.S. must not abdicate its responsibility for restoring public safety and order in Iraq. That responsibility stems not only from our position as an occupying power, but from the harm that resulted from U.S. policy (both military and diplomatic) prior to this last war. From supporting Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, to enforcing crippling international sanctions in the 1990s, to our reckless rush to war and failure to plan for the peace, U.S. policy has contributed to the deaths of over a million Iraqis. EPIC wants to ensure that the U.S. remains committed to Iraq in the long-term. Permanent bases or any long-term U.S. military presence in Iraq would represent a failed political transition, but as a nation, we do have a moral obligation to do all we can to repair the damage the United States has contributed to in Iraq. Democracy cannot be achieved overnight or through violence. It comes over a long period of time through state-building, peace-keeping and reconciliation.

Q. What is the best way to bring democracy to Iraqis?

A. EPIC advocates that the United Nations be given primary responsibility for overseeing Iraq's political transition and the constitutional and electoral processes by which that transition will be effected. The Bush Administration must allow the U.N. to work directly with Iraqis - completely independent of the United States. If that does not occur, then Congress and the United Nations must require full transparency along with the broad participation and representation of Iraqis. Only a process that Iraqis believe has been fair and open can restore peace and stability to Iraq. The crucial goal now is to lay the groundwork for the free and fair elections that have been promised for January 2005. The success of the new caretaker government requires its timely and peaceful demise. That's because, ultimately, the objective of both U.S. and international policy must be not simply to hand over power to only a few Iraqis - but to empower the Iraqi people as a whole to govern their own society.

Q. What role should the international community and the United Nations play in Iraq?

A. The debate over Iraq's political transition has largely ignored some of the most crucial prerequisites for democracy to succeed in Iraq. The collapse of national institutions and law and order has created a free-for-all environment where crony capitalism, private militias, and widespread corruption dominate. Little progress has been made toward establishing a court system and strong political institutions, or toward creating a legitimate and inclusive political process. Rampant insecurity and lawlessness, punctuated by increasingly lethal terrorist attacks on Iraqis, are adding to the instability. This environment contributes to divisions that could lead to serious civil conflict and a return to authoritarian rule, possibly backed once more by the United States and Western powers.

For democracy to have any chance of taking root in Iraq, a truly independent Iraqi government chosen by Iraqis must be allowed to develop - fostered, but not dictated by, the international community. For the people of Iraq to be truly free, their rights must be secure and protected by a safe environment, strong institutions, the rule of law, national reconciliation, and a free and independent press”. (AJ)

John Kerry Statement on Iraq

Tonight, President Bush will speak to the nation about the situation in Iraq. It's about time.

I hope tonight he will address his words not just to us, and certainly not to Karl Rove or Donald Rumsfeld, but to a young American soldier in Iraq right now -- the soldier carrying an M-16 in a dangerous place where he or she can't tell friend from foe, the marine out on patrol at night who doesn't know what's coming around the next bend. America's brave young men and women deserve to hear the truth.

For too long, the Bush administration's strategy has been to divide not unite, to spin not to lead, to attack their political enemies at home rather than fight America's enemies attacking our troops in Iraq.

It's long past time to get it right in Iraq. The administration's current lack of a coherent strategy is courting disaster instead of doing what's needed for success.

That's what we need from this administration. No more false rosy scenarios. No more happy talk about the Iraq insurgency being in "its final throes" when our military leadership knows that's just spin.

It was with our troops in mind that I offered up a plan for Iraq in a New York Times op-ed this morning. I wrote: "The reality is the Bush administration's choices have made Iraq into what it wasn't before the war -- a breeding ground for jihadists."

As I said in the article and I will say again on the Senate floor today, there's no time to wait -- this is a time for humility from the White House, and a time to take specific steps to finally get it right in Iraq. It starts by telling the truth, and being straight with Americans.

Here's what I think President Bush needs to address tonight - and we need to hold him accountable:

* The president must announce immediately that the United States will not have a permanent military presence or bases in Iraq.

* The United States must also insist that the Iraqis establish a truly inclusive political process and meet the deadlines for finishing the constitution and holding elections in December.

* We need to put the training of Iraqi troops on a true six month wartime footing and ensure that the Iraqi government has the budget needed to deploy them.

* The administration needs to work not just at security but at reconstruction -- Iraqis need to see the electricity working and the water flowing.

* The administration needs to get Iraq's neighbors off the sidelines -- they can't afford a failed Iraq on their doorstep, and Bush-style unilateralism needs to bend to getting these countries on board.

* And the administration must immediately draw up a detailed plan with clear milestones for the transfer of military and police responsibilities to Iraqis after the December elections. The plan should be shared with Congress.

It's the only way we can set the stage for American forces to begin to come home.

The next months are critical to the future of Iraq and our security. If the administration fails to take the kind of steps I outlined today, we will stumble along, our troops at greater risk, casualties rising, costs rising, the patience of the American people wearing thin, and the specter of quagmire staring us in the face.

I urge you to watch the president's speech tonight with a careful eye and to act in every way possible to demand what our troops deserve - leadership equal to their sacrifices.

Sincerely,

John Kerry

28 June 2005

The Prime Minister of Iraq calls for new Marshall Plan

Writing in the Times: I am not only the first democratically elected leader of an Arab country. I am also the first prime minister in the Middle East to come from a religious, Islamic opposition movement — at the head of a diverse ethnic and political alliance. Embracing diversity within human society is not just a political necessity, it is rooted in my faith. Islam teaches that there is no compulsion in religion and that freedom of choice is divinely granted; it is dictators who need to cater to fanatics in order to stay in power.

He also considers two potential futures Iraq could embark on and comes down on the side of international co-operation before remembering the helping hand the Allies offered to Germany after World War Two.

The Middle East, including Iraq, is as much of a neighbour to Europe as Germany is to Britain. The Middle East has as much strategic significance as Europe in 1945, and has potential both for exporting violence and terror to the West or, alternatively, developing its human and natural resources to the point where it can imitate Europe’s economic success.

Marshall said: “Our policy is not directed against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos.” Today is the time for a new international Marshall plan towards Iraq and the broader Middle East — directed not for or against any policy but against ignorance, tyranny, hatred and anarchy.

Marshall repaired the decaying infrastructure of Germany after six years of war and 12 years of Nazi rule. In Iraq we have had nearly 40 years of fascist rule and have been in practice at war for half that time. I have seen throughout Iraq the marks of economic collapse and depredation this has left. Iraq today has few English speakers, it has hundreds of thousands of ex-soldiers trained for nothing but war, and its universities — which once enjoyed a worldwide reputation — now lag behind those in the rest of the region. It has debts totalling hundreds of billions of dollars and there has been no investment in its infrastructure for more than 20 years. (hat tip HP)

Refusing to take refuge: Shadi Hamid on why American Muslims should support Iraqi democracy

This powerful article should be read by anyone who opposed the Iraq war but is uncertain about their responsibilities today. Shadi Hamid argues that “We all too easily take refuge in the pieties of protest, thinking that we have done our days work and spoken out against the perpetual straw men of empire and occupation. And, indeed, our rage might be well served by shallow rhetoric and self-pitying indignation. But, this is not the time for such selfishness or silence in the face of greater threats. There is a war currently underway between those who engage in the wanton killing of innocents in the name of “resistance” and those who wish to see the Iraqi people move courageously toward a free, dignified, and democratic future. And, I suspect that this time around, the moral position is a clear one – or at least it should be. There are some things in life, politics, and war which are morally ambiguous. This, however, is not one of them. (hat tip, norm) (AJ)

Unison greets Iraqi trade unionists

The IFTU website reports the warm welcome given by the largest UK union to visiting Iraqi trade unionists at their annual conference in Glasgow.

‘They Stood Their Ground’: a conversation with Ibrahim al-Jaafari

The Prime Minister of Iraq is in conversation here at the Council on Foreign Relations, Washington, DC. He invoked the memory of a young Iraqi. “One of the families in Iraq who came to vote [on January 31 2005] was met by terrorists, who wanted to throw a grenade. One of the youths, Iraqi youths, jumped on the person who had the grenade. That person was martyred, and that family that came to vote continued to vote. They stayed where they were. They voted. They stood their ground. They stood fast. And this is the way that the Iraqi people show their determination and their courage and their stamina and their enthusiasm.” Read it all. (AJ)

55 phone calls

Iraq the Model accuses the Guardian of bias in its coverage of the ‘resistance’ (AJ)

More support for campaign to defend journalists in Iraq

Chris Toensing, the Editor of the Middle East Report (for identification purposes only) is the latest to sign up to the LFIQ appeal to defend journalists.

Defending journalists in Iraq

Please support this campaign by sending your name and organisation (if any) to
LFIQ.

We express our solidarity with the International Federation of Journalists (which represents over 500,000 journalists in 110 countries) in condemning the cold-blooded murder of three Iraqi journalists on 22 May 2005.

The IFJ reports that the three “were among 13 passengers in a minibus that was stopped by an armed group who picked out the journalists when they showed their press cards. The other passengers were freed, but Najem Abd Khudair, the Kerbala correspondent for the newspaper Al Mada, Ahmad Adam, a freelance writer for Al Mada and trainee journalist and Ali Jassem Al Rumi, working for Al Safeer newspaper in Baghdad were then killed".

We endorse the views of Aidan White, IFJ General Secretary. “These colleagues were savagely murdered. They had their throats cut in cold-blooded and ruthless executions that are a cruel demonstration of the horrors of working in journalism in Iraq today”.

85 journalists and media staff have been killed in Iraq since March 2003 of which 62 are Iraqi. The number also includes 14 deaths at the hands of US troops.

We support the following demands of the IFJ:

• Independent reports into the circumstances surrounding the deaths of these journalists.

• US and Iraq authorities should charge or release eight Iraqi journalists, most working for western media, who were arrested in March allegedly because “they pose a security risk to the Iraqi people and coalition forces.” Aidan White has said “These arrests, without formal charges, are nothing short of intimidation. Journalism in Iraq is in the deepest crisis and the authorities should bring forward clear charges or release these journalists immediately. The uncertainty and injustice of arrest and arbitrary detention is intolerable.”

• We also support the work of the IFJ’s safety office in Baghdad, opened last month with the support of Iraqi journalists who have created the Iraqi National Journalism Advisory Panel to improve levels of protection for journalists, to campaign for journalists’ rights and to encourage journalists to work together in the current crisis.

1200 Iraqis Sign Memorandum Calling for Democratic Constitution

More than 1200 Iraqis have signed the Memorandum issued by the Iraqi Committee for Democratic Constitution two weeks ago.

It calls for the adoption of a number of principles to write a permanent constitution that provides the basis for setting up a modern democratic state and consolidates national unity in a free unified democratic federal Iraq. The Committee can be contacted at 54 Westbourne Grove, London W2 5SH and telephoned at 0208 6422981. Email iraqcdc@hotmail.co.uk The campaign for signing the petition is continuing, and the list is here

The memorandum, with the list of signatories, has been sent to: Mr Jalal Talabani, the President of the Iraqi Republic; Dr Ibrahim AL-Jaafary, the Iraqi Prime Minister; Mr Hajem Al-Hassani, the President of the National Assembly; and Mr Humam Hamoudi, the head of the Constitution Drafting Committee.

The following is the full text of the petition:

“We, the undersigned, including Iraqi national and democratic figures, from various tendencies and affiliations, having recognised the great importance of the permanent constitution for Iraq, as a social contract laying the basis for a modern Iraqi state based on the rule of law and institutions, preventing the return of dictatorship and oppression, establishing people’s power and expressing their free will, call upon all those among our people who are genuinely concerned for the cause of democracy and Iraq’s future, to participate actively in writing a democratic constitution that strengthens national unity within a unified democratic federal Iraq.

To achieve this noble aim, that is essential for Iraq’s destiny, national unity and political future for decades to come, we call for adopting the following principles in writing the draft of the permanent constitution:

- Establishing a democratic, pluralistic, parliamentary and federal republic.

- Adherence to the principle of citizenship, and establishing a state of law, institutions and justice, and ensuring political pluralism and peaceful transfer of power

- Separation between executive, legislative and judicial powers.

- Separation between religion and state; respect for the Islamic identity of the majority of Iraqi people, and ensuring the rights of other religions and sects.

- Adopting the International Declaration of Human Rights, stressing on civil and political freedoms the freedom of expressi, demonstration and organisation (as stipulated in the Transitional Administrative Law - the interim constitution ).
- Equality between women and men, and abiding by all international covenants concerning the rights of women and children.

- Prohibiting all forms of discrimination on the basis of belief, race, gender, colour, or ethnic and religious affiliation.

- Ensuring the rights of nationalities, religions and sects

Securing federalism for Iraqi Kurdistan, and national and cultural rights for all the constituents of the Iraqi people, including Turkomans, ChaldeoAssyrians, Faili Kurds, Armenians, Azedians, Sabians, Shabak, Christians, Jews. Adopting a decentralized form of administration for the provinces and their relationship with the central government.

- Ensuring social and economic rights for the citizen; the right to education, health and work, and ensuring social security, and complying with relevant international covenants.

- Ensuring cultural freedom and respect for ideological, political and national pluralism in our national culture.

- Subjugating security forces to elected constitutional institutions and their allegiance to the homeland.

- Developing an effective constitutional mechanism for control over the natural resources, especially the oil wealth, to ensure that it is used to serve the interests of the people and development of national economy, and prevent the plunder and manipulation of this wealth. “ (AJ)

Zimbabwe vigils

Readers who have been appalled at the Mugabe governments so-called clearance programme may wish to get along to the vigil held every Saturday outside the Zimbabwe High Commission, 429 Strand, London, organised by the Zimbabwe Vigil Coalition

Survivors of Torture

Baghdad’s Center for Psychosocial Health- Iraq (CPHI) and Centre for Psycho-Social Care for Survivor of Torture in Baghdad (CPCST), established in January 2004, have released a statement. (MH)

Statement by the management committee and staff of Baghdad Centre for Survivor’s of Torture (the first of its kind, established in January 2004).

On the 21st June every Year the world community will be united in their recognition of the suffering of torture survivors. Various activities take place across the globe in expression of support to torture victims and their families and to condemn regimes, political groups and individual who practice such barbaric act for political purposes.

Physical, psychological and social consequences of torture are well recognised by research and tens of thousands of cases has been documented by human rights organisation, all of which contribute to the challenge of raising awareness about this criminal practice and increase resolve for a united international effort to expose countries and political groups that subject their citizens for torture as the first step towards a complete ban.

Unfortunately Iraq is one of those countries where torture reached an "epidemic proportions” during the 35 years rule of the deposed regime. Moreover prospect of democratic Iraq that respect and protect its citizens , following 2003 occupation was replaced by the reality of terrorism , kidnapping , rape , sectarian violence and illegal detention .The scandalous abuse and torture of Iraqi detainees in Abu Garaib prison was the hallmark of the way Iraqi suspect of illegal activity are dealt with . The promised rule of law was replaced by codes of jungle were the weak and the vulnerable become the prey. Moreover wile recognising the right to deal and respond to the clear and present danger posed by terrorist groups who been targeting innocent civilian increasingly, this has be within the context of rule of law that respects international codes of human right.

Even the long awaited political processes were overshadowed by political and sectarian violence and allegation of torture and abuse of human rights.

21st June will be another great memorial day of world support to victims of torture , Indeed , Iraqi victims will be remembered world wide .Such moral support is vital and important albeit not enough . Iraqi society requires NGOs and voluntary organisation to support and provide practical help to torture survivors. Such help would include medical psychological, legal and most of all recognition by the current and future Iraqi governments to acknowledge the suffering of the victims by deeds and not words. The well supported process of reconciliation and tolerance should not forget the actual victims of the past horrors the citizens who been tortured and lost decades of their lives and often their loved ones too. They have the right foe suffering to be acknowledged, the perpetrators should apologise and receive the punishment according to codes of law. Victims should be compensated for their losses.

Finally all Iraqis who aspire to free democratic and prosperous Iraq aspire to see abolishing of torture and that such commitment will be included in the new Iraqi constitution.

CPHI & CPCST (Iraq- Baghdad)

10th June 2005

Iraq Guide

Need a fact about Iraq? Visit the free online encyclopaedia from Wikipedia (KW)

A Compact for Iraq

After his fifth visit to Iraq, Democrat Senator Joseph P Biden made a major speech
to the Brookings Institute, June 21 2005.(AJ).

Postscript: Challenging Senator Biden

A response to Senator Biden’s speech from a correspondent, a US Government civilian employee working in Iraq, describes the speech as ”from the opening paragraph to the end, almost all cheap shots, half-truths and just plain bullshit.”

’The part right at the beginning about super high security… is true, but the guy is a US Senator, he would be swept around like that anywhere, including in Paris probably! So, a cheap shot half-truth.”

Baghdad has 11 hours of electricity not the 8 hours claimed by Biden. But, more importantly, the correspondent suggests “the output of electricity is HIGHER than last summer, but the DEMAND has gone way up because of the booming consumer economy, so the number of hours of electricity is up only slightly even though electric production is way up. So, another cheap shot half truth.”
On the security front, the newly-trained Iraqi forces and Marines have been “counterattacking the insurgents for months now, versus last year when we were on the defensive and the Green Zone was being mortared every day and police stations were being overrun.” With only two mortars in the last month, and Iraqi police casualties considerably lower, “it is bullshit to say things have not improved in the past year.” “Car bombs blowing up soft targets like vegetable markets, barber shops and restaurants is last ditch desperation,” the correspondent states.

In response to Biden’s point that only $8 billion of $24 billion has been spent on reconstruction, “that is because money is not released, the checks are not actually cut, until the project is done. So if a railway or a dam or power lines take three years to fix, and it is one-third done, then the money to pay is COMMITTED to the project, but only part of it has actually been SPENT. Biden knows this process after 30 years in the Senate, so this is more technically true but practically speaking bullshit.”

In a a polished performance before the Council on Foreign Relations think tank in Washington, Dc, last night Iraqi premier Ibrahim Jaafari acknowledged that terrorism remained a threat but insisted that since the transitional government took office in March, thousands of terrorists had been detained and the number of car bombings had dropped from 12-14 per day to less than one.

'The general trend is very much a downward,' he said. 'Previously, people used to avoid going out but now they stay out very late at night, so there has been a qualitative improvement in the security situation,' said Jaafari.

The Iraqi leader drew analogies with the American war of independence and other struggles for freedom. 'We acknowledge that the blood of your sons has mixed with the blood of our sons and paid a very high price and sacrifice to bring about democracy and freedom,' he said.

Scabbing on the IFTU: a reply to the New York City Labour Against the War and an urgent question for USLAW affiliates

Alan Johnson

Please read these two quotes:

QUOTE 1: November 17, 2004 IFTU STATEMENT ON THE BOMBING OF FALLUJA.

“The Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions wishes to make our position on the current bloody chaos in parts of Iraq absolutely clear. Firstly, the IFTU opposes the use of military force against civilian areas, such as the city of Falluja.

The IFTU believes that a far greater effort needs to be made to negotiate as far as possible, a peaceful ending to the lawlessness, violence and imposition of illegitimate and extreme fundamentalist and totalitarian rule by armed groups in few Iraqi cities. We ask the international labour movement to join us in committing ourselves to a just and peaceful future for an Iraq, free from the occupation and from terrorism.

We opposed the war, the invasion and the occupation of our country because we knew the deadly consequences, which would follow. Those who suffer are as always, the unarmed civilian population.

Iraq once had the strongest labour movement in the Middle East and some million people joined the May Day march in Baghdad in 1959. All that may seem far off now as our country is turn apart by the extreme use of military force by the occupying forces, the fanatics, fundamentalists and terrorists. But the IFTU must remain steadfast in its course and to continue to build the forces of civil society, to support democracy, progress and a peaceful future for the Iraqi people”.

QUOTE 2: June 20 2005 Statement by New York City Labour Against the War

“The IFTU is a pro-occupation mouthpiece … in bed with the "AFL-CIA" alliance… the ICP/IFTU has consistently supported every major aspect of the U.S. war and occupation in Iraq … it has not opposed even the most brutal crimes of U.S. occupation: massacres in Fallujah and other cities..” (Trojan Horse in the Antiwar Movement: Facts About the IFTU, New York City Labor Against the War [NYCLAW] June 20, 2005)

Another vicious assault on the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions has been launched by the extreme fringe of the US left. Its reliability can be judged by comparing the two quotes above. The real question is this: what is the US labour movement, immediately the affiliates of NTCLAW, and other USLAW branches, going to do about the scabbing that is being conducted in its name?

USLAW itself has itself been a solid and valued supporter of the IFTU and is currently touring IFTU representatives, along with representatives from the other Iraqi unions, around the USA. The tour is a great success.

So, what’s happened in the New York City branch? I’ll bet all the money in my pockets against all the money in your pockets that extreme pro-‘resistance’ ‘left’ activists have taken over NYCLAW and are issuing statements in the name of union affiliates who would be appalled and ashamed and angry that the free trade unionists of Iraq are being fingered and the AFL-CIO is being traduced as a CIA front.

Always a few pages short of a full shooting script this extreme fringe of the US far left has gone beyond anything it has done before. It is important to register this. NYCLAW has posted on the internet what amounts to an incitement. Every time one thinks the nadir has been reached one discovers it has not.

My earlier reply to a less hysterical version of the NYCLAW assault, from which I reproduce some lengthy passages here, can be found at
http://www.labourfriendsofiraq.org.uk/archives/000612.html

The NYCLAW makes 15 claims as far as I can see. I deal with each and then make the point that this is all really about politics (ultra-left politics and their poverty) and not conspiracy.

NYCLAW Claim 1. The IFTU is ‘in bed’ with the CIA

Evidence provided? None whatsoever. But the charge is enough to get IFTU militants killed. It is breathtakingly irresponsible, quite as if ultra-left or anarchist kids had taken over NYCLAW. Have they?

NYCLAW Claim 2. The IFTU is in bed with the Iraqi Communist Party and the Iraqi National Accord (the party headed by Iyad Allawi).

The IFTU has links to both the ICP and the INA, yes. There are some leading figures in the ICP and INA that are involved in the leadership of the IFTU. So what? 30 years of totalitarianism left few outside the religious groups, the CP and the exiles with viable networks and a cadre. Thank goodness the ICP were able to help launch the IFTU. Throughout the history of the international labour movement the left has played a similar role, as early organisers and pioneers of the mass unions. Truth is NYCLAW is not bothered that there are ICP’ers in the IFTU. It is bothered about the decision of the ICP to support the UN-backed political process rather than the ‘resistance’. It all about politics. In fact the IFTU is independent of the ICP, the ICP have only a minority on the leading committee, and the ICP demonstrably seek a strong democratic union as part of a vibrant Iraqi civil society, and not a party ‘front’.

Nothing But Genuine

One anarchist critic of the IFTU, Ewa Jasiewicz, who has spent time Iraq (and is cited as an authority by NYCLAW) is more candid than most. She has argued that while the IFTU unions and representatives are ‘nothing but genuine’ (note that) the IFTU should nonetheless be attacked ‘angrily and uncompromisingly’. Huh? How come a trade union federation that is ‘nothing but genuine’ should be attacked? Because the IFTU has the wrong politics. It does not support the resistance. It does not support the this-morning immediate withdrawal of coalition forces. It backs the political process. It is not ‘insurrectionary’. Therefore down with the IFTU.

She wrote in these terms about the assault on the IFTU at the European Social Forum: ‘The anger witnessed from those protesting against the General Secretary of the IFTU can be explained by the fact that Iraqi working class people are, for the first time in 35 years, in a position to form radical unions, new unions, unions which are capable of [being] insurrectionary’.

Note well: the IFTU is ‘nothing but genuine’, the workers need solidarity, but the politics of the IFTU won’t do. The IFTU is not ‘insurrectionary’, you see.

Ewa Jasiewicz argues that ‘Many Iraqis feel no new constitution; government or election can have any credibility, let alone represent any ‘radical’ [the word was Abdullah Muhsin’s] potential when created under occupation’.

But what if the political judgement of the 200,000 strong IFTU in Iraq is better than the political judgement of Ewa Jasiewicz? What about that? What if the best hope to gain sovereignty and democracy without civil war and balkanization of Iraq turns out to be to back the political process critically, while building up one’s own forces? What if the judgement of Iraqis who live in Iraq is more reliable than activists, however brave and selfless, who visit Iraq?

The fact is most Iraqis want to give the political process a go, to try and make it work. They want to give trade unions a go. The IFTU has organized 200,000 of them. The Shia wants to give the political process a go. The Kurds want to give the political process a go. Many Sunni want to give the political process a go.

Ewa Jasiewicz writes ‘The issue at stake is not whether workers in Iraq need solidarity and support, nor whether they are genuine or not if members of an IFTU union. The issue at stake is the political allegiances and agenda of their leadership’. I think Ewa Jasiewicz says what NYCLAW thinks. It is to her credit that she cuts to the chase: the IFTU have the wrong politics. It is to her credit that she does not try and present the IFTU as anything but a genuine trade union. But we are under no obligation to follow her judgement (‘ultra-left’ it used to be called) that only ‘insurrectionary’ trade unions deserve solidarity.

Yes, the IFTU has sat on some governing committees in the last few years. They were absolutely right to do so. There they worked against privatisation, for a decent labour code, for decent pensions, progressive social policy, and for democracy. They represented the interests of their members. Only if you accept NYCLAW’s unspoken premise - that the entire political process is a fake and any involvement in it is pro-imperialist collaboration – does the conclusion – that the IFTU were wrong to sit on those committees or have anything to do with the institutions of the transition - follow. But his premise is mistaken.

The General Secretary of the IFTU explained to The Morning Star newspaper why the decision to sit on governing committees was taken. “Since the Iraqi governing council recognised the IFTU, it has been allowed to sit on government committees dealing with the new labour code, social provision and pensions - both of which were enshrined in the transitional administrative law - as well as those dealing with health and dismissals. Mr Mashadani is keen to emphasise the independence of the IFTU from the state - understandable, given the subservience of Saddam's collaborationist "yellow unions." "Although we sit on some committees, we do so because we want to keep an eye on the situation, to have a stronger say in the welfare of working people," he says. http://www.iraqitradeunions.org/archives/000063.html
In other words the IFTU did what trade unions do: represent and protect the interests of their members. NYCLAW is trying to create a ‘scandal’ when none exists.

NYCLAW Claim 3. The IFTU is the only recognised trade union body (implication: the IFTU is a state union, or a yellow union)

Another fake ‘scandal’. The former Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) recognized the IFTU as a legal and legitimate trade union movement in its Decree No 16 on 28 January 2004 (issued by IGC President Adnan Pachachi). The word ‘sole’ does not appear in any document. On 10 July 2004 The Interim Government sent Official memo No 743 to state ministries and agencies stating that it considered the former IGC's Decree No 16 valid and the IFTU a legal and legitimate trade union.

The original decision was intended to end the monopoly power of Saddam’s yellow union.

The IFTU does not consider itself to be the ‘sole’ union federation, demonstrably opposes such a notion, and works actively for the adoption of ILO conventions, including Articles 87 and 98 which declare that establishing labour unions is the right of the workers themselves, and that governments must not intervene in this issue.

The IFTU also point to the relevant clauses of the supreme Transitional Administrative Law. Clause (d) of Article 13 of the TAL protects “The right of free peaceable assembly and the right to join associations freely, as well as the right to form and join unions and political parties freely, in accordance with the law, shall be guaranteed”. The word ‘sole’ does not appear in the TAL either.

The IFTU stands for the adoption by Iraq of all ILO codes and standards. It has led the way demanding this for the new Iraq. When the IFTU presented its proposals for the new labour code it presented demands for rights for all Iraqi workers not exclusive rights for the IFTU! This proposed labour code had received input from the other federations in Iraq. In other words the IFTU leads the fight for the adoption of a labour code that would guarantee rights to organise for all Iraq’s unions! Gene Bruskin of USLAW met Abdullah Muhsin in London and reported “Abdullah and a representative of the Iraqi government met with representatives of the ILO, on several occasions to discuss the creation of a new labor law. The IFTU has contact with and recognizes the transitional Iraqi government. Abdullah told me that the ILO has reportedly completed a first draft of the labor law that he hopes will assure the right to join unions and give unions the right to bargain, organize and strike, as guaranteed by ILO conventions (emphasis added)”.

At an ICFTU organised training workshop in Amman, held 6-8 February 2005 delegates from all the federations - IFTU, FWCUI, KTU (Erbil), GFITU - met and the rights of all Iraq’s unions to organise was simply not contentious. See
http://www.solidaritycenter.org/docUploads/Training%20REPORT%2Epdf?CFID=14857791&CFTOKEN=93656532

Yes, it is vital that ILO standards are applied in the new Iraq and that the practice – ubiquitous throughout the region - of the state deciding on an ‘official’ union federation is rejected in the new Iraq. The point, however, is that the IFTU fights for the adoption of ILO standards. Another non-existent ‘scandal’.

NYCLAW Claim 4. The IFTU is in bed with the AFL-CIO Solidarity Centre

Look, what can one say? Really, when a union (the IFTU) is being condemned for having a good relationship with the solidarity centre of another national federation (the AFL-CIO) what is there to say? Is this where we have reached, in the company of the revolutionaries of the NYCLAW? Are we now to condemn those unions that forge links of international union solidarity with the AFL-CIO?

NYCLAW Claim 5. ‘The ICP/IFTU has consistently supported every major aspect of the U.S. war and occupation in Iraq’.

The IFTU opposed the war. NYCLAW knows this and given the context is that IFTU militants have been assassinated by the ‘resistance’ this kind of talk really is shameful. The big battalions of the US labour movement have a solemn duty to do whatever they can to stop this kind of lying and fingering (for that is what it is) being presented as the voice of US Labour.

Abdullah Muhsin said this recently to the British TUC's South West regional conference held in Croyde Bay, Devon on 22-23 April 2005.

"Most of you 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 IFTU has upheld a consistently independent line on the post-war reconstruction of Iraq and the political process. This can be confirmed by spending time at the IFTU website.

The IFTU opposed the military action in Falluja the very opposite of what NYCLAW claim (see quotes at top of this post). This is nothing but lying about the IFTU’s record and fingering the IFTU before the most reactionary elements. Fingering is bad enough in a workplace setting. In Iraq it is a matter of life and death.

NYCLAW Claim 6. The elections of January 30, 2005 were a ‘sham’.

No they were not. They were imperfect but overall they were a tremendous step forward for Iraq. Eight and a half million people voted, and they held their purple fingers aloft and danced with joy. The result has been a transitional assembly, a constitutional referendum is planned, and further elections, to elect a sovereign Iraqi government, in December 2005.

The western left came to a crossroads with the January election in Iraq. Whatever our view of the invasion in 2003 (I opposed it) the choice in January 2005 was stark. To support the vast majority of the Iraqi people as they reached out for democracy via the UN-backed political process or to give comfort to those who attacked polling stations, shot election workers, and bombed lines of voters. The democratic choice faced off against the nihilist choice. Listen to these two voices.

The democratic choice was summed up by Abdullah Muhsin, Foreign Representative of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions. He surely spoke for all democrats when he said, "Elections certainly offer the best hope of a secure Iraq and will legitimise the current UN-sanctioned political process, which is aimed at producing a national sovereign transitional assembly and a government mandated by the people. This view rests its legitimacy on international law - UN resolutions 1483, 1511 and 1546 - and the engagement of the majority of Iraqis and their key political parties across Iraq. Surely Iraqis, after all their struggles and sacrifices, have won the right to hold elections. Democracy is not given freely, but won, and to achieve it we shall walk, with heads held high, looking straight into the eyes of the enemies of democracy".

NYCLAW represent the nihilist choice: the eight and a half million votes and the entire political process is just a ‘sham’.

NYCLAW Claim 7. The IFTU has not opposed foreign investment coming into Iraq.

I guess some people might have opposed all foreign investment coming into Iraq. These people would be called…idiots. Iraq desperately needs as much foreign investment as it can get! Tell me one trade union federation anywhere in the world that ‘opposes foreign investment’? And are these union federations stooges of the international capitalist-imperialist conspiracy? Or is it just the IFTU? Privatisation of Iraq’s natural resources is another matter. This the IFTU oppose (by the way the very presence of the ICP on some transitional institutions – which NYCLAW thinks so heinous - was not insignificant in preventing any sell-off, as it happens).

NYCLAW Claim 8. IFTU affiliates have struck only to demand that the occupation regime protect it from the resistance.

You have to admire the sheer cheek I guess. Forgive me, but I can’t stop seeing a comfortable Manhattanite, perhaps between a latte at the Met, a stroll in Central Park, and visit to the Strand to pick up the latest Negri book, sneering at the militants of the IFTU who are rebuilding the unions after 30 years of totalitarianism in a war zone while its leaders are assassinated by death squads and its members immolated and mutilated by theocratic fascists. Tut tut, says the man from the west village, between sips, ‘you IFTU’ers are not taking enough strike action, not of the right kind anyway, not of the kind that will win MY approval’.

But of course the IFTU unions have taken strike action.
March 8 IFTU Website post

“The IFTU-supported strike actions conducted recently at both the Palestine and Sheraton Hotels by more than 750 workers are part of an IFTU organising drive in the hotel sector. The strikes at both hotels were successful in gaining wage increases and improved working conditions for the workers. Additionally, at the Melia Masor and Babil Hotels workers have now elected Union Committees and have entered into negotiations with management there. As a result of this organising drive workers at the Babil Hotel have received a bonus payment of US $600 each and the management at the Melia Mansor Hotel agreed to pay workers a wage increase in order to put them on the same rate as workers at the Palestine and Sheraton hotels”.

UNISON SUPPORTS PUBLIC SERVICE WORKERS' UNION STRIKE ACTION AT PALESTINE HOTEL

Message of support to Public Service Workers' Union (IFTU) from UNISON General Secretary, Dave Prentis: UNISON, the UK's biggest trade union, supports the development of free and independent trade unions in Iraq. The right to take industrial action, including strike action,is an important manifestation of that right. UNISON hopes that the dispute at the Palestine Hotel can be resolved through negotiation, but should this fail we support whatever further legitimate action the Public Service Workers' Union Committee decides is necessary.

Dave Prentis
General Secretary
UNISON

December 12 2004 IFTU Website post

“Abdul Aalye Awlawe Al Rekeabye, President of the Agricultural Workers Union said ‘We organised a strike on 4th and 5th September 2004 at the A1 Kandy Company, demanding a pay increase. All the 170 workers at the company took part in the action and after two days we won a minimum wage agreement for unskilled workers and an increase in the monthly rate from 30, 000 to 70, 000 dinars. We have organised several seminars on trade union rights. We campaigned for reinstatement and compensation for workers who were sacked for their political views by the old regime. Our union has succeeded in obtaining the reinstatement of many workers. We are affiliated to the IFTU and consider our union as one of the main pillars of the federation – we were at the conference that established the IFTU on 16 May 2003’”.

NYCLAW Claim 9. The ICP/IFTU has taken the U.S. government's position that
U.S. troops must remain indefinitely to crush the resistance - which it denounces as "Saddamists," "Islamic fascists" and “terrorists."

The IFTU does not ‘support the occupation’ and nor has it ‘taken the US government’s position’. The IFTU supports the UN-backed political process to end the occupation and its staging posts of elections in January 05, constitutional referendum in October 05, and further elections in December 05. The inchoate violence of the Saddamist-violent Islamic

Fundamentalist ‘resistance’ will produce neither the end of the occupation nor the self-determination of the Iraqi people and the IFTU know it. They know that this violence will only prolong the occupation. They have calculated that fighting within a political process endorsed by the UN, the Shia, the Kurds, and all Iraqi democrats, is the best course for Iraqi labour. It is the only available route to restore sovereignty to Iraq while securing peace and democracy, avoid civil war and the balkanisation of Iraq: ie. secure the best conditions for the struggle of Iraqi labour for social justice and workers interests.

The same basic political judgement has been made by every Iraqi political party bar the Saddamists and the beheaders. And, of course, a tiny vocal minority on the extreme left such as NYCLAW.

Why does NYCLAW only object to the IFTU, by the way? Why not also the entire Kurdish nation? Why not the Shia? Why not the Sunni who voted and participated in the political process? NYCLAW don’t do that only because if they did it would soon become clear what a nonsensical position they have taken.

The leading Shia cleric Sistani said it would be a sin not to vote in the January elections. Do NYCLAW think Sistani and the Shia (maybe 60% of Iraqis) have also ‘taken the U.S. government's position’?

The Kurds (20% of Iraqis) support the UN-backed political process and are developing ideas for the new constitution. Have the Kurds also ‘taken the U.S. government's position’?

The democratic political parties of Iraq support the political process and are planning their December campaigns. Have they all now ‘taken the U.S. government's position’?

And how about the 80-plus countries and organisations that lined up at the EU-US co-hosted conference two days ago to support Iraq’s reconstruction, including Iraq’s neighbours? What about Kofi Annan ("This conference marked a watershed for Iraq")?. Have all those countries and organisations now ‘taken the U.S. government's position’?

NYCLAW remind one of Brecht’s poem about the Stalinist central committee that, upon finding the people had voted the wrong way, issued a call for ‘another people’. NYCLAW ignore the expressed wishes of the vast majority of Iraqis and, in effect, call for another Iraqi people.

The IFTU work for a speedy withdrawal of all troops as part of a political transition process resulting in a fully sovereign but also democratic federal Iraq. So do the vast majority of the Iraqi people. This, they have decided IS their route to self-determination.

The ‘resistance’

As for how the ‘resistance’ should be characterised, the facts are these: the so-called ‘resistance’ has tortured and murdered Hadi Saleh, the IFTU leader. The so-called ‘resistance’ has launched RPG attacks on IFTU headquarters. The so-called ‘resistance’ has mutilated the bodies of IFTU members on the Mosel railway line. The so-called ‘resistance’ murdered Ali Hassan Abd, member of the Oil and Gas Workers' Union. He was assassinated on Friday 18th February 2005 while returning with his children to his home close to the Al-Dorah Oil Refinery in Baghdad. Yet NYCLAW is angry at Abdullah Muhsin for characterising the resistance as ‘terrorists’. Un-be-lievable.

Only the most gifted historians of the future will be able to explain why this tiny vocal minority gave their support to a fascistic Iraqi ‘resistance’ and why so many others indulged them while they did. In the mind of NYCLAW the Iraqi bombers are similar in kind to the French anti-Nazi Resistance of World War Two. The real parallel is with Heinrich Himmler's anti-Allies Nazi Werewolves guerrilla movement that continued to fight in 1945-6 after the fall of Hitler.
Both aimed to use terror to re-impose a tyrannical 'Reich' defined by violence, irrationality, and a leader cult in the face of an allied occupation and a hopeful weary people.

Both murdered the left.

Both murdered trade unionists.

Both murdered those engaged in elections.

Both blew up infrastructure in the hope of stopping reconstruction.

About the record of the Iraqi ‘resistance’ little needs to be said as its actions speak so loud: the torture and murder of trade unionists, the murder of election workers, the murder of voters, the murder of construction workers, the slaying of women MPs, the murder of Iraqi police, the destruction of polling stations, electricity sub-stations, water-treatment plants (and the children gathered outside, happy, dancing, glad the water is about to come back) and oil pipelines, the bombing of lines of voters, the regular massacre of the Shia, the beheadings, the lynchings and, above-all, their bone-deep fear that an Iraqi democracy might just get off the ground. It is of such people and such enormities that Michael Moore has said “The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation are not "insurgents" or "terrorists" or "The Enemy." They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win.” Wrong. It is to such men that Lee Sustar insists we owe ‘unconditional support’. Wrong. It is of such atrocities that NYCLAW does not seem able to raise a whimper of protest while it froths at the mouth about the IFTU. Shame on NYCLAW.

As I write (June 23) the ‘resistance’ has just set off bombs that targeted a Shia mosque, a police patrol, and a public bath-house. More than 30 people have been massacred. These are not anti-imperialist acts. They will not further ‘the self-determination of the Iraqi people’. The perpetrators are not latter-day Minutemen.

NYCLAW Claim 10. The IFTU ‘has not opposed even the most brutal crimes of U.S. occupation: massacres in Fallujah and other cities’.

“The Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions wishes to make our position on the current bloody chaos in parts of Iraq absolutely clear. Firstly, the IFTU opposes the use of military force against civilian areas, such as the city of Falluja” (IFTU statement November 17 2004, posted on the website).

NYCLAW Claim 11. The ICP/IFTU has little support in Iraq, and its slate won only .8 percent in the January 2005 elections.

(First, note in passing that there is no NYCLAW talk of a ‘sham’ poll now! Now the poll is taken as an authentic measure of the distribution of support in Iraq for the various political parties.)

The ICP received 69,920 votes and gained two seats. It’s a start. It fought with almost no resources, in a war-zone, facing the tremendous electoral power of the religious and Kurdish parties, and the near impossibility of campaigning in many areas due to the death squads. It still held mass rallies in football stadiums in the middle of Baghdad and got two seats in the assembly!. 96% of the seats were won by Shite, Sunni, Kurd, Turkoman and Allawi parties. This was to be expected at the first poll. But the left is up and running. We should be celebrating that not sneering.

NYCLAW Claim 12. Muhsin supported Tony Blair's unsuccessful attempt to invite
Allawi, who Muhsin praised as an "Iraqi democrat."

Here are the facts. British Prime Minister Tony Blair had proposed Iyad Allawi be invited to address the 2004 Labour Party conference. A debate followed in the labour movement and left about this proposal, for and against. Abdullah Muhsin wrote a short letter to the Guardian saying he thought Allawi should be invited and debated with. It was a call for people to engage critically in the political process. Allawi’s party represents a large segment of Iraqi opinion. Do the pro-banners - often the same people who call, correctly, for dialogue with parts of ‘the insurgency’ by the way - seriously think that these people can just be ‘boycotted’?

NYCLAW Claim 13. Abdullah Muhsin wrote an article at Labour Party conference that stated "[A]n early date for the unilateral withdrawal of [occupation] troops . . . would be bad for my country, bad for the emerging progressive forces, a terrible blow for free trade unionism, and would play into the hands of extremists and terrorists."

Abdullah Muhsin attended the conference as a guest of the trade union Unison and was invited by other union leaders to speak privately to meetings of union delegates. Abdullah agreed. He did not speak ‘in support of occupation’. He spoke about the IFTU policy about how to end the occupation without civil war. He spoke about the UN-backed political process in Iraq and explained why the IFTU had decided to critically support that process as the best hope for Iraqi workers. He carefully explained to the union delegations why the IFTU had decided against taking up arms alongside the Ba’athist and Islamist ‘resistance’. He spoke about achieving the speedy removal of the troops as part of that UN-backed timetable, along with building up the Iraqi labour movement and democratic political parties, as the best policy for Iraqi workers. Virtually every trade unionist that heard that message understood and backed it overwhelmingly after democratic deliberation and vote. Almost every serious trade unionist who had the issue clearly set out before her has reached the same conclusion: yes, this is what I would do if I was in your shoes.

This is what Tony Woodley. Leader of the TGWU, one of Britain’s largest unions, and a fierce opponent of the invasion of Iraq, said after the conference, “Our voting decisions were influenced by one factor above all others - the representations made to us by the spokesman for the Iraqi trade unions. I make no apology for listening to the representative of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions in Brighton. Our traditions of solidarity and internationalism could not let us do otherwise. And let me make it clear that, as far as the T&G was concerned, it was clear advice from Abdullah Muhsin which tipped the balance. He made a compelling case about the disasters which might follow if troops withdrew before the Iraqi trade union movement felt their country was secure. So I am happy with how the T&G voted, and I am confident that we deserted neither our proud traditions nor our conference policy in so doing”.
Tony Woodley is right. Solidarity with the IFTU is a duty owed to the labour movement’s ‘traditions of solidarity and internationalism’.

NYCLAW Claim 14. Labour Friends of Iraq (the IFTU's British support group) support the occupation.

LFIQ http://www.labourfriendsofiraq.org.uk/ is not an ‘IFTU support group’. We are a British Labour Party group set up to build direct links of solidarity between the emerging Iraqi labour movement and progressive organisations and the British labour movement.

LFIQ has sharply criticised the Bush administration. Here are some articles on the LFIQ website. December 16, 2004 ‘Bush Does Not Get It’; December 31, 2004 ‘Bush Does Not Get It (Part 2): The Assault on the Geneva Convention undermines the War on Terror’; January 06, 2005 ‘Bush Does Not Get It (Part 3): ‘One does not reach democracy, or freedom, through torture’; January 10, 2005 ‘Bush Does Not Get it (4): Discharge Tracy Perkins!’; January 13, 2005 ‘Bush Does Not Get It (5): Lessons from the agony of Falluja’; January 17, 2005 ‘Bush Does Not Get It (6) Torture: the case for absolute prohibition’; April 20, 2005 ‘Bush Does Not Get It (7): The Geneva Convention and Civilian Deaths’; April 20, 2005 ‘Bush Does Not Get It (8): The Human Rights Deficit in Iraq’s Prisons’; April 21, 2005 ‘Bush Does Not Get It (9) The Agony of Falluja’; May 06, 2005 ‘Bush Does Not Get It (10) Stop Bolton!’.

The basic approach of Labour Friends of Iraq is captured in these statements, all taken from our website:
“We've already got a doctrine and it isn't neoconservative. It is the doctrine of the international community pursuing global democratisation and development.
“We have argued that purely coercive ‘solutions’ in Iraq are a chimera. We need ‘political warfare’: capacity-building the organisations of democratic grassroots Iraq, economic reconstruction on a scale and urgency that would deserve the name ‘Marshall Plan’, a step-change in international community involvement in security, and a fierce commitment to human rights and the rule of law, all to underpin the UN-backed political process which – by the speedy achievement of full Iraqi sovereignty and withdrawal of coalition forces - remains Iraq’s only hope”.

“Send Charles Graner to jail but also sack Donald Rumsfeld. We should jail Lindy but also close Guantanamo Bay”.

NYCLAW call LFIQ a ‘pro-occupation’ group. This is false. We are actually a pro-Iraqi labour, pro-Iraqi democrats and pro-Iraqi women’s’ groups. We launched Labour Friends of Iraq in October 2004 to make urgent practical solidarity with the Iraqi democrats by, firstly, uniting the labour movement and the left here in Britain around support of the fledgling labour movement in Iraq. Our record:
- LFIQ members helped organise a fringe meeting of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions on 'Solidarity with Grassroots Iraq' at the 2004 Labour Party conference

- LFIQ (with kind help from the trade union USDAW) has produced a 'Toolkit for Solidarity with Grassroots Iraq'.

- LFIQ has organised global solidarity campaigns with Iraqi democrats such as an appeal to save the life of Iraqi trade unionist Nozad Ismail

http://www.labourfriendsofiraq.org.uk/archives/000097.html and a petition for the defence of journalists in Iraq
http://www.labourfriendsofiraq.org.uk/archives/000589.html
- LFIQ has circulated model resolutions to Constituency Labour Parties on topics such as US Military Action in Fallujah

http://www.labourfriendsofiraq.org.uk/archives/000040.html which we opposed and the Defence of Iraqi Trade Unionists.

- We have addressed local Labour Parties (read a speech at, http://www.labourfriendsofiraq.org.uk/archives/000420.html) regional conferences, and helped to bring together UK trade unionists and Iraqi trade unionists. LFIQ supporters were instrumental in organising a tour of the Birmingham trade unions, for instance, for Abdullah Muhsin, the IFTU rep in London. We have publicised vigils in support of Iraqi women's and students' rights, under vicious attack by Fundamentalists. We have promoted the work of the Jubilee Iraq Network.

- LFIQ has publicised strikes in Iraq such as the successful Baghdad Hotel Workers Strike in February 2005, and helped to network support for the strikers.
- LFIQ has pressed Government Ministers and the Prime Minister in the House of Commons for commitments on the defence of trade union rights in the new Iraq, on the treatment of detainees, and on democracy.

There are many LFIQ-supporting MPs and the number is growing. They have tabled questions and Early Day Motions (resolutions)
http://www.labourfriendsofiraq.org.uk/archives/000593.html to give the House an opportunity to show its support for grassroots Iraq. We have organised meetings for visiting Iraqi democrats in the House of Commons.

- The LFIQ website http://www.labourfriendsofiraq.org.uk/ has hundreds of visitors each day, and growing, from the UK, Europe, America, Australia, Asia, Iraq and the Middle East. It acts as a platform for the voices of Iraqi Democrats to be heard. We post news, interviews with the political parties, speeches and policy statements and comment pieces about Iraq. It also acts as a forum for the democratic left in Britain to discuss Iraq.
NYCLAW Claim 15. NCYLAW claims that Sami Ramadani is ‘an Iraqi trade unionist’.

He is in fact an academic who lives in London, a supporter of the resistance, and he left Iraq in the 1960s, we think. For more see http://www.labourfriendsofiraq.org.uk/archives/000612.html I

Going beyond the hysterical ‘claims’

It is important to refute the NYCLAW ‘claims’. But it is as important to grasp that the NYCLAW case against the IFTU is really about politics.

The IFTU has decided to spurn violence, and to work for a swift withdrawal of troops as part of the UN-backed political process. This, and this alone, condemns the IFTU in the eyes of some. For NYCLAW anyone who supports the UN-backed political process and timetable (elections to a constituent assembly in January 2005, a constitutional referendum in October and further elections in December 2005) is a collaborator and a quisling. For NYCLAW anyone who stops this process with bombs is an ‘anti-imperialist’. This has got nothing to do with labour solidarity and everything to do with ultra-leftist politics masquerading as labour solidarity. Every act of critical engagement in the political process, every act of wary participation in its timetable and institutions by the IFTU, every effort to use the political process on behalf of its members, is an act of treachery and collaboration with the imperialists.

But ask yourself, is NYCLAW right? Think about the situation in Iraq. Is the IFTU policy really treachery? Put yourself in their shoes. You are building a union while crawling from the wreckage of three decades of totalitarian repression, your country is occupied by US-UK troops who deny sovereignty but hold back a fascistic Saddamist-violent Islamic Fundamentalist attempt to block democracy and re-impose tyranny. Of course you will seek to critically support the UN-backed political process, codified in UN Security Council Resolution 1546! After all, this political process is backed not only by the United Nations and the international community but also by the Kurds (who see it as the road to a federal Iraq), the Shia and by many Sunni. It is backed by the democratic Iraqi political parties. And, yes, it is also backed by the Iraqi Communist Party, and the democratic left. It provides for elections, a constitution and a feasible way to get your country back from both the US and the Saddamists.

And ask yourself, can all these forces – the great majority of Iraqis - really be mistaken? Can they all be ‘quislings’? Wouldn’t that mean that Iraq is some kind of ‘quisling nation’ that has to be brought back to the ‘anti-imperialist’ straight and narrow by foreign jihadi suicide bombers, ex-Saddamist thugs, and the New York City Labour Against the War group? This is the logic of the NYCLAW view.

The great majority of Iraqis back the political process – critically, while organising themselves, preparing actively for a sovereign future - because it offers the only feasible way to create a unified, federal Iraq, democratic and at peace. The January elections to the transitional assembly – in which, though far from perfect, eight and a half million Iraqis voted, held their purple fingers aloft and danced with joy - prepared the ground for a national constitutional referendum in October 2005. Fresh elections will be held under the terms of the new constitution in December 2005. A sovereign elected Iraqi government and assembly will then tell the multinational force to stay or go. The prospects of the US and UK troops staying in Iraq in defiance of an elected Iraqi government’s expressed wishes are zero. Such a policy would be opposed by the entire Iraqi nation and the entire international community. It is never, ever, going to happen.

But none of these real-world political calculations mean anything in the world of NYCLAW where striking childish ‘revolutionary’ postures is all. You will search high and low in the NYCLAW post for any arguments that factor in the real world.

On what grounds do NYCLAW think the immediate withdrawal of troops would not lead to civil war in Iraq? Silence.

What political character do NYCLAW think the resistance has? Silence.

Why have the IFTU - who live in Iraq - taken the view that immediate withdrawal might produce civil war in Iraq? Silence (sorry, NYCLAW do have an answer: the IFTU are in bed with the CIA).

Do NYCLAW think that the eight and a half million Iraqis who voted in January agree with its view that the poll they risked their lives to take part in (think of that!) was a ‘sham’? Silence.

What are NYCLAW detailed counter-arguments to the IFTU’s thought-through political position regarding 1546? Silence.

NYCLAW use the old Stalinist amalgam technique against the IFTU again and again. That dirty little ploy used to work like this: Trotsky opposes Stalin, Hitler opposes Stalin, therefore Trotsky is a Hitlerite. Applied to the IFTU by NYCLAW it takes this form. The US government opposes immediate withdrawal, the IFTU oppose immediate withdrawal, therefore “The ICP/IFTU has taken the U.S. government's position..’.

There is no conspiracy. But there is an extreme left that - bowled over by the success of Chomsky and Moore perhaps? - has lost much of its ability to think politically. Everything it says now takes on the shape of a 30 minute TV ‘expose’. It has lost the ability to see complexity. All is now cartoon-like, all is cast in a stark Manichean black or white polarity. All is conspiracy. In that regard the NYCLAW statement is just another example of a Grand Political Dumbing Down.

If we are brave enough to resist that Grand Political Dumbing Down what do we see?

We see that the Iraqi democrats have decided that the best hope in Iraq lies in building up the strength of the forces of democracy, human rights, women’s rights, trade unions, while extending critical support to the UN-backed transition process. We see them fighting within the process to oppose privatisation and torture, and propose a decent labour code, a democratic constitution, human rights and the rule of law. In this policy the IFTU – along with the Kurds, the Shia, the Communists and the great majority of Iraqis – are surely correct. And at any rate, it’s a legitimate response by a legitimate trade union to the awful terrain it has to fight on. And that’s all it is. Nobody, but nobody, has come up with a grown-up alternative. Just slogans and name-calling.

The entire hullabaloo on the extreme left about the IFTU comes down to this: an inability to think politically. The invasion has produced mixed consequences that have to be reckoned with. Iraqi civilian deaths, torture at Abu Ghraib, and the continuing high levels of violence have to be opposed but in a context and on a terrain also marked by the removal and trial of Saddam, the end of his apparatus of terror (but its reorganisation as a ‘resistance’, now in alliance with Al Qaeda), the return of the refugees, the joy of the Kurds, the religious freedoms now enjoyed by the Shia, the creation of a UN-backed political process, the 8 million voters in the January elections, a fantastic display of ‘purple power’, a new democratic assembly, one in three members of which are women, the rebirth of trade unionism and the labour movement, the rise of new democratic political parties, a relatively free press, the reflooding of the Marshlands, the return of the Marsh Arabs, the opening up of the mass graves, the beginning of a truth and justice process and the spread throughout the region of a new confidence in demanding freedom and democracy.

If you stand on this real-world terrain a series of tough questions arise. How can the opportunities to make a transition to democracy be exploited politically by labour? How can the United Nations be persuaded to become more involved? How should labour relate to the fledgling institutions of the new Iraqi democracy? How can the fight for the end of the occupation be balanced by the need to avoid civil war and balkanisation of the country? What to make of the contradictory role being played by the US? These questions preoccupy Iraqi democrats. They do not even occur to some others.

This flat refusal to think politically ends up in the grotesque irresponsibility of the NYCLAW statement in which the IFTU are called ‘a pro-occupation mouthpiece … in bed with the "AFL-CIA" alliance… has consistently supported every major aspect of the U.S. war and occupation in Iraq … has not opposed even the most brutal crimes of U.S. occupation: massacres in Fallujah and other cities..”

Who are the IFTU?

Once we take off the NYCLAW glasses we can see that a quite remarkable thing is happening in Iraq. It is something the left should be celebrating and supporting. A free trade union movement – the basic hope for social justice in Iraq or anywhere else - is emerging in Iraq from the nightmare of Saddam’s totalitarian regime. It is fighting, in conditions we can barely imagine, for workers rights, social justice, peace and democracy. It is weak. But it exists, and it fights! It’s the best thing to have happened in the region in decades. That we have allowed a small vocal minority to distract us from this fact is terrible enough. That we have allowed them to calumny the infant Iraqi labour movement is a crime. Enough of that. Stand up, speak out!

Where did this movement come from?

There are five letters missing from the NYCLAW account of the IFTU and when we bring those five letters back in the story changes entirely. Here they are: WDTUM.

These five letters stand for Workers Democratic Trade Union Movement. This was the underground free trade union network sustained at tremendous cost during the nightmare years of Saddam when free unions were abolished and free trade unionists hounded and tortured.

Formed inside Iraq in 1980 the Workers Democratic Trade Union Movement (WDTUM) existed throughout the 24 years of rule of Saddam’s Ba’ath party. The WDTUM was composed of trade unionists, intellectuals, and liberals, communists, and women’s, youth and students advocates.

Abroad the WDTUM played a significant role in exposing Saddam’s atrocities and genocide against Iraqis. Inside Iraq its members worked to collect information - at great risk- about summary executions, torture and impressments and send them to trade union centres around the world.

In Britain, in 1982, as a result of information passed on by the WDTUM to tobacco workers union leader Dougie Grieve, the TUC conference passed a motion condemning the atrocities against workers in Iraq. The WDTUM helped to organize a strike of four thousand tobacco workers in Iraqi Kurdistan (Sulaymanyah) in open defiance of Saddam’s regime. Saddam’s security apparatus crushed the strike and four workers were executed.

In Spring 2003 it was the hardened militants of the WDTUM that created the IFTU. The WDTUM helped organize 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. They came together on 16 May to form the backbone of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions.

The IFTU has achieved some great things against the odds. Yes, of course it has had to take account of the balance of forces on the ground and the political possibilities of the situation. Of course it has had to compromise. Every trade unionist worth his or her salt will know that imperative (and the way there are always some who will shriek ‘sell out!’ on principle). In just over one year, 12 national unions in key sectors of the Iraq’s economy were 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.

In June 2004 six of the IFTU’s constituent unions held their first open and free workers’ conferences in Baghdad and each had elected a leading committee of 15 members. These unions were: The Service Union, the Agriculture and Food Staff Workers Union and Transport and Communication Union, the Mechanic, Printing and Metal Workers Union, the Construction and Wood Workers Union and the Leather Products and Textile Workers Union.

The IFTU has welcomed a series of fact-finding missions from the international trade union movement. The reports of these missions can be consulted at the IFTU website [http://www.iraqitradeunions.org/]. For the latest report, from April 2005, go to http://www.iraqitradeunions.org/archives/000302.html

The ICFTU visited Iraq on a fact-finding mission in February of 2004. The mission was led by P Kamalam, Middle East officer of the ICFTU, and consisted of representatives of the TUC, the AFL-CIO, the UGTT of Tunisia (with the support of the International Confederation of Arab Trade Unions ICATU), and two global union confederations the ITF (transport) and the EI (education). The TUC representative, Owen Tudor (Head of the TUC European Union and International Relations Department) wrote a report on Iraq and the IFTU that can be read at http://www.tuc.org.uk/international/tuc-7859-f0.cfm.

Current Work of the IFTU

The work of the IFTU can be examined in detail by spending a few hours over at their website http://www.iraqitradeunions.org/

Urgent Question for NYCLAW Affiliates

Does the NYCLAW unequivocally condemn the many acts of torture, murder and mutilation that have been carried out by the ‘resistance’ against the IFTU?

Nothing less than a public and unequivocal condemnation by NYCLAW of the assassination of IFTU leaders and members can begin to repair the damage caused by its grossly irresponsible statement.

If such an equivocal condemnation is not forthcoming then union affiliates to NYCLAW, and other USLAW branches, may wish to consider indicating their distance from NYCLAW by passing appropriate resolutions.

The NYCLAW arguments are not new. When they were raised over here, in Britain, the UK trade unions rejected them. When a handful of people (albeit prominent) tried to finger the IFTU as collaborators it got a blistering response from Mick Rix, left-wing ex-General Secretary of Aslef, the train drivers union, now political officer at the GMB union. He resigned from the Stop the War Coalition leadership, writing in these terms to its Chair, Andrew Murray, on 21 October 2004:

"If you think I am going to sit back and agree with beheadings,
kidnappings, torture and brutality, and out right terrorization of ordinary Iraqi and others, then you can forget it. (…) "I don't think you also realise the danger that your actions and those of the Respect colleagues in the Stop the War Coalition have placed [the Foreign Representative of the IFTU] against attacks from extremists. Some people talk about life and death situations, some unfortunately have to live it and so do their families in Iraq and I don't see why you, Respect or the Coalition have a right to think you can place them in that situation, when they are living daily with those consequences, because they are not the "new" friends of yourself, George [Galloway], StWC or Respect such as extreme nationalists, or religious fundamentalists. It is you who have attacked the IFTU and Abdullah (…) I will not stand by and say or do nothing, when decent trade unionists, and socialists in the UK, and good committed socialists and trade unionists in Iraq or elsewhere are being attacked, by people who politically have made alliances with, and are supporting, religious fanatics and people who are basically against everything that our movement really stands for."

That is the authentic voice of international trade unionism. Solidarity with the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions is the right course.

Visit the BBC website for "One Day In Iraq"

A US Aid worker describes a workshop on the Iraqi constitution and elections between Christians and Muslims.(MH)

Why solidarity with the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions is the right course for the left: a reply to Lee Sustar and Sami Ramadani

Alan Johnson, Labour Friends of Iraq

Introduction

The Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) has grown to over 200,000 members since the fall of Saddam in Spring 2003. It is the largest union federation in Iraq and is a vital to the prospects of democracy in Iraq. Representatives from the IFTU are currently in the USA as guests of US Labour Against the War (USLAW). This is an important moment. It is an opportunity for Iraqi and US labour to make common cause. To read an AFL-CIO report on the tour’s progress go here. To listen to a recording of speeches made in the US by two IFTU delegates, Abed Sekhi and Adnan A. Rashed, go here.

Yet this is the moment Lee Sustar has chosen to write a denunciation of the IFTU as a collaborationist union that should be boycotted by US workers - Does Iraq’s main union support the U.S. occupation?

This article is a response to Sustar written by a member of Labour Friends of Iraq, a British Labour Party group set up in 2004 to build direct links of solidarity between the emerging Iraqi labour movement, progressive organisations and the British labour movement.

First, I ask who is Lee Sustar (and his authority Sami Ramadani) and assess their arguments. Second, I ask who are the IFTU and assess the union’s origins and record. Third, I answer the six charges Sustar makes against the IFTU. Fourth I attach some appendices: (i) a transcript of the speech given by Abdullah Muhsin, the International Representative of the IFTU to the Labour Party conference in 2004 (ii) the statement issued by the British trade union UNISON after the extreme ‘left’s’ verbal and physical assault on IFTU general secretary Subhi Al Mashadani and two Iraqi women members of the IFTU at the European Social Forum in 2004. (iii) a speech by Abdullah Muhsin to the South West Trades Union Congress, 22-3 April 2005 (iv) a short note about, and some endorsements of, Labour Friends of Iraq, whom Sustar traduces in the course of his article, and whom I defend.

Part 1: Who is Lee Sustar?

Lee Sustar is a leading member of the Trotskyist ‘International Socialist Organisation’ (ISO) and his article first appeared in their newspaper, Socialist Worker. The ISO has a shameful position on Iraq: it offers ‘unconditional support’ to the military victory of the Iraqi ‘resistance’. Bluntly put, the ISO stands with the fascistic ‘resistance’ against the democrats in Iraq. The ISO sees the Saddamist-violent Islamic Fundamentalist bombers as progressive ‘anti-imperialists’ and sees the democrats, including the IFTU, as reactionary ‘collaborators’. Turning the world upside down, the ISO stands with those who blew up the polling stations and the voters in Iraq on January 31 and not with those who voted and danced with joy, purple fingers held aloft.

ISO leader Sharon Smith has written, ‘The antiwar movement must not lose sight of the fact that its main enemy is at home--any resistance to that enemy deserves our unconditional support…If we are waiting for the “ideologically pure” movement … we could be waiting forever.’ (Sharon Smith, Socialist Worker, US, January 25 2005). Her words are chosen carefully: ‘any resistance’ and ‘unconditional support’. Our response to the ISO should be as careful.

The ISO has previously (April 15 2005) urged ‘unions in the West’ to ‘reject collaboration with the IFTU’ and to boycott the IFTU as ‘collaborators with imperialism’. Sustar now urges these nursery-school slogans on the US labour movement.

The ISO represents not ‘the left’ but a small segment of the left, an extreme fragment, but one that has made a lot of the running on this issue and must be challenged. Most decent left-wingers do not support Sustar and have backed the IFTU. Nothing in this article is intended to imply otherwise. It is, rather, an appeal to that decent left to stand up and speak out about the treatment of the IFTU by this tiny vocal minority, and disassociate themselves from it.

Who is Sami Ramadani?

Lee Sustar’s article leans heavily on the ideas of Sami Ramadani, whom Sustar commends to US labour as a trade unionist, a ‘political exile from Saddam’s Iraq’ and the authentic voice of Iraqi workers. It is necessary to correct the impression given by Sustar.

In fact Sami Ramadani is an academic living in London. Sustar can correct us if this information is wrong but we think Ramadani left Iraq in 1967, 38 years ago, and before the Ba’ath, let alone Saddam, came to power.

Ramadani, a political man, has long backed the ‘resistance’ in Iraq and called for a boycott of the IFTU. He was characterised by Alex Gordon, a British trade unionist - an RMT member with a record second to none of building solidarity with the Iraq unions - as a "useful mouthpiece to cheerlead 'the popular resistance' from the safe distance of London".

In other words, Ramadani talks big, uses inflammatory rhetoric, stirs up hatred against Iraqi democrats, and then ducks away from the ugly consequences.

For instance, Ramadani argued that the US Army and Government carried out the mass murder of Shia Pilgrims in March 2003 and he attacked the IFTU for … misleading the Iraqi people by blaming terrorists for this crime! ‘Those particular bombings were widely described by Iraqis at the time as the work of occupation forces. Obviously, for those who know the reality of IFTU, it is not surprising that the [IFTU] statement does not even mention the occupation’ he wrote. This kind of conspiracy-talk and desperate blaming of the IFTU for anything and everything is Ramadani’s modus operandi.

At the European Social Forum held in London in 2004 Ramadani urged participants to boycott the IFTU by walking out when the IFTU General Secretary Subhi Al Mashadani tried to speak (Subhi is a very brave man who was tortured in Saddam’s jails where he dwelt for ten long years, and is now rebuilding the unions in Iraq). Ramadani wrote this of Subhi, ‘No prominent supporter of the Vichy regime would have been allowed to set foot in Britain let alone get near a trade union platform or a rally supporting the French people’s struggle against the Vichy regime and its occupation masters. For the Iraqi people…the US tanks, helicopter gunships and heavy bombs are no different from the Hitler’s forces in France’.

What did Ramadani mean? From the safety of his office in London Metropolitan University he dropped a hint about how this survivor of Saddam’s torture rooms and jails should be viewed. He warned ominously, ‘Iraqi collaborators can be as treacherous and deceitful as any of the collaborators in Europe under the Nazi jackboot’. Well, we all know what to do with Nazi collaborators, don’t we?

But when the IFTU leaders were physically attacked at the European Social Forum Ramadani took cover (‘it was wrong and undemocratic to disrupt the European Social Forum plenary’).

And when so-called ‘resistance’ fighters horribly tortured and murdered Hadi Saleh, a leader of the IFTU, (see) what was Ramadani’s reaction? Did he cheer and compare the act to that of a French Resistance fighter gunning down a Nazi at a road side café in 1944 as one might have expected? No, that’s not the Ramadani-style. Again Ramadani took cover. In a letter to the Independent newspaper on January 7 2005 he wrote to condemn the murder but added ‘it is highly relevant to inform your readers that Mr Salih was a leading cadre in the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP)’.

Worse, Sustar’s close comrade, Alex Callinicos, the theoretical guru of the British SWP, sneered at the international labour movement outcry at Hadi Salih’s torture and murder as a hullabaloo’ about a man who ‘supports the occupation’

Hadi Salih was seized at the age of 21 by Saddam’s secret police and sentenced to summary execution for forming a trade union at his work place. He spent five years of his life in the filth of one of Saddam’s prisons, tortured and beaten but still alive, he had his sentence by some miracle commuted to permanent exile. He opposed the war, and continued his work to unite the people of his country. Refusing to give up his fight against Ba’athism he organised the IFTU. For that he was murdered. For Mr Alex Callinicos of the Socialist Workers Party all this is just a “hullabaloo” about a collaborator.

The international labour movement responded magnificently to the individual human tragedy of Hadi Saleh with an outpouring of anger and solidarity. But this same movement all too often cedes its political voice to the likes of Callinicos. Its time to push his kind aside and reclaim the left for decent political principles. Enough franchising-out of the big politics to the likes of Callinicos.
A tiny minority in Britain has attacked the IFTU in a most shameful manner. The IFTU were fingered in the Arab press as ‘quislings’ by George Galloway MP, leader of the pro-resistance Respect Party, political ally of Callinicos (and the ‘dear friend’ of Tariq Aziz, a man accused of crimes against humanity as Saddam Hussein’s lieutenant). The IFTU has been denounced as a ‘fake union’ by the Socialist Workers Party, the main bag-carriers and cheer-leaders for Galloway. The IFTU have been spurned as ‘collaborators’ by the leaders of the Stop the War Coalition. IFTU representatives were intimidated and shouted down at the European Social Forum.

Lee Sustar - whose organisation has close political ties to the British Socialist Workers Party and Respect – offers only a more polite version of this incoherent ‘anti-imperialism’. He rejects the serious social justice and pro-labour politics of the IFTU in favour of infantile sloganising: ‘troops out now, victory to the resistance!’. He camouflages this lunatic politics as a piece of investigative journalism.

The Politics of organising amid occupation and terror

It is important to refute Ramadani and Sustar’s ‘charges’, and I do, below, at length. But it is important to grasp that their case against the IFTU is really about politics.

The IFTU has decided to spurn violence, and to work for a swift withdrawal of troops as part of the UN-backed political process. This, and this alone, condemns the IFTU in the eyes of some extremists. For Ramadani-Sustar anyone who supports the UN-backed political process and timetable (elections to a constituent assembly in January 2005, a constitutional referendum in October and further elections in December 2005) is a collaborator and a quisling. For Sustar anyone who stops this process with bombs is an ‘anti-imperialist’ to be supported unconditionally. Every act of critical engagement in the political process, every act of wary participation in its timetable and institutions by the IFTU, every effort to use the political process on behalf of its members, is an act of ‘treachery’ and ‘collaboration’ with the ‘imperialists’.

But ask yourself, are Sustar-Ramadani right? Think about the situation in Iraq. Is the IFTU policy really treachery? Put yourself in their shoes. You are building a union while crawling from the wreckage of three decades of totalitarian repression, your country is occupied by US-UK troops who deny sovereignty but hold back a fascistic Saddamist-violent Islamic Fundamentalist attempt to block democracy and re-impose tyranny. Of course you will seek to critically support the UN-backed political process, codified in UN Security Council Resolution 1546! After all, this political process is backed not only by the United Nations and the international community but also by the Kurds (who see it as the road to a federal Iraq), the Shia and by many Sunni. It is backed by the democratic Iraqi political parties. And, yes, it is also backed by the Iraqi Communist Party, and the democratic left. It provides for elections, a constitution and a feasible way to get your country back from both the US and the Saddamists.

And ask yourself, can all these forces – the great majority of Iraqis - really be mistaken? Can they all be ‘quislings’? Wouldn’t that mean that Iraq is some kind of ‘quisling nation’ that has to be brought back to the ‘anti-imperialist’ straight and narrow by foreign jihadi suicide bombers and ex-Saddamist thugs? This is the logic of the Ramadani-Sustar-Callinicos view.

The great majority of Iraqis back the political process – critically, while organising themselves, preparing actively for a sovereign future - because it offers the only feasible way to create a unified, federal Iraq, democratic and at peace. The January elections to the transitional assembly – in which, though far from perfect, eight and a half million Iraqis voted, held their purple fingers aloft and danced with joy - prepared the ground for a national constitutional referendum in October 2005. Fresh elections will be held under the terms of the new constitution in December 2005. A sovereign elected Iraqi government and assembly will then tell the multinational force to stay or go. The prospects of the US and UK troops staying in Iraq in defiance of an elected Iraqi government’s expressed wishes are zero. Such a policy would be opposed by the entire Iraqi nation and the entire international community. It is never, ever, going to happen.

But none of these real-world political calculations mean anything in the world of Sustar-Ramadani where striking ‘radical’ postures is all. The latter wrote, ‘It is time to call a spade a spade: the leaders of the IFTU and the ICP are part of a left-wing sounding, trade-union ‘friendly’ campaign to oppose the immediate withdrawal of the occupation forces from Iraq under the pretext of keeping them to prevent civil war and to hold elections in January’. But note that you will search high and low in these kind of articles for any arguments that support Ramadani’s assertions, any factoring in of the real world.

On what grounds do Ramadani-Sustar think the immediate withdrawal of troops would not lead to civil war in Iraq? Silence.

What political character do Sustar-Ramadani think the resistance has? Silence.

Why have the IFTU - who live in Iraq - taken the view that immediate withdrawal might produce civil war in Iraq? Silence.

Does Ramadani-Sustar really think over eight million Iraqis would have voted in January without any coalition presence? Silence.

What are Ramadani-Sustar’s detailed counter-arguments to the IFTU’s thought-through political position regarding 1546? Silence.

Ramadani hints darkly that the IFTU don’t really think immediate withdrawal would lead to civil war. This is just ‘a pretext’, we are told. Evidence? None. What does Ramadani think are the IFTU’s real reasons? Ramadani doesn’t say but he does mention the ‘CIA’. It is desperate stuff.

Sustar has studied the Ramadani technique closely and employs it throughout his scandal-sheet. Dark hints are dropped about the ‘cold-war’ unionism of the ICFTU, and the plots of the CIA; sinister (and non-existent) links are hinted at to the neo-conservatives; questions are left hanging about where the IFTU gets its money from; and the right of Iraqi workers to get back the assets of the old Saddam yellow unions, paid for by their dues, is presented as some kind of theft.

Sustar also uses the old Stalinist amalgam technique against the IFTU. That dirty little ploy used to work like this: Trotsky opposes Stalin, Hitler opposes Stalin, therefore Trotsky is a Hitlerite. Applied to the IFTU by Sustar it takes this form: IFTU Mosul Leader Saady Edan opposes immediate withdrawal, President Bush opposes immediate withdrawal, therefore Edan and the IFTU have, according to Sustar, ‘essentially the official position of the Bush administration’. It’s shameful stuff.

The Iraqi democrats have decided that the best hope for peace and democracy in Iraq lies in building up the strength of the forces of democracy, human rights, women’s rights, trade unions, while extending critical support to the UN-backed transition process. They fight within the process to oppose privatisation and torture, and propose a decent labour code, a democratic constitution, human rights and the rule of law. In this policy the IFTU – along with the Kurds, the Shia, the Communists and the great majority of Iraqis – are surely correct. And at any rate, it’s a legitimate response by a legitimate trade union to the awful terrain it has to fight on. And that’s all it is. Nobody, but nobody, has come up with a grown-up alternative. Just slogans and name-calling.

The entire hullabaloo on the extreme left about the IFTU comes down to this: an inability to think politically. The invasion has produced mixed consequences that have to be reckoned with. Iraqi civilian deaths, torture at Abu Ghraib, and the continuing high levels of violence have to be opposed but in a context and on a terrain also marked by the removal and trial of Saddam, the end of his apparatus of terror (but its reorganisation as a ‘resistance’ in alliance with Al Qaeda), the return of the refugees, the joy of the Kurds, the religious freedoms now enjoyed by the Shia, the creation of a UN-backed political process, the 8 million voters in the January elections, a fantastic display of ‘purple power’, a new democratic assembly, one in three members of which are women, the rebirth of trade unionism and the labour movement, the rise of new democratic political parties, a relatively free press, the reflooding of the Marshlands, the return of the Marsh Arabs, the opening up of the mass graves, the beginning of a truth and justice process and the spread throughout the region of a new confidence in demanding freedom and democracy.

On this real-world terrain a series of questions arise. How can the opportunities to make a transition to democracy be exploited politically by labour? How can the United Nations be persuaded to become more involved? How should labour relate to the fledgling institutions of the new Iraqi democracy? How can the fight for the end of the occupation be balanced by the need to avoid civil war and balkanisation of the country? What to make of the contradictory role being played by the US? These questions preoccupy Iraqi democrats. They do not even occur to some others.

This flat refusal to think politically ends up in sloganising about ‘unconditional support’ to ‘any resistance’ to the USA while attacking the beleaguered democrats of the IFTU as ‘quislings’.

Part 2. Who are the IFTU?

If we were to push Sustar aside (and Callinicos and Galloway and the rest of this tiny extreme fragment of the left), if we were to push their crude and reactionary ideas out of our heads, we could see that a quite remarkable thing is happening in Iraq. It is something the left should be celebrating and supporting. A free trade union movement – the basic hope for social justice in Iraq or anywhere else - is emerging in Iraq from the nightmare of Saddam’s totalitarian regime. It is fighting, in conditions we can barely imagine, for workers rights, social justice, peace and democracy. It is weak. But it exists, and it fights! It’s the best thing to have happened in the region in decades. That we have allowed a small vocal minority to distract us from this fact is terrible enough. That we have allowed them to calumny the infant Iraqi labour movement is a crime. Enough of that. Stand up, speak out!

Where did this movement come from?

Sustar hints darkly that the IFTU is perhaps a creation of Allawi or the (‘cold war’) ICFTU. Or maybe the ‘intense efforts’ of the AFL-CIO explain the rise of the IFTU?

There are five letters missing from the Sustar-Ramadani account of the IFTU and once we bring those five letters back in the story changes entirely. Here they are: WDTUM.

These five letters stand for Workers Democratic Trade Union Movement. This was the underground free trade union network sustained at tremendous cost during the nightmare years of Saddam when free unions were abolished and free trade unionists hounded and tortured.

Formed inside Iraq in 1980 the Workers Democratic Trade Union Movement (WDTUM) existed throughout the 24 years of rule of Saddam’s Ba’ath party. The WDTUM was composed of trade unionists, intellectuals, and liberals, communists, and women’s, youth and students advocates.

Abroad the WDTUM played a significant role in exposing Saddam’s atrocities and genocide against Iraqis. Inside Iraq its members worked to collect information - at great risk- about summary executions, torture and impressments and send them to trade union centres around the world.

In Britain, in 1982, as a result of information passed on by the WDTUM to tobacco workers union leader Dougie Grieve, the TUC conference passed a motion condemning the atrocities against workers in Iraq. The WDTUM helped to organize a strike of four thousand tobacco workers in Iraqi Kurdistan (Sulaymanyah) in open defiance of Saddam’s regime. Saddam’s security apparatus crushed the strike and four workers were executed.

In Spring 2003 it was the hardened militants of the WDTUM that created the IFTU. The WDTUM helped organize 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. They came together on 16 May to form the backbone of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions.

Sustar ignores these facts. But they establish the continuity of the IFTU with the heroic Saddam-era underground free trade unionists. Is Sustar trying to hide (perhaps from himself) the shameful fact that he, a socialist, is asking US workers to boycott those men and women who risked their lives to keep the flame of free trade unionism alight during the long night of Saddam?

The IFTU has achieved some great things against the odds. In just over one year, 12 national unions in key sectors of the Iraq’s economy were 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.

In June 2004 six of the IFTU’s constituent unions held their first open and free workers’ conferences in Baghdad and each had elected a leading committee of 15 members. These unions were: The Service Union, the Agriculture and Food Staff Workers Union and Transport and Communication Union, the Mechanic, Printing and Metal Workers Union, the Construction and Wood Workers Union and the Leather Products and Textile Workers Union.

The IFTU has welcomed a series of fact-finding missions from the international trade union movement. The reports of these missions can be consulted at the IFTU website. For the latest report, from April 2005, go here.

The ICFTU visited Iraq on a fact-finding mission in February of 2004. The mission was led by P Kamalam, Middle East officer of the ICFTU, and consisted of representatives of the TUC, the AFL-CIO, the UGTT of Tunisia (with the support of the International Confederation of Arab Trade Unions ICATU), and two global union confederations the ITF (transport) and the EI (education). The TUC representative, Owen Tudor (Head of the TUC European Union and International Relations Department) wrote a report on Iraq and the IFTU that can be read here.

Current Work of the IFTU

The work of the IFTU can be examined in detail by spending a few hours here.

Despite the terrible security situation IFTU affiliates are organizing on the industrial and legislative fronts. They have organised strikes, marches and negotiated with both public and private enterprises in defence of workers rights to just wages and better working conditions. They are campaigning for a labour code that adheres to the ILO conventions.

In Baghdad, the Mechanic, Printing and Metal Union organized industrial action in a bicycle factory near Baghdad. The president of the union committee Najim Al Daham called for a 24-hour strike and won pay increases from 17,000 to 60,000 Iraqi Dinner. The IFTU was able to bring solidarity delegations from seven Baghdad work places representing several unions, to demonstrate outside the main gate of the bicycle factory in support of the strikers’ demands.

In 2004 Abdullah Muhsin reported on the IFTUs work with a range of unions in Iraq:

Metalworkers

The Metalworkers, Mechanics & Printers’ Union has elected a new 15 member Baghdad Regional Committee and is planning its first national conference.
Some of its members are still employed in the public sector, for example the workers at the ‘Al Nassur’ (Victory) mouldings and car parts manufacturing plant. This factory was nationalised as part of Saddam Hussein’s militarisation of Iraqi industry. The Ministry of Industry now controls it and the wages are paid by the state. The IFTU has fought for and won a minimum wage of 150,000 Iraqi Dinars (IrD) per month. We entered into negotiations with the Ministry at this and at other plants that they control, such as the paint manufacturing plant, where collective bargaining is still recognised.

Railway Workers

There have been excellent developments in the last year. The Railworkers’ Union has been created with an office at the Baghdad Central Railway Station. But we still have a lot of work to do. The Iraqi railway industry is still only partially operational. Railworkers have had to work in conditions of extreme danger (including armed attacks on train drivers) just to keep traffic moving. Passenger traffic was suspended 3 months ago because passengers were being robbed on trains.

The IFTU has established a national minimum wage rate across IRR (Railways of the Iraqi Republic) from Mosul in the north to Basra in the South and forced it up from IrD 75,000 to IrD 125,000 per month due to the inflationary pressures in the past year. We have won the same rate of pay for men and women. Women comprise between 10-15% of the workforce in IRR working with computers and office administration as well as cleaners and also some engineers. Traditionally train drivers of passenger and goods trains received a bonus based on the mileage over which they worked and we have achieved a compensatory package paid to them due to the suspension of so much of the traffic.

Finally, we are very proud to have achieved a scheme in Baghdad and elsewhere for the IRR to provide safe transport from residential areas to their place of work for railworkers. This last was very difficult to achieve but absolutely crucial because of the terrible security situation in Iraq. We had to threaten strike action in order to force the company to concede.

Dockers

What steps is the IFTU taking to organise dockers? Historically railway and dockworkers were crucial in building the trade unions in Iraq. Due to the fascist labour laws introduced by Saddam Hussein in 1987 we had to really rebuild the organisation of dockworkers. The former Port Director of Umm Qasr installed by the US firm Stevedoring Services of America (SSA) was a Ba’athist who was opposed to trade unions. He has now been removed. The delegation from the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) which visited the port in February 2004 was confronted by a mass demonstration of dockworkers demanding union recognition.

Soon after the ICFTU visit the IFTU met with the new Port Director who was appointed by the Ministry of Transport, who says he is not opposed to trade unions. However, we still do not have recognition. Nevertheless, on the docks there are Workers’ Committees set up in defiance of the 1987 labour law. They operate openly and use the newsletter of the Basra Region of the IFTU. There are 6 such docks committees in the Iraqi ports. The minimum wage for dockworkers is currently only IrD 75,000 rising to IrD 100,000 after a year’s employment.

Firefighters

The Civil Defence Corps fire fighters are still controlled by the Ministry of the Interior and are not allowed to join a recognised trade union. However, in the oil industry fire fighters have formed independent workers’ committees within the Oil & Gas Workers’ Union. Of course the recent solidarity visit to Basra by Brian Joyce of the UK Fire Brigades Union was very important and raised the morale of the Iraqi fire fighters. What is necessary now is to separate the civil defence fire fighters from the police force. Oil refinery fire fighters get much better paid (10-15% more) than the civil defence fire fighters”.

And there is no narrow workerism about the IFTU. When violent fundamentalists attacked a student picnic as un-Islamic, killing one male and blinding a female as they beat the students with sticks who do you think organised a solidarity march through Basra? That’s right, the IFTU.

Please take a look at the pictures of the IFTU demo. Now, when you see those photographs, and see the way the IFTU can organise men and women to march shoulder to shoulder in defence of the democratic rights of Iraqi students against the violent Islamic Fundamentalists are you not angry at Sustar? Here are the fighters for social justice and human rights in Iraq and Sustar calls for them to be boycotted!

The IFTU is a legitimate trade union organising workers in the most difficult of circumstances, under threat from fascistic death squads. Its work, frankly, is heroic. Yet Sustar calls for a boycott of the IFTU. How does he justify this? He makes six charges.

1st Charge: The IFTU ‘supports the occupation’

Ramadani says the IFTU ‘shelter behind another UN resolution [1546] to accept the occupation’ and are ‘now at the forefront of perfecting the art of justifying the continued US-led occupation of Iraq’. Sustar makes the same claim: the IFTU ‘support the occupation’ he says.

AS we have seen the IFTU does not ‘support the occupation’. The IFTU supports the UN-backed political process to end the occupation and its staging posts of elections in January 05, constitutional referendum in October 05, and further elections in December 05. The inchoate violence of the Saddamist-violent Islamic Fundamentalist ‘resistance’ will produce neither the end of the occupation nor the self-determination of the Iraqi people and the IFTU know it. They know that this violence will only prolong the occupation. They have calculated that fighting within a political process endorsed by the UN, the Shia, the Kurds, and all Iraqi democrats, is the best course for Iraqi labour. It is the only available route to restore sovereignty to Iraq while securing peace and democracy, avoid civil war and the balkanisation of Iraq: ie. secure the best conditions for the struggle of Iraqi labour for social justice and workers interests.

The same basic political judgement has been made by every Iraqi political party bar the Saddamists and the beheaders. And, of course, a tiny vocal minority on the extreme left.

Why do Ramadani-Sustar only call the IFTU ‘collaborators’ and not also the entire Kurdish nation, or the Shia, or the Sunni who voted and participated in the political process? They don’t do that only because if they did it would soon become clear what a nonsensical position they have taken.

Sistani said it would be a sin not to vote in the January elections. Do Ramadani-Sustar think Sistani and the Shia (maybe 60% of Iraqis) are also ‘now at the forefront of perfecting the art of justifying the continued US-led occupation of Iraq’?

The Kurds (20% of Iraqis) support the UN-backed political process and are developing ideas for the new constitution. Are the Kurds also ‘now at the forefront of perfecting the art of justifying the continued US-led occupation of Iraq’?

The democratic political parties of Iraq support the political process and are planning their December campaigns. Are they all ‘now at the forefront of perfecting the art of justifying the continued US-led occupation of Iraq’?

Ramadani-Sustar remind one of Brecht’s poem about the Stalinist central committee that, upon finding the people had voted the wrong way, issued a call for ‘another people’. Ramadani-Sustar ignore the expressed wishes of the vast majority of Iraqis, dismisses this majority as pro-imperialist quislings and, in effect. call for another Iraqi people.

The IFTU work for a speedy withdrawal of all troops as part of a political transition process resulting in a fully sovereign but also democratic federal Iraq. So do the vast majority of the Iraqi people. This, they have decided IS their route to self-determination.

2nd Charge: The IFTU leadership is ‘unelected’ and there have been no elections at lower levels either

First just stop and think about the fact that the IFTU – which is organising in a war-zone, with few resourc