The other Iraq - report of the LFIQ delegation to Iraq

Dave Anderson MP (Chair Labour Friends of Iraq) and Sue Rogers (TUC General Council) give an initial report of the recent LFIQ fact-finding trip to Iraq where we met the leadership of the Iraqi and Iraqi Kurdistan trade union movements.

Iraq may be on the knife edge of full-scale civil war but there is another Iraq and a non-sectarian future through its growing labour movement.

A million trade unionists are on the march throughout Iraq. A network of non-sectarian union federations, professional associations and civil society groups has emerged in Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan.

They could hold the key to uniting the country in peace and prosperity but only if the federal government's repressive efforts to ban independent activity using Saddam's anti-union laws and by seeking to create sectarian client unions is reversed.

Iraqi unions want urgent assistance to retrieve their independence and to boost their clout as a social partner in reconstructing Iraq. This is a huge task.

Iraqis have long been isolated from modern thinking in every field of human activity and must contend with the enormous physical and psychological legacy of dictatorship, sanctions and war.

Iraqi Kurdistan is generally secure but there is chronic insecurity in the rest of the country. Extremists have murdered over 500 teachers and lecturers who are seen by extremists as a great resource for stability and citizenship.

Trade union leaders such as Nozad Ismail in Kirkuk are being targeted by terrorists because their support for pluralism and democracy undermines those who seek to foment civil war. Nozad has survived two assassination attempts and is always armed himself.

Iraqi Kurdish Communist leader Kamal Shaker says that terrorists who target civilians are enemies of the people and that the real resistance are those who are building trade unions and reconstructing Iraq.

Their schools are overcrowded – sometimes 110 pupils in a class - and hundreds of schools are still mud buildings. Many spoke of a continuing legacy of dominance and physical beatings in schools.

There is a desperate lack of decent housing. Water and electricity come and go. Petrol is often sold at the kerbside rather than petrol stations – deeply ironic in such an oil-rich country. Roads are pot-holed and can change at a blink from tarmac to dirt tracks. Factories are idle or under-capacity.

Yet each part of Iraq has huge natural resources, including agriculture, minerals, oil and a potentially sophisticated workforce – whose second language is often English - and offers real potential for foreign investment.

Iraq has a war-torn command style economy and no indigenous capitalist class to fund such investment and technology transfers.

Such investment always has costs such as a shake-out of workers but a stronger Iraqi labour movement can protect workers by improving training and social security.

We saw the breathtaking beauty of Iraqi Kurdistan whose people endured pitiless efforts by Saddam to physically exterminate them. Nearly 200,000 people were murdered, most famously in the chemical attack on Halabja but thousands of similar villages were bombarded by chemical weapons and razed to the ground.

It's said that the Iraqi Kurds have no friends but the mountains from where their fighters have fought for decades. It's possible that these same mountains could be the source of tourist revenues as the threat of terrorism recedes. There are similar tourism possibilities in the rest of Iraq.

The lingering legacy is one of increased cancers, leukaemia and genetic deformations but they lack specialist health facilities to deal with these in Iraqi Kurdistan or the money to send patients abroad.

After decades of external wars and internal aggression Iraq has an above average number of orphans, widows and disabled people as well as deeply traumatised and mentally ill people.

The one million strong trade union movement wants British trade unionists to help them to stand on their own two feet and reconstruct Iraq.

With its oil wealth, there is no reason why over time Iraq could not have the roads, homes, schools and jobs available in many other parts of the Middle East.

These are key findings of a delegation of senior Labour Party and Trade Union figures who last week held unique summit meetings in Erbil with leaders of the Iraqi Workers' Federation (IWF) and the Iraqi Teachers' Union as well as the Kurdistan Workers' Federation, which kindly hosted our trip.

The first priority is that the unions should have total independence. Iraqi trade union assets have been frozen by Decree 8750 of 8 August 2005 and by the maintenance of Saddam's ban on public sector unions, the old law 150 passed in 1987. The private sector in Iraq is small and the ban on public sector organisation covers about 80% of the workforce.

So unions cannot easily organise or recruit, produce newspapers and other activities that we take for granted. Union leaders have to use Internet Cafes.

Iraqi ministers are seeking to dictate how the unions should organise and union leaders fear that this will "paralyse" independent unions. The first target was the engineers' union who resisted the government rulebook and the coming target is the lawyers' union.

The British government should use its influence to overturn this ban and ministerial interference in unions which totally contravenes International Labour Organisation (ILO) conventions as well as the Iraqi constitution. Whatever view we took on the invasion, democracy needs independent unions and democracy is the declared aim of the American and British governments.

The next issue is assistance. British trade unions have already done much. The Fire Brigades Union has sent fire fighting equipment and more is on its way. We also saw a UNISON sponsored "train the trainers" session in Erbil which was just like any session in the UK except for the language.

We presented the IWF with a symbolic lap top ourselves and will also launch an emergency appeal to raise substantial amounts of money for the million Iraqi trade unionists.

We will for example try to keep the IWF newspaper going at a cost of £1,000 a month.

There are many links between our movements. During our visit, the IWF granted honorary union membership to former Labour MP Harry Barnes who
did his national service in Iraq in the mid 50s and who has been a staunch advocate of the needs of the Iraqi labour movement.

We were deeply privileged to meet the representatives of 1 million Iraqis. Not everyone can visit Iraq but we can all listen to the voices and views of this growing movement. We should not let them down.

We ended our trip in Sami Abdul Rahman Park in Erbil where there is a statue to the Iraqi Kurdish party leaders blown up by terrorists. The inscription says that "Freedom is not free." Urgent material and moral assistance to Iraqi unions will do much to help them build freedom in a democratic and federal Iraq.

ends

The trip was kindly funded by UNISON. The delegation were guests of the Kurdistan Workers' Federation and stayed in Erbil and Sulamani. Its members were: Labour MP Dave Anderson who chairs LFIQ and is a past President of UNISON; Sue Rogers who is Treasurer of the NASUWT, sits on the TUC General Council and chairs the TUC's Iraq Solidarity Committee; Harry Barnes, Labour MP for 18 years and joint President of Labour Friends of Iraq (LFIQ); Norma Stephenson who chairs UNISON's International Development Fund and sits on the Labour Party's national executive committee; Councillor Clive Furness who was a founder member of the campaign against repression and for democratic rights in Iraq (Cardri) and visited Iraqi Kurdistan several timers in the 90s; Tim Lezard, a past President of the National Union of Journalists; Gary Kent, Director of LFIQ and Abdullah Muhsin, IWF International Representative.

The above picture is of the delegation and our hosts from the Kurdistan Workers' Federation on the road between Sulamani and Erbil.

A struggle to exist

Tim Lezard reports on the LFIQ delegation to Iraq in the New Statesman. He quotes the vice-president of the Iraqi Workers Federation, Hadi Ali - We have tried to build new, independent trade unions, totally different from the old ones, but Decree 8750 is stopping us. We struggled to beat Saddam. Now we are struggling to build a strong, federal and democratic Iraq.

More Commons pressure to restore independence of Iraqi trade unions

Labour MP Rob Marris kindly took up the LFIQ appeal and this answer helpfully clarifies the issue and should increase support from the British and wider trade union movement to restore the finances and independence of the Iraqi trade union movement to help them rebuild their movement and contribute to the democratic reconstruction of Iraq.

Gary Kent

Iraq (Trade Unions) – 26th April

Rob Marris: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what representations he has received concerning the independence of trade unions in Iraq; and if he will make a statement.

Dr. Howells: I have received a number of representations concerning the independence of trade unions in Iraq.

In June 2005, I met a delegation from the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions and the Iraqi Kurdistan General Workers during their visit to the UK. Foreign and Commonwealth Office officials met Iraqi trade union representatives at our Embassy in Baghdad in February 2006.

Article 22 of the Iraqi Constitution guarantees the right of Iraqis to form and join unions and professional associations. However, the Iraqi transitional Government issued Decree 8750 on 8 August 2005, which froze union finances while a new law on trade unions was developed. Unfortunately the hiatus in forming a new government and Parliament has also delayed the legislative programme. The freeze on finances is therefore still in force.

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LFIQ Chair defends Iraqi unions in Foreign Office Questions

Tuesday 25th April

Mr. David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab): Does my hon. Friend agree that the Iraqi Government are in breach of international law by the way in which they have implemented decree 8750? They have also reinstated decree 150, which attacks the country's free and independent trade union movement. Trade union assets have been seized and public sector workers denied the right to join trade unions. Will he agree to meet Iraq's trade union representatives in this country to try and resolve these matters?

Dr. Howells: I have certainly met trade unionists from Iraq, and would be only too glad them again. I am not aware of the case that my hon. Friend has presented to the House.

Will Hutton backs Iraqi trade union rights

Will Hutton examines the Euston Manifesto and includes the following perceptive comment on why the liberal press has ignored the rise of the new Iraqi labour movement.

Hutton says - Because Iraqi reconstruction has been a fiasco, the liberal temptation is to side intellectually with the insurgents. But, for example, trade unions are forbidden to organise in the Iraqi public sector because of the Saddam Hussein ban still in force; the comment pages of the liberal press are hardly full of articles insisting that the Iraq government entrenches union rights. Little space is given to arguments about the wider importance of building a sustainable democracy. Rather, there is another piece on why the US and Britain must get out of Iraq now to allow, presumably, the establishment of a theocratic, authoritarian state.

Second-hand mobile phone solidarity

The TUC has launched an appeal for unions and their members to pass on their used mobile phones to the Iraqi trade union movement as an act of second-hand solidarity.

Unions representing workers in Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan face incredible challenges in defending working people and rebuilding democracy. One of their requests for solidarity from British trade unionists is the provision of mobile phones - crucial for any union organiser these days, but especially in Iraq where travel can be dangerous and landlines aren't sufficiently reliable or widespread.

But mobile phones can be expensive to buy in Iraq (and UK phone systems don't work there yet), so buying new ones could eat up scarce union resources. Instead, the Iraqi trade union movement has identified a way of easily converting old European mobile phones for use in Iraq. So now the TUC Iraq Solidarity Committee has opened an appeal for used mobile phones.

TUC General Councillor Sue Rogers, Chair of the TUC Iraq Solidarity Committee, said: 'Rather than throwing your old mobile phone out, put it to good use rebuilding trade unionism in Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan. Their need is great, and this would be such a small effort, but a big contribution.'

Old mobile phones (and their chargers, of course) should be sent to the TUC Aid for Iraq appeal at Congress House, Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3LS.

International trade union movement lambasts interference in Iraqi union affairs

The ICFTU has protested to the Iraqi Prime Minister about his governments labour laws.

Mr. Prime Minister, the ICFTU strongly objects against this inordinate interference in the designation of the leadership of the IFTU. Dictating to a union how to organise its leadership elections, and whom not to include in it, is a blatant violation of International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 87 on Freedom of Association. Although Iraq did not ratify this convention, it has an obligation as an ILO member to respect the principles enshrined in it. I therefore strongly urge you to ensure that the IFTU benefits of complete freedom in organising its trade union elections and designating its trade union leadership. Finally, I urge you to ratify ILO Convention 87 on the right to freedom of association.

Thanks to LabourStart

Mandela Adviser Seeks Iraqi National Reconciliation

Nelson Mandelas former legal adviser Nicholas Haysom has spent much of the last year attempting to teach the Iraqi political classes about South Africas reconciliation process. The 1991 SA peace accord was signed by 26 political parties and organisations in the face of increasing violence. He is now attempting to replicate this form of settlement in Baghdad. (David Spector)

The Euston Manifesto

The Euston Manifesto is launched today. It is the product of discussions between a variety of bloggers and activists, including some involved in Labour Friends of Iraq, and proposes a Renewal of Progressive Politics.

Its conclusion is that It is vitally important for the future of progressive politics that people of liberal, egalitarian and internationalist outlook should now speak clearly. We must define ourselves against those for whom the entire progressive-democratic agenda has been subordinated to a blanket and simplistic 'anti-imperialism' and/or hostility to the current US administration. The values and goals which properly make up that agenda - the values of democracy, human rights, the continuing battle against unjustified privilege and power, solidarity with peoples fighting against tyranny and oppression - are what most enduringly define the shape of any Left worth belonging to.

Gary Kent

Security and Cement

LFIQ Joint President Harry Barnes reflects on his week in Iraqi Kurdistan

I have just spent a busy week in the Iraqi Kurdistan with a delegation from our Labour Movement.

The first impression was of security and cement.

Public buildings, hotels and other well used areas were all protected by huge concrete blocks. Guards in uniforms and with guns were present at each entry post and outside restaurants and political offices.

Each few hundred yards in the towns and every few miles in the countryside we met check points, with further local armed forces scrutinising us.

Construction work was taking place everywhere. Private building, Council housing, University Student accommodation, roads and Government offices were all being built. The splendid Ministry of the Interior was, for instance, a replacement for their old building which had been blown up by a suicide bomber.

We regularly passed their big growth industry - cement factories.

The streets were packed with cars, including numerous taxis. But none of the petrol stations were open in an oil producing region. For they were undercut by an open black market in petrol sold in plastic containers by young men smoking cigarettes.

Whilst unlike the rest of Iraq there is almost full employment in the 80% of the economy covered by the State sector, there is what the economists’ term under-employment. The 600 workers at a cigarette factory we visited haven’t produced a fag for over 3 years. The workers sit beside their old machines and receive mainly a poor minimum wage from that State.

Yet these are the friendliest people in the world and they know that their region has a great potential. Oil, raw materials and a strong commitment to education are all great assets. Whilst the far north is the Switzerland of the Middle East and includes snow covered mountains and a vast tourist potential.

48 villages and towns, including Halabja, were gassed by Saddam Hussein. He obliterated 400 villages.

We saw the remains of his hideous torture centre at Sulaymaniyah where 5,000 died in three years and numerous others had their physical and mental well-being ended.

When all this was happening the Iraqi Kurds were uprooted and fled into the mountains. They returned under the protections of a no-fly zone, the removal of their oppressor.

They have a saying that they have “no friends but the mountains”. We have to see that they now have new friends, who can help them in their determined efforts to achieve democracy, peace and prosperity. It can provide a pattern for the rest of their beleaguered nation of Iraq.

Lest we forget

On our recent trip to Iraqi Kurdistan we were privileged to meet dozens of the bravest people you can imagine. We met people who had been imprisoned and tortured under Saddam Hussein but who were loath to go into detail because their experiences were so common.

We were given a tour of the Red House in Sulamani, a notorious torture centre and one of very many throughout Saddam’s Iraq. We saw how 70 prisoners were stuffed into rooms the size of an average living room and the detailed mechanisms of torture were explained to us.

The grim building was pock-marked by bullets from when it was liberated by the Iraqi Kurd Peshmerga forces and it has now been turned into a living memorial to the victims of Saddam whose rotting Soviet tanks and guns adorn the yard.

We also met Nozad Ismail, the union leader in Kirkuk who has twice escaped assassination attempts and who is under constant threat from the self-styled “resistance.”

Many of us had met Hadi Saleh on his visits to Britain to drum up support for the trade union movement and this moving obituary by Alex Gordon reminds us of the bravery and sacrifice of our comrades and how we will do our best to increase solidarity with the Iraqi labour movement.

Gary Kent

Delegation to Iraq

Labour Friends of Iraq together with trade unions UNISON, the NASUWT and the NUJ organised a fact-finding trip to Iraqi Kurdistan.

We have just returned and will be posting reports soon on our whirlwind of meetings with Iraqi Kurdistan and Iraqi unions and others.

The delegation were guests of the Kurdistan Workers’ Federation and stayed in Erbil and Sulamani.

Its members were:

Labour MP Dave Anderson who chairs LFIQ and is a past President of UNISON;

Sue Rogers who is Treasurer of the NASUWT, sits on the TUC General Council and chairs the TUC’s Iraq Solidarity Committee;

Harry Barnes, Labour MP for 18 years and joint President of Labour Friends of Iraq (LFIQ);

Norma Stephenson who chairs UNISON’s International Development Fund and sits on the Labour Party’s national executive committee;

Councillor Clive Furness who was a founder member of the campaign against repression and for democratic rights in Iraq (Cardri) and visited Iraqi Kurdistan several timers in the 90s;

Tim Lezard, a past President of the National Union of Journalists;

Gary Kent, Director of LFIQ

Abdullah Muhsin, Iraqi Workers’ Federation (IWF) International Representative accompanied the delegation.

Voices of Iraqi women

This report gives a fascinating overview of a debate amongst Iraqi women which recently took place in New York. (David Spector)

Ann Clwyd on missing detainees

The Prime Minister’s Envoy to Iraq on Human Rights Ann Clwyd has raised the issue of missing detainees in Iraq.

Freedom is not free, first report from LFIQ trip to Iraq

Freedom is not free is the inscription on a major statue here in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. This part of Iraq surely knows the cost of war and repression. It's often not mentioned much but Saddams genocidal Anfal campaign murdered nearly 200,000 Kurds and razed hundreds of villages before the uprising and what everyone here calls the liberation in 2003.

Yesterday we also visited the Red House in Sulamani which was the secret police headquarters under Saddam and where hundreds of people were tortured and murdered. It's grim but not the worst one can find. It's being maintained as a memorial to Saddam's victims.

The legacy of Saddam's fascism is everywhere: shattered and ramshackle infrastructure, a culture of dominance from schools onwards and, literally, in the hearts, lungs and bodies of so many here in Iraqi Kurdistan where chemical warfare has resulted in increased cancers and leukemia but where there are no specialist health facilities to deal with them.

This part of Iraq has great potential as the Switzerland of the region but desperately needs investment and tourism.

I am here as part of a Labour Friends of Iraq delegation which includes senior representatives of the British labour movement to meet trade unions, civil society organisations and ministers. It is a breath of fresh air for those who opposed the war but moved on to embrace solidarity .

Not everyone can come to Iraq but should take care to listen to the progressive and non-sectarian voices we have met this week.The highlight of our visit, which was hosted by the Kurdistan Workers Union, was a meeting with the leaders of the wider Iraqi labour movement from Baghdad and Basra. A fuller report will come later but we will shortly launch a major campaign to help our comrades build unions free from government interference.

Gary Kent
LFIQ Director
Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan