Against all the odds

Soma reports that due to mines, wars, natural disasters, genetic and inborn factors, a large number of people have become disabled in the Kurdistan region. They can be seen daily in the markets, offices and government departments. In the Kurdistan region, scores of governmental and non-governmental organizations are engaged in dealing with the problems facing disabled persons, as well as working to protect their rights. It examines the formation of the Kurdistan Paralympics Committee.

Recovery of the southern Iraqi marshes

Normblog carries a report on how native species have returned to reflooded marshes devastated by Hussein regime. The marshes were devastated in the 1980s and 1990s by the Hussein regimes campaign to ditch, dike, drain, and burn them. Unable to pursue their traditional means of livelihood--fishing, herding water buffalo, and hunting--tens of thousands of Marsh Arabs fled to southern Iran.

Ann Clwyd in Iraq

Ann Clwyd has had a round of meetings with ministers in Baghdad and is reported to have urged the new government on Monday to complete investigations into police abuses and to free thousands of prisoners held in Iraqi and U.S. military prisons.

Appeal for solidarity

Gary Kent replies to letter in Guardian and urges increased solidarity with the Iraqi labour movement.

Tuesday May 30, 2006

Guardian

Jane Hoskins simplistic strictures on Iraq (Letters, May 29) define out of the equation those Iraqis trying to build a sovereign and federal polity after decades of minority rule. Hoskins ignores the new and non-sectarian Iraqi labour movement that was pulverised by Saddam, but has won nearly a million members in just three years.

A recent Labour Friends of Iraq delegation met many union leaders from across Iraq. They are not "puppets" but real people, who asked us to encourage moral and material assistance so that they can help overcome the physical and psychological legacy of decades of fascism and war. It is perfectly possible to walk and chew gum: to oppose the invasion, as they did, but also to assist Iraqi civil society to democratise their country. This isn't a part of the "white man's burden", but elementary solidarity and it's high time we saw much more of it.

Gary Kent
Director, Labour Friends of Iraq
labourfriendsofiraq.org.uk

Iraq solidarity motion

Blacktriangle reports on the motion of solidarity passed by the recent Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain’s Branch Representative meeting. We need more such practical initiatives.

Gary Kent

Birmingham and District Branch Motion
“It is the opinion of this meeting that Council should support and develop links with the Syndicate of Iraqi Pharmacists and schools of pharmacy in Iraq either directly or via international pharmacy bodies.”

Explanatory paragraph from the Branch

In addition to the recent conflict and the continuing violence, two wars and twelve years of sanctions have had a crippling effect on Iraq’s pharmacy education and practice. These events have severely affected access to information resources such as books and journals, and imposed a total isolation from the scientific community. Iraq has an important position in the history of pharmacy and Baghdad was a prominent centre for science and culture; providing the world with a great legacy of pharmaceutical and medical knowledge. The Society should, in an act of solidarity with fellow pharmacists in Iraq, extend the hand of friendship to Iraqi pharmacy educators, and the Syndicate of Iraqi Pharmacists, and use its international influence to the same end.

Here is the text of my speech:

The land called Iraq has been at the forefront of medical care for thousands of years. The ancient Babylonian Code of Hammurabi was the 1st documented record of medical harm.

In the 8th and 9th Centuries a rich mixture of Jewish, Christian, Hindu and Muslim scholars, under the enlightened Caliphs of Baghdad, came together leading to a tremendous gathering of scientific knowledge, especially in the field of medicine. Key Greek texts were preserved and translated into Arabic, including the work of Galen. When Europe lost this knowledge, it came back tous via Arabic translations. Baghdad also added to this knowledge, for example the first ever formulary was published there.

Ninth century Baghdad also had the first ever pharmaceutical regulation. Government officials checked the accuracy of weights and purity of medicines. It is not recorded if they checked your CPD records. Iraq is arguably the birthplace of pharmacy.

Today, after three wars [I forgot the Iran-Iraq war in the explanation above], and continuing disruption to civil life - including the targeting of academics - Iraq’s Pharmacy Schools have shortages of books and other teaching materials. As a result of sanctions the Syndicate of Iraqi Pharmacists was not able to participate fully internationally - such as via organisations such as FIP.
This motion seeks to send a message of solidarity to our fellow Iraqi pharmacists. How this is done I leave to Council and I welcome the work that the Society is already providing. In addition to the information that the Society has provided I am also aware that the Commonwealth Pharmacists Association has also provided BNFs to Iraq.

This motion does not seek to provide additional resources for Iraq, above that given to other states, but rather endorses and supports the support the Society already provides. I do not expect Council to spend vast resources on this issue, but the value of an expression of solidarity should not be underestimated.

Interview with Salam Ali

Member of the Central Committee of the Iraqi Communist Party

Published by Nameh Mardom, central organ of the Tudeh Party of Iran, 26 May 2006, Issue No. 739

1- The new government of Iraq was announced yesterday. What is your view about the composition of the new government? Is this any near to your concept of the Government of National Unity? What position the ICP will take towards this government?

- The new Iraqi government was formed after lengthy and tortuous negotiations between the various political blocs that won in the elections in Dec. 2005. The idea of setting up a broadly based national unity government was eventually endorsed, though reluctantly by some forces, to prevent a repetition of the policy of allocating posts on sectarian-ethnic basis. That policy had contributed to aggravating the sectarian polarization in society to unprecedented dangerous levels with catastrophic consequences for the people. The "principles of the government programme", jointly worked out by representatives of the main political groups including our Communist Party, stated that "the principle of participation and representation of Iraqi constituent components" would be employed in forming the government. But, once again, narrow political interests and hegemonistic tendencies prevailed in the distribution of leading positions in governance: President and two deputies, Prime Minister and his two deputies, the speaker of parliament and his two deputies. These positions were divided up, along sectarian-ethnic lines, among three blocs: the Iraqi United Alliance (IUA), the Kurdistan Alliance and the National Accord Front. The democratic and liberal National Iraqi List that includes the Communist Party, ranking fourth with 25 seats (9% of the vote), was excluded from these posts. Attempts were also made to exclude the Iraqi List from "sovereign ministries", although the ministries of interior and defence will now be allocated to "independent" figures who should not be associated with any particular bloc or party, especially one that has its own militia. The Iraqi List was openly and strongly critical of these steps, indicating clearly that it may not join the government unless its grievances were addressed. After last minute negotiations, the List was offered five ministries: Justice, Human Rights, Science and Technology, Communications and a Ministry of State.

In a statement issued on 21 May 2006, the National Iraqi List said that its "participation in the government is based on its recognition of the importance of consolidating the principle of national unity and Iraq's security, safety and stability". It also pointed out that "our participation with a number of ministers who represent a broad spectrum of our people, will help to restore the balance inside the government, strengthen the Iraqi patriotic voice in the Council of Ministers, and curtails the policy of sectarian quota". Furthermore, it called on the Prime Minister to honour a number of promises and commitments that had been previously agreed. These include the need to remedy the "flagrant shortcoming in the proportion of women's participation in ministerial posts" (only 4 women ministers out of 37), and to disband the militias and integrate them within state institutions "as individuals rather than organisations".

It is, therefore, quite clear that the newly-formed government falls short of our Party's aim and desire for a national unity government based on the above-mentioned criteria. But its composition, which is no longer totally dominated by one single bloc (the IUA) as was the case in the previous Transitional Government of Dr. Ibrahim Jaafary, opens up the potential for greater say in the decision making process. There is a relatively better representation of the political spectrum and diversity in Iraqi society. It is a permanent government with a 4-year term according to the constitution, that is facing enormous political challenges and will have a significant impact on the way a new Iraqi state will emerge.

2- There are those who argue that the ICP should not participate in the government and should instead support it from outside. This view points out that non- involvement of the ICP would have made it certain that it would not be tainted by the actions of a government which in the main is made of forces with a questionable past- and tendency for accommodating anti democratic- anti communist policies.

- This argument, whether or not to participate in in the government, was indeed seriously considered and carefully weighed by the Party, and and also by the broad democratic and liberal electoral coalition, the National Iraqi List. Two important factors were taken into consideration: the government's programme and the ability to influence the decision-making process. In addition, the composition of the new parliament, as well as the government, has changed, opening up possibilities for a realignment of forces on major issues facing the country, both national and democratic. Inner rules have also been agreed for the Council of Ministers that would help to curtail authoritarian tendencies in policy formulation. A "Political Commission for National Security" will be set up, providing a forum for national consensus on strategic issues among the main political forces.

Iraqi CP's participation in the government, despite the above-mentioned reservations, will compliment its work in parliament and mass democratic struggles. Strengthening the position and influence of the democratic and secular forces, advancing their vision of a modern democratic state, and consistently combating sectarian and reactionary policies, are essential prerequisites for safeguarding against, and defeating, anti-democratic and anti-communist tendencies. One must also not overlook the urgent need for strengthening national unity and achieving national consensus to be able to seize back full national sovereignty and independence. The ongoing political battle to decide the character of the emerging Iraqi state is closely interconnected with the national task of eliminating the legacy of occupation and ending foreign military presence in our homeland. In all this multifaceted and complex struggle, our Party will be guided, first and foremost, by the interests of the Iraqi people, workers and toilers.

3- Would you please give your evaluation of the new Prime Minister? What is his programme? Do you think that this programme is capable of overcoming the current difficulties you are facing?

- The new Prime Minister is a leading figure of the Dawa party led by Dr. Jaafary. He had been its representative in Damascus before the regime's fall, and was well-known to various opposition groups based there. He has pledged to pursue non-sectarian policies in government, fight rampant corruption, deal firmly with the issue of militias, and tackle the chronic and deteriorating security situation and basic services. As pointed out earlier, the principles of his government's programme had been worked out jointly with other political blocs, and are generally good. But his performance, and that of the government, will be closely scrutinized by the people in the coming weeks and months to see if the words are matched with deeds. The challenges ahead are enormous, and only a government truly embodying national unity can succeed.

4- It seems that during the past few month the security situation has gone out of control. Since October referendum and December General Election terrorism has become a daily feature of events in Iraq. What is the views of the ICP for a Qualitative change in tackling the security issue?

- Our Party has always pointed out that the security issue should be tackled by adopting a multifaceted and integrated approach, including political, social and economic measures, rather than resorting to direct military force alone. The formation of a national unity government, drawing more political groups into the ongoing political process, promoting genuine national dialogue and isolating extremist and terrorist anti-people forces, are all essential prerequisites for handling this issue. The forthcoming National Accord Conference, to be convened next month, will provide an important platform and opportunity to discuss these aspects and develop further the agreement reached at the Cairo Conference last November.

5- There are many international observers who believe that presence of occupation forces is a key factor in the continuation of terrorist violence. Do you have any sympathy with this view? What is the IC Party position regarding the issue of bringing an end to the occupation and regaining full sovereignty and independence for the country?

- Certain important aspects of the current violence in Iraq, further aggravated by sectarian polarization, are a direct consequence of the occupation and the policies implemented by the occupation authority (CPA) and the US administration in Iraq. Our Party has called for a timetable for withdrawal of foreign forces together with doubling the efforts to provide the internal political, institutional and security conditions for this withdrawal. The National Accord Conference held in Cairo last November supported such a withdrawal timetable in order to avoid chaos and additional suffering. We believe that this is a realistic agenda and can be implemented in a relatively short period. With the formation of a permamnent government, that has already endorsed the idea of "an objective timetable" for withdrawal and speeding up the transfer of security responsibilities to the Iraqi forces, this issue will feature prominently on its agenda.

6- In your CC meeting in March 2006 you called for a serious and responsible National Dialogue. What form this dialogue will take? What conditions should be created so the dialogue could take place? Who will be invited/ encouraged to this national dialogue and who not?

- The forthcoming National Accord Conference will be an important step in the direction of the desired National Dialogue. The agreement reached at the pervious Cairo Conference provided a good basis for such dialogue. But it has to broadened to include the full spectrum of social and democratic movements, including trade unions, women, youth, students organisations and other NGOs.

Realism and intervention after Iraq

Andrew Rawnsley argues that if the cause of humanitarian interventionism is lost in Iraq, it will not just be Tony Blair who has tragic cause to be sorry. He says that despite the terrible mistakes made after the removal of Saddam, the case for liberal interventionism is still compelling. In a globalised world, morality and self-interest alike demand that Western nations cannot ignore what goes on within the borders of other states when they threaten their own citizens, their neighbours or the rest of the world. Rawnsley fears that the alternative is to retreat into the school of foreign policy that likes to call itself 'realist'. It was this doctrine of malign inactivity which sat on its hands as a million people or more were slaughtered during the genocide in Rwanda. (Gary Kent)

Murdered for wearing tennis shorts

The Times reports this atrocity in which the coach of the Iraqi national tennis team and two of his players were shot dead in Baghdad, apparently for wearing shorts, in a district where Islamic radicals have started to enforce brutal, Taleban-style law.

The Marines and a massacre in Iraq

The Times carries a shocking piece on an alleged massacre by US Marines last November in al-Haditha, a town on the Euphrates. An American soldier died in a roadside bomb and, it is reported that marines then ran amok, killing as many as 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians, including women and children, in cold blood. The eye witness account by a ten-year-old girl, Iman Hassan is harrowing. The awful incident is the subject of a US military inquiry with possible courts martial and murder charges. That is how it should be. American, British and other foreign troops in Iraq must uphold the highest standards of behaviour for the sake of those like Iman Hassan and her relatives.

Gary Kent

Solidarity with Iraqi and Kurdish women trade unionists

The TUC carries this report of a trade union womens visit to Britain. The aim of the visit is set out as follows: The TUC believes strongly that womens participation in public life, and in particular in trade unions, is vital to the development of a free, democratic and open society. Given the fact that Iraqi/Kurdish women today make up half of Iraq's population and some 35% of the workforce (in some industries, they are the majority, including some parts of heavy industry as a result of the need to draft women into the labour force to replace men sent to the front or killed during Iraq's bloody war with Iran) they are a key part of the development of Iraq's pluralist polity and social stability. Releasing their potential and freeing them from the shackles of outdated cultural tribal customs and traditions will not only benefit Iraqi/Kurdish women but will help Iraq's development and prosperity. For without their active participation Iraq will suffer huge social and economic deficit and probably prolonged political instability.

The war split the world. The struggle of Iraqis for democracy should unite it.

Blair advocates a new concord to displace the old contention

Tony Blair has delivered the third in his series of speeches on the international situation. He describes his meeting this week with the leaders, chosen by the people, Sunni, Shia, Kurds, non-aligned, and heard from them not the jarring messages of warring factions but one simple, clear and united discourse. They want Iraq to be democratic. They want its people to be free. They want to tolerate difference and celebrate diversity. They want the rule of law not violence to determine their fate.

They were quite different from the Interim Government of 2004 or the Iraqi Transitional Government after the elections of January 2005.

This is a child of democracy struggling to be born. They and we, the international community, are the midwives.

You may not agree with original decision. You may believe mistakes have been made. You may even think how can it be worth the sacrifice. But surely we must all accept this is a genuine attempt to run the race of liberty.

These are not stooges. Or placemen. They believe in their country. They believe in its capacity to be democratic. They are fighting a struggle against the odds but they are fighting it. And in their struggle is a symbol of a wider struggle. Listen to what the new Prime Minister says and the new Government's programme.

Tell me where their vision differs from ours except that ours is based in experience and theirs in hope.

I came back from Iraq not less daunted by the responsibility on our shoulders to help them succeed. But I did come back inspired by their determination that they do indeed succeed.

This should be a moment of reconciliation not only in Iraq but in the international community. The war split the world. The struggle of Iraqis for democracy should unite it.

There was a moving moment when I was talking to the new Prime Minister in his office in Baghdad that he told me, with a smile, used to be the dining room of one of Saddam's sons. We were on our own with the interpreter. He leant across to me and said: "if we can change Iraq we can change this region and the world".

Full Text

PRIME MINISTER’S FOREIGN POLICY SPEECH

FRIDAY, 26TH MAY 2006

This is the third of my speeches on the challenges facing the international community. In the first, I argued that the global terrorism that menaces us, can only be defeated through pulling it up by its roots. We have to attack not just its methods but its ideas, its presumed and false sense of grievance against the West, its attempt to persuade us that it is we and not they who are responsible for its violence. In doing so, we should stand up for our own values, asserting that they are not Western but global values, whose spread is the surest guarantee of our future security. In the second speech, I argued that such values would only succeed, however, if they were seen to be fairly and even-handedly implemented; that this required a unifying agenda for global action, which was about more than the immediate security threat but was also about justice and opportunity for all.

In this speech, I contend that now is the moment for reconciliation in the international community around such an agenda and I outline some of the key policy priorities and reforms of the global institutions to make such an agenda happen.

Underlying all these arguments, is a world view. We all agree that the characteristic of the modern world is interdependence. We haven't yet thought through its consequences.

In Government, I realised this first at the time of the Asian financial crisis shortly after taking office. Within weeks, all of us who had been initially holding back, waiting for the market to correct itself, wondering how a market meltdown in Thailand could possibly destabilise our own economies, were coming together, agreeing packages to prevent contagion, supporting Brazil and others who looked like they might be the next to go. In the process every conventional doctrine about markets was amended to prevent catastrophe.

A year later, Kosovo happened and the spectre of ethnic cleansing returned to Europe. We put pressure on Milosevic. We threatened diplomatic action. We eventually took military action by air strikes. But it was only when, with considerable courage President Clinton indicated - and it was only an indication - he might be prepared to use ground force, that suddenly Milosevic collapsed and the crisis was resolved.

What these two events taught me was that the rule book of international politics has been torn up. Interdependence - the fact of a crisis somewhere becoming a crisis everywhere - makes a mockery of traditional views of national interest. You can't have a coherent view of national interest today without a coherent view of the international community. Nations, even ones as large and powerful as the USA, are affected profoundly by world events; and not affected, in time or at the margins but at breakneck speed and fundamentally. Why is immigration the No.1 domestic policy issue in much of Europe and in the US today? What are the solutions? The answer is that globalisation is making mass migration a reality; and only global development will make it a manageable reality.

Which is the issue that has rocketed up the agenda of most political leaders in a way barely foreseen even 3 years back? Energy policy. China and India need energy to grow. The damage to the environment of carbon emissions is now accepted. It doesn't much matter whether the issue is approached through energy security or climate change, the fact is we need a framework, internationally agreed, through which the developing nations can grow, the wealthy countries maintain their standard of living and the environment be protected from disaster. And this is not a long-term issue - though its consequences are long-term. It is here and now.

The point is that in respect of any of these challenges, certain things stand out. They affect us all. They can only be effectively tackled together. And they require a pre-emptive and not simply reactive response.

Here is where it becomes very difficult. In the old days - I mean a few decades back - countries could wait, assess over time, even opt out - at least until everything was clear. We could act when we knew. Now we have to act on the basis of precaution.

What is more such action will often require intervention, far beyond our own boundaries. The terrorism we are fighting in Britain, wasn't born in Britain, though on 7th July last year it was British born terrorists that committed murder. The roots are in schools and training camps and indoctrination thousands of miles away, as well as in the towns and cities of modern Britain. The migration we experience is from Eastern Europe, and the poverty-stricken states of Africa and the solution to it lies there at its source not in the nation feeling its consequence.

What this means is that we have to act, not react; we have to do so on the basis of prediction not certainty; and such action will often, usually indeed, be outside of our own territory. And what all that means is: that this can't be done easily unless it is done on an agreed basis of principle, of values that are shared and fair. Common action only works when founded on common values.

Therefore, to meet effectively the challenge that faces us, we must fashion an international community that both embodies, and acts in pursuit of global values: liberty, democracy, tolerance, justice. These are the values we believe in. These are the values universally accepted across all nations, faiths and races, though not by all elements within them. These are values that can inspire and unify. So, how, at this moment in time, in an international community that has been riven, do we achieve such unity around such values?

Let us go back to the immediate issue: Iraq. We can argue forever about the merits of removing Saddam. Our opponents will say: you made terrorism worse and point to what is happening there. I believe differently. I believe this global terrorism will exploit any situation to further its cause. But I don't believe that its cause is truly to be found in any decision we have taken. I believe it's cause is an ideology, a world-view, derived from religious fanaticism and that had we taken no decisions at all to enrage it, would still have found provocation in our very existence. They disagree with our way of life, our values and in particular in our tolerance. They hate us but probably they hate those Muslims who believe in tolerance, even more, as apostates betraying the true faith.

They have come to Iraq because they see it as the battleground. The battle they are fighting is nothing to do with the liberation of Iraq, but its subjugation to their extremism.

I don't want to reopen past arguments. I want to advocate a new concord to displace the old contention.

It is three years since Saddam fell. It has been three years of strife and bloodshed. But it has also seen something remarkable. Despite it all, despite terror, sectarian violence, kidnapping and the exhibition of every ugly aspect of human nature, a democratic political process has grown. Last week, a new Government was formed. This Monday I visited it in Baghdad, I sat and talked with the leaders, chosen by the people, Sunni, Shia, Kurds, non-aligned, and heard from them not the jarring messages of warring factions but one simple, clear and united discourse. They want Iraq to be democratic. They want its people to be free. They want to tolerate difference and celebrate diversity. They want the rule of law not violence to determine their fate.

They were quite different from the Interim Government of 2004 or the Iraqi Transitional Government after the elections of January 2005.

This is a child of democracy struggling to be born. They and we, the international community, are the midwives.

You may not agree with original decision.
You may believe mistakes have been made.
You may even think how can it be worth the sacrifice.

But surely we must all accept this is a genuine attempt to run the race of liberty.

These are not stooges. Or placemen.

They believe in their country.

They believe in its capacity to be democratic.

They are fighting a struggle against the odds but they are fighting it.

And in their struggle is a symbol of a wider struggle.

Listen to what the new Prime Minister says and the new Government's programme.

Tell me where their vision differs from ours except that ours is based in experience and theirs in hope.

I came back from Iraq not less daunted by the responsibility on our shoulders to help them succeed. But I did come back inspired by their determination that they do indeed succeed.

This should be a moment of reconciliation not only in Iraq but in the international community. The war split the world. The struggle of Iraqis for democracy should unite it.

There was a moving moment when I was talking to the new Prime Minister in his office in Baghdad that he told me, with a smile, used to be the dining room of one of Saddam's sons. We were on our own with the interpreter. He leant across to me and said: "if we can change Iraq we can change this region and the world".

The terrorism that afflicts them is the same that afflicts us. Its roots are out there in the Middle East, in the brutal combination of secular dictatorship and religious extremism. Yet in every country of the region there are people, probably the majority, who are desperate for change. In Kuwait, as I boarded the plane for Iraq, they told me how they were planning elections for the first time with women voting. Across the Gulf states, in the Lebanon, in the steps, however difficult, Egypt is taking, in signs of change in nations as different as Jordan or Algeria, there are possibilities for progress.

These are the true voices of Muslim and Arab people, or more true than the voices of hate, with their poisonous propaganda that seeks to divide.

They need our support. In Iraq, of course, people want to gain full control of their own destiny. The MNF should leave as soon as the Government wishes us. As the Prime Minister said we need an objective timetable. By that he means one that is conditions-based ie as Iraqi capability is built up. But don't be in any doubt. No-one, but no-one I spoke to, from whatever quarter, wanted us to leave precipitately. An arbitrary timetable ie without conditions being right, would be seen for what it would be: weakness.

Here is where we have to change radically our mindset. At present, when we are shown pictures of carnage in Iraq, much of our own opinion sees that as a failure, as a reason for leaving. Surely it is a reason for persevering and succeeding. What is the purpose of the terrorism in Iraq? It is to destroy the prospect of democratic progress. In doing so, they hope to deal us a mortal blow. They know victory for them in Iraq is defeat not just for Iraqi democracy but for democratic values everywhere.

So they kill our soldiers even though our forces - with incredible heroism and dedication - are and have been in Iraq for three years with full United Nations support and are there now with the free consent of Iraq's first ever fully democratic Government. They kill ordinary Iraqis for wanting to join the police or build the country or just for being of one religious persuasion not another. Theirs is a strategy drenched in the blood of the innocent.

Should their determination to do evil eclipse our desire to do good? By all means debate the tactics and strategy of how we succeed. But I ask: how can we possibly, in the face of such a struggle, so critical to our own values, not see it through and do so with renewed vigour and confidence? If Iraqis can show their faith in democracy by voting for it, shouldn't we show ours by supporting them in it?

By "we" I don't mean the countries of the MNF, I mean the entire international community.

Doing so would signal a dramatic step of reconciliation.

There are two "ifs".

"If" the international community could see the struggle for security in Iraq as part of the wider global struggle against terrorism. And "if", we would commit the same energy, engagement and raw political emotion to the rest of the agenda which preoccupies the world at large.

Throughout the past years, ever since I saw 9/11 change the world, I have believed that the greatest danger is that global politics divides into "hard" and "soft". The "hard" get after the terrorists. The "soft" campaign against poverty. The divide is dangerous because interdependence makes all these issues just that: interdependent.

The answer to terrorism is the universal application of global values. The answer to poverty is the same. Without progress - in democracy and in prosperity - security is at risk. Without security, progress falters.

That is why the struggle for global values has to be applied not selectively, but to a global agenda.

The agenda is there. It is largely agreed. But it needs passion as well as policy.

We must act on global poverty, most of all in Africa. We have a plan that last year's G8 agreed. Each aspect is important: aid, cancelling debt, education, tackling disease, especially HIV/Aids, governance, conflict resolution.

We must act on climate change. The G8 +5 process, whose next meeting is in Mexico in October, offers a way forward, building on Kyoto, which can involve America, China and India.

We must deliver an ambitious world trade round, for the poorest nations but also for ourselves.

In each of these areas, there are powerful reflections of nation's interests but also vital tests of commitment to global values. If we believe in justice, how can we let 30,000 children a day die preventably? If we believe in our responsibility to the generations that come after us, how can we be, knowingly, indifferent to the degradation of the planet we live on?

How can we have a global trading system based on unfair trade?

Indeed, even in respect of that part of the agenda that naturally preoccupies my country and yours, there is a breadth we must address.

Earlier I described the fledgling movement toward democracy across the Middle East. As I said, I believe success in Iraq has an importance far beyond the borders of Iraq.

But I would put it higher than this. I now think that we need a far more concentrated and concerted strategy across the whole region. The United States rightly began this with its Broader Middle East Initiative. However, the more I examine this issue, the more convinced I am, that to protect our future, we need to help them to theirs. For example, I don't believe we will be secure unless Iran changes. I emphasise I am not saying, we should impose change. I am simply saying the greater freedom and democracy which, I have no doubt, most Iranians want, is something we need. There is a choice being played out in the region: to be partners with the wider world; or to be defined in opposition to it. If Iran leads the latter camp, the results will be felt by us all. The most effective way of avoiding that is to encourage and support all nations and people in the region who share our belief that freedom is the best route to peace and prosperity. This cannot and should not be the responsibility of the United States alone. The EU, in particular, needs to be fully engaged. But country by country, in every way we can, with every means we can properly deploy, the international community should be the champions of those who want change there. And wherever those who strive for that freedom are in danger, we should be at their side.

They would be hugely empowered and encouraged if we were able to offer hope on Israel and Palestine. At so many levels, this is critical: for ordinary Israelis and Palestinians, of course, who suffer the depredations of the conflict. But far wider than that, this is a dispute which casts a shadow over all attempts at reconciliation. Under its cover, global terrorism recruits. Because of its darkness, moderate Muslim opinion is put on the defensive. And shut out is any enlightened sensible view of what we in the West really stand for and believe in.

The frustrating thing is that whatever people say, everyone knows the following: the state of Israel is here to stay; the Palestinian people aren't going to disappear; and the only possible solution is two states, side by side. In fact, when President Bush became the first US President openly to articulate this, everyone more or less accepted it. The problem we have had in Northern Ireland is that there has never been agreement on the basic nature of the final outcome, one part wanting Union with the UK, the other with the Republic of Ireland. Nonetheless we have achieved extraordinary progress, by relentless working at it through every stop and start. In the case of Israel and Palestine, we do now have agreement as to the basic nature of the settlement: two states. Yes, there are innumerable difficult aspects, not least Jerusalem and of course a negotiation about territory; but the constitutional outcome is essentially agreed.

There is only one way through. Clear acceptance by Hamas that the two-state solution is the only one; a renunciation of all violence; and then a move back into the Road Map, with a speeded up pathway to final status negotiations. It will require heavy engagement by the US and the Quartet. But there is not a better time than now, to break out of what is otherwise a continuing descent into despair.

The scale of this agenda is enormous. It means that today's leaders of nations must analyse, cope with, deal with, a vast array of international problems as well as the myriad of challenges thrown up by each of our systems of healthcare, pensions, welfare, law and order. Except that, these problems are no longer simply international. They intrude into domestic politics. There is globalisation in politics, too.

All of the issues raised today, require immense focus, commitment and drive to get things done. Increasingly, there is a hopeless mismatch between the global challenges we face and the global institutions to confront them. After the Second World War, people realised that there needed to be a new international institutional architecture. In this new era, in the early 21st century, we need to renew it.

I want to make some tentative suggestions for change.

First, the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, has done an extraordinary job in often near impossible circumstances. He has also proposed reforms of the UN that should certainly be done.

But a Security Council which has France as a permanent member but not Germany, Britain but not Japan, China but not India to say nothing of the absence of proper representation from Latin America or Africa, cannot be legitimate in the modern world. I used to think this problem was intractable. The competing interests are so strong. But I am now sure we need reform. If necessary let us agree some form of interim change that can be a bridge to a future settlement. But we need to get it done.

We should give the UNSG new powers: over the appointments in the Secretariat - it is absurd they have to be voted on, one by one, in the General Assembly; and over how the resources of the UN are spent. We should streamline radically the humanitarian and development operations so that the UN can act effectively as one agency in country: single UN offices, with one leader, one country plan and one budget. There is even a case for establishing one humanitarian agency that allows for better prediction of an impending crisis; for swifter action to remedy it; and sees the different aspects, from short-term relief to longer term development as linked not distinct.

We should also strengthen the UNSG's powers to propose action to the Security Council for the resolution of long-standing disputes; and encourage him in doing so.

Second, the World Bank and IMF. These institutions together play an important role in global stability and prosperity. There is a case, as has been argued before, for merger. But in any event, there is certainly a powerful case for reform.

The IMF, and the international monetary and financial committee chaired by Britain's Gordon Brown, is developing plans for change. To fulfil its role in ensuring the stability of the international monetary and financial system, the IMF must focus on surveillance, both of individual countries and the wider system, that is independent of political influence. It also must become more representative of emerging economic powers and give greater voice to developing countries. The World Bank must remain focussed on fighting world poverty.

Finally, reform, including to appointments and administration, is needed to make the Executive Board more effective.

Third, there is a strong argument for establishing a multilateral system for "safe enrichment" for nuclear energy.

The IAEA would oversee an international bank of uranium to ensure a reliable fuel supply for countries utilising nuclear power without the need for everyone to own their own fuel cycle.

Fourth, the G8 now regularly meets as the G8 +5. That should be the norm.

Finally, we need a UN Environment Organisation, commensurate with the importance the issue now has on the international agenda.

I do not, for a second, under-estimate the hazardous task of achieving these changes. But I am sure it is time to make them.

I want to take one example as a test case: Sudan. There are hundreds of thousands who have died. The dispute between different groups has every dimension of strife in it: ethnic, religious, territorial. If it gets even worse, the knock-on consequences will stretch across the middle belt of Africa and beyond. And we have watched it, with intermittent bursts of activity, for the past two years. The seeds of it were, of course, sown years before that.

This is not a condemnation of world leaders. On the contrary, most of us have devoted what time we can and are doing so now. But in reality, we can't do it all. What it needs is an empowered international actor; the capacity to intervene militarily; and a properly orchestrated humanitarian response. And we needed all of it, from the beginning.

Leaders should do more. But it’s the system itself that is at fault, not because of indolence but because of time. Occasionally I look at our international institutions and think as I do about our welfare state: the structures of 1946 trying to meet the challenges of 2006.

What's the obstacle? It is that in creating more effective multilateral institutions, individual nations yield up some of their own independence. This is a hard thing to swallow. Let me be blunt. Powerful nations want more effective multilateral institutions - when they think those institutions will do their will. What they fear is effective multilateral institutions that do their own will.

But the danger of leaving things as they are, is ad hoc coalitions for action that stir massive controversy about legitimacy; or paralysis in the face of crisis.

No amount of institutional change will ever work unless the most powerful make it work. The EU doesn't move forward unless its leading countries agree. That is the reality of power; size; economic, military, political weight.

But if there is a common basis for working - agreed aims and purposes - then no matter how powerful, countries gain from being able to sub-contract problems that on their own they cannot solve. Their national self-interest becomes delivered through effective communal action.

Today, after all the turmoil and disagreement of the past few years, there is a real opportunity to bring us together. We all of us face the common security threat of global terrorism; we all of us depend on a healthy global financial system; all of us, at least in time, will feel the consequences of the poverty of millions living in a world of plenty; we all of us know that secure and clean energy is a common priority. All of us have an interest in stability and a fear of chaos. That's the impact of interdependence.

Above all, though in too many countries and in too many ways, global values are not followed, there is no dissent about their desirability. From the moment the Afgans came out and voted in their first ever election, the myth that democracy was a Western concept, was exploded. The Governments of the world do not all believe in freedom. But the people of the world do.

In my nine years as Prime Minister I have not become more cynical about idealism. I have simply become more persuaded that the distinction between a foreign policy driven by values and one driven by interests, is obviously wrong. Globalisation begets interdependence. Interdependence begets the necessity of a common value system to make it work. In other words, the idealism becomes the real politik. None of that will eliminate the setbacks, fallings short, inconsistencies and hypocrisies that come with practical decision-making in a harsh world. But it does mean that the best of the human spirit, that which, throughout the ages, has pushed the progress of humanity along, is also the best hope for the world's future. Our values are our guide.

To make it so, however, we have to be prepared to think sooner and act quicker in defence of those values - progressive pre-emption, if you will. There is an agenda for it, waiting to be gathered and capable of uniting a world once divided. There wouldn't be a better moment for it.

Iraq recce

The Sheffield Star reports on the LFIQ delegation to Iraq.

THREE years after the invasion by British and American troops, Iraq remains a dangerous place.

But the risk of kidnappings and bomb attacks did not deter a delegation of trade unionists, including Sheffield teacher Sue Rogers and former North East Derbyshire Labour MP Harry Barnes.

Despite reports of carnage still taking place daily, they saw how recovery was beginning to take hold away from areas such as Baghdad and Basra, where insurgents remain a constant threat.

Sue, who teaches history at King Edward VII Secondary School, Broomhill, was on the trip representing the NASUWT teaching union. She said: "We went to look at how the rebuilding of Iraq is progressing."

The 27-strong delegation, from the Trade Union Congress's Labour Friends of Iraq group, included people who were for and against the war in 2003. (actually, it was 7 from LFIQ which is not part of the TUC, Gary Kent)

Sue had been opposed to military action and took part in Stop The War protests.

But on arrival in the northern region of Kurdistan - one of the areas most repressed by Saddam Hussein's regime - she said the welcome was "unbelievable".

She added: "The people we met were totally for the war and were so glad it happened."

During their nine-day visit the group stayed in Erbil and Sulymania and saw how buildings had been reconstructed and schools reopened.

Sue said: "There were men with guns from the regular Iraqi army and police and a small group was assigned for our protection but it was peaceful and I felt quite safe."

However, the group received a stark reminder of the region's darker past when they were given a "moving" tour of the Red House in Sulymania, where Kurdish resistance fighters were imprisoned and tortured.

They also visited memorials to the struggle for freedom and talked to workers in the cities about how they re-established trade unions - banned under Saddam Hussein - but seen by the delegation as an essential part of a free democracy.

Sue was delighted to see classes up and running in schools.

"Although they didn't always have the equipment everyone was positive and hopeful which was fantastic."

Although she believed the invasion of Iraq was wrong she said Britain should not abandon the country. "Now we have to help complete rebuilding."

During the visit, Harry Barnes - joint president of Labour Friends of Iraq - was granted honorary membership of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions to mark his efforts to help unions re-establish themselves in the country.

His work was also recognised by former colleagues in the House of Commons who passed a motion of congratulation.

25 May 2006

LFIQ Chair Dave Anderson MP has tabled a Commons motion backing TUC appeal for mobiles for Iraqi trade unions

TUC AND MOBILE PHONES FOR IRAQI TRADE UNIONS

That this House notes that unions representing workers in Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan face incredible challenges in defending working people and rebuilding democracy and that one of their requests for solidarity from British trade unionists is the provision of mobile phones, which are crucial for any union organiser but especially in Iraq, where travel can be dangerous and landlines are not sufficiently reliable or widespread; further notes that mobile phone handsets are expensive to buy in Iraq and that buying new ones could eat up scarce union resources, but that the Iraqi trade union movement has identified a way of easily converting old European mobile phones for use in Iraq; and congratulates the TUC on launching an appeal for unions, their members and concerned members of the public to pass on via the TUC their used mobile phones and chargers to the Iraqi trade union movement as an act of solidarity.

The geography of the left and Iraq

Norman Geras - professor of government at the University of Manchester and one of the authors of the Euston Manifesto – examines the geography of the left in the Guardian. He rightly argues that within the large "middle" sector of left-liberal opinion opposed to the war there has been, from the start, a differentiating subdivision - between those who opposed the war without being in denial about the considerations on the other side of the argument, and those who precisely have been in denial about them. This latter group extends well beyond the far left. The signs of denial are abundant in the recent public life of the western democracies: in the banners and slogans for that Saturday on February 15 2003, from which one would never have known that Saddam's Iraq was a foul tyranny; in the numbers of those on the left unwilling to allow, many indeed unable to comprehend, why others of us supported a regime-change war; in a constant stream of comment in liberal daily papers and weeklies of the left; in the excommunications issued and more recent calls for apology or recantation; and, most seriously, in the perceptible lack of interest in initiatives of solidarity with the forces in Iraq battling for a democratic transformation of their country, part of a wider lack of enthusiasm for the success of this enterprise given its origins in a war led by George Bush.

The Guardian, sadly, is one of the key culprits in demonstrating what he calls a perceptible lack of interest in initiatives of solidarity with the forces in Iraq battling for a democratic transformation of their country.

Gary Kent

Hillary Benn outlines Iraqi improvements

Hilary Benn has provided evidence of significant progress with reconstruction since Saddams regime was overthrown. The fruits of these labours are now shared throughout the country, whereas in the past, for example, electricity generated for the south would be diverted to Baghdad. (David Spector)

Parliamentary Answer

Iraq

Mr. Moore: To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what assessment has been made of progress in restoring (a) electricity, (b) water, (c) sanitation, (d) health care and (e) education services in (i) Al Basrah, (ii) Al Muthanna, (iii) Dhi Qar and (iv) Maysan provinces in Iraq.

Hilary Benn: The Government of Iraq, supported by the UK and other donors, has made significant progress with reconstruction since 2003. But there is still a long way to go.

Once a relatively wealthy country with high levels of education and health care, by 2003 Iraq had suffered more than 20 years of conflict, mismanagement and chronic under-investment from a brutal regime. Continued violence, especially sabotage directed at key infrastructure, and low (but growing) levels of management capacity in Iraq’s national and local government have slowed progress. The UK and international community are committed to helping the new Iraqi Government tackle these challenges.

One challenge is the lack of data, especially at the regional and provincial level. The following information therefore covers the progress that has been made across Iraq, including regional detail only where this is available.

Electricity generation is more equitably distributed across Iraq than before 2003. Nearly 5,000 megawatts (MW) have been added to the national grid since 2003, but Iraq’s average electricity generation has not improved over that period. This is because at the same time as capacity is being added through reconstruction projects, breakdowns of the pre-existing dilapidated systems, shortages of fuel supplies and sabotage are reducing capacity. So Iraqis are not getting the full benefit of those extra megawatts. Demand for electricity also continues to rise dramatically, as the economy grows and more people own and use electrical goods such as fridges and air-conditioning units. The new Iraqi Government will be starting work on a long-term power sector strategy, with DFID’s support.

In the south, average electricity generation levels have increased from approximately 750 MW in January 2004 to over 1,000 MW in December 2005.

The south now receives its fair share of national power—whereas under Saddam’s regime, power was often diverted from the south to Baghdad.

To improve power supply in the south, DFID has:

Repaired transmission lines from Hartha power station to Basra city—securing electricity supplies for 1.5 million residents;

Improved power distribution to 13 areas of Basra.

By the end of 2006, we will have:

Established point power generators to provide 15 MW of back-up supplies in Dhi Qar and Maysan;

Added or secured a further 190 MW of electricity in the south, through our £40 million Iraq Infrastructure and Services Programme.

Water supplies have improved across the south since the end of the conflict, and sewage systems and water treatment plants are now operating again.

Before the conflict, no major sewage systems were operating. Immediate post-conflict work improved efficiency of water treatment plants and pumping stations. DFID has: provided technical advice for a major sewage installation in Al Amarah, providing up to half the city’s population with access to a piped system and replacing open sewage channels; improved the water supply to 60,000 people in Al Amtahiyah; started construction of reservoirs and water towers to benefit a further 200,000 people; constructed a water training centre which will train water engineers from Maysan, Muthanna, Basra and Dhi Qar provinces.

Health services are gradually being restored throughout Iraq. Hundreds of health care facilities have been rehabilitated and 240 hospitals and 1,200 primary health centres are now functioning. Through extensive disease control programmes, there has been a decline in the prevalence of leishmaniasis, malaria, measles, mumps, and polio. Japan and the US have rehabilitated a number of health care facilities in the south, as well as supplying essential equipment, ambulances and drugs. The US is constructing a new paediatric hospital in Basra, which will offer improved treatment to children with acute conditions across the south.

5,168 schools have been rehabilitated throughout Iraq, with a further 450 in progress. By the end of 2006, more than 133,000 primary school teachers and 47,500 secondary school teachers and administrators will have received training and technical support. In southern Iraq, the UN has rehabilitated schools and supplied textbooks, and is also rehabilitating vocational training institutes. Japan has provided textbooks to all primary schools in Muthanna. There are 465 schools operating in Maysan, and 348 in Muthanna.

Iraqi first lady warning on youth

The BBC reports that Hero Ibrahim Ahmad has warned that high unemployment levels in Iraq are making disaffected youths easy targets for extremists. The wife of President Jalal Talabani founded the Kurdistan Womens Association in 1989. She told a conference in London that I believe that if we are to genuinely try to end the misery and misfortunes of all of the people of Iraq, we must work together regardless of ethnic background, nationality or religion to achieve freedom of the individual and a respect for human rights and dignity equally for both women and men.

Building a civil society in Iraq

The New York Times examines the role of Iraqi charities in rebuilding civil society where , it says, small acts of pure altruism often go unnoticed but the outlines of a nascent civil society are taking shape. It says that since 2003 the government has registered 5,000 private organizations, including charities, human rights groups, medical assistance agencies and literacy projects. Officials estimate that an additional 7,000 groups are working unofficially.

Quagmire or Cut and Run?

Reknowned Australian human rights barrister Jim Nolan gives a wide-ranging address to the Sydney Fabian Society in which he trenchantly addresses parts of the Australian left on Iraq and much more.

May 17th 2006.

Tony Blair’s recent visit should have been the occasion for Australian labour to reflect upon its differences with him on Iraq. Unfortunately for anyone who any longer bothered to reflect on the topic, Blair’s clarity and conviction did nothing so much as highlight the predicament of Labor’s claimed progressive credentials in foreign policy - which these days have withered to little more than a conservative parochialism.

Strung on a taught and straining thread which connects Jaques Chirac to Michael Moore - with nothing in between - Labor’s recent pronouncements on Iraq seem a pale apologia for defeatism when compared with Blair’s resolution.

Speaking in London in early April, Blair reminded us that there is another, optimistic and idealistic, view of a progressive, internationalist agenda.

“[T]he defining characteristic of today's world is its interdependence; that whereas the economics of globalisation are well matured, the politics of globalisation are not; and that unless we articulate a common global policy based on common values, we risk chaos threatening our stability, economic and political, through letting extremism, conflict or injustice go unchecked. The consequence of this thesis is a policy of engagement not isolation; and one that is active not reactive.

Confusingly, its proponents and opponents come from all sides of the political spectrum. So it is apparently a "neo-conservative" ie right wing view, to be ardently in favour of spreading democracy round the world; whilst others on the right take the view that this is dangerous and deluded - the only thing that matters is an immediate view of national interest. Some progressives see intervention as humanitarian and necessary; others take the view that provided dictators don't threaten our citizens directly, what they do with their own, is up to them.”

This speech echoed Blair’s earlier landmark 1999 speech in Chicago where he laid out the need for a fresh internationalist foreign policy after the cold war. He showed a remarkable prescience then which still holds today:

“I want to speak to you this evening about events in Kosovo. But I want to put these events in a wider context - economic, political and security - because I do not believe Kosovo can be seen in isolation. No one in the West who has seen what is happening in Kosovo can doubt that NATO’s military action is justified. Bismarck famously said the Balkans were not worth the bones of one Pomeranian Grenadier. Anyone who has seen the tear stained faces of the hundreds of thousands of refugees streaming across the border, heard their heart-rending tales of cruelty or contemplated the unknown fates of those left behind, knows that Bismarck was wrong.

This is a just war, based not on any territorial ambitions but on values. We cannot let the evil of ethnic cleansing stand. We must not rest until it is reversed. We have learned twice before in this century that appeasement does not work. If we let an evil dictator range unchallenged, we will have to spill infinitely more blood and treasure to stop him later.”

Blair also singled out Saddam in this connection and foreshadowed that Saddam’s continued recalcitrance would have to be dealt with.

Its now forgotten that while Blair was speaking in Chicago, the then governor of Texas – when he had any thoughts on foreign policy at all – expressed himself in the language of that self same parochialism which now appears to be the guiding (and enervating) principle of Australian Labor’s foreign policy. Isolationism, indifference, an arch ‘realism’ of the kind that the Henry Kissinger of old would have espoused. Just ask the Kosovans, the Kurds or the East Timorese what that held out for them!

September 11 shook Bush and the Republican establishment out of the complacency which had led many of them just a few years earlier to oppose the NATO intervention in the former Yugoslavia and in the first months of the Bush presidency to focus on missile defence and reducing troops deployments overseas. Some Republicans had queried as naive idealism Clinton’s support for that intervention. Early in his presidency Bush even toyed with the idea of lifting the sanctions on Saddam in favour of so-called “smart sanctions”, but the plan was scuppered by France and Russia. September 11 powerfully brought home the message of just how murderous and calamitous the internationalist jihadi program had become. With the aid and comfort of the likes of Iraq whose state power could be utilised as a facilitator and quartermaster of the jihadis, this was a potentially deadly combination.

Bush was not the only one whose comfortable world view was shaken by September 11. Bush ‘got it’ just as Blair had ‘got it’ many years earlier. But not everyone did. So devalued had become the vocabulary of contemporary political analysis that when militant Islam broke so dramatically into the western consciousness, there was no adequate political term to describe it. Despite the wishful thinking of the playschool pretend Marxists who tried to re-invent these fanatics as doughty anti-imperialists, the truth is that they represent a deeply reactionary nihilist death cult which is in the process of attempting to hijack a major religion. As the Taliban regime demonstrated, their ‘vision’ could not be adequately described as medieval. No amount of sociological dissimulation can alter this fact .

Ah – but we all know how robustly secular Saddam was - right? Well, as robustly secular as any man who was using his own blood to write a Koran (or at least claiming as much), who had written, in his own hand, “Allahu akbar” on Iraq’s national flag, a policy known as “al-Hamla al-Imaniyya” (the faith campaign), instituted the Islamic law punishment for theft (cutting off of the right hand), banned the drinking of alcohol in public (even while his favourite tipple was Matteus Rose), whose son Uday had “prostitutes” publicly beheaded and who brought in legislation that amnestied any Muslim in prison who managed to learn the Koran , and who had embarked upon a major mosque building program whose major architectural feature was the minaret as missile. And we know how these secular regimes have nothing to do with religious fanatics don’t we – just as Secular, Ba’athist Syria, where most of the population is Sunni, has nothing to do with Shi’ite fundamentalist Hezbollah or, faced with the alternatives of democratic reform or further reaction has become a catspaw of the deranged Ahmadinejad – sure!! The truth is that Ba’athism in both its Syrian and Iraqi strains was up to its grimy blood stained armpits in cahoots with various jihadi groups.

Islamofacism is a serviceable, if interim, description of this phenomenon - since as Paul Berman has showed us , - the particular toxic ideology which animates the international jihadi movement draws upon fascism as much as is does upon fanatical religion. The conveyor belt for many of the ideas which underpin it was Ba’athism as much as it was other stripes of fanatical Islam. Yet this has little penetrated the ideological blinkers of many on the western left – preferring as they do the scenario whereby visceral anti Americanism trumps all comers - no matter how ugly . And thus was born the contemporary phenomenon of the alliance between the extreme left and Islamic right – confirmed by nothing so much as the indefatigable George Galloway in Damascus, if confirmation was needed, by an even more shameful scene than his famous paean to Saddam.

Repeating the mantra like Keating’s pet shop parrots, the conventional wisdom on much of the political left appears in Australia to be that the removal of Saddam was a greater crime than the many which he committed? The truth however was and is, much different.

Time does not permit a recapping of many of the issues which led to the war, and in particular the canard that western governments ‘lied’ about Saddam’s WMD. Some recent revelations may cause a rethink of those who have swallowed this piece of Michael Moore inspired mendacity.

A long report in the May-June Foreign Affairs gives an intriguing view of Saddam’s last days which chimes with the last days of so many dictators. Read it. There is no doubt that Saddam wanted, until the end, to maintain ambiguity about his possession of WMD because he wanted, when sanctions had collapsed, to rebuild his WMD capabilities. Given his past record, of cheat and retreat there was no reason why any serious government should have believed his – never unequivocal - denials.

Many months after the fall of Baghdad, a number of senior Iraqi officials in coalition custody continued to believe it possible that Iraq still possessed a WMD capability hidden away somewhere although they insisted that they had no direct knowledge of WMD programs. Saddam’s secretive compartmentalised tyranny lent plausibility to the existence of secret compartmentalized WMD programs; and unsurprisingly many Western governments believed such programs existed. Indeed, Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector freely admits in his 2004 memoir that on the eve of the war he believed along with Egyptian, French and German intelligence, that Iraq did have banned weapons and prohibited programs: "gut feelings, which I kept to myself."

It is now also clear that Saddam believed until the end that the French and Russian governments would save him. He also knew that the oil-for-food programme would sustain him in the meantime. It had the added advantage of ‘cementing’ his support in French and Russian circles. Indeed, Serge Boidevaix, the former secretary general of the French Foreign Ministry, and Jean-Bernard Mérimée, French Ambassador to the UN from 1991-95 and Kofi Annan’s special advisor on European issues from 1999-2002. have both have admitted taking oil-for-food cash from Saddam and have claimed that the French government was aware of their behaviour (for good and implausible measure, Boidevaix said that the United States also knew of his oil dealings).

The Duelfer report in any event confirmed that Saddam intended to retain his regime’s capacity to restart production once the sanctions had been lifted or rendered ineffective.

As for Saddam’s sponsorship and support for "terror", Stephen Hayes in a series of recent articles in the Weekly Standard has laid out a significant case for these connections, based on a mere fraction of declassified documents captured from the Ba’athist regime. These show Iraqi Baathist involvement with jihadist and Bin Ladenist groups from Sudan to Afghanistan to Western Asia.

As Christopher Hitchens observed in summarising this material earlier this year in Slate - Never mind "imminent threat," if that phrase upsets you. How does "permanent threat" sound?

Was anything said about Saddam untrue? It is beyond dispute that Saddam was a genocidal fascist psychopath whose crimes against his own people were legion - including a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs . In addition, he committed major acts of environmental vandalism against the habitat of the Marsh Arabs and the Kuwaiti oilfields. Iraq’s President Talibani recently reminded us that Ba’athist Iraq was the longest lived fascist regime in history. Hitchens rightly described Saddam’s Iraq as a ‘charnel house above ground and mass grave below’. All of this was widely known before March 2003 yet, disingenuously, Saddam’s crimes were sidelined when the debate on the war broke out.

Only a fortnight ago there were mass demonstrations in many western capitals calling for military intervention in Darfur to stop the genocide. Yet Saddam was a more determined and successful genocidiare than the Sudanese government and its repellent Janjaweed militia (two groups it must be noted enthusiastically boosted in the recent broadcast of that doughty anti imperialist Osama Bin Laden). Still, this counted for little among the western ‘intelligensia’ once Blair and Bush had Saddam slated Saddam for removal. Suddenly there was a ‘virtual’ statute of limitations on genocide. When ever Saddam’s crimes were discussed the subject was changed.

But, has Oliver Kamm has reminded us, significant parts of the French left defected to the fascist right in 1936, so the coddling of Ba’athist and other middle eastern dictators should come as no real surprise. In early 2003, little wonder that Saddam believed that he was set to be back in business as soon as the French and Russians contrived to weaken or remove the sanctions. In the meantime he could use the sanctions as a political weapon – and as we know now, thanks to AWB and others, he was awash with cash.

The English journalist Nick Cohen writing in the New Statesman a little while ago suggested that if you asked an Iraqi communist or Kurdish socialist today what support they have had from the liberal left, ‘they won't detain you for long’. While little better could be expected from the crypto fascists on the far left who represent the ‘insurgents’ as some kind of Iraqi Viet Cong, it was the collapse of much of the democratic left which Cohen said was catastrophic. “Why couldn't it oppose the second Gulf war while promising to do everything possible to advance the cause of Iraqi democrats and socialists once the war was over? Cohen asked. “Why the sneering, almost racist pretence that Saddam had no honourable opponents?” Why indeed!

George Orwell once wrote in another, not unrelated, context: "The truth, it is felt, becomes untruth when your enemy utters it…There was even a tendency to feel that the Nanking atrocities had become, as it were, retrospectively untrue because the British Government now drew attention to them." Reminding his appeasement minded comrades of the atrocities in pre war Europe, Orwell said "These things really happened, that is the thing to keep one’s eye on. They happened even though Lord Halifax said they happened."

What is the situation in Iraq now? And what does it call for? Listen to Iraq’s Ambassador to Canada, Howar Ziad. In a speech just last month at Carleton University in Ottawa, he said this:

“The contrast between democracy and dictatorship explains much of what is happening in Iraq. Diehard fascists, the remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime and al-Qaeda fanatics, have waged a relentless campaign against the Iraqi people. They have allowed Iraqi citizens almost no rest, no opportunity to heal the wounds of 35 years of Baathist totalitarianism. This faction, which subscribes to the dark days of state brutality in Iraqi history, has viciously attacked schoolchildren, mosques, churches, funerals and hospitals. They provoke murderous sectarianism in attempt to undo every weave of the country's social fabric. Outrageously, foreign apologists dress up their ruthless acts of murder as a so-called "national resistance."

Despite the violent challenges that we face from fanatics in our attempt to establish a secure and stable democratic state, our aim is to go further than mere democracy and to build an Iraqi national consensus. The majority of Iraqis has insisted on a principle of inclusiveness over one of narrow majoritarianism. We have already built a government that represents over 80 per cent of Iraqis, and now we are trying to accommodate the remainder. Most members of the Sunni Arab community of Iraq reject terrorism; it is only a violent minority that wishes to wreck a peaceful and democratic future.”

I invite anyone to quarrel with this prognosis and anyone with any credibility on the left to say that the ambassador’s description of Iraq’s enemies is inaccurate. Or do we support those dishonest foreign apologists who dress up the Ba’athist and jihadi ruthless acts of murder as a so-called "national resistance” or acquiesce in their continues campaign by shamefully ignoring its consequences just as Saddam’s crimes were ignored. Where is the “resistance” to foreign “occupation” in the blowing up of Iraqi mosques, hospitals and funerals?

That is the nightmare to which Iraq will return if the West decides to ‘cut and run’. Faced with a determined and ruthless insurgency combining fanatical jihadis and Ba’athist fascists – none of whom appear to lack significant international support - what should the response be? As with the Saddam denial syndrome, the ‘cut and run’ strategy steadfastly refuses to face up to its consequences.

Australian Labor’s present Iraq policy quietly steps around the consequences of ‘cut and run’ while remaining shamefully silent on the reasons why the world is a much improved place thanks to Saddam’s removal. What this leads to is the ‘progressive’ left’s own groundhog day, from Kissinger and Ford (abandoning the Kurds in 1975) Bush Snr (abandoning the Shi’ites, and briefly the Kurds, in 1991) to encouraging Bush Jnr to abandoning all the anti Saddam Iraqis in 2006, and all in less than a generation. Only cold indifference and a substantial addition to the stock of Saddam’s & Ba’athisms’ mass graves will lie between these two shameful episodes, with only the prospect of further desertion and abandonment for the future for Iraqi democrats. That is no place for any progressive to be.

It is not Kissinger, so much as Pogo (see the enemy approaching, hack off your left arm and use it as a club) which is the inspiration for this non-policy, the fragility of which is exposed in a minute if its implications are to be pressed. But of course the lazy, Blair-Bush hating consensus which has infected much of the left - not to mention the ‘quality’ media - has now become so widely entrenched it rarely has to confront squarely the existential consequences of the cut and run strategy.

Late last year the Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen – no supporter of Bush - remarked upon a troubling shift in left opinion which had turned its back on internationalist idealism. The article was titled “Ceding Idealism to the GOP”. Cohen said:

Both JFK and FDR were Democrats, of course, and the party has always been associated with internationalism. Somehow, though, that moralism -- that urge to do good abroad -- has drifted over to the GOP. It is Republicans, particularly neocons, who talk the language of moralism in foreign policy and who, weapons of mass destruction aside, wanted to take out Saddam Hussein because he was a beast. It mattered to them that he killed and tortured his own people. It says something about the Democratic left that it cheered Michael Moore's infantile "Fahrenheit 9/11" even though the film made no mention of Hussein's depredations, not even his gassing of Kurdish villages.

Just last week Madeline Albright, also in the Washington Post, warned that a preparedness to punish Bush for his setbacks in Iraq would translate into a new conventional wisdom which will treat as a mistake the promotion of democracy in the middle east.

There is an alternative. UK trade unionists and Labour activists have created a group called ‘Labor Friends of Iraq’ [‘LFIQ’] [www.labourfriendsofiraq.org.uk]. LFIQ has recently sponsored a trip to Iraq by trades unionists and their report makes compelling reading. No surprises who the real enemies of trades unions in Iraq are. The report mentions trade union leaders such as Nozad Ismail in Kirkuk. Nozad, like many other Iraqi unionists is constantly targeted by terrorists because of his support for pluralism and democracy which undermines those who seek to foment civil war. Nozad has survived two assassination attempts and is always armed himself. The Iraqi Kurdish Communist leader Kamal Shaker told the LFIQ delegation 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.

Even more encouraging for a re-invigorated democratic left is the publication, just the last month, of the “Euston Manifesto”. The Euston Manifesto [eustonmanifesto.org] started with some like-minded progressives – principally Norm Geras, the leading U.K. Marxist scholar and Nick Cohen, Observer columnist and author, and others, meeting in a London pub about a year ago. They were disenchanted with what they saw as the wrong-headed thinking of the anti-war movement, they began to talk of a new left movement.

The manifesto brought together those who were supporters of the military intervention in Iraq, and those who had opposed it but who found themselves increasingly disaffected with the dominant so-called ‘anti-war’ discourse. They were at odds, too, with how it related to other prominent issues - terrorism and the fight against it, US foreign policy, the record of the Blair government, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, more generally, attitudes to democratic values.

The manifesto, will be given a public launch next week (May 25) at Kings College, in London. I am proud to have been one of the founding signatories (along with three other Australians) among whom are included: UK academics Norm Geras, Brian Brivati, journalists Nick Cohen, John Lloyd Frances Wheen and Oliver Kamm, pillars of the US left Paul Berman, Marc Cooper and Michael Walzer and the Iraqi dissident and author of Republic of Fear - Kanan Makiya.

The general principles of the Manifesto may be summarised as follows:-

‘We value the traditions and institutions of the liberal, pluralist democracies, and we decline to make excuses for, to indulgently “understand”, reactionary regimes and movements for which democracy is a hated enemy. We hold the fundamental human rights codified in the Universal Declaration to be precisely universal. Equally, violations of these rights are to be condemned whoever is responsible for them and regardless of cultural context.

We argue that the time is long overdue to break with the tradition of left apologetics for anti-democratic forces and regimes; that there is a duty of respect for the historical truth; and that it is more than ever necessary to affirm that, within the usual constraints against incitement, people must be at liberty to criticise beliefs - including religious beliefs - that others cherish.

Turning specifically to Iraq the Manifesto states:-

“This opposes us not only to those on the Left who have actively spoken in support of the gangs of jihadist and Baathist thugs of the Iraqi so-called resistance, but also to others who manage to find a way of situating themselves between such forces and those trying to bring a new democratic life to the country. We have no truck, either, with the tendency to pay lip service to these ends, while devoting most of one's energy to criticism of political opponents at home (supposedly responsible for every difficulty in Iraq), and observing a tactful silence or near silence about the ugly forces of the Iraqi "insurgency". The many left opponents of regime change in Iraq who have been unable to understand the considerations that led others on the Left to support it, dishing out anathema and excommunication, more lately demanding apology or repentance, betray the democratic values they profess.”

Hitchens writing about the manifesto in the Times a fortnight ago summed up its contents and approach with typical flair:

The “Euston Manifesto” keeps it simple. It prefers democratic pluralism, at any price, to theocracy.
…
It prefers those who vote in Iraq and Afghanistan to those who put bombs in mosques and schools and hospitals. It does not conceive of arguments that make excuses for suicide murderers. It affirms the right of democratic nations and open societies to defend themselves, both from theocratic states abroad and from theocratic gangsters at home.

… So call me a neo-conservative if you must: anything is preferable to the rotten unprincipled alliance between the former fans of the one-party state and the hysterical zealots of the one-god one.

On a purely pragmatic level can anyone imagine a post Bush White House ‘cutting and running’ from Iraq? Whether the next US President is Senator John McCain, Rudy Guliani or Senator Hillary Clinton, the commitment to Iraq will be continuing. Its success is vital not for the future of any particular US politician but for the future of democratic politics in the middle east. That is a goal worthy of the commitment of any social democrat.

Blair has reminded us that “[w]e are all internationalists now, whether we like it or not. We cannot refuse to participate in global markets if we want to prosper. We cannot ignore new political ideas in other counties if we want to innovate. We cannot turn our backs on conflicts and the violation of human rights within other countries if we want still to be secure.” Blair is right about this as he was right in 1999. It will be to our cost if we fail to listen to his message. We may only hope that, however unpalatable, Australian Labor finds the courage and determination to see past its current trough of pessimistic conservative parochialism and instead, embraces the principle and enduring wisdom of Blair’s progressive internationalism.

Jim Nolan
May 17th, 2006.

[Jim Nolan (jimnolan@ozemail.com.au) is a Sydney barrister, Labor Party member, and a Fabian Society member]

Women, Gays & Secularism in Post-War Iraq

Solidarity with Iraqi gays, feminists, democrats and socialists

Public meeting - Panel discussion, with Qs and As

Friday 19 May 2006
7 - 9 pm
Conway Hall, Red Lion Sq, London WC1 (nearest tube Holborn)
All Welcome

Panellists include: Ali Hili of the Iraqi LGBT- UK group, Houzan Mahmoud
of the Organisation for Women's Freedom in Iraq and Peter Tatchell of
OutRage!

This event is a part of the International Day of Action Against Homophobia
programme organised by GALHA, with the support of OutRage! and other LGBT
groups.

"We hated Saddam's tyranny, but the situation for gay people in Iraq is now
even worse, with the rise of fundamentalist death squads that are
assassinating homosexuals and unchaste women," said keynote speaker, exiled
gay Iraqi, Ali Hili, coordinator of Iraqi LGBT - UK and Middle East Affairs
spokesperson for OutRage!

Full metal racket

The Observer carries an extract from the new book by award-winning Observer reporter and Middle East expert Jason Burke. He concludes as follows: I spent many months in Iraq after the war. Oddly, I was always more optimistic about the country's future when I was there than in London. Western news bulletins were dominated by those making the most noise or mess, and the voices of the majority in Iraq, who wanted only to eat and sleep in peace with their families, were barely heard. This was true on a global scale too. In Iraq, the violence was aimed at dividing communities. Spectacular acts of international terrorism aimed to do the same. To an extent, sadly, they have succeeded. In the short term at least, brutality can work. But the dogmatic, the fanatic and the violent are still a long way from outright victory.

Extracted from 'On the Road to Kandahar' by Jason Burke, published by Allen Lane on 25 May, £20. To order a copy for £18 with free UK p&p go to observer.co.uk/bookshop or call 0870 836 0885

Iraqi Communists assess current situation

This substantial and just translated assessment by the Central Committee of the Iraqi Communist Party assesses the political and economic problems facing the Iraqi people.

It records, for example, in relation to restrictions against trade unions and others, that: A big protest movement developed against government Decree No. 8750 issued on 8th August 2005, which gives itself the right to interfere in the affairs of non-governmental organisations, to control their activities, freeze their assets and disband some of them. Faced with mounting pressure by civil society organisations, the government was forced to rescind some of the items of its ill-considered decree which clearly reveals the intention to control these organisations.

Communiqué - issued by the meeting of the Central Committee of the Iraqi Communist Party

The CC of the Iraqi Communist Party held a regular meeting on 15th March 2006, which discussed the political developments in the country since its previous meeting on 2nd September 2005, as well as the work of the party, its leadership and all organisations.

The meeting opened with one minute silence to commemorate the martyrs of the heinous crime committed by Saddam’s dictatorial regime against the town of Halabja, the martyrs of the March 1991 popular uprising, and in memory of party comrades and supporters who were martyred or passed away during the past few months, as well as the victims of terrorist acts.

The CC considered in its meeting the outcome of the recent elections held on 15th December 2005, and how the party worked during the election process, on the basis of an evaluation document that contained the results of assessment carried out by party organisations.

In the course of evaluating party work, extensive discussions took place of the performance of its leadership and organisations under the difficult and complex conditions which our country is going through. The meeting praised the achievements in various fields of party work, and took a host of decisions and measures aimed at developing and improving this performance, building party organisations that are closely attached to the people and their concerns, and that consistently defend their interests, rights and aspirations.

The meeting followed up the decision to embark upon preparations for the party’s 8th National Congress and preparing its documents. It also endorsed a number of measures needed to provide the prerequisites for holding the Congress and ensuring its success.

Discussing political developments, the meeting noted that the conditions prevalent in our country are getting more difficult and complex, and that a host of processes are simultaneously interacting. These are connected to:

- A security situation that is out of control, and worsening acts of terrorism and sabotage.
- Deteriorating living conditions and services, rampant unemployment, paralysis of reconstruction, and negative consequences related to restructuring the economic system.
- Eradicating the legacy and underpinnings of the ousted dictatorial regime.
- Eradicating the legacy of occupation, ending foreign military presence and setting a timetable for withdrawal through providing its necessary prerequisites, such as regaining of full independence and sovereignty.
- Sharp struggle over the character of the new Iraqi state, the alternative to the ousted regime, and subsequent sectarian-ethnic polarization.

All this confers a specific character to the situation in Iraq, that requires exerting efforts to influence effectively the direction of the political process, its content and pace, so as to bring it closer to the patriotic democratic vision that we strive to achieve as an alternative to the dictatorial regime.

For a Qualitative Change in Tackling the Security Issue

The meeting paid great attention to the security situation, which was and continues to be the main source of concern for the people in general. It reiterated what our party had pointed out time and again, that tackling security problems has to be multifaceted, including, in addition to the military-security aspect, political, economic, social, psychological and media aspects. This means that a proper approach would have to comprise an integrated bundle of measures that are part and parcel of a clear policy, in accordance with specified phases that achieve cumulative and escalating successes. Necessary prerequisites must be provided, first and foremost building military and security institutions on the basis of competence, integrity and patriotism. These institutions must incorporate national unity in their structure and practice, giving a sense of belonging to all Iraqis irrespective of their ideological and political affiliations, ethnic origins, religious beliefs and confessional backgrounds.

It has to be stated that there has been no tangible improvement in the security situation, despite the big resources that were put at the disposal of the relevant authorities, the setting up of several formations in the relevant ministries, and ongoing talk about additional plans, programmes and campaigns. As a matter of fact, the security situation has witnessed many crises, as a result of the escalation and expansion of terrorist operations, covering a bigger geographical area and selecting targets with greater accuracy, with the aim of influencing the political process, confusing the picture and further intensifying the sectarian and social polarization. In addition, nothing has been spared or considered forbidden, including sacred shrines and various places of worship.

Growing Role of Militias and its Dangers

Noteworthy in this connection is the noticeable growth in the role of armed militias, beginning to seize the powers of the relevant bodies in the state. Many acts of assassinations, excesses, kidnappings and violations of the rights of citizens have taken place without proper response by government agencies in order to pursue the perpetrators and bring them to justice. This situation has led to an increased scale of violations, turning into a phenomenon that must be combated before getting out of control, further aggravating the security situation and undermining the standing of the government and state.

Regaining National Sovereignty

The Central Committee meeting reaffirmed the party position regarding the issue of regaining full sovereignty and independence, pointing out that it had dealt with the issue of the legacy of occupation and foreign military presence in our homeland in party documents since the occupation of our country in April 2003. The party had pointed out that this presence constitutes a violation of national sovereignty that the party strives to fully regain. The party had already called upon the Iraqi government to work for the gradual withdrawal of foreign forces from the cities, while simultaneously working to provide the material, political and security prerequisites for ending the foreign military presence and setting a timetable to achieve this.

Deterioration of Living Conditions and Services and Rampant Unemployment

In addition to the worsening security situation, there has been an awful deterioration in the public services, especially electricity and water and the provision of oil products, as well as municipal services. The government, meanwhile, did not adopt a clear economic policy, acting in a haphazard manner and submitting to the pressures exerted by international financial and monetary institutions. Amidst this situation, Iraqi citizens have raised questions about the enormous funds that were expended to improve the services without any tangible results.

Meanwhile, recent surveys have revealed that more than 20% of Iraqi families are living, according to international criteria, below the poverty line. Unemployment, that covers 30-50% of the labour force, is rampant, especially among the youth, despite re-employing large numbers of people who had been expelled from their jobs under dictatorship and enlisting many in the police and army. Inflation has also increased, reaching 32.8 in November 2005, with a hike in prices that devours any increases in wages.

The distribution of the food ration items among the citizens has also deteriorated. This development could mark the beginning of an unannounced gradual abolition of the food ration system, despite the fact that it continues to fulfil a big proportion of people’s essential food requirements and contributes to preventing an outright deterioration in the standard of living. This is highlighted by the reduction of the funds allocated for the food rations from $4 billion to $3 billion in the budget for 2006. The proposed cash payment to compensate for the rations, or through the limited and unstable social care network, is of no use. The biggest part of whatever is paid out, either way, will be devoured by inflation even before it gets to the people!

It has become evident that the measures taken by the government in this respect, as it did when it raised the prices of refined oil products last December, were in response to the advice and pressures of the IMF, the World Bank and members of the Paris Club. It is well-known that it is the policy of these institutions to exert pressure, under the name of economic reform, in the direction of removing any government subsidy for commodities, especially those considered essential to the broadest sections of the population.

What was amazing with respect to the increase in the prices of refined oil products is that the government justified this measure by claiming that it came, partly, to support the poor families that don’t have a stable income! As if it was really possible to guarantee that any financial aid would reach the needy in the absence of a clearly defined mechanism, the poor performance of the government and its agencies, and with rampant administrative and financial corruption. And as if support for impoverished families can only be achieved through raising the prices of refined oil products, that led to an increase in the prices of various commodities and services because these products enter into the cost of all productive and services processes. It was therefore only natural that the response of the masses was swift and firm - there were wide protests.

This move by the government was also surprising because it coincided with a big increase in Iraq’s oil revenues last year, compared with 2004, while statements were made about building up the government’s foreign exchange reserve !

The Budget for 2006

In this context, it is useful to scrutinize the state budget for 2006, which seems to have changed from a tool for development into an aim in itself. This is evident in emphasis on providing for immediate needs, submitting to the logic of international finance institutions, and reducing big developmental issues to pinning hopes on striking deals with the IMF so as to ensure that its recipe is implemented literally !

It is quite clear that the strategy employed in developing the budget, aiming to achieve “great financial balances”, will not contribute to building a modern and developed economy. It will lead, instead, to the reproduction of an economy that is backward and dependent, with its growth level remaining subjected in essence to external factors, first and foremost crude oil prices, and to the conditions and diktat of international finance institutions. This strategy will also contribute to deepening the current structural crisis of the Iraqi economy, taking it to new levels, and aggravating its contradictions.

The implementation of this budget will effectively lead to increased levels of unemployment, as well as “expelling the state” from the field of economy, and the gradual destruction of local productive capacities.

This, and other factors, will impact the social structure and relations as a result of the emergence of strata that benefit from the bundle of policies that are based on the restructuring adaptation programs employed by the budget.

The Masses Demand their Rights

The Central Committee pointed out that broad masses had moved into action during the past few months against the worsening living conditions and the intensifying crises in various aspects of daily life. This development was influenced by the feeling s of frustration towards the overall performance of the government and its reneging on previous promises, and by resentment towards some of its hasty and ill-considered measures. The mass action was manifested in the big demonstrations that took place throughout Iraq in protest at the decision to increase the prices of refined oil products, the demonstrations by health workers who demanded a pay supplement in line with their counterparts in the health sector, as well as demonstrations calling for the provision of job opportunities for the unemployed.

A big protest movement developed against government Decree No. 8750 issued on 8th August 2005, which gives itself the right to interfere in the affairs of non-governmental organisations, to control their activities, freeze their assets and disband some of them. Faced with mounting pressure by civil society organisations, the government was forced to rescind some of the items of its ill-considered decree which clearly reveals the intention to control these organisations.

The Central Committee meeting believes that this growing mass movement needs active support, backing and participation in order to help it adopt the proper direction. It is important to promote awareness among the people of their rights and stimulate their preparedness to defend them and prevent any violations, ensuring that they enjoy these rights in accordance with the permanent constitution and relevant international covenants. This requires activating the work of various civil society organisations and those defending human rights.

Financial and Administrative Corruption and the Need to Combat It

The CC meeting pointed out that the administrative and financial corruption in state institutions has reached unprecedented levels, according to the criteria of Transparency International. It warned once again of the dire consequences of this corruption, stressing that confronting it is a patriotic task that is no less urgent than the task of confronting terrorism, especially that they - corruption and terrorism - are two sides of the same coin.

The meeting explained that confronting this issue is a general responsibility that is not limited to the Integrity Commission alone, despite the importance attached to the work done by this Commission. Any success that is achieved in this direction is a step towards regaining control over the assets of the state and the country’s wealth, and embarking upon reviving the economy and launching the process of reconstruction.

The Struggle over the Constitution and its Consents

The meeting considered the issue of the permanent constitution and its endorsement in the referendum conducted last November. This was seen as a milestone of great significance in the course of the political process and the transitional phase. It is a historical moment that marks the transition from the era of interim constitutions to the time of the permanent constitution and the institutions that should develop according to it. Such institutions would act as the pillar the modern civil and democratic state that is based on institutions, justice, the rule of law and respect for human rights.

The constitution finally emerged after an agonising process, and came to reflect, from its preamble to various clauses, the reality of the situation in the country and the balance of forces that existed in the National Assembly at the time.

Our Party expressed its conviction at the time that the endorsed version of constitution is not the best one, and does not embody what we had desired, as a basic document that consolidates civil democratic life and peaceful transfer of power, strengthens national unity, resists whatever that may fragment the society into allegiances that are detrimental to citizenship.. a constitutional document that draws on the achievements of human experience and the values of justice and human rights.

This document, in any case, has not been finalized yet. It contains the mechanisms for amending it in future, in accordance with Article 140.

The Elections in December 2005

The CC meeting extensively considered the recent elections in December 2005. While these elections were a political practice of peaceful transfer of power, that contributes to the consolidation of democratic values, mechanisms and practice, they do not, however, constitute the whole of democracy. They need to be complemented by other basic elements of democracy.

The elections can only produce the hoped for results if they are set up in a proper and transparent manner, eliminating the manipulation and violations that marred the elections in practice. There has to be free competition based on the political programmes, free of coercion and political, ideological and financial pressures, so that the people can freely express their will. Elections would then be an important means for consolidating democracy and building the elected institutions, as well as a factor contributing to the country’s stability and progress.

Based on the essence of the party’s experience in the first elections in January 2005, the party organisations began early preparations for the second parliamentary elections. Intensive efforts were exerted to overcome the shortcomings and mistakes that had been pointed out by the evaluation document endorsed by the Central Committee meeting in April 2005. It was also necessary to confront the sectarian-ethnic polarization that had resulted from the first elections and left its imprint on the whole political process, the formation of the government and the performance of the National Assembly.

In the course of preparing for the elections, our party had to develop the mechanism for its participation. There were three options:

- Participating with its own list, as in the 30th January 2005 elections.
- Participating with a coalition list of democratic forces.
- Participating within a broader electoral coalition.

The approach to finding what is proper in the concrete conditions in our country was the format based on our vision for the patriotic democratic alternative. This project aims at enhancing the status of Iraqi citizenship, strengthening national unity and equality among citizens irrespective of gender, ethnicity, religion, sect, confessional affiliation, creed, ideology, and social or economic position. It is a vision that embodies the people’s aspirations to establish a democratic system and a state based on the rule of law and institutions.

After considering these options and conducting a wide-ranging poll of the party cadre, it was decided to adopt the broad coalition format. It was considered to be an expression of a joint interest and effort to achieve joint objectives in specific historical conditions, dictated by the need to save the country through a patriotic democratic plan in the face of sectarian-ethnic polarization. This electoral coalition was embodied in the National Iraqi List which included forces and figures who are generally democratic and liberal.

When we announced our participation in the National Iraqi List, and taking into account the party’s past experience in transient and longer-term alliances, we stressed that any alliance cannot annul the ideological, political and organisational independence of the party, or its freedom to act and take positions in accordance with its principles and policies, and to mobilize around them at present and in future.

The second elections took place, again, in abnormal conditions, and under weak democratic awareness and traditions, a heavy legacy of prolonged authoritarian rule, along with another legacy of the occupation and its effects. There was a sharp crisis manifested in a turbulent security situation, tense political relations, poor co-ordination or the lack of it between the main pillars of government, the poor performance of the government, intensified political-social tension, deteriorating living conditions and public services, intensifying sectarian-ethnic polarization, the strengthening of the role of militias ..

On the other hand, the elections and the broad participation of the people once again, constituted a big challenge to the forces that are hostile to our people, democracy, security and stability. The elections demonstrated a commitment to the political process and fulfilling its last phase, moving forward to an elected assembly and a new government with a 4-year term. The elections were also significant due the enormous tasks awaiting the new parliament, first and foremost the issues related to the constitution and possible amendments, and the need to enact legislation that, as a whole, will decide the features of the present and future Iraq.

However, the elections were unfortunately marred, during the preparations stage, during the election campaigning and then on the election day itself, In addition, many violations of the election rules and regulations were committed by some of the lists during the campaign and the count. This included violations of the rules laid out by the Independent Higher Electoral Commission, as well as the Transitional Administrative Law. The blatant violations included criminal attacks and the killing of a number of candidates and political activists, including our party comrades Abdul Aziz Jassem and Yas Kudhayer. The state apparatus, especially the security forces, also departed from its supposed neutrality.

During the various stages of the election process, many lists and political entities, including the National Iraqi List, submitted 1985 complaints to the Higher Electoral Commission. But the latter did not take any take any effective measures to deal with these complaints. It actually declared, in an unexpected move, partial and uncertified results, but was forced later on to amend its figures!

The stance of the government and its agencies was also disappointing. It chose to remain silent and did not act to investigate the attacks that targeted the offices of well-known parties and organisations, including our Communist Party. It did not pursue and apprehend the murderers and those who stand behind them, so that they face justice. This, and other examples, were an indication of the government’s failure in conducting its duty by providing protection and security for the election process and ensuring its success. This position - along with the poor performance of the Electoral Commission and its refusal to take measures to guarantee fair and transparent elections - caused widespread protests and anger among the people and many competing groups and lists, including the National Iraqi List.

Against this background, a broad umbrella organisation called “Maram” was set up to protest and demand that the election results be checked, as well as considering the complaints they had made. This organisation has fulfilled the task assigned to it. When complaints were considered, the performance of the Electoral Commission lacked, once again, neutrality and competence. “Maram” therefore called for an international investigation team, which did arrive. The final report presented by the team confirmed the case made by the protesters. As a result, the Electoral Commission had to comply with some of the complaints, annulling the results from 227 ballot boxes, i.e. about 100 thousand votes.

Despite all the shortcomings in the reports issued by the international team and the Commission, both confirmed that violations and irregularities did take place. The report of the international team also included important recommendations that will have to be adopted in future to ensure that transparent and fair elections take place.

The last elections, similar to the first one, witnessed serious violations and open and large scale fraud, both inside Iraq and abroad. The voting was clearly influenced by fervent sectarian mobilization, favouring traditional allegiances at the expense of national identity, and multisided external interference with various agenda. All this ensured that the voting was not based on political, economic and social programmes.

Despite this, and as a result of a number of objective and subjective factors, the elections produced a new parliament that is different from its predecessor. It is relatively balanced, because none of the lists achieved an absolute majority, thus allowing for open blocs and coalitions to emerge, and enabling the parliament to perform better compared with the previous National Assembly.

Based on a sense of patriotic responsibility, despite everything, our Party called for a positive approach towards the election results. This position, however, does not mean fully vindicating the elections or overlooking the violations that undermine their credibility as a democratic practice.

The Central Committee meeting pointed out, in the same context, that three months have passed since the elections took place, and yet our people are still impatiently waiting for the parliament to start its normal functioning. The meetings and dialogue between political forces, although important and necessary, should not impede the due process, first and foremost the formation of the new government, so as to begin - before anything else - carrying out its urgent and numerous tasks. These tasks are centred around the need to normalize the situation and save the people from the vicious cycle of endless crises.

The meeting also pointed out that the countdown for the local councils elections, as another imperative that needs to be carried out through the ballot box, will begin following the parliament’s first session. It stressed the importance of these elections due to the role that will be shouldered by the municipal councils in tackling the problems that are directly connected to people’s lives, related to living conditions, services, social aspects.. etc. This requires that our party organisations and comrades start preparing for these elections, utilising the experience they have accumulated in the election processes that have taken place until now. But this should be coupled with a serious evaluation of the experience of our current work in the provincial councils and drawing lessons from them.

Sectarian Polarization and its Dangers

The CC meeting dealt with the phenomenon of sectarian polarization and its dangers for Iraq’s present and future. In this respect, it drew attention to the fact that our society is multi-ethnic with many religions, sects and confessional affiliations, and the continued harmony and cohesion of its constituents is conditional on strict implementation of the principle of equality among citizens in rights and obligations, discarding bigotry and isolationism, and rejecting sectarian allegiance as an alternative to the Iraqi national identity and allegiance to Iraq as a homeland for all.

It is evident that the aggravation of sectarian tensions, which the ousted dictatorship had instigated and practised, is partly the outcome of the policies, measures and legacy of the occupation. The latter has resorted to sectarian and ethnic categorization of our society, thus deepening divisions and creating a serious obstacle to tackling the hated legacy of dictatorship.

The sectarian tensions are also partly due to some political forces employing the policy of sectarian-ethnic polarization as an alternative to political programs in competing with other forces to seize political power and influential positions in government. This was quite evident during the election campaign, by resorting to sectarian agitation and using it to secure victory.

The forces of terrorism, on the other hand, exert enormous efforts to stir up and deepen the sentiments of sectarian hostility and hatred, exploiting them in their brutal battle to frustrate the democratic process in Iraq. The attack on the holy shrine of Imams Ali Al-Hadi and Ali Al-Askari in Samarra last month, and subsequent reactions, is the latest evidence of this dangerous criminal policy which must be foiled through relentless work and strenuous effort to form a national unity government.

The National Unity Government

Taking into consideration the outcome of the elections and its repercussions, and the tasks facing our people and country, the CC meeting stressed that it is difficult for a political group or list on its own, regardless of its size and influence, to take upon itself fulfilling these enormous tasks and achieve the aspirations of Iraqis. Based on the lessons drawn from the previous government, the concept of the national unity government emerged. Such a government would be broadly based and includes the representatives of effective political forces in the parliament and others. It is to be formed on the basis of a political programme that is agreed upon, with the participants taking part in drawing up policies and decision-making. The sectarian quota system in allocating government posts must be rejected, along with the logic that a winning majority would dictate, but without ignoring the election results.

While recognising the difficulties caused by a number of factors, including the differences in opinion among political groups about the nature of this government and its significance, failure to reach consensus on it will create problems and dangers for the whole political process.

The formation of this government, however, on the basis of dialogue, enhancing the values of citizenship and national unity, will create hope and optimism, build a climate of confidence and push the political process forward. All this will constitute a firm basis for the efforts to save the country, end its ordeal, restore security and stability, rebuild its economy, improve the living conditions and provide the essential services.

The National Accord Conference

The meeting also discussed the issue of the National Accord Conference, that was held last November in Cairo, at the initiative of the Arab League. It was pointed out that although the Arab League was late in responding positively to the new situation in Iraq, prevailing facts asserted themselves in the end. The League has therefore pursued a new policy and play a role in activating dialogue between the Iraqi forces. This position has been received with satisfaction and welcomed, combined with the hope that dialogue would continue until its logical conclusion is achieved. It can be said that the conference, despite the complexities and difficulties it had faced, was a good start. To develop it further would require credibility and the existence of an effective political will, so that compromises and joint positions can be achieved on the basis of consensus.

On the other hand, although the second session of the Conference has been postponed until next June, the ongoing developments in Iraq confirm the importance of holding it and the need for good preparations to ensure its success.

New Developments in Kurdistan Region

Regarding the situation in Kurdistan region, the CC meeting reviewed the developments concerning the unification of the two administrations in Arbil and Sulaimaniyah, which entails convening the opening session of the regional parliament and selecting its presidency, and agreement to form the unified government of the region while postponing the process of unifying all the ministries, on the condition that everything would be completed within one year. These developments, followed by ratifying the nominations of the prime minister of the unified regional government and his deputy, constitute an important contribution to fulfilling the demand of the Kurdistan population for unifying the two administrations and the region, in the interest of the region itself and Iraq as a whole. It is hoped that these steps will strengthen the democratic experience in the region and contribute to making new achievements for its people on economic and social levels.

For a Serious and Responsible National Dialogue

Concluding its discussions of the internal situation and developments, especially in relation to the dangers of igniting sectarian sedition following the bombing of the holy shrine in Samarra and its repercussions, and in an effort to halt the shedding of the blood of Iraqis and safeguarding the lives of the people of all political affiliations, ethnic backgrounds and religious and sectarian beliefs, to bring back normality so that the country would enjoy security and stability, ensure the success of the political process and establish a federal democratic Iraq and a state based on the rule of law and justice, the Central Committee meeting issued an appeal for all-inclusive national dialogue between all the political forces, except for the terrorists, Saddamists and Islamic extremists -, the enemies of the people and democracy.

The meeting explained that in order that this dialogue achieve its objectives, there should be no exclusion or marginalization of any national force that rejects violence as means to resolve disputes, and expresses readiness to sit at the negotiation table to resolve existing problems. This must be coupled with serious efforts to form a national unity government as a guarantee for moving forward and saving the country.

At the same time, in relation to the complex political-economic-social scene in the country, the Central Committee highlighted a host of tasks facing the party, its organisations and all the patriotic and democratic forces that strive to bring the country out of the current ordeal and ensure its stability and progress:

- Activating mass and political struggle, mobilizing efforts in the direction of forming the national unity government and participating in the decision-making process, without which it will be difficult for our people and country to avert the looming dangers.

- Continuing the ideological, political and media effort aimed at exposing the harm caused by sectarian bigotry, violence and terrorism, and emphasizing Iraqi citizenship and national identity.

- Struggle to achieve a radical improvement in the security field. This requires a new approach to tackle the security issue, considering it to be a societal issue of economic, social and political roots, rather than a purely security issue. In addition, the efforts of various