Health successes

The Department of Health has announced a five year plan for health and medical research. World Health Organisation figures have demonstrated that since the invasion there has been an increase in both live births and surviving infants. The, immunisation programme has resulted in a significant reduction in cases of measles, pertussis (Whooping Cough) and rubella for the same period. These vaccines were available during Saddam's rule but he chose not to instigate such a programme.

Meeting on Labour foreign policy

Progress Westminster Fringe Series

2020 VISION: LABOURS FUTURE CHALLENGES

After our largest-ever annual conference in September, Progress launches a new series of seminars which seek to continue the debate on the challenges of the next decade. The first two events are:

'Labour's foreign policy: Is liberal interventionism dead?'

Professor Brian Brivati, Kingston University; Gary Kent, Labour Friends of Iraq; Denis MacShane MP; Gisela Stuart MP; Oona King (chair).

Tuesday 7 November - 1800-1930 - House of Commons: Committee Room 15

If you want to come along, please register with Tom Brooks Pollock, by supplying your full name and email address to tom@progressives.org.uk or 0203 008 8180.

TUC campaign to assist Iraqi union organisers

The TUC has set itself a target of equipping every one of the thousand trade union organisers within Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan with a mobile phone. This Autumn the TUC is also planning to bring a delegation of transport union representatives to Britain for meetings, training and to develop solidarity links.

Harry Barnes on the current situation in Iraq

LFIQ Vice President Harry Barnes has produced an extended written version of a speech he has recently delivered to the Ruskin Fellowship and the Exeter University Labour Students. He covers matters about the invasion and the call for the troops to be withdrawn, before concentrating on a third big issue, the role of the Iraqi Trade Unions in seeking to build towards democracy and a secular State. He concludes "... whose side will we be on when the troops leave? If the answer includes the Trade Unions, then shouldn't we be active at their side already?"

Troops out?

Dave Anderson MP recently took part in a Commons debate on a possible strategy for the removal of British troops from Iraq. He criticised the opinions of "armchair theorists" who would leave Iraqi workers in a vulnerable situation, and cited Iraqi union leaders opposing a premature withdrawal. He said: This year, I led a delegation to Kurdistan on behalf of Labour Friends of Iraq. The people there were clear that our intervention was positive and that we were giving them a chance to rebuild their country and their infrastructure and to develop an industrial base from which to grow. Although they ultimately want us out of their country, we were told by a group of 22 trade unionists from Baghdad and Basra that it was not safe for us to leave yet, and that was the view of most of the people we met, who included trade unionists, workers and representatives of local and regional government in Kurdistan. Yesterday, I checked with the international representative of some of those people in this country, and they still have that view.

Transcript of exchange at Prime Ministers Questions over Iraqi unions

Mr. David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab): What support the UK Government are giving to develop democratic, independent trade unions in Iraq.

The Prime Minister: My special envoy for human rights in Iraq recently met the Iraqi Minister for civil society and reiterated our full support for the right to form free and fair unions. She also made the same point when she met a group of Iraqi women trade unionists on international women’s day. As my hon. Friend knows—I think that he was present at the launch—there is a TUC pamphlet celebrating the life of Hadi Saleh, the international secretary of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, who was murdered in Iraq, almost certainly by former Saddamists, in January 2005. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate my hon. Friend and those in the TUC on campaigning for free and fair trade unions in Iraq. I also congratulate all those who continue to strive for free and trade unions in difficult circumstances today.

Mr. Anderson: I welcome the Prime Minister’s words, but is he aware of Iraqi Government decree 8750, which was issued last year and said that the Government of Iraq will

“take control of all monies belonging to the trade unions and prevent them from dispensing any such monies”?

Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is anti-democratic, and will he do everything in his power to convince the Iraqi Government to rescind that pernicious legislation?

The Prime Minister: We are indeed making those points to the Iraqi Government. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw attention to the fact that it is important that there are no inhibitions on free Iraqi trade unions. I know that he will join me in celebrating the publication of the pamphlet, which shows that despite all the problems in Iraq today, the position of trade unions in Iraq has been absolutely transformed compared with the conditions under Saddam Hussein. That is one of the most powerful things about the pamphlet, which I urge hon. Members to read, and it is a great antidote to all those who say that nothing has improved since the fall of Saddam. The pamphlet makes quite clear the appalling brutality to which people—especially trade unionists and others—were subjected under Saddam and shows how, despite the difficulties, that is changing in Iraq today.

Tony Blair promises to act in favour of free Iraqi trade unions

In response to a question today from Dave Anderson who asked the Government to do all in its power to persuade Iraqi ministers to rescind restrictions on Iraqi unions, the Prime Minister said that his ministers and the Special Envoy on Human Rights to Iraq, Ann Clwyd, were making these points and that there should be no inhibitions on free and fair unions in Iraq. He praised the TUC pamphlet on the life and times of murdered Iraqi union leader Hadi Saleh and said that the TUC book showed the tremendous transformations that had taken place and that this was an antidote to those who say nothing has improved in Iraq.

The full transcript will be published as soon as possible.

Gary Kent

Questions to the Prime Minister

LFIQ Joint President Dave Anderson is asking the PM what support the UK Government is giving to develop democratic, independent trade unions in Iraq. The question will be raised in Question Time on 25th October

Dave Anderson has also tabled a written question asking the Prime Minister, what assessment he has commissioned into the findings of the recent Lancet report on deaths in Iraq.

Both answers will be posted as soon as they are available.

Gary Kent

Another sober assessment of the Lancet report

This report on the Lancet report concludes: Overall, the study demonstrates that the conflict in Iraq touches broad sectors of the population, that violence is a problem in large parts of the country, and that the level of violence is increasing. The study’s methodological problems may not be trivial. The fact that the study does not better analyze and define the agents behind the increased violence raises concerns about its credibility, as do several tendentious and nearly polemical statements in the body of the article. For example, to argue that Iraq is “the deadliest international conflict of the 21st century” is not saying much—the century is only six years old, and if one looks back 100 years, Iraq does not look like a major conflict.

In war, people die—often in large numbers. And in twentieth-century warfare, the percentage of civilians dying increased. War is no longer fought away from population centers, if it ever was. In Iraq the war is being fought within population centers, and civilians are routinely involved in the fighting. There is no easy way to separate the combatants from the population. Both Sunni insurgents and Shiite militia emerge from the cover of the populace, conduct their actions, and fade back among civilians. Militias use the Iraqi police as a cover for death-squad actions. In many cases the Iraqi populace supports, willingly or unwillingly, the armed elements operating from within it. The death of Iraqis is not a byproduct of an international conflict in which they are only tangentially involved. Iraqis are intimately and intrinsically participating in the conflict. Not all of them, of course, but a great many Iraqis are the gunmen, the bombers, the expediters, the militia leaders, and the support base for these active agents in the war. The notion that the coalition is the primary driver of violence is no longer correct. The war in Iraq is an increasingly Iraqi war, and one that the various Iraqi constituencies can halt should they choose to.

Reality checks – more on Lancet

The anti-war Iraq Body Count carries an interesting press release which rounds on the recent Lancet report. Hamit Dardagan, John Sloboda and Josh Dougherty conclude: In the light of such extreme and improbable implications, a rational alternative conclusion to be considered is that the authors have drawn conclusions from unrepresentative data. In addition, totals of the magnitude generated by this study are unnecessary to brand the invasion and occupation of Iraq a human and strategic tragedy.

The summary is as follows.

A new study has been released by the Lancet medical journal estimating over 650,000 excess deaths in Iraq. The Iraqi mortality estimates published in the Lancet in October 2006 imply, among other things, that:
1. On average, a thousand Iraqis have been violently killed every single day in the first half of 2006, with less than a tenth of them being noticed by any public surveillance mechanisms;
2. Some 800,000 or more Iraqis suffered blast wounds and other serious conflict-related injuries in the past two years, but less than a tenth of them received any kind of hospital treatment;
3. Over 7% of the entire adult male population of Iraq has already been killed in violence, with no less than 10% in the worst affected areas covering most of central Iraq;
4. Half a million death certificates were received by families which were never officially recorded as having been issued;
5. The Coalition has killed far more Iraqis in the last year than in earlier years containing the initial massive "Shock and Awe" invasion and the major assaults on Falluja.
If these assertions are true, they further imply:
• incompetence and/or fraud on a truly massive scale by Iraqi officials in hospitals and ministries, on a local, regional and national level, perfectly coordinated from the moment the occupation began;
• bizarre and self-destructive behaviour on the part of all but a small minority of 800,000 injured, mostly non-combatant, Iraqis;
• the utter failure of local or external agencies to notice and respond to a decimation of the adult male population in key urban areas;
• an abject failure of the media, Iraqi as well as international, to observe that Coalition-caused events of the scale they reported during the three-week invasion in 2003 have been occurring every month for over a year.

In the light of such extreme and improbable implications, a rational alternative conclusion to be considered is that the authors have drawn conclusions from unrepresentative data. In addition, totals of the magnitude generated by this study are unnecessary to brand the invasion and occupation of Iraq a human and strategic tragedy.

Some comments on death and troops

Norman Geras makes some fair and necessary points about the balance to be struck in supporting or indeed opposing the use of physical force against tyranny.

He won’t comment on the Lancet figures but I will: personally the figures seem incredible but, like Geras, I am no expert in this field.

If there had been 655,000 deaths in the last 3 years this necessarily means two things: a) bodies and burials – where are all the bodies and where are they buried and b) injuries:

I don’t know if there is an accepted ratio between deaths and injuries but, aside from systematic and industrial slaughter methods like Auschwitz the ratio has to be at least 1:1 or perhaps higher. Where are the injured?

I have recently been to Iraqi Kurdistan and, if I understand the methodological basis of the report, would have seen or heard of considerable numbers of politically motivated deaths. I think I am right in saying, however, that “only” 99 people have been killed (in two terrorist bomb attacks in Erbil in 2004) in the last period of time.

So I have gone further than Geras in venturing opinions on Lancet. I think we need a highly competent and accessible debate on how these figures have been arrived at.

But I don’t want to enter a discussion with macabre calculations: for example, the war would have been justified if, for instance, those who died in one year were less than those murdered by Saddam on average in one year etc

As for the debate about troops out. Parts of the left have been arguing for Troops Out Now since before they went in. I and others have resisted this because we feared, as did our contacts in Iraq, that their withdrawal would cause worse calamities.

Troops Out Now is almost a permanent slogan and single transferable policy for parts of the left. Troops In Now isn’t a permanent policy. It’s entirely possible that like the stopped clock which is right twice a day Troops Out is coming.

Or rather it would probably be a question of replacing US and UK troops with others. Some talk of Syria and Iran and the Daily Telegraph remarks in an editorial today that “such a move would be wholly unacceptable to a Bush Administration that has excoriated both these states as sponsors of terrorism. Setting thieves to catch thieves may make for entertaining fiction, but it has no place in global diplomacy.”

The former Iraqi Foreign Minister Adnan Pachachi spoke at a recent meeting in the Commons where he talked of European and Arab forces (without borders with Iraq) replacing the current multinational forces. The issue for me is one of practicability.

In the meantime, the issue neglected by the anti-war left is how to support civil society forces such as the trade unions. It should be a key priority for the British labour movement.

Gary Kent
Director LFIQ personal capacity

I have noticed this written parliamentary answer too

Iraq

Mr. Winnick: To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if she will obtain from the Iraqi authorities the estimated number of those murdered so far during 2006 as a result of terrorism.

Dr. Howells: The Iraqi Ministry of Health has released figures on a monthly basis through 2006. The figures from January to August 2006 state that 10,034
Iraqis died violently, where the cause of death was recorded as ‘military’ or ‘terrorist’ action. The vast majority of these were recorded as being a result of ‘terrorist’ attacks. The Ministry of Health points out that this figure includes all Iraqis, including civilians, Iraqi security forces and insurgents, except those in the Kurdish provinces.

There continues to be no comprehensive or reliable assessment of violent deaths in Iraq.

Grim news on education

Peter Beaumont in Baghdad for the Guardian reports that Iraqs school and university system is in danger of collapse in large areas of the country as pupils and teachers take flight in the face of threats of violence. Professors and parents have told the Guardian they no longer feel safe to attend their educational institutions. In some schools and colleges, up to half the staff have fled abroad, resigned or applied to go on prolonged vacation, and class sizes have also dropped by up to half in the areas that are the worst affected. Professionals in higher education, particularly those teaching the sciences and in health, have been targeted for assassination. Universities from Basra in the south to Kirkuk and Mosul in the north have been infiltrated by militia organisations, while the same militias from Islamic organisations regularly intimidate female students at the school and university gates for failing to wear the hijab. Women teachers have been ordered by their ministry to adopt Islamic codes of clothing and behaviour.

Speech by President Talibani to UN General Assembly

Here is the text of the Iraqi Presidents speech to the recent UN General Assembly in which he called on national leaders to support the International Compact for development in his country: We are hopeful that the international community fulfils its obligations by providing the required resources to deal with the key priorities and achieve a common vision in the framework of an economic transformation process for the sustainable development programme.

New peace plan

The Times reports that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has announced a four-point plan based on neighbourhood committees to report on sectarian militias and government security forces amid scepticism that this effort will succeed. More proof, I say, that the international labour movement should redouble its solidarity with the non-sectarian trade unions and other parts of civil society. Their chances of success will be increased with such external support. Gary Kent

Barham Salih in conversation

On September 13, the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings hosted a fascinating discussion with Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih as part of its Statesmans Forum.

He starts out by saying: As an Iraqi and a Kurdish democrat, as somebody who has devoted his life to the overthrow of that tyranny of the Ba’ath Party, I understand Iraq in its true context, a society traumatized by 35 years of state terrorism, a state that was designed to fail, a state that was a prison of its people, a state of imposition and repression. No perspective is more false, no analysis more shallow than that of viewing Iraq within the context of the last three and a half years alone. Iraqi history did not start in 2003, but if Saddam Hussein had his way, it would have ended with him and his sons.

Listen to the Iraqi left

Australian writer Jim Nolan takes parts of the left to task for ignoring the plight of the Kurds and the Iraqi labour movement. Gary Kent.