Mesopotamian optimism

The BBC reports optimism in Iraq: more than 50% of Iraqis think their lives are good, more than at any time in the last three years, a survey says. The poll for the BBC, ABC, ARD and NHK of more than 2,000 people also suggests that a majority believe that security in their area has improved since 2007. And while most Iraqis still believe US troops are making things worse, the number who want the Americans to pull out immediately has fallen.

Iraq Five Years Later – Iraqi Association Statement

As the Iraq War enters its tragic sixth year, its becoming hard to imagine a time when refugees can go home without fear. More than 4 million Iraqis have been uprooted, either fled to the neighbouring countries or displaced internally. "Our families are being ripped apart, enough is enough?" Said Jabbar Hasan of Iraqi Association in London.

So far, the international community has failed to address adequately Iraq's spiraling displacement crisis. It has failed to help the basic needs of so many Iraqis - to shelter, health care and education - and to offer the possibility of resettlement to the most vulnerable among the refugees. Some states have put the lives of Iraqis at further risk by refusing to offer them sanctuary, cutting off their assistance or forcibly returning them to Iraq despite the risks that they face there in central and southern Iraq.

“Many Iraqi interpreters, who were employed of the British army, have been murdered by extremists and terrorists; others are fleeing from death squads but abandoned by the Home Office to grant them sanctuary.” Said Jabbar Hasan.

While sectarianism is not ingrained in poverty stricken communities of Baghdad but fostered by the politics of bigotry and intimidation. The venom of this violence is not only affecting people in Iraq, but many of our community members here also lost family members, relatives and friends.

The Iraqi government has failed to introduce practical measures to deal with the gross and serious human rights violations perpetrated by its security forces. There appears to be no serious willingness to investigate properly the many incidents of abuses, including killings of civilians, torture and rape, and to bring those responsible to justice. The government has also been unable to ban militia groups. In Basra alone, more than 150 women have been murdered in the last 12 months, equally many journalists were assassinated.

Despite the promises of speedy reconstruction after the invasion, economic recovery looks a similarly distant prospect. The reconstruction has been exceedingly slow, partly due to the violence but also because of poor planning, shortages of qualified and experienced personnel and widespread corruption.

Murder of Archbishop condemned

I am shocked and saddened by the murder of Chaldean Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho of Mosul last week. Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho was a highly respect community leader of great hope and integrity. He was committed to providing assistance to the poor and the needy so that they could acquire a dignified life, said the Ambassador of Iraq to Canada, Howar Ziad. “I add my voice to those of His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, His Most Eminent Beatitude Patriarch Mar Emmanuel III Cardinal Delly of the Chaldean Church, the members of the Canadian-Iraqi Christian community and of all Iraqis in mourning for this inspiring man. I join with them in denouncing this cowardly act against a man of faith."

Ambassador Ziad said “President Talabani and Prime Minister Al-Maliki have made it clear in the strongest terms that the Archbishop’s murder will not go unpunished and every necessary step will be pursued to find the terrorists who committed this heinous crime. At the same time, they have reaffirmed Iraqi government’s determination to take measures to provide security for the Christian community in Iraq. This ancient community of Iraq has been targeted by the terrorists in an attempt to impose their intolerant and ruthless jihadist agenda on the Iraqi people. It is part and parcel of the attempt by Al Qaeda and the remnants of Saddam’s regime to eradicate pluralism in Iraq.”

“Archbishop Rahho leaves a stellar legacy of outstanding dedication: he founded the new parish of St. Paul in Mosul, started a ‘Youth Week’ in his diocese, and founded the Fraternity of Charity and Joy.”

“The campaign of intimidation against the Christian community will not succeed in Iraq. I call upon the international community to add its solidarity with the just struggle of the people of Iraq against the terrorists and their enablers” added Ambassador Ziad.

LFIQ meeting with Hasan Jumaa

LFIQ Joint President Dave Anderson MP and Director Gary Kent met Hasan Jumaa, the President of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, on 28th February at the suggestion of the TUC as he was about to embark on an 8 city speaking tour with the Stop the War Coalition. He was accompanied by Sabah Jawad, who did the translation. Apologies were received for the meeting from Ann Clwyd MP, Katy Clarke MP and Dr Robert Spink MP

He told us that his union was formed days after the start of the occupation of Iraq. Their first action had been to expel the US company KPR from Basra. Membership stands at 26,000 in 10 oil companies including the Southern Oil Company and in related areas such as refineries and oil products. All the companies have union branches but the continuation of Saddam's anti-union laws prevents them from collecting individual membership dues which means they rely on personal contributions and international support. Their Executive Committee of 18 members, which has full powers to call strikes, meets once a week. They have a negative view of the Iraqi government and claim to be the first union to declare opposition, in 2006, to the privatisation of oil. Thanks to their pressure, the original draft oil law which included production-sharing agreements, was altered in its second draft.

He said that the Government still has a reflex attitude towards unions which means they are not respected and the Oil Minister had issued an instruction that oil companies should not deal with the unions. He added that there is still no labour law and encouraged LFIQ to use its good offices with Dawa and others.

The IFOU has, however, had discussions with the Iraqi Government including two meetings with the Iraqi PM and he has written a paper on the need for pluralism. We requested a copy of this by the end of April so we could use it in our own campaigning and discussions.

We asked about his relations with other union formations. He replied that they have good relations with others and have formed a Bureau for joint union activities to try to find common ground – 200 representatives had, three weeks before our meeting, attended such a Bureau meeting.

We asked about the issue of women's rights and cited reports that 76 women had been murdered in "honour" killings in the Iraqi South this year. He replied that the issue had been "slightly exaggerated" and that Iraq was in turmoil with the targeting of women having more than one explanation. He didn't know who is doing the killing. He said that women in Basra were curtailed in their activities and participation in public life. However, over 3,000 women work in the Southern Oil Company and the union has a women's section and planned a day of action to coincide with International Women's Day. He said that the prime responsibility for stopping the violence lies with the Government but cited reports that most killings were carried out by people in official cars.

We asked him if the union was participating in an international conference of oil unions then taking place in Amman. He replied that he hadn't heard of it.

Dave Anderson had to leave at this point. I then asked him why he was sharing a platform with Ibrahim Moussawi, a representative of the Hizbollah which is seen as a pro-Iranian, anti-Semitic terrorist organisation. He said that his union has no direct relationship with Hizbollah but had participated, last December, in the World Against War conference, with the group and delegations from 26 countries. He would use such events to highlight issue of oil privatisation and talk about Iraqi issues. He opposes the occupation of Iraq and sees the
occupation as the main perpetrator of Iraqis misfortune.

I asked what position he took on troops out to which he replied that they had a clear policy urging the immediate withdrawal of troops but would have no problem with a timetable for withdrawal. In response to a question concerning armed resistance, he supported what he called "honourable resistance" which includes those who do not target Iraqi civilians – not Al Qaeda. I asked if this would include support for the killing of foreign soldiers to which he gave a general statement that occupied people have a moral right to resist.

The meeting concluded.

Comment

LFIQ has long enjoyed very good relations with the IFTU and now the GFIW of which Hasan Juma'a has been critical, and they of him. However, we feel that it is vital to maintain contacts with a wide range of labour movement organisations and this is, in fact, the second such meeting between LFIQ and Hasan – the first being with the then MP Harry Barnes and myself in 2005.

Gary Kent
March 2008

Iraqi Kurds deserve better neighbours

New Statesman column by Gary Kent

Published 28 February 2008

There is obvious fellow feeling between Kurds in Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria, but PKK actions do the Kurds no favours

"The PKK is the result of and not the reason for Turkish actions," was the curt message from the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Masoud Barzani, when a British parliamentary delegation visited him shortly before Turkish troops crossed into Iraq late on Thursday 21 February. For decades, Turkish governments have denied the rights of the country's Kurds. This more than anything has fuelled the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Addressing that issue would surely be better than infringing the sovereignty of the most successful part of Iraq. Besides, the PKK is based mainly inside Turkey, which has failed to deal with the problem for more than 24 years. Some PKK guerrillas are perched in the largely inaccessible Qandil mountains on the border between the two countries but have proved impossible to dislodge. Barzani should know: he co-operated several times with the Turks to try to do just that. Some fear al-Qaeda could take over Qandil.

In fact, the Kurdistan Regional Government strongly opposes the PKK. There is obvious fellow feeling between Kurds in Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria, but the PKK's actions do the Kurds no favours. KRG ministers believe Turkey is using the PKK as a pretext to constrain Iraqi Kurdistan.

Fears for the future of the region centre on Kir kuk, the Iraqi Kurds' historic capital, which was forcibly settled by Saddam Hussein's "10,000-dinar Arabs" in the 1970s. The new Iraqi constitution promised a referendum by the end of last year on whether the oil-rich city should be part of the KRG. The vote would almost certainly be in favour of that result.

The Kirkuk question mainly concerns oil, but that is an oversimplification. Whether Kirkuk is formally part of the region or not, oil revenues accrue to Baghdad and are then shared out proportionately. If the KRG region became larger that would, of course, increase the Kurdish share. But Turkey fears that Kirkuk's oil could come to provide the material basis for an independent Kurdistan, even though KRG leaders have long opted for autonomy within a
democratic Iraq. The KRG understands the glaring political reality that Kurdish independence is a non-starter.

So we have a Mexican stand-off between two moderate and non-Arab Islamic entities that theoretically have much in common. Ankara refuses to deal directly with the KRG, which urges multilateral diplomatic action.

But although politics is in deep-freeze, trade is red-hot. Turkish companies are the main drivers of the region's rapid construction boom, nowhere more so than at the British-designed, multimillion-pound mega-airport in Erbil, where Turkish contractors proudly showed us the planet's fifth-longest runway. Historically, Iraqi Kurds say they have "no friends but the mountains", but they will soon have a political and commercial bridge to the world and possibly a railroad to
Istanbul.

Kurdish leaders are playing a major role in building a federal Iraq - for example, as president and foreign minister. Yet there is a pervasive sense of limbo in the region and less optimism than in the first flush of "liberation" after 2003. The Iraqi parliament was slow to agree an oil law. Small oil companies have set up shop, but big players are nervous. The KRG desperately needs investment to maximise revenue from oil, gas, agriculture and tourism - yes, tourism.

Kurdistan is moving from a bloody past to an uncertain future. It has history in abundance: 182,000 Kurds died and 4,000 villages were razed in Saddam's genocidal Anfal campaign. Children are still being born with deformities caused by his chemical weapons. All this weighs heavily on the small, landlocked region, but there are signs of hope blowing in the wind, literally.

For Iraqi Kurds, the Iraqi flag was tainted by Saddam's totalitarian legacy and has long been banned. Now it has been redesigned and has been unfurled over the Kurdistan National Assembly beside KRG colours. The mostly secure and secular Kurdistan could yet be a model for the rest of Iraq, and the wider Middle East. It deserves better friends and neighbours.

Gary Kent visited Iraqi Kurdistan with the UK all-party parliamentary group on the region

Marking the murder of Shahab Al-Tamimi

Dave Anderson and Gary Kent mark the murder of the leader of the Iraqi Journalists’ Union in Index on Censorship.

Dying for change

Are we becoming inured to the murders of journalists and civil society leaders in Iraq? The outcry is minimal when another brave figure doing his patriotic duty at some considerable risk is deliberately targeted and murdered.

Journalists are regular targets for the insurgents and criminal gangs, and some have been killed by US forces. In 2007, 25 journalists and media assistants were kidnapped in Iraq; 208 reporters have died on duty since 2003.

The latest victim of what is almost certainly a strategy of terror and decapitation of the political leadership of the new labour movement is 75 year-old Shahab Al-Tamimi, the leader of the Iraqi Journalists' Union since 2003.

He was seriously wounded in a gun attack by three masked men on 23 February, following a meeting of the union leadership in the north Baghdad district of Al-Waziria. He died of his injuries five days later. Al-Tamimi's son Rabei was also in the car and was injured in the attack.

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: "This latest attack upon Iraqi trade unionists is a reminder that the main force for a secular, democratic and non-sectarian Iraq — the trade union movement — is under threat. Meanwhile, the Iraqi government continues to persecute trade unionists when it should be protecting and supporting them."

Since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, free media and civil society in Iraq have blossomed, but they still face major problems. Decades of totalitarianism will take time to overcome. Saddam's fascist-type regime banned free unions and set up official unions. The recently convicted war criminal Ali Hassan al-Majid ("Chemical Ali") — a leading figure in the "Anfal" genocide against the Iraqi Kurds in which 182,000 men, women and children were murdered — was also a leader of these Ba'athist unions.

These yellow unions were a transmission belt for the Ba'ath's repressive apparatus. The very term "union" came to scare many ordinary Iraqis.

However, the new and independent unions are trying to play their part in organising workers and making a contribution to building a federal, democratic and pluralist country which can use its oil wealth to fund social justice.

Sadly, the unions don't just face murderous assault; Saddam's anti-union laws also remain in force. His ban on public sector unions from 1987, Decree 150, still applies. New restrictions have been added by ministries governing transport and oil. Union funds were frozen under Decree 8750 of August 2005 although some international and national unions have been conducting invaluable work in training union organisers.

The assassination of the leader of the Journalists' Union, most probably by sectarian militia or former secret policemen, is a deliberate attempt to crush the media and the labour movement and discourage people from taking part in civil society.

Dave Anderson MP and Gary Kent. Dave Anderson is Labour MP for Blaydon
and Joint President of Labour Friends of Iraq. Gary Kent is Director of Labour Friends of Iraq and a member of the NUJ but writes in a personal capacity