President Talabani cites success

Clock the optimism in this report which says that Iraqi president Jalal Talabani has told LFIQ Joint President Ann Clwyd that security operations against terrorists and outlaws are very successful and that he expects Iraqi forces to take full control of security in Iraq by the end of the year.

Iraqi Infrastructure

Lords Written Questions

Baroness Northover: What action they have taken following the reports by the Baghdad security plan on the operability of Baghdads sewage plants.

Baroness Crawley: We are unaware of any official reports having been made on the operability of Baghdad's sewage plants as a result of the Baghdad security plan. However, we are aware that a spokesman for the Government of Iraq has stated that, as at 3 February this year, none of the city's three sewage plants was operating at capacity. These problems were directly attributed to the neglect with which Saddam Hussein's regime treated the maintenance of Iraq's infrastructure.

The Joint Reconstruction Operation Centre, responsible for co-ordinating and synchronising reconstruction efforts in Baghdad, announced on 2 March that in the past year 80 per cent of the city's water distribution system and 60 per cent of the sewerage system had undergone reconstruction, as a result of co-operation between the Government of Iraq and coalition forces. Work is also continuing on extending the capacity of these systems. The US Army Corps of
Engineers reports that a $2.3 million upgrade to sewer lines and water pumping stations in one of Baghdad's suburbs, which will help prevent health hazards to more than 115,000 area residents, is due to be completed in June, and that it is undertaking many other projects to improve Baghdad's infrastructure.

The UK Government are not currently involved in any work to improve
Baghdad's sewage system. However, by May of this year the Department for International Development will have improved access to water for more than 1 million people in southern Iraq, by: undertaking infrastructure repair projects; providing training facilities for Iraqi engineers; and by providing technical advice for a major sewage installation in al-Amarah, replacing open sewage channels and providing up to half of the city's population with access to a piped
sewage system.

19 May 2008 : Column WA167

A city break in Baghdad

A weekend in the Green Zone as part of the Labour Friends of Iraqs ongoing dialogue with the Islamic Dawa Party of Prime Minister Al Maliki was gruelling but politically worthwhile.

Talking with the PM and his party colleagues, his bipartisan advisory group, the Sunni Defence Minister, MPs from various parties in the Parliament and others reinforced several themes.

First, the massive burdens of Iraq’s history and geography. The scale of the physical and psychological destruction wreaked by Saddam should never be forgotten. And Iraq is surrounded by countries which are suspicious (some with good historical reasons) and hostile for ethnic, economic and political reasons with some actively fomenting terrorism. Iraq’s neighbours prefer Iraq as a consumer rather than producer and competitor. A successful Iraq would be positive for the wider Middle East, which is why reactionary forces there want it to fail.

However, the Prime Minister’s relatively successful action against the Mehdi Army in Basra which halted the talibanisation of the city and retrieved control over the port and trade routes from them has made him popular with Sunnis and Shias and may allow him to be a popular and unifying force.

Time will tell if Iraqi forces are able to establish their writ in Mosul near the Syrian border and in Sadr City in Baghdad from where the rockets and mortars aimed at the Green Zone originate.

I have visited Iraqi Kurdistan for two week-long visits and now Baghdad for a long weekend. I have met very many politicians and others who have a deep affection for Britain, which I believe is genuine. English is widely spoken and taught at schools from a very early age.

In our meeting with MPs, I raised the issue of whether Iraq would one day like to join the Commonwealth. The answer was positive. It will be a question of priorities and timing. But Iraqi political leaders are very eager to engage with the outside world and overcome decades of isolation.

On a less positive note, the trade unions, which have come from near complete annihilation under Saddam to being a considerable non-sectarian force, still face needless restrictions on their work. We strongly pushed the PM and the Dawa Party to lift such restrictions and have been promised progress on this in the near future.

LFIQ delegation meets Iraqi PM in Baghdad

A Labour Friends of Iraq delegation visited Baghdad from 8-10 May where we had discussions with the Iraqi Prime Minister and others.

We placed a strong emphasis on efforts to encourage overturning the restrictions on the new and independent trade union movement. We met Adnan Al Saffar of the General Federation of Iraqi Workers and Jasim Al Lami of the Iraqi Teachers' Union before meeting Prime Minister Maliki.

We stressed in that meeting and in a meeting with the Islamic Dawa Party that LFIQ and the wider international labour movement are supportive of the Iraqi unions, which are hampered by the maintenance of Saddam Hussein's ban on public sector unions and further restrictions introduced in 2005 by the previous Iraqi Prime Minister.

Mr Maliki said that flourishing unions were part of his vision for the new Iraq and said that he expected progress in the near future.

The delegation consisted of LFIQ Joint President, Dave Anderson MP, LFIQ Director Gary Kent, Eric Joyce MP and Rachel Cowburn, International Manager of the Labour Party.

Accountancy and Solidarity

Professor Stiglitz spoke at the Commons recently before an appreciative crowd. He outlined the key theme of his new book - the Three Trillion Dollar War. Without having read the book, I cannot challenge his evident erudition on accountancy and how the Bush Administration has behaved. The thrust of his argument appeals to American voters – he himself admitted that he was being US-Centric.

He went on to refer to the impact of the war on Iraq, citing casualty figures and the number of exiles and internally displaced refugees. I am sceptical of the figures so often cited by opponents of the intervention but it is clear that a large number of Iraqi people has been killed in the last few years, mainly by nihilist forces that have no compunction about targeting busy markets. I don't dispute that millions have fled to other parts of Iraq and neighbouring countries. It's wrong to ignore negative factors.

My difference with Professor Stiglitz is that he failed to mention the positives that have emerged in the last few years. If there had been enough time for comments at the meeting I wanted to mention two.

First, the overthrow of a fascistic regime that deliberately slaughtered up to 200, 000 Iraqi Kurds has allowed the Kurdistan Region to breathe more easily and begin its democratic reconstruction in earnest. On two visits there in the last two years, it was clear that most people there regard the intervention as a liberation – their only quibble is why it took so long to happen. What price can be put on such liberation. What would have been the cost, through the no-fly
zone, of preventing Saddam, or his possibly more psychotic sons, from
continuing genocidal operations against the Kurds, as well as the general oppression of most Iraqis? Who can know?

Second, there has been a mushrooming of democracy and independent
organisations such as unions and women's groups. What price their freedom?

My guess is that none of this cuts much ice with those who were firmly opposed to the intervention and to whom the Professor's enlivening of accountancy to damn the Bush Administration is further proof that we should just get out of Iraq.

My plea is to remember Iraqis whose government has accepted, under UN resolution, the continuing presence of foreign troops. Of course, they should go when the elected Iraqi Government says so. In the meantime, whatever view one had on the original intervention, solidarity with those seeking a democratic and federal Iraq should be the priority.

Gary Kent