Iraq

Iraqi union leader Falah Alwan speaks on workers' struggles in Iraq

On the Saturday night of Ideas for Freedom 2014, Workers' Liberty and comrades from the Worker-Communist Parties of Iraq and Kurdistan organised a fundraiser to support Iraqi workers', women's, and refugee organisations in their struggles against sectarianism. In this speech, specially recorded for the event, Falah Alwan, the President of the Federation of Workers' Council and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI, one of Iraq's main labour federations) reports on the recent struggles of Iraqi workers, and explains why only the working class and organised labour can save Iraq from sectarian-religious...

Iran-Iraq-Syria: the triple alliance

In a 2011 interview with Associated Press, Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki stated, “The killing or removal of President Bashar in any way will explode into an internal struggle between two groups and this will have an impact on the region.” The Iraqi Government was one of only three states in the 22 strong Arab League not to back Syria’s suspension in 2011, when the revolt in Syria began, then as a broad mass movement for democracy against Assad’s police state. Maliki had spent his time in exile from Saddam Hussein not in the US or Britain, as many other exiles did, but in Iran and Syria...

Bad for USA, automatically good for us?

Since about 1987, and until recently, the standard SWP line has been to support any force clashing with the USA as “anti-imperialist”. The battles in Syria since 2011 have put that line into question; and the current clash between ISIS on one side, and the US, Iranian, Syrian, and Iraqi governments on the other, even more so. The SWP does not back ISIS. Yet in an interview in Socialist Worker (28 June), Alex Callinicos claims a sort of good side to the ISIS victories. Because “the US has been weakened”, “movements from below can strike real blows — not just against US power or the power of...

Right and left on Iraq

The right and Iraq The USA and most other big-power governments (including China, which has huge oil interests in Iraq) have followed a Saudi call for “a national conciliation government” in Iraq. Vladimir Putin’s Russia has confined itself to saying: “We warned long ago that the affair that the Americans and the Britons stirred up there [in Iraq] wouldn’t end well”. The US has got a pledge from Maliki to form a new government by 1 July, but may resign itself to Maliki heading it. The Sunni minority in Baghdad is reckoned to have fallen to 12% (as against 35% pre-2003) over ten years of...

The collapse in Iraq

On Wednesday 11 June, the Al-Qaeda-oriented Sunni Islamist group ISIS seized control of Iraq's second-biggest city, Mosul. It has taken several other cities in the Sunni-majority north and west. Before 11 June it already had control of Fallujah and much of Ramadi, and of significant areas in Syria. Nadia Mahmood of the Worker-communist Party of Iraq told Solidarity : "What's going on now with ISIS is a new phase of the sectarian violence which reached its peak in 2006-7 with the bombings in Samarra". That simmering sectarian civil war died down in 2007-8 and after. But, said Nadia: "After the...

Thousands flee Fallujah

Thousands of people have fled from the Iraqi city of Fallujah as the government army attempts to recapture it from Islamist rebel control. Fallujah has been under the control of Isis (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), a militant Islamist group linked to al-Qaeda, since the group took the city in allegiance with Sunni tribal fighters in January. Since then, there has been continuous violence as the government has attempted to regain control. Now, the tens of thousands of troops have been assembled at Fallujah. In the wake of artillery bombardment, it is estimated that around 300,000 people...

Iraqi labour under fire as sectarianism grows

Sectarian violence continues in Iraq, with 21 people killed in bombings in Baghdad on 20 January. The central government, dominated by Shi’ite Muslim parties and led by Nouri al-Maliki, recently launched a military counteroffensive against Sunni-Islamist militias which have taken control of areas in the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah in western Iraq. Falah Alwan, President of the Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI, one of Iraq’s main labour federations), spoke to Solidarity about the situation in the country. There is enormous wastage on government salaries and other...

Iraqi labour at risk in sectarian battles

Escalating sectarian conflict in Iraq reached a new peak on 2 January. According to academic Juan Cole, an Al Qaeda group took over “big swathes of some al-Anbar cities and... police stations”, abandoned by the cops after mass anti-government demonstrations by local people. “Allegedly half of Fallujah had fallen to the Al Qaeda affiliate”. Anbar is a large but mostly desert province in the west of Iraq, bordering Syria and Jordan, and mostly inhabited by Iraq’s large Sunni minority. Iraq’s government, led by Shia Islamists round prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, has negotiated alliances with...

Remembering Azad Ahmed

On Saturday 2 November a memorial service was held in London by the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan in memory of their fallen comrade Azad Ahmed. Azad was kidnapped and killed a week previously in Kirkuk, Iraq by unknown assailants. Members of the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq, Kurdistan and Iran were all present to pay tribute to Ahmed, a longstanding member of the Iraqi party’s Central Committee, who had long been a prominent advocate of secularism, pluralism and workers’ rights in Iraq. Workers’ Liberty also sent a solidarity message of condolence and support, remarking...

How the US uses torture

Western democracies have prided themselves in applying humane standards to the treatment of prisoners of war. This treatment is encapsulated in the Geneva Convention, first formulated in 1864 and modified since, most recently in 1949. They have also signed up to the UN Convention against Torture. These conventions have been flouted by some democratic states (France in Algeria, Britain in Northern Ireland, USA in Vietnam, ...). The US explicitly banned torture and harsh treatment by military interrogators after the Vietnam war, introducing the Army Field Manual on Interrogation (FM 34-52) in...

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