Iraq

Wave of protests in Iraq

Despite a government-ordered “lockdown” designed to prevent them, demonstrators took to the streets in Iraq on 25 February in at least 17 cities, protesting against government corruption and neglect of basic services. The Washington Post reports that Iraqi security forces detained about 300 people, including prominent journalists, artists, and lawyers in the aftermath of the Friday protests.The demonstrations are part of the biggest wave of social upheaval since Saddam Hussein’s regime fell. The growing movement has included significant workers’ militancy, particularly amongst workers in the...

Iraq: "People are demanding their rights"

This is the most significant wave of action since 2003. There was a massive change in 2003; whether you agreed or disagreed with the war, for the first time in the history of Iraq, people are free to organise, to march and to protest. However, there are limited services and attacks on freedom of association and freedom of speech. These protests are not limited to one area. The current protests are generated by internal circumstances within Iraq, but it cannot be said that they were not influenced by what took place in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere. Eight years after the fall of Saddam Hussein...

Vanessa Redgrave, the WRP and Libyan money

The British Workers’ Revolutionary Party (WRP) was a sizeable organisation up to its implosion in 1985. From 1976, in order to fund its daily paper, Newsline , the WRP took money from Libya, Iraq and other vicious dictatorships, rewarding its paymasters with anti-Jewish propaganda and support for those regimes, dressed up as “anti-imperialism”. In 1981, actress Vanessa Redgrave, the WRP’s best known member, sued our comrades John Bloxam and Sean Matgamna for libel for comparing the WRP to the Moonie sect and the Scientologists, and for reporting that the WRP used systematic emotional and...

Appeal for kids' adventure playground in Halabja, Iraq

From Jo Wilding: Of all the images that name brings to mind, probably the last is children shrieking with glee, flying down a zip line in an adventure playground. The town of around 70,000 people is still mourning the deaths of over 5000 during the three day attack in March 1988. The chemical weapons used on March 17 have left a population blind, lame, with damaged lungs, rampant cancers, fertility problems, the poisons still hang around in the soil and the water – and that's just the physical effects. Every family is missing someone. The kids of Halabja, born into the aftermath, have nowhere...

Strikes and demonstrations in Iraq

As part of monthly web-conferences involving AWL members and other working-class activists in the UK and Australia, Iraqi workers' leader Falah Alwan has been giving regular updates on workers' struggle in the country. For updates from January's web conference, click here . For December, click here . There are many strikes and protests happening in the last few weeks. There have been strikes in leather industries in Baghdad, in a textile factory in Kut, protests by workers the Northern Oil Company in Kirkuk, electricity workers' protests in Basra and preparations for another demonstration by...

Demonstrators shot and killed in Iraqi Kurdistan

The democratic rebellion in the Middle East has spread to Iraqi Kurdistan, where protesters in Sulaimaniya on Thursday 17th chanted: "Do you remember Mubarak?" The authorities responded with gunfire, killing two and injuring 47. As of Friday 18 February, activists of the Worker-communist Party of Kurdistan are running a round-the-clock protest outside the Kurdistan Regional Government London office at 8th Floor, Winchester House, 259-269 Old Marylebone Road NW1 5RA (Edgware Road Tube), and there are unconfirmed reports of martial law being imposed across Iraqi Kurdistan. Reuters reports: In...

"Already people in Iraq are taking to the streets"

Nadia Mahmood from the Worker-communist Party of Iraq spoke to Solidarity about the impact of the upheavals in Tunisia and Egypt on Iraq and the whole Middle East. This version of the interview is longer than the abridged version in the printed paper. These two great revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt are opening a new arena in the entire world. They have a huge impact and influence on the people in the Middle East in general and all over the world. The victory of the revolution in Tunisia and Egypt has forced all western governments to abandon one of their loyal allies, under the pressure of...

Iraqi working-class activists express solidarity with Egyptian revolution

Statements of solidarity with the Egyptian revolution from the leader of the Federation of Workers' Councils and Unions in Iraq and the Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq. A terrible massacre was committed by the rogue gangs of the semi-overthrown president Husni Mubarak. In the last phone call with the leaders of the uprising in Al Tahreer Square, central Cairo, held by Akram Nadir: the Egytian unionist Kamal Abo Aetah, one of the founders of the Egyptian Federation for Independent Unions announced that a serious fight was running between the demonstrators and the policemen who were...

Iraqi railworkers demand security benefit

Iraqi railworkers who work on the railways heading south from Baghdad are fighting for pay increases and security benefits after several workers died in explosions on the track. The railway, which heads south from Baghdad to Samawah, crosses a particularly dangerous territory in which armed gangs are active. Instead of providing adequate security for the trains and their workers, railway bosses have attempted to pay off the gangs themselves. Falah Alwan, president of the Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions in Iraq, said “railway workers have been suffering from mines and explosions. The...

Class struggle in Iraq

As part of monthly web-conferences involving AWL members and other working-class activists in the UK and Australia, Iraqi workers' leader Falah Alwan has been giving regular updates on workers' struggle in the country. (For updates from December's web-conference, which gives background to some of the issues reported on below, click here ) The new development on the issue of union elections is the intervention of Maliki himself. He held a meeting with a new group, calling them an official union. They carry the same name as the former IFTU. This meeting confused the situation with the elections...

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