Iraq

Comrades from all sides of the AWL’s debate on Iran/Iraq summarise what they they thought of the debate, what they think were the important arguments in the discussion and where they think the discussion can now go. Solidarity will continue this debate. Please send in (short) contributions. All members of the AWL agree on three basic points: 1. opposition to the occupation, 2. the clerical-fascist nature of the various sectarian movements and 3. that we give exclusive political support to the Iraqi labour movement, women’s and LGBT organisations. We wish to see these particular movements take...

May Day Message from the General Union of Dock Workers in Iraq to the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in the United States: Dear Brothers and Sisters of ILWU in California, The courageous decision you made to carry out a strike on May Day to protest against the war and occupation of Iraq advances our struggle against occupation to bring a better future for us and for the rest of the world as well. We are certain that a better world will only be created by the workers and what you are doing is an example and proof of what we say. The labor movement is the only element in the society...

May Day 2008 Statement from the Iraqi Labour Movement To the Workers and All Peace Loving People of the World On this day of international labour solidarity we call on our fellow trade unionists and all those worldwide who have stood against war and occupation to increase support for our struggle for freedom from occupation - both the military and economic. We call upon the governments, corporations and institutions behind the ongoing occupation of Iraq to respond to our demands for real democracy, true sovereignty and self-determination free of all foreign interference. Five years of invasion...

Q. You’re writing a polemic for the AWL “majority” position on Iraq against “the minority”? A. It falsifies the debate to put it that way. For a start, “the minority” have different views among themselves. The final revised proposal on Iraq for AWL conference submitted by David Broder and two other AWL people differs seriously — in politics, not just literarily — from what David wrote in Solidarity 3/128. For example, though David in that article insisted on troops out now, the conference proposal pointedly does not. I don’t reproach the three for having differences between themselves. There...

The relative stability and quiet in Iraq since September 2007 has been very, very relative. And now it could unravel in a very ugly way. Iraqi army forces, backed up by US and British forces, attacked the Sadr militia (Mahdi Army) in Basra in late March. The attack was a fiasco. Over 1000 Iraqi soldiers, including senior officers, deserted. Nouri al-Maliki's Baghdad government made good the losses by recruiting more people from the militias of the main Shia-Islamist government parties, Dawa and ISCI/SCIRI. Thus it made it clear that the attack was a factional one by the leaders of one group of...

Kathy Black spoke for US Labor Against War (USLAW) at a meeting at Melbourne Trade on 12 March. Riki Lane summarises her speech. USLAW is a rank and file initiative, not an official wing of the AFL-CIO. Its achievements are quite historic. It now has almost 200 affiliates, representing three million workers. They have managed to avoid the “hardhats versus hippies” syndrome of the anti-Vietnam war movement, and to turn out a contingent of 4,000 unionists to a major anti war demonstration. They have affiliates in both the AFL-CIO and the split off “Change to Win” federation; they have managed...

Nick Broomfield’s latest cinematic offering dramatises a particular brutal and harrowing chapter in the five year history of the U.S occupation of Iraq. The film depicts the events of 19 November 2005, when a battalion of U.S marines went on a murderous rampage, killing 24 men, women and children in revenge for the death of a fellow soldier by a roadside bomb. Broomfield, who has made his name primarily as a documentary film maker, employs the same documentary ethic not only in the way the film has been shot (an improvised script and hand held cameras), but also through the use of non-actors...

The first two weeks of March saw dozens of shootings, roadside bombs, car bombs and discoveries of mass graves in Iraq. Five years into the war, the country remains torn apart by sectarian violence, which marks its toll not only in bodies but also in destroyed basic infrastructure, power and supplies shortages and a grave lack of hospital beds. Yet on March 13 it was revealed that the Home Office now considers Iraq ‘safe’, and will therefore give 1,400 Iraqi asylum seekers an ultimatum – go back, or stay in Britain but with no benefits and no home. They have three weeks to make up their minds...

AWL members, supporters and friends collected money for the campaign to free the jailed socialist students in Iran on the Stop The War demonstration in London on 15 March. We don't have complete returns yet, but the total must come to a few hundred pounds. The ordinary marchers had more positive attitudes than those expressed on the platform, where George Galloway sneered at "the pink contingent of the khaki brigade", suggesting that anyone who opposes the victimisation of LGB people in Iran is a pro-Bush warmonger. Sales of Solidarity on the demonstration were also passable. It was pretty...