Iraq

For two months now, since 8 July, there has been a wave of street demonstrations in southern Iraq, a rise of social agitation such as has not been seen since the almost-civil-war of 2006-7. The protests were triggered by the Iranian government cutting off electricity supplies to the major southern Iraqi port city, Basra, most of which come by grid from Iran rather than being generated locally. They then took up the issues of jobs - unemployment is very high in Iraq - and corruption. Over the last couple of weeks, the focus has shifted to contamination in the water supply in Basra, and protests...

Nadia Mahmood of the Worker-communist Party of Iraq spoke to Martin Thomas about a split within her organisation. Nadia: The resignation of our comrades Muayad Ahmed and Yanar Mohammad was announced after the central committee’s decision to take away Falah Alwan’s membership of the party. MT: There must have been some political issues behind it, like the referendum? Nadia: We always have different political views in our party. We always take decisions based on votes. That is basic. As regards the referendum, we had our differences but we set them out. So it wasn’t an issue. And the referendum...

We boycotted the [Iraqi] elections [of May 2018] with a very active campaign. Now many political parties and candidates in particular those who did no won seats complain that there was corruption. The Prime Minister says that the vote count was so corrupt that all the votes need to be recounted. It has been agreed that votes need to be recounted. A new commission formed by nine judges took the responsibility for the recounting, instead of the election commission. Then a storage site housing half of Baghdad’s ballot boxes caught fire, and the government said they had arrested those behind it...

Dear comrades: We would like to take the opportunity to tell you what we think about the issues raised in your motion. We recognise the long history of Kurdish oppression and we are for the rights of the Kurds to self-determination. We also accept the right of the Iraqi Kurds to break with Iraq and set up a fully independent state. We accept that the majority of Iraqi Kurds currently want this. We also understand that the founding of an independent state for the Iraqi Kurds would probably give Kurdish people elsewhere in the region more confidence and hope for their own liberation, and bring...

A lull in conflict in the Middle East looks likely. But it may be short-lived, or not happen at all. None of the underlying drivers of tension have eased. On the Gaza-Israel border, Israeli snipers killed 64 people on 14 May. That brings the total killed by snipers over weeks of protests, from which groups mostly of young men sally forth to throw stones and improvised firebombs, to over 110. Thousands have been injured. The protests were backed by Hamas, the Islamic clerical-fascist group which rules in Gaza, on the slogan of “right of return”, which Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh explicated as...

Urgent action to all Trade union & Left organisations Re: Urgent action Against KRG Dear Sir or Madam: The political situation in Iraqi Kurdistan is deteriorating day by day. Kurdistan Regional Government announced in early 2016 that it would cut government employee salaries by 15 to 75 percent, depending on position and salary bracket, as part of austerity measures to deal with the ongoing economic crisis. Kurdish public servants protested across the Kurdistan Region against KRG austerity measures and salary delays. Salaries and wages have not been paid for months. Electricity, clean water...

An open letter to Ashok Kumar It’s been said before, and it will bear saying again. If everything published by the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty in the last five decades were to disappear, and if future historians of socialism had to rely on what our political opponents said about us, then the historians would find it impossible to make political sense of the story. On the one hand we are people who do, and have always done, everything we can to help workers in their struggle against employers and governments. We throw everything we have into that. We preach working-class revolutionary...

Muhsin Kareem from the Worker Communist Party of Kurdistan spoke to Solidarity about the situation in Kirkuk. What has happened since the Iraqi army came into Kirkuk on 16 October? The situation right now in Kirkuk is not one of a complete occupation; the city is look like to operate normally. But despite of Hashd Al- Sha’abi is now not in Kirkuk itself and deployed in outskirts, but the people are very worried and many have left especially the Kurds. In addition to Kurds, people from all other communities, unless just in the very early days after the attack on the city and the areas around it...

Over 100,000 Kurds have fled Kirkuk since the Iraqi army and the Hash’d al-Shaabi militia seized control of the territory, in the face of an overwhelming vote for an independent Kurdistan. Kirkuk is of great importance for both Kurds and the Iraqi government. Its oilfields would have made any potential Kurdish state economically viable and allow it to quickly establish international trade links. Few oilfields now remain in the hands of the Kurdish peshmerga fighters. The stepping down of President Masoud Barzani and the recent death of former Kurdish Iraqi President Jalal Talabani have left a...

Iraqi government forces and Shia militias have occupied Kirkuk for the first time since 2014, the year Daesh made their away across Iraq. Although Kirkuk is not part of Iraqi Kurdistan it has been under the control of Kurdish forces. In the September referendum it voted by a sizeable majority in favour of independence. Up to half a million Kurds are now fleeing Kirkuk for northern Iraq Following the referendum Kurdish peshmerga and civilians gathered arms and prepared themselves for a threatened takeover. The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the largest Kurdish party and the party of the...