Iraq: ferment from 2019 still simmers

Nadia Mahmood of the Worker-communist Party of Iraq, in Baghdad, talked to Sacha Ismail from Solidarity about her perspectives for Iraqi politics. See also Nadia discussing corruption in Iraq in Solidarity 654.

Our slogan is that this government has to go, and the regime be changed. There is no solution to problems including corruption and looting while this government remains, or under any government elected within this framework. Problems including corruption have remained and worsened under different governments. So we do not raise slogans about particular procedures or anything like that. The whole ethnic-sectarian power-sharing framework has to go.

To allow the creation of a real alternative, we need a different system of representation. We in the Worker-communist Party of Iraq call for people to organise themselves in local committees or councils. The example of the “resistance committees” in Sudan is a good one; and there is something similar being tried in Iran.

That would also allow you to undercut the sectarian nature of Iraqi politics. Unlike say fifteen years ago, many people in Iraq now speak against political Islam; and there is little enthusiasm for the idea of ethnic-sectarian political parties. Even back in 2015, in the protests then, hundreds of thousands of people raised slogans like “‘In the name of religion the thieves have robbed us”. Then many Islamic political parties changed their names from religious to secular political ones. Yet these kind of parties still dominate the political system.

We are doing what we can to try to mobilise and organise people around the idea of people’s councils. It’s not easy. Some people still believe it will be enough to change this or that aspect of the constitution; others reject the whole system, but it’s still a leap from there to the idea of building councils. To many people, even people who are left-wing, the idea is still strange or alien.

The last big wave of protests was in 2019, which was really a popular uprising; but there are still smaller protests all the time. There are a lot of protests by young unemployed graduates, including from colleges linked to the oil industry who now cannot get jobs; also by teachers. The main demands are for the creation of jobs and services and against corruption. The situation that sparked previous protests has not changed, and I believe things could easily be triggered again.

There aren’t many strikes. The employed working class, for now, has its head down; I think a lot of people are relieved to have a job when there is mass unemployment and want to hold on to it. In addition those who affiliate with Islamic political parties have a better chance of getting employed, for instance in the oil industry, so that shores up their support.

The challenges we faced is that people are very sceptical or even hostile to political parties, and that spills over to even left political parties, and even to the idea of ongoing political organisation. I would say the bigger problem is convincing people of thinking about different forms of political representation from the bourgeois parliamentarian kind of political one. That is to represent people bottom-up through their councils or committees or any other forms of organisation. The good news, however, is that there are now really quite a lot of young people in Iraq who are sympathetic to socialism and even engaged with socialist and Marxist ideas, This is a new and obviously very positive development. We have discussions with some of them; but we have to convince them of ongoing socialist organisation.

Unfortunately, the protests in Iran have not had a big impact in Iraq, yet at least, despite or perhaps because people are so fed up with Iranian intervention in Iraq, of Iran’s links with Iraqi militias and so on. There are those who support Iran, of course, but also those who want Iran to go away. They say things like “It’s not our business; we have our problems that we need to deal with.” This is strange, as during protests people have raised slogans for Iran to get out of Iraq. But there is not enough sensitivity toward what is happening in Iran. This neglect and indifference could be attributed to a Arab nationalist attitude against Iran.

However, when Iran’s football team refused to sing the national anthem in support of their people in Iran, Iraqis considered them as heroes and gloried in their protest against their government.

The Worker-communist Party and the Aman Women’s Alliance are the main organised forces making a big deal of the protests and arguing of course we should support this great movement in Iran, which could even topple the Islamic Republic. A change for the better in Iran can change the whole political environment in the Middle East.