Interview With A Progressive Iraqi Leader

[Itsthetruth]

Still waiting for the freedom to organize
by Brian Kaller

Pulse Of The Twin Cities
June 15, 2005

No matter how many lies were told to promote or justify the U.S. government’s invasion of Iraq, there was one truth: Iraqis did want Saddam Hussein gone and had waited decades to regain their freedom.

They are still waiting, says Iraqi labor activist Amjad Ali Aljawhry. Hussein had prohibited workers from unionizing in a country with a decades-old tradition of radical and labor activism. After the fall of the Hussein regime, many Iraqis expected to regain such freedoms. But the American-led government has kept Hussein’s ban in place, and unionizing is still illegal in most places. The occupation government has also made other changes that have worsened the country’s rushing poverty and high unemployment.

The North American representative of the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions of Iraq (FWCUI), Aljawhry is carrying on a heritage of labor organizing in a country whose rulers—usually Britain, the United States, or dictatorships backed by them—have imprisoned or executed union leaders.

Aljawhry will speak in the Twin Cities June 16 at the Carpenters’ Union Hall in St. Paul, joined by FWCUI president Falah Awan, an engineer who refused to sign a Saddam loyalty pledge and was subsequently barred from practicing his trade. Awan was an underground union organizer in factories and the construction trades during the Ba’athist regime and the first Gulf War, and helped found the FWCUI in 2003.

Aljawhry spoke to Pulse of the Twin Cities last week.

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Please read the interview with brother Aljawhry at:

http://www.pulsetc.com/article.php?sid=1889

[Itsthetruth]

1. kick

eom

[manic expression]

2. A few things about this....

The secular left in Iraq has had a very hard time since the invasion. As was stated here, the ban on unionizing and freedom of assembly has been imposed by the occupation. The Iraqi people, by and large, do not support the left for a variety of reasons. Most people are turning to religious leaders, and they are, for the most part, the opposite of the progressive effort in Iraq.

Hopefully, this movement will attract more supporters, as would be expected in a country with 50+% unemployment. However, it does not seem likely, but there is still a great chance that these groups can find some measure of success in Iraq. I, for one, really do hope this movement gains momentum and can bring about some progress.

Here's a section of a book on occupied Iraq about the Iraqi left.

On the Iraqi Union of the Unemployed and the leftist movement of Iraq:

"In a way these cadre could be anywhere in the world; they are the same collection of diehards, misfits...and solid, noble regular folks who protest injustice everywhere. Only here they are so outnumbered and the political context so hopeless that it is very hard to willingly suspend disbelief and see the revolution coming - unless it's the one waving a green flag and wearing the black shirts of Muqtada al-Sadr's militia....
Ultimately their message of 'worker communism' makes little or no sense to the people of Iraq, where workers' symbols were the currency of the old Baathist plutocracy and where Islamist religious rhetoric is now the prevailing discourse of all sides."
(From "The Freedom" by Christian Parenti)

Thanks for posting this.

(spelling mistake edited)