EIGHT YEARS OF IRAQ'S OCCUPATION - EIGHT YEARS OF MISERY
By David Bacon
TruthOut News Analysis, 3/24/11
http://www.truth-out.org/for-iraqs-unemployed-nothing-has-changed-eight-years68633
The war in Iraq is supposedly over. The U.S. administration
says the occupation, which began on March 20 eight years ago, is
ending as well, with the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops. But as
the U.S., Great Britain and France begin another military
intervention in North Africa, their respective administrations are
silent about the price Iraqis are paying for the last one.
Not so the Iraqi, however. Demonstrations have taken place
in Baghdad, Basra and Kirkuk, among other cities, calling on the U.S.
in particular to stop its escalating military intervention in Libya.
Iraqi unions have been especially vocal, linking the U.S. invasion of
Iraq with continued misery for its working people. According to one
union representative, Abdullah Muhsin of the General Federation of
Iraqi workers, "Eight years have ended since the fall of Saddam's
regime, yet the empty promises of the "liberators" - the invaders and
the occupiers who promised Iraqis heaven and earth - were simply
lies, lies and lies."
The GFIW, which supported the recent uprisings in North
Africa and the Middle East, says the U.S. should "allow the people of
Libya, Bahrain and other countries to determine their own destiny by
themselves." Falah Alwan, president of the Federation of Workers
Councils and Unions in Iraq, says violence directed against workers
and unions is intended to keep a lid on protests against miserable
living conditions. "We are still under occupation," he charges.
"The new Iraqi army, created by the U.S. occupation, is doing the
same job, protecting the corrupt government while we are suffering
from the difficulties of daily life."
"There's no electricity most of the time, and no drinking
water - no services at all," says Qasim Hadi, president of the Union
of Unemployed of Iraq. Eight years after the start of the U.S.
military intervention, "there's hardly even any repair of the war
damage - there's still rubble in the streets. People are going
hungry."
Despite often-extreme levels of violence in the years of
occupation, Iraqis have never stopped protesting these conditions.
When demonstrations broke out in other countries of the Middle East
and North Africa, people in Baghdad, Basra and Kirkuk had been taking
to the streets for years. In large part, protests continued in Iraq
because living conditions never changed, despite promises of what the
fall of Saddam Hussein would bring.
"There has basically been no change in the unemployment
situation since the occupation started," Hadi charges. "There are
more than 10 million unemployed people in Iraq -- about 60-70% of the
workforce" According to the UUI, government unemployment statistics
are artificially low because they don't count many people.. "Women
aren't counted," Hadi says, citing just one example, "because the
government says their husbands or fathers are responsible for
supporting them."
Hadi was one of Baghdad's first protestors, leading marches
of unemployed workers to the gates of the Green Zone, where U.S.
occupation chief Paul Bremer had his offices, almost as soon as
Bremer moved in. On July 25, following the May 2003 invasion, Hadi
was arrested by U.S. troops for protesting. For the next six years,
he led one protest after another, making the Union of the Unemployed
a thorn in the side first of the U.S. occupation administration, and
then of the Iraqi regimes that followed.
Some government representatives tried to stop the union's
growth with bribes. "They said they'd give us a position in the
Labor Ministry, and make us responsible for unemployed people," Hadi
says. Those attempts were unsuccessful because, he explains, "we
belong to the union because we want civil rights, not for ourselves,
but for all people."
When bribes didn't work, threats followed. "A representative
of the Dawa Party (the party of Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki) told
us to leave the union," Hadi recalls. "If we didn't, he said we'd be
enemies of the people of Iraq. We know what this language means.
They will kidnap you. They'll make holes in your body with a drill.
They will kill you slowly, with lots of pain."
Hadi isn't exaggerating. During the years of U.S.
occupation, many union organizers have been murdered, some, like Hadi
Saleh, brutally tortured first. "People who get threatened like this
change the place where they sleep many times," he says. "Sometimes
they go live in another city. I don't care what they do to me. I
have a dream I'm fighting for. But when they threatened to kidnap my
wife and children I couldn't stay." A year ago Hadi left Iraq.
He describes enormous economic pressure on families. "Prices
are very high, and millions of people have no income at all," he
elaborates. "Even for those who have a job, wages are so low you see
people on the street selling all their furniture. If they get a
sugar ration, they sell it instead. People stop drinking tea because
they have to spend all their money just on the food they need to stay
alive. It surprises me how people can survive."
The Iraqi government only counts 2 million unemployed, and
pays unemployment benefits to a quarter of them. Benefits are low,
about $110 a month, and if there's more than one unemployed person in
the family, they reduce the benefit. But the worst problem, the UUI
says, is that you have to register with the governing political party
at the same time you register for benefits. "If you oppose the
governing party, you can't register," Hadi says. "Benefits are given
out as political bribes."
Unemployment, hunger and corruption were the fuel that fed
the rising wave of protest that culminated in Iraq's Day of Rage at
the end of this February.
At the beginning of the month Baghdad neighborhoods saw
rallies calling for dismissing and jailing corrupt officials,
including those involved in election fraud. Al-Kuray'at neighbors
protested declining services, while the people of Al-Mutanabbi Street
demanded more freedom. Some held banners saying "The Baghdad
Municipality is wasting billions and the capital is sleeping in
trash." Other banners had warnings for the government: "O
inhabitants of the Green Zone -- think about the others," and
"Remember the fate of Arab dictatorship regimes and how their people
revolted." On Al-Fardaws Avenue in central Baghdad protestors
accused a security company of executing an Al-Ma'lif man in front of
his children, and called for ending random arrests and home invasions
by police.
One of the sorest points for Iraqis has been the lack of more
than a couple of hours of electricity a day, and skyrocketing prices
for gasoline and diesel oil, not just for vehicles, but for the small
generators many people now use to run their air conditioners in
summer heat that can reach 120 degrees.
Last summer Basra was rocked by protests over the lack of
services. Police put down June demonstrations over blackouts,
supported by the Iraqi Electrical Utility Workers Union, the first
national union led by a woman, Hashmeya Muhsin. Haider Dawood Selman
was killed and several others injured. Electricity and Oil Minister
Hussein al-Shahristani then issued an order to shut the union down. A
thousand Basra workers protested, shouting slogans asking Shahristani
where the $13 billion appropriated for electricity reconstruction had
disappeared. Within days, the union was expelled from its offices as
well.
A similar fate met Iraq's oil union after it too protested
corruption, privatization, unemployment and bad housing. Hassan
Juma'a and Falih Abood, president and general secretary of the
Federation of Oil Employees of Iraq, were hauled into court and
threatened with arrest. The government has never taken off the books
the infamous Public Law 150, issued by Saddam Hussein in 1987, which
makes unions illegal for public workers, including in the oil and
electricity industries.
Both Qasim Hadi and Hashmeya Muhsin charge that the
electricity blackouts are not simply the result of unrepaired war
damage -- the claim of the U.S. contractors like Bechtel Corp. that
received billions of dollars for their (unsuccessful) reconstruction.
"Since 2005 there have been many projects to fix the
electrical stations," Hadi says, "but the money appropriated for them
has been stolen. Big generators are not repaired. The workers in
the stations say they can fix them, but instead they're sold and
government people pocket the money. Each new minister just demands
more money and time." In addition, Hadi says, blackouts are used to
punish communities for opposing the government.
Muhsin incurred the government's anger when she accused
ministers last year of
using blackouts and repression to create an atmosphere of
desperation. "If people are desperate enough, the government believes
they'll accept anything to get electricity, including privatization,"
she charges. "It knows our union won't accept that, so it wants to
paralyze us so we can't speak out."
Under Saddam Hussein power was free, and there were no
blackouts. Today large private generators sell power on a thriving
black market at 10-15 times the government's power price.
This year, as the February demonstrations grew, other workers
joined in, including the oil and gas workers' branch of the General
Federation of Iraqi Workers, which struck the refinery and fields of
the North Oil Company in Kirkuk on February 13. The union demanded
pay raises, especially for temporary workers who make only a tenth of
a normal salary. The Mechanics and Printing Workers Union held a
one-day protest in Baghdad, followed by a contingent calling itself
the Youth of the 14th of February, who organized a big rally that day
in Tahrir Square. In addition to the constant complaint of lack of
services and corruption, young people demanded jobs.
As the month wore on, the government passed an $82 billion
budget, financed almost entirely from oil revenue. Endemic
corruption, however, practically guarantees that little of that will
reach the country's hungry and unemployed populace. The growing
anti-government tone of the demonstrations was displayed in one large
banner at a Tahrir Square rally that read, "The oil of the people is
for the people, not for the thieves."
Finally, unions, leftwing political parties and other
organizations of Iraqi civil society announced a national
mobilization for February 25, the Day of Rage. The Maliki government
attempted to keep turnout low by arresting leaders of organizations
calling for the protest. One was Jabbar al-Asadi, a member of the
Executive Bureau of the Iraq Freedom Congress in Baghdad and a member
of the People Protests Committee in Iraq. Another was IFC member
Mahmood Khalis, who had applied for a rally permit for Tikrit (Saddam
Hussein's hometown.) The offices of both the Iraqi Communist Party
and the Iraqi Nation Party were closed by troops as well.
Nevertheless, Yanar Mohammed, president of the Organization
of Women's Freedom in Iraq, reported that almost 70,000 people
participated in the day's protest rallies. One demonstration in
Samarra was the first tribal protest organized by women, in part
because widows now make up a majority of the city's female
population. "The army shot the demonstrators in the evening,"
Mohammed says, "attempting to disperse them. Seven were killed in
Samarra, and 15 were wounded." According to the Iraqi Society for
the Defense of Press Freedoms, 14 people were killed in Hawija,
Mosul, Tikrit and Basra during the February 25 Day of Rage.
It's hard to measure the number of people even in the Baghdad
protest, the largest, because the government used force to disperse
people that day, and when even more protested on the day following,
tanks closed off the square.
Marwan was an IFC activist who helped organize the
demonstration. He told Hadi, "When we started they surrounded us
with Hummers. We were shouting slogans - 'Give us 24-hour
electricity! Give us a minimum wage! Raise the salaries of those
who work! Give us unemployment benefits!' At first we thought the
authorities would protect us, but then they suddenly withdrew. Then
cars rushed in full of plainclothes police. They attacked us with
knives, sticks and their fists. That's when we began demanding that
the government resign." Marwan was shot in the neck.
The government closed streets leading into Tahrir Square.
While 6000 people were able to assemble there, Hadi says, in every
street around it there were many times the number of people in the
square itself. Al Jazeera reported 20,000 in one street alone.
"Everyone was shouting about their civil rights," Hadi says. "Then
the police and army began to attack them, so everyone sat down. They
called out to the army and police, 'There's no reason to hit us!'
When the attacks continued people fled into the neighborhoods. The
police followed, beating and shooting people. Residents let people
into their homes, but then the army followed."
If only several hundred people were brave enough to
demonstrate in Baghdad's Tahrir Square on March 4, a week later, the
reason was obvious. Iraqis have never become inured to high levels
of violence, even after eight years of occupation. But it is not
likely that shooting demonstrators and a massive show of force will
end the protests sweeping Iraq. Instead, the state's violence has
pushed protestors into moving beyond calls for better conditions to
demands that the government itself resign.
"The government says we're Baathists or Al Qaeda," says Qasim
Hadi. "That's their main tactic - try to scare people, to say we're
going back to 2003. But it's a lie. They know the people don't want
them. They're just the government because the U.S. and Iran helped
them get power with threats and militias and the military. But I
believe people will lose their fear, and the protests will get
bigger."
For more articles and images, see http://dbacon.igc.org
See also Illegal People -- How Globalization Creates Migration and
Criminalizes Immigrants (Beacon Press, 2008)
Recipient: C.L.R. James Award, best book of 2007-2008
http://www.beacon.org/productdetails.cfm?PC=2002
See also the photodocumentary on indigenous migration to the US
Communities Without Borders (Cornell University/ILR Press, 2006)
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4575
See also The Children of NAFTA, Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border
(University of California, 2004)
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9989.html
--
__________________________________
David Bacon, Photographs and Stories
http://dbacon.igc.org
__________________________________
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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