Iraq Letter to International Workers' Movement

Sunday, April 01 2007 @ 12:56 PM PDT

Iraq: Letter to the International Workers’ Movement

Friday, March 30 2007 @ 06:57 AM PDTContributed by: WorkerFreedomViews: 57

Four years of occupation and destruction have devastated the society, where the streets witness daily killings through explosive bombs, booby traps, cars, and belts. Unprecedented destructive powers were unleashed in these 4 years to turn people’s lives into hell. All of this happens amongst false promises of democracy and freedom, in the time when the country is stamped by tanks, military vehicles, and tens of thousands of heavily armed soldiers.Letter to the International Workers’ MovementFrom: Falah Alwan, FWCUI’s presidentFour years of occupation and destruction have devastated the society, where the streets witness daily killings through explosive bombs, booby traps, cars, and belts.Unprecedented destructive powers were unleashed in these 4 years to turn people’s lives into hell.

All of this happens amongst false promises of democracy and freedom, in the time when the country is stamped by tanks, military vehicles, and tens of thousands of heavily armed soldiers.The occupation troops, their allies and the influential militias have driven the society into a burning sectarian war. They have also confiscated the most basic liberties in the areas under their power.Moreover, the regional powers have put their resources and experiences under the command of the armed groups and powers who represent their interests in Iraq, thereby turning the country into a battlefield of conflict among these different forces. All of this has given way to turn living and working places into battlefields of a destructive reactionary war.The secular, libertarian, and egalitarian alternative failed to become the major power to face and resist this scenario. Still, the freedom-loving people have expressed their aspirations to resist these situations in a variety of ways.The workers of Iraq have taken their position against the occupation and the current situation through continuous demonstrations and ways of protest. Some administered sit-ins while others demonstrated demanding better pay and living conditions, even some demanded cancelling the laws of the previous era.

The workers’ movement managed to maintain an independent presence regarding their theses, programs, and approaches of workers’ organizations, or their different practical methods of work among the movement, even through setting forward practical demands here and there.The main reasons which stopped the workers’ social efforts from turning into a main pole/part within the political formula and kept them as a mere potential force, is not that the workers are incapable or reluctant in organizing; although these factors are of some influence more or less. In reality, there is an essential reason and aspect, which is that the weakness of the workers’ movement in Iraq reflects the parallel weakness of an international workers’ movement, and is consequently and extension to it.

The workers of Iraq have to face and confront the whole arsenal of the occupation troops, and moreover all the dominant and destructive political and militia forces, in addition to all their reactionary heritage which defies all the liberties of the workers and the people. All of these forces have their regional and worldwide depth and resources, and are therefore international powers. In other words, the working class in Iraq is confronting international poles, while the workers’ movement is not functioning in international parameters.

In the midst of the flow of blood and fire, the Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions in Iraq has established its presence as a radical workers’ movement with a profound basis of revolutionary tradition, a movement which forwards demands and fundamentals of social equality and a humane alternative for the current situations.Our victory and survival precondition is that the international workers’ movement stands immediately by us, not in the sense of supporting and encouraging a movement somewhere in the world, but they need to regard it as a basic part of an international movement which confronts a fierce adversary whose main objective is to impose weakness and withdrawal on the international workers’ movement and paralyzing its’ political will.Iraq is currently the main arena of struggle between the American and the regional local forces, a struggle which is basically reactionary.

Achieving a working class victory in Iraq at this point will represent a victory of the workers’ movement internationally. This victory will elevate the libertarian and socialist movement to new heights. Simultaneously, both the US and their adversaries’ victory will impose an accomplished failure of the workers’ movement and force it to withdraw and become marginal for decades to come.The failure of the US and the current political forces in imposing a functional political model in the last four years in Iraq, in addition to the drawbacks which came over the nationalist and political Islamist forces, have opened a window of opportunity for the leftist and libertarian forces to enter the arena swiftly and to become

THE alternative.The pre-requisite for that is preparing and organizing the workers’ forces and ranks around their main aims, in addition to attracting and gaining the inseparable support of millions around the world. Only then, the possibility of victory becomes achievable and possible.

Falah Alwan Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions in Iraq, presidentMarch 6, 2007

http://www.uuiraq.org/english/248.htm