by Ali Issa

Iraqis in the Northern province of Salah al Deen on 11 January 2013 holding a banner that reads “No to Sectarianism…exclusion, marginalization and the politicization of the judiciary.” Image from the “Great Iraqi Revolution” Facebook page.

 The Iraqi state releasing 335 detainees this past week? Prime Minster Nouri al-Maliki bussing in a few hundred paid “supporters” to rally? What gives? Signs point to the wave of mass anti-government protests mostly centered around the provinces al-Anbar, Niniweh, and Salah al-Deen, shaking Iraq since 21 December 2012. These evolving mobilizations have sometimes brought out numbers approaching hundreds of thousands (as in Mosul’s Ahrar Square) and led to the blocking of a major Iraq-Jordan-Syria Highway. Some have also claimed the recent mobilizations as an “Iraqi Spring.” By 7 January 2013, Iraqi security and pro-government thugs began physical attacks against protesters. The demands—ever a contentious issue given the many layers of influence in Iraq—have focused on releasing Iraq’s detained—namely women— the casual use of the death penalty, and the closely related issue of “combating sectarianism,” which lies at the heart of Iraq’s many social and political crises. In a complex interplay, much of civil society and the (sectarian) political elite have struggled over the meaning of these protests. Even interpreting the word “equality” very differently—especially as these calls have come from areas of Iraq traditionally associated with Sunni populations. Though garnering more media than the mass protests of say early-to-mid-2011, according to blogger Reider Visser, “International media are attracted to these protests precisely because they fit in a sectarian narrative about a simplistic Sunni-Shi’a battle over Iraq.” How “sectarian” are these protests exactly, and what might be their potential beyond that narrow frame? To get a firmer understanding of the moment’s dynamics, Ali Issa talked to Baghdad-based Falah Alwan, President of the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI), about what brought this about and where it all may be going. The interview was originally conducted in Arabic.
 

Ali Issa (AI): What happened recently in Iraq to trigger mass mobilizations seeing as how the street has been very quiet the past several months?

Falah Alwan (FA): The protests that many Iraqi cities are witnessing now are not actually in reaction to a passing event. That is to say they are not the direct result of some government action. The street that your question describes as “quiet” is actually silent only as a result of repression, especially after the protests of February 2011 when the authorities revealed their violence openly—using the army to clamp down on nonviolent protests and firing live ammunition at peaceful protestors. It may be that a particular event triggered what is happening now, but the content of the protests now goes well beyond the Prime Minister vs. the Finance Minister. You have [surely] noticed the development of the slogans people are raising. So while the “event” was the arrest of the finance minister’s security guards, the protestors demanded the end of “Article 4: Terrorism”, which is a law that authorities have used as an instrument to repress any dissent. They have also used it against all strikes and nonviolent sit-ins that workers demanding their rights have organized for years—especially the protests of the Basra oil workers in 2006-2007. Protesters are also now demanding the end of sectarianism or sectarian discrimination, while others ask for work opportunities and a remedy to unemployment.

AI: What is the situation of prisoners in Iraq now, especially women prisoners? Are there reliable numbers?

FA: With regards to women prisoners we [at FWCUI] used to receive field reports from a team at the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq that visited women’s prisons, and they would report numbers of rape cases and other violations. The consolidation of government control post-2009, and especially in the aftermath the 2011 protests, have made these visits extremely difficult. Also, political, civil society, and feminist groups are absolutely banned from visiting the prisons that hold people for political reasons, under accusations of “terrorism.” As for numbers, according to government institutions, there are one thousand women detained, with four thousand arrested and under interrogation. Other media, however, put the numbers at the tens of thousands.

AI: If elite political and sectarian forces inside and around the regime have played a role in the recent protests, how has the street gone beyond those designs? In your opinion what is the biggest challenge to the movement spreading to the rest of Iraq?

FA: It is possible for any individual to project their judgments and understandings on any phenomenon, but this does not change the core of the issue. In addition, a situation may remain “quiet” for decades but continue to hold within it the elements of an explosion that can be triggered by any event. Looking at the objective basis, it is these elements that shifted the scenario. Tunisia remained under Ben Ali’s repressive regime for decades without us seeing the “elements” of a revolution. The suicide of Mohamed Bouazizi sparked events that led to the revolution that overtook all of Tunisia, then Egypt, then the Middle East and even beyond.

Not looking at Iraq as a chain of events, but rather seeking the roots, they lie in a political system and the division of a society based on what they call Shi’a, Sunni, Kurdish, Turkmen, and Christian “component parts.” The government then says that it does not discriminate between one part or another, and that “Iraq is one.” Then politicians wrestle over dividing the ministries between political blocs based on ethnicity, each in a team that hates the other, uniting only in their animosity towards Iraqi society. The centralization of power in Shi’a Islamic parties, the spread of corruption in the government institutions were set up, and the inability of the authorities to create a broad political frame that can contain the whole society has all lead to a general societal disgust, which the people have expressed through a series of protests and sit-ins across Iraq, that preceded the moment we are living now.    

All this led to discrimination against large sections of Iraq in the form of policies and actions like arrests, accusing any opposition group of having affiliation with al-Qaeda or the Ba’ath, etc. These then are the bases that today’s movement launched from. On one hand, this movement is expressing in a direct and practical way that the sectarian regime cannot lead society under any circumstance. On the other, the areas or provinces that were accused [by the authorities] of sectarianism or [links with] al-Qaeda and the like are now raising slogans that directly threaten the sectarian structure. This is because the regime actually relies on sectarian claims so it may then reproduce itself by “counteracting” a sectarian or Saddamist banner.

These regions have broadcast their opposition to sectarianism and put forward broad slogans—some of which are democratic and civil. As this grows it will seriously strike the ethnic discourse of the central government—which I believe will begin to identify itself on another basis in order to sustain its efforts.

The Maliki government victory over the people in February 2011, and then settling scores with its political opponents resulted in a narrow, top-down regime that only became more and more insular. The present wave may put an end to this tyranny if social forces can develop through it.

AI: How do the protesting forces attempt to go beyond sectarianism?

FA:  From the first days, slogans were demanding unity and a rejection of sectarianism and division. Coming about instinctually and organically—calling for brotherhood between Shi’a and Sunni, Arabs and Kurds . . . [but that is] as if “unity” were a coming together of Shi’a and Sunni. “Unity” is a positive slogan, no doubt, but raising it in this way, I believe, will again reproduce sectarian political tendencies. I feel that putting out a societal understanding of “unity” based on an objective class analysis is a serious political goal that falls on the shoulders of political groups that have a clear understanding of Iraqi society.   

AI: What is the relationship between these protests and the labor movement or the political formations that emerged after 25 February 2011—what some call Iraq’s forgotten uprising?

FA: I already talked about the relationship to 25 February. Now labor, across Iraq—while acknowledging the lack of deep-rooted institutions—has tools of struggle at its disposal. We are talking about a social class that is at the center of events, even if they are not participating clearly and directly as the working class, since the political situation and sectarian divisions deeply paralyze the organizing abilities of workers. In the end the strengthening of any mass democratic movement will improve the climate for direct workers’ struggle. 

AI: In your opinion, what could truly make this a turning point in Iraqi political life?

FA: This moment could be a crossroads for more than one possibility—all is open now. First, it is possible that these protests could transform into a broad social revolution that changes the political system and builds another. And a new socio-political model could develop, one that opposes the model imposed on, and advertised for, in the region. The development of the present movement could refresh the revolution in the region as a whole and will not be apart from it—especially if it spreads through progressive forces to the Southern and Kurdish regions.

Another possibility is the continuing stubbornness of the government, its success in strengthening sectarianism, and the eventual deterioration to armed struggle and widespread unrest. This may be similar to what took place in Syria as well as in Iraq during 2006 and 2007, now with the lack of a US presence. The regressive forces that risk losing their seats—should this movement grow—could push society in that direction. They could even attempt to divide the whole of Iraq officially.

The third possibility is that the protests remain concentrated in the West and North while the regime’s forces remain elsewhere. Then there might be a truce between some of the forces involved in the protests and the authorities, with a gradual shrinking of the movement.

All of these are possible. Though what has been realized now is that the regime is facing a broad mass of people that publicly reject its policies and boldly raise banners stating so. In other words, the people have intervened in a sphere that the authorities want to monopolize. 

Text by Judith Pasternak – translated into Arabic by Ali Issa.

Earlier last week, Egyptians poured out onto the streets across Egypt to protest President Morsi’s dictatorial decree overriding the power of the courts, attempting to keep a heavily Muslim Brotherhood-influenced constitutional assembly in tact, and granting himself seemingly unchecked authority over the nation. This past Friday, pro-democracy protestors poured into Egypt’s streets and pack its many squares again to counter Morsi and his attempts to quickly push through a controversial constitution in spite of popular outcry over his seizure of ultimate control over the Egyptian government.

U.S.-made tear gas has continued to rain down on protesters in Egypt calling for Morsi to reverse his decision as well as on those who filled Mohamed Mahmoud Street to call for justice and accountability for those who were gassed, beaten and murdered there exactly one year ago. Much of the tear gas — then and now — was made in Jamestown, Pa., by Combined Systems Incorporated, the same manufacturer whose seven-ton shipment, approved by U.S. government, was refused on November 27, 2011 by Asma Mohammed and her fellow customs workers at the Port of Adabiya in Suez.

The War Resisters League has awarded Asma Mohammed its 2012 Peace Award, given in the past to activists including Bayard Rustin, Bob Moses and Jeanette Rankin. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at the first WRL Peace Award event in 1958.

Mohammed’s refusal of the tear gas shipment from the Port of Wilmington, N.C., came following the unprecedented deployment of thick walls of tear gas against protesters near Tahrir Square during the “battle of Mohamed Mahmoud.” The “battle” on this street near Tahrir, began on Friday, November 18, 2011 and lasted for eight days. During this time, Egyptian riot police killed tens of young men, most of them poor and working class—some estimates of the death toll are as high as 50. Hundreds of thousands of people remained in the square during this time, and volunteers at the makeshift field hospitals in Tahrir for the injured noted that some of the bodies that returned were completely black from the gas, as if they had been burned.

In addition, though Tahrir was a relatively “safe” place during the attacks on people at Mohamed Mahmoud, a new kind of chemical agent was used against people in the square on at least one day in particular. On the spent canisters, protesters read the term “CR,” different from the “CS” gas they normally saw. CR gas was said to cause violent convulsions, unconsciousness, and seizures—something they had never before experienced. It was enough to spark a new macabre and biting chant among the revolutionaries: “asha’ab yureed al-ghaz al-adeem!” (“The people want the return of the old gas!”)

Asma Mohammed, whose act of resistance to tear gas and to US support for the regime led to the formation of the General Independent Union of Port Workers, recalls: “I said ‘No, I refuse — because I don’t want to be the cause of someone’s pain or death.’ So in solidarity with me, or with the cause, my co-workers said ‘No, we’re not going to work on it either.’”

Asma Mohammed and her counterparts in the independent Egyptian labor movement, a key force in the unfolding revolution, have been present in the streets of Egypt over this past week. The protests continue while the tear gas, beatings and repression remain the norm under Morsi’s civilian government, as it was under the Supreme Council of Armed Forces’ military junta. On Tuesday, the Egyptian “Popular Alliance Party” member Fathy Ghareeb died of asphyxiation as a result of tear gas fired in Tahrir Square.

As Morsi tries to justify his takeover with the promise for justice for those killed by government forces on streets including Mohammed Mahmoud, Asma Mohammed recognizes that only the people of Egypt can protect the revolution and calls on the people of the U.S. to join her: “The Arab people now want to be the decision makers. Just as the American people should be the decision makers and affect their government in the decisions it makes. We also want our rulers to know that we are the ones that are going to influence things. And they’re not going to understand that until governments of the world begin to act according to that logic.”

And as the US embassy in Cairo tweeted last Tuesday, “The Egyptian people made clear in the January 25^th revolution that they have had enough of dictatorship” while the US continues to send tear gas and military aid to the Egyptian government, the ordinary people of the US must recognize that we are the only ones here who are of any use to the revolution.

For more information about US-made tear gas in Egypt, go to: facingteargas.tumblr.com.

للنشر الفوري

11-26-2012

للاتصال:

ali@warresisters.org

علي عيسى – في نيو يورك 718-310-9968

 اسماء محمد – في سويس, مصر012-680-9980

منظمة مقوامة الحروب الامريكية تمنح للقيادية العمالية, اسماء محمد محمد, التي قالت لا للغاز المسيل للدموع, جائزة سلام

كان رفضها لتمرير شحنة المحرك الرئيسي لتكوين نقابات من عمال الجمارك في كل انحاء مصر

نيويورك – غدا, 27 نوفمبر, سيعلن علي عيسى, المنسق الميداني لمنظمة مقاومة الحروب الامريكية, منح جائزتهم للسلام لسنة 2012 لاسماء محمد محمد والعاملين في جمارك السويس. في 27 نوفمبر 2011 بالضبط قبل سنة من يومنا هذا, رفضت العاملة في ميناء الادبية, اسماء محمد محمد, تمرير شحنة ذات 7 اطنان من غاز مسيل للدموع امريكي الصنع, قادما من ميناء ولمنجتون نورث كارولينا, الولايات المتحدة.

جاء هذا الرفض في اعقاب استعمال الغاز المسيل للدموع بشكل غير مصبق في شارع محمد محمود قرب ميدان التحرير, حيث مات عشرات المتظاهرين نتيجة تنفس الغاز. اثار رفض السيدة اسماء تكوين اول نقابة جمارك مستقلة في مصر – النقابة المستقلة العامة للعاملين في الجمارك – التي بدأت في السويس ومن ثمة انتشرت الى جميع جمارك مصر كجزء من الحراك العمالي الذي اتسع بعد انتفاضة 25 يناير.

كما تقول السيدة اسماء – عضو في لجنة المرأة في نقابتها: “انا قلت, لا. انا آسفة. انا ارفض ان اعمل على هذه الشحنة. لانني لا اريد ان اكون السبب  في موت او اذية احد. فتضامنا معي, او الموقف بشكلن عام, قالوا زملائي في العمل – نحن ايضا لن نعمل على تمرير شحنة الغاز.”

اضافة الى ذلك تعمل منظمة مقاومة الحروب على حملة لحظر استدخدام الغاز المسيل للدموع عالميا, وفي داخل الولايات المتجدة حيث يستدخدم ضد ناشطين بما فيهم سجناء.

“هذه الجائزة معنية بوقف عسكرت العالم من قبل الولايات المتحدة – ممثلا بالغاز التي تصرده, ورفع صوت الذين يأخذون زمام الامور بايديهم, كما فعلت السيدة اسماء” قال علي عيسى, المنسق الميداني لمنظمة مقاومة الحروب. واضاف “ان هذا الامر متعلق بشكل مباشر بحملة منظمتي لحظر الغاز عالميا – حيث متظاهرين حول العالم – في اليونان, البحرين, اوكلاند كاليفورنية, فلسطين, وتشيلي, و كل اسبوع تقريبا في مصر, يواجهون استدخدام مفرط لهذا السلاح الكيماوي.”

وتضيف السيدة اسماء ان كل هذا يحدث اثناء الانتفاضة العربية المستمرة, والذي يعني لها ان: ” تريد الشعوب العربية الان ان تكون هي صاحبة القرار. كما ان الشعب الامريكي يجب ان يكون صاحب القرار ويؤثر على حكومته في القرارات التي تتخذها. نريد حكامنا يعرفون انه سيكون لنا التأثير. ولن يحصل ذلك الا اذا حكومات الاجنبية تتعامل بهذا المنطق: سيادة ارادة الشعوب.”

#  #  #

 منظمة مقاومة الحروب, منظمة تأسست في عام 1923 ومقرها في نيو يورك, الولايات المتحدة. للمزيد:

http://www.warresisters.org

This week, a project six years in the making – and which many of us hope will have a significant positive impact on US movements for social change – finally shot off the presses. We Have Not Been Moved: Resisting Racism and Militarism in 21^st Century America, which I had the honor of co-editing with Mandy Carter and Elizabeth “Betita” Martinez, is ready for distribution. In thinking about how this fact needs to be celebrated – in addition to the very real, vital and hard work of coordinating speaking tours, loading and unloading boxes, and paying for printing costs – it is hard sometimes to remember how vital celebration actually is, and how very poor the left can often be about positive thinking. We are so mired in the depressing work of fighting against a seemingly all-powerful empire, and in the tedious work of basic survival (sometimes our own, sometimes our organizations), that our output becomes more negative than is healthy for either of those worthy goals. How then to stay positive while not getting distracted from the struggle?

Two short examples came to mind:

The first is from Africa, from a recent book by Albie Sachs, the former political prisoner, former ANC militant based in Mozambique, who had his arm blown off with damage to one eye when a car bomb intending to kill him exploded one day outside his office-in-exile in Mozambique. Albie is also a former Constitutional Court judge, who helped write and shape the foundational document for 18-year-old democracy in his country. From an early age, he has chronicled his life amidst the horrors of racist apartheid in beautiful prose contained in several books. His Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter is must-reading for anyone concerned with the art of reconciliation. But I am just now finishing a more recent work – The Free Diary of Albie Sachs – which he was challenged to write in the more positive environment of a post-apartheid society. He reflects on his own doubts at being able to coherently express his more nuanced thoughts about freedom.

One passage struck me:

In a “flash-back” describing a party held in 1956, after the detained leaders being charged during the infamous Treason Trial were released on bail just before Christmas. Sachs notes “I am being taught to dance by the pulsating joy of the bodies around me…It is as though my soul in being rattled and escapes from my tight, white, intellectual skin. South Africans of all communities love to dance. There is a happiness in our country waiting to express itself: apartheid is doomed, and I feel personally liberated as the irrepressible shared popular excitement wells up within me.”

Another memory floods through me:

In the late 1980s, with my own dancing (and social) skills quite lacking despite being in my twenties, ready for rock and roll and revolution, there were two figures I loved and respected who stubbornly insisted that we include some informal dancing after every War Resisters League meeting, conference, or event. Mandy Carter, African American lesbian feminist, and Jon Cohen, Euro-american bi dead head, dragged us onto the dance floor in celebration of I-can’t-remember-what. Despite their differences in age and culture and experiences, they knew something vital about social change and the human condition which Albie and the South African liberation movement, and Emma Goldman with her famous quote about revolution and dancing, also understood. If we don’t express joy at our accomplishments, celebrating one another at as many turns as possible in glorious defiance of the repressive, militaristic state, we lose a vital chance of pushing our movements forward.

As Mandy and I get ready to celebrate, thinking about Jon (whose early death from cancer makes him unable to join us in the flesh, but whose never-before-published essay on accountability accompanies us between the pages of the book), it will be good to think about the larger uses of celebration. No successful organizing can be sustained in the dark negativism of misery without hope, or work without a sense of at least occasional joy. There is resistance and wonder and beauty in our country waiting to express itself: US imperialism is doomed.

Matt Meyer is an educator-activist, based in New York City, and serves as convener of the War Resisters International Africa Working Group. His recent books include Guns and Gandhi in Africa: Pan-African Insights on Nonviolence, Armed Struggle and Liberation (Africa World Press, 2000), the two-volume collection Seeds of New Hope: Pan African Peace Studies for the 21st Century (Africa World Press, 2008, 2010), and Let Freedom Ring: A Collection of Documents from the Movements to Free U. S. Political Prisoners (PM Press, 2008). Meyer is a contributing member of the Editorial Advisory Board for New Clear Vision.

Defense Technology tear gas canisters found in Victoriaville, Quebec on May 4th, 2012.

This week, the Québec movement sparked by students striking against tuition hikes, is ramping up the pressure again, as some schools start class today, while “Law 12″ is mandating that students attend and protest has been largely criminalized. The response of the movement though, has been “Back to Class Means Back to Strike!”

As people in the thousands have joined the strikes, protesters have faced huge amounts of police repression, supported in part by US-based corporations. Defense Technology, headquartered in Casper, Wyoming, produces tear gas used against the Québec movement. This manufacturer is a subsidiary of  Safariland, now owned by prominent war profiteer Warren B. Kanders, based in Southern Connecticut (though the sale was held up by the sentencing of a former Safariland exec for bribing government officials in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East in order to secure business). Safariland holds monthly trainings for cops, prison officers, private security personnel, and active-duty soldiers across the U.S. in how to use this Chemical Weapon.  Defense Technology tear gas has been used against Occupy Oakland, the ongoing Yemeni movement for change, Palestinians in East Jerusalem, as well as against protestors in Egypt, Bahrain and Tunisia. Between 3,000-5,000 canisters of Safariland tear gas were also used against protesters at the 2001 Summit of the Americas in Québec City. (For updates and action alerts on tear gas use in Québec and around the world, sign up on our e-mail list, and for more on WRL’s storytelling project and campaign against tear gas visit: http://www.warresisters.org/facingteargas.)

But how did the movement in Québec begin?

In March, Québec’s Premier, Jean Charest, announced a 75% tuition hike for all public university students.

Many current university students in Québec are first generation college students. Most of them are working their way through college—a dramatic tuition hike means taking on a second job or enormous amounts of debt.

Many students decided to go on strike—abstaining from attending their universities en masse to protest the hikes. Students pinned red squares to their lapels—or wore them as earrings or face paint—taking to the streets, demanding negotiations to end the tuition hikes.

Students—now protesters—would take to the streets each night—banging pots and pans (les casseroles)—chanting “Manif chaque soir, jusqu’a la victoire”- Protest every night, until victory.

When it became undeniable that the students were serious, the now notorious Montreal Police (SPVM) began implementing the Emergency “Law 78”—a law that actively criminalized unannounced gatherings of more than 50 people.

Law 78 transformed what was once a student strike into a popular movement. Solidarity actions erupted throughout the world. Though to others a $1625 tuition hike seemed cheap in comparison to other attacks on public education, police repression and criminalizing of the people’s voice was something that echoed throughout the world.

On the last nights in May, more than 400,000 marched through the streets of Montreal.

The police responded with violent force—using smoke bombs, stun grenades and teargas to intimidate the crowds and make mass arrests. Protesters were beaten, shot and in some cases hospitalized and permanently injured. Journalists trying to get into Montréal to report on the movement were detained at the border. Anyone wearing the carré rouge in public—even if they weren’t at a protest—was subject to police interrogation.

It became clear that the police were trying to crush, intimidate and silence the movement and would use any means available to them. It was also clear that the police were the soldiers of the state–a state which has a neoliberal agenda motivated by profit that has no interest in serving the people.

It became clear that—like so many police forces throughout the world—they were willing to beat, gas and silence them into submission.

Now, it is August. On August 13th—today—the first of the Québec public universities will resume classes. However, in the words of the student strikers, “la grève continue!”

What does this mean for us and our solidarity work with other movements against police brutality—both domestically and internationally? In Québec, three groups—La CLASSE, L’association des jurists progressites (Association of Progressive Lawyers) and La lingues des droits et libertés (League of Rights and Liberties) are organizing to gather testimonies of police violence—the beatings, gassings and arrests and the unwanted aggressive interrogations and refusals of access to public space because of their affiliation with the movement—and use them as a popular, public request to the police to hold them accountable for their behavior.

This is la palais de justice – a large courthouse in Montreal, Québec. The “lai” is covered , reading “pas de justice” which means: “NO JUSTICE.”

[Originally published on July 24th, 2012 on Jadaliyya.]

by Ali Issa

[US Sergeant Masterson checks out an oil pipeline valve in Iraq early in his deployment in 2005. It was referred to as "the big steering wheel-looking thing." Image by YourLocalDave via Flickr]

Greg Muttitt (GM): Unsurprisingly, the documentary record shows that oil was a central part of the strategic thinking behind the war, and consistently shaped the conduct of the occupation. My book is primarily about what happened during the occupation. The United States, Britain, and the “international community” were keen to see Iraq’s oil developed through foreign investment. It was not so much about helping out their own corporations—that was a secondary concern for them. What they wanted was to see foreign investment in Iraq as a starting point for opening up the other nationalized industries, especially of the region, so as to get oil flowing more quickly. Iraq’s oil sector had been nationalized since the 1970s. The nationalization took place mostly in 1972, and the final phases of it continued until 1975. Essentially, what they wanted to do was to reverse that: put multinational oil companies back in the dominant role in the Iraqi oil sector.

AI: You place the struggle over Iraq’s “oil law” at the center of Iraq’s recent history. What is the oil law, how has it evolved, and what is its present status?

GM: The oil law was drafted in 2006, after the first post-Saddam permanent government was formed. Then the Bush administration pushed it especially hard through 2007.

The law had three purposes. The first was to create a framework in which multinationals would have a primary role in developing Iraq’s oil industry, and to determine exactly the extent of that role, what rights they would have, and the extent of their powers. The second element was to clarify how that would work in an emerging federal system in Iraq. To put it simply: With whom would they sign contracts? Was it with the central government in Baghdad, or was it with regional governments—in particular, the only one that exists so far, the Kurdistan regional government?

The third element of the law was to essentially disempower parliament in relation to decisions around oil. . . . Since 1967 Iraq has had a law in place, No. 97, which said if the government were to sign contracts to develop oil fields and run them, the parliament would have to sign a specific piece of legislation to approve them. [In other words,] the parliament would have to say, “We support and agree with this contract and we give it validity in law.” That was still in force in 2003, and indeed in 2006. The government could legally sign contacts with foreign companies. But if it did so, it would have to get the OK from parliament for them to have any force. Therefore, the most important role of the oil law of 2006/2007 was not [so much] to allow contracts to be signed by multinationals, as that was already possible. It was to allow them [i.e., the contracts] to be signed without parliament having any oversight.

Incidentally, the importance of parliamentary oversight is that oil accounts for over ninety-five percent of government revenue. So it is quite reasonable for parliament to have some say in how that works.

So this was the oil law. The United States, Britain, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and other financial institutions wanted to see it passed as soon as possible once the permanent post-Saddam government was formed in May 2006. As soon as that happened, the United States and the Britain started to say, “your priority is going to be to pass the oil law.” I have documents from that period which make this very clear. They moved very quickly to draft an oil law in August 2006, and it basically delivered those three asks of it. Getting this law passed in parliament became the major political priority of the United States.

AI: But the law did not pass. What prevented its passage?

GM: There were two barriers to it passing. Only one of them was recognized. First, there were disputes between Iraq’s politicians—primarily, between Kurdish politicians and everyone else. The dispute was over the degree of decentralization. Essentially, it was a squabble between politicians – who thought only about their own interests, or about their ethno-sectarian groups’ interests – about which of them would get the right to sign contracts and thereby control revenues. This dispute over decentralization slowed down the law’s progress, and people on either side of that debate leaked it to their allies.

This led into the second factor, which was the overwhelming opposition within the Iraqi population to giving multinationals such a central role. I think this was very well known by those in the US administration and those in the Iraqi government. So the way they planned to deal with that was by not telling anyone that this oil law was going through. But it leaked in October 2006.

Once it leaked out, it started to spread into civil society. In December 2006 I attended a meeting of Iraq’s trade unions in Amman. They were discussing the law and decided that they were going to campaign against it. Their strategy, which began in early 2007, was basically just to get it known about: to tell people about it. So they produced pamphlets, which they handed out to their members and to the general public. They also organized conferences, public meetings, demonstrations, etc. The more this was done, the more people knew about it, the more anger there was that in secret this government — that had a fairly limited mandate given the circumstances of an election under occupation — was trying to push something through that the occupation powers were demanding, and that looked like it would do considerable damage to Iraqi interests and the Iraqi economy. Iraqis feel very strongly that oil should remain in Iraqi hands, not least because of their historical experience with foreign companies. So during the course of 2007 this opposition spread. One after another, new groups and new constituencies got involved in it.

AI: What did the Bush administration do?

GM: At the same time that opposition to the oil law was spreading, through the first half of 2007, the Bush administration was ramping up the pressure on the Iraqi parliament to get it passed. They were very frustrated and angry that it had not been passed at the end of 2006. All the time, they claimed publicly that it was the dispute with the Kurds over decentralization that was holding things up. They then claimed that the law was about the sharing of revenues between different groups, which it was not at all.

The surge, which was announced in January 2007, sending an extra thirty thousand troops to Iraq was very clearly one side of a two-part strategy. You can read this in the documents published by the Bush administration at the time. It was called “The New Way Forward,” and its two parts were . . . to send thirty thousand troops, to control and pacify the country, and . . . to use that control delivered by the extra military force to push Iraqi politicians to deliver what they called benchmarks—markers of political progress. By far the foremost among these was passing the oil law. It was all they ever talked about. In meetings with members of the Maliki government, US administration officials kept saying, “When are you going to pass the oil law, where is our oil law?”

Also during this period there were very strong indications from the US military that if the oil law was not passed, the Maliki government would no longer have the support of the United States. . . . Maliki very clearly understood it as a threat to remove him from his job. So through the course of 2007 you had pressures increasing on both sides. On one side you had pressure from Iraqi civil society started by the trade unions, but spreading into broader civil society—religious and secular, also the professionals who ran the oil industries since nationalization—all of them were saying, “this oil law is bad news for Iraq, do not pass it.” At the same time you had the Bush administration applying more and more pressure to get it passed.

AI: What was the outcome?

GM: The popular opposition to the oil law grew so great that it started to spread into parliament. And members of the Iraqi parliament started to see a political opportunity in opposing the oil law, and a political threat in supporting it, a threat to their future political careers. . . . By around July 2007, the majority of the Iraqi parliament was against it. The US administration had set a deadline for passing the oil law, September 2007, and this was when General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker were going to report to Congress on how the surge was going, and they were very clearly saying to the Iraqi government, “give us the benchmarks, give us the oil law by September, otherwise you will face all of these consequences that we warned you of.” But by that stage it was a majority of the parliament that was against the oil law; they could not therefore get the oil law approved by parliament. The September deadline arrived, and there was no oil law. Today there is still no oil law.

To me that is quite a remarkable story, and it is an untold story. It is remarkable in that Iraqi civil society was able to prevent the United States from getting this absolutely vital objective, in which they had invested so much political capital, simply through talking about it. It was partly a measure of the distance between what the United States was demanding — and absolutely desperately wanted — and what the vast majority of Iraqis really passionately felt should happen But I think the consequence beyond that is that having invested all that political capital and failed to get the oil law, September 2007, I think, marked the beginning of the decline of US influence in Iraq. We saw that much more clearly through the course of 2008, in particular the failure to get the treaty to keep US troops indefinitely, the Status of Forces Agreement had a three-year term limit. But I think it was this moment, having thrown all that political capital into getting something and then failing, which marked the shift in Iraqi politics from being absolutely dominated by the United States to having a rising Iraqi voice.

AI: Why then are multinational oil companies are in Iraq now?

GM: In the latter half of 2009 the Iraqi government awarded several contracts to foreign companies – BP, Shell, Exxon, and so on – even without the oil law, and without showing them to parliament. They are a hybrid form of contract, not the production sharing agreements the companies really wanted, and importantly they are technically illegal, since Law 97 is still in force and they have not been approved by parliament.

AI: The challenge to oil law succeeded, so the contracts could be declared illegal in a future Iraqi government. What are the conditions necessary for a second challenge, a second wave to come up against these contracts that have been signed?

GM: After the first contracts were signed in 2009, there was a member of the Iraqi parliament – Shatha al-Musawi – who challenged the first of the contracts, which was with BP, in the Iraqi Supreme Court. Her challenge was unsuccessful, but not on substantive legal grounds. It was rather stopped on process grounds. The Supreme Court has been quite problematic over the last few years in that the Maliki government has had increasing influence over its decisions, and that has been seen in a number of decisions that have gone the way that Maliki wanted them to, in contradiction to where the law as written should have pushed it. That was seen especially after the 2010 election when Maliki was given the right to form the government rather than it being given to Allawi. That decision was the Supreme Court’s. There are strong indications that he has channels of influence. In the case of Shatha al-Musawi’s challenge to the BP contract, what happened was that the court ordered her to pay a deposit of three hundred million Iraqi dinars, which was about 225,000 dollars at the time. She was ordered to pay that, and it would be returnable if she won. She did not have that kind of money, so the case collapsed. So in order to carry out a legal challenge in Iraq, I think what would be needed would be some means of containing government influence over the Supreme Court. A way of containing that might be a set of institutions that are backing the case financially, institutionally, and politically, such that it becomes difficult for the Maliki government to steer the court or for the court to side with the Maliki government. But that is the major block there.

On the other hand, I think that where such a challenge could come from is most likely the government itself. This is traditionally where challenges to contracts come from in oil-producing countries. A government says, this is not in our interest, we are going to change the terms, or we are even going to cancel it. This has happened a lot over the past decade around the world. Now companies use legal mechanisms in the contracts to prevent governments from doing that—to get the contracts judicable in international investment tribunals, rather than in the courts of the country. . . .

The fact is that these contracts are not validated within Iraqi law. That Iraqi law requires parliamentary approval, and parliamentary approval has not been sought or given, means that if a future Iraqi government were to change the terms of the contracts or even tear them up, and if the companies concerned went to an investment tribunal, in Europe or in the United States, the government could argue, and I believe it would have a very strong case, that these contracts are not legal, because look: here is the law No. 97 of 1967, it is still in force, it says you have to get parliamentary approval, you did not; therefore, they are void. Now the conditions for that to happen would be a government that believed there was a problem with the contracts, and probably it means a different government from the current one. It would be politically embarrassing to say the least for the current government to argue that they are illegal on the basis of what this same government did not do—take it to parliament. So a change in the government could drive this.

But Iraqi politics strikes me as very fluid at the moment. I could not predict what the nature of the Iraqi political system will be in a year’s time. I think it is hard to say whether Maliki will still be there; it is more likely that he will than he will not, but I would not put a great deal of money on it.

AI: In their rejection of the oil law, did you get a sense for what unions and civil society was positively hoping for? Are their concrete visions much like the nationalization of pre-1990 Iraq, or do they differ?

GM: When you look at the history of the Iraqi oil industry, the most successful period, of which Iraqis in the oil sector field are very proud, is the period immediately after nationalization. So from 1972 to 1979, for instance, production increased from 1.5 million barrels a day to 3.5 million. . . . They were finding greater quantities of reserves each year than were found in the whole of the rest of the world put together. What I heard, especially from the senior managers and technicians in the oil industry, was that if you want to run a technically successful oil industry in Iraq—and that was what they were interested in since they were technocrats—then the way to do it is to keep it in the public sector. The only reason you would privatize it and bring in foreign companies is for ideological reasons. . . .

I think the only problem with keeping the oil industry in the public sector was that Iraq was behind on technology as a result of the sanctions period. But many people recognize that technology is something you can buy. You can hire a company like Schlumberger to come and install some if its new separators, or pumps, or whatever it is. They can install them, they can train the Iraqis how to use them, and they can even operate them for a couple of years until the Iraqis have got the hang of it—quite straightforward. But that is very different from signing a twenty-year contract that gives a company like BP or Exxon control over the oil field, management of it.

I think where there was some debate was exactly how far you would go in terms of letting foreign companies in. There were varying degrees of pragmatism towards that. Some said, Well maybe it is OK to have BP for five years. Or maybe it is OK to have BP as long as they are in a junior role. The absolute objection was to the idea of putting a company like BP in control, having the primary management and decision-making role for a long period, like twenty years. Especially when there was homegrown Iraqi expertise. So that’s what I was hearing. . . .

AI: You have written that the decimation that the sanctions caused triggered a kind of slow rebuilding of the oil industry by many of the technicians that remained, and all of that then played an important role in a sense of ownership over that rebuilding. So the other side of the reaction to sanctions seems to have been a maintenance and even a strengthening of a national consciousness that then played an important role in Iraqi civil society’s response to the oil law.

GM: The way one of the oil workers in Basra put it to me was, Look—we Iraqis have rebuilt our oil industry three times. We rebuilt it in the late 80s after the war with Iran. We rebuilt it after the Gulf War, and we did so then under sanctions, when it was especially difficult. And we rebuilt it after 2003. Well Halliburton was getting paid for doing it but essentially doing nothing. We have rebuilt our oil industry three times, and that gives us a sense of ownership over, and belief in, our oil industry. This is something we rebuilt. It is very different from when you pay someone to come in and rebuild it for you. And that is not something we will willingly hand over.

I have an assignment for you.

Have you ever been tear gassed? I have not. It does not sound like fun. Brad Lyttle, an activist living in Chicago, described the experience like this: “my eyes began to water, and shut, and I felt as if I were being choked. I was nearly totally incapacitated.” Samah was gassed in Tahrir Square. “Blindness, skin on fire, utter panic,” were her words. These are just two of more than a dozen stories being told in the War Resisters League’ new “Facing Tear Gas” campaign.

The ultimate goal of this campaign is to stop the use of tear gas as a weapon of state repression (mostly against nonviolent groupings of people) and to end U.S. export of tear gas to nations around the world. In the process, the project hopes to shine a light on the pervasive use of tear gas against social movements in all corners of the world and to provide a forum for people to share their painful, harrowing stories and their overcoming stories.

Tear gas is used to incapacitate and create panic, but people keep going out into the streets, people keep protesting, people keep exercising their rights, even with faces full of tears. As one Quebecoise activist writes of their student street movement:

Every night is teargas and riot cops, but it is also joy, laughter, kindness, togetherness, and beautiful music. Our hearts are bursting. We are so proud of each other; of the spirit of Quebec and its people; of our ability to resist, and our ability to collaborate.

Do you have a story like Brad or Samah? Write it on a placard, take a picture of yourself and post it on the Tumblr.

The United States is one of the largest manufacturers and exporters of tear gas (are you surprised?). NonLethal Technologies, Defense Technology and Combined Systems Inc. are three of the big manufacturers. They have exported tear gas to dozens of nations including Egypt, Bahrain, Tunisia, Yemen, East Timor, Israel, Cameroon and Sierra Leone.

Tear gas can be more than a non-lethal crowd dispersant. It can be a death sentence. In Tunisia in January 2011, a French journalist was killed after being hit in the head with a tear gas canister. In Oakland, Cairo and many other places, people have been grievously injured by tear gas canisters used as projectiles by the police or military.

A reporter for Pro Publica pushed the State Department for comment, asking why did the State Department license the sale of American-made tear gas to be used by the Egyptian police, when the State Department itself has documented the police’s history of brutality? The response?

The US government licensed the sale of certain crowd dispersal articles to the government of Egypt. That license was granted after a thorough vetting process and after a multi-agency review of the articles that were requested.

Not much of a response, right?

The WRL project is not the first effort to draw attention to U.S. tear gas manufacturers. Just a few months ago, the hacker group Anonymous shut down Combined Systems Inc.’s website to protest its sale of tear gas to Egypt, where it was being used to brutally put down the democracy movement. In December, Egyptian activists and members of Occupy staged a die-in before the doors of CSI in Washington, D.C. and there were simultaneous demonstrations in New York and Canada and at the company plant in Jamestown, PA. But one of the most valuable things about the Facing Tear Gas project is that it helps to universalize the experience of tear gas and link all of those people in the work to outlaw this pernicious weapon. Already posters have included Palestinian, Egyptian, Swedish, Quebecoise and U.S. activists. Tomorrow you could be there too.

We are a diverse gathering of groups working for global justice and peace around the world. Our focus is usually on the actions of global economic powers and governments as they foster inequality, suppress human and civil rights and use military force. As US-based organizations, we struggle to end U.S.-led wars and militarism and to confront economic and political policies that deprive people of their freedom and justice.

At the same time, we are keenly aware of the US government’s policies at home. Police brutality and repressive policies are nothing new to communities of color, especially to Black and Latino communities in the U.S.  We are alarmed by recent developments in institutionalized racial profiling, increased surveillance, the continued chipping away of constitutional rights, and the expansion of police presence in many communities. These are the domestic expressions of the foreign policies we rigorously oppose. As the police at protests look more and more like soldiers and as the NYPD continues to pull people of color off the streets at random and throw them into prisons and detention centers, we see that the militarization of the state has been crucial for the maintenance of both U.S. foreign and domestic policies. The militarized state tries to keep us from organizing against these policies by forcibly dispersing protests and locking people up so they can’t lead movements for local and global change in their neighborhoods and communities.

On Sunday, June 17th, a broad coalition of civil rights, labor, religious, youth and student, and diverse community groups led by the communities most targeted by policing will silently march down Fifth Avenue to demand an end the stop and frisk policy of the New York Police Department. Grounded in racial profiling, this policy has unjustly targeted young Black and Latino men in communities across New York City. Last year some 685,000 stops were made, and the numbers are growing this year.

We know the struggle for peace and justice abroad is and must be linked to the struggle for racial and economic justice at home. On June 17th we will march to strengthen that link. And we call on all peace and global justice organizations and activists to join us.

Brooklyn for Peace

Campaign for Peace and Democracy

Code Pink

DRUM – Desis Rising Up and Moving

Fellowship of Reconciliation

The Global Justice Working Group of Occupy Wall Street

Havaar: Iranian Initiative Against War, Sanctions and State Repression

Jews Say No

Northern Manhattan Neighbors for Peace and Justice

Peace Action – NY State

Progressive Democrats of America

Raha: Iranian Feminist Collective

South Asia Solidarity Initiative

United for Peace and Justice

Veterans for Peace – Chapter 34

War Resisters League

Image: The New York Times

by Ali Issa

[Hashmeya Muhsin al-Saadawi with colleagues at the 2012 May Day march in Basra. Image from Electrical Utility Workers Union in Iraq]

Hashmeya Muhsin al-Saadawi (HMS): To answer that question, let me start with 31 August  2010, because it was an important step in ending the occupation, and in regaining sovereignty, according to the timetable included in the withdrawal agreement signed by Iraq and the US. On that day, US forces completed their withdrawal from cities, and their mission shifted to training Iraqi forces. Complete withdrawal was then realized on 31 December 2011, leaving only very few troops, whose sole mandate is to “provide training.”

Iraqi security and military forces are still  facing problems including not being oriented properly – which goes back to a few causes, among them that some Iraqi political forces did not want a US withdrawal. There is also the fact that the sectarian quota system is reflected even within the structure of the Iraqi armed forces, while there of course ability and patriotism should be the basis, not loyalty to a party or sect.

The deterioration of the political situation, and the putting off of any serious decisions, the weakness of the Council of Representatives (majlis al-nuwab), in-fighting between winning blocs, and the deadlock that now governs the relationship between them. All that has had negative effects on the strength of the security forces and their role in these difficult and sensitive times.

AI: Are there Iraqi demands, wishes or ideas, with regard to the responsibility of the US government that lead and managed this occupation?

HS: Iraqis lived under a repressive, all-encompassing dictator for over three decades. That regime brought great suffering to Iraq, and the entire region. I do not want to get into this because it has become clear to the whole world (now it is clear to the world, after it had been deaf and blind to the oppression and torture of Iraqis by Saddam and his agents.) We wanted to get rid of this regime, but not through war and occupation. Because all the occupation did was bring new pain: including destroying what was left of the country’s infrastructure, and the undoing of its institutions, opening its borders to killers, terrorists and weapons dealers. As well as planting the seeds of sectarianism that thousands and thousands of Iraqis have died as a result of. Now the occupation is leaving after it has finished its mission and got what it came for. The occupation is the central responsible party in Iraq, but we do not really imagine for one minute that the US government will help with the true crises we have on many levels. So there is no way out except for serious and responsible efforts by forces acting politically in Iraq, both that are in power and outside of it, to deeply reassess the political process and the sectarian quota system on which it is based. Reform of that process, and getting it on the right track, could allow us to build a civil, democratic, united country.

AI: The union movement in Iraq has faced, and is still facing, great challenges from several successive Iraqi governments and the occupation since 2003, like the maintenance of Saddam’s 1987 law that criminalized independent union organizing. But in the face of all this, parts of that movement were able to launch a successful and populist campaign against the “Oil and Gas Law” from 2006-2009. What are the movement’s greatest challenges now?

HMS: Under the past regime, there was no union organizing in the public sector due to the terrible “Labor Law 150″ of 1987. After that regime fell, the workers quickly put together unions in the public sector, worked very hard, but faced many agendas the US occupation brought with it. The occupation launched several consecutive attacks against the union movement: the attacks on the Baghdad headquarters of the General Federation of Trade Unions in Iraq by occupation forces, the parliamentary order 8750 in 2005 that froze the accounts of that federation, then the ferocious attack on the oil and electricity unions – that stated anyone unionizing in the public sector could be charged under article 4-2 of the anti-terrorism law.

The union movement challenged the “Oil and Gas Law” project and launched a campaign, aided by patriotic forces, Iraqi academics, and international labor allies, that revealed the faults with this law and the parts that needed to be revised. We are not against the passing of a law that includes that rights of the people and protects our oil wealth, and reinforces the role of the “Iraq National Oil Company” [Iraq’s public oil company which has been government owned since 1972].

At the same time, The General Federation of Trade Unions in Iraq launched a campaign to pass a labor law that is fair for workers and that matches work standards and international agreements. A proposal for this law was introduced in 2005, and the parliament and the government are still dragging their feet and playing with it. They have removed key parts, including not covering the public sector for union organizing as well as deleting the section on non-union workers’ role, until in its present form it no longer meets international standards.

Most recently, the electrical worker unions in Basra launched a campaign called “Social Security is the Right of Every Iraqi” relying on constitutional rights, which is supported by some international friends, the Federation of Unions in Holland being one of them.

AI: What is the situation with electricity like on the ground?

HMS: The issue of electricity has remained a daily battle. A sad thing that has become great fodder for sarcasm. It bears mentioning the gap that Saddam’s regime left—with its foolish policies and destructive wars—and the subsequent terrorist attacks that have targeted generators and grids. Most recently, there has been a gross exaggeration on much money has been spent on this sector, with no tangible results after their promises of improvement.

The Ministry of Electricity had promised a minimum of ten hours a day for ordinary people, based on what is left from State health and security needs. In reality, people get between four to six hours, with some houses getting no power for a full day, or even several days.

The Ministry of Finance estimates that twenty-seven billion public dollars have been spent on electricity since 2003. With all that, the Ministry of Electricity has failed in rebuilding this sector, complicated by the security factor which includes sabotage. This is partly due to a lack of consultation with Iraqis that know what they are doing, as well as mismanagement and widespread corruption. Now, just like every Spring, officials appear on TV and start making their brittle and hilarious promises, with some unionists joking that we might be exporting electricity to our neighbors or even Europe!

AI: What is your opinion of the Arab uprising-style movement in Iraq that started 25 February 2011, and has been called by some “the forgotten uprising?” Did unions participate in the mobilizations? Since recently they have been smaller in number do you think they will come back? Finally, do you have any explanation for the lack of media coverage, even in the Arabic-language media?

HMS: Iraq has seen successive waves of sit-ins, demonstrations, and protest activities. They have been the result of the continued hardships in daily life and lack of services for people, as well as the deterioration of security since April 2003 that I described. On top of all that, are the efforts to limit civil liberties and silence people, while cementing the hated ethno-sectarian-quota system; we consider all this an open and direct violation of the constitution. Many sectors of society have participated in these protests: youth, women, civil society groups, unions, and the newer pro-democracy formations.

The right of citizens to demonstrate, express opinions and take positions is a constitutional right, and the government and its apparatuses should provide the necessary amount of security to whoever is exercising it. It should also listen closely to people’s legal demands and seek to satisfy them. As well as pay attention to their calls for reform of the political process, and correct its course on the path to building a civil, democratic state, based on the text of the constitution that citizens voted for in October 2005.

It should be obvious that our Iraq is not isolated from what is happening, in the countries of the region, though it might differ in its internal dynamics and specifics. The storms of change around us have also energized our people to break the wall of silence and take the streets. The role of the youth in this movement has been especially key, with them taking advantage of new social media technology.

But the way the Iraqi government and its apparatuses have treated the protest movements is a serious violation of the constitutional right to freedom of expression and peaceful protest, and an attempt to stifle the citizens’ practicing of that right. That is when the people understood that the first and last concern of influential ruling political blocs is to look after their own interests, struggle with each other over power, and divide the pie among themselves, without any regard for ordinary people living under cruel conditions in a country whose yearly budget exceeds 100 billion dollars.

The protest actions of 25 February 2011 were a great success, as were the actions preceding and following, in expressing the clear and just demands of the people, despite being exposed to attempts to distort the depth of the movement and its goals. Then there has been the intrusion of the Prime Minister’s cabinet, with all its influence, to try to stop it, the attempts of the government as a whole to abort it, and all the surveillance and incarceration that followed.

Whether to expect the return of the protests depends on the reasons that lead to them breaking out. To this day, none of the protesters’ demands have been met, so if the government continues on its present path, disregarding people’s rights, it is very likely the protests will return.

As for media coverage, there had been coverage from several TV stations, but the government put pressure on them, and shut down some of their offices. In addition, a good number of journalists were beaten by infiltrators at the protests—thugs–while others were arrested and detained. And of course there have been assassinations of journalists – those brave, honorable people– including the writer and poet, Hadi al-Mahdi.

AI: In a recent interview you have talked about your work with “The Iraqi Women’s League.” Have there been developments there?

HMS: I am a member of the women’s league and am proud of my affiliation to this Iraqi organization that has sacrificed so much, and aided in the fight against the Iraqi monarchy and played a big role in the glorious revolution of July, 1958. A few weeks ago, we celebrated sixty years of the league. Right now though, the union work is what takes most of my time.