From Falah Alwan, president of the Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions of Iraq
The occupation troops and their allies, and the militias, have driven society into a sectarian war. They have also confiscated the most basic liberties.
The regional powers have put their resources at the disposal of the armed groups and powers who represent their interests in Iraq, thereby turning... living and working places into battlefields of a destructive reactionary war...
The workers of Iraq have taken their position against the occupation and the current situation through demonstrations and protests. Some organised sit-ins. Others demonstrated demanding better pay and living conditions. Some demanded cancelling the laws of the previous era.
The main reasons which have stopped the workers’ social efforts from turning into a main pole within the political formula and kept them as a mere potential force is not that the workers are incapable or reluctant in organising, although these factors are of some influence. The essential reason is that the weakness of the workers’ movement in Iraq reflects the parallel weakness of an international workers’ movement.
The workers of Iraq have to face the whole arsenal of the occupation troops, and all the dominant and destructive political militia forces. All of these forces have regional and worldwide resources. 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.
Iraq is currently the main arena of struggle between the American and the regional local forces, a struggle which is basically reactionary. The USA's victory, or their adversaries’, will impose a failure of the workers’ movement and force it to withdraw and become marginal for decades to come.
The precondition for our victory and survival is that the international workers’ movement stands by us, not in the sense of supporting and encouraging a movement somewhere in the world, but of regarding us as a basic part of an international movement.
• March 6, 2007. Abridged and slightly edited from http://www.uuiraq.org/english/248.htm.
