Samir Adil, president of the Iraq Freedom Congress, a movement initiated by the Worker-communist Party of Iraq, spoke to Martin Thomas when he visited London in July.
Oil workers in southern Iraq are planning to strike against the sectarian militias — the Iraq Freedom Congress is asking all its members to support it.
The demands are:
• Abolition of all contracts which include imposed privatisation.
• The disbanding and expulsion of armed militias from Iraqi cities.
• An end to the killing of workers by the armed militias in Iraqi cities.
• Continued distribution of food rations.
• Continued distribution of profit-sharing bonuses to the oil workers.
In our view there is no real government, no real state, in Iraq. But we want to send a message to the occupation and to what is supposed to be the government of Iraq.
The IFC is working for an end to the sectarian militias. But as yet we are not strong enough to eliminate them. The strike is very important to unite workers and to show that there is another power in Iraq, independent from the occupation and the sectarian militias.
The southern oil union had put out a much longer and different list of demands (www.basraoilunion.org), but we now have agreement on the new demands.
We worked hard to get three of the leaders of the southern oil workers into IFC. In the end we convinced them that we need a secular government.
We know that previous statements from the southern oil union have been headed: “In the name of God, the most beneficent, the most merciful”. We are working to change that. We tell the union leaders that the workers have all sorts of views - Christian or atheist as well as Muslim - and the union should not impose on them statements “in the name of God”.
The positive thing is that in the oil union there is strong resistance to ethnic conflict and ethnic cleansing. There is no sectarian conflict among the workers in the workplaces.
IFC’s aim is to unite the workers. Our statement after the 22 February 2006 bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra - “no Shia, no Sunni” - was very popular.
But there is a financial problem. We could open IFC offices, but we have no money. Because of our policy against Iran, against Syria, against the Gulf states, and against the occupation, we get no money from any state.
We know that in the past the southern oil workers have been mobilised in support of the provincial authorities in Basra in their conflicts with Baghdad over shares of the oil revenue. Among the leaders of the oil union there are also members of the Fadila party [a dissident Sadrist, Shia-Islamist group], which runs the provincial government.
The IFC decided to oppose meetings between the oil union and the provincial government. Our demands are not just demands for oil workers, but for all the workers in Iraq. Now we have Nouri al-Maliki, prime minister of the Baghdad government, negotiating with the oil union leaders.
There is political conflict inside the leadership of the oil union. To find the union’s statements referring approvingly to the “legally elected government” is not strange. But we are working hard to bring the whole union under IFC influence.
Three years ago Hassan Jumaa, the southern oil union leader, was pro-occupation. Last year, in the negotiations about a joint statement by Iraqi union leaders at the end of their speaking tour of the USA, he was against secularism. Now he has joined the IFC, which takes its stand against both political Islam and the occupation.
Against the Shia sectarian militias, the Sunni sectarian militias, and forces like Iyad Allawi’s, IFC represents another political pole.
Other unions have joined IFC, for example the General Federation of Trade Unions of Iraq, a grouping in Baghdad which comes from a split from the pro-Jaafari Iraqi Workers’ Union, has joined IFC.
The participants in the joint committee of Iraqi trade union organisations set up in January 2006 at a meeting sponsored by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions are Hassan Jumaa’s Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, the Federation of Workers’ Councils and Unions of Iraq, and the Iraqi Workers’ Federation (formerly Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions). The FWCUI supports the oil workers’ strike call. We have sent a delegation to the IWF. We have had no response from them.
We asked about the programme and strategy of the IFC project — it is similar to the programme of the Worker-communist Party, but without any of the “worker” or “communist” social and economic demands. How can the IFC gain the forces to overpower both the US/UK and the Islamist militias without mobilising on the social, economic, class questions?
We have had elections in Iraq — nobody respects the results of those elections. There is no state, no law.
The IFC is working to establish a state and law. Where we have strength, we take responsibility for security and for distributing supplies. We say “no Shia, no Sunni” - you can believe what you want individually, but you should allow no discrimination.
We want to pull people away from the sectarian groups and to end the occupation. The IFC represents our way to end the occupation. If the militias kill one US or British soldier, they kill ten Iraqi people at the same time. Actions like the planned strike in the oil industry show a better way.
By mobilising millions of people under the IFC banner we can easily become the government. How to deal with social problems of education, health, electricity supplies, and so on, is clear. The profits from oil exports should be distributed equally to the Iraqi people.
If we can do it, we will go on to socialism. But today Iraqi society is not a normal society. There is no state. The IFC aims to rebuild civil society and establish a government that will give a normal life to the Iraqi people. But if we can go forward to socialism, we will not hesitate.
