A-Infos (en) South Africa, Zabalaza* #6 - ANARCHISM, ALTERNATIVE UNIONISM & WORKERS' STRUGGLES IN IRAQ

NARCHISM AND THE IRAQ ELECTIONS
    This Sunday Iraq goes to the polls and
gets to choose its own government. Or so
we are told. Probably no one who was
opposed to the war actually believes this
but its useful to look at the flaws in the
election process and then to ask what
hope is there for the Iraqi people. The first
obvious flaw is that the election is taking
place while Iraq is occupied by a foreign
army. Add to this that the current regime
was more or less appointed by that army.
And that the process is set up to return a
national assembly which will have very lit-
tle power to do anything itself except draft
a new constitution. International election
observers will not actually be in Iraq but in
neighbouring Jordan - presumably peering
over the border with very powerful binocu-
lars.
    Who is standing is actually a secret as
is the location of polling stations. It gets
even more bizarre; US soldiers have been
passing out candy and election material
while on patrol!1 Presumably this is the
sort of thing that UN electoral division chief
Carina Perelli meant when she said that
"the US military has been I would say
overenthusiastic in trying to help with this
election". Earlier this month a scandal qui-
etly erupted when the (US government
appointed) Prime Minister Iyad Allawi was
revealed to have handed out $100 bills to
journalists at a campaign meeting.2 Some
of the opposition parties have been com-
plaining of the lack of media coverage they
have received, this might be one explana-
tion.
    Even the method of voting is pretty
odd. Basically the list of candidates is
being kept secret so you vote only for a
party/list. There are no constituencies,
each party gets a number of candidates
elected in proportion to what its (sup-
posed) national vote was. There is a
choice of over 90 of these lists and as
many are themselves coalitions it's not at
all clear what, if anything, most stand for.
The lack of constituencies is relevant
when you consider that most if not all
Sunni Arab votes are liable to boycott the
election. If Iraq had been divided up into
constituencies this wouldn't matter so
much as even a tiny turnout in areas that
are predominantly Sunni Arab (i.e. the
`Sunni triangle') would ensure a somewhat
proportional number of Sunni's were elect-
ed. But without any such constituencies
the end result will be an Iraqi national
assembly comprised entirely
(Sunni) Kurds. If what you we
was civil war leading to partitio
absurd logic to this. But may
cynical?

THE DEBATE IN THE AN
MOVEMENT
     Of course the joy of being
is that even if these election
conducted perfectly we'd st
that all they would do is brin
gang of politicians who the p
have no power over. So to a c
we can stand above the squa
taking place in the anti-war
relation to the elections. But t
is interesting. Basically so
commentators, most nota
Achcar have pointed out tha
tions are conducted fairly the
be very uncomfortable for th
piers. In fact it would be likely
to a Parliament and a governm
Shia Fundamentalist forces,
friendly with Iran, are hegemo
all the noise that the US gov
been making in recent days a
Iran this could be a little awkw
But in fact the powers of
assembly are limited, in partic
can get a 2/3 majority, so the
ers of the election have prob
covered themselves against t
     Achcar 's suggestion that
mistake to write off the
advance greatly annoyed s
Trots involved in the anti-wa
They tend to quietly have the
enemy's enemy is my friend'
and silence any criticism of th
in the anti-war movement.
self-indulgent line is based on
Iraqi workers will defeat
imperialism for them and
never mind if the process
of doing so throws them
into the hands of Islamists.
After the mass executions
of the left that followed the
Islamist takeover of the
Iranian revolution * this sort
of self serving `logic' from
the professors of the west-
ern left seems and indeed
is a little unpleasant and I
don't intend to discuss it
further. Both positions do
seem to flow from a
requirement of `what would
be best for us in the western left'. They
ask `Would it be better if Iraqis militarily
defeat US imperialism for us or would it be
better if they defeat it through the ballot
box'. Given the suffering our governments
have already imposed on the people of
Iraq this seems like a very odd way of
approaching the question of the Iraqi elec-
tions.
    Another approach - an internationalist
approach - would be to ask what is in the
interest of the ordinary Iraqi people and
what can we do to show solidarity with
them. When you ask that question the
choice offered above between a Shia
dominated Islamist regime or a Sunni
dominated Islamist regime doesn't seem
to have so much to offer. Already huge
numbers of women are now forced to wear
the veil in Iraq. Over 1,000 Iraqi women
have abandoned their university studies.
Hinadi, the star dancer of the group `el-
Portoqala' was killed by Islamists while
visiting her family.         Apparently "el-
Portoqala sings modern songs, which out-
raged some Islamists who said the songs
were pornographic, liberal and `alien to
conservative Iraqi society'. In reality the
songs merely showed women dancing
and posing as lovers".4

picture: US soldiers hand out sweets before Iraq

WHAT HOPE FOR THE PEOPLE?
    If you rely on the mainstream media
and the left then Iraq seems to be without
hope. The choice it appears is only
between US imperialism and Islamist
reaction. In fact Iraqi workers have not
been sitting by since the occupation -
there have been many militant workers
struggles in Iraq, it is just nobody bothers
to report on them because they don't fit
into the predefined conceptions of the
struggle. There have been rumours and
some reports of anarchists active in Iraq
  ut it seems that such forces are not yet
significant.**
     However there are other progressive
forces who have managed to get news of
their activities onto the web.*** They are
also calling for a boycott. In particular the
Worker-Communist Party of Iraq declares
that "The Election is a Puppet Show to
Legitimatise the U.S Policy in Iraq."5 They
see the intention of the US in this election
to be "to impose a reactionary Islamic and
ethnocentric puppet government."6 The
WCPI are an interesting neo-Leninist
group which broke with orthodox commu-
nism out of their experiences in the work-
ers councils thrown up in the Iranian revo-
lution of 1979 and the uprisings that fol-
lowed the 1991 Iraq war. The conclusions
they came to are in some ways similar to
that of the Dutch and German Council
Communists of the 1920's. Naturally
enough this experience also left them with
a healthy hostility towards the Islamist pro-
gram. They warn that "Iraq has become a
battlefield for a war between American and
Islamic terrorism and the Iraqi masses are
constant victims caught amid the fire
between both these terrorist forces". They
have a fairly comprehensive English lan-
guage website (at www.wpiraq.net/eng-
lish), which includes regular PDF newslet-
ters detailing the struggles they are
involved in.
     There is an obvious enormous gulf
between anarchists and Leninists but if we
leave that aside for this article the WCPI
offer a real breath of fresh air in much of
the debate around Iraq. Their real efforts
to build union and women's organizations
in Iraq offer at least an alternative that can
be built on. Their recent document
"Worker-communism and the Armed
Struggle in Iraq: Guerrilla War or Mass
Armed Resistance?" 7 is well worth read-
ing as it tries to sketch out an alternative
path to ending the occupation. This
acknowledges a need for armed resist-
ance but seeks to "avoid the traditional
guerrilla-style of
armed resistance"
substituting    one
which "focuses on
mobilizing      and
leading the popula-
tion to reclaim vari-
ous suburbs, vil-
lages, towns and
cities and bans
both US forces and
Islamo-ethnocen-
tric militia from
entry".
Significantly     for
anarchists one of
the reasons they
give for this alter-
native form of
resistance is that "It
encourages   the
population to intervene in running their
own affairs. It will embroil the masses in a
process, which will raise their awareness."

Picture: Power workers demonstration in Baghdad against terrorist
  attacks on electrcity and oil workers - 24 March 2005

AN ONGOING STRUGGLE
     It has become clear that the occupa-
tion in Iraq is not likely to be a short term
event but something that is intended to go
on for years and even decades. The US
military machine is deeply entrenched
both in Iraq and in the White House.
Ending the occupation will not come about
as a result of an anti-war march, no matter
how big or any other single event. We
need to view the war in Iraq not as a dis-
tant event but as part of our own backyard.
The fight of Iraqi workers for justice is part
of our own fight for justice. And just as we
would refuse to accept a struggle led by
those who seek only to be an alternative
oppressor we should not demand that
Iraqi workers switch one oppressor for
another. The election this Sunday will
change nothing for the better, even if those
it brings to power are somewhat hostile to
the US occupation. What we need to be
doing is to look for and reach out to what-
ever progressive forces are struggling in
Iraq and show solidarity with these. At the
end of the day our fight for freedom is a
global fight - or it is no fight at all.
                                - Andrew Flood,
        Workers Solidarity Movement (Ireland)
Notes:
1. A picture of them in action is at
http://iraqpictures.blogspot.com/2005/01/sol
diers-with-3rd-battalion-21st.html
2. Reported at
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/41
68925.stm
3 . See www.zmag.org/content/showarti
cle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=6948
4. www.wpiraq.net/english/2004/Basra-popu
lar_entertainer191204.htm
5. See for instance the text of their leaflet
announcing demonstrations in England
www.wpiraq.net/english/2004/wpiUK-elec
tion251204.htm
6. www.wpiraq.net/english/rebwar_call.htm
7. Online at www.wpiraq.net/english/2004/work
ercommunism-armedstrugle45.htm
Further Notes:
* The course of the Iranian Revolution was
briefly charted in the "Zabalaza" article
"Religious Fundamentalist Regimes: A Lesson
from the Iranian Revolution 1978-1979" online
at: www.zabalaza.net/zabfed/zab2.htm#relig
     In August 1977, 50 000 poor slum-dwellers
successfully resisted their forced removal by
police, then in December, police massacred 40
religious protestors and the resentment boiled
over into open anger. Strikes and sabotage
were on the rise while wages dropped due to an
economic downturn. The shah imposed martial
law and on "Black Friday", September 8, 1978,
troops gunned down thousands of protestors.
In response, infuriated workers launched a
strike-wave that spread across the country like
wildfire. Oil workers struck for 33 days straight,
bringing the economy to a dead halt, despite
fruitless attempts to send troops into the oil-
fields. On December 11, 2-million protestors
marched in the capital, Tehran, demanding the
ousting of the shah, an end to American imperi-
alism and the arming of the people. Soldiers
began to desert. On January 16, 1979, the
shah fled to Egypt. In mid-February, there was
an insurrection, with air force cadets joining with
guerrilla forces - the leftist Organisation of
Iranian Peoples' Fedai Guerrillas, or Fedayeen,
and the nationalist Mujahedeen - in over-run-
ning the military academy, army bases, the par-
liament, factories, armouries and the TV station.
The Pahlavi regime collapsed and Khomeini,
who had returned from exile, cobbled together a
multi-party provisional government, but the peo-
ple wanted more.
     Women's organisations flourished, peas-
ants started seizing the land and in some
places, established communal cultivation coun-
cils, strikes were rampant and workers seized
control of their workplaces, arranging raw mate-
rials, sourcing and sales themselves, even set-
ting prices in the oil industry. A system of grass-
roots soviets - called "shoras" in Iranian and
based on the old factory council idea - sprang
up in fields, factories, neighbourhoods, educa-
tional institutions and the armed forces. Armed
neighbourhood committees - called "komitehs" -
based on the old Muslim scholar networks -
patrolled residential areas, arrested collabora-
tors, ran people's courts and prisons, and
organized demonstrations. It was a true work-
ers' revolution with secular revolutionaries and
Muslim workers overthrowing the capitalist state
side by side. A May Day march in Tehran drew
1,5-million demonstrators.
     The former headquarters of the secret
police-controlled official trade union federation
was occupied by the unemployed and renamed
the Workers' House. The new workerist feder-
ation, that replaced the old state one, the All-
Iran Workers' Union, declared that its aim was
an Iran "free of class oppression" and called for
shoras to be "formed by the workers of each
factory for their own political and economic
needs". But the religious fundamentalist clerics
lead by Khomeini were terrified of the power of
the working class and haunted by the spectre of
the imminent collapse of Iranian capitalism. If it
collapsed, they could not reconstitute them-
selves as the ruling elite in place of the shah
and there would be no profits for them to steal
from the workers. Three days after the insur-
 ection, the provisional government ordered
workers back to work, but the strike, shora and
komiteh movements just spread.
     A month later, the government declared the
shoras to be "counter-revolutionary", claiming
that their minority bourgeois regime was "the
genuine Islamic Revolution". Still the shoras
spread, so the regime introduced a law aimed
at undermining worker self-management by
banning shora involvement in management
affairs - while at the same time trying to force
class collaboration by insisting that manage-
ment must be allowed to participate in the
shoras. The shora movement peaked in July
but then the government offensive, combined
with the inexperience of the left, began to take
its toll. The National Front, Masses, Fedayeen
and both the leftist and Muslim wings of the
Mujahedeen all backed the provisional govern-
ment mistakenly believing that an Iranian cleri-
cal-dominated bourgeoisie was better than the
imperialist-backed Pahlavi dynasty.
     Khomeini founded the fundamentalist
Iranian Republican Party (IRP) to squeeze
opposition parties out of the provisional govern-
ment and at the same time established the
Revolutionary Guards (Pasdaran), a political
police force to marginalize the secular left with-
in the komitehs, which it wanted to mobilise as
a supporter bloc. The Pasdaran were soon
forcibly liquidating shoras, purging komitehs
and repressing ethnic Kurdish separatists and
women's organisations, while the Party of God
(Hezbollah) was created as a strikebreaking
force of thugs. The IRP also created a public
works project to divert the energies of the most
militant shoras - replacing them with fundamen-
talist shoras and Islamic Societies - and to
rebuild the exploitative capitalist economy (all
the while spouting populist and anti-capitalist
slogans in the manner of all fascist dictator-
ships). The true workers' revolution was
destroyed and for the Iranian working class,
whether secular or Muslim, a long night of living
under a new autocratic regime had begun.
     The fundamentalist clerical regime had not
set them free: it had only produced new forms
of capitalist exploitation and police state repres-
sion. The lesson of Iran is a basic anarchist
one: workers can never trust groups, religious
or not, who chant the right revolutionary slogans
but whose real aim is class rule.
** The Iraqi workers' movement arose only in
the 1920s and 1930s because of the late devel-
opment of an industrial proletariat centred on
the oil industry and was initially dominated by
the Communist Party of Iraq (HCI). The HCI
suffered massacres at the hands of the ruling
Ba'athist Party in the 1960s, but in 1973, the
two parties' leaderships struck a pact. This
enraged the HCI youth, about 300 of which
broke away from the party in 1976 to form the
anarcho-communist Shagila group. Shagila's
primary activities were running an underground
press and the assassination of Ba'athist securi-
ty police goons. When the Iranian Revolution
broke out, many Shagila militants crossed into
Iran illegally to support their sister anarcho-
communist organisation there, The Scream of
the People, and the shorah and komiteh move-
ment. But both Shagila and The Scream of the
People were caught up in the Khomeinist mas-
sacres of the Left which were unleashed in
1979 and only a handful escaped into exile with
their lives. Those who remained behind, alive,
buried their weapons and printing presses. It is
believed that a "second-generation" of Shagila
militants may be involved in the current upris-
ing, but we have no confirmation of this.
     - Source: a Shagila veteran in exile who
       cannot be named for security reasons.
*** One of the most significant progressive
forces to emerge in Iraq in recent years is the
Federation of Workers' Councils and Unions of
Iraq (FWCUI), formed in December 2003, and
its affiliate, the Unemployed Union of Iraq (UUI),
which have spread like wildfire to most main
urban centres in Iraq. The FWCUI states that
its aim is to form "labour organisations that the
workers elect by themselves, without the
guardianship or domination from any authority,
whether government or party." This explicity
distances it from any form of state/party control,
affiliation or co-option. In other words, it is
against both boss-friendly yellow unionism, or
state-ruled corporatist unionism of the type the
imperialist occupation forces have attempted to
establish. Its constitution expands on this
theme, saying its aim is to "establish councils
and directly elected labour unions inside the
factories, workshops and enterprises by the
workers themselves." It has taken a distinctly
anti-chauvanist line, embracing all workers in
the territory of Iraq whatever their ethnic origin,
nationality, religion, gender or creed. It fights for
bread-and-butter issues, but has also demand-
ed unlimited political freedom and the right to
strike and industrial action. Most crucially, its
constitution states that the "General
Conference [of worker delegates] is the highest
authority in the federation and is called for
assembly every six months" and that the "lead-
ing committee" of the federation, elected in
secret ballot by the General Conference, is not
an executive body but is merely a delegated
body, strictly limited to abide "by all resolutions
and recommendations of the conference and
work for their implementation." This committee
can in turn appoint "specialised committees" to
deal with certain tasks, but these organs are
merely "consultative" and have "limited validi-
ties". In other words what we have here is a
directly democratic grassroots rank-and-file
organisation that is not organised according to
the usual top-down "democratic centralist"
model in which the union executive controls the
membership. Although the FWCUI has no
explicit revolutionary goals, the fact that the
control is exercised the other way around,
makes a good argument for it to be included by
anarchist analysts among the rising number of
"alternative" and "grassroots" unions in coun-
tries as diverse as Mexico and Switzerland, with
whom the resurgent revolutionary anarchist,
revolutionary syndicalist and anarcho-syndical-
ist movements have much in common.
                 - Source: http://www.uuiraq.org/
         Further Notes by Michael Schmidt,
                ZACF (southern Africa)
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