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NEWS & LETTERS, January-February 2005Assassination exposes shallow solidarityWe condemn the murder of Hadi Salih, the International Secretary of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), tortured and killed in his Baghdad home on Jan. 4. Ex-Ba’athists loyal to Saddam Hussein are suspected. Salih, a former printer, had been persecuted by the Ba’ath regime for his labor activism. He had lived in exile since 1969, returning to Iraq just before Hussein’s fall. The IFTU, the largest trade union organization in Iraq, is aligned with the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP). The ICP was given a seat on the Iraqi Governing Council, and now participates in the interim government while actively campaigning in the Jan. 30 election. In contrast, the unrelated Worker-Communist Party of Iraq (WPI) has boycotted the election. Like others, they wish not to give the appearance of legitimacy to a sham process that can only result in a legal veneer for the continuing occupation. The WPI has denounced the ICP for working with the occupation government. Their current policy is simply the latest in the ICP’s long history of opportunistic maneuvering, and later dealings with the Ba’ath regime in the 1970s. LABOR AS TERROR TARGET While the IFTU does not support the foreign occupation, it does express critical support for the Allawi government--widely regarded to be the puppet of the occupying forces--as better than an Islamist or Ba’athist government that would certainly brutally repress any independent labor organizations. This, along with its vocal opposition to Islamist and Ba’athist militias, has made members of the federation targets of the so-called resistance. The murder has also been condemned by the rival Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq (FWCUI), which has links to the WPI. It also opposes both the occupation and political Islam, yet remains independent of the interim government. In this country, US Labor Against the War and the AFL-CIO have likewise condemned the assassination, pointing to the daily dangers that confront trade unionists in Iraq. The murder of Salih cannot but have the effect of terrorizing the Iraqi labor movement. Indeed it is simply the most recent and visible of a spate of murders and kidnappings of IFTU members and rank-and-file workers, which further reveal the retrogressive, anti-working-class nature of the "resistance." DEAFENING SILENCE The majority in the American anti-war movement has been silent over this murder of a trade union leader and other attacks on workers in Iraq. That speaks volumes about the priorities of much of the Left, especially in light of the numerous explicit and implicit statements of support for the Iraqi armed "resistance." The lack of solidarity with Iraqi workers’ organizations and women’s groups fighting for equality reveals an inability to conceive of international people-to-people solidarity as a way of building momentum for a worldwide movement against global capitalism in all its varieties. The rest of the world seems to matter only in its relation to U.S. policy. This provincial attitude suppresses a vision of a comprehensive alternative to existing society by working to limit the perspectives of our movements. The murder of this trade unionist should alert us to the vital need for international solidarity with workers, and their organizations such as the FWCUI and the Union of Unemployed, trying to build a third pole of opposition to the occupation and its puppet government, as well as the forces of Ba’athist reaction and Islamic neo-fascism. The future of Iraq and our own freedom movements depends on this solidarity. --Joshua Skolnik |
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