Iraqi Labor Leaders Blame US for the Bloodshed in Iraq and say Get Out!

Two Iraqi Labour leaders, who are in Philadelphia as part of a U.S. tour sponsored by a coalition of American labor unions called U.S. Labor Against the War, have said that the US is the cause of most of the violence in Iraq and are demanding that they leave.

Some of the points they raise are very hard to argue with.

“Did the occupier find us fighting each other when they came to Iraq?” asks Hashmeya, who is president of the Electric Utility Workers Union of Iraq. “No. The fighting among Iraqis started two and a half years after the Americans came.”

Faleh, general secretary of the Southern Oil Company Union based in Basra, agrees, saying that while the U.S. claims to be trying to quell the violence, “actually, since the U.S. has come into Iraq, they have done everything they could to encourage sectarian strife.” He asks, if Iraqis are just a bunch of sectarian fanatics, “How did we manage to get along in the past?”

They also claim that the violence in Iraq is being misrepresented by US television networks who, they claim, give the impression that the violence is mostly Iraqi fighting Iraqi.

Of an average 1000 attacks in Iraq each week, only about 30 are by Iraqis against other Iraqis. The rest are attacks on American and British forces.

Astonishingly, Union membership in Iraq has grown since the invasion despite a ban on Union membership started under Saddam and continued by Paul Bremner. And one of things causing membership to grow is opposition to the Bush plan to pass Iraq's new oil laws, which ordinary Iraqis realise is simply a way to pass their oil into a foreign company's hands.

But the workers are having some success, even when their own government threaten them.

Faleh says his union recently won a victory when its members struck in Basra in opposition to the oil privatization plan. “The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki ordered the workers surrounded, and ordered the army to attack and arrest the strikers,” he says, “but the commander of the Basra region refused and said he would “not arrest anyone who loves Iraq.” At the commander’s urging, the government agreed to put off action on an oil industry law until October, and to sit down and negotiate with the union. Faleh called the action a “big victory” for the union movement.

It seems even the commander of the Basra region realises that opposing Iraq's new oil law might actually be an act of the deepest patriotism.

Faleh also warned that an attack on Iran would increase the violence in Iraq even beyond it's present horror.

Not that any of us have any faith that Bush and Co will listen to such sensible advice. Especially if it's coming from union men, who they no doubt see as socialists wasters.

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Tags: Iraq, oil workers, labour leaders, Bush, Iraq war, calls for US to leave Iraq