From the first days of the US-British invasion of Iraq, oil workers have resisted foreign occupation
Hassan Juma'a Awad
Friday February 18, 2005
The Guardian
We
lived through dark days under Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. When the
regime fell, people wanted a new life: a life without shackles and
terror; a life where we could rebuild our country and enjoy its natural
wealth. Instead, our communities have been attacked with chemicals and
cluster bombs, and our people tortured, raped and killed in our homes.
Saddam's
secret police used to creep over the roofs into our homes at night;
occupation troops now break down our doors in broad daylight. The media
do not show even a fraction of the devastation that has engulfed Iraq.
Journalists who dare to report the truth of what is happening have been
kidnapped by terrorists. This serves the agenda of the occupation,
which aims to eliminate witnesses to its crimes.
Workers
in Iraq's southern oilfields began organising soon after British
occupying forces invaded Basra. We founded our union, the Southern Oil
Company Union, just 11 days after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003.
When the occupation troops stood back and allowed Basra's hospitals,
universities and public services to be burned and looted, while they
defended only the oil ministry and oilfields, we knew we were dealing
with a brutal force prepared to impose its will without regard for
human suffering. From the beginning, we were left in no doubt that the
US and its allies had come to take control of our oil resources.
The
occupation authorities have maintained many of Saddam's repressive
laws, including the 1987 order which robbed us of basic union rights,
including the right to strike. Today, we still have no official
recognition as a trade union, despite having 23,000 members in 10 oil
and gas companies in Basra, Amara, Nassiriya, and up to Anbar province.
However, we draw our legitimacy from the workers, not the government.
We believe unions should operate regardless of the government's wishes,
until the people are able finally to elect a genuinely accountable and
independent Iraqi government, which represents our interests and not
those of American imperialism.
Our union is
independent of any political party. Most trade unions in Britain only
seem to be aware of one union federation in Iraq, the regime-authorised
Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, whose president, Rassim Awadi, is
deputy leader of the US-imposed prime minister Ayad Allawi's party. The
IFTU's leadership is carved up between the pro-government Communist
party, Allawi's Iraqi National Accord, and their satellites. In fact,
there are two other union federations, which are linked to political
parties, as well as our own organisation.
Our
union has already shown it is able to stand its ground against one of
the most powerful US companies, Dick Cheney's KBR, which tried to take
over our workplaces with the protection of occupation forces.
We
forced them out and compelled their Kuwaiti subcontractor, Al Khourafi,
to replace 1,000 of the 1,200 employees it brought with it with Iraqi
workers, 70% of whom are unemployed today. We also fought US viceroy
Paul Bremer's wage schedule, which dictated that Iraqi public sector
workers must earn ID 69,000 ($35) per month, while paying up to $1,000
a day to thousands of foreign mercenaries. In August 2003 we took
strike action and shut down all oil production for three days. As a
result, the occupation authorities had to raise wages to a minimum of
ID 150,000.
We
see it as our duty to defend the country's resources. We reject and
will oppose all moves to privatise our oil industry and national
resources. We regard this privatisation as a form of neo-colonialism,
an attempt to impose a permanent economic occupation to follow the
military occupation.
The
occupation has deliberately fomented a sectarian division of Sunni and
Shia. We never knew this sort of division before. Our families
intermarried, we lived and worked together. And today we are resisting
this brutal occupation together, from Falluja to Najaf to Sadr City.
The resistance to the occupation forces is a God-given right of Iraqis,
and we, as a union, see ourselves as a necessary part of this
resistance - although we will fight using our industrial power, our
collective strength as a union, and as a part of civil society which
needs to grow in order to defeat both still-powerful Saddamist elites
and the foreign occupation of our country.
Bush
and Blair should remember that those who voted in last month's
elections in Iraq are as hostile to the occupation as those who
boycotted them. Those who claim to represent the Iraqi working class
while calling for the occupation to stay a bit longer, due to "fears of
civil war", are in fact speaking only for themselves and the minority
of Iraqis whose interests are dependent on the occupation.
We
as a union call for the withdrawal of foreign occupation forces and
their military bases. We don't want a timetable - this is a stalling
tactic. We will solve our own problems. We are Iraqis, we know our
country and we can take care of ourselves. We have the means, the
skills and resources to rebuild and create our own democratic society.
· Hassan Juma'a Awad is general secretary of Iraq's Southern Oil Company Union and president of the Basra Oil Workers' Union