PEP, April 2007: Life in war-torn Iraq

By GARY GOFF
2nd Vice President, Local 2627

“There are no rights in Iraq for working people today,” said Houzan Mahmoud, speaking at the Manhattan campus of SUNY Stony Brook on March 5.

Mahmoud represents both the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq and the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions, Iraq’s second largest union group.

She is currently living in London and was in New York to testify about gender-based violence in Iraq before the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.

Mahmoud spoke at great personal risk, because she is under a fatwa, an open-ended death sentence issued by an Islamist group from Iraqi Kurdistan, where she was born.

“Women are the uncounted victims of this occupation.”

“Women are the uncounted victims of this occupation,” Mahmoud said. They cannot safely go out on the streets alone to buy food for their families, she said. Daily life is very difficult. There is no security. There are no basic services — drinkable water, electricity, health care or schools. Millions of people are out of work or have been forced to flee the Islamist militias to refugee camps in neighboring countries.

More and more women are now in Iraqi prisons, with no legal protection or representation. “They can just come and take you out of your home,” said Mahmoud.

Civil society has broken down. “The government is dysfunctional,” says Mahmoud, with no real existence outside the U.S.-run Green Zone.

The politicians are heavily corrupt, stealing public money and spying on each other. Elsewhere, she said, there is “a never-ending battle” among the occupying forces, the terrorist networks and the Islamist militias and gangsters.

It was not always like this. “Secularism is deeply rooted in Iraqi society,” she said. “The people don’t want a theocratic regime.”

And, according to Mahmoud, that is the strength of the secular Federation of Workers Councils and Unions, which includes men and women of all faiths, ethnicities, and nationalities.

“We’re anti-occupation, therefore we’re illegal, but we still organize.”

Unlike the legal unions supported by the Iraqi government and the U.S.-occupation forces (“We call them ‘yellow unions,’ ”), the Federation organizes protests, conferences and strikes — “at least two a month,” says Mahmoud with pride.“ We’re anti-occupation, therefore we’re illegal, but we still organize. We’re gaining popularity among the working people of Iraq.”

In Iraq, the war “has created a breeding ground for the terrorists.” They “carry out all kinds of suicide bombings and attacks, all in the name of fighting the occupation,” she said. The terror groups use the American presence “as a cover to kill.”

Mahmoud sees women, youth, and labor unions as the keys to restoring a dynamic secular society in Iraq. But before that can happen, she said, the war has to end. “This war is not in the interests of the working-class in Iraq or in America.”

Mahmoud’s presentation was sponsored by Stony Brook’s Center for Study of Working Class Life and U.S. Labor Against the War, the organization that led the labor section of the recent anti-war marches in which many DC 37 members participated.

This article is based on Mahmoud’s March 5 talk and an interview she gave Goff, which is available on line at www.local2627.org.