More on the Material Situation in Iraq

With 70% of Iraq formally unemployed, and the Iraqi Governing Council threatening everything from tyranny of the majority to the imposition of Sharia rule, it is a fair question to ask whether the majority of Iraqis (and especially Iraqi women) face a future that can, objectively, be called "better" than life under the brutal, tin-horn dictator Saddam Hussein (who at least secularized his regime). I say "objectively" because it's a damn hard thing to say that a people are worse off than they were under a regime where hundreds of thousands were tortured and killed as a matter of routine political expediency. But one must remember that the political expediencies of U.S. occupation throughout history have often called for U.S. leaders to shake hands with and prop up all sorts of devils, comparable to Saddam and often much more brutal. And one must also remember that some of these demons could very well be part of the IGC, or be playing very close to their doors.

One must also remember that this is a dynamic, ever-changing situation, and that the designations "better" and "worse" should not obfuscate the dynamic nature of the situation. Absent Saddam, it appears some political spaces for struggle have opened up, even if those struggles are conditioned by, or necessitated by, U.S. occupation.

Here's Ewa Jasiewicz of Occupation Watch, Baghdad, writing on wage cuts and a threatened strike in the energy sector that appears to have actually forced the CPA to blink. Apparently the thought of labor disputes with soldiers guarding Iraqi oil facilities from Iraqis themselves was just too much to bear:

"In early September, the CPA designed, and Paul Bremer the Third
signed, Order 30 on Salaries and Employment Conditions, which
cancelled all previous state subsidies for public sector workers such
as family, housing, location, and risk benefits. Iraqi workers had
relied on these subsidies in order to survive their pittance
dictatorship wages. Instead, the CPA imposed a new 10 step, 13 level
salary table which sets the country's minimum monthly wage at 69,000 Dinar ($40) per month. This is less than half of the recommended salary of a sweatshop worker in one of neighbouring Iran's Free Trade Zones."

"For any workers receiving the new CPA minimum wage, this means their income will almost be slashed in half."

"Occupation Watch interviewed workers and trade unionists in Basra on their conditions and organising. The response from Iraqi Port
Authority workers, Southern Oil Company Workers, Basra Oil Company Workers, Electricity Plant Workers and Transport Union
representatives was that they needed a rise. Most workers we spoke to were receiving $60 or $120 monthly wages..."

"Market prices, for basic foodstuffs, have almost doubled in some
parts of Iraq, the price of a kilo of onions rising from 250 dinar to
750 in Basra, and apples going up by a third. Ration card rice was
cut also cut three months ago, say mother and wives, still struggling
to make ends meet. Fruit is too expensive to barely ever be seen in
family homes in Basra's poorest areas such as Haiyania and
Jhoomouria, where I have been living for the past month with trade
unionists and their families..."

"'If the ministry refuses to pay our new table, all of the refineries,
the power plants and crude oil pumping stations will stop. And no
one from the administration will be able to interfere', told us
Faleh. The threat of a total shut down of Iraq was however, more of
a shock-tactic according to Hassan Jum'a who reasoned, 'We won't shut down everything, there are humanitarian needs that need to be met, water purification plants, hospitals, these facilities must be kept
going and we want the SOC to keep going too. But, what we will have a total shut down of, is exports'. And the expected response to that?
'One of our assumptions is that soldiers will occupy the pumps. If
they do, we will fight them. We will resist them with force. And we
will join the armed resistance'."

"Unsurprisingly, the threat of a general oil strike in Iraq's biggest
oil company and one of only two still functioning and shipping oil to
market, plus thousands of radical oil workers joining the armed
resistance, caused some alarm at CPA-Governing Council levels and
prompted the Minister of Oil himself came down to hold talks with the
Union. The result was that until the new wage table can be agreed, through negotiation, between the Ministry of Finance and the union, the old sparse-step CPA emergency payment system (starting at $60 per month rather than the risible $40) will replace the 130-step CPA dictated one..."

Elsewhere I have talked about the differences between the Iraqi Communist Party, who are part of the IGC, and the Worker Communist Party of Iraq, associated of the WCP of Iran and adherents to the perspectives of Mansoor Hekmat, who wanted to unify communists in Iran and Iraq, and who died in 2002.

Yoshie Furuhashi at LBO-Talk writes:

"If any Iraqis are looking for a political party for secular democracy
associated with neither the Ba'ath Party nor the US occupation, as
some LBO-talk subscribers suggest they should, they won't probably
look to the Iraqi Communist Party. The ICP was in the
Ba'ath-dominated the National Progressive Front for seven years
(1972-1979) and joined, together with Islamists and former exiles,
the Iraqi Governing Council appointed by Washington.

"Joining the Iraqi Governing Council was a mistake. Moreover, the ICP
has missed several chances to correct the error to its political
advantage. One of the latest and most important moments that should have prompted a change of course came when the Iraqi Governing Council placed gender and family issues under the jurisdiction of sharia, making women's social position worse than under the Ba'ath Party..."

At least, however, the ICP has criticized Resolution 137 (the Sharia resolution) from within its position in the IGC. Their resolution in part reads:

"We return to this issue as a result of the decree adopted by some members of the interim Governing Council against the norms for decision-making, which require a two-third majority to pass such a decree. It was also wrong for the Council to take such a grave decision. Once again, we reiterate our opposition and total rejection of this decree, as expressed by our Party representative in the Council. This is also to respond to some politically bankrupt claims that the Party was in favour of such a decree although we had opposed and rejected it!

"We seize this opportunity to call upon all women organisations, and all women, to take their cause into their own hands, and also call upon all sections of the democratic public opinion to continue the work for consolidating the rights of women and children stipulated in the International Declaration of Human Rights and the two relevant UN covenants. It is necessary to demand that these UN documents should be incorporated in Iraqi legislation, especially the forthcoming constitution, in order to confirm these rights. Consistent efforts should continue for their implementation in real life, as an important part of building a new democratic, pluralistic, federal, unified and prosperous Iraq.

So it is important to remember that the ICP is calling for groups outside of the IGC to protest and organize against Resolution 137. This suggests that the ICP isn't a complete sell-out and isn't going to rubber-stamp every IGC decision.

The Urgency for Women (and secularism):

From MADRE, the international human rights organization, on Jan. 30:

"Under IGC Resolution 137, issued on December 29, 2003, arbitrary interpretations of religious law threaten to replace one of the Middle East’s most progressive personal status laws. The Resolution gravely endangers women’s rights, undermines prospects for democracy and foments a dangerous sectarianism in an already destabilized society.

"Resolution 137 could give self-appointed religious clerics the authority to inflict grave human rights violations on Iraqi women, including denial of the rights to education, employment, freedom of movement and travel, property inheritance and custody of their children. Forced early marriage, polygamy, compulsory religious dress, wife beating, execution by stoning as punishment for female adultery and public flogging of women for disobeying religious rules could all be sanctioned if the Resolution is upheld."

Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the reactionaries in the IGC succeed in imposing Sharia and set women's rights back a hundred years...and that the CPA and the Iraqi bourgeoisie succeeds in crushing labor unions there. SOMEBODY WHO SUPPORTED THE INVASION OF IRAQ ON HUMAN RIGHTS GROUNDS PLEASE TELL ME WHY THIS WOULDN'T BE AT LEAST AS BAD OR WORSE THAN LIFE UNDER SADDAM!!! Material reality is material reality. You can't uphold the "symbolic" or rhetorical value of removing Saddam as some kind of answer to a material situation (poverty, suppression of labor rights, destruction of women's rights) that is objectively no different (or, arguably, worse) than life under Saddam.