Iraqi Communist Party
by Sehrab Jassim

Dear Comrades,

I convey to you the wholehearted greetings from your
comrades in the leadership of the Iraqi Communist Party,
with their best wishes for a successful outcome to this
important meeting. We look forward to concrete results
which help to our movement to rise up to the various tasks
facing it in the present conditions. We also seize this
opportunity to express our high appreciation for the
initiative taken by our Greek comrades in convening this
meeting and shouldering preparations for it. We hope that
these meetings would continue and be held on a regular
basis in order to discuss issues of common interest and to
develop close views which contribute to enchancing the role
of our parties in confronting the big challenges imposed by
life and the increased pace of development. Such discussion
are also vital for participating jointly with other forces
in developing proper solutions for the major and complex
problems of our current epoch and their consequences.

Dear Comrades,

The topic �Communists and the trade Union Movement� is one
of the important topics facing our political parties and
movements, as it concerns in essence our ideological
positions for its dignity and thus the dignity and
happiness or man. Its significance also stems from the fact
that it deals with our ability to mobilise our potential
and struggle, by various means, to achieve urgent demands,
as well as dealing with the major and complex issues of our
epoch and the enormous tasks to which they give rise
regarding the future of humanity and prospects for its
development.

Our concentration and strenuous efforts should therefore be
focused on globalism, being one of the most important
phenomena of the current stage in the development of
humanity, and its consequences and challenges, so as to
benefit as much as possible from the communications and
information revolution in order to activate our role and
that of the trade union movement, and the respond
effectively to the changing pace of the life.

The heightened activity of world finance capital and its
international �general staff�: the International Monetary
Fund, and the restructural adaptation programs which many
states, in various continents of our world, have been
forced to carry out in a strict manner, with destructive
economic and social consequences, have led to the
development and growth of new social movement, in addition
to the old ones, which aim at confronting monstrous liberal
globalism and its plans to seize the whole world. The
lessons of the confrontations which have taken place in
recent years, the latest, of which were in Prague
(September 2000) and Quebec (April 2001), have revealed the
board range of forces which the best proof on the powerful
and growing challenges to the old capitalist system and its
international institutions. It constitutes, at the same
time. Taking into consideration the broad nature of
participating forces and their slogans, a new character of
our current struggle which we must give proper attention,
analysing and studying it, in order to draw proper lessons
so as to formulate programs of actions which support our a
struggle, both on national and international levels.

The experiences of recent years have shown that there are
numerous joint objectives and tasks which can unite as many
as possible of those objecting to the logic of
international capital and its unjust laws and policies
around many issues. For issues such as unemployment,
immigration, conflicts, wars, terrorism, drugs etc. , in
addition to the destructive consequences and effects of
restructual adaptation programs which affect mainly the
working class and other toiling strata, have become
phenomena with an international dimension as well as a
national dimension, The duality, of international /national
dimension, of these issues imply that they have become
beyond the ability resolving them on its own. We must
therefore, draw the other forces around these issues, put
forward specific initiatives, and formulate concrete
programs to deal with them .

We believe that this important topic needs to be discussed,
in order to develop a broader framework for co-operation
attainable objectives. Achieving such objectives will help
t develop the level of our joint struggle on the
international level. It is for this purpose that we must
address the urgent task of broadening this international
resistance movement, develop its organisation, and strive
to add to its ranks the forces of progress and democracy in
the world, especially Communist Parties and Left movements.
This requires that they add their potential and rich
organisational and militant experiences to those of the new
organisations and movements which are leading with
distinguished courage this young but promising movement.
There is no doubt that the best way to resist the onslaught
of rampant capitalist globalism is to unite all the forces
which strive for freedom, justice, peace, clean environment
and a dignified and secure future, within a unified front
fighting to condemn capitalism as a social system and
humanise globalism.

To achieve this, we must aim at re-energising the efforts
of the trade union movement in order to rise up to the
level of these challenges and achieve the slogan of
globalising struggle and globalising solidarity. This is
not in contradiction at all with the national role
shouldered by trade unions, but rather interconnected with
it, because these issues also have their own international
dimension.

We, as Iraqi Communists, despite our extremely difficult
and complex conditions, view these issues with a high sense
of responsibility, and contribute our modest share in
putting forward solutions for these problems, because we
are part of this on-going struggle; affected by it and also
influencing it.

Dear Comrades,
Our country, which wad a bastion and knowledge in the old
times, suffers today destruction, devastation and unjust
economic blockade as a result of the criminal policies
which were, and still are pursued by a dictatorial regime
which has no parallel in the world. These policies have
affected all sectors and forces of Iraqi society, in the
forefront of which is the working class. As a matter of
fact, the first war unleashed by the dictatorship was the
war against workers and their rights, when it abolished
Labour Law No 151 (1970), suspended some of the clauses of
the Pensions and Social Security Law No. 39 (1971), seizing
the assets of the pensions and social security institution
which were worth hundreds of millions of Iraqi Dinars.
Workers were turned into state employees in accordance with
Law No. 150 which was enacted in 1987. Accordingly, a third
of the Iraqi working class was excluded from trade union
organisation, thus violating their rights and gains which
they had achieved after long years of great patriotic and
class struggles.

In its efforts to impose the totalitarian rule of the Baath
Party on all aspects of life, the dictatorial regime
monopolised trade union work through its mercenaries, not
only by setting up yellow trade unions, but also by
transforming these unions into a gendarme to terrorise the
workers, spying on them, throwing them in prisons, and
conscripting them into its armies, to become a fodder for
its unjust internal and external wars.

The regime placed many factories and institutions under the
control of the Ministry of Military industrialisation,
subjugating them and their workers to military laws and
discipline. The worker was thus turned into a soldier,
working 16 hours a day. He is also deprived of the most
basic rights, including his right to set up a trade union
organisation free of control by regime's agents.

What is truly regrettable, and cause for both sadness and
anger, is that the official yellow trade union, the
so-called �General Federation of Trade Unions�, a sham
organisations, is still a member of the World Federation of
Trade Unions. Even worse, this yellow trade union held a
conference on 19/11/1999 which was supervised by the mass
murderer Ali Hassan al-Majid, the cousin of the dictator
Saddam Hussein. This criminal is widely known in our
country as �Ali Chemical� because he was directly in change
of caring out the horrific massacre of Halabja in March
1988, when this Kurdish town was bombed with chemical
weapons, annihilating about 5000 people, most of whom were
women, children and old people.

Dear Comrades,
This is the reality of these official unions and their
leadership. They are no more than a front for the regime,
with the job of subjugating workers, placing them under
surveillance, and forcing them to pay taxes and tributes
out of their meagre wages. Their offices have become
Security centres. Workers consider them to be part of the
regime. The rich democratic trade union traditions, which
Iraqi Communists played a leading role in deepening, have
been brutally crushed. Workers, continue to cherish this
heritage and the distinguished role of our party founder,
comrade Fahad, i developing workers' organisation and class
consciousness, laying the basis for connecting their trade
union struggles with the general political struggle.

Based on this rich heritage, Iraqi Communists are
continuing their struggle today while facing difficult
tasks of enormous complexity. The continuing unjust
economic blockade constitutes a major factor in the
deterioration of the economic and social conditions of the
people in general, and workers in particular. Their
situation has worsened and their exploitation by employers
has been intensified. They are suffering along with the
toiling masses, intellectuals and other strata with limited
income, who have been crushed by miserable living
condition. This situation has also affected owners of small
productive units who have been forced to close down because
of their inability to pay the increasing and escalating
taxes. According to the report of the Arab Labour
Organisation, issued by the 53rd session of its executive
board (20-22/5/2000), unemployment in Iraq amounts to 60%
of the workforce. The plight of women is even worse. Women
have been forced to undertake extremely difficult and
hazardous jobs in order to support families which have lost
their breadwinners.

Under these difficult conditions, our comrades and their
colleagues in the �Democratic Trade Union Movement in the
Iraqi Republic�, continue to establish trade union networks
in various parts of the country, which work under extremely
clandestine conditions. The Movement's aim is to promote
trade union and class consciousness, and develop trade
union activities. It publishes a paper which is distributed
secretly, and also disseminates its massage through a radio
program transmitted in co-ordination with the Iraqi
Communist Party.

Party comrades who are trade union activists held a
conference in August 2000, in the liberated area in Iraqi
Kurdistan, which was devoted to discussing these issues.
They look forward to your international solidarity in their
difficult struggle.

I seize this opportunity to convey to you the sentiments of
our comrades, supporters and all patriots and democrats
among activists of the �Democratic Trade Union Movement in
the Iraqi Republic�, expressing their solidarity with the
workers of the world and their cause. They will continue to
support workers of the world and their cause. They will
continue to support workers struggle to achieve the
historic mission of the working class to free humanity from
all kinds of exploitation and destructive policy of
international capital, its financial institutions and
multi-nationals, and all other instruments of imperialist
exploitation.

Long live international solidarity, the Communists tested
weapon!
Let us unite to globalise solidarity in the face of
globalised capital !