born 1976, political Scientist and freelance journalist
[16/02/2010]
Ali Niazi is the head of the Association of Fighting Students of the Basra University. He is 23-years old and he studies Business Administration. He is resolute in his idea that, in a few months, when he graduates, he will try to emigrate to Europe or to the United States. "In order to start working in the Iraq Southern Oil Company you have to pay. An engineer may earn up to 1.800 dollars and the position costs about 20.000 dollars. It is easy to recoup the cost, but who has that kind of money available to bribe some member of the provincial government?"
This practice, known as "Raswa" is common. Ali assures us that is also usual in other posts in the civil service -while his classmates all nod in agreement-. "In most of the cases, each department is controlled by a party or a family who exploit it to the maximum". And he does not agree that all Iraqi political debate should be centered on security. "The main problem in Iraq is the sectarian control of the Administration, especially by the Islamic parties". Nowadays, any organization that manages to establish itself in any sector of the public life is really just another branch of the religious parties. "The student union that we have tried to build-up since 2005 was banned in March 2007. They sent the police to close our offices, without any kind of explanation. A few months later, they had established in the University, with all the possible means, the Union of Muslim Students of the Al Sadr tendency and "the chosen" of the Iraqi Supreme Islamic Council. Secular students are not even allowed to move". The threat is very serious, especially after the sectarian war that ravaged the region between 2006 and 2007, with its main political consequence being the instalment of an absolute fear among the civil society. "We know with who we are talking and what they would do to us if we tried to disobey with too much insistence. Despite this knowledge, we are trying to organize a secular student union from Kurdistan to the south. Iraq needs organizations that are not based in only one province or religious belief. If we do not manage to change the present sectarianism to a strong civil society, Iraq will not have any future other than war".
He smiles when he is required to give an example that is all too evident. Sitting on a terrace drinking coffee, speaking in English and with a camera on the table it is obvious that he is giving an interview and that nobody is impeding him to do so. The checkpoint behind us gives us the sensation that no militia will suddenly break into the city. "45.000 soldiers and 17.000 policemen in a city with 2,7 million inhabitants is the definite proof that in this country there is no security, only an excessive use of force. Basra is a military camp. Absolutely militarized. If the army leaves the streets, the militias will immediately regain control". According to Ali, decision 91, taken by Prime Minister Al Maliki, used Basra as a test case for his security plan but "those soldiers at the checkpoint, under the flag of Hussein (the martyr saint of the Shiite) will put the control back into the hands of their religious leaders when they ask them to do so. They are militiamen in disguise. They used to kill with hoods on and now a law has been passed and wages have been paid to legalize them".
Ali Niazi is one of the participants in an informal meeting in the house of Ali Awnofel (the director of Shat Al Arab, a Human Rights organization). Behind the facade of a meeting of NGOs, in which they can all meet and discuss matters of common interest, Rasool Alhosond, recently arrived from Baghdad as the delegate for Basra for the Iraqi National List, the party of Iyad Alaui, the former Prime Minister, is trying to curry favor with the secular organizations, the trade unions and the NGOs in view of the oncoming parliamentary elections in March. "We believe that violence may become more extreme in the months prior to the elections. In Basra, we are especially fearful that Fadila and the Mahdi Army will fight over the city again and we are very doubtful that Al Maliki's government, of the Dawa party, is capable of controlling the situation if that should happen. The religious parties do not want to rebuild society; they only want to strengthen their position in order to defend their specific interests".
According to the representative of the Iraqi National List, the present pact between the militias and the government is highly unstable because Al Maliki is undergoing increasing foreign pressures to abide by the law and put and end to impunity. This means that there is more tension in his agreements with the militias, that are being, de facto, betrayed by him. “We would only give him support if he staged a clear break with the religious sectors and he started to prioritize the common good of the Iraqis". The people in the meeting are very skeptical about any possibility of improvement of the present situation, and they consider that they, as representatives of civil society, have the ultimate responsibility in putting an end to the sectarian war. "It is the citizens who have stopped the sectarian violence, because they were fed up with it, because they did not understand it, because we never understood where it came from, who was planning the massacres and why the army was doing nothing to stop them."
The members of the Oil Workers Union and the other representatives of the organizations who are present in the meeting agree that Alaui's time as a Prime Minister was probably the moment of greatest movement of the Iraqi civil society, before the outbreak of the sectarian civil war. Even if he nominally ratifies and insists on the independence of the political parties, the organizations present all believe in some sort of lesser evil or realpolitik. "The only way of finishing with the sectarianism of the Shiite Islamic parties is supporting Alaric. He is the only one who demonstrated that he could reach agreements with them. If during his government there was not so much violence it was due to his ability to reach agreements even with officers and experts of Saddam's regime and to put a stop to the flow of foreign terrorists entering Iraq." According to Hassan Jumah, President of the Oil Union, who says all this with a great deal of skepticism and irony. The "lesser evil" concept is repeated systematically, it floats in the air amidst an atmosphere of thinly disguised defeatism.
Far from coordination, the tone of the meeting seems to be a measurement of the powers of the other participants. Areer Youseff, from an Association of Pensioners of the public sector insists in pointing at unemployment among the young people as the main factor behind the successive violent outbursts that he has witnessed and that he is certain that he will see again. "The militias paid the youngsters to kill and now they wear uniforms because the army pays them better wages. But it is still the only thing they know how to do. Especially in the Shiite south, with a lower educational and economic level than the center and the north of the country. Violence is a way of life there. If our youngsters do not find any other way to progress, we will continue to be submitted to a dictatorship, under whatever form, with Baathist or religious Shiites. A society dies without economic development and none of the governments has made any effort in giving opportunities to the young. Security is important, but security cannot last long without jobs or Iraqi companies who are capable of prospering".
The oil unionists relentlessly campaign against the auctioning of oil fields that always end-up in the hands of foreign companies and the conversation turns once again in this direction. But despite their efforts, this same afternoon, and even though they are going as workers, in company cars, after various hours of failed attempts, the army blocks our access to the Rumailah refineries, in the road leading to Nasiriya, about a 100 kilometers to the north of Basra. Is there any better proof of a powerless union than the impossibility of gaining access to the facilities of the company where they work in order to meet with the other workers and members of their organization? The Iraqi civil society still has a long way to go before recovering its natural space.
But it is undeniable that the survivors keep on trying. There are all kinds of organizations trying to stop the religious groups from taking power. But the good intentions of a bunch of men and women become silenced; disconnected telephones and hidden cameras when we reach one of the hundreds of checkpoints that control every street corner. Worse still than silence, sadness and impotence.
Through the window, we watch a procession slowly cross the street, rehearsing the procession of the Ashura, with dozens of boys, adolescents and adults dressed strictly in black advancing to the rhythm of the slow choreography set by the drums, while they pound their chest and their back with such violence that we can hear their hands bashing against their body, the sticks with chains banging against their backs. "These are the only demonstrations you will see in Iraq. They mourn over something that happened a thousand years ago while their national wealth is being handed over to the invader. And that does not make them take the streets". Farouk Ismaeel, with four decades of union militancy, will not throw the towel in this time either.