The Red House in Sulamani, in Iraqi Kurdistan, is scarred by bullets and the rusting hulks of Soviet tanks. It was once one of a string of bleak torture centres throughout Saddam Hussein’s fascist-type regime.
The Red House is now a museum run by former prisoners who survived torture – the blood stained ropes and electrodes are displayed and 5,000 people perished there. I lost count of the detainees we met who now lead this beautiful and surprisingly cheerful part of Iraq.
I was in Iraqi Kurdistan on a delegation to meet trade unions. In between visiting ministers, schools, factories and parties, we held key meetings with Iraqi trade union leaders who had come from Basra, Babel and Baghdad, and also with the separate but fraternal Kurdistan Workers’ Union.
They each described how they had wrenched a devastated movement from nowhere to a million people throughout Iraq, with all the usual paraphernalia of union actions: bargaining, strikes, demonstrations and campaigns to increase the minimum wage. We attended a Unison-sponsored training session on bargaining, which was just the same as here, bar the language.
They argued that the trade unions are a vital bedrock of non-sectarianism, and they are determined to help rebuild Iraq as a democratic and federal society.
Support for free unions is advanced by President Bush, our government and the new Iraqi constitution, but ministers have frozen union assets while they draw up a new labour code in what union leaders fear is an effort to create client sectarian unions.
Furthermore, Saddam’s ban on public sector unions remains. Given that 80 per cent of the economy is state-owned, this is a huge impediment and should be reversed.
Union leaders have to go to internet cafes and cannot freely organise and play a full role in reconstructing Iraq. The international labour movement should provide temporary funding so that the Iraqi Workers’ Federation can publish its monthly newspaper.
Our visit was hosted by the Kurdistan Workers’ Union, whose leaders showed us two major cities and the mountains.
There’s an old saying that the Kurds have no friends but the mountains. Time and time again, the people and their Peshmerga fighters have sought safety there.
Iraqi Kurdistan has had more time to rebuild, thanks to its effective autonomy from Saddam after the uprising in 1991, but has only enjoyed stability in recent years.
The area has not been entirely immune from terror. We visited the statue in Erbil to the 98 victims of two terror attacks in 2004. The inscription says simply: ‘Freedom is not free’, which it certainly isn’t judged by the constant roadblocks and guards – I also lost count of the Kalashnikovs I saw.
The long legacy of fascism lingers in the bodies of those who survived Saddam’s genocidal chemical campaign. We were near Halabja, one of thousands of villages chemically bombarded in an onslaught that claimed 182,000 lives. There is an above-average incidence of cancer and leukaemia, but neither specialist clinics nor the foreign exchange to buy medicine and treatment abroad.
There is also a dwarfs’ association, thanks to Saddam’s toxic overhang, as well as a disproportionate number of orphans, widows and people with physical and mental disabilities.
The war-torn command economy is struggling. We visited a cigarette factory that employs several hundred people but has not produced a single fag in years. Tarmac roads suddenly become dirt tracks. School classes can exceed 100 pupils. Electricity is intermittent, even in the poshest places. Petrol is sold by the roadside.
Union leaders and ministers asked us to encourage foreign investment, because trade unions cannot prosper without jobs and, as the local Communist party leader put it, there’s no national capitalist class. External assistance to the unions can equip them as a strong social partner to protect workers’ interests.
And there is much investment potential here. The breathtakingly beautiful mountains could be a rich source of tourism once terrorism is defeated. There are minerals to be exploited, including gold, copper and oil. The same is true of the rest of Iraq.
The trade unions and what we call grassroots Iraq could help hold the country together, with a little help from their friends, and use its oil wealth and intellectual capital to benefit its people and regional democratisation. It would be an error of historic proportions if the left failed to help the Iraqi unions in their hour of need.