Kidnapping workers is the latest tactic of the Iraqi insurgents that some on the supposed left persist in glorfying as the "resistance." On June 25, unidentified gunmen kidnapped 16 employees of a technology institute in Taji, north of Baghdad. Taji was also the site of a kidnapping on June 21 when 64 workers of the Nasr General Company for Heavy Mechanical Industries were abducted by gunmen. Later, 34 of the workers were released, while the corpses of seven others were found. The fate and whereabouts of the remaining 23 missing workers remained uncertain. (DPA, June 25) Days earlier in Baghdad, gunmen stormed a bakery and kidnapped 10 workers. Iraqi police found nine bodies dumped in various parts of the city, all shot in the head with six of them showing signs of torture. Dumped bodies are discovered in the capital almost every day, and they are linked to sectarian violence. (CNN, June 18)

The secular, civil, anti-imperialist and pro-democracy Iraq Freedom Congress, which has a far better claim to being the legitimate Iraqi resistance, issues the following statement:

On The Abduction Of 80 Workers In Baghdad
An armed mob has kidnapped 80 workers and took them to an unknown place where their fate remains in jeopardy. It has become common where the workers are under threats of bombs, abductions, or random killings in or out of their workplaces.

The workers in the "New Iraq" are highly exposed to danger in this chaos because they are unarmed which makes them easy targets. The gangs in turn have failed so far to plant divisions among the workers and push the society into a civil war so they chose to implement this strategy to impose their reactionary laws.

To Iraqi workers…

The occupation and its subsequent governments have failed to bring about security. They were the main reason behind the worsening of this anarchy, and played a vital role in the escalation of the situation. The parties who formed those governments have been ethnocentric, sectarian and discriminatory so far, and every one of them is motivated by his greed to follow his own interests by means of its militia. Therefore we cannot look forward to stability to be achieved by these parties.

The newly announced security plan is suppressive and prejudiced intended to control the regions considered Sunni dominated areas while it turned the blind eyes to districts where the Shiite political Islamist groups are jeopardizing the safety and security of people in the daylight as the Sunni political Islamists groups did to exterminate the Shiite workers.

To Iraqi workers…

Be cautious from sliding into hatred and sectarian violence, the society is looking forward to your struggle to bring peace and stability. You have been sharing happiness and misery, laughs and tears for decades. As you stood together to defend yourselves without having the ethnic, sectarian, or sexual identity affecting your unity; you are able to overpower your enemy by not letting the sectarian gangs penetrating your ranks.

Be united by organizing yourselves in the Iraq Freedom Congress at your workplaces. Raise the slogan of:

"No Shiite… No Sunni… Ours is the Human Identity".

Unifying in one rank is the only way to crush sectarianism and occupation together.

Samir Adil

Iraq Freedom Congress/ President

June 22, 2006

Why are so few on the supposed left in the West listening to what they have to say?

See our last posts on Iraq and the civil resistance.