From IFTU


I recall a prophetic line of verse that roughly reads: My life is a long row of candles; warm, lively candles are my coming days; consumed and burnt are those of bygone days; and I would not turn back lest I see the horrible row of burnt candles growing larger and larger. Substitute graves for candles. I had few tombs in my memory in exile; upon my return to Baghdad, they developed into a massive cemetery. I could not realize how prolific wars and tyranny are in this macabre enterprise that makes life seem so fragile, so accidental. The last new grave was that of my friend and colleague, the unionist, Hadi Saleh (1949-2005). A group of five, most probably, ex-security men, broke into his house in Baghdad, waited for him in the dark and preyed on him the moment he stepped in. They killed three times: first they strangled him with a wire; second they riddled his body with bullets; lastly they burnt him. This was not an ordinary killing. Unlike show beheadings that mark ‘resistance’ in Iraq, this was a triple vengeance: in the 1970s Saleh was condemned to death for clandestine unionism, he was amnestied years later, now the Ba’ath security men working in clandestine for restoration reneged on their amnesty.

They also took vengeance for the successes Saleh achieved in rebuilding trade unions (The Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions, IFTU) that stand now at some 200,000 membership, a formidable democratic social movement defying all sorts of fundamentalist, communal or other parochial identities. Lastly, they wanted to hush him and his colleagues who pursue a twin line of peaceful action for the restitution of Iraq’s sovereignty and building an all-inclusive, federal democracy.

Perhaps he was born with a smile; and simply forgot it was there. I never saw him appearing without that innocent grin. We rubbed shoulders at the ICP [Iraqi Communist Party] printing house in Baghdad that ran the only non-governmental publications in the 1970s. He was a printing worker, and later, an expert, I was a fledgling writer. My first book appeared there. He was on the production line ready with a helping hand. In exile in Beirut and Damascus, we worked on a daily basis to produce the ICP’s monthly, al-Thaqafa al-Jadida.

After his return from Sweden in 2003 with his wife Corea and two kids, the offices of the Iraqi unions were raided by the coalition forces for no apparent reason. I was worried about him. Following the macabre series of kidnapping and beheadings in 2004, my worries grew even sharper, and he had this reassurance to offer at our last encounter in Baghdad in November 2004: ‘I am a worker and unionist not a politician, who on earth would wish to target me. They are killing your lot, writers and intellectuals‘.

I wish he were right. He was on the hit list by the very murderers who raped the nation for thirty odd years and who reemerged now with the gold they dug from the Central Bank, their family networks and the criminals of the underworld, putting a false mantle of ‘resistance’.

Millions of Iraqis are resisting the occupation peaceably. Their collective wisdom is that restitution of sovereignty should go hand in hand with popular mandate, and block restoration. Hadi Saleh’s death is a wake-up call for all those who rightly opposed the war, but wrongly support post-conflict violence. The millions of Iraqis who defied death to vote reiterated Saleh’s message and sacrifice for those who may see in bombing utilities, gas stations, union offices, voters and voting stations as ‘anti-imperialist’ endeavours. Skeptics should ask at least one question: if insurgents genuinely enjoy massive popular support, as they seem to claim, why do they fear the ballot?