Murder of Iraq Freedom Congress leader
is a blow to labor and peace activists
around the world
by Kathlyn Stone
At 3 a.m. on the 4th of July,
U.S. military forces and Iraqi national
guards opened fire with a barrage of
bullets and grenades on the Baghdad home
of
Abdel-Hussein Saddam. The severely
wounded Abdel-Hussein was taken away and
his 18-year-old daughter was left alone,
injured and bleeding on the floor.
Abdel-Hussein’s beaten body turned up at
the Yarmouk Hospital morgue on July 6.
The murder of Abdel-Hussein was the most
devastating of four attacks by the U.S.
military on the Iraq Freedom Congress in
the past 10 months. The IFC is an
organization comprised primarily of
trade unionists, community leaders, and
women’s and children’s rights workers
who are determined to look after their
own. IFC’s goals are to salvage the
lives of as many Iraqis as possible, and
to end the occupation and sectarian
fighting. Its slogan: "No Shiite… No
Sunni… Ours is Human Identity.”
The IFC has 22 offices or “wards” in
Iraq cities and neighborhoods. It
establishes where and when it is invited
by local community leaders. Since 2005
the IFC has been working toward a
progressive democratic non-sectarian
government in Iraq . It is as critical
of the violent political Islamic forces
as of the violent U.S. occupiers.
Abdel-Hussein, 50, was born in Basra ,
and was a resident of Baghdad ’s
Alattiba neighborhood at the time of his
death. He was the head of the IFC’s
Safety Force, an organization of men who
volunteer to protect and defend both
Sunni and Shiite citizens from sectarian
gangs. He spent two years of his life in
jail in the 1990s for opposing the
Saddam Hussein regime. “Throughout the
period of his leadership of the Safety
Force, there had been no killing based
on identity
in the area where he lived and
in
other areas with the presence of the
Safety Force,” the IFC said in a written
statement.
An IFC spokesman says the “cowardly”
attack
is part of Bush’s surge which is aimed
at suppressing Iraqi political
opponents. It could be, too, that IFC’s
growing influence as a protector and
unifier within Iraq ’s pulverized
society is seen as a threat to U.S.
government objectives. A peaceful
sovereign Iraq will not turn over its
rich oil reserves to foreign invaders.
The day before Abdel-Hussein’s
abduction, the IFC-sponsored SANA TV
gave its inaugural broadcast over a
satellite network. The program ran a
story about the recent mass
demonstration against the proposed oil
law being pushed by the Bush
administration. The program included an
overview of the IFC’s Safety Force and
interviewed some of the five IFC members
who had been arrested by U.S. and Iragi
national guards June 7. Those arrested,
Mohamed
Karim, Ali Hussein, Mohamed Mahmoud,
Hussam Salim and Abdul Amir Saleh,
were
interrogated at the U.S. base in Baghdad
’s Rustumiyyah neighborhood and then
transferred to the local police station
before being released 11 days later.
An IFC spokesman said the Iraqi police
intentionally misled US forces, stating
that the IFC was part of the sectarian
Al-Mahdi Army that was planning to
expand into the Al-Askary neighborhood,
and therefore a terrorist organization.
In fact, the IFC Safety Force had
already confronted the scouts of
Al-Mahdi and prevented them from
establishing a foothold.
The IFC won the detainees’ release by
waging a political campaign both locally
and globally, as well as a judicial
battle. It filed a lawsuit against the
U.S. agents for raiding the office
without judicial authorization or an
arrest warrant.
SANA
is funded by IFC alli es around the
world, but primarily by Japanese
supporters. Besides its 22 chapters in
Iraq , there are five chapters in Japan
and south Asia, five in Europe and
Scandinavia, and two in North America
(one in Canada and one in the United
States ). IFC has ongoing collaboration
with the 0 million member US Labor
Against the War, and the IFC-US chapter
carried the IFC banner during the
January 27 protest in Washington D.C.
SANA intends on using its solidarity
network “to amplify the voice of
freedom, peace and the equal rights of
all people in Iraq and the Middle East,”
said Nadia Mahmood
Al-Sanna, a SANA producer.
The IFC Safety Force recently graduated
its third group of volunteers who are
trained in mediation and self defense.
Besides protecting citizens from
marauding sectarian gangs, the Safety
Force provides escorts to people who are
in danger, and has a proactive outreach
program c alli ng for an end to
sectarianism. The IFC tries to influence
citizens against f alli ng for the trap
of retaliation. The so-called
“insurgents” have also organized
recreational play days for children,
economic survival conferences for women,
teams of doctors who go to the homes of
people too ill or too afraid to travel
to the hospital, raised money for food
and medicine, and attended funerals to
shield mourners from further violence. A
primary goal of each project is to bring
together Shiites and Sunnis in a spirit
of cooperation and non-violence.
IFC Executive Committee Member
Amjad
Al-Jawhary (Abdel-Hussein also served on
the committee), said the U.S.
administration is targeting efforts such
as IFC that “aim to restore security,
safety, freedom, and prosperity. They [
US ] well know that such forces will
jeopardize the presence of the
occupation and threatens to undermine
its determination and prestige.” The
IFC is trying to provide some semblance
of public safety without government
resources or sanction during a
humanitarian crisis. Neither the
trillion-dollar U.S. military led by the
dazed and confused Bush administration,
nor the dysfunctional police and army
under Bush’s puppet leader Al-Maliki
have provided any measurable safety for
Iraqis. If anything, civilian killings
are growing by the day.
Abdel-Hussein was a courageous man,
someone an American would look up to,
like John Wayne – only real. What will
be the result of this all too common
incomprehensible killing? It brings to
mind an observation Cindy Sheehan shared
when speaking in Minneapolis this year.
“It’s common sense that when you kill an
innocent person, it’s going to piss off
their relatives. I don’t know why George
Bush hasn’t learned that from me.”
I’m very pissed off, too. And deeply
saddened for what we have become.
Abdelhussein Saddam, 1957-2007
“The assassination of Abdel Saddam
Hussein by US forces mafia will not
discourage the determination of the Iraq
Freedom Congress and will be a new
impetus to continue the struggle to rid
the Iraqi society from all types of
terrorists. They
murdered Abdelhussein, but his spirit,
ambitious aspirations, and bravery for
building Iraq that is secular,
humanitarian, and free from occupation
and sectarian gangs, will be firmly in
the hearts of freedom lovers.”
--
From a statement by the Iraq Freedom
Congress on the death of Abdel-Hussein
Saddam, leader of the IFC Safety Force,
July 8, 2007
For more information:
Iraq
Freedom Congress: www.ifcongress.com
IFC-USA: www.freewebs.com/ifc-usa
US Labor Against the War:
www.uslaboragainstwar.org