The slogan or demand of “federalism” put forward in Basra and in Anbar, which is presented these days as a “Sunni” state of the Iraqi federalism, regardless of the title attached to it is a surgical political process to amputate an organ of the body of the Iraqi society. Federalism is a reactionary policy aimed at dividing the society on basis of ethnicity, sect and nationality as if these identities are eternal identities. In reality these are false labels produced by the ruling classes and today are well utilised by the bourgeoisie to serve its class’s interests and its political rule. Religion and nationality are personal affairs. Separating religion and nationality from the state is a realistic demand especially in a country like Iraq which has various religions, nationalities and sects. For Iraq as a country to enjoys security and stability where human beings are respected according to their Iraqi identity and for Iraq to stay a united country, the principle of “ equal citizenship right” must be adopted and religion and nationality must be separated from the state and education.

Today once again the “Sunni Federal State” is raised against the so- called Shiite dominance. The political Islam which controls the power and the Pan-Arab movement represented by the Iraqi Coalition, are two political movements which represent the bourgeois class. In the final analysis federalism serves them in this stage in spite of their deep and intense conflicts because they represent small elite in the Iraqi society, that is the capitalist class. The federalism is a sward in the hands of the bourgeois class and its various Islamic and ethnocentric movements to cut the Iraqi society into different pieces according to false identities to slice a share from the wealth of Iraq and the profit created by the cheap labour.

Raising federalism in this stage represent the failure of the ruling bourgeois class in uniting its ranks and building its state on the basis of equal citizenship rights, therefore it divides the Iraqi society to national, ethnic and sectarian states as an exit out of  their social and political failure and in consistence with their intellectual and political approach.

Their common interest in federalism is the partition of the working class to put a big obstacle before its unity and its class struggle against capitalism as a social and political system. The federalism raised in the name of Kurds, “Sunni Arabs” and “ Shiite Arab” is a reactionary, false and hypocritical policy. The Iraqi Kurdistan is a good exaple, the economic activity from oil to all trading and investment contracts to the revenues of the traffic points are controlled by the two ruling parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, their top officials and their supporters from big capitalists. The federalism is the soul of the Kurdish national movement representing the bourgeois elite in Kurdistan rather than the vast majority of the ordinary people. The latest protest movement in the Iraqi Kurdistan is decisive evidence on the reactionary nature of federalism and the reality that it does not represent the interests of the ordinary people.

The Worker-communist Party of Iraq strongly condemns the efforts to federalise Iraq under whatever name. It is a reactionary political movement which must be faced with mass and workers’ protests in Iraq. The protest and labour movement in Iraq are called upon to take a strong stand against this bourgeois policy, if it is to have a political future independent of the current political process. It is called upon to raise the slogan of; No to a Federal Iraq, Yes to a Non Religious and Non Ethnocentric State.

Worker-communist Party of Iraq

8th July 2011