Picture: The President of the GUOE, Hassan Juma Awad (at the table, second from the right) together with Falah Alwan of the FWCUI (at the table, third from the right) and Adnan Al-Saffar (at the table, first from the right) during a tour of several weeks in the US, in June 2005. The FWCUI and the IFTU are two other “trade unions” that have been approved by the occupying power.

In the Danish daily Dagbladet Arbejderen (The Worker) on June 27 one could read the front page article “Assets of oil workers frozen” (1) in which one could get the impression that the General Union of Oil Employees in Basra (GUOE) are “ardent opponents of the occupation”, as it is said in the article. However, the reality is a lot more tangled – to put it mildly.

In a press statement posted June 26 on the website of the GUOE, the President of the GUOE, Hassan Juma Awad, describes the current puppet regime that has been “elected” in sham elections under the full control of the occupying power and is a product of the illegal war, as a “legitimate elected government” and lists a series of demands to be fulfilled if the GUOE is to continue its collaboration with the puppet regime, among other things that those “politicians”,

who came to Iraq sitting on the tanks of the occupiers, should be returned their rights “as those politicians didn’t get their rights” (2). It is almost impossible to express the support for the occupation and “the New Iraq” more clearly.

But it should be mentioned, though, that the GUOE also has declared its support for the immediate end of the occupation. But one thing is words. Something completely different is action in occupied Iraq.

The facts about the GUOE is that the Southern Oil Company Union – the predecessor of the GUOE – was established shortly after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, and that it is today, just like the other approved “trade unions” with which it is collaborating, working on the terms of the occupying power.

From the beginning of the occupation, the oil has been flowing from Basra without almost any interruption. The money from this has gone straight to the pockets of the occupying power and its puppet regime and become bombs over Iraqi cities, especially in Northern and Central Iraq. When the Iraqi Resistance has tried to halt this profitable source of income for the warfare of the occupying power, the GUOE has branded it as “terrorism”. (3)

In the West, the GUOE has become known as “an opponent of the privatisation of the oil” and therefore “an opponent of the occupation” because of the lobby work being carried out by organisations like the British supporting committee of the GUOE, Naftana. The GUOE thinks that “struggle against privatization (of the oil, CK) is more important than the struggle against the occupation”. (4)

But if the oil in Iraq is formally privatised is not a decisive, but diverting question, a question, which is completely subordinated under the struggle against the occupation because the oil, in reality, is already under foreign control, that is, under the control of the occupying power. The crucial thing in terms of the oil in occupied Iraq is to stop the oil export, or rather the oil robbery, from Iraq completely because this will place another economic burden on the occupying power and the puppet regime, weakening them both and therefore shortening the occupation and the sufferings of the Iraqi people.

If what the GUOE is doing in Iraq is resistance to the occupation, then the Danish agricultural export to Nazi Germany under its occupation of Denmark was resistance, too. And if the sabotage of the Iraqi Resistance against oil installations and pipelines is terrorism, then the sabotage of the Danish Resistance against companies trading with the German occupying power was terrorism, too.

From the start of the occupation and until today, a main role of the GUOE has been to keep the oil workers in Basra calm, thereby securing the oil export. Hereby it has actively been contributing to the “reconstruction” made by the occupiers and the (puppets), that is, the colonisation of Iraq, and to prolonging of the occupation.

Quarrels about the freezing of the assets of the GUOE are nothing but bickering inside the camp of the collaborators and expose their growing problems. It has nothing to do with real resistance to the occupation. The GUOE serves the occupation.


Notes:
1. Oliearbejderes midler indefrosset, Dagbladet Arbejderen, June 27, 2006. Dagbladet Arbejderen (The Worker) is a leftist daily published by the Communist Party of Denmark (Marxist-Leninist).
2. http://www.basraoilunion.org/2006/06/name-of-god-most-beneficent-most.html, www.basraoilunion.org, June 26, 2006.
3. Iraq's Oilworkers Will Defend the Country's Oil, www.truthout.org, April 5, 2005.
4. As note 3.