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By Akanshya Gurung on 22 Oct 2020

The 21st century has been a tragedy for Iraqs children. An entire generation of girls and boys have suffered violence, terror, poverty, and displacement.

Iraqs 17 year conflict began with the US-led invasion in 2003 and evolved into a sectarian civil war, with intense military confrontations between ISIS and the Iraqi Government between 2015 and 2017. Today, Iraq and its allies are engaged in fighting a low-level ISIS insurgency. Throughout the geopolitical developments of Iraqs protracted conflict the use of explosive violence has remained consistent. The impact of these weapons on children has had far-reaching and devastating consequences.

This report presents data and research on the impact of explosive violence on the children of Iraq, focusing on how Iraqi children have been affected by the military interventions of foreign powers, combat operations of the Iraqi government, and terrorist activities of groups such as ISIS.

According to data collated by AOAV, there were 4,424 recorded incidents of explosive violence in Iraq between 2011 and 2019. In total, some 72,438 individuals were either killed or injured. Of these, 77% (55,999) killed or injured were civilians. AOAVs data shows that of the incidents which recorded children among the casualties, 693 children were killed or injured by explosive violence in Iraq between 2011 and 2019. As AOAVs data only uses the information made available by English-language media reports, the real number is likely to be much higher. The volatile security situation in Iraq has limited access for the monitoring and documentation of violations.

Research by Save the Children recorded a total of 717 child casualties in Iraq from conflict in 2017 alone, with 78% (562) of these from blasts. In their report, Blast Injuries, Save the Children notes that the effects of blasts are immediate, long-term and life-limiting. Blast injuries, such as torso injuries or burns, affect children more severely than adults, with children at higher risk of death than adults when explosive violence is used.

Airstrikes*Airstrikes have been a key component in the military operation against ISIS. In March 2017, the US conducted a series of airstrikes across Mosul, killing and injuring hundreds of civilians. Nine members of one family were killed in the attacks, including children. In May of that year, six children were also killed and five were maimed as a result of an unattributed air strike on a school hosting families of ISIS fighters. Data collected by the AOAV found that airstrikes carried out in 2003-2011 were more likely to impact the lives of women and children than other forms of violence.

IEDs*The second largest cause of child casualties was the use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Between 2014 and 2019, 41% (713) of child casualties were due to the use of IEDs, including 14 children used to carry out suicide attacks. Over the course of 6 months in 2016, more than 800 attacks involving IEDs were recorded in civilian areas in Baghdad Governorate alone, many resulting in child casualties.

Explosive Remnants of War (ERW)*Though the military defeat of ISIS stabilised the security situation, it presented a further risk to children in the form of explosive remnants of war (ERW). Handicap International reported that Iraqs level of contamination is unprecedented: there are explosive remnants of war and improvised explosive devices in fields, homes, sometimes inside corpses, or behind refrigerator doors. The UN found that during 2018 and until mid-2019, almost half of the child casualties (47%) were due to ERW in territories previously held by ISIS. When explosive hazard clearance activities began in Mosul, the United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS), described the extent of explosive contamination in the area as of a previously unseen magnitude. ERW results in severe injuries, disabilities and death, but also inhibits childrens access to education and other services.

Impact on ChildrenBeyond the direct bodily harm and loss of life that explosive violence inflicts on Iraqi children, reverberating impacts affect childrens lives in a number of other ways. Humanium judged that Iraqi children are at a particularly high risk of becoming child soldiers, used for child labour or trafficked to be sold into slavery or prostitution.

Psychological Health*In addition to physical harm to children, the conflict in Iraq has led to mental health problems for Iraqi children. Save The Childrens 2017 report, *An Unbearable Reality, identifies extreme sorrow as one of the many causes of a mental health crisis within Iraqi children. Out of the children surveyed, up to 90% had felt upset over the experience of loss, while 45% could even share stories of violent deaths of loved ones.In particular, the presence of ERW generates an unresting sense of insecurity.

EducationChildren in Iraq not only face physical and mental health challenges; they have also been denied access to education. As of November 2018, it was reported that nearly 2.6 million children in Iraq were not attending school. This adversely effects girls with UNICEF reporting that 10% of primary school-aged girls are out of school, compared with 7% of boys.

UNICEF found that there had been at least 138 attacks on schools between January 2014 and May 2017, and that half of schools in Iraq were in need of urgent repairs. Most attacks on schools were carried out using explosive weapons. During the war against ISIS, 50% of all school buildings in conflict-ridden areas were reported to have been damaged or destroyed. The majority of these have not been rebuilt leaving a serious gap in education. In Nineveh Governorate alone, 130 schools were completely destroyed during the conflict there, and 350 are in need of rehabilitation. The numbers of teachers in the district also plummeted from a pre-war level of 40,000 to 25,000. This has meant that in post-conflict Nineveh, in some cases, there are up to 650 students per class.

*Displacement*Explosive violence has resulted in the large-scale displacement of Iraqi civilians. Since 2014, more than three million Iraqis have been internally displaced and a further 260,000 forced to flee the country. By the end of 2019, more than 1.5 million Iraqis remained internally displaced. Half of Iraqs Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) are thought to be children.

Children in IDP camps often receive limited access to education . In 2018, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that nearly 50% of children in IDP camps do not have access to quality education. For example, in one IDP camp in Kirkuk, there are just two teachers for more than 1,700 students. Girls in IDP camps were found to be particularly vulnerable to sexual abuse.

*Childcare*An estimated 800,000 Iraqi children had lost one or both parents- these children are at risk of being the forgotten casualties of war. The deaths of adults by explosive weapons expose children to considerable risks such as child labour and trafficking, orphans are particularly vulnerable to Iraqs prostitution networks. Adoptions are illegal in Iraq, with the law only allowing guardianship of a member of the extended family or a close family friend. Adoption or legal guardianship from strangers is not permitted.

*Children as perpetrators*The UN reported that between 2016 and 2019, 296 children were recruited as child soldiers, 199 of these were used as combatants. The UN was able to verify that 14 children were used to carry out suicide attacks with IEDs. ISIS was responsible for half of the child recruits, but a significant proportion were recruited also by the lesser known Popular Mobilization Forces, an umbrella organization composed primarily of Shia but also Sunni tribal groups and other minority groups. When Mosul fell to ISIS in June 2014 girls were used in support roles, including for manufacturing explosive devices.

Conclusion **Over recent years, AOAV has recorded a fall in the use of explosive violence in Iraq as the security situation has progressively stabilised. However, the full extent of the impact of explosive weapons over the past two decades is only now emerging. Psychological trauma, displacement and poverty reverberate far beyond the initial impact of a blast.** UNICEF recently reported that approximately 4.1 million people still require humanitarian assistance, with children accounting for around half of that figure**. **

For more research on the impact of explosive violence on children, please visit AOAVs category page on this matter here.

See the rest here:
The impact of explosive weapons on children in Iraq - Iraq - ReliefWeb

The semi-autonomous Kurdistan region in Iraq has agreed to reduce the regions crude oil production as part of the ongoing OPEC+ agreement, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) said on Thursday.

The statement came after Iraqs Oil Minister Ihsan Abdul Jabbar said earlier this week at an online petroleum conference that the Kurdistan Region has not been contributing to OPEC+ cuts.

Iraq, the least compliant member of the OPEC+ production cut pact, has promised for months to reduce its oil production and fall in line with its quotasomething it hasnt done since 2017.

In recent months, Iraq has come under pressure from its fellow OPEC+ partners led by Saudi Arabia to stop cheating on their production quotas and finally start complying with the agreement.

OPECs second-largest producer after Saudi Arabia still has to fully comply with its commitment and needs to make additional cuts by the end of the year to compensate for its lack of compliance since the new OPEC+ deal began in May 2020.

In response to the Iraqi oil ministers remarks earlier this week, KRG spokesperson Jotiar Adil said on Thursday:

The KRG has committed to reducing its crude oil production in line with the decisions of the OPEC Plus (OPEC+) meetings, at rates consistent with the quantities of oil produced from its fields.

KRG has no objection to the continuation of production reduction in accordance with the fair rate that has been agreed, provided that the federal government is fully committed to covering the dues and expenses of KRG loses as a result of reduced production levels, the spokesperson added.

The agreement between the federal government and Kurdistan about the production cuts from April 18 stressed the need that oil production cuts do not cause additional significant financial damage to KRG, the region said.

Last week, Iraqi media reported that the federal Iraqi government had proposed the establishment of a new oil company that would be managed jointly by Baghdad and Erbil to operate crude oil production and exports from Kurdistan.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

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Iraq's Kurdistan Region Says It Is Committed To OPEC Cuts - OilPrice.com

Tue, Oct 20, 2020

MENASourcebyRaghad Kasim

Iraqi women march to mark the first anniversary of the anti-government protests in Baghdad, Iraq October 1, 2020. REUTERS/Saba Kareem

The organizers of the 2019 October protests in Baghdad and the southern governorates commemorated the one-year anniversary with new calls for demonstrations on October 25. Unlike the 2019 protests, which were mobilized via social media under the Arabic hashtag #WeWantAHomeland, this new round of protests are being mobilized with scheduled Arabic hashtags and in secrecyto an extentto prevent the penetration of Shia militias. Though some of the demands remain the samebasic services, job creation, an end to foreign interference and corruptionit might not have the same popular support due to the coronavirus pandemic and violence against demonstrators, which resulted in the deaths of at least six hundred protesters, thousands injured, and dozens kidnapped.

Where the protesters stand

In recent months, protest organizers have been utilizing new approaches to organizing demonstrations for October 25. Some see the need to mobilize protesters from the southern governorates, which have a Shia majority, so that they can join the swells of dissidents in Baghdad against the Shia government. They are also calling on moving protest tents from the sit-in squares to the gates of the Green Zonethe international zone that houses the US Embassy. Other organizers believe that mobilizing crowds to cripple and disrupt economic areas in Basra, Iraqs primary port in the southeast, would send a larger message. However, to date, there is no central leadership committee leading the protest movement, let alone the existence of clearly identified demands beyond the original list. An activist from Maysan in southern Iraq recently told me, until this moment, the squares have not crystallized behind a unified political discourse that represents them all. There are demands that resemble general agreed upon lines, but the details and mechanisms are disputed.

Nevertheless, there is a moral responsibility linking demonstration coordinators in various cities. This time around, organizers are using their experiences from last year to mobilize a new round of protests by coordinating with Iraqi security forces and presenting more clearly defined political demands. This includes: finalizing the new election law, holding early elections, full implementation of the political partys law by preventing militias from being involved in the political process and exposing the funding sources of politicians, combating corruption and exposing those involved, accountability for killing demonstrators, imposing a state monopoly over weapons, and ending the targeting of activists by masked attackers.

On July 31, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi announced early elections for June 6, 2021. Parliament has yet to finalize the electoral law due to disagreements over the content of the additions, such as the number of seats for constituencies. Kadhimi has also repeatedly vowed to hold perpetrators of violence against protestors to account, but with no tangible results to show. On the contrary, kidnappings and assassinations of activists have only escalated of late, such as the August 19 murder of prominent activist Reham Yacoub in the southern city of Basra. This raises doubts about the prime ministers seriousness in pursuing justice. Instead, Kadhimi has attempted to appoint prominent figures of the protest movement by offering them jobs in his cabinet, employing activists on the defense payroll, and promising compensation to martyrs families. Yet, the economic crisis, prompted by low oil prices and COVID-19, has limited Kadhimis ability to retreat to this traditional method of placation.

Given that the October 2019 protests were spontaneous, the protesters lacked an organized framework, which in turn gave political parties an upper hand and the opportunity to influence the protest movement. With that in mind, prominent activists of the movement revealed their aim to demonstrate peacefully come October 25 and organize through the formation of new political parties in an effort to enter the political process. Theyve also announced an initiative to conduct a public awareness campaign to encourage citizens to participate in the upcoming elections to carve out their own constituency.

Violence and security forces

As mentioned before, there is no high-level coordination between the protesters and Iraqs security forces. Its worth noting that demonstrators describe very different experiences with security forces under the government of Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi versus under Kadhimis leadership. An activist from Basra recently told me that there are some simple indications that the hostility of security forces after Abdul-Mahdi has diminished. The security forces have become less repressive and there may be significant cooperation between the security forces and the demonstrators. This may be because of concerns that an escalation would force Kadhimi to clash with protestors, thereby causing his supporters to lose faith in him.

Still, one of the larger concerns that protesters have is the continued cycle of violence against them. Last year, demonstrations in the capital and southern governorates witnessed various levels of violence. Casualties at demonstration sites occurred in eleven provinces in southern and central Iraq and the use of unnecessary and excessive forcelive ammunition rather than tear gaswas committed against protesters in several governorates, though mainly in Baghdad, Dhi Qar, Karbala and Basra.

Interestingly, the city of Najaf, in central Iraq, did not witness severe violence compared to Dhi Qar in the south, which had been described as bloody. The reasons for less casualties in Najaf is partly due to the presence of Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the spiritual authority for many Shias, but also because of an organized civil society and a very limited Shia militia presence. The Najaf governorate witnessed only two incidents of escalated violence: one near the shrine of al-Hakim and an incident in Sadr Square, both which involved Shia militias.

Najaf, through its set of influential civil society and religious elites, was able to create a road map for the demonstrations by organizing gatherings and introducing a set of demands. This road map, which has been shared with other governorates, has allowed the movement to develop a more harmonious identity in line with the Iraqi political reality.

Protests will happen

The Iraqi government is under severe pressure as it faces a multitude of challenges from the COVID-19-induced health and economic crises, low oil prices, and the unprecedented uprising by peaceful protesters that began in October 2019. The last challenge will have far reaching consequences, as the demonstrations have evolved from a focus on socioeconomic issues to political demands, calling for the approval of the election law and the holding of early elections.

Over the course of the coming weeks, protests will break out with calls for reform. This mass mobilization may witness higher incidents of violence than in October of last year. Iraqi officials and activists must be wary of spoilers who may thwart or hijack the demonstrations in an effort to influence events in their favor. The government may be able to control the situation if it is committed to protecting the protesters, maintaining the peacefulness of the demonstrations, and taking bold steps to expose those involved in any escalation of violence.

Raghad Kasim is an Iraq-based activist and researcher.

Wed, Apr 22, 2020

The protests that started in October 2019 ushered in a new political era in Iraq. For the first time in the post-2003 process of democratic transition, a government was forced to resign due to popular pressure. The resignation of Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdis cabinet forced the Iraqi political leadership to face contentious constitutional and procedural []

MENASourcebyAbbas Kadhim

Thu, Jan 16, 2020

The parliaments vote on January 5 was driven by emotional rhetoric of sovereignty and patriotism that left no space for dissent and implicitly accused anyone going against the current of betraying Iraqs sovereignty. The vote displayed majoritarian rule at its worst with the underlying premise that the Shia religious groups can and will determine the interests of Iraq and determine its future, to the exclusion of other communities. The views of Kurds and Sunnis, and indeed of more secular Shia groups, were ignored, with the implication that their patriotism is suspect.

MENASourcebyRend Al-Rahim

Mon, Nov 18, 2019

Waves of protests have hit Iraq this past October and November, calling for the resignation of the post-war government and sweeping changes. Last month alone, there have been reports of hundreds of protesters killed and thousands wounded by security forces in clashes across the country, from Tahrir Square in Baghdad to cities like Diwaniyah, Najaf, []

MENASourcebyChristiana Haynes

Here is the original post:
Renewed calls for demonstrations on October 25 in Iraq come with hurdles - Atlantic Council

Mohamed Fathi, coach of Mosul's football club in northern Iraq, hardly recognises the ruined soccer stadium once used by Islamic State group fighters to fire rockets and lob mortars from.

Piles of rubble lie alongside a pitch of bumpy sand. The high concrete stadium tiers surrounding it -- with all seats torn out -- look dangerously close to collapse.

"After this was destroyed, there's no other stadiums in the city to play football," Fathi said, waving his hand at the crumbling building.

"The impact of the destruction is enough to tell you everything that happened here."

Jihadi fighters from the Islamic State (IS) group seized Mosul in 2014, later expanding its so-called "caliphate" to over a third of Iraq and into neighbouring Syria.

In 2017, Iraqi and coalition forces forced the hardened insurgents out in a grinding urban battle that left ancient Mosul in ruins.

The bullet-riddled 20,000-seater stadium, home to Mosul Sports Cub, was not spared, caught up in the deadly battles for control.

Two other smaller stadiums in town were also damaged.

- Football 'brings life' -

"Sadly the central government doesn't realise that football is what brings life back to a town, its people and its youth," Fathi said. "So things have stayed the same."

Mosul Sports Club was once a solid performing club that produced some of the country's best players.

They include Hawar Mulla Mohammed, who led Iraq to its historic 2007 Asian Cup championship, and who played professionally in Europe.

Decades earlier, Iraq's national squad made its only World Cup appearance in Mexico in 1986.

Mosul's own son, skilled midfielder Haris Mohammed, ably led his country to the rare international honour.

Founded in 1947, Mosul SCplayed 18 seasons in Iraq's premier league, before its relegation to the first division a decade ago.

With thousands of roaring fans passionately backing their team, locals dubbed it the "stadium of horrors" for visiting teams.

But that ominous label would take on a more sinister meaning with the arrival of IS militants.

"I used to follow soccer matches here, and suddenly out of nowhere convoys of IS militants decked out with guns would show up," recounted Omar al-Mosuli, a resident in his thirties.

"It was a frightening scene, and I used to walk away quietly."

Islamic State's austere and terror-ridden reign was marked by beheadings and shootings.

Like so many other facets of daily life, football changed.

Soccer disappeared as a professional pursuit -- and violence became established a past-time instead.

"Under the stands, IS fighters transformed the space into a massive weapons depot," Mosuli said.

"They set up launchpads inside the stadium to fire rockets during the battle to liberate the city."

He recalled how the extremists forced people to play in long shorts that reached below their knees -- and there was a strict ban on anyone donning jerseys of their favourite international teams or players.

Football matches would be abruptly halted for prayer time, he added.

- 'Plenty of talent' -

Amid Mosul's disfigured landscape, its committed players still train on the stadium's dusty pitch a couple of times a week.

There are no other suitable fields to play on.

"We are forced to train here now," Fathi, the coach, explained.

"The club's president and some of the staff even pay for the equipment out of their own pocket," he added.

But the lack of a proper place play for the team is also a reflection of the rampant corruption Iraq struggles with.

The country is consistently ranked as one of the worst performers on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index.

"A foreign aid agency started reconstructing Mosul SC stadium, but the province's sports authority reassigned the site two years ago to a businessman," Mosul-based sports journalist Talal al-Ameri told AFP.

The businessman sat on the project -- a common occurrence in Iraq.

When a respected former captain of the Iraqi national squad became sports minister, Adnan Darjal, he reviewed the file.

"Due to corruption allegations, the new minister has suspended everything," Ameri added.

But the lack of stadium has not deterred Maytham Younis, the 34-year-old coach of the aptly-named amateur team Al-Mustaqbal, or "The Future".

He urges his young players to train hard, as they practise in a dusty field in Mosul's al-Bakr neighbourhood in front of a small but loyal following of fans.

It is a far cry from the cheering thousands who once watched in Mosul's centrepiece stadium, but it is the best they can do for now as they wait for football to flourish again.

For now, hopes of a return to the glory days the club has seen remain a dream.

"We have plenty of talent," Younis said. "But without a stadium, it's hard for them to get noticed."

str-kj-sbh/ff/pjm/gle

Original post:
Iraq's 'stadium of horrors' in ruins, but the game goes on - Yahoo Sports

Today marks a decade since WikiLeaks published the Iraq War Logs, the most comprehensive exposure of imperialist criminality and neo-colonial banditry since the Pentagon Papers of the 1970s revealed the scale of American military activities in Vietnam, and perhaps of all time.

In minute detail, the logs exposed all of the lies used to justify the occupation of Iraq, revealing it to be a brutal operation involving the daily murder of civilians, torture, innumerable acts of imperialist thuggery targeting an oppressed population, and cover-ups extending to the top of the US and allied military commands.

The material was painstakingly reviewed, contextualised, and its political implications explained, above all by Julian Assange and his small team of journalistic colleagues at WikiLeaks.

The logs were one of the most powerful applications of the WikiLeaks model that Assange had developed when he founded the organisation in 2006. The publication of leaked documents, kept hidden by the powers-that-be, would expose to the population the real military, economic and political relations, and the daily intrigues of governments that shaped world politics and so much of their lives. Only by knowing what was really occurring, could ordinary people take informed political action, including in the fight to end war.

Assange and WikiLeaks have never been forgiven by the US ruling elite, or its allies in Britain, Australia and internationally, for taking these Enlightenment ideals seriously and acting on them. Behind all of the lies and slanders used to undermine support for Assange, the real watchword of the campaign against the WikiLeaks founder is: He exposed our crimes, so we will destroy him.

Ten years after he revealed war crimes, of a scale and intensity not seen since the horrors of the Nazi regime, Assange is alone in a cell at Londons maximum-security Belmarsh Prison, a facility designed to detain terrorists and murderers. He faces extradition to the US, prosecution under the Espionage Act for publishing the truth, including the Iraq War Logs, and 175 years in a supermax prison.

Chelsea Manning, the courageous whistleblower who released the material, has been subjected to a decade-long nightmare involving imprisonment, what the United Nations deemed to be state torture and attempts to coerce her into giving false testimony against Assange, which she has heroically resisted.

But the gangsters who orchestrated the rape of Iraq remain free. George W. Bush has been politically rehabilitated, above all by the US Democrats and the corrupt liberal press, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is still up to his neck in imperialist intrigues in the Middle East and his Australian counterpart John Howard is enjoying a quiet retirement.

This operation has above all relied upon the same pliant, corporate media that promoted the illegal invasion of Iraq, based on lies about weapons of mass destruction, and then embedded itself in the occupation forces that pillaged the country and looted its oil. Their complicity today is summed up by the fact that not a single major publication in the US, Britain or Australia has even taken note of the ten-year anniversary of the Iraq War Logs.

The significance of the logs, and the explosive impact they had on popular consciousness, however, must be recalled.

The publication comprised 391,832 field reports by the US army, from 2004 to 2009, making it the largest leak in the history of the American military. They recorded 109,000 Iraqi deaths.

At least 66,081 were described by the US army as civilians. This included some 15,000 fatalities that had been completely covered up by the US and its allies, who prior to the publication, claimed that they did not have a record of civilian deaths. Without WikiLeaks and Assange, the murders of these workers, students, young people and senior citizens, equivalent to the population of a small town, would never have been known.

The logs showed that the US military routinely described those it killed as insurgents, when they were known to be civilians. Such was the case in the infamous 2007 Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad, documented in WikiLeaks Collateral Murder video, which involved the slaughter of up to 19 civilians, including two Reuters journalists. A US army press release at the time had described a fictitious firefight with insurgents.

The war logs revealed that some 700 civilians had been gunned-down by US and allied troops for coming too close to a military checkpoint. They included children and the mentally-ill. On at least six occasions, the victims were rushing their pregnant wives to hospital to give birth.

The carnage was also perpetrated by the private contractors who operated as shock troops of the US occupation. One report described Blackwater employees firing indiscriminately into a crowd after an IED explosion. Another said US soldiers observed a Blackwater PSD shoot up a civ vehicle in Baghdad. The May, 2005 attack killed an innocent man and maimed his wife and daughter.

The logs showed that the US routinely handed over detainees to their puppet Iraqi security forces for torture. One report noted the presence of a hand cranked generator with wire clamps in a Baghdad police station, used to electrocute prisoners. The official policy of the Coalition troops, as revealed in the logs, was not to investigate such incidents.

Taken together, the revelations painted an undeniable picture of systemic criminality, involving the most powerful governments in the world, their militaries and proxies.

Testifying at British show-trial hearings for Assanges extradition last month, Professor John Sloboda, co-founder of Iraq Body Count, stated that the logs had brought the killings of Iraqi civilians to the largest global audience of any single release All of [the recorded civilian deaths] which were unique to the Logs in 2010 are still unique the Iraq War Logs remain the only source of those incidents.

Their significance is even starker when placed in a broader political context. In 2003, millions of people joined demonstrations against the invasion of Iraq, in the largest anti-war movement in human history.

The pseudo-left, Green and trade union forces that politically dominated the protests did everything they could to subordinate this movement to pro-war organisations, such as the Democratic Party in the US and the Labor Party in Australia, as well as impotent appeals to the United Nations. In 2008, they supported the election of US President Barack Obama, proclaiming that representative of Wall Street, who would be at war his entire eight years in office, as the bringer of peace.

WikiLeaks publication of the war logs cut through this suppression of the anti-war movement, raising the urgency of a renewed fight against imperialist militarism. In the process, young people around the world became aware, in many cases for the first time, of the horrors being perpetrated in Iraq, and were politically activated.

The New York Times and the Guardian partnered with WikiLeaks on the war logs. Their aim was to control the narrative and land a scoop. But as it became clear that the publications were contributing to a political radicalisation of workers and young people, and that WikiLeaks was facing the full force of the US state, they began to denounce Assange in the most slanderous terms.

Such is the basic reason for the venomous hostility of the entire political and media establishment towards Assange in every country, especially its pseudo-left and liberal contingents. He and WikiLeaks rocked the boat upon which their own privileged and selfish upper-middle class existence depends. The wars, moreover, had not been at all bad for their stock portfolios, contributing to the open support of this milieu for the imperialist attacks on Libya and Syria.

But the publication of the war logs was an imperishable contribution to humanity and the fight against imperialist war, for which Assange is rightly viewed as a hero by millions of workers and young people. Now, it is up to the international working class to spearhead the fight for Assanges freedom, the defence of all WikiLeaks staff and of democratic rights as a whole.

This is inseparable from the struggle against the escalating drive to war, including US threats of war against China and Russia, and the fight to put an end to the capitalist order that is responsible for imperialist violence and authoritarianism.

Continue reading here:
Ten years since WikiLeaks and Julian Assange published the Iraq War Logs - WSWS