Editor’s Note: This video report was originally published by People’s Dispatch.
As Panamanians enter week three of national strike against the cost of living crisis, the government has responded with heavy repression. On July 19, the anti-riot units brutally repressed the protesters, who have been blocking the Inter-American highway over the past three weeks. However, within hours, the protesters returned to block the road.
Ronaldo Ortíz of the National Front for the Defense of Economic and Social Rights (FRENADESO) spoke to Peoples Dispatch about the ongoing struggle and attempts to negotiate with the government on their demands.
Ethiopians in Lebanon took to the streets in December to protest U.S. and Western meddling in the Horn of Africa / credit: Twitter / Xinhua News
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in People’s Dispatch.
The Ethiopian diaspora across the Western world is condemning the United States and the European Union for “emboldening” the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which resumed war in the northern part of the country on August 24, ending the truce initiated by the federal government in March.
“Deploring the international community, in particular the UN, United States and the EU Member states, for their continued sympathy” towards the TPLF, the Ethiopian Advocacy Organizations Worldwide (EAOW) passed a resolution on Friday, September 2. The EAOW, a consortium of 18 organizations representing Ethiopian nationals in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, South Africa, and 11 European countries, condemned the TPLF’s alleged systematic large-scale forced conscriptions—including of child soldiers—in the northernmost state of Tigray.
Thousands have been fleeing Tigray, which is under the TPLF’s control, in order to escape forced conscription. However, hundreds have been caught and arrested by the TLPF, which is waging a war against the Ethiopian federal government. Tens of thousands of conscripts were sacrificed in human wave attacks launched by the TPLF, which had advanced south into the neighboring states of Amhara and Afar last year before being beaten back into Tigray.
The resolution alleges that in order to conscript more soldiers for another round of invasion into Tigray’s neighboring states, the TPLF instituted a “one family, one soldier” policy, as the war became increasingly unpopular in Tigray itself. The group is allegedly denying food aid to families unable or unwilling to contribute soldiers. This is when, according to the World Food Programme (WFP), 83 percent of Tigray’s population is food-insecure and over 60 percent of pregnant or lactating women were malnourished as of January.
On resuming the war on August 24, the TPLF looted 12 full fuel trucks from the WFP and tankers with 570,000 liters of fuel meant to facilitate food aid delivery. Hundreds of WFP trucks which entered Tigray to distribute food aid had already been seized by the TPLF and used to mobilize its troops during its offensive last year.
“This has only reaffirmed the view [that] the TPLF should not be playing a central role in the distribution of aid in Tigray,” Bisrat Aklilu, a board member of the American Ethiopian Public Affairs Committee (AEPAC), said in a letter to WFP’s Ethiopia country director Adrian van der Knaap.
He called on the WFP “to undertake an urgent review of its processes and to identify any misuse of aid by the TPLF… Given the sheer number of Ethiopians in need in Tigray, Afar and Amhara regions, it would be an unforgivable scandal if WFP’s humanitarian assistance is ending up in the hands of rebel forces rather than the vulnerable communities who are suffering.”
“Deploring the deafening silence of the International Community in condemning such blatant violation of international law by TPLF,” the resolution urged the international community to force the TPLF to come to the negotiating table.
The federal government led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has kept the door open for negotiations under the African Union (AU). AU’s High-Representative for the Horn of Africa, former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, had met with the government’s and TPLF’s leaders several times during the months of truce.
The EAOW resolution has called on the international community to “reiterate the peace process under the undisputed leadership” of the AU.
However, dismissing the AU as incompetent, the TPLF had effectively called for Western intervention only two days before resuming the war. It made particular references to the United States and the EU, whose envoys had met its leaders only weeks before it resumed the war.
“To date, the American Ethiopian community has been disappointed with the United States Government’s approach to the conflict, which has been perceived as more favorable to the TPLF terrorist group than the democratically elected government of Ethiopia,” the American Ethopian Public Affairs Committee (AEPAC) said in a press release.
AEPAC, which is a part of the EAOW and a signatory to its resolution, will be holding demonstrations and rallies on Tuesday, September 6, in Washington D.C., and other cities in the United States.
“The rallies will have a clear objective—to call on the U.S. government to support peace over violence in Ethiopia,” its statement said. “The only way to give peace a chance for the people of Ethiopia and ensure stability in [the] Horn of Africa is to end the TPLF’s violence. AEPAC will continue to engage U.S. legislators and the administration to educate them on the facts on the ground and views of the diaspora.”
Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in Peoples Dispatch.
This October marks the third anniversary of the 2019 popular protests in Iraq. On Tuesday, October 25, a large number of people gathered in the Tahrir square in capital Baghdad and paid homage to the people who were killed in the protests. They raised slogans in support of what has been termed by the protesters as the Tishreen movement.
The countrywide protests in 2019, rooted in the long-term grievances of people against successive governments, went on for months. Before the global COVID-19 outbreak forced them to end, the protests were successful in forcing the then government led by Adil Abdul Mahdi to resign, putting the ruling classes on the defensive and pressing for reforms.
Caretaker prime minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, who came to power in May 2020 after months of uncertainty, had promised to deliver on some of the major demands raised by the protesters, including rebuilding the economy and punishing those guilty for the deaths of over 600 people including protesters and others.
Three years down the line and with a new government on the horizon, none of these promises have been met. This is likely to lead the vast majority of pro-reformers pushing for their demands in the coming days.
Economic and Political Aspects of the Protests
The 2019 protests were one of the largest in Iraq’s history since the 2003 U.S. invasion. Long-term grievances regarding inefficiency of successive administrations and the widely perceived corruption among the ruling establishment were at the center of the public anger. In their slogans, the protesters repeatedly denounced the failure of the system created under the supervision of the US occupation in tackling the issues faced by the people, such as rising poverty, unemployment, and basic services delivery.
At the time of the protests, the official rate of poverty in the country of approximately 40 million people was rising. Even before the pandemic hit in 2020, the poverty rate had risen to above 31 percent. Oil-rich Iraq witnessed an unprecedented rise in poverty during the COVID-19 outbreak. While the government claimed that the poverty rate was coming down after the pandemic, a large number of Iraqis are still forced to live a life as paupers.
Since oil revenues make up the bulk of Iraq’s federal budget–around 96 percent–the economy remains vulnerable to market fluctuation.
Iraqi youth, who make up the majority of the population, were at the center of the 2019 protests. The unemployment rate among the youth–fresh graduates from the university and others–was above 40 percent at the time of the protests.
The majority of Iraqis were forced to live without the basic amenities such as power, sanitation, and health care. Protesters claimed that these failures on the economic front were the result of inefficiency and corruption of the ruling elite. They also pointed to structural reasons such as the system of Muhasasa or sectarian quota based on distribution of political posts for this inefficiency and corruption.
Failure to Address Demands for Structural Changes
The protests were not limited to Baghdad but spread across all urban centers in the country, particularly in the southern regions. The protesters raised the demands of more jobs, better governance and systemic changes, including ending the sectarian quota system and all kinds of external intervention in Iraqi affairs.
Instead of taking initiatives to address the issues related to structural reforms, the ruling class announced fresh national elections in October 2021, a year before schedule.
Partial changes in the country’s electoral laws and introduction of the first past the poll system to replace the system of proportional representation were sold as fulfilling the demand for reforms in the political structure.
However, none of these addressed, even partially, the demands raised by the protesters. The U.S. troops were forced to end their operational presence but, in complete violation of the parliament’s resolution and popular demand, they still remain in the country.
The national elections of October 2021 saw a historically low participation rate with just about 40 percent of the electorate exercising their right to vote amid a call for boycott. This resulted in a situation where no political coalition or group was in a position to claim majority and form a new government for almost a year after the elections.
Mohammad Shia al-Sudani was finally approved as prime minister this week. He was designated to the post by Abdul Latif Rashid who was newly elected as president earlier this month. Al-Sudani’s appointment is expected to end the political uncertainty in the country for now. However, it may not mean an end to the political turmoil despite his promises to deliver on the economic front and tackle corruption.
A sign of the challenges ahead is the fact that disagreements and disputes over the nature of government as well as al-Sudani’s candidacy led to the killing of dozens of people this year.
A demonstration took place March 18 in Washington, D.C., that coincided with the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq / credit: ANSWER Coalition
WASHINGTON, D.C.—An estimated couple of thousand of people to “several thousand” marched on March 18 in downtown Washington D.C., calling for an end to the U.S. imperialist project that they hold responsible for 20 years of a “War on Terror” on millions of people. The weekend marked the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
U.S. interference in the form of military invasions and other types of activities since 2001 have caused the global displacement of 38 million people and the death of at least 900,000 people, according to the Costs of War Project. Those are conservative estimates.
The demonstration aimed to link the lack of funding for people’s needs in the United States with the diversity of tactics the United States uses to perpetuate wars on people around the world.
“The proxy war in Ukraine has already taken hundreds of thousands of lives, plunged the world into crisis, and will cost the people of the U.S. at least $113 billion in public money,” Press TV reported. “Over the past year, Washington has supplied Ukraine with military equipment worth more than $50 billion, excluding other types of assistance worth tens of billions of dollars.
Rally speakers representing a diverse cross-cut of U.S. society, ranging from students and Filipino migrants, to internal U.S. colonies like African and Indigenous peoples, as well as Wikileaks Publisher Julian Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, gathered in front of the White House for a 1 p.m. rally. Toward Freedom Board Secretary Jacqueline Luqman also spoke, which can be found here, here and here.
Then a mile-long march kicked off that stopped briefly at the Washington Post headquarters.
“The corporate media has decided to boycott the American ppl when they speak up against the war machine. CNN, NBC, ABC, all the corporate networks are just echo chambers for the Pentagon — nothing else.”
Activists spoke out against the newspaper—now owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos—because it spread information that helped build the U.S. government’s case for the invasion of Iraq. A U.S. Senate intelligence committee report later found the war was based on false information.
Happening now in front of the Washington Post: “Whether it’s the war at abroad or the war at home, you can count on the Washington Post to be a liar and a warmonger!” —@EugenePuryearpic.twitter.com/m6fi8aSvm7
— Party for Socialism and Liberation (@pslnational) March 18, 2023
“Thousands of anti-war protesters stretched for blocks without a corporate camera in sight yesterday,” tweeted independent journalist Chuck Modi, who has documented protests in Washington, D.C. “In pre-cell phone age, you wouldn’t even know it happened.”
Activists on Saturday carried coffins wrapped in the flags of countries that the United States has either invaded over the past two decades or that the United States has helped fuel a conflict inside of through the shipment of arms and funds.
Growing numbers are condemning the US/NATO for fueling the war in Ukraine and blocking peace negotiations. On March 18, the 20th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, protesters carried mock coffins to the White House and demanded “Money for People’s Needs, Not the War Machine” pic.twitter.com/gs3yrujlfK
More than 200 organizations demonstrated against the United States funding and arming the war in Ukraine, and called for the United States to not interfere in peace negotiations. They also spoke out against a possible military conflict with China and decried the U.S./EU sanctions regime that prevents food, fuel and medicine from reaching one-third of the world’s population.
Plus, the call was raised to close U.S. military bases around the world and U.S. military commands, such as AFRICOM. Some estimates have ranged from as little as 800 bases to thousands of bases, according to U.S. military veteran and psychologist Monisha Rios. She claimed at the International Women’s Alliance conference, held March 4-5 in Washington, D.C., that activists have used a figure based on a calculation that undercounts U.S. military installations.
People leading the march held banners that read, “Remember Iraq: No More Wars Based on Lies” and “Fund People’s Needs, Not War.”
‼️You definitely didn’t hear it on on Tucker Carlson or the Washington Post, but several thousand marched in DC this weekend against endless U.S. wars.
After the march, a teach-in was held at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, just a few blocks from the rally site. There, professor Noam Chomsky, as well as representatives from the U.S. colonies of Guam and Hawaii, gave remarks.
Activists like Asantewaa Nkrumah-Ture of Philadelphia, a member of the Black Alliance for Peace, spoke out against the international wars as well as the domestic war on the people of the United States. That includes the most recent federal government move to eliminate Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to hungry families. “Roughly 60 percent of those households have children, and more than half include older people or adults with disabilities,” the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette‘s editorial board writes.
“More and more ppl are against this war because their conditions are worsening. They’re cutting food stamps; it’s harder to pay rent; wages are stagnant. This must change. We must fight back!”
The protest was noted for how it was led by people who bear the brunt of U.S. imperialism.
“When the interests and positions of colonized people are respected, the turnout to mobilizations look different,” tweeted the Black Alliance for Peace, an anti-imperialist organization led by African people in the United States. “Perhaps the March 18 demonstrations signal a shift is taking place: That an anti-imperialist movement led by young African and other colonized peoples is rising.”
When the interests and positions of colonized people are respected, the turnout to mobilizations look different. Perhaps the March 18 demonstrations signal a shift is taking place: That an anti-imperialist movement led by young African and other colonized peoples is rising. https://t.co/W2O8fHr8HU
— Black Alliance for Peace (@Blacks4Peace) March 20, 2023
Many commented that a renewed movement for peace was emerging with this demonstration. About 11 million people protested the U.S. invasion of Iraq 20 years ago. An ANSWER Coalition representative did not reply to this reporter in time to confirm the number of marchers on March 18.
“Here we are again, 20 years later, because imperialism persists,” Black Agenda Report Executive Editor Margaret Kimberley told activist group Popular Resistance. “As long as that is true, the location of the war will change, the people waging the war will change, but we will still have wars. Our goal is to end imperialism.”
Besides in Washington, D.C., demonstrations were held in dozens of cities across the United States.
