In Kurdistan, the Class Struggle Reveals the Deception of the Nation

In a massive demonstration of struggle, teachers in Sulaymaniyah, the Kurdistan region of Iraq, embarked on a long strike in October 2023 that was destined to last for four months. This struggle was not only economic in nature, but also represented a direct challenge to the political power firmly held by the two largest parties of the Kurdish bourgeoisie in Iraq: the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).

The teachers, organized by the Council of Dissident Teachers–a grassroots body that grew out of the workers’ struggle–demanded full and timely payment of their salaries after the government failed to meet both payment deadlines and amounts. This strike, the longest in the region’s recent history, highlighted the systemic exploitation of public sector workers. These workers have long been manipulated by patronage networks run by the ruling parties.

These networks are instrumental in maintaining the capitalist order by employing workers in state apparatuses in exchange for their subservience to a ruling party. However, this widespread clientelist practice has long demonstrated its increasing ineffectiveness in ensuring social peace.

Faced with delayed and almost never full payment of wages, due to austerity measures imposed by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the teachers’ demanded direct payments from the federal government of Iraq. This reflected a broader critique of the role of the autonomous region, in which the pretense of promoting the interests of the local people increasingly proved to be a mask to hide the most unmentionable interests of the capitalists. The teachers’ strike has seen significant participation, with tens of thousands of people, including those outside the profession, joining the weekly protests. This illustrates the potential power of the working class when it unites to defend its economic interests.

In some cases, this solidarity has been expressed through strikes, as with traffic police on January 28th of this year. Due to the government’s inability to pay its employees, workers in different categories of the public service joined the strike in several areas, reinforcing the teachers’ demands and widening the struggle. Meanwhile, the leaders of the unions close to the ruling parties did their best to downplay the extent of the crackdown and denied, against all evidence, the harsh sentences imposed on the striking teachers.

Despite the repression, particularly in KDP-controlled areas where protests have often been met with arrests, the movement showed some ability to move forward. Striking teachers in Sulaymaniyah faced the entry of security forces, who arrested some of them as they tried to march to the residence of PUK leader, Bafel Talabani. This response was part of the usual repressive tactics of the bourgeois state to stifle working-class dissent. The demonstrators then denounced the heavy security measures without being intimidated.

Later, the Iraqi Federal Supreme Court decided to transfer responsibility for Kurdistan’s salary payments from Erbil to Baghdad—a move aimed at addressing the Kurdistan Regional Government’s habitual failure to meet its obligations. However, the KRG’s new «My Account» initiative, which forced civil servants to receive digital payments, sparked further anger among workers, who saw it as another mechanism of control by the ruling patronage elite. Nevertheless, this measure was part of a general framework to modernize payment systems and encourage workers to open bank accounts and make electronic payments. This line was also followed by the central government in Baghdad, which adopted similar measures. Not surprisingly, it was in the Iraqi capital that gasoline workers took the lead in protesting the proliferation of self-service stations.

A few days ago it was announced that the KRG intends to contract 38,000 precarious teachers with regional funds. This will be an opportunity for the local authorities to revive their patronage network through the instrument of contractualization, after the Iraqi Federal Supreme Court’s decision that partially disempowered the local government. The young workers, who are probably destined for a long period of precarious work, will be forced to have a bank account to receive their meager salaries, while the financial flows in the banks of Kurdistan will continue to swell like overflowing rivers for the benefit of the bourgeois class.