The Union of the Unemployed Iraq decided to wind up their continuous
sit-in protest opposite the former Republican Palace 3 weeks ago, after
48 days, which included demos, road-blocking, spontaneous mass meetings,
strategy planning, singing, dancing and solidarity galvanizing. The send
off to the sit-in was an out-door performance art festival including
songs, poetry, theatre and traditional chioni music, all in the Protest
Square, renamed as such by the UUI. During their continuous sit-in, the
UUI experiences mass arrests (19 one day and over 54 another). The
arestees, including Qasim Haadi, the Union's General Secretary, suffered
sleep deprivation through deliberate repetitive noise pollution, were
denied water and food and were made to sit in a cramped room surrounded
by barbed wire and subject to standard military verbal abuse and taunts
such as the GI favourite 'Ali Baba'.

Whilst being involved in negotiations/demorolisations with the Occupation
Authority, UUI members were told, 'We know who you are, we know your
ideas', 'Socialsm? You've got to face reality, Saddam was a socialist'.

The Union of the Umemployed's heydey, in Baghdad at least, is over.
Following weeks of fruitless, setpiece negotiations with the CPA
(Coalition Provisional Authority - aka as American Occupation Authority)
and empty promises including the granting of stipulated benefit of $100
per month and the supervision of food aid distribution in places like
Thaowra and Nassiriyah, the UUI broke of talks and declared them a
failure. This choice of words was deemed a mistake by the leadership of
the union. Already heatstroked, hungry and demoralised, the UUI shebab's
confidence was further corroded and their hopes of securing their demands
for unemployment emergency benefit of $100 per month, in the face of an
Occupation Adminsitration which condones the killing of civillians,
allows homeless families to live en-masse in canvas tents and unexploded
ordinance ridden ex-Ba'ath military bases, and redefines prisoners of war
as unlawful combatants and cages, blinds, numbs and shackels them for
national television, the chances of winning any social demands here were
and still are, dim.

One of the other destabilizing effects if not direct threat to the UUI's
very existance occured when members of the Free Democratic Iraqi
Gathering, headed by wealthy businessman Abdul Mussan Sharlash turned up
on day 40 of the protest, sporting banners bearing his face and promising
the protesters jobs. He lured away approximately 70% of them with a
dollar - 2000 dinar. Those who left called themselves 'The Association of
the Unemployed". The organisation broke down a week later, its members
returning to the UUI, remourseful, telling the union's leadership, 'We're
sorry, we were desperate'.

The UUI continues to struggle. Members say that they will continue to
organise until there are social befeits for everybody in Iraq of $100 per
month rather than the derisory $60 dole from the Ministry of Labour and
Social Affairs. At the moment former soldiers are being given $100 per
month, essentially to stop them banding together and revolting aginst the
occupation government. The comparatively weighty benefit was asigned to
them following mass protests and riots.

October 1 saw US and UK troops stationed in Baghdad and Basra, open fire
on former servicemen waiting for their monthly anti-riot payment, widely
reported to be a one-off sum of $40 but in reality payments have been
doled out every month. The ex-soldiers had got fed up of the endless
cash-queues, the prodding and pushing from irate troops patroling their
lines, and errupted into a riot. Two Iraqis were killed, one in each
city, an at least a dozen suffered gunshot wounds. Occupation troops
reported two casualties and two Iraqi copcars were torched.