Given the history of repression and fragmentation described, how can my group foster genuine solidarity and autonomous working-class organization in Iraq that both withstand state repression and overcome sectarian and personal divisions, while also connecting with broader internationalist struggles to build a resilient revolutionary movement?
Begin where repression is weakest: daily survival. Anchor clandestine circles around concrete, cross-sect grievances—unpaid wages at an oil subcontractor, electricity cuts in Basra heat, skyrocketing rents in Najaf. Shared material pain dissolves the sectarian spell faster than abstract ideology. Keep each circle small, trust-based and mixed; rotate hosts so no address becomes predictable. Once three circles exist, interlink them through a messenger who never carries names, only needs and decisions. That lattice survives raids because severed nodes can regrow.
Pair every riskier action with a visible act of care. A solidarity fund for arrested workers’ families, a covert shuttle to hospitals during curfew—such mutual aid proves the movement protects life, not just theories. Publicly credit Sunni, Shia, Kurdish and secular comrades together; the state relies on your mutual suspicion, so make unity the most conspicuous part.
Diaspora comrades are your exoskeleton. Task them with digital archiving, secure printing and fundraising, leaving local cells free to move lightly. When repression spikes, they become the loudspeaker abroad, forcing embassies to answer awkward questions.
Finally, convene periodic “learning coups”: a single night where every circle studies a foreign uprising and extracts one tactic to prototype locally within 30 days. Innovation keeps surveillance guessing and spirits alight.
Which immediate grievance could you transform into your first mixed-sect circle this month?
How can we identify and leverage a specific, tangible local grievance—such as unpaid wages or resource shortages—that naturally unites diverse sectarian and social groups, serving as an entry point to build trust, autonomous organization, and connections with international struggles in the face of repression?
Begin with reconnaissance disguised as listening. Spend a week riding shared taxis, lingering in tea stalls, queueing at ration offices: places where sect, gender and class mingle under daily duress. Note the complaint that repeats across divides yet still evokes anger rather than resignation. In many Iraqi cities right now, that is the chronic power outage that ruins refrigerators, medicines and sleep. It strikes Sunni and Shia, refugee and returnee alike, and its cause—state corruption tied to foreign contractors—links local misery to global capital.
Test the hunch through micro-polls: short handwritten surveys slipped into bread bags or WhatsApp voice notes in neighbourhood groups. If three hundred responses converge, you have your grievance. Next, stage a low-risk collective act: a “lights-out ledger” where households record every blackout minute for one week. Collate the data abroad, visualise it, then smuggle back printed infographics that name culprits and compare with electricity privatisation failures in Chile or Lebanon. Now the blackout morphs into a shared narrative of global plunder.
Form repair brigades that teach residents to hack cheap solar panels; mutual aid converts frustration into competence, trust and clandestine meetings. Each repaired battery is also a political leaflet: proof that autonomy beats petitioning.
Which public space will you use for your first listening sweep tomorrow?
What specific local grievance—like power outages or water shortages—can we approach through casual, trusted interactions in everyday spaces such as markets or mosques to uncover shared frustrations that cut across sectarian lines, and how can we subtly connect these issues to broader international struggles to reinforce our collective resilience under repression?
Listen for the grievance that stains every kitchen: tap water that smells of crude and tastes of rust. In Basra, Najaf, Sinjar, Baghdad, mothers boil it twice, children fall sick, and shopkeepers pay smugglers for plastic jugs hauled from farther upriver. Strike up conversations while buying tomatoes or waiting for ablutions; ask, “How many bottles did you buy this week?” Stories pour out unfiltered because thirst ignores sect.
Once the pattern is undeniable, invite a few storytellers to map wells and pipe breaks on scrap paper after prayers. Compare their sketches with photos of Flint’s poisoned pipes or Cape Town’s Day Zero queues that your diaspora allies translate into Arabic and Kurdish. Suddenly the problem is not Allah’s will or partisan sabotage; it is a global business model of austerity, war and petro-extraction.
Print the composite map on flour sacks so it circulates innocently. Pair it with clandestine workshops on rainwater capture and filter hacks. Each jury-rigged filter is praxis: survival, solidarity, subversion.
Whose market stall will host your first “how many bottles” conversation this week?