A Documentary History of Modern Iraq

6. Consolidating Ba'thist Power, 1968–1979

6 Consolidating Ba’thist Power, 1968–1979 Iraq’sArabBa’thSocialistPartyorganizedacoupd’étaton17July1968,replacing the government of Abd al-Rahman Arif. There are many factors that contributed to the Arif regime’s downfall. The government, for example, was fighting a war with Kurds in the north, and this destabilized the regime. Further, Arif had created networks of patronage that heavily favored a very narrow group, namely his own Sunni al-Jumayla tribe (Fattah, 207). Factors contributing to the Ba’th’s overthrow of the Arif government, however, included more than just widespread domestic discontent with the regime. In June 1967, the Arab world suffered a humiliating defeat in the Six Day War with Israel, and this wreaked political havoc in Iraq. Under Arif, Iraq had remained neutral in this struggle, and Iraqis and the officers in the army were unhappy with this (Fattah, 208). The Arab Ba’th Socialist Party espoused a populist ideology, but it did not necessarily have widespread support at the time of the coup. The political party oftheBa’thhadbeencreatedinSyriain1941,anditsprincipalideologuewasMichel Aflaq, a Christian. It was a secular party that theoretically welcomed people of different faiths. It was pan-Arab in its orientation, meaning that it intended to draw together all states—viewed as artificial constructions—of the Arab-speaking world. Since European powers had artificially divided the Arab nation, the party enunciated anti-imperial ideas. In the economic sphere, the Ba’th sought a socialist program that would spread the wealth of the old elite fostered by colonialism .In thisway, theBa’thsoughtto beamassmovement.Ba’thismflourished throughout the Middle East, though in Iraq it would remain a relatively small movement until the end of the 1960s. The historian Hala Fattah notes, “Baathist ideology was sufficiently vague and adaptable to accommodate a number of disparate elements in the Iraqi population” (209). Leaders of Iraq’s Ba’th Party would ultimately eschew many of the ideology’s basic tenets. The two key actors in the Ba’th Party during its first ten years of rulewouldbePresidentHasanal-BakrandVice-PresidentSaddamHussein,who 194 / A Documentary History of Modern Iraq took over for al-Bakr in 1979. These men were, as identified by Charles Tripp, “nominally Baathist,” meaning they privileged national priorities over the panArab goals (Tripp, 186). Hussein, in particular, exercised primordial influence in Iraq, beginning to forge what one historian calls the “Saddamist State” by the 1970s (Dawisha, 211). Such a state was based on highly personalized networks of patronage, whereby the Ba’th privileged certain groups, most notably Sunnis from Tikrit, hometown of Bakr and Hussein. In retaining power, the Ba’th had to neutralize its political rivals—Communists, Shi’i clerics, and Kurds—and it did so by relying on mechanisms of political violence that pitted the state against opposition groups. This chapter provides insights into both the carrots and the sticks used by the Ba’th Party to control life in Iraq. It begins with a memo from the U.S. State Department, which reflects an ambivalent American attitude toward the coup. It then turns toward the promulgation of the Constitution of 1970, which reveals Iraqi mutations of Ba’thism. The Ba’th Party, however, had no intention of adhering to the rule of law. As recounted by Saeed Herdoon, the Ba’th manufactured a spy scare and executed a number of Jews after trials with predetermined outcomes. Despite such terror, some Iraqis supported Ba’thist rule. And so, this chapter includes a pan-Arab poem by Hameed Sa’id, editor of the al-Thaura newspaper. Afterward, a speech by Saddam Hussein reveals the extent to which the Ba’th—at least, in these early years—sought to break Iraqi patriarchy by encouraging women to assume a larger role in the workforce. The Ba’th Party also targeted youth, so this chapter includes reflections on the teaching of history by Saddam Hussein. This chapter then reveals a U.S. State Department memo in which the United States decides to support Kurds in 1972 in their struggle against the Iraqi state. Hineer Saleem describes the second Kurdish-Iraqi War of 1974–1975, which ultimately left the peoples of the north disillusioned with the United States. During these years, Shi’ism became a political movement, so this chapter includes an excerpt of the writings of the influential Shi’i cleric Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr. Since the Ba’th targeted Shi’is, the chapter ends with a firsthand Shi’i account of the sister of a man arrested for participating in an Ashura commemoration...