Saddam and the Islamists: The Ba‘thist Regime’s Instrumentalization of Religion in Foreign Affairs

Abstract

Based on extensive archival research with newly available Iraqi state and Ba‘th Party documents, this article attempts to shed light on the Saddam Husayn regime’s relationship with Islamists and Islamism, arguing that it instrumentalized Islam in its foreign policy to an unprecedented extent, but not out of ideological conviction. This article, therefore, clarifies an important issue in the historiography of Saddam’s Iraq and suggests that religion can play a concrete role in international relations.

In 1990, with war between Iraq and a Western-led coalition looming, Iraqi president Saddam Husayn wrote “God is greater” on the Iraqi flag and called for jihad against his enemies. After the war, and throughout the last decade of his rule, the Ba‘thist regime declared a “faith campaign” (hamla imaniyya) in which it built mosques, required increased religious education in Iraq, and consistently allied with Islamists abroad. As a result, some observers of Iraq have questioned whether Saddam took a strategic shift toward Islamism. ¹ After September 11, 2001, and especially during the run-up to the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, this debate moved beyond the confines of academia. Policy makers, public intellectuals, and various government agencies argued about Saddam’s support of Islamist terrorism. These debates attempted often to either associate or disassociate Saddam with Islamism as a means of “proving” whether or not Saddam supported Islamist terrorist groups such as al-Qa‘ida. ²

This article attempts to move beyond that debate. It relies on newly released Iraqi state and Ba‘th Party archives from the period of Saddam’s rule (1979–2003), ³ and argues that viewing Saddam’s relationship with Islamists abroad through the prism of a shift toward Islamism in Iraq is a misunderstanding of how the regime formed alliances and carried out foreign policy. Thus, while Iraqi Ba‘thists did indeed begin to cooperate with Islamist organizations abroad, this was largely unrelated to the regime’s domestic policies or ideological convictions. Another explanation is warranted. This article will demonstrate that the regime was able to cooperate with Islamists as a result of a calculated policy of instrumentalizing Islam to neutralize Islamist opposition, and convince some Islamists to support Saddam’s strategic objectives. Thus Islam did not guide Iraqi policy; rather, it was a tool to achieve policy goals. Yet, the regime’s use of religion was also more than a mere rhetorical shift. It was a long, detailed process of building institutions and networks to carry out policy and realize Iraq’s strategic aims. In doing so, Iraq worked toward shaping the regional religio-political landscape to meet its needs.

Moving beyond the question of Saddam’s supposed turn to Islamism is also helpful in that the question has obscured a far more interesting debate about the manner in which religion can be employed in international affairs. In that sense, this article should interest not only those concerned with how an authoritarian Arab regime co-opted religion, but also scholars of international relations and diplomatic history more broadly. Scholars in the latter fields often view senior statesmen, traditional diplomats, and the military as the primary practitioners of foreign policy. When they do discuss religion, they classify it as an aspect of ideology or identity. Yet, as this article will demonstrate, Islamic scholars and religious institutions can sometimes be just as important as traditional diplomats or the military in the practice of foreign policy. Therefore, this article suggests that more than a mere aspect of ideology or identity, religion can play an active and concrete role in international relations. ⁴ In doing so, it will detail the considerable extent to which Saddam’s regime was able to instrumentalize religion in its foreign affairs, as well as how and why it did so.

THE QUESTION OF SADDAM’S SECULARISM

As mentioned above, there has been some debate recently over whether Saddam abandoned his previously secular ideology and embraced Islamism in the last decade of his rule. This article is primarily concerned with Iraq’s foreign affairs, and thus will not go into detail about Iraq’s domestic policies concerning Islam. Yet, it should be noted that the release of the regime’s archives has only heightened debates over Saddam’s ideology and domestic policies. Joseph Sassoon has argued:

The documents, in numerous instances, clearly indicate that the declared policies and speeches had other dimensions of which we were unaware. One example is the treatment of religiosity in the 1990s: the regime publicly launched a faith campaign but simultaneously, behind the scenes, continued to be anti-religious and to repress any sign of real religiosity. ⁵

In fact, Sassoon has insisted that the Ba‘th Party documents show that the regime remained suspicious of excess piety. ⁶ Aaron Faust’s 2012 dissertation likewise relies heavily on the regime’s archives and also generally supports the argument that no major shift in the regime’s position on Islam took place. ⁷ Nevertheless, an important dissenting view on this topic exists. Amatzia Baram has held fast to his previously articulated argument that the formerly secular regime had “Islamized.” ⁸ In fact, he now argues that the regime moved “From Militant Secularism to Islamism.” ⁹

Whatever the Ba‘th regime’s domestic policy and ideology, its own documentary record (as will be demonstrated below) makes clear that in foreign affairs its outreach to Islamists was not based on a shared ideology. Saddam made this point in a lengthy landmark speech to parliament in March 1996. During the heart of the so-called “faith campaign” that the regime launched in 1993, Saddam focused this important address on the regime’s relations with religious figures and activists. Saddam often made contradictory public statements depending on his audience and immediate goals. This speech, however, is significant in that, several months after it was delivered, Saddam ordered a full 33-page transcript of it to be distributed to national party offices and the party leadership in every province. It was to be read aloud to every Ba‘th party member and to be made the basis of the regime’s policies toward religion. ¹⁰ Thus, the speech can be deemed a reliable indicator of the regime’s actual policy, rather than simply public posturing.

In the speech, Saddam launches several attacks on Islamists and “two-faced” men of religion, who deny the need for Arab unity and replace it with a call for Islamic unity. ¹¹ Saddam rejects this outright, stating “it is not permissible to be fooled by this ruse.” He then states that those who call for Islamic unity are expressing a “tendentious call, even if it covers itself with religion.” ¹² He notes that the regime sees itself as ideologically closest to the “new generation” of “Nasserists in Egypt and Yemen whose call is based on the sincere foundation . . . of nationalism and fighting for it.” ¹³ Nevertheless, Saddam states that he does not assess men of religion or Islamic activists solely by whether they are Ba‘thists or they agree with the regime’s ideology. The regime, he firmly states, will work with those who have supported it. Indeed, he continues, some Islamic activists who do not view the Ba‘thist regime kindly supported it during its wars, “so it is permissible to work with them, and it is not shameful.” ¹⁴

Accordingly, Saddam’s foreign policy was not dependent on shared ideology. It was based on a pragmatic assessment of whether other international actors would support his regime. Thus, the Iraqi regime’s goal was to influence others to support Saddam and the Iraqi Ba‘th Party’s goals. This policy was not only applied to Islamists; the regime employed the same strategy in its relationship with Communists outside Iraq, i.e., the Ba‘thists brutally repressed the Iraqi Communist Party, but allied with sympathetic Communist movements abroad. ¹⁵

The archival record makes clear that the ideas Saddam laid out in his 1996 speech were consistent with the regime’s policy toward Islamists outside Iraq since at least the beginning of Saddam’s presidency in 1979. During the Iran-Iraq war, for instance, Iraqi intelligence reports discussed the various branches of the Muslim Brotherhood, and described each branch’s position on the war. For example, the regime felt the Egyptian branch sided with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, while the Syrian branch supported Iraq. ¹⁶ Therefore, the regime worked with the Syrian, but not the Egyptian branch of the Brotherhood. ¹⁷ Since the early years of the Iran-Iraq war, the regime also maintained good relations with non-Arab Islamists who disliked Khomeini. This was especially true in its dealings with Sunni Pakistanis. ¹⁸

ISLAMIC OUTREACH

In addition to working with Iraq’s natural allies during the Iran-Iraq War (1980–88), namely those who disliked Khomeini and hoped Saddam would defeat him, the Ba‘thist regime also wished to influence other Islamic and Islamist activists who did not openly support the regime. Saddam’s strategy was to use the Ba‘th Party’s time-honored reverence for Islam and its claim that Ba‘thists were believers to emphasize the regime’s Islamic legitimacy, thereby neutralizing the Islamist opposition. How he accomplished this is the subject of the remainder of this article.

In the early 1980s, Saddam had little experience in dealing with international Islamic activists, so he turned to Saudi Arabia for assistance in combating their mutual adversary, Iran. The Saudis dispatched Ma‘ruf al-Dawalibi, an exiled former prime minister of Syria who had been supervising Saudi Arabia’s Islamic diplomacy. Tapping into Saudi networks, Dawalibi helped bring 280 religious scholars and activists from 50 countries to Baghdad for the first Popular Islamic Conference in April 1983. ¹⁹

Through the conference, the Iraqi regime attempted to undermine Iran’s Islam-themed propaganda. For example, the conference’s main finding was that the Qur’an forbade Muslims from fighting each other (49:9). The verse also stipulates that if one party oppresses another, which the conference attendees interpreted as continuing the conflict, then the Islamic community is required to fight against the oppressor. ²⁰ Saddam’s initial assault on Iran had stalled in the first months of the war, and from that point on, he had pressed for a ceasefire. The Iranians refused. Therefore, this finding by the 1983 Popular Islamic Conference corresponded with Iraqi policy goals. In the face of Iranian propaganda that labeled the Iraqi Ba‘th government an infidel regime, this framing of the debate was also useful for Saddam because it depicted both sides as fully Muslim and condemned Iran as being outside God’s ordinance (amr Allah).

Two years later, in 1985, Iraq hosted the Second Popular Islamic Conference in Baghdad. This time, the conference attracted over 300 participants, including the head of the Saudi-sponsored Muslim World League, an official Egyptian delegation, the Moroccan minister of endowments (awqaf), and the director (mudir) of the Deobandi Dar-ul-‘Ulum in Karachi, Pakistan. The conference participants expressed deep frustration with Iran, which had refused the First Popular Islamic Conference’s call to end the Iran-Iraq War. Again, the conference emphasized that both Iran and Iraq were Islamic nations, and that therefore they should live by the imperatives of Islam, which called for an end to intra-religious conflict. ²¹

To best reap the benefits of these conferences, the regime needed to spread the conference findings to the widest possible audience. Therefore, shortly after the Second Popular Islamic Conference, the Iraqi foreign minister, the minister of endowments and religious affairs, the head of Iraqi General Intelligence, and Saddam’s personal secretary met secretly to discuss how best to distribute the conference’s findings abroad. In addition to the open channels discussed during the conference, they also decided to employ their clandestine party and state apparatuses, especially to target Iranians both in Iran and in the Arab Gulf states. ²²

In the latter half of the 1980s, the regime also began to consider whether it could use similar tactics to “neutralize” Sunni Arab Islamists who had supported Iran, such as the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. ²³ In a closed meeting on July 25, 1986, Saddam acknowledged that Ba‘thism and Islamism were incompatible, and that Islamists may gain supporters at the expense of the Ba‘th Party, but, he suggested, “why not neutralize them when there is a chance to do that? We [can] interact with them in a way that will not enable them to say to our faces that we are apostates.” In so doing, Saddam was neither suggesting a shift in regime ideology nor adopting Islamism; rather he was proposing cooperation on a practical, not ideological level. Thus he suggested explaining to the Muslim Brotherhood that “If you stop talking about the religious state, we will stop criticizing the religious state. If you continue to talk about the religious state, we will criticize the religious state but not the Muslim Brotherhood.” ²⁴

In 1987, the regime further expanded these efforts. Iraqi state media began to refer to the Popular Islamic Conference as the “Popular Islamic Conference Organization” (PICO), and the regime allocated a building in Baghdad to be used as its permanent headquarters. ²⁵ PICO then began publishing books on Islam. Most of this “scholarship” sought to demonstrate the heretical and even un-Islamic nature of Khomeini’s Iran by situating the 1979 Islamic Revolution as the latest in a long history of heterodox Shi‘i movements, often with ethnic Persian separatist overtones. Most prominently, these works label the Iranians as adherents of Shu‘ubiyya — a term that describes a movement of (mostly Persian) non-Arabic speakers who resented Arab dominance of Islam during the ‘Abbasid period. ²⁶ In using this terminology, the Ba‘thists hoped to contrast Iran’s Shu‘ubiyya (with the implication that it is illegitimate because it is “Persian”) with Iraqi Arabism’s respect for Islam.

The end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988 did not alter Saddam’s religious policies. During the final years of the decade, he worked to establish more Islamic institutions through which he could better control Iraqi Islam and reach out to potential supporters abroad. The most important of these was the Saddam University for Islamic Studies, which was founded in 1988 in Baghdad, and played a significant role in international affairs. The regime required 50% of the students to be non-Iraqis ²⁷ and for scholarships to be granted to foreign “Islamic associations, organizations, and people who are influential” and who “have positive views of our fighting country.” The purpose of these scholarships was “to create good supporters among Muslims who are sympathetic with our country. . .” ²⁸ The director general of the Office of the Party Secretariat suggested that the university should accept students who have not yet gone to a university so that the regime could better “build the loyalty of the students to Iraq and the Arab nation [umma].” Moreover, he added that outreach efforts should pay particular attention to Africa and Southeast Asia. He believed that the Iranian regime was also focusing its activities in these areas and that Muslims in these regions were very “simple” and held undeveloped Islamic ideas. Thus, “it is easy to influence them.” ²⁹ The regime then used these foreign students to establish contacts and good relations with international Islamic and Islamist organizations. As will be shown below, Saddam had no affinity for these organizations, but he did not hesitate to employ them to meet his regime’s policy goals.

Saddam also used Shi‘i centers of learning for similar purposes. On several occasions in the 1980s, the Ba‘thists considered expelling the hawza ³⁰ from Najaf, but they were afraid that it would simply move to Iran. Instead, the regime decided to strengthen its role “in order to serve the march (of the Ba‘th) and the revolution.” Unlike state universities, however, the regime could not directly control which students were accepted for study in Najaf (that was a right that the senior Shi‘i scholars refused to cede). However, the state could control who received visas to enter Iraq, and it used these visas to control foreign students. The regime ordered the special security services in its embassies to investigate the political and social background of every student and to limit who could receive a visa. As such, the security services would be able to develop a relationship with, and ensure the cooperation of the students. All the students’ information was then forwarded to the security services in Iraq. From there, the regime’s plan continues, “in light of this information, cooperation with these students [while] they are in the country becomes possible. . .” The students were only offered a limited visa and its renewal required that they continue to cooperate with the authorities. One report states that “for the most part, these students come from circles that need financial support, and therefore [the regime] can provide this for them.” It continues, “Through these operations it is possible to influence them [the students] and to supply them with ideas on the Islamic religion and its luminous essence.” But, “As for the students who deviate from this approach, their residency will be revoked and they will be sent back to their countries.” ³¹

THE GULF WAR AS A TRANSITION

Official Iraqi rhetoric during the Gulf Crisis of 1990/91 increasingly instrumentalized Islamic idiom. Soon after the invasion of Kuwait, Saddam called for the “Muslim masses” to rise up. He claimed that the rulers of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia “have not only challenged the Arab and Muslim nations but continued . . . to challenge God when they put the Mecca of the Muslims and the tomb of Prophet Mohammed under the spears of the foreigner.” He then called for Muslims around the world to declare a jihad on Saudi Arabia and its Western allies. ³² Saddam also increasingly employed Islamic symbolism, famously adding the words “God is greater” to the Iraqi flag. This rhetoric, as well as Saddam’s championing of issues that most Islamists supported, such as the Palestinian cause, helped him to court Islamic and Islamist activists abroad both during and after the 1991 conflict.

Yet behind the scenes, regime officials remained skeptical of Islamism and continued to discuss Islam instrumentally. In other words, Islam did not guide the regime’s policies; it was a tool for achieving them. For instance, during a meeting about the American invasion, one of Saddam’s advisors suggested, “Mr. President, we can test Iran from the Islamic perspective and we should incite the Iranian religious scholars, parliament, and civil organizations in any way we can to gain their sympathy and support, along with that of other Islamic countries.” He went on to explain that:

The truth is, sir, an Iranian religious scholar was on Iraqi TV yesterday during the Friday religious ceremony. . . . he had a huge turban and was inciting the audience against the United States and explaining Iraq’s position. In my estimation, there is popular support for us and we should take advantage of it. ³³

This type of rhetoric was not limited to high level meetings or Saddam’s inner circle. Military reports during the First Gulf War were equally calculating when it came to instrumentalizing religion. One such report, for example, orders the Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs to “raise the emotions of hatred and hostility of all Muslims against [the Saudis and their Western allies]. Emphasize that the Islamic holy sites are being violated by foreign forces that entered the holy land and the desecration of the Ka‘ba and the Prophet’s grave.” In doing so, the ministry was to “emphasize jihad for God’s sake to expel the American invaders and their allies.” ³⁴

In an attempt to capitalize on these sentiments, Iraq convened a Popular Islamic Conference on January 9–11, 1991, just days before the UN deadline for Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait. Several prominent delegates such as Jordan’s minister of religious affairs, and notably, the head of Egypt’s Islamic Labor Party (which had been aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood since the mid-1980s ³⁵ ) attended. Saddam addressed the participants and along with the other speakers, he remained obstinate in the face of Western threats. He used the conference as a bid to win over Islamist activists to Iraq’s cause and called for Muslims everywhere to declare jihad if Iraq were attacked. ³⁶

It should not be forgotten, however, that the Popular Islamic Conference was originally a joint Saudi-Iraqi venture. The Saudis obviously took issue with Saddam’s use of the conference to oppose Saudi interests. Therefore, they held their own shadow Popular Islamic Conference in Mecca on the same dates as its Iraqi counterpart. Delegates of the Saudi conference included prominent Saudi scholars, the Shaykh of al-Azhar, and importantly, the chairman of PICO’s executive committee, Ma‘ruf al-Dawalibi. Unsurprisingly, the Saudi Popular Islamic Conference declared that Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait “violated the very principles of Islam,” and that religious scholars who supported Saddam were “committing a sinful act.” ³⁷

The two Popular Islamic Conferences held in January 1991 marked a divide that cut through the Islamic landscape in the Middle East in the aftermath of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. State-sponsored Islam under the regimes that opposed Saddam, such as in Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, vigorously condemned Iraq. The leaders of these states relied on their long established Islamic institutions to issue authoritative proclamations on the conflict. For example, after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, Egypt’s al-Azhar convened its council of scholars and condemned Iraq. Around the same time, the Saudi-sponsored Muslim World League issued a similar ruling, which responded to the military report issued by the Iraqi ministry of endowments and religious affairs that encouraged jihad. The Muslim World League also argued that stationing foreign (i.e., non-Muslim) forces in Saudi Arabia was justified due to the “obvious threat to the Kingdom and other gulf [sic] countries.” ³⁸

Nevertheless, unofficial Islamic religious opinion, as represented most clearly by the Islamist opposition in the aforementioned states, often broke with the opinions of al-Azhar and the Muslim World League. Saddam’s wartime rhetoric linked the American presence in the Arabian Peninsula with the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem in an anti-imperialist master narrative delivered in a Ba‘thized Islamic idiom of good versus evil and Arabs/Muslims versus non-Arabs/infidels. While framing the crisis in these terms appealed to Islamists, it also posed a dilemma for them. Many Islamist organizations now had to deal with the fact that their financial support came from the Gulf states, while their rank and file supported Saddam. At first, this situation produced ambiguous rhetoric from groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood. Yet in the end, pro-Saddam sentiments appear to have won the day. By the conclusion of the conflict, most Islamists succumbed to Saddam’s narrative and became some of his staunchest supporters. ³⁹

An example of this shift can be seen in the evolving stance of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Just hours after the news of Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait reached Egypt, the Brotherhood called for an immediate withdrawal of Iraqi forces. However, as Gehad Auda has argued, “Once Iraq began to rely heavily on Islamic propaganda, and Saddam began to project himself as a reborn Muslim, they came to see the invasion as an expression of hostility between two Islamic forces.” ⁴⁰ By the UN deadline for Iraqi withdrawal, the head of the Egyptian Labor Party’s attendance at the Iraqi Popular Islamic Conference rather than the shadow conference in Mecca, suggests that those sympathetic to the Brotherhood in Egypt sided with Saddam.

Similarly, the Jordanian branch of the Brotherhood, which was initially critical of Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, changed its position in response to the stationing of US troops in the Arabian Peninsula. ⁴¹ If we are to believe Iraqi intelligence reports, the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood, which is normally considered to be nonviolent, also secretly took up arms in support of the Iraqi regime. Iraqi intelligence reported in November 1990 that “a group from the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan is presently smuggling weapons to Saudi Arabia by land with the intention of planning military commando operations against US forces and its allies near Najd and Hijaz.” ⁴²

Of course, not all branches of the Muslim Brotherhood supported Saddam. The Kuwaiti Brotherhood were appalled that their counterparts had justified Iraq’s actions. As a result, the Kuwaiti branch of the Brotherhood officially broke with the International Muslim Brotherhood, though it continued to maintain close ties. ⁴³

ACTIVATING ISLAMIC NETWORKS

In the aftermath of Iraq’s defeat and its expulsion from Kuwait, Saddam doubled down on the instrumentalization of Islam in his foreign policy. He had made valuable alliances with Islamist organizations, which he intended to further develop. Directly after the war, the regime worked to solidify these alliances and utilize them in achieving Iraq’s strategic goals of lifting international sanctions levied against it and alleviating the regime’s postwar isolation. In early June 1991, PICO held an emergency meeting to lay out its strategy. During the first day of the conference, the Iraqi minister of endowments and religious affairs, ‘Abdullah Fadil, made clear the necessity “to coordinate action among Islamic organizations, societies and unions. . .” He then called for “Arabs and Muslims to work hard and put pressure on international organizations so that the unjust economic blockade imposed on Iraq’s Muslim Arab people would be lifted. . .” ⁴⁴ PICO’s calls for coordinated action to meet the regime’s strategic goals continued throughout the decade, ⁴⁵ and as the regime’s records show, it became one of the organization’s primary functions.

After the 1991 war, the Iraqi regime devised a secret strategy to undermine the Kuwaiti regime. It included a proposal to “Work on opening a communication channel with religious groups” because they “reject the foreign presence in Kuwait.” ⁴⁶ A similar plan was created to bring down the Saudi and Egyptian regimes. Thus the Iraqis reached out to various Saudi and Egyptian Islamist opposition groups. In 1994, Saddam’s eldest son, ‘Uday, made contact with Usama Bin Ladin through a Sudanese intermediary. With the approval of Saddam, Iraqi representatives met Bin Ladin in February 1995. Bin Ladin requested that the Iraqis begin broadcasting anti-Saudi religious sermons into Saudi Arabia and to “perform joint operations against the foreign forces in the Hijaz.” Iraqi intelligence informed Saddam of the meeting. Then, with his approval, they created a plan to begin the broadcasts and “to develop the relationship and cooperation between the two sides to see what other doors of cooperation and agreement open up.” After Bin Ladin was expelled from Sudan in 1996, Iraqi intelligence reported to Saddam that, “The information we have indicates that he is currently in Afghanistan. The relationship with him is ongoing through the Sudanese side. Currently, we are working to activate this relationship through a new channel in light of his present location.” ⁴⁷ There is no evidence that any operations were eventually planned or carried out and the extent of this relationship remains vague. Nevertheless, these documents make clear that, although he was wary and even fearful of Bin Ladin and al-Qa‘ida’s ideology, Saddam felt he could work with Bin Ladin on mutually beneficial operations.

As such, Iraqi outreach efforts were not limited to any particular sect or ideology, which reflected the regime’s willingness to work with any group that would help to achieve its goals. Unlike members of more theologically rigid Sunni organizations, PICO scholars had no problem saluting the Shi‘a-led “Islamic resistance in southern Lebanon” or working with Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam in the US, whom many Sunnis considered to be heterodox. ⁴⁸ The relationship with Farrakhan is particularly telling and should give pause to anyone who believes that Iraqi outreach efforts were based on sincere ideological affinity. The regime named Farrakhan as both the American representative to the Popular Islamic Conference Organization and a member of its board, ⁴⁹ but it is clear that Saddam did not share his views. In fact, when one of Saddam’s advisors later mentioned Farrakhan during a 2001 discussion on reorganizing the Iraqi intelligence service, Saddam replied “By God, I do not like them. I do not like those who engage in politics under the guise of religion. I don’t trust them.” ⁵⁰

Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, the regime also continued to use Saddam University for Islamic Studies and the Shi‘i holy cities in southern Iraq to build networks of spies and international Islamic activists who would work for the regime. Beginning in 1992, the university increased its outreach to Islamic and Islamist activists abroad. These efforts were coordinated between the university, the intelligence services, the foreign ministry, the ministry of endowments and religious affairs, and PICO. The regime targeted Islamic charitable associations throughout the Middle East, Europe, and North America, as well as a wide range of Islamist movements and prominent individuals, which it felt were sympathetic to Iraq’s position. The ideologies of those targeted varied widely, from the Muslim Brotherhood, to Palestinian Islamic Jihad, to influential preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi, to completely apolitical Islamic charities and educational institutions in the West. These organizations and people were asked to nominate students who would be granted scholarships to study in Baghdad with the hope that they would become advocates for the regime in their home countries. ⁵¹

Shi‘i religious institutions in Iraq also continued playing a role in recruiting international activists and spies to work for the Sunni-dominated regime. In the mid-1990s, Saddam allowed Iranians to begin making the pilgrimage to the Shi‘i holy cities in southern Iraq. In public, he presented this as a goodwill gesture, but the regime’s documents reveal that it also developed a plan “to use our intelligence to recruit the Iranian visitors to the holy place to work for us.” This included opening two intelligence centers — one in Najaf and another in Karbala — which would be used “to build relations with the owners of all shops, restaurants, cafes, and hotels near the shrines of the Imams.” Then they would work on recruiting spies by means of “rewards, interests, public benefit, threatening and blackmail.” ⁵²

PICO’s primary mission during this period was to use the resulting networks to pressure the international community to end Iraq’s postwar isolation, lift UN sanctions, and undermine any Islamic opposition to the Iraqi regime. Often, PICO’s pleas in this regard were couched in Islamic justifications, such as “Islam and Muslims prohibit besieging other Muslims [in this case Iraqis] and consider this a sin. . .” ⁵³ Despite these references to Islamic principles, however, PICO officials were interested first and foremost in attaining Iraq’s strategic goals. Any debates about Islam were clearly secondary to strengthening the regime. To the extent that PICO did refer to Islam, it was always in support of these goals.

It must be remembered that Iraq’s diplomatic situation was quite tenuous during this period. Saddam had made enemies throughout the region, was considered a pariah in the West, and was in desperate financial straits. Nevertheless, by working through the auspices of Islamic organizations, and employing loyal Iraqi religious scholars — which by this point it had co-opted, coerced, or created from scratch in institutions such as the Saddam University for Islamic Studies — the regime was able to reach out to states and NGOs that would have been off limits to traditional diplomacy. In that sense, PICO began to function as a shadow diplomatic corps. It was PICO’s secretary general in the 1990s, ‘Abd al-Razzaq al-Sa‘di, who led these efforts. In addition to his status as an Islamic scholar, the regime issued Sa‘di a diplomatic passport, and he led several religio-diplomatic missions to states in which traditional diplomacy would have been difficult, such as in the Gulf. He also corresponded with Islamic leaders worldwide on the regime’s behalf and designated foreign Islamic activists who were willing to help the regime as the heads of PICO branches in their respective countries. ⁵⁴

Sa‘di’s missions to places like Iran and Saudi Arabia were often diplomatically sensitive. ⁵⁵ Their primary aim was to build and reinforce networks of sympathetic Islamic scholars and activists who would support the Iraqi regime. Sa‘di also conducted more traditional diplomacy by meeting with officials from foreign regimes (many of whom were not on good terms with Saddam) in an effort to ease Iraq’s isolation. ⁵⁶ Relations with Saudi Arabia in particular, were conducted almost exclusively through the auspices of Islamic organizations. Iraq did not have official diplomatic representation in Riyadh. However, it did maintain a consulate at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation headquarters in Jidda, through which the country managed its relations with the Saudis. In that sense, diplomacy that would have been difficult through traditional means was made possible under the auspices of Islam.

Perhaps the best example of Sa‘di’s unusual role in Iraq’s foreign relations was demonstrated during his visit to Russia in 2000. In addition to reaching out to local Islamic leaders, he also met with the director general of the Russian oil company Bashneft and concluded an agreement on “exchanging specialists and high school professors as well as exchanging gas and oil processing technologies.” ⁵⁷ These are not activities that one expects from a traditional religious scholar.

ISLAMIC NETWORKS IN TIMES OF CRISIS

A closer look at how Iraq employed its Islamic networks during a crisis further highlights the regime’s implementation of this strategy. In February 1998, as debates over weapons inspections increased and the US threatened military action, a Popular Islamic Conference convened in Baghdad. The regime used the event as a public platform to argue that “the states of infidelity and aggression are launching an unjust campaign and making false allegations.” ⁵⁸ PICO delegates then marched through Baghdad, setting fire to American and Israeli flags outside the UN headquarters and called for an end to “aggression against Iraq and its people. . .” ⁵⁹

More important, however, was what occurred outside Iraq. At the same time as the conference convened in Baghdad, the general guide of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Mustafa Mashhur, came to the Ba‘th regime’s defense, publishing an essay entitled, “This Harassment of Iraq,” which condemned the United States and Britain. On February 10, Egypt’s Islamist press then covered what it termed “mammoth” pro-Iraq demonstrations in Egypt that the Brotherhood had helped organize. ⁶⁰ It was not an accident that these actions organized by the Brotherhood coincided with the Popular Islamic Conference in Baghdad. Rather it was a sign of the coordination for which PICO had been working. As discussed above, during the 1990/91 crisis, Saddam’s advisor highlighted the benefits of “inciting” foreign religious leaders. The regime did this not only through overt propaganda, but also through the secret channels and networks it had established. For example, an Iraqi diplomatic cable, sent throughout the Middle East as American forces were threatening to attack Iraq in 2002, instructs embassies to “use your relationship with religious scholars in the mosques in your areas to speak about the subject during Friday sermons and religious holidays and to clarify the implications of the attack as an assault against Islam and the Arab nation. . .” ⁶¹ As this cable makes clear, the regime had actively constructed a network of sympathetic religious leaders abroad (and we can assume it had been active only four years earlier).

During the 1998 crisis, ⁶² the regime’s efforts were not only effective in Egypt; as some Western observers have argued that throughout this period, the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood also acted as an arm of an “Iraqi Lobby.” ⁶³ Indeed, during the same February 1998 Popular Islamic Conference, several thousand Jordanian Islamists took to the streets in support of Saddam. These demonstrations ended in a violent clash with Jordanian security forces. ⁶⁴ During an era in which Iraq had few allies, this type of political warfare was often Saddam’s most powerful and effective means to influence other states.

CONCLUSION

During the FBI interrogation of Saddam Husayn after his capture in 2004, the ousted Iraqi president condemned mixing religion and politics and claimed that religious fanaticism had “interfered” with the minds of people like his former rival, the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. ⁶⁵ As this article has attempted to prove based on the Ba‘thist regime’s own archival record, Saddam maintained deep reservations about Islamism until the end. However, this did not prevent his regime from working extensively with Islamists and Islamic activists outside Iraq. Indeed, religion played a leading role in the country’s foreign policy throughout the 1990s. The Iraqi regime implemented this policy through a calculated program of building institutions and networks, which it could then employ to meet its objectives. As such, Saddam’s instrumentalization of religion both suggests an active role for religion in foreign policy and opens the way for further research on the extent to which religion can be employed in international relations.