|
Iraq
THE EMERGENCE OF SADDAM HUSAYN, 1968-79
The Baath of 1968 was more tightly organized and more determined
to stay in power than the Baath of 1963. The demise of Nasserism
following the June 1967 War and the emergence of a more parochially
oriented Baath in Syria freed the Iraqi Baath from the debilitating
aspects of pan-Arabism. In 1963 Nasser had been able to manipulate
domestic Iraqi politics; by 1968 his ideological pull had waned,
enabling the Iraqi Baath to focus on pressing domestic issues.
The party also was aided by a 1967 reorganization that created
a militia and an intelligence apparatus and set up local branches
that gave the Baath broader support. In addition, by 1968 close
family and tribal ties bound the Baath's ruling clique. Most notable
in this regard was the emergence of Tikritis--Sunni Arabs from
the northwest town of Tikrit--related to Ahmad Hasan al Bakr.
Three of the five members of the Baath's Revolutionary Command
Council (RCC) were Tikritis; two, Bakr and Hammad Shihab, were
related to each other. The cabinet posts of president, prime minister,
and defense minister went to Tikritis. Saddam Husayn, a key leader
behind the scenes, also was a Tikriti and a relative of Bakr.
Another distinguishing characteristic of the Baath in 1968 was
that the top leadership consisted almost entirely of military
men. Finally, Bakr was a much more seasoned politician in 1968
than he had been in 1963.
Less than two months after the formation of the Bakr government,
a coalition of pro-Nasser elements, Arif supporters, and conservatives
from the military attempted another coup. This event provided
the rationale for numerous purges directed by Bakr and Saddam
Husayn. Between 1968 and 1973, through a series of sham trials,
executions, assassinations, and intimidations, the party ruthlessly
eliminated any group or person suspected of challenging Baath
rule. The Baath also institutionalized its rule by formally issuing
a Provisional Constitution in July 1970. This document was a modification
of an earlier constitution that had been issued in September 1968.
The Provisional Constitution, which with some modifications is
still in effect, granted the party-dominated RCC extensive powers
and declared that new RCC members must belong to the party's Regional
Command--the top policy-making and executive body of the Baathist
organization (see Constitutional Framework , ch. 4).
Two men, Saddam Husayn and Bakr, increasingly dominated the party.
Bakr, who had been associated with Arab nationalist causes for
more than a decade, brought the party popular legitimacy. Even
more important, he brought support from the army both among Baathist
and non-Baathist officers, with whom he had cultivated ties for
years. Saddam Husayn, on the other hand, was a consummate party
politician whose formative experiences were in organizing clandestine
opposition activity. He was adept at outmaneuvering--and at times
ruthlessly eliminating--political opponents. Although Bakr was
the older and more prestigious of the two, by 1969 Saddam Husayn
clearly had become the moving force behind the party. He personally
directed Baathist attempts to settle the Kurdish question and
he organized the party's institutional structure.
In July 1973, after an unsuccessful coup attempt by a civilian
faction within the Baath led by Nazim Kazzar, the party set out
to reconsolidate its hold on power. First, the RCC amended the
Provisional Constitution to give the president greater power.
Second, in early 1974 the Regional Command was officially designated
as the body responsible for making policy (see The Revolutionary
Command Council , ch. 4). By September 1977, all Regional Command
leaders had been appointed to the RCC. Third, the party created
a more pervasive presence in Iraqi society by establishing a complex
network of grass-roots and intelligence-gathering organizations.
Finally, the party established its own militia, which in 1978
was reported to number close to 50,000 men.
Despite Baath attempts to institutionalize its rule, real power
remained in the hands of a narrowly based elite, united by close
family and tribal ties. By 1977 the most powerful men in the Baath
thus were all somehow related to the triumvirate of Saddam Husayn,
Bakr, and General Adnan Khayr Allah Talfah, Saddam Husayn's brother-in-law
who became minister of defense in 1978. All were members of the
party, the RCC, and the cabinet, and all were members of the Talfah
family of Tikrit, headed by Khayr Allah Talfah. Khayr Allah Talfah
was Saddam Husayn's uncle and guardian, Adnan Khayr Allah's father,
and Bakr's cousin. Saddam Husayn was married to Adnan Khayr Allah's
sister and Adnan Khayr Allah was married to Bakr's daughter. Increasingly,
the most sensitive military posts were going to the Tikritis.
Beginning in the mid-1970s, Bakr was beset by illness and by
a series of family tragedies. He increasingly turned over power
to Saddam Husayn. By 1977 the party bureaus, the intelligence
mechanisms, and even ministers who, according to the Provisional
Constitution, should have reported to Bakr, reported to Saddam
Husayn. Saddam Husayn, meanwhile, was less inclined to share power,
and he viewed the cabinet and the RCC as rubber stamps. On July
16, 1979, President Bakr resigned, and Saddam Husayn officially
replaced him as president of the republic, secretary general of
the Baath Party Regional Command, chairman of the RCC, and commander
in chief of the armed forces.
In foreign affairs, the Baath's pan-Arab and socialist leanings
alienated both the pro-Western Arab Gulf states and the shah of
Iran. The enmity between Iraq and Iran sharpened with the 1969
British announcement of a planned withdrawal from the Gulf in
1971. In February 1969, Iran announced that Iraq had not fulfilled
its obligations under the 1937 treaty and demanded that the border
in the Shatt al Arab waterway be set at the thalweg. Iraq's refusal
to honor the Iranian demand led the shah to abrogate the 1937
treaty and to send Iranian ships through the Shatt al Arab without
paying dues to Iraq. In response, Iraq aided anti-shah dissidents,
while the shah renewed support for Kurdish rebels. Relations between
the two countries soon deteriorated further. In November 1971,
the shah occupied the islands of Abu Musa and the Greater and
Lesser Tunbs, which previously had been under the sovereignty
of Ras al Khaymah and Sharjah, both member states of the United
Arab Emirates.
The Iraqi Baath also was involved in a confrontation with the
conservative shaykhdoms of the Gulf over Iraq's support for the
leftist People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (South Yemen) and
the Popular Front for the Liberation of the Occupied Arabian Gulf.
The major contention between Iraq and the conservative Gulf states,
however, concerned the Kuwaiti islands of Bubiyan and Warbah that
dominate the estuary leading to the southern Iraqi port of Umm
Qasr. Beginning in the early 1970s, Iraq's desire to develop a
deep-water port on the Gulf led to demands that the two islands
be transferred or leased to Iraq. Kuwait refused, and in March
1973 Iraqi troops occupied As Samitah, a border post in the northeast
corner of Kuwait. Saudi Arabia immediately came to Kuwait's aid
and, together with the Arab League, obtained Iraq's withdrawal.
The most serious threat facing the Baath was a resurgence of
Kurdish unrest in the north. ln March 1970, the RCC and Mustafa
Barzani announced agreement to a fifteen-article peace plan. This
plan was almost identical to the previous Bazzaz-Kurdish settlement
that had never been implemented. The Kurds were immediately pacified
by the settlement, particularly because Barzani was permitted
to retain his 15,000 Kurdish troops. Barzani's troops then became
an official Iraqi frontier force called the Pesh Merga, meaning
"Those Who Face Death." The plan, however, was not completely
satisfactory because the legal status of the Kurdish territory
remained unresolved. At the time of the signing of the peace plan,
Barzani's forces controlled territory from Zakhu in the north
to Halabjah in the southeast and already had established de facto
Kurdish administration in most of the towns of the area. Barzani's
group, the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), was granted official
recognition as the legitimate representative of the Kurdish people.
The 1970 agreement unraveled throughout the early 1970s. After
the March 1974 Baath attempt to assassinate Barzani and his son
Idris, full-scale fighting broke out. In early 1974, it appeared
that the Baath had finally succeeded in isolating Barzani and
the KDP by coopting the ICP and by signing a treaty with the Soviet
Union, both traditionally strong supporters of the KDP. Barzani,
however, compensated for the loss of Soviet and ICP support by
obtaining military aid from the shah of Iran and from the United
States, both of which were alarmed by increasing Soviet influence
in Iraq. When Iraqi forces reached Rawanduz, threatening to block
the major Kurdish artery to Iran, the shah increased the flow
of military supplies to the Kurdish rebels. Using antitank missiles
and artillery obtained from Iran as well as military aid from
Syria and Israel, the KDP inflicted heavy losses on the Iraqi
forces. To avoid a costly stalemate like that which had weakened
his predecessors, Saddam Husayn sought an agreement with the shah.
In Algiers on March 6, 1975, Saddam Husayn signed an agreement
with the shah that recognized the thalweg as the boundary in the
Shatt al Arab, legalized the shah's abrogation of the 1937 treaty
in 1969, and dropped all Iraqi claims to Iranian Khuzestan and
to the islands at the foot of the Gulf. In return, the shah agreed
to prevent subversive elements from crossing the border. This
agreement meant an end to Iranian assistance to the Kurds. Almost
immediately after the signing of the Algiers Agreement, Iraqi
forces went on the offensive and defeated the Pesh Merga, which
was unable to hold out without Iranian support. Under an amnesty
plan, about 70 percent of the Pesh Merga surrendered to the Iraqis.
Some remained in the hills of Kurdistan to continue the fight,
and about 30,000 crossed the border to Iran to join the civilian
refugees, then estimated at between 100,000 and 200,000.
Even before the fighting broke out in March 1974, Saddam Husayn
had offered the Kurds the most comprehensive autonomy plan ever
proposed. The major provisions of the plan stated that Kurdistan
would be an autonomous area governed by an elected legislative
and an executive council, the president of which would be appointed
by the Iraqi head of state. The Kurdish council would have control
over local affairs except in the areas of defense and foreign
relations, which would be controlled by the central government.
The autonomous region did not include the oil-rich district of
Kirkuk. To facilitate the autonomy plan, Saddam Husayn's administration
helped form three progovernment Kurdish parties, allocated a special
budget for development in Kurdish areas, and repatriated many
Kurdish refugees then living in Iran.
In addition to the conciliatory measures offered to the Kurds,
Saddam Husayn attempted to weaken Kurdish resistance by forcibly
relocating many Kurds from the Kurdish heartland in the north,
by introducing increasing numbers of Arabs into mixed Kurdish
provinces, and by razing all Kurdish villages along a 1,300 kilometer
stretch of the border with Iran. Saddam Husayn's combination of
conciliation and severity failed to appease the Kurds, and renewed
guerrilla attacks occurred as early as March 1976. At the same
time, the failure of the KDP to obtain significant concessions
from the Iraqi government caused a serious split within the Kurdish
resistance. In June 1975, Jalal Talabani formed the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan (PUK). The PUK was urban-based and more leftist
than the tribally based KDP. Following Barzani's death in 1975,
Barzani's sons, Idris and Masud, took control of the KDP. In October
1979, Masud officially was elected KDP chairman. He issued a new
platform calling for continued armed struggle against the Baath
through guerrilla warfare. The effectiveness of the KDP, however,
was blunted by its violent intra-Kurdish struggle with the PUK
throughout 1978 and 1979.
Beginning in 1976, with the Baath firmly in power and after the
Kurdish rebellion had been successfully quelled, Saddam Husayn
set out to consolidate his position at home by strengthening the
economy. He pursued a state-sponsored industrial modernization
program that tied an increasing number of Iraqis to the Baath-controlled
government. Saddam Husayn's economic policies were largely successful;
they led to a wider distribution of wealth, to greater social
mobility, to increased access to education and health care, and
to the redistribution of land. The quadrupling of oil prices in
1973 and the subsequent oil price rises brought on by the 1979
Islamic Revolution in Iran greatly enhanced the success of Saddam
Husayn's program. The more equitable distribution of income tied
to the ruling party many Iraqis who had previously opposed the
central government. For the first time in modern Iraqi history,
a government--albeit at times a ruthless one, had thus achieved
some success in forging a national community out of the country's
disparate social elements.
Success on the economic front spurred Saddam Husayn to pursue
an ambitious foreign policy aimed at pushing Iraq to the forefront
of the Arab world. Between 1975 and 1979, a major plank of Saddam
Husayn's bid for power in the region rested on improved relations
with Iran, with Saudi Arabia, and with the smaller Gulf shaykhdoms.
In 1975 Iraq established diplomatic relations with Sultan Qabus
of Oman and extended several loans to him. In 1978 Iraq sharply
reversed its support for the Marxist regime in South Yemen. The
biggest boost to Saddam Husayn's quest for regional power, however,
resulted from Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's signing the Camp
David Accords in November 1978.
Saddam Husayn viewed Egypt's isolation within the Arab world
as an opportunity for Iraq to play a leading role in Arab affairs.
He was instrumental in convening an Arab summit in Baghdad that
denounced Sadat's reconciliation with Israel and imposed sanctions
on Egypt. He also attempted to end his long- standing feud with
Syrian President Hafiz al Assad, and, in June 1979, Saddam Husayn
became the first Iraqi head of state in twenty years to visit
Jordan. In Amman, Saddam Husayn concluded a number of agreements
with King Hussein, including one for the expansion of the port
of Aqabah, regarded by Iraq as a potential replacement for ports
in Lebanon and Syria.
Data as of May 1988
|
