FRIENDS IN NEED, FOES TO HEED: THE IRAQI MILITARY IN POLITICS(1).

Parasiliti, Andrew ; Antoon, Sinan

"... With such methods, there is no chance for anyone who disagrees with us to jump on a couple of tanks and overthrow the government."

-- Saddam Hussein, 1971, on the Baathization of the Iraqi army

"The good military [man] is the good Baathist"

-- Famous Baathist slogan

While the scenarios for a post-Saddam Iraq differ in many ways, all assign a major role to the military, which many rightly view as the only institution capable of bringing about a change of regime in Iraq.(2) The military continues to be the final arbiter of political power, the "independent variable" in modern Iraqi history, determining which regimes remain and which regimes fall. This legacy of intervention reveals the country's lack of democratic institutions and processes, and complicates the prospects for a democratic transition after Saddam Hussein. Understanding the role of the military in a post-Saddam Iraq therefore requires a wide historical lens that takes into account the effects of ideology, colonialism, dictatorship and war on Iraq's political culture.

POLITICAL AND IDEOLOGICAL TRENDS

To attempt to understand the role of the military in Iraqi political culture, we must begin with the early political environment of Iraq. As a post-colonial nation-state with at times conflicting and contending identities and political trends, and without fully-formed or viable sociopolitical institutions to articulate them, the armed forces were bound to become a national melting pot of sorts, where a new Iraqi subject could be produced and where the image of the nation could be projected. Thus, the military can serve as an institution that reflects the emergence and growth of certain ideological trends in Iraqi politics, including nationalist currents that eventually led to the rise of the Baath party.

When the Iraqi army was formed on January 6, 1921, King Faisal deemed it "the spinal column of the young nation and a protective force the government could use as a deterrent against any popular resistance or uprising."(3) From its inception, the Iraqi army's first order of business was maintaining regime security, not defending the state's borders. The latter role remained the domain of the British armed forces throughout the mandatory period and beyond. The tension inherent in these two roles -- gendarme for the ruling regime and defender of the country's borders -- would spill over into the wider arena of Iraqi politics throughout the modern period.

The formative period, from 1921 until Iraq's formal independence in 1932, saw little organized political activity within the armed forces.(4) Some Iraqi officers, however, were members of, or had contacts with, certain political movements and societies (such as al-Ahd). Al-Hizb al-Watani (the National party) was active in establishing links with senior officers in the thirties.(5) In 1931, the Iraqi Communist party (ICP) formed its first cell in the army.(6)

The embryonic nature of Iraq's political institutions, the increasing restlessness of its officers and students, and the weakness of the Iraqi monarchy ushered in the era of military interventions. The death of King Faisal I in September 1933 and the succession of Ghazi, his only son, to the throne signaled this new period in Iraqi politics. Ghazi had attended Iraq's Military College and identified with the ideological spirit there. The radical and nationalist ideologies that swept both Europe and the Arab world during the inter-war period contained a strong element of militarism. Iraq's education system, the Military College and associated institutions propagated these ideas among Iraq's youth.

A central figure in introducing this militant nationalism into Iraq's education program, and a major influence on Saddam's own militarist discourse, was Sami Shawkat, who served as director general of education (1931-33; 1939; 1940) and minister of education (1940). Shawkat is well known for, among other things, his 1933 speech, Sinaat al-Mawt (The Manufacture of Death), in which he argued that the ability to cause and accept death in pursuit of pan-Arab ideals was the highest calling. He was a prominent member of the Muthanna Club, which sponsored many lectures on pan-Arabism. Shawkat introduced military-style education into Iraq's curriculum, including uniforms for both teachers and students. In 1939, he instituted Al-Futuwwa, a paramilitary youth organization. Shawkat's promotion of a nationalist education system and vanguard youth organization foreshadowed the Popular Army and youth organizations of the Baath party four decades later.(7) His influence on the later more intense militarization of Iraqi society under the Baath can be detected in Saddam's discourse. Ofra Bengio notes that Saddam often paraphrases and recasts Shawkat's ideas and sentences in his own speeches.(8)

The education at Iraq's Military College, which opened its doors in 1924, reinforced the nationalist and anti-British educational approach of Sami Shawkat and his associates. Although British and Iraqi officers taught the classes and used British manuals translated into Arabic, young cadets became exposed to the radical and revolutionary nationalist ideologies of the time. Tawfiq Husayn, a lecturer in military history, indoctrinated young Iraqi military officers into the ways of Arab nationalism, Iraqi-style. Husayn, who was educated in the Ottoman military system and had served in the Turkish army, encouraged an interventionist military role in Iraqi political affairs. He soon had around him a coterie of military officers weaned on nationalist doctrine. Among those influenced by Husayn included officers who supported both Bakr Sidqi and the "Four Colonels" who backed Rashid Ali in 1941.(9)

The pan-Arabism of Iraq's educational and military systems encouraged an activist worldview centered on Arab unity, anti-imperialism and, over time, the question of Palestine. The young military officers and students of the period became indoctrinated in an ideology that challenged the pro-British inclination of the Iraqi monarchy and the pre-revolutionary era's most formidable politician, General Nuri al-Said. The nationalist, ideological bent of Iraq's new officer classes eventually influenced both the Free Officer movement that overthrew the monarchy in 1958, and the Baath officers who took power in 1963 and 1968. Ghazi also laid Iraq's first public claim to Kuwait, raising a volatile issue that reached its violent and tragic climax under Saddam Hussein.(10)

THE MEANING OF THE "ASSYRIAN AFFAIR"

Ghazi had foreshadowed his nationalist inclinations during the so-called "Assyrian affair" in the months prior to his ascension to the throne. The Assyrians were easy targets for nationalist provocateurs in both the government and the military. The architect of the eventual massacre was General Bakr Sidqi, who, though of Kurdish origin, espoused the demagogic nationalist rhetoric of the day.(11)

The Assyrian affair is noteworthy for the precedents it set with regard to the role of the military in Iraq's politics. The government sought to capitalize on popular support for the Assyrian pogrom in order to expand the size and influence of the military in the guise of containing possible threats in both the north and south of the country. The Iraqi parliament passed the first mandatory conscription bill in 1934 against opposition from both tribal leaders and the British government. The military thereafter was a career path for a generation of young men from all classes and regions of Iraq.

The advent of conscription helped to break down traditional bonds of loyalty based upon tribe and religion, replacing them with secular notions of national and especially pan-Arab identity. The ideological indoctrination of Iraq's officer class undermined the state-building role that militaries have traditionally played in some developing societies.

One should note that from this period forward "the military" should not necessarily be viewed as a "unitary actor" in Iraqi politics. The armed forces became a favored institution for those ideologically committed to an independent and nationalist path for Iraq. Nationalists within the military included both "Iraq-first" and pan-Arab currents, a schism that has colored Iraqi nationalist movements since. In addition to the nationalist parties, the Iraqi Communist party also had its followers among Iraq's new officers.(12)

The Assyrian affair also set a precedent for the military's role as guardian of Iraq's unity from domestic enemies, rather than neighboring powers. Here is where the army would have its most notable "successes," such as the subsequent campaigns against the tribes of southern Iraq and the Kurds of the north.(13) In a similar vein, another tragedy of the Assyrian affair is that it foreshadowed the tactics of a later era, portraying an act of political violence under the guise of nationalism as an anti-imperialist crusade. The precedent of "foreign enemies" necessitating extreme actions at home became an unfortunate mainstay of Iraqi and particularly Baath politics.(14)

THE MILITARY AND THE BAATH

Despite well-documented conflicts, purges and regular coup attempts, the Baath and the military draw from an interconnected nationalist background and experience. The Baath party could not have pulled off two coups and two wars without the cooperation and complicity of its members in Iraq's armed forces. Hanna Batatu suggests that the rise of members hailing from Takrit (the hometown of Saddam Hussein and Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr, among others) has to do with the positioning of Takriti men in the Royal Military Academy and their ability, through their party and family connections, to outlive rival parties and clans.(16)

The experience of the first Baathist regime (February-November 1963) provided a high-stakes case study for the party's second and more long-lasting bid in 1968. Foreshadowing the events of five years hence, the Baath party had allied itself with nationalist military figures to bring about the removal of the government in power. Although Staff Marshall Abd-al Salam Arif ruled in title if not deed as president of the republic following the coup, real power came to the hands of Baath party figures, especially Ali Saleh Al-Saadi and his colleagues from the civilian wing of the party. Al-Saadi sought to cut the power of Arif and the military, many of whose officers betrayed Nasserite leanings, to give more weight to the National Guard (al-Haras al-Qawmi), a popular-based, paramilitary force placed under the command of Colonel Mundhir al-Windawi, a trusted officer-Baathist. The Guard, which grew from a force of 5,000 in February to 34,000 by August, challenged military officers and their authority, and its actions and abuses earned it a nefarious reputation. When political rivalries spilled into open conflict in November, Arif, who had for a time stood a middle ground, finally called out his troops and put an end to the excesses of the party and its paramilitary wing, ending the short, brutal history of the first Baath regime.(17)

In reviewing the lessons learned from 1963, the party articulated its troubled relationship with the military by blaming the demise of the first Baath regime on "a dominant rightist military aristocracy cut off from the army, the people and the national movement."(18) Once in power the second time around, the Baath party sought to make the armed forces into an instrument of foreign policy, not subversion. Baathist ideology gave "urgent" priority to consolidating its leadership in the military, purging "suspect elements" and integrating the "armed forces with the people's movement, directed by the party, and [ensuring] its effective contribution to the revolutionary enterprise."(19) Toward this end, the party "managed ... to install its own, very substantial and effective organization in the armed forces. Supervised by the party leadership, it has played its part as an avant-garde."(20) The Baath regime also established the General Intelligence Directorate, composed of party members and apparatchiks, to consolidate its power over internal police and security operations.

Saddam Hussein thereby sought to reduce the influence of military officers in Iraqi politics. The concept of "al-jaysh al-aqaidi," the "indoctrinated" or "ideological" army, came to the fore in the justificatory discourse of the regime. Fadhil al-Barrak, the erstwhile director of General Security, and later the Mukhabarat, defined the indoctrinated army as "the militant tool of the leading Baath party to fulfill its aims and objectives ... enriched with the overwhelming feeling of historical responsibility."(21) The Baath government purged and "Baathized" the officer corps by eliminating rivals, including the officer-Baathists that had been the backbone of the party and the 1968 coup-d'etat (among them Abdelrazzaq al-Nayif and Hardan al-Takariti), and staffing key posts with Baathists of proven loyalty, essentially those reflecting tribal affiliations and patronage networks deemed more reliable than simple proven competence and military service. In 1973, Mudiriyyat al-Tawjih al-Siyasi, the Directorate of Political Guidance, was established to further insure ideological indoctrination of all facets of the Iraqi army.(22) A famous slogan from the second Baath era crystallized this trend: al-askari al-jayyid huwa al-Baathi al-jayyid (The good military [man] is the good Baathist).

In 1970, the Baath party converted the National Guard to the Popular Army (al-Jaysh al-Shabi), which operated as a militia independently of the armed forces.(23) The Popular Army (also known as the people's army or party militia) assumed responsibility for internal security, propagation of Baathist ideology and protection of the regime from subversion by the regular armed forces. It included the Youth Vanguard, a paramilitary organization for secondary school students founded in 1975. Although no reliable figures are available, the Iraqi government claimed that by 1982, the Popular Army had 450,000 "active participants," both men and women, located in towns and villages throughout Iraq.(24)

The "Baathization" of Iraq's officer corps undermined morale and professionalism. Party apparatchiks in the armed services, including members of the Popular Army and the regime's security organs, challenged traditional military lines of authority. In the late 1970s, the Iraqi government set about purging Communist cells in the military as part of its crackdown on the Iraqi Communist party.

Saddam Hussein's policies proved effective in reducing the influence of military officers in the government's inner councils. Immediately after the July 1968 coup, the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) consisted entirely of military officers. By 1986, career officers played no significant role on the RCC, replaced by civilian party officials who owed their allegiance to Saddam Hussein.(25)

In undertaking these policies, the Baath party had recognized and implemented a strategy to undercut the military as an agent of potential subversion against those in power. At the same time, Saddam Hussein spent millions earned from Iraq's oil revenues to expand Iraq's military capabilities and make the armed forces an instrument of foreign policy, not insurrection. The second Baath regime articulated a more elaborate and refined ideological position towards Iraq's international and pan-Arab roles and responsibilities, but this time around the regime set out on a course to develop the economic and military capability to undertake a regional bid for dominance.

Batatu concludes that although the civilian wing of the party sought and achieved primacy over the officers by the mid- 1970s, it would be a mistake to view this as a zero-sum contest. Instead, despite the clear tensions in these competing wings of the Party, he sees the civilian wing of the second Baathi regime as more, not less, reliant on the officers for maintaining power. He writes that "so long as the Baath continues to be characterized by the insubstantiability [sic] of its ideological links and the volatility of its mass support, its ultimate reliance on the army is inescapable."(26)

THE IRAQ-IRAN WAR

The war with Iran presented an opportunity to change the troubled relationship between the government and the armed forces. The Baath party credited the war for the emergence of a "deep, strong and creative Iraqi nationalism, ... for the first time linked to the Arab nationalist bond."(27) The idea that war plays a vital role in the evolution of nationalism is common in the international-relations literature dealing with state development and evolution. Raymond Aron wrote that "nations have rarely achieved an expression of their will as states without the intercession of force."(28) In observing the situation in Iraq, Frederick W. Axelgard wrote that the war might have indeed contributed to a "potential transformation of political-military relations" in Iraq because it forced the Iraqi military into a newfound role: defending the country against a foreign enemy, rather than meddling in Iraq's domestic politics.(29) Not surprisingly, the increase in the military's size and capabilities that began in the 1970s continued and expanded during the eight-year conflict. Furthermore, that Iraq's Shia community did not cut and run signaled to Axelgard and other observers that "the war has probably exerted a decisive, consolidating influence on Iraqi politics by cementing the national loyalty of Iraq's Shiis."(30)

Culturally, the intense mobilization on all levels produced a body of nationalist material. As there were few patriotic songs before 1980, in the first few days of the war the TV and radio aired songs produced mostly in Egypt and Syria from previous wars against Israel. By the end of the war, there were hundreds of songs, poems and novels in celebration of Iraq. In addition to the Ministry of Culture's Literature of War Series (Silsilat Adab al-Harb), the Directorate of Political Guidance produced a daily newspaper for the armed forces, al-Qadisiyya, and oversaw the army Theater (al-Masrah al-Askari). Cultural policy reinforced the regime's nationalist rhetoric and propaganda and sought to portray Baghdad as the cultural capital of the Arab world, hosting tens of festivals that glorified and legitimized Iraq's status as the "eastern flank" of the Arab world.

Furthermore, the regime calculated that the loyalty and stamina of Iraq's officers and soldiers could not be guaranteed solely by contrived national fervor; more direct carrots and sticks would be needed. Rewards and economic benefits such as subsidized cars for martyrs' families flowed to those of proven loyalty, while severe punishments, including public executions, awaited dissenters and deserters. The number of deserters rose dramatically, reaching into the thousands. Many set up camps and bases in the southern marshes and conducted raids on Iraqi highways. The alarming rate of desertion prompted the regime to initiate a whole campaign under the slogan: taziz zruh al-nasr (maintaining the spirit of victory).(31)

As for the Popular Army (PA), although nominally formed on a voluntary basis, the methods used to muster the numbers for the war against Iran changed, so that it almost resembled a second conscript army. This had a negative impact on the regular army.(32) The mobilization was carried out by the various regional divisions of the Baath. Party officials had to come up with a certain number of men and would get credit for doing so successfully. Thus, it became part of the lives of Iraqi male civilians to be stopped in the street and taken against their will to training camps and then to the battlefront. Ill-trained and relatively disorganized, these PA units undercut military operations and effectiveness. This policy was costly, as after the 1991 Gulf War many of the weapons given to the PA were turned against the regime. Moreover, many Baath officials responsible for rounding up "volunteers" were tortured and killed during the 1991 uprising.

Another symptom of the insecurity of the civilian leadership toward the officers during the war against Iran was the custom of all high-ranking civilian officials and government ministers to wear khaki uniforms. Saddam had decreed that special quasi-military symbols and ranks be worn by members of the Regional Command of the Baath. This is perhaps also related to the increased militarism of society and glorification of violence that became associated with Saddam's rule.(33)

That Iraq "won" the Iran-Iraq War also requires qualification. The eight-year war, started by Iraq, devastated rather than enhanced Iraq's economic power and regional standing. The economic and human costs of the war signaled a decline in Iraq's relative power that influenced Saddam Hussein's decision to invade Kuwait in 1990.(34) After the war, Iraqi military officers and servicemen had returned home to a broken economy with high unemployment. There appeared no "peace dividend" for Iraq's sacrifices. The Arab Gulf states, for example, were loath to grant Iraq pride of place as preeminent Gulf power based upon Iraq's military sacrifices. According to an insider's account, Taha Yaseen Ramadan is said to have supported the decision to invade Iraq's tiny southern neighbor by citing the opportunity to feed the hungry returning soldiers by means of the wealth of Kuwait.(35)

On another score, Saddam Hussein sought to use military power to solve Iraq's Kurdish problem once and for all. Here, as in the Assyrian affair and the Kurdish insurgency of 1974-75, the army played its presumed role as guardians of Iraq's unity against enemies from within the state. That both leading Kurdish opposition groups -- the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic party --had sided with Iran by 1986 allowed the regime to raise questions about Kurdish loyalty and the role of foreign influence in Iraqi domestic politics. In February 1988, the Baath government launched a brutal counterinsurgency campaign, the "Anfal" (spoils), against the Kurds, replete with destruction of villages, use of chemical weapons and the forced resettlement of villagers. Human Rights Watch/Middle East has estimated that Iraqi forces destroyed 2,000 Kurdish villages and caused the disappearance of over 180,000 Kurds, most of them civilians.(36)

While it is difficult to ascertain the depth of Iraqi nationalism engendered by the war with Iran, Iraq's experience demonstrated as much continuity as change with regard to the political-military relationship. Indeed, the tension between Saddam Hussein and the professional officer class worsened rather than improved as a result of the war. Iraq's armed forces had difficulty projecting and sustaining military power, and the struggle with Iran soon settled into trench warfare reminiscent of World War I. The Iraqi president regularly dominated the decision-making process regarding the conduct of battlefield operations, with at times less than glorious results, while scapegoating, purging and executing those senior officers deemed incompetent or disloyal. The resulting fear of retribution from above may have hindered the performance of Iraq's generals, especially early in the war.(37)

In sum, the experience of war with Iran accentuated and complicated the tensions between the Iraqi government and the military. While the Iraqi armed forces proved capable of a national-defense role, the military as an institution was not accorded its fair share of the institutional credit. When celebrating Iraq's successful military campaigns against Iran, Saddam Hussein made sure that the final credit was his alone, reminding one of Edward Gibbon's observation that the first Caesars were not

 disposed to suffer that those triumphs which their indolence neglected
 should be usurped by the conduct and valor of their lieutenants. The
 military fame of a subject was considered as an insolent invasion of the
 Imperial prerogative.(38)

He regularly rotated generals from post to post to make sure none became either too popular or too powerful. Furthermore, Saddam and his inner circle consciously excluded professional officers from the inner decision-making circle. In the context of this outcome, the military had again turned its attention to the matter of defending the state from enemies within, prosecuting the anti-insurgency campaign against the Kurds with ferocious brutality.

THE GULF WAR

The invasion of Kuwait seems to have marked a significant and lethal widening of the rift between the army's leadership and Saddam's inner circle. Sad al-Bazzaz compares the planning of the invasion and the parties involved to that of the operation to recapture al-Faw peninsula in the war against Iran. The Kuwait planning session included, in addition to Saddam, the commander of the Republican Guards, Ayad al-Rawi, and Husayn Kamil and Ali Hasan al-Majid, the last two not professional military men by training. The Faw meeting included, in addition to Saddam and Husayn Kamil, the head of military intelligence, the chief of staff and the commander of the Republican Guards. More than 30 major officers had knowledge of the Faw plan 24 hours ahead of time. In contrast, rather than being a party to the planning, Minister of Defense Abdeljabbar Shanshal learned of the invasion through the radio as he was driving to work the next morning. The chief of staff was summoned seven hours after the start of the operation. Iraq's generals had precious little opportunity for honest consultation and advice; Saddam Hussein countenanced no dissenting view. Abdeljabbar Shanshal, who served in the army for 50 years and became minister of defense after the death of Adnan Khairallah, was accused of senility and dismissed after he expressed doubts about Iraq's ability to confront the U.S.-led coalition. Fadhil al-Barrak was executed for espionage after heading a consultative team that was to provide Saddam with recommendations on the confrontation with the United States.(39)

The actions of Iraq's armed forces after the war both reinforces and complicates the military's legacy. The anti-regime rebellions in 14 of 18 Iraqi provinces following the cease-fire in February 1990 began in southern Iraq with the actions of bitter and aggrieved soldiers returning from the front lines. But it was the Republican Guards, the best-trained of Iraq's military, that ruthlessly crushed the rebellions in northern and southern Iraq. The actions of both rebellious soldiers and loyalist troops reinforced the paradox of Iraq's armed forces as enemy and guardian of the Baath regime.

As has been documented elsewhere, the cycle of mistrust between Saddam Hussein and the military continues, with reported coups and assassination attempts coming from within the armed forces, followed by the predictable purges and executions.(40) There were at least three such attempts between 1991 and 1996, when Saddam Hussein foiled a U.S.-backed coup attempt by Iraqi military officers that included officers from the elite Special Republican Guards, the General Security Service and the Republican Guard. Since the Gulf war, Saddam Hussein has undertaken a series of measures to make his regime as secure as possible from military coups. While professional military officers, for the most part, remain outside the decision-making circles, the Republican Guard, the most elite and formidable branch of the Iraqi armed forces, has assumed greater prominence and increased responsibility for regime security.

CONCLUSION

The Iraqi military continues to be both the key to Saddam Hussein's survival and the best hope for his departure. The military remains the primary institutional arbiter of Iraq's political future, as it has been throughout the country's modern history. Saddam's policies of intrigue, reward and punishment have not resolved the problem of the military's interventionist role in domestic politics, which has bedeviled all Iraqi governments since the monarchy. That said, the Baath party's relationship with the military has been troubled yet symbiotic. Clearly, the Baath party could not have engineered two coups and prosecuted two wars in the absence of an alliance with partners in the military. At the same time, the experience of both wars deepened the hostility and mistrust between the party and the armed forces.

Historically, the Iraqi armed forces have been a haven for the various ideologies, from the nationalist to the communist, that have colored Iraq's political spectrum. The military may portray itself as the guardian of sovereignty and unity, as it has in the past, and juxtapose itself as a rival to Saddam Hussein or other contenders for popular support. Yet, the problem of civil-military relations in Iraqi politics will only be resolved through a democratic transition, with the establishment of institutions that allow for both popular participation and the peaceful transfer of power. In that context, the military would be assured its proper role as defender of the country's borders, rather than as a power broker or partner in the intrigues of domestic politics.

(1) Parts of this article have been taken and adapted from Andrew Parasiliti, "Lessons Learned: The Military in Iraqi Politics," in Iran, Iraq, and the Arab Gulf States, ed. Joseph A. Kechichian, forthcoming.

(2) It is important, as will be shown later, not to view the Iraqi military of the last few decades as a cohesive and unified institution. Aside from the obvious difference between regular army units and the Republican Guards, recent years have witnessed the creation of other military and paramilitary structures and units whose power and influence outweigh that of the army and whose interrelationships are complex.

(3) See A. Abbas, "The Iraqi Armed Forces, Past and Present," in Saddam's Iraq: Revolution or Reaction? (London: Zed Books, 1989), pp. 203-224.

(4) Fadhil al-Barrak, Dawr al-Jaysh al-Iraqi fi Hukumat al-Difa al-Watani Sanat 1941: Dirasa Tahliliyya wa Naqdiyya wa Mukarina lil Khalfiyyat al-Ijtimaiyya lil Qiyadat al-Siyasiyya wal Askariyya (The Role of the Iraqi Army in the National Defense Government and the War against Britain in 1941: An Analytical, Critical and Comparative Study of the Social Backgrounds of Political and Military Leaders) (Baghdad: al-Dar al-Arabiyya, 1979), p. 132.

(5) Abbas, op. cit., p. 213.

(6) Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq: A Study of Iraq's Old Landed and Commercial Classes and of its Communists, Baathists, and Free Officers (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), p. 601.

(7) This point is made in Samir al-Khalil, Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq (Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 177-79.

(8) See Ofra Bengio, Saddam's Word: Political Discourse in Iraq (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 146-147. Saddam's intellectual debt to Shawkat is never acknowledged publicly. Bengio attributes this to his defection from the nationalist camp in 1941.

(9) Reeva S. Simon, Iraq Between the Two World Wars: The Creation and Implementation of a Nationalist Ideology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 127-30.

(10) David Finnie, Shifting Lines in the Sand: Iraq's Elusive Frontier with Kuwait (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 106-113.

(11) For an account of the Assyrian Affair, see Stephen Hemsley Longrigg, Iraq, 1900 to 1950: A Political, Social, and Economic History (London: Oxford University Press, 1956), pp. 229-37; and R.S. Stafford, The Tragedy of the Assyrians (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1935), esp. pp. 159-81.

(12) See Batatu, op.cit.

(13) Of the rebellions and disturbances quelled by the army between 1933 and 1941: al-Rumaytha and Suq al-Shuyukh in May of 1935, Barzan/Mosul in August 1935, the Yazidis' rebellion against conscription in October 1935, the Basrah rebellion in September 1935, al-Rumaytha in spring of 1936 and al-Diwaniyya in 1936. See al-Barrak, op. cit., p. 56.

(14) al-Khalil, Republic of Fear, pp. 166-76.

(15) Falih Abd al-Jabbar, al-Dawla, al-Mujtama al-Madani wa al-Tahawwul al-Dimuqrati fi al-Iraq (State, Civil Society and Democratic Transition in Iraq) (Cairo: Markaz Ibn Khaldoun, 1996), p. 80.

(16) Batatu, op cit., pp. 1088-93.

(17) On the first Baath regime, see ibid., pp. 1003-26 and Hani al-Fukayki, Awkar al-Hazimah: Tajribati fi Hizb al-Baath al-Iraqi (Dens of Defeat: My Experience in the Iraqi Baath Party) (London: Riyad al-Rayyes, 1993).

(18) The 1968 Revolution in Iraq: Experience and Prospects: The Political Report of the Eighth Congress of the Arab Baath Socialist Party in Iraq, January 1974 (London: Ithaca Press, 1979), p. 103.

(19) Ibid.

(20) Ibid., p. 105.

(21) al-Barrak, op. cit., p. 216.

(22) Bengio, op. cit., p. 147.

(23) See Arab Baath Socialist Party, Iraq, The Central Report of the Ninth Regional Congress, June 1982, trans. SARTREC, Lausanne (CH) (Baghdad: January 1983), pp. 204-9.

(24) The estimates of active members are from Christine Helms, Iraq: Eastern Flank of the Arab World (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1984), pp. 99-100, based upon her interview with Taha Yasin Ramadan. The Central Report of the Ninth Regional Congress, June 1982, cites a figure of" 120,00 fighters" involved in the battle with Iran; see p. 207. Also see Samir al-Khalil, Republic of Fear, pp. 29-33.

(25) See Isam al-Khafaji, "War as a Vehicle for the Rise and Demise of a State-controlled-society: The Case of Baathist Iraq," Amsterdam Middle East Papers, No. 4, December 1995, pp. 9-11; and Amazia Baram, "The Ruling Political Elite in Baathi Iraq, 1968-1986: The Changing Features of a Collective Profile," International Journal of Middle East Studies, No. 21, 1989, pp. 447-93.

(26) Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq, p. 1079.

(27) Arab Baath Socialist Party, Iraq, The Central Report of the Ninth Regional Congress, p. 40.

(28) Raymond Aron, Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations (Malabar, FL: Robert E. Krieger Publishing Co., 1981), p. 355.

(29) Frederick W. Axelgard, A New Iraq? The Gulf War and Implications for U.S. Policy (New York and Washington, DC: Praeger and Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1988), pp. 48-55.

(30) Ibid., p. 29.

(31) It was around this time that the government began a ridiculously inflated tradition of wholesale medal-awarding as a transparent means of providing incentive and reward during a seemingly endless war. By the end of the war, some generals had tens of medals, too many to fit on their uniforms.

(32) See Bengio, op. cit., p. 151.

(33) For more, see ibid., pp. 148-153. The 1982 Baath Party Report states that "the penetration of military terms into everyday language, giving way to a love of militarism ... making young people in uniform highly-regarded."

(34) See Andrew T. Parasiliti, Iraq's War Decisions, Ph.D. Dissertation (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University, 1998), esp. pp. 7-56.

(35) Sad al-Bazzaz, Al-Janiralat Akhir man Ya'lam (The Generals are the Last to Know), (London: Dar Al-Hikma, 1996), p. 43.

(36) The best account to date of the Anfal is in Human Rights Watch/Middle East, Iraq's Crime of Genocide: The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1995).

(37) The dire straits of Iraq's battlefield situation, especially between 1982 and 1986, encouraged improvements in professionalism and adaptability in military command decisions. Anthony H. Cordesman and Abraham R. Wagner, The Lessons of Modern War, Volume II: The Iran-Iraq War (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990), pp. 412-13.

(38) Edward R. Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (London: Penguin, 1980), p. 29.

(39) al-Bazzaz, op. cit., pp. 22, 136, 140, 141, 136.

(40) See, for example, Andrew Cockburn and Patrick Cockburn, Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein (New York: Harper Collins, 1999), pp. 218-30; and Amatzia Baram, Building Toward Crisis: Saddam Hussein's Strategy for Survival (Washington, DC: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1998), pp. 47-9.

Dr. Parasiliti is the director of the Middle East Initiative at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Mr. Antoon is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University, where he also is a senior editor of the journal Arab Studies.