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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Iraq
Index
In February 1979, Saddam Husayn's ambitious plans and the
course of Iraqi history were drastically altered by the overthrow
of the shah of Iran. Husayn viewed the 1979 Islamic Revolution in
Iran as both a threat and an opportunity. The downfall of the
shah and the confusion prevailing in postrevolutionary Iran
suited Saddam Husayn's regional ambitions. A weakened Iran seemed
to offer an opportunity to project Iraqi power over the Gulf, to
regain control over the Shatt al Arab waterway, and to augment
Iraqi claims to leadership of the Arab world. More ominously, the
activist Shia Islam preached by the leader of the revolution in
Iran, Ayatollah Sayyid Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, threatened to
upset the delicate Sunni-Shia balance in Iraq, and a hostile Iran
would threaten Iraqi security in the Gulf. Furthermore, deepseated personal animosities separated the two leaders. The two
men held widely divergent ideologies, and in 1978 Husayn had
expelled Khomeini from Iraq--reportedly at the request of the
shah--after he had lived thirteen years in exile in An Najaf.
For much of Iraqi history, the Shias have been both
politically impotent and economically depressed. Beginning in the
sixteenth century, when the Ottoman Sunnis favored their Iraqi
coreligionists in the matter of educational and employment
opportunities, the Shias consistently have been denied political
power. Thus, although the Shias constitute more then 50 percent
of the population, they occupy a relatively insignificant number
of government posts. On the economic level, aside from a small
number of wealthy landowners and merchants, the Shias
historically were exploited as sharecropping peasants or menially
employed slum dwellers. Even the prosperity brought by the oil
boom of the 1970s only trickled down slowly to the Shias;
however, beginning in the latter half of the 1970s, Saddam's
populist economic policies had a favorable impact on them,
enabling many to join the ranks of a new Shia middle class.
Widespread Shia demonstrations took place in Iraq in February
1977, when the government, suspecting a bomb, closed Karbala to
pilgrimage at the height of a religious ceremony. Violent clashes
between police and Shia pilgrims spread from Karbala to An Najaf
and lasted for several days before army troops were called in to
quell the unrest. It was the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran,
however, that transformed Shia dissatisfaction with the Baath
into an organized religiously based opposition. The Baath
leadership feared that the success of Iran's Islamic Revolution
would serve as an inspiration to Iraqi Shias. These fears
escalated in July 1979, when riots broke out in An Najaf and in
Karbala after the government had refused Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir
as Sadr's request to lead a procession to Iran to congratulate
Khomeini. Even more worrisome to the Baath was the discovery of a
clandestine Shia group headed by religious leaders having ties to
Iran. Baqir as Sadr was the inspirational leader of the group,
named Ad Dawah al Islamiyah (the Islamic Call), commonly referred
to as Ad Dawah. He espoused a program similar to Khomeini's,
which called for a return to Islamic precepts of government and
for social justice.
Despite the Iraqi government's concern, the eruption of the
1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran did not immediately destroy the
Iraqi-Iranian rapprochement that had prevailed since the 1975
Algiers Agreement. As a sign of Iraq's desire to maintain good
relations with the new government in Tehran, President Bakr sent
a personal message to Khomeini offering "his best wishes for the
friendly Iranian people on the occasion of the establishment of
the Islamic Republic." In addition, as late as the end of August
1979, Iraqi authorities extended an invitation to Mehdi Bazargan,
the first president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, to visit
Iraq with the aim of improving bilateral relations. The fall of
the moderate Bazargan government in late 1979, however, and the
rise of Islamic militants preaching an expansionist foreign
policy soured Iraqi-Iranian relations.
The principal events that touched off the rapid deterioration
in relations occurred during the spring of 1980. In April the
Iranian-supported Ad Dawah attempted to assassinate Iraqi foreign
minister Tariq Aziz. Shortly after the failed grenade attack on
Tariq Aziz, Ad Dawah was suspected of attempting to assassinate
another Iraqi leader, Minister of Culture and Information Latif
Nayyif Jasim. In response, the Iraqis immediately rounded up
members and supporters of Ad Dawah and deported to Iran thousands
of Shias of Iranian origin. In the summer of 1980, Saddam Husayn
ordered the executions of presumed Ad Dawah leader Ayatollah
Sayyid Muhammad Baqr as Sadr and his sister.
In September 1980, border skirmishes erupted in the central
sector near Qasr-e Shirin, with an exchange of artillery fire by
both sides. A few weeks later, Saddam Husayn officially abrogated
the 1975 treaty between Iraq and Iran and announced that the
Shatt al Arab was returning to Iraqi sovereignty. Iran rejected
this action and hostilities escalated as the two sides exchanged
bombing raids deep into each other's territory. Finally, on
September 23, Iraqi troops marched into Iranian territory,
beginning what was to be a protracted and extremely costly war
(see The Iran-Iraq War
, ch. 5).
The Iran-Iraq War permanently altered the course of Iraqi
history. It strained Iraqi political and social life, and led to
severe economic dislocations
(see Growth and Structure of the Economy
, ch. 3). Viewed from a historical perspective, the
outbreak of hostilities in 1980 was, in part, just another phase
of the ancient Persian-Arab conflict that had been fueled by
twentieth-century border disputes. Many observers, however,
believe that Saddam Husayn's decision to invade Iran was a
personal miscalculation based on ambition and a sense of
vulnerability. Saddam Husayn, despite having made significant
strides in forging an Iraqi nation-state, feared that Iran's new
revolutionary leadership would threaten Iraq's delicate SunniShia balance and would exploit Iraq's geostrategic
vulnerabilities--Iraq's minimal access to the Persian Gulf, for
example. In this respect, Saddam Husayn's decision to invade Iran
has historical precedent; the ancient rulers of Mesopotamia,
fearing internal strife and foreign conquest, also engaged in
frequent battles with the peoples of the highlands.
* * *
The most reliable work on the ancient history of Iraq is
George Roux's Ancient Iraq, which covers the period from
prehistory through the Hellenistic period. Another good source,
which places Sumer in the context of world history, is J.M.
Roberts's The Pelican History of the World. A concise and
authoritative work on Shia Islam is Moojan Momen's An
Introduction to Shii Islam. The article by D. Sourdel, "The
Abbasid Caliphate," in The Cambridge History of Islam,
provides an excellent overview of the medieval period. Stephen
Longrigg's and Frank Stoakes's Iraq contains a historical
summary of events before independence as well as a detailed
account of the period from independence to 1958. Majid Khadduri's
Republican Iraq is one of the best studies of Iraqi
politics from the 1958 revolution to the Baath coup of 1968. His
Socialist Iraq: A Study in Iraqi Politics since 1968
details events up to 1977. A seminal work on Iraqi socioeconomic
movements and trends between the Ottoman period and the late
1970s is Hanna Batatu's The Old Social Classes and the
Revolutionary Movements of Iraq. The most comprehensive study
of Iraq in the modern period is Phebe Marr's The Modern
History of Iraq. Another good study, which focuses on the
political and the economic development of Iraq from its
foundation as a state until 1977, is Edith and E.F. Penrose's
Iraq: International Relations and National Development. An
excellent recent account of the Iraqi Baath is provided by
Christine Helms's Iraq, Eastern Flank of the Arab World.
(For further information and complete citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of May 1988
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