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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Iraq
Index
In 1988 Iraq was no nearer to the goal of democracy than it
had been when the Baath came to power in 1968. The establishment
of "popular democracy" as a national objective remained
essentially unfulfilled. Political activities were restricted to
those defined by the Baath regime. The party, however, recognized
that not all citizens would become party members, and it sought
to provide a controlled forum for non-Baathist political
participation. It created the Progressive National Front (PNF) in
1974 to ally the Baath with other political parties that were
considered to be progressive. As a basis for this cooperation
President Bakr had proclaimed the National Action Charter in
1971. In presenting the charter for public discussion, the Baath
had invited "all national and progressive forces and elements" to
work for the objective of a "democratic, revolutionary, and
unitary" Iraq by participating in the "broadest coalition among
all the national, patriotic, and progressive forces."
The Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) was one of the important
political groups that the Baathists wanted involved in the PNF.
Discussions between the Baath and the ICP took place periodically
over three years before the latter was induced to join the PNF in
1974. For Baath leaders, the PNF was a means of containing
potential opposition to their policies on the part of the ICP.
Although the ICP was too small to pose a serious armed challenge
to the Baath, it was regarded as a major ideological rival. The
ICP's roots were as deep as those of the Baath, because the
former party had been formed by Iraqi Marxists in the 1930s. Like
the Baath, the ICP was an elitist party that advocated socialist
programs to benefit the masses and that appealed primarily to
intellectuals. Despite these similarities, there had been a long
history of antagonism between the two parties. Baathists tended
to suspect the communists of ultimate loyalty to a foreign power,
the Soviet Union, rather than to the Arab nation, even though the
Baathists themselves regarded the Soviet Union as a friendly and
progressive state after 1968.
In return for participation in the PNF, the ICP was permitted
to nominate its own members for some minor cabinet posts and to
carry on political and propaganda activities openly. The ICP had
to agree, however, not to recruit among the armed forces and to
accept Baath domination of the RCC. The ICP also recognized the
Baath Party's "privileged" or leading role in the PNF: of the
sixteen-member High Council that was formed to direct the PNF,
eight positions were reserved for the Baath, five for other
progressive parties, and only three for the communists. The ICP
also agreed not to undertake any activities that would contravene
the letter or spirit of the National Action Charter.
The ICP may have hoped that the PNF would gradually evolve
into a genuine power-sharing arrangement. If so, these
expectations were not realized. The Baath members of the High
Council dominated the PNF, while the party retained a firm grip
over government decision making. By 1975, friction had developed
between the ICP and the Baath. During the next two years, at
least twenty individual ICP members were arrested, tried, and
sentenced to prison for allegedly attempting to organize
communist cells within the army in contravention of the specific
ban on such activities. The April 1978 Marxist coup d'etat in
Afghanistan seemed to serve as a catalyst for a wholesale assault
on the ICP. Convicted communists were retried, and twenty-one of
them were executed; there were virulent attacks on the ICP in the
Baathist press; and scores of party members and sympathizers were
arrested. The ICP complained, to no apparent avail, that
communists were being purged from government jobs, arrested, and
tortured in prisons. By April 1979, those principal ICP leaders
who had not been arrested had either fled the country or had gone
underground. In 1980 the ICP formally withdrew from the PNF and
announced the formation of a new political front to oppose the
Baath government. Since then, however, ICP activities against the
Baathists have been largely limited to a propaganda campaign.
The various Kurdish political parties were the other main
focus of Baath attention for PNF membership. Three seats on the
PNF were reserved for the Kurds, and initially the Baath intended
that these be filled by nominees from the Kurdish Democratic
Party (KDP), the oldest and largest Kurdish party. By the time
the PNF was established in 1974, however, the KDP was already
involved in hostilities against the government. The KDP, which
originally had been formed in 1946 in Iran where Mullah Mustafa
Barzani and other party cofounders had fled following the
collapse of a 1945 revolt, was suspicious of the Baath's ultimate
intentions with respect to self-rule for the Kurdish region. Even
though Barzani himself had negotiated the March 1970 Autonomy
Agreement with Saddam Husayn, he rejected Baghdad's March 1974
terms for implementing autonomy. Subsequently, full-scale warfare
erupted between central government forces and KDP-organized
fighters, the latter receiving military supplies covertly from
Iran and from the United States. The Kurdish rebellion collapsed
in March 1975, after Iran reached a rapprochement with the Baath
regime and withdrew all support from the Kurds. The KDP leaders
and several thousand fighters sought and obtained refuge in Iran.
Barzani eventually resettled in the United States, where he died
in 1979. Following Barzani's death, his son Masud became leader
of the KDP; from his base in Iran he directed a campaign of
guerrilla activities against Iraqi civilian and military
personnel in the Kurdish region. After Iraq became involved in
war with Iran, Masud Barzani generally cooperated with the
Iranians in military offensives in Iraqi Kurdistan
(see
Internal Developments and Security
, ch. 5).
Barzani's decision to fight Baghdad was not supported by all
Kurdish leaders, and it led to a split within the KDP. Some of
these Kurds, including Barzani's eldest son, Ubaydallah, believed
that the Autonomy Agreement did provide a framework for achieving
practical results, and he preferred to cooperate with the Baath.
Other leaders were disturbed by Barzani's acceptance of aid from
Iran, Israel, and the United States, and they refused to be
associated with this policy. Consequently, during 1974, rival KDP
factions, and even new parties such as the Kurdish Revolutionary
Party and the Kurdish Progressive Group, emerged. Although none
of these parties seemed to have as extensive a base of popular
support as did the KDP, their participation in the PNF permitted
the Baath to claim that its policies in the Autonomous Region had
the backing of progressive Kurdish forces.
The unanticipated and swift termination of KDP-central
government hostilities in March 1975 resulted in more factional
splits from the party. One breakaway group, the Patriotic Union
of Kurdistan (PUK) under the leadership of Jalal Talabani, was
committed to continuing the armed struggle for Kurdish autonomy.
Until 1985, however, most of the PUK's skirmishes were with
fellow Kurdish fighters of the KDP, and Talabani himself held
intermittent negotiations with Baathist representatives about
joining the PNF. Other KDP splinter groups agreed to cooperate
with the central government. In order to accommodate them, and in
recognition of the fact that no single political party
represented the Kurds, two additional seats, bringing the total
to eighteen, were created in the PNF. Thus, the number of Kurdish
representatives increased from three to five. The composition of
the PNF changed again in 1980, following the withdrawal of the
three ICP members; the number of Kurds remained constant.
In 1975 the Baath invited two independent progressive groups
to nominate one representative each for the unreserved seats on
the PNF. These seats went to the leaders of the Independent
Democrats and the Progressive Nationalists. Neither of these
groups was a formally organized political party, but rather each
was an informal association of non-Baathist politicians who had
been active before 1968. These groups had demonstrated to the
satisfaction of the Baath Party that their members had renounced
the former "reactionary" ideas of the various pre-revolutionary
parties to which they had belonged.
In 1988 the Baath Party continued to hold the position that
the PNF was indispensable as long as the Arab revolutionary
movement faced dangers in Iraq and in other parts of the Arab
homeland. The Baath insisted that its policy of combining its
"leading role" within the front and a cooperative relationship
based on "mutual respect and confidence" among itself and the
front's members was correct and that, in fact, this was a major
accomplishment of its rule. Nevertheless, the PNF was not an
independent political institution. Although it served as a forum
in which policy could be discussed, the Baath actually controlled
the PNF by monopolizing executive positions, by holding half of
the total seats, and by requiring that all PNF decisions must be
by unanimous vote.
Data as of May 1988
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