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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Iraq
Index
The armed forces in 1988 conceivably could have been expected
to reflect the varied ethnic, religious, and class components of
Iraqi society, because universal male conscription has been
compulsory since 1934. To a certain extent the enlisted men did
reflect society, especially after seven years of war. Indeed, for
the purpose of unifying the diverse minority groups in this
extremely heterogeneous country, the armed forces was one of the
most important institutions in Iraq. For political reasons, this
unification was never fully accomplished, however. Selective
recruitment policies for the Military College, for example, were
instituted by the British in the 1920s to favor the Sunni Arab
community, and this bias was perpetuated by the Sunni political
and military elite, which has also tended to dominate the Baath
party. The Shia majority was represented in the officer corps,
but in a proportion far below that of their numerical presence in
society.
The majority of the officers were of lower middle class urban
background; they were the sons of minor government officials and
small traders, for whom a career in the military promised
considerable social advancement. Family ties to officers also
played an important role in the recruitment of new personnel, and
in the mid-1980s, Iraq's top military commanders were from the
small town of Tikrit, on the Euphrates River in the heart of
Iraq's Sunni Arab community.
Data as of May 1988
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