| 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 More
on Saddam Hussein...
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