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Iraq
Impact of Agrarian Reform
One of the most significant achievements of the fundamentally
urban-based revolutionary regime of Abd al Karim Qasim (1958-63)
was the proclamation and partial implementation of a radical agrarian
reform program. The scope of the program and the drastic shortage
of an administrative cadre to implement it, coupled with political
struggles within the Qasim regime and its successors, limited
the immediate impact of the program to the expropriation stage.
The largest estates were easily confiscated, but distribution
lagged owing to administrative problems and the wasted, saline
character of much of the land expropriated. Moreover, landlords
could choose the best of the lands to keep for themselves.
The impact of the reforms on the lives of the rural masses can
only be surmised on the basis of uncertain official statistics
and rare observations and reports by outsiders, such as officials
of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
The development of cooperatives, especially in their capacity
as marketing agents, was one of the most obvious failures of the
program, although isolated instances of success did emerge. In
some of these instances, traditional elders were mobilized to
serve as cooperative directors, and former sirkals, clan
leaders who functioned as foremen for the shaykhs, could bring
a working knowledge of local irrigation needs and practices to
the cooperative.
The continued impoverishment of the rural masses was evident,
however, in the tremendous migration that continued through the
1960s, 1970s, and into the 1980s from rural to urban areas. According
to the Ministry of Planning, the average rate of internal migration
from the countryside increased from 19,600 a year in the mid-1950s
to 40,000 a year in the 1958 to 1962 period. A study of 110 villages
in the Nineveh and Babylon governorates concluded that depressed
rural conditions and other variables--rather than job opportunities
in the modern sector-- accounted for most of the migration.
There was little doubt that this massive migration and the land
reform reduced the number of landless peasants. The most recent
comprehensive tenurial statistics available before the war broke
out--the Agricultural Census of 1971--put the total farmland (probably
meaning cultivable land, rather than land under cultivation) at
over 5.7 million hectares, of which more than 98.2 percent was
held by "civil persons." About 30 percent of this had been distributed
under the agrarian reform. The average size of the holdings was
about 9.7 hectares; but 60 percent of the holdings were smaller
than 7.5 hectares, accounting for less than 14 percent of the
total area. At the other end of the scale, 0.2 percent of the
holdings were 250 hectares or larger, amounting to more than 14
percent of the total. Fifty-two percent of the total was owner-operated,
41 percent was farmed under rental agreements, 4.8 percent was
worked by squatters, and only 0.6 percent was sharecropped. The
status of the remaining 1.6 percent was uncertain. On the basis
of limited statistics released by the government in 1985, the
amount of land distributed since the inception of the reform program
totaled 2,271,250 hectares (see Land Tenure and Agrarian Reform
, ch. 3).
Political instability throughout the 1960s hindered the implementation
of the agrarian reform program, but after seizing power in 1968
the Baath regime made a considerable effort to reactivate it.
Law 117 (1970) further limited the maximum size of holdings, eliminated
compensation to the landowner, and abolished payments by beneficiaries,
thus acknowledging the extremity of peasant indebtedness and poverty.
The reform created a large number of small holdings. Given the
experience of similar efforts in other countries, foreign observers
surmised that a new stratification has emerged in the countryside,
characterized by the rise of middle-level peasants who, directly
or through their leadership in the cooperatives, control much
of the agricultural machinery and its use. Membership in the ruling
Baath Party is an additional means of securing access to and control
over such resources. Prior to the war, the party seemed to have
few roots in the countryside, but after the ascent of Saddam Husayn
to the presidency in 1979 a determined effort was made to build
bridges between the party cadre in the capital and the provinces.
It is noteworthy that practically all party officials promoted
to the second echelon of leadership at the 1982 party congress
had distinguished themselves by mobilizing party support in the
provinces.
Even before the war, migration posed a serious threat of labor
shortages. In the 1980s, with the war driving whole communities
to seek refuge in the capital, this shortage has been exacerbated
and was particularly serious in areas intensively employing mechanized
agricultural methods. The government has attempted to compensate
for this shortage by importing turnkey projects with foreign professionals.
But in the Kurdish areas of the north--and to a degree in the
southern region infested by deserters--the safety of foreign personnel
was difficult to guarantee; therefore many projects have had to
be temporarily abandoned. Another government strategy for coping
with the labor shortage caused by the war has been to import Egyptian
workers. It has been estimated that as many as 1.5 million Egyptians
have found employment in Iraq since the war began.
Data as of May 1988
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