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Iraq
The Politics of Alliance: The Progressive National Front
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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