Iraq: Turning Over a New Leaf?

By Richard H. Curtiss

"The evolution of Iraq's political life is of paramount importance to consolidate the revolutionary democratic experiment led by the Baath party over the past 20 years."

—President Saddam Hussein, January 1989

Being an Iraqi hasn't been easy for much of the 20th century. If President Saddam Hussein has his way, however, the next century will be different. Changes that have taken place in this richly endowed country of 17 million people since the cease-fire with Iran last August 20 would be remarkable anywhere. Coming after one of the longest and, per capita, most costly wars in modern history, and even before a peace agreement is signed, they are astonishing.

Within 10 months the heavily damaged port of Basra has been rebuilt. Residents, who numbered a million before the war cut off Basra's access to the sea and triggered eight years of intermittent artillery bombardment, received government grants to repair damaged buildings. Squadrons of bulldozers, mountains of cement and structural steel, and legions of contractors and laborers converged on the city. Target for completion of all of the public works and as many of the private projects as possible was June 1. By dint of round-the-clock clearing and construction, that goal was largely met.

It is the way Saddam Hussein does things—by decree, forced draft, and on a large scale. For that matter, it is the way Iraqi rulers have always done things, from the Sumerians who founded the world's first cities in southern Iraq, Nebuchanezzar who enacted the world's earliest-known legal code and built the world's most magnificent city in Babylon, and the Arab Abbasids who ruled from Baghdad an empire that encompassed most of the lands formerly ruled separately by Persian and Roman emperors.

A Dramatic History

Events of Iraq's 20th century history have rivaled the high drama of its past. During World War I, Ottoman Turkish troops were driven out in four years of bloody seige warfare by a British colonial army. The British-backed Hashemite monarchy was overthrown bloodily in 1958 by Iraqi Colonel Abdel Karim Qassem. He, in turn, was overthrown and killed in 1963 by a Baathist Nationalist coalition. Later in 1963 the Nationalists, supporting the pan-Arabism of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, deposed their Baathi senior partners. The Baathis, including Saddam Hussein, went underground, built up their following in the Sunni Muslim areas of northwestern Iraq which traditionally have supplied its leaders, and won a rematch in 1968.

Iraq is a country where, because of its complex religious and ethnic structure, there is no clear ruling majority group. The Baathis have stayed in power partly by rule as heavy-handed as that of any of their predecessors, and partly by adherence to a leftist and determinedly secular ideology.

The secular aspect survived the challenge of a war in which Iraqis were outnumbered three-to-one by the Iranians of Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Republic. Now the leftist economic ideology is challenged by its visible failure in China, the Soviet Union, and throughout the Third World.

Saddam Hussein defended the secular state single-mindedly. His actions make it clear, however, that Iraq's socialist economy will be restructured. Iraqi agriculture, which had turned the country from a food-surplus to a food importing state, has been "privatized." So far, this consists largely of turning over to private ownership the nation's food processing plants. In the near future, however, it may affect land ownership.

Iraq is concentrating on developing petro-chemicals, armaments, and other heavy industry. If private participation is not so far along as in agriculture, it is because existing regulations make it difficult for private Iraqis and other Arabs, and virtually impossible for non-Arab individuals or companies, to invest.

Politically, the goal seems to be at least a measure of "glasnost." Just completed elections to fill 250 seats (each representing 650,000 Iraqis) in the National Assembly are an early manifestation. More than 900 candidates ran, not on party slates but as individuals. None was allowed to spend his own funds. Campaigns were financed by the government, which promised equal media and advertising access to all. Although some seats are reserved for women and special categories, women and candidates from these categories competed successfully for general seats as well. Turnout was not mandatory, but heavy nevertheless. Most Iraqis seemed eager for the chance to select members of the third national parliament in the Baath era. The first was elected in 1980, just before the outbreak of the war with Iran, and the second in 1984.

If, because of wartime measures, the first parliament was a rubber stamp for decisions made by Saddam Hussein in meetings of the Revolutionary Command Council and the Baath Regional Command, the second parliament received in February 1988 the power to oversee ministries and state organizations. Examinations by 20 committees set up for this purpose resulted in the firing of a minister of health and a number of other officials.

Powers to be exercised by the new parliament, with only 40 percent Baath party member participation, will be defined in a constitution being drafted this year to replace the previous constitution written 20 years ago.

Easing Government Controls

If Iraq's new constitution further eases government controls, it will be consistent with earlier moves. In 1987 a "glasnost wall" was inaugurated at Baghdad University where students could post their comments. Last August, Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Saddoun Hammadi remarked, "I doubt that criticism will bring chaos." Earlier this year Saddam Hussein asserted that, "pluralism has been adopted as part of our party's trend."

There also appears to be a barely perceptible public deemphasis of Saddam Hussein's personal leadership, although his omnipresent photos in varying poses and garb still startle first-time visitors to Iraq. The Iraqi president has elevated three veteran leaders to positions just below his own to help direct the nation's bountiful resources to its pent-up problems.

Among these is the unfinished war. The building frenzy in Basra signals dearly that Iraq has no intention of renewing the fighting. Nor is Iran's economy in any condition to sustain hostilities But Iran's "Islamic Revolutionary" regime is so unstable that it may be politically incapable of making peace.

At present, a tiny corps of UN observers stands by to monitor violations along an uneasy 400-mile-long cease-fire line where, in some places, opposing troops are said to be only 10 meters apart. Iran insists that all Iraqi troops must be off Iranian soil before peace talks begin. Iraq insists that Iran must help clear the disputed Shatt-al-Arab waterway and stop searching Iraqi ships in the Gulf before Iraqi troops withdraw.

Meanwhile, 87,000 Iraqi soldiers languish in Iranian prison camps, and 35,000 Iranian prisoners remain in Iraq. Even exchanges of sick and wounded prisoners have broken down, largely because of Iranian unpredictability.

The war was, in some respects, an outgrowth of the instigation by Iran of Iraqi minorities against the Baathi regime. It was to end the Shah of Iran's support for a decades-old Kurdish revolt that Iraq made concessions in 1975 over the Shatt-al-Arab waterway that it later decided were intolerable. The same Kurdish tribes, led by the Barzani and Talabani clans, threw in their lot with Iran in the third year of the war. Iraq's first military action after the August 20 cease-fire with Iran was to crush the Kurdish rebel tribesmen. There were allegations that Iraq used poison gas against Kurds on August 25.

Iraq denies the charges, but clearly the Kurds believed them at the time. The Iran-Iraq war had ended abruptly when rumors swept Iran that Iraq was planning to fit the rockets it was firing into Iranian cities with poison gas warheads. Iranian civilians vacated the cities, just as many Iranian soldiers had fled the front lines in the face of wartime Iraqi gas attacks.

When word swept Kurdish rebel areas that Iraqi aircraft had dropped poison gas canisters on or near Kurdish villages, a similar exodus took place. The Kurdish revolt ended, literally overnight, as tens of thousands of inhabitants of rebel areas poured into Turkey.

Since then, Saddam Hussein has personally directed a campaign to dismantle villages and towns in the strategic mountains between Iraq's Lake Dokan and the Iranian border. Kurds are being relocated, many under protest, into new towns built in the plains below.

In this century, Kurds have had better treatment in Iraq than they have received in either Turkey or Iran. In the three provinces that comprise Iraq's Kurdish autonomous area, Kurdish children in government schools can study from textbooks in Kurdish, a privilege not accorded Kurds elsewhere. In addition to electing representatives to the Iraqi National Assembly, Kurds also have their own 50-member legislative council. Its members are elected for three-year terms. The fourth such election is scheduled later this year.

Discontent Centers on Economy

What discontent is voiced openly in Iraq centers on the economy. Iraqis contrast their per capital income of $2,200 with figures 10 times higher in nearby Arab oil-producing states. While the war is partly to blame, many Iraqis feel they won't catch up until obstacles to private economic activity are removed.

Iraq emerged from the war with an external debt of $50 billion, largely because petroleum enabled the Baathi rulers to pursue a guns and butter policy. Foreign workers were imported, particularly from Egypt and Sudan, to replace Iraqi workers serving in the army. With petroleum reserves that exceed Iran's, Iraq could pursue similar two-track policies in peacetime.

This unnerves neighbors, who feared Iraq as much as they feared Iran before 1980. They worry because, in the absence of a peace agreement with Iran, Iraq still maintains one million men under arms.

Saddam Hussein's first moves have been reassuring, however. In April he signed a nonaggression pact with Saudi Arabia, with annexes concerning continued intelligence sharing and Saudi support for Iraqi development of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. King Fahd's visit to sign the treaty was the first by a Saudi monarch to Baghdad since the Baathi revolution in March, 1968.

Iraq also entered into an Arab Cooperation Alliance with Egypt, Jordan and North Yemen. As the major oil producer, clearly Iraq will set the agenda. However, the move formally linked peacetime Iraq with Arab world moderates who had supported its war effort. In 1984 Iraq also abandoned its stance as the Arab world's most militant opponent of Israel. It now accepts whatever the PLO accepts for Palestine.

Saddam Hussein even made a conciliatory gesture toward Iran in June, shutting down the radio of the anti-Khomeini Iran Liberation Army, based in Iraq, during the uneasy period following Khomeini's death. There is no willingness, however, to patch up a feud with Syria's President Hafez Al-Assad that dates back to an ideological split between the two Baathi regimes in the 1960s. The rivalry was greatly exacerbated by Syria's support of Iran's war effort.

This is why Iraq is supplying arms to Christian forces in Lebanon. Originally they went to Maronite militia chieftain Samir Geagea (who also was receiving help from Israel). When General Michel Aoun's Christian forces neutralized Geagea, Iraq diverted the flow of captured Iranian arms to Anion, who is hostile to both Israel and Syria.

None of this presages any postwar downturn in US-Iraqi relations. Aside from the Lebanon adventure, Saddam Hussein appears to be focusing his attention on physical rebuilding, economic restructuring, and to a quest that preoccupies many Third World states at present—the search for legitimacy, grounded in the consent of the governed.

Jonathan Crusoe, writing about Iraq in London's Feb. 3 Middle East Economic Digest, observed: "It seems that political change will probably be geared more towards reviving the economy and producing a better national lifestyle than to introducing genuine democracy."

However, Iraq has a hard-working, highly educated population and the potential to be the noncommunist world's second-largest oil producer. No matter which way it starts, Iraq will surely, someday, end up with both.

Richard H. Curtiss is chief editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.