Iraq: The Eastern Flank of the Arab World

By Christine Moss Helms. |Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1984. 215 pp. $28.95 (cloth), $9.95 (paper).

Reviewed by Louay Bahry

Iraq is one of the richest Arab countries in both natural and human resources. Before the war with Iran it had the second highest Arab oil production, with large estimated reserves. Its diverse population is young, and its geographic position makes it unique in the Arab world. Iraq is bordered directly by two major non Arab nations, Iran arid Turkey, which have played and still are playing important roles in Iraq's history. Despite its geopolitical importance and the significance of its problems, however, Iraq is still poorly understood and appreciated in the West.

For this reason, Dr. Helm's book, written in a spirit of friendship and sympathy for Iraq, is a welcome contribution to our knowledge of this important country. The author, who is currently a research associate on the staff of the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., has published before on the Middle East (The Cohesion of Saudi Arabia). She made several trips to Iraq to prepare this book.

Sunni and Shia: Increased Interaction

Although she does look back a bit into the history of Iraq, her main focus is the Iran Iraq war and its consequences for Iraq. The author divides her work into three major parts. The first is a social, economic and political study, going back to the founding of the Iraqi state in 1932. In this section the author analyzes the ethnic components of the society (mainly the Arabs and the Kurds) and the country's natural resources, with emphasis on their political significance. She also explores the relationship between Iraq's borders and the state's politics, including the negative effects on the country's economy and people caused by the arbitrary delimitation of Iraq's frontiers by foreign powers (mainly Great Britain and France). The relationship between the Sunni and Shia in Iraq is discussed here and elsewhere in the book in a constructive way, and Dr. Helms is careful to show the increased interaction between these two sects.

In the second part of the book Helms studies the origin and development of the Ba'th party and its ideology. Thus, she begins in Syria, where Ba'thism originated in the 1930s, developed in the 1940s, and eventually spread to Iraq and put down roots in the 1950s. She deals with the structural and organizational components of the party, and how it first ascended to power in 1963 and then was overthrown that same year. She analyzes mistakes made during the first, brief Ba'thist interlude, mistakes which were not repeated when they returned to power in 1968.

Turning to Iraq's achievements during the past 16 years, she focuses on education, health, industrialization, and the change in the role and status of women. Perhaps the major achievement of the Iraqi Ba'th has been its efforts to uplift the previously deprived and forgotten social classes among both Sunni and Shia Muslims, Kurd and Arab alike. It is these formerly forgotten people who are giving the Iraqi government its major base of support.

The third and last part of the book examines the conflict between Iraq and Iran, which Dr. Helms rightly claims "is not simply a war over borders." Putting aside the secondary causes of the conflict (the situation of the Persian minority in Iraq, Iranian instigation of the Kurds, and the dispute over the three Arab islands in the Gulf occupied by Iran in 1971), the real cause of the war lies in the orientation and ideologies of the regimes in Baghdad and Tehran. While Baghdad is more or less secular, pragmatic, and nationalist, the regime in Tehran is theological and dogmatic, and attempts to export its interpretation of Islam to Iraq and other countries of the Gulf. This has caused many Iraqis to feel that what is really endangered, should the Iranians win, is not merely the Ba'th regime, but the entire basis of the Iraqi state.

Balancing Between the Superpowers

If the main internal consequence of the war has been to strengthen an already centralized government and to encourage a sense of national unity, the most important external consequence, as the author sees it, has been a foreign policy more carefully balanced between the superpowers.

The book is replete with interviews with Iraqi officials, quotations from Saddam Hussein's speeches, and excerpts from Ba'thist literature. It contains several interesting maps. Its style is clear, although the prose is a bit wordy at times.

As usual, there are several points in the book with which one could disagree. One is the author's statement that "among the large Shia population in Iraq there are many of Persian origin." In fact, the great majority of the Shia putting aside a small Kurdish minority called Faylis are Arab. Shias of Persian origin are mainly to be found in only three cities al Najaf, Karbala, and Kadhimain. It is also useful to remind the Western reader that several Sunni tribes in Iraq became Shia in the 19th century as a means of avoiding service in the Ottoman army, since Shia were not recruited. One can also take issue with the author's statement that the three islands in the Gulf occupied by Iran are "also claimed by the Emirates." In reality they belong to the Emirates, and it is Iran that claims them.

Louay Bahry, adjunct associate professor of political science at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, is a specialist on Gulf affairs.