Download or read book The Ba thification of Iraq written by Aaron M. Faust and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2015-11-15 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq as a dictator for nearly a quarter century before the fall of his regime in 2003. Using the Ba’th party as his organ of meta-control, he built a broad base of support throughout Iraqi state and society. Why did millions participate in his government, parrot his propaganda, and otherwise support his regime when doing so often required betraying their families, communities, and beliefs? Why did the “Husseini Ba’thist” system prove so durable through uprisings, two wars, and United Nations sanctions? Drawing from a wealth of documents discovered at the Ba’th party’s central headquarters in Baghdad following the US-led invasion in 2003, The Ba’thification of Iraq analyzes how Hussein and the party inculcated loyalty in the population. Through a grand strategy of “Ba’thification,” Faust argues that Hussein mixed classic totalitarian means with distinctly Iraqi methods to transform state, social, and cultural institutions into Ba’thist entities, and the public and private choices Iraqis made into tests of their political loyalty. Focusing not only on ways in which Iraqis obeyed, but also how they resisted, and using comparative examples from Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia, The Ba’thification of Iraq explores fundamental questions about the roles that ideology and culture, institutions and administrative practices, and rewards and punishments play in any political system.
Download or read book The Ba thification of Iraq written by Aaron M. Faust and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 646 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: Why and how did Saddam Hussein and the Ba`th Party maintain their authority in Iraq for so long in contrast to their predecessors? Based on an archival study of recently opened internal Ba`th Party documents, this study argues that Hussein and the Ba`th used a strategic policy of Ba`thification to trap Iraqis within an environment created by a series of controls that channeled their behavior into avenues supportive of the regime. With a monopoly over state power, Hussein and the Ba`th Party used violence and surveillance to eliminate enemies, monitor state and society, and engender fear. Equally important, the Ba`thist State doled out benefits connected to a system of awards and official statuses bestowed upon Iraqis who exhibited allegiance. This combination of terror and enticement offered Iraqis a stark choice between opposing and supporting the regime, and the consequences of an individual's behavior extended to his family, providing a further incentive for loyalty. Additionally, Hussein and the Ba`th "organized" state and society by recruiting individuals into the party and its proxies and co-opting or replacing the leaderships of government and social institutions with loyalists. Simultaneously, Hussein used the Ba`th Party to take over the Iraqi state—to transform it into the Ba`thist State. He then utilized the Ba`thist State's resources to either obliterate and build anew existing civil and social institutions or reform and incorporate them into the government's legal and administrative frameworks. In the process, Hussein transformed these institutions' raisons d'être into support for himself, the party, and the Iraqi nation: the three primary symbols of his regime. Finally, Hussein infused classical Ba`thist ideology with his personality cult to rationalize his emergence as "the Leader." Through propaganda, indoctrination, ritual, mass ceremonies, and myth the Ba`thist State applied the political ideas of this Husseini Ba`thism to all aspects of public and private life in an attempt to reorient Iraqis' conceptions of what constituted a just and "natural" society to conform to the Ba`thist reality. Combined, the boundaries these controls placed on permissible action and thought forced Iraqis to subordinate their traditional loyalties to the regime, making them complicit in it.
Download or read book Saddam Hussein s Ba th Party written by Joseph Sassoon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique and revealing portrait of Saddam Hussein's Iraq which was every bit as authoritarian and brutal as Stalin's Russia or Mao's China.
Download or read book Iraq s De Ba thification written by Aysegul Keskin Zeren and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mechanisms of transitional justice are used by post-conflict societies emerging from authoritarianism or civil wars as they confront the crimes and injustices of the past. Vetting is one of many transitional justice mechanisms that aim to purify the public sphere of former regime members or of people who lack integrity. Many post-World War II and post-communist European countries endorsed some form of vetting. De-Ba`thification of Iraq is the latest effort that can be investigated under this category. Government officials from the Saddam Hussein government were purged in 2003, and many institutions that represented Ba`th party's brutalities were dissolved under a program that borrowed in part from the de-Nazification program established in Germany after World War II. The process of de-Ba`thification in Iraq provides a unique case study for the vetting literature, not only because it is the latest example, but also because it was initiated and administered by an occupying power whose policies contributed to a countrywide insurgency. Also, the process of de-Ba`thification holds lessons and provides valuable insight into policy-making and implementation for policy makers well beyond Iraqi context. The main questions of this dissertation are: What are the rationales given by U.S. and Iraqi officials for adopting de-Ba`thification? How was it designed and implemented? To what degrees were the rationales incorporated in the design and implementation of de-Ba`thification? In order to answer these questions two different data gathering methods are utilized: archival research and interviews with U.S. officials and Iraqi elites who were actively involved in the decision-making, planning and implementation of de-Ba`thification and Iraqis who suffered under or supported the Ba`th regime. The findings of this dissertation indicate that the main rationales for de-Ba`thification were transforming institutions in order to safeguard the democratic transition, satisfying expectations of the Iraqi public, gaining Iraqi support and trust in U.S. leadership, balancing the interests of Kurds and Shi`is against Sunnis, securing the new regime, preventing a Ba`thist revival, normalization and reconciliation, promoting the 'de-ideologization' of Iraqi society and removing Ba`thist ideology from the social, political and education systems, cleansing the system from corrupt and criminal activities that were tolerated under the Ba`th regime, preventing a revenge campaign against Ba`thists, establishing meritocracy, and comforting the victims of the Ba`th party. Most of these rationales were not considered when designing and implementing the de-Ba`thification program. For instance, the positions and persons who were subjected to de-Ba`thification were identified arbitrarily, there was not enough guidance on how to implement the de-Ba`thification especially at the provincial and ministerial levels, there was a great deal of ignorance about the composition of the Ba`th party and Iraqi culture. The commissions that were responsible for implementing the program were highly politicized, and consequently implementation process was inconsistent and corrupt. All of these problems left Iraq in the midst of broader protected quandaries including sectarianism, extra-judicial killings and governance gap.
Download or read book Writing the Modern History of Iraq written by Jordi Tejel and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2012 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The modern history of Iraq is punctuated by a series of successive and radical ruptures (coups d'etat, changes of regime, military adventures and foreign invasions) whose chronological markers are relatively easy to identify. Although researchers cannot ignore these ruptures, they should also be encouraged to establish links between the moments when the breaks occur and the longue durée, in order to gain a better understanding of the period.Combining a variety of different disciplinary and methodological perspectives, this collection of essays seeks to establish some new markers which will open fresh perspectives on the history of Iraq in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and suggest a narrative that fits into new paradigms. The book covers the various different periods of the modern state (the British occupation and mandate, the monarchy, the first revolutions and the decades of Ba'thist rule) through the lens of significant groups in Iraq society, including artists, film-makers, political and opposition groups, members of ethnic and religious groups, and tribes.
Download or read book Lessons of the Iraqi De Ba athification Program for Iraq s Future and the Arab Revolutions written by W. Andrew Terrill and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2012-08-04 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This monograph considers both the future of Iraq and the differences and similarities between events in Iraq and the Arab Spring states. The author analyzes the nature of Iraqi de-Ba'athification and evaluates the rationales and results of actions taken by both Americans and Iraqis involved in the process. While there are differences between the formation of Iraq's post-Hussein government and the efforts of Arab Spring governing bodies to restructure their political institutions, it is possible to identify parallels. As in Iraq, new Arab Spring governments have to apportion power, build or reform key institutions, establish political legitimacy for those institutions, and accommodate the expectations of their publics in a post-revolutionary environment. A great deal can go wrong, and any lessons that can be gleaned will be of value to those nations facing these problems, as well as to regional and extra-regional allies seeking to help them. (Originally published by SSI)
Download or read book A History of Iraq written by Charles Tripp and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-05-27 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This updated edition of Charles Tripp's A History of Iraq covers events since 1998, and looks at present-day developments right up to mid-2002. Since its establishment by the British in the 1920s Iraq has witnessed the rise and fall of successive regimes, culminating in the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. Tripp traces Iraq's political history from its nineteenth-century roots in the Ottoman empire, to the development of the state, its transformation from monarchy to republic and the rise of the Ba'th party and the ascendancy of Saddam Hussein.
Download or read book Lessons of the Iraqi De Ba athification Program for Iraq s Future and the Arab Revolutions written by W. Andrew Terrill and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This monograph considers both the future of Iraq and the differences and similarities between events in Iraq and the Arab Spring states. The author analyzes the nature of Iraqi de-Ba'athification and carefully evaluates the rationales and results of actions taken by both Americans and Iraqis involved in the process. While there are many differences between the formation of Iraq's post-Saddam Hussein government and the current efforts of some Arab Spring governing bodies to restructure their political institutions, it is possible to identify parallels between Iraq and Arab Spring countries. As in Iraq, new Arab Spring governments will have to apportion power, build or reform key institutions, establish political legitimacy for those institutions, and accommodate the enhanced expectations of their publics in a post-revolutionary environment. A great deal can go wrong in these circumstances, and any lessons that can be gleaned from earlier conflicts will be of considerable value to those nations facing these problems, as well as their regional and extra-regional allies seeking to help them. Moreover, officers and senior noncommissioned officers of the U.S. Army must realize that they may often have unique opportunities and unique credibility to offer advice on the lessons of Iraq to their counterparts in some of the Arab Spring nations."-- Publisher's website
Download or read book Compulsion in Religion written by Samuel Helfont and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book draws on newly available archives from the Iraqi state and Ba'th Party to present a revisionist history of Saddam Hussein's religious policies. The point of doing this, other than to correct the current understanding of Saddam's political use of religion through his presidency, is to argue that the policies promoted then directly contributed to the rise of religious insurgencies in post-2003 Iraq as well as the current and probably future crises in the country. In looking at Saddam's policies in the 1990s, many have interpreted his support for state religion as evidence of a dramatic shift away from Arab nationalism, toward political Islam. But this book shows that the 'Faith Campaign' he launched during this time was the culmination of a plan to use religion for political ends, begun upon his assumption of the Iraqi presidency in 1979. At this time, Saddam began constructing the institutional capacity to control and monitor Iraqi religious institutions. The resulting authoritarian structures allowed him to employ Islamic symbols and rhetoric in public policy, but in a controlled manner. By the 1990s, these policies became fully realized. Following the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, religion remained prominent in Iraqi public life, but the system that Saddam had put in place to contain it was destroyed. Sunni and Shi'i extremists who had been suppressed and silenced were now free. They thrived in an atmosphere where religion had been actively promoted, and formed militant organizations which have torn the country apart since.
Download or read book Compulsion in Religion written by Samuel Helfont and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-21 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Samuel Helfont draws on extensive research with Ba'thist archives to investigate the roots of the religious insurgencies that erupted in Iraq following the American-led invasion in 2003. In looking at Saddam Hussein's policies in the 1990s, many have interpreted his support for state-sponsored religion as evidence of a dramatic shift away from Arab nationalism toward political Islam. While Islam did play a greater role in the regime's symbols and Saddam's statements in the 1990s than it had in earlier decades, the regime's internal documents challenge this theory. The "Faith Campaign" Saddam launched during this period was the culmination of a plan to use religion for political ends, begun upon his assumption of the Iraqi presidency in 1979. At this time, Saddam began constructing the institutional capacity to control and monitor Iraqi religious institutions. The resulting authoritarian structures allowed him to employ Islamic symbols and rhetoric in public policy, but in a controlled manner. Saddam ultimately promoted a Ba'thist interpretation of religion that subordinated it to Arab nationalism, rather than depicting it as an independent or primary political identity. The point of this examination of Iraqi history, other than to correct the current understanding of Saddam Hussein's political use of religion throughout his presidency, is to examine how Saddam's controlled use of religion was dismantled during the US-Iraq war, and consequently set free extremists that were suppressed under his regime. When the American-led invasion destroyed the regime's authoritarian structures, it unwittingly unhinged the forces that these structures were designed to contain, creating an atmosphere infused with religion, but lacking the checks provided by the former regime. Groups such as the Sadrists, al-Qaida, and eventually the Islamic State emerged out of this context to unleash the insurgencies that have plagued post-2003 Iraq.
Download or read book Sectarianism in Iraq written by Fanar Haddad and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-05-03 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Viewing Iraq from the outside is made easier by compartmentalising its people (at least the Arabs among them) into Shi'as and Sunnis. But can such broad terms, inherently resistant to accurate quantification, description and definition, ever be a useful reflection of any society? If not, are we to discard the terms 'Shi'a' and 'Sunni' in seeking to understand Iraq? Or are we to deny their relevance and ignore them when considering Iraqi society? How are we to view the common Iraqi injunction that 'we are all brothers' or that 'we have no Shi'as and Sunnis' against the fact of sectarian civil war in 2006? Are they friends or enemies? Are they united or divided; indeed, are they Iraqis or are they Shi'as and Sunnis? Fanar Haddad provides the first comprehensive examination of sectarian relations and sectarian identities in Iraq. Rather than treating the subject by recourse to broad-based categorisation, his analysis recognises the inherent ambiguity of group identity. The salience of sectarian identity and views towards self and other are neither fixed nor constant; rather, they are part of a continuously fluctuating dynamic that sees the relevance of sectarian identity advancing and receding according to context and to wider socioeconomic and political conditions. What drives the salience of sectarian identity? How are sectarian identities negotiated in relation to Iraqi national identity and what role do sectarian identities play in the social and political lives of Iraqi Sunnis and Shi'as? These are some of the questions explored in this book with a particular focus on the two most significant turning points in modern Iraqi sectarian relations: the uprisings of March 1991 and the fall of the Ba'ath in 2003. Haddad explores how sectarian identities are negotiated and seeks finally to put to rest the alarmist and reductionist accounts that seek either to portray all things Iraqi in sectarian terms or to reduce sectarian identity to irrelevance.
Download or read book Memories of State written by Eric Davis and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2005-02-28 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Eric Davis eschews traditional histories of Iraq that have tended to emphasize political personalities and struggles amongst them, and focuses instead on the relationships between culture and political control, civil society and state institutions, and intellectuals and policy makers. The result is an innovative and multi-layered analysis that is a pleasure to read.”—Adeed Dawish, author or Arab Nationalism in the Twentieth Century: From Triumph to Despair "Eric Davis's book is a truly impressive tour de force of the cultural history of modern Iraq and the political struggles over the appropriation of national culture and memory. It is based not only on meticulous and detailed research, but also a thorough familiarity and sympathy with Iraqi society. Davis offers a particularly valuable cultural and intellectual history of modern Iraq, a country that has appeared in Western public discourse primarily in terms of its geo-political aspects and the bloody regime which ruled it until recent times."—Sami Zubaida, author of Law and Power in the Islamic World
Download or read book Republic of Fear written by Kanan Makiya and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1998-06-15 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1989, just before the Gulf War broke out, Republic of Fear was the only book that explained the motives of the Saddam Hussein regime in invading and annexing Kuwait. This edition, updated in 1998, has a substantial introduction focusing on the changes in Hussein's regime since the Gulf War. In 1968 a coup d'état brought into power an extraordinary regime in Iraq, one that stood apart from other regimes in the Middle East. Between 1968 and 1980, this new regime, headed by the Arab Ba'th Socialist party, used ruthless repression and relentless organization to transform the way Iraqis think and react to political questions. In just twelve years, a party of a few thousand people grew to include nearly ten percent of the Iraqi population. This book describes the experience of Ba'thism from 1968 to 1980 and analyzes the kind of political authority it engendered, culminating in the personality cult around Saddam Hussein. Fear, the author argues, is at the heart of Ba'thi politics and has become the cement for a genuine authority, however bizarre. Examining Iraqi history in a search for clues to understanding contemporary political affairs, the author illustrates how the quality of Ba'thi pan-Arabism as an ideology, the centrality of the first experience of pan-Arabism in Iraq, and the interaction between the Ba'th and communist parties in Iraq from 1958 to 1968 were crucial in shaping the current regime. Saddam Hussein's decision to launch all-out war against Iran in September 1980 marks the end of the first phase of this re-shaping of modern Iraqi politics. The Iraq-Iran war is a momentous event in its own right, but for Iraq, the author argues, the war diverts dissent against the Ba'thi regime by focusing attention on the specter of an enemy beyond Iraq's borders, thus masking a hidden potential for even greater violence inside Iraq.
Download or read book Hezbollah written by Dominique Avon and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-09-10 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For thirty years, Hezbollah has played a pivotal role in Lebanese and global politics. That visibility has invited Hezbollah’s lionization and vilification by outside observers, and at the same time has prevented a clear-eyed view of Hezbollah’s place in the history of the Middle East and its future course of action. Dominique Avon and Anaïs-Trissa Khatchadourian provide here a nonpartisan account which offers insights into Hezbollah that Western media have missed or misunderstood. Now part of the Lebanese government, Hezbollah nevertheless remains in tension with both the transnational Shiite community and a religiously diverse Lebanon. Calling for an Islamic regime would risk losing critical allies at home, but at the same time Hezbollah’s leaders cannot say that a liberal regime is the solution for the future. Consequently, they use the ambiguous expression “civil but believer state.” What happens when an organization founded as a voice of “revolution” and then “resistance” occupies a position of power, yet witnesses the collapse of its close ally, Syria? How will Hezbollah’s voice evolve as the party struggles to reconcile its regional obligations with its religious beliefs? The authors’ analyses of these key questions—buttressed by their clear English translations of foundational documents, including Hezbollah’s open letter of 1985 and its 2009 charter, and an in-depth glossary of key theological and political terms used by the party’s leaders—make Hezbollah an invaluable resource for all readers interested in the future of this volatile force.
Download or read book State of Repression written by Lisa Blaydes and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new account of modern Iraqi politics that overturns the conventional wisdom about its sectarian divisions How did Iraq become one of the most repressive dictatorships of the late twentieth century? The conventional wisdom about Iraq's modern political history is that the country was doomed by its diverse social fabric. But in State of Repression, Lisa Blaydes challenges this belief by showing that the country's breakdown was far from inevitable. At the same time, she offers a new way of understanding the behavior of other authoritarian regimes and their populations. Drawing on archival material captured from the headquarters of Saddam Hussein's ruling Ba'th Party in the wake of the 2003 US invasion, Blaydes illuminates the complexities of political life in Iraq, including why certain Iraqis chose to collaborate with the regime while others worked to undermine it. She demonstrates that, despite the Ba'thist regime's pretensions to political hegemony, its frequent reliance on collective punishment of various groups reinforced and cemented identity divisions. At the same time, a series of costly external shocks to the economy—resulting from fluctuations in oil prices and Iraq's war with Iran—weakened the capacity of the regime to monitor, co-opt, coerce, and control factions of Iraqi society. In addition to calling into question the common story of modern Iraqi politics, State of Repression offers a new explanation of why and how dictators repress their people in ways that can inadvertently strengthen regime opponents.
Download or read book Constitution Making Under Occupation written by Andrew Arato and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The attempt in 2004 to draft an interim constitution in Iraq and the effort to enact a permanent one in 2005 were unintended outcomes of the American occupation, which first sought to impose a constitution by its agents. This two-stage constitution-making paradigm, implemented in a wholly unplanned move by the Iraqis and their American sponsors, formed a kind of compromise between the populist-democratic project of Shi'ite clerics and America's external interference. As long as it was used in a coherent and legitimate way, the method held promise. Unfortunately, the logic of external imposition and political exclusion compromised the negotiations. Andrew Arato is the first person to record this historic process and analyze its special problems. He compares the drafting of the Iraqi constitution to similar, externally imposed constitutional revolutions by the United States, especially in Japan and Germany, and identifies the political missteps that contributed to problems of learning and legitimacy. Instead of claiming that the right model of constitution making would have maintained stability in Iraq, Arato focuses on the fragile opportunity for democratization that was strengthened only slightly by the methods used to draft a constitution. Arato contends that this event would have benefited greatly from an overall framework of internationalization, and he argues that a better set of guidelines (rather than the obsolete Hague and Geneva regulations) should be followed in the future. With access to an extensive body of literature, Arato highlights the difficulty of exporting democracy to a country that opposes all such foreign designs and fundamentally disagrees on matters of political identity.
Download or read book Iraq in Wartime written by Dina Rizk Khoury and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-08 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When US-led forces invaded Iraq in 2003, they occupied a country that had been at war for 23 years. Yet in their attempts to understand Iraqi society and history, few policy makers, analysts and journalists took into account the profound impact that Iraq's long engagement with war had on the Iraqis' everyday engagement with politics, the business of managing their daily lives, and their cultural imagination. Drawing on government documents and interviews, Dina Rizk Khoury traces the political, social and cultural processes of the normalization of war in Iraq during the last twenty-three years of Ba'thist rule. Khoury argues that war was a form of everyday bureaucratic governance and examines the Iraqi government's policies of creating consent, managing resistance and religious diversity, and shaping public culture. Coming on the tenth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, this book tells a multilayered story of a society in which war has become the norm.
