Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party – Iraq Region

The Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party – Iraq Region (Arab: حزب البعث العربي الاشتراكي في العراق Hizb Al-Baath Al-'Arabi Al-Ishtiraki fi Al-'Iraq) is a ba'athist regional organisation founded in 1951 by Fuad al-Rikabi. This regional organisation was a part of the Baghdad-based Ba'ath movement.

Leaders

• Fuad al-Rikabi (1951–1959)
• Ali Salih al-Sadi (1961–1963)^[1]
• Hazim Jawad (1963/64–1964 - or just acting?)
• Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr (1966/68?–1979)
• Saddam Hussein (1979–2003 de facto (from 13 December 2003 until 30 December 2006 de jure)
• Izzat Ibrahim ad-Douri (2007–Present)

History

The branch was founded in 1951 by Fuad al-Rikabi.

In Iraq, the Ba'ath party remained a civilian group and lacked strong support within the military. The party had little impact, and the movement split into several factions after 1958 and again in 1966. The movement was reported to have lacked strong popular support,^[2] but through the construction of a strong party apparatus the party succeeded in gaining power. The Iraqi-based party was originally committed to Pan-Arabism like its Syrian counterpart but after taking power in 1968 the party adopted Iraqi nationalism and encouraged Iraqis to identify themselves as the cultural and civilizational heirs to Mesopotamian and Medieval Islamic identity.^[3] Saddam Hussein sought to be seen as the leader of a great neo-Mesopotamian Iraqi nation by having himself compared to Nebuchadnezzar II and Hammurabi.^[4]

In July 1968, a bloodless coup led by General Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr, Saddam Hussein and Salah Omar Al-Ali brought the Ba'ath Party back to power. In 1974 the Iraqi Ba'athists formed the National Progressive Front to broaden support for the government's initiatives. Wranglings within the party continued, and the government periodically purged its dissident members. Emerging as a party strongman, Hussein eventually used his growing power to push al-Bakr aside in 1979 and ruled Iraq until 2003. Under Saddam's tenure Iraq experienced its most dramatic and successful period of economic growth, with its citizens enjoying standards of health care, housing, instruction and salaries/stipends well comparable to those of European countries. Several major infrastructures were laid down to help with the country's growth, although many had to be scaled down or abandoned as the costs of the Iran-Iraq War became heavier and heavier.

In June 2003, the Coalition Provisional Authority banned the Ba'ath party. Some criticize the additional step the CPA took—of banning all members of the top four tiers of the Ba'ath Party from the new government, as well as from public schools and colleges—as blocking too many experienced people from participation in the new government. Thousands were removed from their positions, including doctors, professors, school teachers, bureaucrats and more. Many teachers lost their jobs, causing protests and demonstrations at schools and universities. Under the previous rule of the Ba'ath party, one could not reach high positions in the government or in the schools without becoming a party member. In fact, party membership was a prerequisite for university admission. In other words, while many Ba'athists joined for ideological reasons, many more were members because it was a way to better their options. After much pressure by the US, the policy of de-Ba'athification was addressed by the Iraqi government in January, 2008 in the highly controversial "Accountability and Justice Act" which was supposed to ease the policy, but which many feared would actually lead to further dismissals.^[5]

The new Constitution of Iraq approved by a referendum on October 15, 2005, reaffirmed the Ba'ath party ban, stating that:

"No entity or program, under any name, may adopt racism, terrorism, the calling of others infidels, ethnic cleansing, or incite, facilitate, glorify, promote, or justify thereto, especially the Saddamist Baath in Iraq and its symbols, regardless of the name that it adopts. This may not be part of the political pluralism in Iraq."

Following Saddam Hussein's execution on December, 30, 2006, The Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party choose the former Vice Chairman of The Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council Izzat Ibrahim Al-Douri as the party's new leader.

On December 17, 2008, the New York Times reported that up to 35 officials in the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior ranking as high as general had been arrested over the three previous days accused of quietly working to reconstitute the Ba'ath Party.^[6][7]

The Ba'ath party currently continues to maintain a prominent role in the Iraqi Insurgency.

Allegations of racism

Author Fred Halliday writes about 1958-1979: Arab Nationalism confronting Imperial Iran, Ba'thist ideology, where, under the influence of al-Husri, Iran was presented as the age-old enemy of the Arabs. Al-Husri's impact on the Iraqi education system was made during the period of the monarchy, but it was the Ba'thists, trained in that period and destined to take power later, who brought his ideas to their full, official and racist, culmination. For the Ba'thists their pan-Arab ideology was laced with anti-Persian racism, it rested on the pursuit of anti-Persian themes, over the decade and a half after coming to power, Baghdad organised the expulsion of Iraqis of Persian origin, beginning with 40,000 Fayli Kurds, but totalling up to 200,000 or more, by the early years of the war itself. Such racist policies were reinforced by ideology: in 1981, a year after the start of the Iran-Iraq war, Dar al-Hurriya, the government publishing house, issued Three Whom God Should Not Have Created: Persians, Jews, and Flies by the author, Khairallah Talfah, the foster-father and father-in-law of Saddam Hussein. Halliday says that it was the Ba'thists too who, claiming to be the defenders of 'Arabism' on the eastern frontiers, brought to the fore the chauvinist myth of Persian migrants and communities in the Gulf.^[8]

Election results

Presidential Elections

Parliamentary Elections

References