Excerpts from "Iraq: Eye to Eye with the Occupation"
The Historical Roots of Resistance
...The US-UK war for the control of oil did not begin in 2003, or even in 1991, but in the 1920s. In order to understand the Iraqi resistance to the present occupation, we have to go back to the beginning of contemporary Iraqi history. A history of colonisation and imperialism on the one hand, nationalism and resistance by the Iraqi people on the other....
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Excerpts from "Iraq: Eye to Eye with the Occupation"
The Historical Roots of Resistance
Mohamed Hassan and David Pestieau, EPO publishing house - www.epo.be
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Postscript to Iraq: Eye to Eye with the Occupation
First published in French and Dutch in May 2004, Iraq: Eye to Eye with the Occupation by Mohamed Hassan, former Ethiopian diplomat and Middle East specialist, and David Pestieau, Belgian journalist (www.solidaire.org) has now been translated into German, Italian and Turkish.
One of the first books on the occupation of Iraq, it gives facts and analysis on the historical, political and social roots of the Iraqi resistance against the US army and its allies.
The postscript, written in December 2004 for the Turkish edition, and now translated into English offers you a first taste of the contents of the book, along with the third chapter "The historical roots of the resistance" also available in English.
You may use these two chapters freely but please mention the source, the authors and the original publisher (copyleft).
Thank you for your comments.
3. The Historical Roots of Resistance
1. 1914-1958: From British Colonisation to National Resistance
"I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes."
Winston Churchill, in 1919, during the Iraqi uprising against British occupation
The US-UK war for the control of oil did not begin in 2003, or even in 1991, but in the 1920s. In order to understand the Iraqi resistance to the present occupation, we have to go back to the beginning of contemporary Iraqi history.[1] A history of colonisation and imperialism on the one hand, nationalism and resistance by the Iraqi people on the other.
Colonisation and Occupation, 1920-2003: Spot the Differences
"Any Iraqi found in possession of weapons must be punished with the utmost severity. The village where he resides will be destroyed… Pressure will be brought on the inhabitants by cutting off water power, the area being cleared of the necessaries of life. Burning a village properly takes a long time, an hour or more according to size."
Lieutenant Genral Sir Aylmer L Haldane, 1920[2]
Right from the beginning, about eighty years ago, the United States concentrated its Iraq policy on one point: gaining control of oil. US intervention in Iraq began after World War I. At the time, most of the Middle East was controlled by Turkey. Through special agent Thomas E. Lawrence – better known as Lawrence of Arabia – the British promised that after the war they would support the setting up of an independent Arab state, on condition that the Arab leaders take up arms on the British side against their Turkish oppressors. At the same time, however, in 1916, the British, French and Russian Foreign ministers signed the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement, which redrew the map of the Middle East.
The Sykes-Picot Agreement decreed that the Lebanon and Syria would come under French authority and that Palestine, Jordan and the two southern provinces of Iraq – Baghdad and Basra – would become part of the vast British Empire. About the province of Mosul (the North of present-day Iraq) there was no agreement. According to the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the region would be in the French zone of influence, but the British were determined to add Mosul to their new Iraqi colony. In order to give more weight to this demand, the British Army occupied Mosul in October 1918, just four days after the surrender of Turkey. The British were there to stay.
The 1920 Revolt
After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Lenin’s Communist Party revealed the existence of the Agreement. Throughout the Middle East, mass protests broke out when Arabs and Kurds understood they had been cheated by the "democratic" countries. The rebellion extended over the entire colonial period, with ups and downs, and repression was merciless. In 1925, for example, the British launched poison gas on the Kurdish town of Sulaimanya, in Iraq. It was the first time toxic gas had been dropped from planes. (As early as 1919, the British Air Force had asked Churchill to authorise the experimental use of chemical weapons against "recalcitrant Arabs". Churchill, who was Defence Minister at the time, agreed straightaway: "I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes."[3]
The British were in fact having to face stiff resistance. Iraq was still a feudal country and national resistance was led by tribal chiefs and religious leaders who realised that the new colonial project in no way served their interests as they had had more autonomy under Ottoman rule. The repression of this revolt cost the British many men and a great deal of money.
Direct colonisation was no longer possible. Instead, there was to be an "Arab solution". In March 1921, the British authorities set up an Arab Council and "imported" a king, Faysal, son of the Sherif Makkar of Saudi Arabia. This was all the more extraordinary in that, until then, there had never been a king in the whole Arab world. His first mission was not to reign but to maintain order.
The Arab Council, incompetent in Foreign Affairs, was responsible only for passing an electoral law and setting up a National Council. The colonial administration depended mainly on the British Royal Air Force.[4]
The resemblance to the present situation in Iraq is striking: a new army – trained by the occupying forces – and a local leadership which can undertake practically nothing without the approval of the same occupying forces, were put in place.
In 1921, in the space of two days, Sir Percy Cox, the British High Commissioner, drew up the new map of the area. To the feudal chiefs he presented the new boundaries of the three countries, Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, as decided by a decree of the British Empire. " Cox produced a red pencil and an empty map of what was known as Arabia. Telling the delegates 'gentlemen, there are your borders,' Cox drew the angular lines which are today's frontiers of Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. " wrote Trevor Royle.[5]
The Key Question: Oil
In 1917, the United States entered the First World War at a moment when Britain and France were exhausted. The condition was the following: after the war, US economic and political aims would have to be taken into account. One of these aims was access to new raw materials, in particular oil.
In February 1919, Sir Arthur Hirtzel, a high-ranking British colonial civil servant, warned: "Don’t forget that the Standard Oil Company is ready to intervene to get Iraq back [6]." Faced with Franco-British domination of the region, the United States demanded an "Open Door" policy. The oil companies had to have complete freedom to negotiate contracts with the new regime of King Faysal. The solution to the conflict between the allies was the sharing of Iraqi oil. The cake was divided into five parts: Great Britain, France, the Netherlands and the United States each received 23.75% and the remaining 5% went to the oil baron Calouste Gulbenkian, also known as "Mister 5%", who had helped with the negotiations. 0% of Iraqi oil went to Iraq itself. And things remained that way until 1958.
In 1927, large-scale oil expeditions got under way. In the province of Mosul, two important oilfields were discovered. Two years later the Iraqi Petroleum Co. was founded, a joint-venture between the Anglo-Iranian Petroleum (today BP), Shell, Mobil and Standard Oil of New Jersey (today Exxon). A few years later, this international company had a monopoly of oil production in Iraq.
In 1932 – after fifteen years of occupation – British troops officially left Iraq. Despite formal independence and its own army, Iraq remained a neo-colony – due to British and American economic domination.
New forms of resistance appeared. The sheiks and imams, the notables and aristocrats were not really after national independence. They did not have that way of looking at things. After the disappearance of direct British colonialism, they accepted the new situation of indirect colonialism. At the time, Iraq was not a modern state and the resistance was not really prepared to throw the coloniser out of the country once and for all. The development of a modern Iraq only began with the setting up of a national army and the introduction by the British of an education system in the 1920s. To work in the police, the army, the administration and education, the British trained and recruited people who would bring new ideas into the country. Those ideas were at the basis of two new movements: communism and nationalism.
A Communist Party in the Centre of the Arab World
The course of history had also created a working class in Iraq. In 1934, the Iraqi Communist Party was born. In fact it was the first ever political party in Iraq. At the 7th Congress of the Communist International, Qasim Hasan (Nazim), the Iraqi Communist delegate, gave a striking description of Iraq at the beginning of the 1930s[7]:
" British imperialism has replaced the direct mandate system of governing Iraq by the treaty of 1930, and has thereby organised an "independent" state. Before the ruling class of Iraq received its so-called "independence" and a seat in the League of Nations, it had to agree to all the demands of British imperialism. Thereby the latter not only did not weaken but on the contrary fundamentally strengthened its position of colonial rule in Iraq.
Therefore British imperialism, despite the "treaty" with the ruling classes of Iraq, has retained in its hands all the points of military importance in the country. You understand quite well that these measures by British imperialism are directed likewise towards inflicting merciless punishment upon and suppressing the powerful rising national liberation movement in Iraq. The British Intelligence Service has its representatives literally in every corner of the country. One of the usual methods of "work" by these agents of the British Intelligence Service is to cause constant clashes between tribes and among the various religious sects, which in this way aim to achieve a split and thus weaken the national front of struggle against British imperialism.
Direct and indirect taxes are growing constantly while the arbitrary actions and the plundering policy of the government carried out by the officials creates an increasingly intolerable situation for the toilers.
To this must be added that the local feudal lords enjoy almost unlimited sway over the peasants, while the merchants and usurers draw the last farthing from the peasantry without mercy and with great arbitrariness. The prisons of "independent" Iraq are overcrowded with peasants who were unable to pay their taxes or their debts.
The sufferings of the peasantry are increased by the tropical and social diseases which prevail among the vast majority, especially in the South where 90% of the peasant population have no medical aid while being afflicted with syphilis, malaria, trachoma; they live in abject poverty and squalor, work day and night, at that the whole family works, especially the women who do the heaviest work.
Each of these peasants must pay 40% of the harvest to his feudal lord or sheik, and in addition 40% in taxes so that he is left 20% with which to feed his family.
The working class of Iraq is in the same difficult situation as the peasantry. Their wages, their living standards are constantly on the downgrade and therefore the young worker who is cruelly exploited ages rapidly and dies an early death. There is no law in the country to cure even in the slightest degree the unlimited arbitrary conduct and cruel exploitation of the bourgeoisie and capitalists. In Iraq there is no labour protection: a worker may be thrown upon the street at any time if his boss so desires, in which event his whole family is doomed to perish. There is no limit to the working time. The average working day lasts from 12 to 16 hours, and in most of the workshops, workers get no free day even on religious holidays. The law prohibits labour organisations of every description as well as meetings of workers. "
In 1935, the Communists founded the United Anti-Imperialist Committees, in support of the peasant revolts in the South and the demands of peasants and workers, among which were the withdrawal of British troops, the creation of a national democratic government, reduced taxes, distribution of land to the peasants and the cancelling of debts. In the cities, the Communists supported the first worker organisations. In 1931, the railwaymen went on strike. In 1932, a genral strike paralysed the country for 17 days. All the shops and factories remained closed and the (Belgian) electricity company was boycotted.
Qasim Hasan, the Iraqi Communist Party leader, collaborated with Syrian and Palestinian Communists. Arab Communists were opposed to the split in the Arab world and wanted Arab unity. They also fought the Zionist project in Palestine. Qasim Hasan explained it in the following way: " We want to utilise this occasion in order to say to the toilers of all Arabian countries that they can gain true independence only through decisive struggle and through the organising of the broadest national masses for armed fight against imperialism and its agency. Only this armed battle can bring the masses to a struggle for a workers’ and peasants’ government, as against the puppet national government which helps the imperialists in realising their colonial policy. " [8]
In spite of the repression, the Communist Party gained more and more influence. The esteem it was held in increased further when it took part in the revolts 1948, during the strike for higher wages which broke out in the oil refinery in Haditha. The strike culminated in a march on Baghdad. The regime reacted violently: the Iraqi Communist Party leaders were executed. In spite of their growing influence, the Communists did not manage to gain roots in the Iraqi army, which was to cost them dear later on.
The Arab Nationalist Movement and the foundation of the Baath Party
In addition to the Communist Party, the Arab nationalist movement was also growing at the same time. It was under the influence in particular of the thinker and writer Sati al-Husri, who was in favour of panarabism: a concept whereby all Arabs, from Morocco to Iraq, a region artificially divided by colonialism, imperialism and, after 1948, Zionism, formed a single people.
It was out of this trend that Baathism emerged. Baath doctrines were drawn up in the 1940s by the Syrian Christian writer Michel El Afleque who, with his followers, had considerable influence on Syrian policy.[9]
On 7 April 1947, in Damascus, he founded the Baath Party of Syria. It was only after the end of the Palestine War in 1948, however, that Baath thought began to spread throughout the Middle East. At the time, it seemed obvious that the lack of Arab unity had been the cause of the Palestinian defeat, which in turn strongly stimulated the growth of Panarab nationalism.
In 1952, in Egypt, a revolution brought to power the Committee of Free Officers, under Gamel Abdul Nasser. In 1956, Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal. British, French and Israeli troops occupied the Canal Zone, but Nasser stoutly resisted, becoming in the process the hero of the Arab world.
It was in this context that the Iraqi branch of the Baath Party was founded in 1954. In 1958, during the Iraqi revolution, the party was extremely weak, with no more than 300 members. It was, however, well represented in the Army, particularly among the officers.
Right from the beginning, the Baath Party was a lay, Arab nationalist party. Politically, it defended Arab unity in face of foreign intervention.
Baath Ideology
Baath ideology puts Arab nationalism above all else, including domestic social contradictions. The Baath Party programme is particularly revealing:
"The Arab Baath Party is a socialist party. It holds that the economic wealth of the country belongs to the nation" (article 26). The economy is socialist when it is national. The same goes for private property: "Property and inheritance are two natural rights. They are protected within the limits of the national interest." (article 34)[10]
As for the precise contents of Baath socialism, they are to be found in article 4: "We believe socialism to be a necessity emanating from Arab nationalism. Socialism represents the ideal social order allowing the Arab people to achieve its potential, develop its true nature and ensure constant material and moral progress. It enables the development among its members of mutual fraternity relying on reciprocal trust."[11]
The party programme juggles with the terms "nationalism" and "socialism". For the Baath, everything is subordinated to the nation. The rising national bourgeoisie could feel at home in the political organisation of the Baath. The party developed a progressive socialist discourse because it was confronted with a strong Communist movement, the only one firmly entrenched in the population in the years preceding the revolution.
When the Baath came to power in Iraq, the party drew on a rather general text written by Michel El Afleque about Baath ideology. In 1980, al-Thawra, the official party newspaper, wrote:[12]
"A worker is a citizen because he is a son of the people and it is that relationship which defines his rights and duties. His class is thus determined by his role as a citizen. Since his role as a citizen is defined by his role as a son of the people, the people as such therefore defines his rights and duties. Since the socialist state is the state of the people, there can be no class struggle. So the result is that the relationship between the working class and the Baath party is harmonious, since the Baath is the party of the working class."
Baath socialism can hardly be qualified as genuinely socialist (in Marxist terms), since, according to the Baath, class struggle cannot exist within the Arab nation. The result of this was that in Iraq, peasant demands, workers’ rights and the Kurdish national question were all subjected to a severely repressive approach. In fact, according to the Baath, these groups put national unity in danger with their demands.
1945-1958: the Americans try to conquer the Country
On 4 March 1944 – three months before the Normandy landing – Winston Churchill sent President Roosevelt a communiqué that was particularly sharp both in tone and in its subject matter: "Thank you very much for your assurances about no sheep's eyes [looking enviously--RB] on our oilfields in Iran and Iraq. Let me reciprocate by giving you the fullest assurance that we have no thought of trying to horn in upon your interests or property in Saudi Arabia. My position in this as in all matters is that Great Britain seeks no advantage, territorial or otherwise, as a result of this war. On the other hand she will not be deprived of anything which rightly belongs to her after having given her best services to the good cause, at least not so long as your humble servant is entrusted with the conduct of her affairs." [13]
Churchill’s communiqué indicates that the American leaders were so determined to get hold of Iraq and Iran that the British ended up being alarmed. In spite of Churchill’s declarations, the British were unable to stop the rise of the United States. A few years later, the British ruling class had to resign itself to the new reality and accept the role of Washington’s junior partner.
In 1953, after the CIA coup in Iran which put the Shah in power, the United States gained control of the new Persia. Around the middle of the 1950s, Iraq was jointly controlled by the United States and Britain.
In 1955, Washington imposed the Baghdad Pact, signed by Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and Iraq, as well as by the British. This pact (the Cento or Central Treaty Organisation) was adopted in opposition to liberation movements in the area. In addition to Nato, Seato and Anzus, it was the nth military alliance aimed, in this period of Cold War, at encircling the Soviet Union, China, North Korea and North Vietnam. Iraq, the heart of Cento, was independent in name only. The British maintained their military airfields in Iraq and, in spite of the latter’s oil wealth, the population lived in poverty and hunger. Over 80% of its population was illiterate, there was a doctor for every 6000 inhabitants and a dentist for every… 500,000.
Iraq was ruled by a corrupt monarchy and by big landowners and feudal merchants. It was in this situation that revolution broke out in 1958.
2. 1958-1968: From the Revolution of Qasim to the Take-over of Power by the Baath
"The situation in Iraq is the most dangerous in the world."
Allen Dulles, chief of the CIA, April 1959
On July 14, 1958, Iraq was shaken from top to bottom. The monarchy was overthrown by a military coup led by the young officers Abdul Karim Qasim and Abd as-Salam Arif. King Faysal II was shot together with a large part of the royal family. The revolution changed the social structure of Iraq completely. The power of the sheiks and the big landowners was done away with and the position of the urban workers, the peasants and the middle classes reinforced.[14] A military uprising turned into a national revolution. Crowds thronged the streets of Baghdad and the other cities. Correspondents spoke lyrically of "rivers of people", of a "purifying flood", of a "never-ending flow". The popularity of the revolution was unquestionable.[15]
Washington and Wall Street were mesmerised. Throughout the following week, the ten first pages of the New York Times were almost entirely devoted to the revolution in Iraq. President Dwight D. Eisenhower described the event as "the most important crisis since the Korean War".
The day after the Iraqi revolution, 20,000 US marines landed in Lebanon. The day after that, 6,600 British paratroopers were dropped in Jordan. These expeditionary forces were coming to the help of the Lebanese and Jordanian governments. There was in fact a real risk that the impulse coming from the events in Iraq would sweep away the regimes of Beirut and Amman. So the United States intervened directly to prevent revolution spreading through the Middle East, vital to its interests. This policy would later be christened the "Eisenhower Doctrine".
Eisenhower, his generals and his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, did actually intend to invade Iraq and set up a puppet government in Baghdad. Three factors prevented them from carrying out this plan: the popularity of the revolution, the declaration by the United Arab Republic (Egypt and Syria) that its troops would fight the United States in case of attack, and the support accorded to the new Iraqi government by the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union. The latter even began mobilising its troops in its southern republics, near Iraq. The American leaders were thus forced to recognise the Iraqi revolution.
The 1958 Revolution: First Steps of a Sovereign State
The rebel officers who had taken power, including Qasim, were, however, not only not members of a political party, they were, in spite of their common military origins, quite divided. They had no coherent ideology and no efficient organisation. What united them was a rather vague aversion for the big landowners, hostility towards the corrupt monarchy and a deep hatred of the British Empire and the United States. The question of joining the United Arab Republic, founded in 1958 by the Egyptian nationalist Nasser and the Baath Party of Syria, then opposed Qasim and Arif in a personal struggle for power. Arif, with his pro-Nasser sympathies, was supported by the Baathists, while Qasim, who was opposed to unification, was upheld by the Communists.[16]
Qasim gained the upper hand and Arif was arrested. Very soon, the conflict between the two men destabilised the infant republic. In March 1959, the supporters of Arif launched a revolt against Qasim from Mosul. However, the Communists attacked the insurgents and, with the troops of Qasim and the Kurdish chief Barzani, contributed to the suppression of the revolt.
In October 1959, an attempt on the life of Qasim was undertaken by a Baath unit. A young militant from Tikrit took part in it. His name was Saddam Hussein. Qasim was wounded, but survived.
Qasim was a centrist: he wanted to improve the lot of the have-nots while sparing the haves, a policy that was the result of his weak base in the population. He was thus able to keep power only by a balancing act between the Communists and the Panarabists. He tried to counterbalance the rising Panarabism among the military by supporting the Communists who did have a strong popular base.
In 1959, he opened diplomatic relations with Moscow, which led to considerable economic collaboration. The Soviet Union began delivering arms to Iraq.
Qasim set on the agreements with the oil companies. In 1961, he expropriated 99.5% of the concessions of the Iraqi Petroleum Company. He limited the companies’ field of activity to the areas where oil was already being produced and founded the Iraq National Oil Company (INOC) to exploit the new oilfields. The new regulations considerably increased the oil revenues of the state.
In 1960 and 1961, the Communists went from strength to strength. Qasim decided to remove them from important government posts and intervened harshly against the peasant organisations, the trade unions and the communist press. In 1961 his position was further weakened when the Kurds took up arms against the central government.
The shah of Iran considered Qasim’s sympathies for the communists and his claims on certain Iranian territories to be a threat. In July 1961, Qasim shocked the West as well as the surrounding pro-Western regimes by laying claim to Kuwait, which had only just become independent. When the Arab League unanimously accepted Kuwaiti membership, Iraq broke off all its diplomatic relations with its Arab neighbours. More and more isolated at home and abroad, Qasim’s balancing act looked shaky.
The Communists and State Power
Throughout the years 1959, 1960 and 1961, it seemed that the Baath understood the crucial significance of state power better than the communists.
The Baath reasoned in terms of taking power. With this in view, it infiltrated the army, organised officers and prepared a coup, which, far more than the CPI, it believed in.
In May 1959, the Political Bureau of the CPI considered a shake-down with Qasim. The Party Secretary, Hussein ar-Radi, esteemed that the moment was ripe among the population, that the CPI would emerge triumphant from a confrontation with Qasim and that the revolution would thus be completed. Other members of the Political Bureau, however, were in favour of a compromise with Qasim. The problem was that since the 1958 revolution the party had made no preparations to take power and had not prepared the population either. It had made no agitation around a programme of popular demands. It had delayed the demand for the nationalisation of oil. Its most radical catch-words went no further than the demand for "power-sharing". On the contrary, to keep Nasser at a distance, the CPI painted Qasim as the only valid Arab leader, which was hardly credible either in the Arab world in general or in Iraq.[17]
At the time, the international communist movement was in the throes of a debate on the role of the national bourgeoisie which in various countries wanted to be free of colonialism. The policy of Khrushchev, the then leader of the Soviet Union, and his supporters was to follow behind nationalist currents like that of Nasser in Egypt or Nehru in India. When Nasser banned all political parties in his country, the local communist party fell in line and dissolved the party. This "follow-on" orientation was opposed within the communist movement, among others by the Chinese and Vietnamese communist parties, who pled for communists to assume the leadership of the anti-colonial movement for national liberation by placing peasants and workers at the head of the movement.
Within the Iraqi communist party, the trend for compromise with Qasim won the day. In addition, the leading role of the communist party could not be put into practice in fact, since the party had no military branch, with influential officers.
Arif in power
In February 1963, part of the army – along with the Baath party – committed a coup. The regime collapsed and Qasim was executed. The Baath leaders ask Arif to take up the presidency.[18] Colonel Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, a Baath officer, was appointed Prime Minister. An alliance was thus constituted between two nationalist tendencies: the Baath and the pro-Nasser current which had grown up in the army.
President Arif, whose power had been restricted by the Baath right from the beginning, built up an army. On 18 November 1963, he took power. The Baath leaders were arrested.
1963 was a disastrous year for the communists. They had opted for a prudent support of Arif but a year later the facts were there: "In one year, Arif had killed more communists than the old regime in 25."[19]
Like Nasser in Egypt, Arif called on "all national political parties to unite" in a broad Arab socialist union. An appeal which immediately sparked protests form all the political parties.
From that moment on, Irak entered a period of great instability. After Arif’s death it was his elder brother who took over. The Arab defeat in the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 – during which Iraq played a purely formal role – provoked considerable agitation throughout the country. The Baath demanded the formation of a coalition government, demand ignored by President Arif. This crisis was at the heart of the Baath coup in July 1968, which was to put the Baath in power for the next 35 years.
3. 1968-1979: The Baath in Power
"Although Iraq was freed from the yoke of colonialism in 1958, until 1968 monopoly enterprises continued to control the first and most important of our resources and the main source of our national revenue: oil."
8th Congress of the Baath Party, 1974
In 1963, when Arif took power, the Baath Party was forced to go underground. Deep-going reforms were undertaken in the party, in its leadership and strategy.[20] Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr was the new leader. He was assisted in the reorganisation of the Baath by his young nephew, Saddam Hussein, who became the party’s general secretary.
On 17 July 1968, the government was overthrown by a military coup. Al-Bakr became Prime Minister and President of the country. Most of the members of the cabinet belonged to the Baath. The latter, which had always been very well organised, was now in a position to influence almost all national organisations.
The Baath, which now held the reins of power, drew up a nationalist orientation for the country. The rising national bourgeoisie was the first to benefit, but the Baath also managed to create links with the middle classes and part of the workers and peasants, seduced by the progress made by the country in the 1970s.
Arab Oil for the Arabs
The principal achievement of the Baath, which aroused the immediate anger of the Americans, was the nationalisation of oil. Even after the measures carried out by Qasim in 1961, the oil industry had remained mainly in the hands of Western firms and the majority of oil revenues went abroad. When it came to power, the Baath realised that "the treasury was empty".
The control of Iraqi oil thus became the bone of contention of the Baathists, which relied on oil revenue to finance all the other plans. From 1969 on, the Soviet Union promised to aid Iraq exploit its oilfields in the region of Arrmila – on the understanding that the totality of revenues would accrue to Iraq. The Western monopolies of the Iraqi Petroleum Company tried by all means to counter this agreement, but, on 1 June 1972, the Iraqi government decided to nationalise the oil sector: 65% of production and all the oilfields were expropriated.[21]
Iraq concluded an agreement with the Soviet Union, the first country to decide to buy Iraqi oil.
Other countries, European for the most part, followed, France in the lead.
Iraq was using its oil as a political weapon against Israel and the United States.[22] From January 1973, Iraq insisted that all the Arab countries nationalise the oil companies that collaborated with Israel. In October 1973, the American share of the refinery of al-Basra, still in private hands, was also nationalised.
As early as 1973, the United States envisaged intervention
The oil crisis broke out in 1973. The Arab countries, Iraq in the lead, imposed a rise in oil prices on the West.[23] At the time, the strategists of the Pentagon and the White House were already – according to a secret memorandum made public by the British secret services – contemplating an invasion of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the emirate Abu Dhabi. The document, entitled Middle East: Possible Use of Force by the United States, states in particular: "We believe Americans would prefer a rapid operation, led by themselves, to gain control of the oilfields."[24]
The report also quotes a warning by the then Defense Secretary, James Schlesinger, addressed to the British ambassador to the United States, Lord Cromer, saying that Washington would not permit any threat by "underdeveloped and under-populated" countries: for him, it was no longer sure that "the Americans would not use force". Taking over the oilfields constituted, according to the note, "the most likely option for the Americans". That was the reply of the United States to the challenge to its hegemony over oil.
A document drawn up on 13 December 1973 by Percy Cradock, chief of the British secret services, for the then Prime Minister, Edward Heath, also comments on the possibility of an American invasion, the eventuality of British aid and the way the Arabs and the Soviet Union could react: "The main risk in such a confrontation in the Gulf would probably consist of Kuwait, where the Iraqis, with the help of the Russians, could intervene."
In the eyes of the White House, Iraq constituted a danger because it already possessed at the time a weapon of mass destruction: its oil. Oil which, contrary to the other Arab countries, was being used to stimulate development at home and not for investment in the American or European economy, as was the case for the famous petrodollars of the Saudi and Kuwaiti sheiks. For the Americans, the Kurdish question was to be a lever to get to grips with the "Iraqi peril".
Rapid evolution
After the complete nationalisation of oil, in 1975, and high prices, the income of the Iraqi state increased fourfold. In a few years the country progressed rapidly in the economic and social fields.
In 1972, just before the nationalisation of oil, Iraq drew 400 million dollars on the licences of British and American firms. After taking control of its own oil, oil revenues increased, reaching 12.000 million dollars in 1979. In this period, the economy grew eight-fold. Industry, education and health services all leapt forward.
"Until 1968, the Iraqi national bourgeoisie was not very strong. The Baath encouraged its rise by nationalising the oil industry. This led to the regime’s receiving considerable revenues which it redistributed to private Iraqi contractors. These contractors made up the heart of the new national bourgeoisie."[25]
The Baath and its leaders had ambitious plans.[26]The struggle for power during the decade 1958-1968 had left little room for a genuinely constructive approach and it was time to set that right. A first step towards agrarian reform was taken in 1958. A limit was put on the amount of land belonging to landowners and the rest was divided up among the peasants. Ten years later, however, it was obvious that less than half the land had been redistributed. In 1969 the law of agrarian reform was amended. The peasants no longer had to pay for the land (the indemnities to landowners were abolished) and, a year later, a new agrarian reform law was voted to improve peasant living conditions. Production increased and the development of the countryside at last took off.
The Baath regime finished some large irrigation projects and began new ones. The 1976-1980 Five-Year Plan freed funds for dams on the Euphrates and the Tigris. The state built schools and universities. Unicef declared that Iraq had elimiated illiteracy. The level of education was one of the highest in the Middle East. In 1991, 87% of those between 12 and 17 were at school.
The Kurdish National Question once again
The Kurdish national question emerged abruptly just after the take-over by the Baath (a multinational party composed of Arabs and Kurds). The Shah of Iran encouraged Mustapha Barzani’s Kurds to secede from the rest of Iraq. At the end of 1968, the conflict between the Kurds and the Iraqi army degenerated into outright war.[27]
With the military support of Iran, the group around Barzani constituted a grave threat. In 1970, negotiations took place between the Baath, Barzani and the leaders of the Democratic Kurdish Party (DKP). The government agreed to recognise the Kurds as a "national" group, with a self-governing region and the right to self-determination. The two points were included in the Manifesto of 11 March 1970, which was to go into application in 1974, as soon as an agreement could be reached on the borders of the areas where Kurds were in a majority. The Manifesto recognised the Kurdish national movement within the framework of the Republic of Iraq. It recognised the rights of the Kurdish population and invited the latter to take part in a progressive national front. The rights of Kurds to their own language and culture were guaranteed. Newspapers and magazines were published in Kurdish (rights never obtained by the Kurds of Turkey).
In 1973-1974, the negotiations on the manifesto with Barzani and his party, the DKP, had ground to a halt. The Kurdish groups refused the borders of the Kurdish region proposed by the Baath. They wanted to add the rich oil province of Kirkuk. On 11 March 1974, in spite of the deadlock, the Baath regime began to put the Manifesto into application. A provincial Council and an assembly of Kurdish Affairs were set up, in collaboration with Kurdish leaders who did not share Barzani’s point of view. The Manifesto declared Kurdistan to be an autonomous region, ruled by an elected leadership and an executive council whose president would be appointed by the Iraqi chief of state. The Kurdish Council would control all local affairs, except defence and foreign affairs, the latter remaining in the hands of the central government. A special budget was allocated for the development of the Kurdish region and for bringing back Kurdish refugees from Iran.
The plan did not take into account the United States, determined to weaken Iraq. The Kurdistan war began again in March 1974. Barzani received the support of Iran and the United States. When Iraqi troops were approaching Rawanduz and threatening to cut the road linking Kurdistan to Iran, the Shah intervened, sending masses of military material to the Kurdish rebels.[28] Thanks to Iran’s artillery and anti-tank missiles, as well as the military support of Syria and Israel, the DKP managed to inflict heavy losses on the Iraqi army. In March 1975 in Algiers, in order to avoid deadlock, the Baath, in the person of Saddam Hussein, tried to reach an agreement with the Shah of Iran. The agreement recognised the middle of the river Chatt al-Arab, in the South of the country, Iraq’s only outlet to the sea, as the border between the two countries, and renounced all Iraqi claims to Iranian Arbestan, the part of Iran inhabited by the Arab minority, and to the islands on the edge of the Persian Gulf. In exchange, the Shah agreed not to allow the Kurdish Peshmergas to cross the border. Without the support of the Iranians, they could not hold out for long. Following an amnesty proposal, 70% of the Peshmergas gave themselves up. A few groups went on fighting in the Kurdistan mountains and 30.000 Kurds crossed the border to live in Iran as refugees. (There were already between 100,000 and 200,000 Iraqi Kurds in Iran at the time.) The guerrilla continued, but growing divisions arose between the supporters of Barzani and the PUK (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan) of Jalal Talabani, a group which seceded in 1975.
The Kurdish question was thus never completely resolved in Iraq.
The Progressive National Front with the Communists
After the 1968 coup, all political parties were once again authorised in Iraq. Trade unions, peasant organisations, associations of intellectuals and students were set up not only by the Baath but also by the other parties.[29] The Democratic Kurdish Party as well as the Communist Party both had the right to a legal press. In 1968, the Baath Party launched an appeal to the CPI and the DKP to form a progressive national front. This Charter for National Action of the Baath was published for discussion in all newspapers. It formed the basis for collaboration with the CPI and other parties.[30] In 1973 the front, whose lines of force had been drawn up by the Baath, was officially set up. The member parties of the front recognised the preponderant role of the Baath as a Party that was revolutionary, socialist, unitary and democratic. They had to "proclaim their hostility to colonialism and to reactionary forces" and "be totally opposed to Zionists and support Palestinian liberation". Arab unity was their main action point and dominated all other aims. Finally, they were forbidden to undertake political action within the armed forces. In the beginning, the CPI refused to collaborate, but the signature of the Friendship Treaty between Iraq and the Soviet Union in 1972 caused it to hesitate. In the end, the CPI became a member of the front in order to "collaborate unconditionally and with all its might with the Baath Party (...) so that the flag of friendship between Iraq and the Soviet Union would fly high". Two communists entered the government.
Very quickly, however, relations between the Baath regime and the CPI became strained. Baath policy was openly criticised in the communist press. In 1978, the CPI demanded to be treated on an equal footing with the Baath, communist cells were neutralised in the army and many communists were arrested. By 1980, the power and influence of the Baath had fallen away to almost nothing and most of the party leaders had been arrested, executed or forced into exile.
The Rise of a Big National Bourgeoisie
At the same time as the nationalisation of oil, a big national bourgeoisie emerged, linked to the state apparatus. The nationalist ideology of the Baath ended up in fact by stifling social contradictions in the country. The involvement of the population in state affairs, so great in the first years of the 1958 revolution, dwindled away.
On the international level, the Iraqi government continued to carry out the nationalist policy of a regional power. The Baath took advantage of the contradictions between the great powers to take its place as a regional player, the ambition of the big national bourgeoisie, which thought in terms of expanding its power and its profits. In 1979, Saddam Hussein wrote: "Other than the two present centres of polarisation (the United States and the USSR), other centres of power will develop further in the coming twenty years: China, Europe with France in the lead and Japan."[31]
The greatest stroke of luck came in November 1978, when the Egyptian president signed the Camp David Accords with Israel. Israel found itself isolated in the Arab world and the Baath party did not want to let the opportunity slip. An Arab summit, held in Baghdad, condemned the reconciliation between Sadate and Israel and declared sanctions against Egypt. The Baath also tried to smooth away a long-standing difference with Syria and President Assad. The Baath parties of Syria and Iraq had long wished for Arab unity, but Assad snatched at the bait only after the rapprochement between Egypt and Israel.[32]
In October 1978, conversations finally resulted in the signing of a Charter for National Action. In this charter, the two countries agreed to military unity. In 1979, it was clear that the ultimate aim was to arrive at complete political unification. However, the most important hurdle was yet to be crossed: which country would get the leadership of the Union, Syria or Iraq? Very soon, relations between the two countries worsened once again.
On 16 July 1979, on the eve of the anniversary of the 1958 revolution, al-Bakr officially resigned. Saddam Hussein succeeded him, after repression in the ranks of the Baath. Saddam also immediately had 30 communists executed.
On the eve of the eighties, Iraq was thus in the throes of division. In 1979, in Iran, revolution broke out, the shah was expelled and replaced by an Islamic regime hostile to the Americans.
4. 1980-1988: The War between Iran and Iraq
"I hope they’ll kill each other"
Henry Kissinger, former US Secretary of State, talking about the war between Iran and Iraq.
After the fall of the shah and the coming to power of Saddam Hussein in 1979, relations between Iran and Iraq went from bad to worse.[33] Various border conflicts broke out. Ayatollah Khomeiny, the spiritual leader of the Iranian revolution, wanted to export his revolution and, on his programme, Iraq was high up on the list. In addition, Iran still occupied three small parts of Iraq which should have been given back after the treaty of 1975.
On 17 September 1980, Saddam Hussein announced that he was nullifying the agreement of 1975, because it had been violated by Iran, and on 21 and 22 September 1980, Iraqi troops invaded Iran. At the same time they bombed Iranian airforce bases and other strategic targets. Attempts at mediation came up against a categorical refusal by Iran. In the following tears, the war spread to the whole Gulf region and provoked foreign intervention.
Iraqi progress in Iran was stopped in November 1980. In May 1982, Iraqi troops had been driven out of practically all the territory they had conquered and Iranian troops were counter-attacking. They penetrated the province of Basra. Between 1983 and 1986, they occupied the island of Majnun, threatened the city of Basra and captured the peninsula of Fao. In the North Eastern provinces, in collaboration with the Iraqi Kurds, they threatened the region of Kirkuk up to the Turkish border and advanced as far as the towns of Hajj Umran and Halabjah.
The Iranian attack on Basra encountered fierce resistance. The number of dead and wounded was particularly high. Iraq responded with heavy bombing on the Iranian oil terminals in the Gulf – especially on the island of Kharg. The occupation of Majnun and Fao continue to worry Iraq. In 1987, Iraq once again managed to gain the upper hand, receiving arms from France and the Soviet Union – which considerably improved its military position – and bettering its relations with various Western powers, above all the United States, with which it had renewed diplomatic relations in 1984 [34]. The United States supported Iraq in the United nations and supplied the country with information about Iranian troop movements in the Gulf. In October 1987 and April 1988, American troops attacked Iranian ships and oil rigs. At the same time – as the Irangate scandal would reveal – the United States was delivering anti-aircraft artillery to Iran.
Resolution 598
On 20 July 1987, The United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 598, which invited Iraq and Iran to sign a cease-fire, to withdraw their troops within internationally recognised borders and to settle their border dispute by way of negotiations. However, the resolution remained without effect.
Iraq reconquered Fao and the districts of Salamcha and Majnun. The military position of the Iranians was clearly untenable and their leaders tried to convince Ayatollah Khomeiny to accept a cease-fire so as not to put the regime in danger. On 20 August 1988, the Iranian government officially let it be known that it accepted Resolution 598. It was not until 1990, however, that the difference was finally settled on the basis of the 1975 agreement and that Resolution 598 could be put into application.
The war was a catastrophe: it had caused a million deaths and the two countries emerged considerably weaker from the conflict.
During the war, the United States’ aim was to weaken the two countries. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had declared: "I hope they will kill each other."
This position was confirmed by President George Bush in person. In his Memoirs, he wrote: "After the fall of the Shah – in our eyes the weakest stabilising element in the area – the United States decided to favour neither Iran nor Iraq. That is why the Reagan administration leaned on the side of Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq conflict. Not because of a preference for one or other of those two criminal regimes, but because we did not want one country to come out on top. We were convinced at the time that Iraq was in the weaker position."[35]
Saddam Hussein also understood that, but a bit late in the day. "Could they (the Americans) not have stopped the war? (...) They let Iran and Iraq fight for eight years. (...) During those eight years, they were very pleased with us. If only so as to be able to sell us arms and lower the price of oil."[36]
The main economic result was in fact that the pro-American regimes took advantage of the situation to lower oil prices. A heavy blow, financially speaking, for Iran and Iraq, but also for the Soviet Union.
5. 1988-2003: Iraq versus the United States
"We have to be prepared for possible conflicts against regional Third World powers, like Syria and Iraq." Dick Cheney, US Defense Secretary, in February 1990
In 1989, exhausted by the war against Iran but militarily strengthened, Saddam Hussein launched the idea of an Arab Economic Union in the Arab League. From that moment, the contradictions with the Americans increased. At the same time, the fall of the Soviet Union left the United States as the only super-power, with no equally-matched adversary.
In 1989, William Webster, director of the CIA, gave evidence before a commission of the US Senate. He judged the increase in the share of US oil imports from the Gulf to be alarming.: 5% in 1973, 10% in 1989 and 25% foreseen for the year 2000.[37]
In February 1990, six months before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, Dick Cheney, Defence Secretary under Bush Senior, approved a secret document fixing the defence rules for the period 1992-1997, which asked the armed forces to put less emphasis on the Soviet danger (the Soviet Union still existed, formally, at the time) and to "prepare for possible conflicts with regional Third World powers like Syria and Iraq".[38]
It was the beginning of an anti-Iraq campaign. On 2 May 1990, three months before the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the Iraqi delegation to Unesco published a document: "In recent weeks, Iraq has received, in the Western press, a flood of hatred, insults and counter-truths which are a reminder, in some aspects, of the anti-Arab hysteria which gripped the western media in 1956, on the eve of the tripartite aggression against Egypt led by Great Britain, France and Israel and the aggression of June 1967 against the Arabs."
The document also warned against the hegemonic tendency of Israel over the region: "Ever since the cease-fire with Iran, not a week passes without Israeli threats against Iraq. Several high Israeli military and political leaders have not hesitated to recommend "preventive" attacks on certain Iraqi industrial and military installations without that troubling Western consciences."[39]
The Iraqi government wanted a rise in oil prices, but Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar did not agree. Even while accepting to limit their production on paper, Kuwait and the Emirates, in particular, went on flooding the market, and the excess production once again put pressure on prices. Tareq Aziz, the Iraqi Minister for Foreign Affairs, explained the Iraqi point of view: "We were facing two options, either to stop servicing our debts and then being declared bankrupt in the international arena, by our debtors, or we were to stop living well... Country needs several billion dollars a year to buy food, medicine, spare parts, and to take into consideration that after 8 years of war, the people wanted a better living. So this was a real conspiracy against Iraq, a deliberate threat to the security and status of Iraq in the region and in the world."[40]
During the summer of 1990, the crisis was total. On the insistence of the Americans, the Kuwaitis were pumping more and more oil near the Iraqi border. The huge oilfields straddle the border between Iraq and Kuwait. The latter was a colonial creation. Independent since 1961, it is ruled by a small group of feudal sheikhs. Like most of the minute Gulf states, the country’s borders were fixed to coincide exactly with the oilfields.
In the night of 1 to 2 August 1990, Saddam’s troops invaded Kuwait. The Iraqi Foreign minister, Tarq Aziz, defended the action of his government in these terms: " We were expecting an Israeli aggression or an American aggression or both, during that period, regardless of whether we go to Kuwait or not. That was our analysis, that was our conviction, that the United States, after the weakening of the Soviet Union, when George Bush started to feel that he's the most powerful leader in the world. He decided to take over this region. He decided to put his hand on the oil reserves. He couldn't do that successfully fully without destroying Iraq and destroying the military power of Iraq and removing this nationalist, patriotic leadership.
You will either be hit inside your house and destroyed, economically and militarily. Or you go outside and attack the enemy in one of his bases. Iraq was designated by George Bush for destruction, with or without Kuwait. Inside Kuwait or outside Kuwait."[41]
In a first reaction, the neighbouring Arab states wished to resolve the conflict by negotiations. However, the United States would not hear of it. President Bush demanded the immediate withdrawal of Iraqi troops from Kuwait.
During the following months, twelve of the fourteen resolutions of the United Nations were written by the American government.[42] The most important was Resolution 678 of 29 November 1990, accepted by twelve votes for, two against (the Yemen and Cuba) and one abstention (China). The resolution "authorises the member states which co-operate with the Kuwaiti government, to use all means necessary for the restoration of international peace and security in the region, if by 15 January 1991 Iraq has not fully applied the resolutions."[43]
No issue was left to the Iraqis. Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of Great Britain, demanded the disarmament of Iraq, even if Iraq withdrew from Kuwait. Tareq Aziz asked: "So what does that mean? It means first, that they will not go to United Nations to seek permission in this case. Secondly she was saying we must dismantle Iraq from its military power. How could that be done without destroying Iraq, without a war? You cannot dismantle the military power of a nation unless there is some sort of a war. As it happened in Japan, as it happened in Germany in the Second World War, you just don't do that by diplomatic means."[]
After five months of blockade, on 17 January 1991, the United States and their allies (the European countries and some Arab states) attacked. George Bush senior launched air attacks in the course of an operation he christened "Desert Storm". 615,000 soldiers gathered round Iraq, ready to intervene. On 24 February, the American troops and their allies launched a land war. On 27 February, they entered the Kuwaiti capital and on the 28th, all was over. The retreating Iraqi army was massively and mercilessly bombed in the desert. The war caused more than 200,000 deaths. On 2 March, armed revolts broke out in the south of Iraq (with the pro-Iranian Shia groups al-Bakr) and in the North (with the Kurdish troops of Barzani and Talabani). These revolts were brutally crushed by the Iraqi government. The United States and their allies concentrated henceforth on the embargo, supposed with time to weaken the country and make the regime collapse from within. In the meantime, the United States financed the opposition groups which were forming in North Kurdistan.
Iraq was to pay "war damages" to Kuwait. It was to allow UN inspectors to "investigate the production of weapons of mass destruction". Without the agreement of the United nations, the United States and Great Britain decreed two "no-fly zones" (by Iraqi planes) over Iraq: one in the North, in the sky above Iraqi Kurdistan, the other south of Baghdad. In the twelve years that followed, the Royal Air Force and the US Air Force regularly bombed factories and bridges, as well as the homes of high-placed Iraqi officials. Iraq’s right to self-determination was trampled on. The country was strangled by the embargo. Between 500,000 and 1,500,000 Iraqis died as a result of it.
In 1996, Iraq and the United Nations reached an agreement on the "Oil for Food" plan. Every six months Iraq was allowed to sell 2 billion dollars worth of petrol, a sum to be put into an account controlled by the UN and which was to allow Iraq to buy food, medicine and materials for rebuilding infrastructures.[45]
In December 1198, Iraq expelled the disarmament inspectors after proving that their chief, Butler, was working for the CIA. President Clinton ordered intensive bombing of Iraq.
The Americans were pushing for a direct confrontation with Baghdad. When George W. Bush became president, in January 2001, the plans for the attack were already there. On the evening of 11 September 2001, the US government announced its intention of attacking Iraq.
From 1996 on, the brutality of the embargo struck the minds of people everywhere. Iraq was thus able to count on a certain amount of sympathy. By one means or another, Iraq was able to get most of its infrastructure in working order. It carried off several diplomatic successes in the region, renewing diplomatic relations with Turkey and Jordan. The national interest of the two latter countries forced them to come to a modus vivendi with Iraq. In this framework, the most notable events were the opening of a new pipeline to Syria and the reopening of the Iraqi-Syrian border. Diplomatic contacts were engaged with Iran. Even Egypt sent a chargé d’affaires to Baghdad. An Iraq once again became an "ordinary", full member of the Arab League.
On the other hand, the Iraqi army managed effectively to counter the Kurdish rebels in the North of the country. In 1998, it even regained control of the town of Erbil, in North Kurdistan and forced the CIA agents stationed there to flee.
From then on, Iraq purely and simply rejected the UN "Oil for Food" programme. Other countries, like France and Russia, showed a certain amount of understanding towards the Iraqi point of view. The Russians, the Chinese, the Malaysians and the French all went to Baghdad to investigate taking up relations once again. In 2002, the Prime minister of Kuwait, taking part, in Jordan, in an assembly with Iraqi ministers, declared, "We want to invest and put an end to the embargo."
In 2001 and 2002, Iraq was able to take advantage of this changing situation to break its isolation. In all the Arab countries, the population followed these developments with great attention.
Notes
1.Workers World Newspaper, 31 October 2002, http://www.workers.org/ww/2002/iraqoil1031.php
2. quote in animation of words of liberators, July 2003, http://strike-free.net/dead_list/popup/liberators.htm
3. quoted in Dissident Voice, 30 March 2003, www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles3/MickeyZ_March29.htm
4. Committee against Repression and for Democratic Rights in Iraq, Saddam’s Iraq, Zed Books, London, 1986
5. Trevor Royle, Games with Frontiers, in : Sunday Herald, 23 February 2003, www.sundayherald.com/315631
6. Quoted in Peter Sluglett, Britain in Iraq , 1914-32, London, 1974
7. 7th Congress of the Komintern. Report of the Arab Delegates, speech by Qasim Hasan (Nazim), Iraq, www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/7th-congres
s/arab4.htm
8. Ibidem
9. Marion Farouk Sluglett & Peter Sluglett : Iraqi Baathism : Nationalism, Socialism and National Socialism, in Saddam’s Iraq, Revolution or Reaction? Zed Books, London , 1986
10. Quoted in Saddam’s Iraq : Revolution or Reaction ? op cit
11. Ibidem
12. Ibidem
13. Quoted in Gabriel Kolko, The Politics of War, New York, 1968
14. Republican Iraq, in : Library of Congress Country Studise, www.ku.edu/history/VL/near_east/Iraq.html
15. Tariq Ali, Bush in Babylon, o.c., p.72
16. Republican Iraq, in : Library of Congress Country Studies, www.ku.edu/history/VL/near_east/iraq.html
17. Tariq Ali, Bush in Babylon, o.c. p.86
18. Gilgamesh, The military coup of 1963, www.angelfire.com/nt/Gilgamesh/63.html
19. Amir Iskander, Saddam Hussein, le militant, le penseur et l’homme. Hachette 1980, pp.239-240
20. Gilgamesh, The Military Coup of 1968, www.angelfire.com/nt/Gilgamesh/68.html
21. Iskander, ibidem, pp.187-188
22. Iskander, ibidem, pp.192-193
23. The Arab countries of OPEC imposed an embargo on the United States and the other Western countries, in the hope of forcing Israel to withdraw from the Palestinian territories. The embargo, which was to last until March 1974, prevented only 13% of US oil imports, but it made prices soar throughout the world.
24. www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/01/107290854403.html
25. Stephen Pelletière, Land Power and Dual Containment : rethinking America’s Policy in the Gulf, p.8. Strategic Studies Institute, http://www.carlisle.army.mil/ssi/pubs/1999/dual.pdf
26. Iraq, the Emergence of Saddam Hussein 1968-1979, in Library of Congress Country Studies, www.ku.edu/history/VL/near_east/iraq.html
27. cf. also www.angelfire.com/nt/Gilgamesh/68.html
28. Iraq, the Emergence of Saddam Hussein 1968-1979, in Library of Congress Country Studies, www.ku.edu/history/VL/near_east/iraq.html
29. Iskander, o.c., pp.242-243
30. Gilgamesh, The Military Coup of 1968, www.angelfire.com/nt/Gilgamesh/68.html
31. Iskander, o.c., p.281
32. Iraq, the Emergence of Saddam Hussein 1968-1979, in Library of Congress Country Studies, www.ku.edu/history/VL/near_east/iraq.html
33. Based on : The Iran-Iraq War, Gilgamesh, www.angelfire.com/nt/Gilgamesh/iran.html
34. They had been broken off in 1958
35. George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998.
36. Quoted in : Chapour Haghighat, Histoire de la crise du Golfe, Complexe, Bruxelles, 1992, p.64
37. Quoted in Michel Collon, Attention médias ! EPO, Brussels, 1992, pp.25-26
38. New York Times, 7 February 1990, quoted in Michel Collon, Attention médias ! EPO, Bruxelles, 1992, p..35
39. Quoted in Attention médias !, o.c., p.36
40. Interview of Tareq Aziz, Frontline, BBC, 2001, www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/gulf/oral/aziz/1.htmlù
41. Ibidem
42. Quoted in Attention médias ! o.c., p.36
43. Chapour Haghighat, o.c., p.254 ; http://www.un.org/
44. Interview of Tareq Aziz,, Frontline, BBC, 2001
Chronologie de l’embargo à la résolution 1454, dans : Le Monde Diplomatique,
http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/cahier/irak/chrono-embargo%
20?var_recherche=irak
Postscript to the Turkish edition of Iraq Eye to Eye with the Occupation(EPO)
© Mohamed Hassan - ali.mohamed@pandora.be
0473/478418
David Pestieau - david.pestieau@solidaire.org
0472/817374
2 December 2004
Postscript to the Turkish edition of Iraq: Eye to Eye with the Occupation
Nine months have passed since we wrote these pages. Nine months, the time of a pregnancy for many Iraqi mothers. In what kind of
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