Iraq occupies some of the most significant historical ground in the world. Situated along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers and stretching north into ancient Kurdish territory and south to the unchanged world of the Marsh Arabs, Iraq is a strange mixture of both culture and religion.

The British intended it that way. As a consequence of the end of World War I, the British created a protectorate in the old world of Mesopotamia. Wanting to establish a British foothold in the area, they recognized that they could use a variant of the old "divide and conquer" ("join and conquer") to bring together the southern Marsh Arabs (mostly Shi’ia), the central Mesopotamian townspeople (mostly Sunni), and the Kurdish north. The Turkish Petroleum Company, formed by the Ottoman Government in 1912, went over to British control in 1914. The year before the British and the Turkish regimes defined the border of Kuwait in the Anglo-Turkish Convention. That agreement would prove fragile in years to come.

The History of Iraq. Iraqi history includes some of the greatest civilizations on earth, including the Sumerians, the Assyrians, the Akkadians, the Amorites, and the Babylonians. The great cities of Nineveh, Ur, Babylon, and Nippur were built in what is now Iraq. The people’s who lived here left behind grand ruins and clay tablets that reveal stories remarkably similar to the Jewish-Christian theology.

Towards the end of the Ottoman Empire, Great Britain developed a growing interest in modern Iraq when Turkey offered Germany a chance to build a railroad from Konya in southern Turkey to Basra in 1902. That interest grew again in 1914 when Turkey entered World War I on Germany’s side, and British forces landed at al-Faw at the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab to prevent the German forces in Iraq from cutting British lines to east Asia. Those forces ultimately took Baghdad after a considerable struggle from Turkish forces, and thus Britain controlled almost all of Iraq except for the Kurdish north. Sir Percy Cox, the first British high commissioner, found himself with a myriad of problems left over from centuries of Ottoman rule. The local citizens demanded that order be maintained, roads and canals be built, and seeds and livestock be provided. Tribal fighting, suppressed somewhat by the Ottomans, broke out anew, and much of western Iraq was paralyzed by fighting. Nationalism reared up against British mandate policy, which was managed by inexperienced officers and staffed by Indians skilled in administration, leading to resentment by Iraqis who saw the British as intent on turning Iraq into just another colony.

Nationalist groups began to grow, including the League of Islamic Awakening, the Muslim National League, and the Guardians of Independence. When the mandate status for Iraq was announced in May 1920, the anti-British fervor grew considerably, with the Grand Mufahid of Karbala, Imam Shirazi calling for a jihad against British rule. The Shi’ia and Sunni briefly joined forces in what is now called the Revolt of 1920, which the British suppressed with forces sent from Iran and India, including Royal Air Force bombers and seaplanes. For the British, though, the cost of maintaining Iraq in its unruly state was too high to bear on top of the costs of World War I. The 1921 Cairo Conference and events in the Arabian Peninsula would provide an answer.

At Cairo Britain created the political system that would govern Iraq until 1958, based on Faysal Husayn as king, a Kurdish north, a Sunni center, a Shi’ia south, a Sunni-led army, and an Anglo-Iraq Treaty to hold the whole thing in place. Faysal, the son of Sherif Husayn of Mecca, had played a part in the Arab Revolt of 1916 against the Ottoman Turks, so the British hoped he would be acceptable to Iraqi nationalists. To increase the image of independence from Britain, the Treaty of Cairo created an Electoral Law that provided for an elected Constituent Assembly, which met for the first time in March 1924 and ratified the Treaty. Iraqi nationalists opposed the treaty, though, as nothing but a cover for British imperialism. That position gained credibility when the British attempted to gain oil concession rights in Mosul Province for the British-controlled Turkish Petroleum Company. Iraqi negotiators tried to gain a 20 percent participation in the company (later renamed the Iraqi Petroleum Company), but failed, and in March 1925 Iraqi Petroleum got a 75 year lease with no proceeds for Iraq.

By 1930 Iraq got a new treaty with Britain, granting Britain lease rights to Iraqi air bases in the event of war and mutual defense rights. Faysal’s close advisor, Nuri as-Sayyid carried out the negotiations for Iraq, and forced the treaty through the Iraqi parliament despite strong Iraqi opposition.

Iraqi independence from Britain came in October 1932, but the British-imposed governance structure remained. However, it proved unable to cope with the long-standing divisions within Iraq’s borders. The Sunni, who had been favored by the Ottoman Turks and the British, dominated the political system, leading to Shi’ia fears of Sunni oppression. Other conflicts grew from the British-drawn borders. The city of Mosul in the north was cut off from its trade with Syria, and Basra in the south in a similar way was cut off from its Iranian trade. The Kurds in the north resisted Arab rule, as did the largely Christian Assyrians, who had sided with the British against the rebellious Kurds.

Despite his ties to the British, King Faysal was the one unifying force in Iraq, but that ended with his death in September 1933. His inexperienced son, Ghazi took over, but lacked his father’s ability to keep at least the appearance of stability. His government lasted only three years before Iraq experienced its first coup. It was launched by General Bakr Sadqi a Kurdish officer, Hikmat Sulayman, a Turkmen, and Abu Timman, a Shi’ia. Sulayman formed a cabinet, banishing Prime minister Yasin al-Hashimi in the process.

King Ghazi had no choice but to accept Sulayman’s regime, which was divided by infighting. Ghazi himself died in a car accident in April 1939 and his infant son Faysal II succeeded him, though the country was placed under a regency until Faysal II became an adult. That allowed an Iraqi nationalist, Rashid Ali to assume the prime ministership, provoking the British to land forces once again at Basra to oust the Rashid Ali regime, which had taken on distinct fascist leanings. British troops then re-imposed the regency for Faysal II and got Iraq to declare war against the Axis powers in 1943.

Iraq entered the post-World War II world dominated by pro-British Nuri as-Sayyid. His continued efforts to strengthen Iraqi-British ties (like the Treaty of Portsmouth of January 1948) increased nationalist resentment against him, climaxing in the 1948 Wathbah, or uprising that strengthened the hands of the nationalists. Their position was furthered by the poor performance of the Iraqi army in the 1948 Israeli war of independence. More protest broke out in 1952 as the economy deteriorated, burdened by high inflation and corruption. The decision of Nuri as Sayyid to join the Baghdad Pact in 1955, joining Iraq in a mutual defense alliance with Britain, Pakistan, Iran and Turkey also provoked nationalist opposition, which crystallized on July 14, 1958, with a coup against the monarchy and the government.

General Abd al Karim Qasim and Colonel Abd al Salaam Arif were ordered to mobilize his troops on the morning of July 14, 1958 to go to Jordan and bolster the regime of King Husayn, believed to be threatened by the events in Lebanon. Instead Qasim led his troops to the royal palace, and after an exchange of gunfire, both King Faysal II and regent Abd al Illah were killed. The King’s body was wrapped in a carpet and spirited away by his retinue, but a mob found Illah’s body and dragged it through the streets, mutilated it, and hung it from a lamppost. Nuri as Sayyid escaped, disguised as a woman, but was caught and reportedly impaled alive.

Fighting between Arif and Qasim hampered the new leader’s ability to build a political consensus, and ultimately Arif was removed, charged with treason. Qasim developed ties to the Iraqi Communist Party, and his increasing left-wing policies (like nationalizing the Iraqi Petroleum Company) provoked opposition in the conservative Sunni ranks. A March 1959 coup failed, though, and Qasim only strengthened his ties to not only the Iraqi Communist Party but also the Soviet Union. But more problems continued to haunt Qasim, including violence in northern Iraq between Kurds and Turkomans, and Ba’ath leaders decided to dispense with Qasim, appointing a young Ba’athist functionary named Saddam Husayn to do the deed in 1959. Husayn and his small band of followers failed, though, and Saddam was apparently shot several times, caught in the fire of his conspirators across the street. Qasim’s Chevrolet was riddled with bullet holes, but he escaped unscathed.

Qasim weakened his ties to his communist allies, who responded with an effort to topple him in an uprising in Kurkuk in July 1959. Possibly fearing that his popular support was quickly fading, Qasim turned his attention to foreign adventures.

He laid claim to the Shatt al-Arab, but his action threatened to abrogate a 1937 agreement between Iran and Iraq over that significant waterway (the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers into the Arabian Gulf). In 1961 he also claimed Kuwait, reviving an old Iraqi claim based on the unratified Anglo-Ottoman Convention of 1913 declaring Kuwait as an autonomous district of the Ottoman Empire. British troops numbering some 7,000 were quickly inserted into Kuwait to prevent the arrival of Iraqi forces. The crisis ended, at least for the moment, by the November 1963 ouster of Qasim by his partner in the 1958 coup, Colonel Arif. Arif initially included Iraqi Nasirists along with Ba’athists in his ruling coalition, but ultimately the Nasirists gained power at Ba’athist expense. Arif originally planned to use his Nasirist ties to join the United Arab Republic (UAR -- the union of Syria and Egypt fostered by Nasir), but the merger never actually took place. Arif also nationalized most of Iraq’s business enterprises, including cement steel, insurance, and others, modeling his efforts after Nasir. But Arif began to lose enthusiasm for a union with Egypt, and ousted several ranking Nasirist officers from leadership positions, provoking Iraqi Nasirists to attempt their own coup against him. The September 1965 effort also failed, but Arif died in an April 1966 helicopter crash, and his brother Abd as Rahman Arif took over briefly. He attempted to improve relations with Iran, which had been supporting anti-regime violence by Iraqi Kurds, and visited Teheran in the spring of 1967. But just as one crisis seemed to be lifting, another erupted, this time with Syria. IPC transported oil in pipelines running through Syria to the Mediterranean, and in the winter of 1966-67 Syria demanded that Iraq pay Syria back payments for what Damascus claimed was a pattern of Iraqi under-payment of fees dating back to 1955. The regime was so weakened by internal strife and economic mismanagement that it chose to stay out of the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, giving fuel to its critics that it could not mount a military operation against the Israeli enemy. Another coup came in July 1968 led by Colonel Abd ar Razzaq an Nayif and Ibrahim ad Daud. They lasted only a few weeks, though, before being replaced by a group of military officers of the Ba’athist Party. They were mostly from the city of Tikrit, in the north central part of the country, they were Sunnis, and they distrusted the politics of Baghdad. Two of these leaders emerged to lead the Ba’ath, Ahmad Hasan al Bakr and Saddam Husayn. Their first opportunity to consolidate power came in a counter coup effort led by Nasirists and Arif supporters, and both Bakr and Husayn outflanked them by arresting hundreds of suspected Nasirist supporters and executing them. Saddam also began his move to sole authority by arranging for his relatives to assume powerful positions in the regime. His brother-in-law, General Adnan Khayr Allah Talfah became Minister of Defense (whose sister Saddam married). In July 1979 Bakr, suffering from declining health, resigned, and Saddam took the top positions, including President, Secretary General of the Ba’athist Party, and commander of the military.

Shortly after, Iraq decided to initiate war against neighboring Iran, with which it had a border dispute. Apparently believing that its Islamic revolution had weakened the Iranian military, Saddam Husayn believed that the war would be short and that he would quickly achieve his objectives. Those included the elimination of Iraqi dissidents operating out of Iran (including Iraqi Shi’ites ousted from Iraq earlier), total control of the Sha'at al-Arab, and curbing what he claimed was a threat of the Iranian Islamic Revolution spreading into the Arab world. After a bloody eight-year-long war (see Chapter 3 for details), Saddam had little to show for his efforts except a depleted treasury, hundreds of thousands of dead soldiers and civilians, and small slices of Iran, which, as it turned out, he would keep only temporarily. But Saddam did get the grudging support of the Gulf Arab states, who also feared Iranian efforts to stimulate Islamist opposition against their deeply-entrenched monarchies. They advanced Saddam billions of dollars to support his war against Iran, but ironically they were actually sowing the seeds of Saddam’s next military operation, against one of the very Gulf Arab nations that supported him against Iran.

In early 1990 Iraq began to complain about Kuwaiti behavior, and on August 2, 1990 Saddam’s forces moved across the Kuwaiti border and quickly occupied the small nation, discussed in fuller detail in Chapter 3. Arab leaders were mostly startled by the action, choosing to believe that Saddam would keep his word that he would settle the conflict peacefully. Resistance mounted in the Arab world and elsewhere when it became apparent that Saddam was not simply interested in solving a conflict over oil and debt, but in rather claiming Kuwait as Iraq’s 19^th province. It was now a clear case of Iraqi imperialism, and resistance mounted by Kuwaitis who had been fortunate to flee the country before the wave of Iraqi forces. In the end Iraq would lose much of its military force as well as its hold on Kuwait when other Arab nations joined together with the United States and many other nations to crush Iraqi (see Chapter 3).

Given Iraq’s use and development of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the termination of such programs became a war objective. While coalition aircraft struck suspected sites of WMD, many such sites remained after the war. The UN-brokered agreement ending the war provided for a mechanism to detect and destroy Iraqi WMD research and production facilities (see below for details of the Iraqi WMD programs). What resulted, though, was a cat-and-mouse situation between the UN inspectors and the Iraqi government, resulting in a series of crises between the UN and Iraq, and drawing in the United States to enforce UN inspection rights.

Iraqi leadership blamed the United States and Great Britain for their predicament. According to Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq ‘Aziz, those two nations dominate the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), and, moreover, U.S. policy in particular was an extension of Israeli policy, which, according to ‘Aziz, "Israel directly and indirectly influences the U.S. policy." Particularly troubling to outside observers, though, was the obvious expense lavished on the numerous presidential palaces, which were not only expansive physically, but were decorated with imported marble, fine woods, and luxurious furnishings and surrounded by lavish gardens. To these observers, the complaints by Iraq of the effect of sanctions might have been a cover for the budget extremes of its leader.

By December 1998 the U.S. and Britain had wearied of constant Iraqi efforts to stymie UN WMD inspections, and President Clinton ordered a large buildup of military force. This time, unlike previous clashes, Saddam received little support for his obfuscation, and so again Iraqi leaders backed down from their refusal to allow inspections and promised full cooperation. By late December that cooperation was only partial.

Saddam’s position remains insecure, with efforts directed against his life from both within and outside Iraq. An attack that wounded his son Uday was officially blamed on Iranian agents, though some fingered Iraqi dissidents as the culprits. He faces challenges also from Iraqis who either fled or were exiled to Iran. They have organized resistance against Saddam’s forces, sometimes inspired by the mysterious "Abu Hattam," who is a hero to the more than 600,000 Iraqis living in Iran. On the other hand, though, the Shi'ia population in southern Iraq, who briefly rose in revolt against Saddam in the aftermath of the Gulf War, have reportedly lost their willingness to continue the struggle. Iraq has apparently applied both carrot and stick to the region in order to pacify it. The carrots included the rebuilding of mosques and towns damaged in the Gulf War fighting, and an improved water supply, while constant reminders of the stick are found in the ever-present displays of military force in the area; patrols, encampments, military checkpoints, and gun emplacements. There was a brief flurry of protest, led by Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Sadeq Sadr, in an-Najaf, but that ended violently after Ayatollah Sadr, along with two of his sons and two other senior Shi’ia clerics, were murdered in February 1999. Riots broke out in an-Najaf, which Saddam’s forces crushed with the usual brutality.

The Political Structure of Iraq. The state structure of Iraq resembles in many ways the fascist regimes of the 1930s and 1940s, or the Stalinist Soviet Union. Saddam Husayn rules the country with ruthlessness comparable to Stalin. His vehicle is the Ba’athist Party, which he stocked with his supporters after eliminated Ba’athist leaders and members considered disloyal to him. He tolerates no dissent or questioning of his decisions, and is reported to have personally shot those who dared to disagree with him. His personal security apparatus works to eliminate all opposition, both internally and outside Iraq. Suspected opponents are tortured, murdered, purged, even as they attempt to flee Iraqi jurisdiction. Saddam reportedly operates assassination squads to travel to nations where Iraqi dissidents have fled to track them down and murder them.

The Iraqi Executive. The President, Saddam Husayn, holds absolute power in the executive, and those who surround him are political cronies. The current Vice Presidents are Tahah Muhyi al Din Maruf, who has served there since April 1974, and Taha Yasin Ramadan, appointed in March 1991. One of the more powerful figures is Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Mikhail Aziz, a Christian, who has held those posts since 1979. The president and vice presidents are elected by a two-thirds majority of the Revolutionary Command Council, which gave Saddam Husayn a 99% vote in October 1995 to renew his presidency. Those results were hardly surprising: Saddam chairs the Revolutionary Command Council. They were also apparently an effort to show continued support for Saddam after two of his sons-in-law defected to Jordan, as noted above.

The Revolutionary Command Council is the executive organ through which Saddam runs the country. It is technically separate from the ministries, but in reality positions in ministries and the RCC overlap. The RCC disseminates ideological guidance and Ba’athist policy throughout Iraq, at both the central and regional levels. The RCC also has provincial level headquarters, and further divisions in to branches, sections, divisions, and cells, much like Communist parties. That way uniform compliance with Saddam’s directives is assured throughout the nation.

The Iraqi Legislature. Despite Saddam Husayn’s monopoly of political power, Iraq does have a token legislature. The National Assembly, or Majlis al-Watani has 250 seats, 30 of them appointed by Saddam Husayn to represent the three northern provinces in Kurdish areas. The other 220 are popularly elected, and members serve four-year terms. Elections are not regularly scheduled for the Majlis, and prior to 1995 no election had been held since 1989. In March 1995, though, elections were held, with 689 candidates competing for the 220 seats available. It must be noted, though, that all of the 689 candidates had to pass a screening panel before they could compete in the elections, and the test question was whether they supported the 1968 coup that brought Saddam to power. The legislature has the token responsibility of approving Saddam’s policy, which it unfailingly does.

The Iraqi Judiciary. The primary court in Iraq is the Court of Cassation, and below it are five courts of appeal. There are also so-called revolutionary courts to hear political cases, and the judges are empowered to order summary executions of political opponents. Uday Husayn gave permission to make such executions public in 1992 as economic hardship drove an increasing number of Iraqis into committing crimes. Then capital punishment was extended into black market crimes and currency speculation as goods ran short in Iraq, and the victims included cousins of Saddam Husayn. By June 1964 Saddam instructed Iraqi courts to amputate the hands of anyone stealing more than $12 of goods, and by March 1995 punishments expanded to include branding of thieves and the cutting off of ears for military deserters. Physicians who refused to perform such mutilation were themselves executed. Finally international condemnation of these practices led Justice Minister Shahid Lazim al-Malaki to suspend (at least publicly) amputation and branding of criminals in January 1996. Executions, though, continued. By late 1997 they included four Jordanians accused of smuggling auto parts into Iraq. Those executions badly strained Iraq’s relations with one of the few Arab nations that supported it during its occupation of Kuwait.

Judicial safeguards in Iraq do not exist. The 1996 U.S. State Department report on human rights in Iraq reports summary executions, detention without trial or charge, poor prison conditions, a lack of due process, and a judiciary subject to presidential over-rule.

Political Succession in Iraq. Saddam remains alive at this writing (although given the tenuous nature of his rule, dead at the time of reading this writing). Both Iraqis and those outside the country hold great interest in succession possibilities, given the degree to which Saddam is directly connected with Iraq’s internal and external behavior. The future of Saddam continued to be debated years after the Gulf War ended. The focus was on both whether or not Saddam would survive efforts inside and outside of Iraq to remove him by force, and, if so, who might succeed him. Should he survive such efforts, the assumption both in and outside Iraq is that his eldest son, Uday, would succeed him as head of Iraq. However he almost died in an assassination effort in December 1996 when shots were fired into his Porsche while he drove through a wealthy neighborhood in Baghdad. He recovered after several rounds of surgery, and after the attempt as many as 600 senior military and government officials were arrested. While the identity of his assassins remains unknown, it may be assumed that Uday was a secondary target, and that the real target is Saddam himself.

Efforts to oust Saddam abound. Many reported coups since the Iran-Iraq war and the invasion of Kuwait occurred, but in each instance Saddam triumphed. He appears to enjoy most the breaking of U.S.-supported coup efforts. According to one report the CIA worked through a former general who defected from Saddam to launch an effort to oust the Iraqi leader. The movement, called Wifaq ("truth" in Arabic) got underway in 1996, but Saddam’s agents penetrated it thoroughly, and in July arrested hundreds of agents. Iraqi forces then used CIA broadcasting equipment captured from Wifaq agents to boast of their victory to the CIA station chief in Amman, Jordan.

Speculation continues, though, that Saddam’s days are numbered, given the pressing problems that his regime has inflicted on the nation. The Iraqi military was reported to be critically short of parts and equipment, and thus deteriorating in quality. Opposition in the military in response to such problems could join opposition from other quarters, including from Saddam’s own family. According to some sources Saddam faced increased opposition at the end of 1997, and executions in response were up; between 450 and 800 alone in early December.

The CIA estimates that should Saddam die or be exiled his replacements are likely to be Sunni Arabs, and most likely military leaders. The CIA believes that such leadership may well share at least some of Saddam’s views, but might also favor a moderated stance in order to allow Iraq to rejoin the world community.

Structure and Performance of the Iraqi Economy. Iraq lies above one of the world’s largest oil field, and two of the world’s largest rivers water its land. With oil reserves at an estimated 100 billion barrels, and 12 percent of its land arable Iraq has the potential to be a regional economic superpower. However most indicators suggest something closer to economic ruin. While Iraq does not provide its own data on economic performance, some estimates peg the per capita distribution of GDP at $2000, putting Iraq in the same category as developing nations such as Guyana and the Philippines. The 1996 growth rate, the latest available, is thought to be 0 percent. Widespread reports of malnutrition and a high infant mortality due to the lack of both food and medicine came out of Iraq, though independent verification was difficult. One passing item gave some small indication of how bad things were in mid-1998; an announcement that anyone caught selling dog or donkey meat as beef or lamb was eligible for a seven-to-ten year prison sentence.

The main source of foreign revenue, oil exports, declined to around 5 percent of the pre-1990 amounts due to the embargo imposed on Iraq by the UN. Shortages of imported goods drove prices to the point where they reportedly doubled in both 1994 and 1995. Reports of large-scale malnutrition and serious shortages of almost every essential good continue to the point where international support for the continuing economic sanctions is eroding. To make matters worse Iraq had a foreign debt of almost $50 billion prior to the Gulf War, and that figure did not include an estimated $35 billion owed to the Gulf Arab nations who supported Iraq’s war with Iran.

Iraq’s economic problems are at least partially of its own making, despite criticism of the international sanctions imposed against it. By June 1992 the UN proposed a food and medicine-for-oil swap, but Iraq rejected it as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty. The UN continued to propose, and Iraq continued to reject, similar offers, which became progressively less attractive as OPEC oil prices fell and OPEC imposed quotas on oil production by OPEC members, including Iraq. Poor food harvests also reduced food availability, and in September 1994 Iraq further reduced food ration amounts, cutting by half food intake for many Iraqis. By April 1995 the UN offered Iraq more generous terms for a food-for-oil deal, but again Iraq rejected the offer. Finally talks reopened in early 1996, and by May an accord was finally reached. The deal allowed Iraq to sell $1 billion of oil every month, with one-third of the revenues to be used to compensate Kuwait for damage from the invasion, and $150 million in relief to go to Kurds in northern Iraq. By June 1997 the UN Security Council allowed Iraq a second oil sale for $2 billion, which doubled by August of that year. However Iraq then refused to sell the oil in protest against what Iraqi officials claimed were slow deliveries of food and medicine. The UN acknowledged that food deliveries had been behind schedule, and attempted to increase them. But by mid 1998 another snag emerged; this time Iraq claimed that its oil sector was hampered by aging and outmoded equipment and it needed to spend $300 million repairing it. The UN approved, only to have Iraq refuse its approval since the deal was tied to the continuation of the oil-for-food program, which Iraq now claimed to reject. The consequence of all these problems was that Iraq contracted for only 260 tons of infant milk, even though the UN approved the delivery of 1,500 tons, according to a report released by UN General Secretary Annan. As Cortright and Lopez note, "By agreeing to these measures, Baghdad could have avoided much of the humanitarian crisis."

A similar picture emerged on the food-for-medicine program, where only half of the $540 million worth of drugs and other medicines delivered to Iraq since 1996 were delivered to clinics and hospitals.

A sharp decline is agricultural production also hampers Iraqi economic performance. Large efforts at farm collectivization and mismanaged water projects contribute to inefficient use of land and salinization of the soil. Moreover, Iraq relied heavily on expatriate labor to farm its fields, and much of this labor returned to home nations during and after both the Iran and Gulf Wars. Iraqi soldiers who returned from the Iranian front to find Egyptians working their fields drove out Egyptian labor in particular. Reportedly the resulting violence against these Egyptian workers was so severe that Cairo had to fly special EgyptAir flights to Baghdad to rescue them.

Another unknown in the Iraqi economy is how much Saddam Husayn siphons off the resource base. His appetite for lavish palaces and other luxuries may have led him to tap into the "oil for food" revenues to use for his own purposes: "The money he should have put toward feeding people he is now using to buy marble for his palaces or to keep his inner circle happy and loyal, said a senior Clinton Administration official. While the program also allows Iraq to fund a number of development programs, including electric facilities, water sanitation, resettlement, health care facilities, and others, it is very unclear how much money was actually earmarked for these humanitarian projects.

By late 1998, there were signs that Iraq’s economy might be starting to slowly recover, even though the sanctions remained in place. That was partially due to a growing trade with some former Arab state enemies. Syria opened its border to trade with Iraq, and Saudi Arabia signed contracts estimated at $100 million for food and medicine. Partially as a result, food was appearing in the markets in quantities not seen since 1991, and malnutrition seemed to have peaked, though estimates held that half of Iraqi children under five still suffer from it. Moreover, any optimism about Iraq’s economy must also be tempered by the potential impact of water shortages. In 1999 drought reduced the flow of the Tigris at Mosul to half of its regular amount, and officials estimated that over 70 percent of Iraqi crops might be lost.

The Role of Women in Iraq. Prior to the Gulf War of 1990-91, Iraqi women seemed to be freer from Islamic restrictions than were women in many other Arab or Muslim nations. It was all a part of Saddam’s effort to emphasize the secular aspect of the Ba’athist Party over the religious. But during and after the Gulf War Saddam needed the support of the Islamic clerics and thus found it expedient to restrict women. Most now appear with head scarves, and seem to have withdrawn from the more active role they played in Iraqi society prior to the Gulf War.

Iraqi Foreign and Security Policy. Since 1958 Iraqi foreign and security policy have focused on expansion of Iraqi power and prestige in the region. The Ba’athist Party quickly embraced pan-Arabism and emphasized Iraq’s particular struggle against foreign forces. Iraq also turned to the Soviet Union for support and foreign assistance, particularly in areas of military technology and sales.

The Iranian Revolution of 1979 gave Iraq another self-appointed foreign affairs role, that of protector of the Arab world against the feared spread of Iranian revolutionary fervor. Saddam Husayn then led a quixotic crusade against Israel by threatening to "burn half" of that nation right before his invasion of Kuwait in 1991, then offered to give up Kuwait in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal from the Occupied Territories. Other Arab nations noted that what Saddam actually did was to strengthen the position of the U.S., Israel’s strongest friend, in the Middle East by his actions. That position continued on at least eight years after Kuwait.

Weapons of Mass Destruction. One of the most troubling aspects of Iraqi foreign and security policy is its program to develop and build WMD. Those programs mostly began in the early 1980s, and included research into nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. Later investigation indicated that a considerable amount of assistance for these programs came from Germany. That assistance included building centrifuges for the production of enriched uranium, construction of chemical weapons complexes, and supplying mycotoxins for biological warfare. Of the 207 companies that assisted Iraq, 86 were German. Germany was not alone though; the United States sold Iraq $1.5 billion of arms supplies, including computers for Iraq’s nuclear programs and material believed to have gone to Iraqi laboratories for the development of chemical and germ war programs.

Iraq’s program in germ warfare apparently began in the early 1970s, with few results. But, apparently spurred on by a paper written by an American-educated scientist, the germ warfare program started in earnest in 1983, as Iraq was losing a costly and dangerous war with Iran. Later investigations revealed that much of the technical assistance for Iraq’s programs for germ warfare came outside actors, including from the U.S.

In November 1997 Saddam challenged the U.S. again when he ordered the American participants of the UN weapons inspection team out of the country. President Clinton again ordered a military response, but at the same time orchestrated a diplomatic reply focusing on the Permanent Members of the UN Security Council. The UN had sanctioned the weapons inspection process initially after the discovery of a large effort in Iraq to develop weapons of mass destruction, to include nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Given the abhorrence that much of the world gave to weapons of mass destruction, Clinton recognized that inaction by the UN was unlikely. The Iraqi record of hiding weapons and production facilities was chilling – smuggled gyroscopes for missiles, component chemicals for VX nerve gas, development of disease-bearing spores, and a host of other activities gave lie to Iraqi denials to charges of illicit weapons development. After a tense several days during which the U.S. mobilized force but found little support to use it in the Arab world, the crisis waned and the Iraqis allowed the American inspectors back in the country. Iraq mimicked its November 1997 behavior a year later when it again refused to allow UN inspectors to carry out their investigation. The U.S. again mobilized its forces, and was reportedly within an hour of launching hundreds of missiles against Iraq when Saddam again threw in the towel.

The crisis revealed starkly the scope of the Iraqi programs. Iraq revealed that it developed enough botulism toxin to kill the earth’s population several times over. Iraqi scientists also developed 528 gallons of a carcinogenic pathogen known as aflatoxin, mixing it with riot control agents with the possible intent of spraying it on Kurdish populations. The purpose would have been to produce latent cancer in the victims, since aflatoxin is a known carcinogenic agent. Iraq produced enough anthrax to kill billions of people, and even experimented with ricin, a deadly toxin distilled from castor beans. Even more troubling were reports of a new Iraqi missile that could deliver such toxins more than 90 miles away.

Such reports became difficult to verify, though, given the Iraqi efforts to hide their weapons of mass destruction production and storage facilities. After the 1981 Osirak bombing the Iraqis moved to dig these facilities underground and protect them with thick concrete. Another more elaborate ruse was to hide them in complexes that the Iraqis claimed were "presidential palaces." Claiming that inspectors could not visit the private residences of Saddam Husayn, these "palaces" were placed off limits. But as the number of "palaces" exceeded 78, it became evident that they were being used for something else. One Israeli researcher with access to photographs of the buildings, said that "These are not palaces like single buildings. These are huge estates and some of them are bigger than Washington, D.C."

The fears of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction research and production kept the sanctions in place. As they dragged into their seventh year the conditions faced by Iraqis reportedly worsened. Particularly troubling were reports of children malnourished and deprived of health care by the sanctions. Iraq claimed that by 1997 1.2 million people had died as a consequence of the sanctions, though the figure was impossible to verify independently.Washington in turn accused Iraq of callousness in cutting food rations to its people, claiming that they were insufficient. Other indicators of the dire poverty in Iraq included people in the souqs selling the doors and windows off their own houses to buy food and salaries of $3 per month paid to civil servants.

The United Nations report revealed the size of the WMD weapons arsenal. UN inspectors destroyed around 28,000 chemical weapons, 125,000 gallons of live chemical weapons agents, 48 operational missiles, 30 "special warhead" designed to carry chemical weapons, and numerous items used to produce such weapons. The identification and destruction of these weapons was one of the stated objectives of the Gulf War coalition, and a mechanism for finding and destroying the weapons, delivery systems, and means of production was a part of the agreement that ended the war. Responsibility for enforcing that arrangement went to the United Nations. For some years the agreement seemed to work, as the above figures indicate. But in early 1998 Iraq began to complain about the procedures used by the inspectors. They objected in particular to American members of the inspection teams, claiming that they were working for American rather than UN interests. In March they ordered that American weapons inspectors be evicted from Iraq, an action that led to a strong condemnation by a large number of world powers. Even France and Russia, who both had been quietly pressing for a relaxation of the sanctions imposed because of these weapons, condemned Saddam’s regime for the action. Iraq then declared that Saddam’s presidential palaces, where inspectors suspected that weapons production either had been or was underway, were off limited to the inspectors. The American response in particular was severe; President Clinton ordered a significant increase in American military force in the Arabian Gulf and threatened to use it if Iraq did not retreat from its positions. However he found that there was little support in the rest of the Middle East for military actions against Iraq. Britain was the only other major power that offered support for a military strike against Iraq, so options turned to a diplomatic solution. In what appeared to be a last minute gesture of desperation, the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, journeyed to Iraq to engage Iraqi leaders in direct negotiations to end the stalemate. While the U.S. privately opposed the initiative, Annan announced success after several days of tense talks. Iraq agreed to allow American inspectors back into the nation and further agreed to open the palaces up for inspection. The agreement called for international negotiators to accompany the inspectors on their rounds, and for a while all seemed to be going well. The palaces were searched (apparently revealing nothing incriminating), but after several weeks the chief UN inspector claimed that Iraq had refused to turn over to the inspectors data on their weapons program. The impasse seemed to continue, but the U.S. apparently began to lean the other way politically, pressuring the UN inspectors to cancel several surprise inspections. The reason seemed to have more to do with a loss of support for a hard-line U.S. policy than improved compliance by Iraq. Indeed, according to UNSCOM, there was still no evidence that weapons that Iraq was known to have made had been destroyed, as the agreements required. Such unaccounted weapons included Al Hussein missiles, anthrax, botulinum, aflatoxin, wheat cover smut, mustard gas, Sarin, VX nerve gas, and devices designed to deliver the above weapons.

In December 1998 the impasse finally exploded as Iraq refused renewed inspection plans, and ousted the UN inspectors again. This time the U.S. and Britain responded with a fierce bombardment of suspected Iraqi WMD facilities. Iraq responded by renouncing another part of their 1990 agreement, to allow allied aircraft to patrol the "no-fly" zones in northern and southern Iraq. The U.S. flew these missions anyway, but as Iraqi radar sought these flights, American pilots responded by bombing antiaircraft sites in both "no-fly" zones.

By mid-1999 efforts began anew to find a diplomatic solution. The U.S. backed a British-Dutch solution allowing for partial lifting of economic sanctions if Iraq provided answers to questions about the status of its WMD program. The plan allowed foreign firms to invest in improving Iraqi oil infrastructure, which would both benefit international oil firms and improve Iraq’s dilapidated oil production facilities, which produced less oil than Iraq was allowed to sell under the 1990 sanctions. The UN also moved back to Iraq then, to inspect a vaccine factory destroyed by weapons inspectors. The plant once made botulinum toxin for weapons, but Iraq wanted to reopen it to produce vaccine against animal disease, and thus required UN permission.

Iraqi Foreign and Security Policy. As much of the history recounted above indicates, Iraq has entered into conflicts with all of its direct neighbors and many other nation in the region. While most of the conflicts accelerated in seriousness and intensity under Saddam, most predate him. Those conflicts are noted in the following table:

Iraq has been a party to some but not all wars fought between the Arab nations and Israel. Unlike Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, or Jordan, Iraq has not been invaded by or lost territory to Israel.

Iraqi relations with Iran have been complicated historically by many factors, not the least of which is the composition of the Iraqi population. Unique among Arab nations, Iraq is around 56 percent Shi’ia, but that population tends to be among the poorer sectors of the Iraqi population. The dominant Sunni tend to keep the Shi’ia population in check, but on occasion disorder bubbles up from Shi’ia frustration, as it did in February 1977 when the Iraqi government closed the city of Karbala to Shi’ia pilgrims. Karbala is the site of one of the holiest places in Shi’ia Islam, the defeat of Ali Husayn, and when the Sunni government blocked access to the city, anger exploded into violence. The area would again experience violent unrest in 1979 after the Iraqi government refused Iraqi Shi’ia Ayatollah Sadr’s request to travel to Iran to congratulate the new revolutionary Shi’ia regime there. The regime feared that the group Sadr headed, called Ad Dawah (The Call) had connections to Iran’s Shi'ia leadership. When, in the spring of 1980, members of Ad Dawah attempted to assassinate Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz and Culture and Information Minister Latif Nayyif Jasim. the Iraqi government arrested thousands of Ad Dawah. Thousands were deported to Iran, and their leaders executed. That response was not judged harsh enough, apparently, by Saddam, because several months after the assassination attempt against Tariq Aziz, Iraqi troops marched into Iran.

Iraq apparently expected little resistance in its efforts to realign the borders of the Shatt al-Arab, negotiated in 1975. The radical Islamists controlling Iran’s government had purged the Iranian military of many of its leaders, believed to be too imbued with Western influence to serve the Revolution. Iraq may also have expected U.S. assistance of some sort, since the U.S. remained embroiled in a crisis over the holding of U.S. hostages taken by radical students in an attack on the U.S. embassy. However the fierce resistance of Iranian soldiers, who forced them into a brutal standoff war, surprised the Iraqis. By some estimates, a quarter million Iraqi soldiers died ultimately in that war, and many tons of Iraqi military equipment was destroyed during its course. Only in September 1997 did Iran and Iraq meet to discuss normalization of relations and the final release of prisoners of war.

The Kurdish Situation. Like Turkey, Iran, and Syria, Iraq has a Kurdish population, and like other Middle Eastern nations with such a minority, Iraq’s Kurdish situation has spilled over into its foreign and security policy. Iraqi Kurds live largely in the northern part of Iraq, where there are significant deposits of oil. They have agitated for their own homeland, but their effectiveness is marred by internal disagreements between Kurdish factions.

The U.S. has actively intervened in the Kurdish fighting between Barzani and Talabani to gain elections that would reestablish a regional assembly and determine a leader for all of Iraq’s Kurds, presumably uniting them against Saddam Husayn. But the agreement carried a cost to the U.S. Turkey, angered at the U.S. effort, expressed its displeasure by sending an ambassador to Baghdad to replace the one recalled in 1992. Turkey also demonstrated that it was capable of taking its own steps against Kurds in Iraq when it invaded Iraqi territory in March 1995 with ground forces and warplanes. Some 35,000 troops participated in the operation, which Turkey claimed was an effort to eliminate PKK bases in Iraq. After some weeks Turkish forces withdrew, but occasional forays by Turkish military into Iraq continued, particularly in late 1997 when they appeared to take advantage of infighting between rival Kurdish groups in Iran.

Iraqi Security Policy. Even since 1958, Iraq’s leaders have invested heavily in military equipment for the armed forces. By 1990, Iraq’s military was the fourth largest in the world in many military measures. But the power of the coalition forces aligned against Saddam reduced this military considerably, although some of the more powerful units remain in 1998. The land army remains sizeable at around 350,000 troops, though many of those are either conscripts or recalled reserve forces, and probably lacks quality training. Iraq’s tank force of over 6,000 before the Gulf War was reduced dramatically by coalition forces, and now numbers around 2,700, many of them obsolete and poorly maintained. The navy is limited to two frigates and some smaller craft. Iraq’s air force was also decimated by allied airpower, with many Iraqi planes either destroyed on the ground or flown to Iran to escape the air blitz. Remaining are around 130 fighter-bombers and 180 fighters, most of them either obsolete or inoperable.