Ba'athist Iraq

Iraqi Republic
(1968–1992)
الجمهورية العراقية
al-Jumhūriyah al-‘Irāqīyah
Republic of Iraq
(1992–2003)
جمهورية العراق
Jumhūriyyat al-ʽIrāq
1968–2003
Motto: (1968–1991)
وحدة، حرية، اشتراكية
Wahda, Hurriyah, Ishtirakiyah[1]
("Unity, Freedom, Socialism")
(1991–2003)
الله أكبر
Allāhu akbar
("God is the Greatest")
Anthem: (1968–1981)
والله زمان يا سلاحي
Walla Zaman Ya Selahy
("Oh it's been a long time, my Weapon!")

(1981–2003)
أرض الفراتين
Arḍ ul-Furātayn[2]
("Land of the two rivers")
Capital
and largest city
Baghdad
33°20′N 44°23′E / 33.333°N 44.383°E / 33.333; 44.383
Official languagesArabic
Ethnic groups
(1987)[3]
75–80% Arab
15–20% Kurdish
5% other
Religion
(2003)
Majority:
90% Islam
—59% Shia Islam
—31% Sunni Islam
Minorities:
5% Christianity
2% Yazidism
3% Other religions
Demonym(s)Iraqi
GovernmentUnitary Ba'athist one-party Arab socialist[4] republic
President 
• 1968–1979
Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr
• 1979–2003
Saddam Hussein
Prime Minister 
• 1968
Abd ar-Razzaq an-Naif
• 1968–1979
Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr
• 1979–1991
Saddam Hussein
• 1991[9]
Sa'dun Hammadi
• 1991–1993[9][10]
Mohammed Hamza Zubeidi
• 1993–1994[11]
Ahmad as-Samarrai
• 1994–2003
Saddam Hussein
LegislatureRevolutionary Command Council
Historical eraCold War • War on terror
17 July 1968
22 July 1979
Sep 1980 – Aug 1988
2 August 1990
Aug 1990 – Feb 1991
Aug 1990 – May 2003
20 March – 1 May 2003
3–9 April 2003
Area
1999[16]437,072 km2 (168,754 sq mi)
2002438,317 km2 (169,235 sq mi)
Population
• 1999
22,802,063 (43rd)[17][18]
• 2002
24,931,921 (41st)[19][20]
• Density
57/sq mi (22.0/km2) (87th)
GDP (nominal)2002 estimate
• Total
Decrease $18.970 billion (74th)
• Per capita
Decrease $761 (141th)[21]
HDI (2002)0.603
medium (114th)
CurrencyIraqi dinar (د.ع) (IQD)
Time zoneUTC+3 (AST)
Driving sideright
Calling code+964
ISO 3166 codeIQ
Internet TLD.iq
Preceded by
Succeeded by
Iraqi Republic
Saudi Arabian–Iraqi neutral zone
Republic of Kuwait
Kuwait
Coalition Provisional Authority

Ba'athist Iraq, officially the Iraqi Republic (1968–1992) and later the Republic of Iraq (1992–2003), was the Iraqi state between 1968 and 2003 under the rule of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party. This period began with high economic growth, but ended with the country facing severe levels of socio-political isolation and economic stagnation. By the late 1990s, the average annual income had decreased drastically due to a combination of external and internal factors. UNSC sanctions against Iraq, in particular, were widely criticized for negatively impacting the country's quality of life, prompting the establishment of the Oil-for-Food Programme. The Ba'athist period formally came to an end with the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the Ba'ath Party has since been indefinitely banned across the country.[22][23]

Led by Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, the Ba'ath Party came to power in Iraq through the bloodless 17 July 1968 Revolution, which overthrew Iraqi president Abdul Rahman Arif and Iraqi prime minister Tahir Yahya. The Ba'athists had previously assumed power for a brief period after the 8 February 1963 Revolution, but were forced into exile by Nasserists within their ranks following the November 1963 coup d'état.[24] By the mid-1970s, Saddam Hussein, through his post as chief of the party's intelligence services, became the country's de facto leader, despite al-Bakr's de jure presidency. Under Saddam's new policies, both the Iraqi economy and citizens' standard of living grew, and Iraq's standing within the Arab world increased significantly. As land reforms were introduced, the country's wealth was distributed on a more equal basis. However, several internal factors were imminently threatening Iraq's stability; the Ba'athist government, which was secular, Arab nationalist, and dominated by Sunni Muslims, was drawn into an escalating conflict with the religious separatism among Shia Muslims in the south and the ethnic separatism among Kurds in the north. The then-ongoing Second Iraqi–Kurdish War, in particular, was increasingly becoming a cause of great concern for the government, in light of the fact that Kurdish rebels were enjoying extensive support from Iran, Israel, and the United States. After the Iraqis suffered a major defeat to the Iranians in the 1974–1975 Shatt al-Arab clashes, Saddam met with Iranian monarch Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and, with the ratification of the 1975 Algiers Agreement, ceded parts of Iraqi territory in exchange for Iran's termination of support for the Kurds. With the Kurdish rebellion subsequently disadvantaged, the Iraqi military was able to successfully reassert the federal government's control over Iraqi Kurdistan.

In 1979, al-Bakr resigned from the presidency, citing health reasons, though it has been alleged that Saddam coerced him into stepping down. Nonetheless, al-Bakr was succeeded by Saddam, who became the fifth Iraqi president—a position he would hold for the next two and a half decades. Saddam's seizure of power occurred during a wave of Shia-led anti-government protests, which were violently suppressed by the Ba'ath Party. Alarmed by the Iranian Revolution, which had overthrown the Pahlavi dynasty and established a theocratic Shia republic, Saddam adopted an aggressive foreign policy stance towards Iran's new theocratic leader Ruhollah Khomeini, who had begun calling for the establishment of a similar Shia theocracy in Saddam's secular Iraq; there were fears among the Iraqi leadership that the Iranians would leverage the religious zeal among Iraq's Shia-majority population in order to destabilize the country. Rapidly deteriorating relations culminated in the Iraqi invasion of Iran in September 1980, triggering the eight-year-long Iran–Iraq War. Saddam and his government had miscalculated the effects of the Iranian Revolution, and had gone through with the invasion under the impression that Iran had been militarily weakened by ongoing internal post-revolutionary chaos. For the duration of the conflict, the state of the Iraqi economy deteriorated and Iraq became dependent on foreign loans (primarily from other Arab countries) to fund the war effort. The Iran–Iraq War ended in a stalemate in 1988, when both sides accepted UNSC Resolution 598 after suffering over a million casualties combined.

Claiming a decisive victory over the Iranians, Iraq emerged from the conflict under a steep economic depression while owing millions of dollars to foreign countries. Kuwait, which had loaned money to Iraq during the conflict, began demanding repayment, although Iraq was not in a position to do so. The Kuwaiti government subsequently increased the country's oil output, greatly reducing international oil prices and further weakening the Iraqi economy, while continuing to exert pressure on the Iraqi leadership for repayment of the loans. Iraq, on the other hand, demanded that the Kuwaitis reduce their oil output, as did OPEC.[citation needed] In 1989, Iraq accused Kuwait of slant drilling across the Iraq–Kuwait border in order to steal Iraqi petroleum, and demanded compensation. Failed bilateral negotiations resulted in the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, triggering the Gulf War. Iraq continued to occupy Kuwait until February 1991, when a 42-country UNSC military coalition embarked on an extensive campaign to force all Iraqi troops out of Kuwait, pursuant to UNSC Resolution 678. In an attempt to weaken Saddam and the Ba'ath Party after the conflict, the international community sanctioned Iraq, cutting it off from all global markets. Consequently, the Iraqi economy worsened for the remainder of the 1990s, but began to gradually rebound by the early 2000s, primarily due to the fact that many countries had started to ignore sanctions enforcement. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the United States' Bush administration began building a case for invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam's regime. Their rationale asserted that Iraq still possessed weapons of mass destruction and that Saddam had friendly links with al-Qaeda, both of which were found to be false claims during and after the Iraq War. In December 2003, nine months after the invasion, American troops captured Saddam near Tikrit and turned him over to Iraq's new Shia-led government. After almost two years in custody, Saddam's trial for crimes against humanity began in 2005. In December 2006, after sentencing him to death, the Iraqi tribunal executed Saddam for crimes against humanity with regard to the 1982 Dujail massacre, in which 142 Shia Muslims were killed by the Iraqi government in response to an assassination attempt against Saddam by the Iranian-backed Islamic Dawa Party.

  1. ^ Bengio 1998, p. 35.
  2. ^ Dougherty, Beth K.; Ghareeb, Edmund A. (7 November 2013). Historical Dictionary of Iraq. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 9780810879423 – via Google Books.
  3. ^ "Iraq". The World Factbook. 22 June 2014.
  4. ^ Musallam, Musallam Ali (1996). The Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait: Saddam Hussein, His State and International Power Politics. British Academic Press. p. 62. ISBN 978-1-86064-020-9.
  5. ^ Makiya, Kanan (1993). Cruelty and Silence: War, Tyranny, Uprising, and the Arab World. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 19. ISBN 9780393311419.
  6. ^ Bengio 1998.
  7. ^ Woods, Kevin M.; Stout, Mark E. (16 December 2010). "New Sources for the Study of Iraqi Intelligence during the Saddam Era". Intelligence and National Security. 25 (4): 547–587. doi:10.1080/02684527.2010.537033. S2CID 153605621. Retrieved 3 March 2022.
  8. ^ Faust, Aaron M. (15 November 2015). The Ba'thification of Iraq: Saddam Hussein's Totalitarianism. University of Texas Press. ISBN 9781477305577.
  9. ^ a b Cordesman, Anthony H. (20 February 2018). Iraq: Sanctions And Beyond. Routledge. p. 40. ISBN 978-0-429-96818-1.
  10. ^ Gazit, Shlomo (10 September 2019). The Middle East Military Balance 1993-1994. Routledge. p. 565. ISBN 978-1-000-30346-9.
  11. ^ Britannica
  12. ^ "Iraq executes coup plotters". The Salina Journal. 8 August 1979. p. 12. Retrieved 25 April 2018 – via Newspapers.com. Free access icon
  13. ^ Hardy, Roger (22 September 2005). "The Iran–Iraq war: 25 years on". BBC News. Retrieved 19 June 2011.
  14. ^ "Iraq invades Kuwait". HISTORY. Retrieved 9 June 2020.
  15. ^ "Resolution 1483 - UN Security Council - Global Policy Forum". Globalpolicy.org. Retrieved 1 June 2011.
  16. ^ CIA (7 October 1999). "Iraq". The World Factbook 1999. Virginia: CIA. Archived from the original on 7 October 1999.
  17. ^ "Iraq - Population 1999".
  18. ^ "Population Pyramids of the World from 1950 to 2100".
  19. ^ "Iraq - Population 2002".
  20. ^ "Population Pyramids of the World from 1950 to 2100".
  21. ^ "Iraq GDP - Gross Domestic Product 2002".
  22. ^ "Iraq: Resolution No. 460 of 1991 (official toponymy)". United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. 6 January 1992. Retrieved 25 October 2020.
  23. ^ "al-Waqāʼiʻ al-ʻIrāqīyah". CLR. 6 January 1992. Retrieved 25 October 2020. (in Arabic)
  24. ^ Saddam, pronounced [sˤɑdˈdæːm], is his personal name, and means the stubborn one or he who confronts in Arabic. Hussein (Sometimes also transliterated as Hussayn or Hussain) is not a surname in the Western sense, but a patronymic, his father's given personal name; Abid al-Majid his grandfather's; al-Tikriti means he was born and raised in (or near) Tikrit. He was commonly referred to as Saddam Hussein, or Saddam for short. The observation that referring to the deposed Iraqi president as only Saddam is derogatory or inappropriate may be based on the assumption that Hussein is a family name: thus, The New York Times refers to him as "Mr. Hussein" [1] Archived 24 March 2014 at the Wayback Machine, while Encyclopædia Britannica uses just Saddam [2] Archived 6 June 2004 at the Wayback Machine. A full discussion can be found [3] Archived 31 March 2014 at the Wayback Machine (Blair Shewchuk, CBC News Online). -- Content originally at Saddam HusseinBurns, John F. (2 July 2004). "Defiant Hussein Rebukes Iraqi Court for Trying Him". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 24 March 2014. Retrieved 2 July 2004.