Iraq (2004) | Introduction
On April 9, 2003, much of the world’s attention was riveted on a scene in a public square in Baghdad, the capital city of the Middle Eastern nation of Iraq. Television cameras broadcast a picture of a group of Iraqi citizens, who, after several hours of trying and with the assistance of American soldiers and tanks, finally succeeded in toppling an enormous statue of Iraq’s now-deposed leader, Saddam Hussein. For Americans watching on television, the fall of the statue marked the triumphal moment of a military campaign begun a few weeks earlier to remove a regime that was seen as a threat to American security. For the Iraqi people, the event marked the symbolic overthrow of a tyrannical ruler who had terrorized the nation for more than two decades. However, Saddam Hussein’s political career—including its ignominious end—left several significant legacies that will make the rehabilitation of Iraq problematic.
Saddam Hussein joined the Baath Party, a political organization that preached Arab unity, nationalism, and revolution, while in college. By 1968, the Baath Party had taken over Iraq, and Hussein became the second-most important man in the Iraqi government behind President Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr. In 1979 Hussein replaced al-Bakr as president and immediately executed twenty-one high government officials he suspected of treason. It was but one of many actions that left Iraq with a legacy of brutal political oppression. Political opponents of Hussein were routinely tortured and jailed. Key government and security apparatus positions were parceled out to relatives and trusted members of Hussein’s hometown and tribe. According to Middle East scholar Alon Ben-Meir, this combination of oppression and favoritism has left many Iraqis, even after Hussein’s demise, “embittered, disillusioned, cynical, suspicious, and impatient.” These traits of the Iraqi people will make it more difficult to create a functioning representative government in Iraq—a major policy objective of the United States.
Hussein’s rule proved especially destructive to two of Iraq’s three main ethnic and religious groups: Shiite Muslim Arabs and ethnic Kurds (Hussein was a Sunni Muslim Arab, a group that despite its minority status had historically held political power in Iraq). The “Anfal” campaign Hussein instigated to suppress the Kurds in the late 1980s was not the first time ethnic conflict had raged between Kurds and Arabs but it was the most ruthless. Iraqi forces destroyed thousands of Kurdish villages and killed more than one hundred thousand people, including five thousand from a 1988 chemical weapons attack on the Kurdish city of Halabja. Hussein also took extreme measures to keep Shiite Muslims under political control, ordering his troops to shoot and kill thousands when Shiites attempted an uprising in 1991. Saddam’s actions may have kept Iraq from breaking apart into separate countries but at a terrible cost. The hostility between the nation’s ethnic factions further complicates the establishment of a unified and democratic Iraq after Hussein’s demise.
In addition to years of political and ethnic oppression, another legacy of Hussein’s rule is a series of foreign policy misadventures that led to Iraqi defeats, years of diplomatic isolation and international sanctions, and ultimately foreign occupation. His decision to attack Iran in 1980 resulted in a eight-year war and stalemate that cost hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives and left Iraq’s economy in critical shape. His 1990 decision to invade Kuwait resulted in condemnation by the United Nations Security Council, international economic sanctions, and military defeat in 1991 at the hands of a large international force, led by the United States and including Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations.
Much of Iraq’s urban infrastructure, including irrigation and water systems, was destroyed by American bombs during the 1991 conflict and was not replaced. Iraq’s postwar rebuilding was hampered by the continuation of UN sanctions, which were to be lifted only when Iraq satisfactorily fulfilled UN demands that it verifiably relinquish all of its chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, and halt all of its weapons of mass destruction programs. Although Hussein agreed to these conditions at the time of the 1991 cease-fire, he continued to obstruct efforts by the United Nations to inspect weapons sites. In 1998 inspectors from the UN Special Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency were withdrawn from Iraq after Hussein reneged on promises of cooperation. Although seven hundred tons of chemical agents and other components of weapons of mass destruction programs had been found and destroyed, questions persisted about Iraq’s remaining WMD capabilities. Hussein’s refusal to fully cooperate with the United Nations meant that the last twelve years of his reign were marred by economic sanctions that severely hampered Iraq’s economy and deprived Iraq’s people of medicines, food, and clean water.
UN weapons inspections were given a final chance in late 2002, after the United Nations, at America’s urging, passed a resolution calling for Iraq to demonstrate proof of disarmament or face military consequences. Iraq admitted a new team of UN weapons inspectors in November 2002. However, chief inspector Hans Blix reported in February 2002 that while no actual weapons of mass destruction had been uncovered, Iraq still was not fully cooperating in answering questions regarding its weapons programs. President George W. Bush cited Iraq’s noncooperation and the potential threat that Iraq’s weapons could pose to the United States as reasons for his decision in March 2003 to order American military forces into Iraq. A few weeks later Hussein’s reign over Iraq was over.
While television news coverage that day in April showed Iraqis celebrating the end of Hussein’s rule, the toppling of Saddam’s statue did not signify the end of problems for Iraq and its people. Months after President Bush proclaimed the end of major combat operations in Iraq on May 1, 2003, the United States continued to station 150,000 soldiers in Iraq—a deployment that some people predict may last for years. Iraq also was experiencing guerrilla conflict and terrorist attacks—events that some people blamed on loyalists to Hussein’s regime; some speculated that Hussein, whose whereabouts remained unknown months after his regime was deposed, was continuing to organize resistance to impede efforts by the United States to provide security for Iraq’s people and install a new Iraqi government. These problems, as well as others Hussein had left in his wake, figure prominently in the ongoing debates that Iraqis, Americans, and members of the international community hold regarding the best way to help Iraq. Many of these problems are discussed in the following chapters of Iraq: Opposing Viewpoints: Was the 2003 War on Iraq Justified? What Role Should the United States Play in Iraq? What Kind of Government Should Iraq Have? What Lies in the Future for Iraq? Regardless of Hussein’s personal fate, his adverse political legacy continues to affect the lives of Iraq’s people and make the rehabilitation of Iraq after the war more difficult.
