[PEN-L:31462] How Saddam keeps power in Iraq

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

Title: How Saddam keeps power in Iraq

This is an excellent analysis, much deeper than that of the article that showed up in Opinion section of the L.A. TIMES on 10/20/02. However, the word "totalitarian" should be dropped. The role of tribalism shows that Saddam's "totalitarianism" isn't that different from that of Mexico's PRI and Taiwan's KMT. Both of those parties are out of power now, which surely takes the "total" out of totalitarianism.

------------------------
Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxx &  http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine

> >Le Monde diplomatique
> >
> >-----------------------------------------------------
> >
> >October 2002
> >
> >THE PATH TO WAR
> >
> >How Saddam keeps power in Iraq
> >_______________________________________________________
> >
> >Although Iraq has agreed to let UN weapons inspectors back
> >into the country, the United States still seems determined
> >to topple President Saddam Hussein's regime. So far, he has
> >defeated all internal opposition and maintained his grip on
> >power, despite the international embargo. Saddam has relied
> >on the country's various clans and tribes, at the expense of
> >the Baath party, which once had the main role in public
> >life.
> >
> >by FALEH A JABAR *
> >_______________________________________________________
> >
> >THE impending United States military campaign against
> >Iraq is reminiscent of the "death foretold" chronicled in
> >Gabriel García Márquez's novel - given the Bush
> >administration's longing for Saddam Hussein's
> >unconditional surrender. Yet overthrowing Saddam's regime
> >may well prove prohibitively expensive and could even
> >lead to chaos, because of his unique political system.
> >This has survived war against Iran (1980-1988) and
> >stinging military defeat in 1991, after Iraq's invasion
> >of Kuwait on 2 August 1990 and the outbreak of the Gulf
> >war. Saddam's political durability is no fluke: it is the
> >outcome of complex and carefully calculated plays for
> >power.
> >
> >As a young man, Saddam Hussein admired Hitler's system of
> >government. His fondness for totalitarianism came from
> >his maternal uncle, Khairullah Tilfah (1). Stalin and
> >communism were subsequently Saddam's exemplars. He
> >tailored his system along Nazi and Stalinist lines,
> >though it had a number of new features. In keeping with
> >Nazi ideals, Iraq's Ba'ath party had four main pillars:
> >totalitarian ideology, single-party rule, a command
> >economy (nominally socialist), and firm control over the
> >media and the army.
> >
> >Unlike the Nazi model, the Ba'ath version deployed Iraq's
> >traditional tribes and clans in key state institutions;
> >these groups still survive in the provinces and outlying
> >rural areas. Three strategic posts were set aside for the
> >ruling clan: the defence ministry, the party's military
> >bureau (al-maktab al-askari) and the National Security
> >Bureau (maktab al-amn al-qawmi). In the early years of
> >the regime, state tribalism (the ruler's employment of
> >his own tribesmen in state institutions) focused on the
> >tribe that made up the ruling elite: Albu Nasir and its
> >leading core, the al-Beijat clan. In later years other
> >junior tribal groups were admitted (2). This strategy,
> >based on fear, aimed to strengthen the regime's power
> >base, build a monolithic ruling elite, and stem the
> >schisms and power struggles that had plagued the army and
> >party politics between 1958 and 1970.
> >
> >Oil revenues were another essential component of the
> >Ba'ath party system. Iraq's vast oil reserves enabled the
> >government to expand public services and social safety
> >nets. As a result, the Westernised middle classes took
> >advantage of expanded opportunities and prospered during
> >the oil boom that followed the October 1973 Arab-Israeli
> >war. The success of the upper classes exceeded all
> >expectations, despite the restrictions of the command
> >economy. In 1968 Iraq had 53 millionaire families,
> >measured in dinars (a dinar was then worth $3.10). There
> >were around 800 such households in 1980 and 3,000 by
> >1989. Salaried employees and property owners in the
> >middle and upper classes became powerful social forces.
> >They did not owe their prosperity to a free market
> >system; they were dependent on government employment and
> >contracts.
> >
> >In the corridors of power and the newly ascendant clan
> >classes, tribal or kinship-based groups held strategic
> >positions. These clan classes maintained a tight grip on
> >the army, the Ba'ath party, the bureaucracy and business.
> >Their bonds were in shared ideology and economic
> >interests, together with intermarriage and the
> >glorification of kinship, in spite of official
> >anti-tribalism.
> >
> >This totalitarian system brought together modern and
> >traditional elements. It sought to control the state's
> >power structures and the restless multi-ethnic and
> >multi-cultural masses. Iraq's Arab population are divided
> >between Sunnis and Shi'ites, while the Kurds form a
> >sizeable minority (see article Kurdistan: on the map at
> >last). This blend of the modern and the traditional has
> >been the primary source of the regime's longevity, as
> >well as its chief weakness.
> >
> >In dealing with the cohesiveness and stability of the
> >ruling elite, the Ba'ath regime contrasted sharply with
> >its predecessors. These included General Abdul-Karim
> >Qassim (1958-1963), who relied on military discipline to
> >keep order, and Marshal Abdul-Salam Arif (1963-1968), who
> >married military discipline with blood ties to the
> >Jumailat clan. Both leaders failed to secure a stable
> >power base. The Ba'ath party added its own original
> >ingredients to the basic formula of army plus tribal
> >solidarity.
> >
> >This new and complicated mixture took years to set since
> >its two sides were so contradictory. Modern party norms,
> >which the Ba'ath party ostensibly espoused as a socialist
> >and Arab nationalist party, did not make the party immune
> >to internal divisions. And these norms ended up
> >conflicting with tribal bonds, too.
> >
> >In the regime's early years co-existence between the
> >Ba'ath party's civilian and military wings was uneasy;
> >and in the end, the military was confined to its
> >barracks. The tribal groups were fraught with internal
> >rivalries, and there were bloody fights over power and
> >wealth, but they did provide some cohesion. Clashes arose
> >when these opposing forces and political discourses were
> >forcibly joined. Still, there were the beginnings of a
> >peaceful co-existence. With each new crisis, reforms were
> >introduced to restore the balance of power. Such flexible
> >fine-tuning became Saddam Hussein's usual practice.
> >
> >Secular nationalism had never supported the tribal
> >elites' traditional beliefs, yet it eventually
> >incorporated the tribal value system, based on lineage,
> >into its ideological fabric. With Iraq's oil revenues in
> >constant flux, primitive forms of economic control were
> >put in place.
> >
> >Failure in Kuwait
> >
> >Regional and global realities once encouraged
> >totalitarian nationalist systems, but this changed
> >dramatically after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the
> >end of single-party government in eastern Europe.
> >
> >The Iran-Iraq conflict and the Gulf war led to constant
> >restructuring. During the eight years of war against
> >Iran's Islamic revolution, religion appeared on the
> >political agenda. Baghdad was particularly concerned with
> >Iraq's militant Shi'ite Muslims and their attitudes
> >toward Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic republic. Weakened by
> >the long conflict with Iran, Iraq lost control over
> >traditional social groups in rural and provincial areas.
> >This weakness led to renewed tribalism.
> >
> >The war devoured Iraq's $38bn surplus and left it with a
> >$50bn debt. The army's 1m soldiers grew restless. The war
> >generation longed for the prosperous civilian life it had
> >known in the past, the military seemed dangerously out of
> >control and the state's power structures and social
> >engineering mechanisms showed the strain. Against this
> >backdrop Iraq, in the hopes of restoring stability,
> >invaded Kuwait. But its defeat in 1991 led to chronic
> >structural crises.
> >
> >The Iraqi state was seriously weakened. Reduced to almost
> >one-third of its pre-war size, the army was crippled by
> >insurrections that broke out in the north (Kurdistan) and
> >in the predominantly Shi'ite south. Military difficulties
> >increased when the US created two no-fly zones. Iraq's
> >security services, targeted by the uprisings in spring
> >1991, lost much of their database and many experienced
> >personnel.
> >
> >The systems of ideological control - the structures of
> >the ruling party - also went into decline. Ba'ath party
> >membership, which peaked at 1.8m in 1990, had plunged by
> >40% by the 10th party congress in 1991, and continued to
> >drop before the 11th and 12th congresses in 1996 and
> >2001. Estrangement was most pronounced in the southern
> >cities of Basra and Nasiriya, in the central region
> >(including the cities of Hilla, Najaf and Karbala), and
> >in the capital. These losses reduced the Ba'ath party's
> >ability to manage the state and dominate
> >though still embryonic, have also been eroding state
> >power.
> >
> >The salaried middle classes - once a key source of Ba'ath
> >support - have also fallen on hard times. Hyperinflation
> >has destroyed livelihoods as people struggle to get by on
> >meagre government benefits. The Iraqi dinar traded at
> >$3.10 before the war; in 1996 one dollar was worth 3,000
> >dinars. Exchange rates subsequently fluctuated between
> >2,000-1,200 dinars to the dollar before stabilising
> >around 2,000 dinars. To survive, people have been reduced
> >to selling their clothing, furniture, books, jewellery
> >and household utensils. Middle-class disillusion is so
> >profound that General Jabar Muhsin, the official Ba'ath
> >party ideologue and propagandist, has lamented "the
> >middle classes which we have lost" (3). Millions of
> >Iraqis are emigrating to Jordan, Europe and the US.
> >
> >The revolutionary legitimacy that justified Iraq's
> >single-party system and command economy was hit hard by
> >the end of the Soviet Union and East European
> >single-party states, and the effects of limited
> >liberalisation in the Middle East.
> >
> >The disastrous aftermath of two unnecessary wars
> >disconnected popular patriotism from official
> >nationalism, leading to massive dissent after the
> >government brutally quelled the 1991 uprisings. Ceasefire
> >conditions and UN Security Council resolutions saddled
> >the regime with unprecedented constraints and handicaps.
> >As a result, the ruling elite lost its grip on power and
> >the state was too frail to supervise the restless, if
> >segmented, urban masses. Schisms at the top were
> >inevitable, striking at the centre of the leading house,
> >al-Majid. Dissidence became epidemic within the party and
> >army. More than 1,500 high- and mid-level army officers
> >fled to the West while many Ba'ath party officials sought
> >asylum abroad.
> >
> >A new survival strategy
> >
> >Between 1991 and 2002 Saddam implemented a new survival
> >strategy to deal with these challenges. This had five
> >main objectives: restoring order to the leading tribal
> >house; restructuring the army; reviving tribes nationwide
> >to replace party organisations; updating the ideological
> >arsenal; and using new instruments of economic control.
> >
> >The most daunting challenge was to restore order to the
> >ruling clan and solve the dilemma of presidential
> >succession. State tribalism depended on a broad alliance
> >of Sunni clans, concentrated around the Beijat clan. The
> >latter is divided into 10 branches, or sub-clans
> >(afkhad). Before 1968, these branches competed for
> >traditional local leadership. Since 1978 these struggles
> >have centred on national power. Despite professions of
> >solidarity, leadership shifted abruptly across the
> >branches, disrupting the clans and their relations with
> >the party and state. Seven out of 10 clans were severely
> >disrupted, leading to chain reactions.
> >
> >Although he had effectively controlled the levers of
> >power for many years, Saddam became president in 1979,
> >replacing Hassan al-Bakr. This led to the demise of the
> >Albu Bakr sub-clan (from which Hassan al-Bakr came) and
> >the rise of Albu Ghafoor, Saddam's sub-clan.
> >
> >The extended families of the Takrit clique suffered a
> >similar fate. In the 1980s Saddam relied heavily on his
> >kinsmen, divided into three core groups: his three
> >half-brothers (from the Albu Khattab sub-clan); Adnan
> >Khairulla Tilfah, his cousin, brother-in-law and
> >ex-defence minister (from the Albu Mussallat sub-clan);
> >and some elements from the house of al-Majid, a branch of
> >the president's Albu Ghafoor sub-clan. Other sub-clans,
> >such as General Omar Hazza's Albu Hazza, General Fadhil
> >Barrak's Albu Najam and Marshal Mahir Rasheed's Albu
> >Munim held significant but non-vital positions. These
> >three sub-clans fell out of favour during and after the
> >Iran-Iraq war: their leaders were executed and their
> >sub-clans marginalised.
> >
> >Al-Majid's rise to power in the 1990s posed huge problems
> >since it infringed fundamental party and military norms:
> >efficiency, service record and seniority. Hussein Kamil
> >and Saddam Kamil both married daughters of Saddam.
> >Alongside Ali Hassan al-Majid, they respectively held the
> >military industries, the special services (jihaz al-khas)
> >and the defence ministry. Their cousins, including Rokan,
> >Saddam's aide-de-camp, have also held important posts.
> >
> >With the rise of Saddam's two sons Udai and Qusai, the
> >house of al-Majid proved itself even less reliable than
> >its predecessors. The conflict came to a head when the
> >brothers Kamil defected to Jordan in 1995, only to return
> >to Iraq. They were executed in February 1996, as were
> >their father, mother and sister. This bloody episode
> >unsettled al-Majid and embarrassed Saddam. The president
> >disassociated himself from the al-Majid members that made
> >up his inner house, and decided to draw from his larger
> >sub-clan (Albu Ghafoor), which includes the house of Albu
> >Sultan. Kamal Mustapha (Albu Sultan's leading figure and
> >Saddam's cousin) was entrusted with the Republican Guard-
> >two corps, seven divisions, roughly one third of the
> >armed forces - the regime's real praetorian guards. Kamal
> >Mustapha's brother, Jamal, married Saddam's youngest
> >daughter. There is every indication that contacts between
> >the al-Majid and Albu Sultan houses are as tense as
> >relations between Saddam's sons.
> >
> >As Saddam's chosen successor, Qusai was entrusted with
> >reorganising the intelligence and security services. In
> >2000 he was named presidential caretaker, ready to serve
> >as interim president if necessary. Qusai had previously
> >been appointed supervisor of the "Army of the Mother of
> >all Battles" (renamed the Republican Guard). In April
> >2001 he was elected to the party's regional leadership
> >(4). A new nucleus, centred round Kamal Mustafa and
> >Qusai, has been created.
> >
> >Although it is showing signs of age, state tribalism -
> >the process of integrating the tribal lineages into the
> >state to consolidate the power of a fragile ruling elite
> >-is still operating. In contrast, the forces of social
> >tribalism revive, manipulate or invent tribal structures
> >by tapping into the cultural values and kinship networks
> >of rural migrants and provincial city dwellers.
> >
> >The Ba'ath party saw and exploited Kurdish military
> >tribalism: as early as 1974 the chiefs (aghas) of the
> >Sorchy, Mezouri, Doski and Herki tribes were recruited as
> >mercenaries in the fight against Kurdish nationalism.
> >During the war with Iran, the Iraqi regime came to
> >appreciate the strength of the southern Arab tribes, who
> >fought the Iranian forces and were subsequently courted
> >by the central government. Another important development
> >in the late 1980s was the social rise of prominent tribal
> >leaders, made possible by the decline of modern civil
> >associations.
> >
> >As the Ba'ath party's organisational structure grew
> >shakier, age-old kinship networks stepped in. Encouraged
> >by the government to take charge of law and order, old
> >tribal families took this task to heart. They
> >reconstructed many real tribes and invented new ones. In
> >1992 Saddam met tribal leaders in the presidential
> >palace, where he promised reconciliation and apologised
> >for previous land reforms. The tribal leaders raised
> >their banners and pledged allegiance to Saddam, reborn as
> >"chief of the chieftains". From that moment,
> >retribalisation rapidly spread nationwide.
> >
> >Exempted from military service, the fabricated tribes
> >were provided with light weapons as well as transport and
> >communications equipment. The major tribes, mainly Sunni,
> >were given responsibility for national security; the
> >smaller ones were assigned local duties such as
> >maintaining law and order, settling disputes and
> >collecting taxes. The tribes were organised to operate as
> >extensions of the state organs. Their rebirth as powerful
> >social movements filled the void created by devastated
> >civil institutions and a damaged state, supposedly the
> >guarantor of law and order and the defender of life and
> >property. The revived or invented tribes operate in urban
> >centres, not their natural rural habitat. This is
> >endangering the fabric of an urbanised and cultured
> >society.
> >
> >State tribalism and social tribalism come with many
> >auxiliaries of mobilisation and control, including
> >renovated ideology. Iraqi patriotism, with its references
> >to ancient history, was used alongside Arab patriotism to
> >draw in non-Arab ethnic groups. According to Ba'ath party
> >ideologues, the glorification of lineage - the definitive
> >tribal trait - was at the heart of Arabism; without
> >hereditary descent, Arab nationalism is meaningless.
> >
> >Wahhabism, the strict Saudi version of orthodox Hanbalite
> >legal traditions, crossed Iraq's porous southern border
> >while the security services turned a blind eye. This
> >ideological newcomer was seen as a desirable alternative
> >to Shi'ite militancy.
> >
> >The regime has endured for another crucial reason: under
> >economic sanctions, the regime oversees the oil-for-food
> >programme (5). To obtain food rations, people must
> >present special coupons, which have become instruments of
> >social manipulation. In the 1995 presidential election,
> >citizens were forced to vote if they wanted to remain
> >entitled to ration coupons; dissidents, and alleged
> >dissidents, are not entitled to them. Never has the
> >regime had such a powerful tool. These are the politics
> >of starvation. Upper-class support is secured by another
> >kind of bribery: market deregulation. Nightly, Baghdad's
> >elite establishments host old money and nouveaux riches.
> >The fantastic luxury of the Baghdad of the Arabian Nights
> >could not compare with their excesses.
> >
> >This mix of nationalism, patriotism, tribalism and
> >Sunnism, with its provisions and its bribes, has enabled
> >the regime to survive and, until now, to overcome all
> >obstacles. If the US invades Iraq, who can foretell
> >Saddam's legacy?
> >____________________________________________________
> >
> >* Research fellow at School of Politics and Sociology,
> >Birkbeck College, London University. Author of
> >Ayatollahs, Sufis and Ideologues, State, Religion and
> >Social Movements in Iraq and Tribes and Power (co-edited
> >with Hisham Dawod), both from Saqi Books, London 2002;
> >forthcoming: Shiism, State and Nation: Cultural
> >Identities in Iraq, also Saqi Books
> >
> >Read also:
> >- Knowing and not knowing
> >- A question of human rights
> >
> >(1) Tilfah was a staunch Arabist. His fiery speeches on
> >Radio Baghdad in 1941 (published in the 1970s) showed how
> >much he worshipped power, the Third Reich and Adolf
> >Hitler.
> >
> >(2) Tribal structure: the tribes are divided into clans,
> >composed of sub-clans (afkhad). The sub-clans are then
> >divided into extended families (hamula or finda, meaning
> >breast), in turn made up of beit, translated here as
> >houses. Distinctions between hamula and beit blurred as
> >the tribal system broke down.
> >
> >(3) Babil daily newspaper, Baghdad, 20 December 1994.
> >
> >(4) The Ba'ath party's regional command is responsible
> >for Iraq. The national command, whose officials come from
> >different countries, oversees the entire Arab world.
> >
> >(5) Adopted in 1995, UN Security Council Resolution 986
> >(known as oil for food) was finally accepted and signed
> >by Iraq on 20 May 1996 via a memorandum of agreement with
> >the UN. This allowed Iraq to export a maximum of $2bn in
> >oil every six months; this ceiling was raised to $5.2bn
> >in February 1998 and subsequently abolished. Oil revenues
> >flow into a special UN account, with 58% allocated for
> >imports of food, medicine and other civilian
> >expenditures; 13% is allocated to the three northern
> >provinces (Kurdistan) that remain outside central
> >government control. The rest is used to compensate
> >victims of the war in Kuwait (25%) and for expenses of
> >the embargo and UN operations, including the UN special
> >commission (Unscom) responsible for monitoring Iraq's
> >weapons. In September 2002 Baghdad increased its oil
> >exports to 914,000 barrels a day. This represents nearly
> >50% of its total estimated production capacity, against
> >33% in previous months.
> >
> >
> >
> >Translated by Luke Sandford
> >
> >
> >____________________________________________________
> >
> >ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © 1997-2002 Le Monde diplomatique
>
>
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