Iraq by Dawisha Adeed

Author:Dawisha, Adeed
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2009-03-03T16:00:00+00:00

CONTESTED IDENTITIES IN THE NATIONALIST ERA

The first communiqué announcing the demise of the Qasim regime spoke of enhancing national unity, restoring freedoms and establishing the rule of law, but said little about Arab unity apart from a cursory mention toward the end of the communiqué. Indeed, the commitment to United Nations principles, to the anti-imperialist struggle, and to the policy of non-alignment all preceded the reference to the unity of the Arab people.100 Listeners to the first communiqué would have been doubtful about the ideological credentials of their new rulers.

That would be surprising since the new ruling elite had not in the past hesitated about proclaiming their Ba‘thist beliefs publicly and emphatically even in the face of imprisonment and exile. These beliefs had been first annunciated by Michel ‘Aflaq, a Christian Syrian intellectual. As a student in Paris in the 1930s, ‘Aflaq was exposed to the intellectual ferment of that European era, and would later formulate the concept of an “indivisible Arab nation” that had been forcibly divided by colonialism and imperialism into a number of “illegitimate” Arab states. To ‘Aflaq, this willful fragmentation of the Arab nation had led to the degeneration of the Arab spirit itself. Ba‘thists therefore would strive to reverse this trend, reunite the various Arab entities, and do it quickly and by force if necessary.101 From this emerged the need not to shy away from alliances with the military.102 It was such an alliance, as we have seen, that facilitated the Ba‘thist coup in Iraq, which allowed it to put its ideals into practice.

The explanation for the new rulers’ reticence on Arab unity probably lies in the uncertainty of the coup makers over the ideational direction of the Iraqi population, which after five years of Qasim’s rule would have found comfort in the notion of an Iraqi national unity based on its various ethnic and sectarian demographic elements. While in the early uncertain days of the coup it was prudence that prevented the new Ba‘thist rulers from aggressively advertising their Arab nationalist creed, once in power they would soon grasp the wide gulf that existed between stirring slogans demanding organic Arab unity and concrete policy that could not but take into account Iraq’s demographic realities. The new Iraqi leaders thus would advocate a more realistic, less emotional, conception of Arab unity,103 and this orientation would come through in the “unity talks” that took place in Cairo with Egypt and Syria in March 1963.

The talks were precipitated by the two Ba‘thist coups in Iraq and Syria in February and March 1963, respectively. The new leaders in Baghdad and Damascus traveled to Cairo in March 1963 to urge a tripartite unity on Egypt’s President. The talks, however, would soon flounder not only because of deep mistrust brought on by the earlier break up of the UAR, but also because of the varying political, demographic, and socioeconomic conditions of the three countries. On their part, the Iraqis stressed their country’s local conditions, and advocated a confederate arrangement in

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