Iraq: Civil-Military Relations from the Monarchy to the Republics

Iraq is a young state, having been founded in 1921 by a colonial power, Britain. Its army was created several months beforehand, with its nucleus being Iraqi Sunni Arab officers of the former Ottoman army. As the mandate power in Iraq, Britain wanted a small internal security establishment while the officer corps and the monarchy wanted a large army that would act as a nation-building institution to make Iraqis out of the disparate ethnic groups who found themselves reluctant subjects of this new entity. As the strongest institution in the fragile state, the army played an important role in the political process and ultimately launched the first coup in the Arab world in 1936. As the older and more pliant senior officer corps retired, younger, more nationalist officers came to the fore; they were discontented with the overbearing presence of the British, the rampant cronyism and corruption in the royal court and among the ruling elite, and by the backwardness of their country. A small group of militant nationalist officers seized power and fought a brief and unsuccessful war against Britain. The power of the ruling elite was seemingly consolidated in the period after World War II. Both Iraq and the rest of the Middle East were in turmoil as colonial powers found themselves facing a rising tide of movements striving for independence. Leading the way were junior and middle-ranking officers, and in Iraq they launched a bloody coup-revolution in 1958 that destroyed the monarchy and established a republic. The Iraqi republic was unstable, due mostly to the inability of elites to establish solid institutions for governing the country and channeling mass politics effectively. The fragility and lack of legitimacy of governments provided ample opportunity for the military—which was riven by factionalism and ideological differences—to intervene regularly in the political process. The seizure of power by the nationalist and socialist Baath Party under Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr and Saddam Hussein effectively put an end to the military’s political role; the Baath Party implemented a series of stringent “coup-proofing” measures between 1968 and 2003 when it was displaced from power by the U.S. invasion. The Baath Party’s measures did not mean that members of the officer corps did not try their hand at overthrowing the Baath regime; many did, but all failed, often at tremendous costs to themselves and their families. The measures of control had a deleterious effect on the professionalism and combat performance in the conventional wars that it fought between 1980 and 2003. The Americans tried to build a new Iraqi army and sought to professionalize it, but their efforts had little success. The removal of the brutal authoritarian regime of Saddam Hussein did not change Iraqi politics for the better. Sunni Arab dominance was replaced by Shia Arab dominance. Post-Baath governments were kleptocratic, corrupt, and characterized by ethno-sectarian favoritism and cronyism. These characteristics pervaded the new military itself but the military’s ability to interfere in the political process has been stymied by its focus on fighting the dangerous jihadist fighters of the Islamic State (Daesh), the proliferation of government security services, and by the emergence of heavily armed and motivated pro-government militias. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

Os dilemas entre a memória e a história em Ya Maryam, um romance de Sinan Antoon

No presente ensaio, analisamos como a obra Ya Maryam ‘Ave Maria’, de Sinan Antoon (2012), por meio da memória de seus personagens se propõe a reconstruir fragmentos da história do Iraque e entender seus desdobramentos, os quais resultaram na desintegração país. Neste romance, o autor iraquiano e cristão tece a realidade de uma típica família bagdali e dá voz à minoria cristã, vítima do sectarismo perpetrado pela intolerância religiosa desde o regime ditatorial que se impôs no país com a ascensão de Saddam Hussein, no ano de 1979. Nesta intervenção artística, que toma forma a partir da memória de dois sujeitos que representam gerações diferentes, Antoon nos coloca no espaço ideal para que versões de uma mesma história sejam confrontadas, pois narrada sob perspectivas diferentes, torna-se um exercício valioso de reflexão sobre a política da memória e seus efeitos vertiginosos na sociedade, já que desestabiliza certezas e imagens estáveis do passado.

The art of nature in Iraq’s marshes: Images of the occupation

In August 2003, Iraqi exile Zaid Kubra returned to Baghdad to restore and conserve the country’s marshes, once drained by Saddam Hussein, as the signature emblem for the new state. Under Kubra’s leadership Iraq’s marshes conservation initiative became the ‘success story of the war’. Photographic images of Iraq’s restored marshes were potent markers of this success, used by more than 75 news articles since 2003 to fuel special interest good news reportage. Through a comparative of occupation imagery with the Iraqi canon of literary and visual arts centring on the marshes, the article analyses how Iraqi exiles cultivated an occupation aesthetics of the marshes that deployed images of wetlands’ nature – its towering reeds and its soaring birds – to advance the occupation.

The Position of Jimmy Carter's Administration about Iraq-Iran war in 1980 A Historical and Political Research

Following the demise of the Shah regime, Saddam Hussein capitalized on the deteriorating situation of Iran to attack the country in a bid to achieve a set of goals. He never thought that the war would last eight years. Before Iraq kicked off the conflict, Saddam and other Iraqi leaders had apparently gathered with American officials in Jordan. It is highly likely that Saddam declared war on Iran with the consent of the USA, though both sides categorically have rejected such accusations. Saddam seized the fallout of Iran-US relations to introduce himself as the guard protecting America's interests. Even if the US was not responsible for the ignition of the war, it liked it as Iran at the time had American hostages behind its bars, a crisis which emerged in November 1979. In the meantime, the new Iran emerged to portrait itself as a major foe of the US. Though Jimmy Carter chose neutrality amidst the conflict, it asked for an immediate pause. The equation, however, turned up side down soon after Washington started to assist Iraq. One indication is that, two months before the war started, Baghdad and the US had decided to normalize ties, but announcing it was delayed as the war had been looming in order to avoid miscalculations from other sides. Through the war, the US wanted to destroy the infrastructure of both sides in order to cripple them from emerging as two powerful regional states. Through third parties, Washington was selling arms to both sides. The US had even warned Iran of Iraq's military attack plan. The age of Carter's age came to an end shortly after the war began when he lost the elections to Ronald Reagan and that a new administration took office in January 1981.

Emerging Discourses, Changing Perspectives: Iraq in Oscar Documentary Films

Documentary film has become an important tool to seek information. This study shows how documentaries are projecting skepticism and sarcasm of Iraqi people due to volatile, uncertain complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) conditions. The fims discussed in this study consists of Oscar-winning and Oscar-nominated documentary films from 2003 to 2011 with a total of 45 films. The year 2003 is selected for its demarcation of U.S.-led invasion of Iraq which started in March 2003 and toppled over the government of Saddam Hussein. The year 2011 denotes the end with the departure of US troops in 2011. Through the criterion sampling, four films are selected that depict Iraq and all the four got the nomination for Oscar that includes: Iraq in Fragments (2006-Nomination); My Country My Country (2006-N); No End in Sight (2007-N); Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience (2007-N). To explore Iraqi people’s perspectives, further sampling is applied and two documentaries are selected depicting entanglement of religion and politics in Iraq from Iraqi people’s perspective.