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PREFACE
When the U.S.-led allied forces liberated Kuwait after six weeks of devastating air attacks and only one hundred hours of ground combat, few had any serious doubt that Saddam Hussein’s days were numbered. Reports from the Allied command indicated that his fearsome army was decimated, his command and control capability severely reduced, and massive Kurdish and Shi‘i rebellions were gaining ground in both northern and southern Iraq. Just three weeks later, however, the situation had taken a turn in favor of Saddam’s regime: the Shi’i rebellion in the south was crushed, and regime forces retook the key Kurdish city of Kirkuk, occupied much of Iraqi Kurdistan, and sent two million refugees fleeing to the Turkish and Iranian border. Saddam appeared as much in control of Iraq as ever.
The U.S. administration had avoided making the removal of Saddam’s regime an overt objective of U.S. policy. Was the Bush administration really concerned to avoid interfering in Iraq’s affairs, or did it fear the potentially destabilizing effects of either a Kurdish or Shi‘i success? What or who did the administration want to replace Saddam—a military dictatorship, possibly, or a new Ba’ath leadership? In this Policy Paper, Laurie Mylroie explores the future of the Iraqi regime and the possible options for a new leadership to succeed Saddam.
Throughout the Gulf crisis, Laurie Mylroie has masterfully explained the complex history of Iraqi politics to a broad audience of citizens and policymakers alike. This paper provides a rich, contextual analysis of Iraq’s past, present and possible future. Beginning with the existing institutions of political power in Iraq, Dr. Mylroie examines the instruments by which Saddam Hussein has maintained his dictatorship—the internal security forces, his loyal Takriti clan, the Ba’ath party, and the army. Most of these institutions remain functional after the Gulf war, but it is unclear whether any of them can provide the basis for a stable regime in Iraq, at peace with its neighbors.
In addition to the official sources of political power in Iraq, there also exist myriad opposition groups eager for an historic opportunity to rid themselves of Ba’athist rule. These groups, their ideologies and leaders, are also treated at length.
Finally Dr. Mylroie analyzes U.S. policy toward Iraq since the end of the Gulf war—what it was trying to accomplish, and where it may have failed. The paper offers two options for U.S. policy toward post-war Iraq that may help to bring the egregious regime of Saddam Hussein to an end.
As the U.S. struggles between its desire to see Saddam gone, and its fear of a Vietnam-style “quagmire,” we are pleased to present Dr. Mylroie’s timely and thorough analysis of the difficult issues that surround the future of post-war Iraq. Dr. Mylroie presents us with a guide to understanding the complexities of this ethnically-divided society, reeling under the burdens of war, ideological struggle and dictatorship.
Barbi Weinberg
President
June 1991
Executive Summary
Operation Desert Storm may well go down in history as America’s most successful military operation. The unexpected speed of Kuwait’s liberation, the small number of allied casualties, and the astonishingly high kill ratios of enemy tanks and aircraft destroyed to allied equipment lost are all hallmarks of the war. Nor are the gains of Operation Desert Storm small. Had Iraqi forces remained in Kuwait, Baghdad would have controlled 20 percent of the world’s oil reserves, and cast an intimidating shadow over Saudi Arabia’s 20 percent of world oil.
Baghdad’s seemingly insane efforts to accumulate weapons of mass destruction have been set back, and Saddam Hussein has failed in his bid to mobilize the Arab peoples around a militaristic anti-Westernism.
Even so one may ask whether the political achievements of this war will prove to be of the same magnitude as its military triumphs. How will Desert Storm appear a year from now? What if Saddam Hussein remains in power, unpunished and unrepentant? What if the reconstruction of Kuwait proceeds slowly, the oil fields still burn, and the sheikhdom is politically troubled, torn between a ruling family seeking to maintain its pre-war privileges and a restive population demanding political rights it feels it has earned by organizing, enduring, and resisting the Iraqi occupation? Will Saddam Hussein’s bloody repression of the Kurdish and Shi‘i revolts, conducted while the United States Air Force controlled the skies of Iraq, become a more vivid and lasting image than the liberation of Kuwait? Will the tremendous military
achievements of Desert Storm in the end dissipate in the sands of the Middle East?
At the heart of these ambiguities lies Saddam Hussein’s continued presence as ruler of Iraq. The American administration maintains the position that Saddam Hussein should be removed from power. Such an outcome seems necessary to any fully satisfactory conclusion of this war. Surely, if “war crimes” has any meaning, Saddam Hussein is a criminal and outlaw. But who, or what, would replace him? That question generates immediate unease and second thoughts. It is argued by some that there are developments possible in Iraq’s future worse than Saddam Hussein, above all the prospect of instability. Yet even if it were conceded that accepting Saddam Hussein was the price of stability, would Iraq under Saddam Hussein be “stable”?
The first section of this policy paper examines the institutions that maintain Saddam’s regime in power. Can any of those institutions serve as the basis for a new government in Iraq that would neither be aggressive toward its neighbors nor so repressive toward its own population that its human rights record would make it nearly intolerable for the United States to deal with? Indeed, contrary to the conventional wisdom of realpolitik, how a government treats its own population is not easily separable from how it treats its neighbors. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait was very much the product of the country’s domestic system. First, as a matter of political culture, the regime deals with the country’s tremendous internal tensions by directing them outward, in external aggression. Second, in terms of government structure, in a less authoritarian system, Saddam Hussein would likely have received the advice that he was headed on a disastrous course. Finally, Saddam Hussein’s repression of Iraq’s Shi‘i and Kurdish populations created a tremendous refugee problem for Turkey and Iran, precipitated an American reintervention in Iraq, and has raised tensions along the Iranian-Iraqi border. Once again, Iraq’s internal tensions had spilled over its boundaries.
The paper’s second section explores the Iraqi polity, both how it has evolved historically and the impact that twenty years of Ba’athist rule have had on the country. It also considers the nature of the considerable Iraqi population in exile, its relationship to the population inside Iraq, and the prospects for new leadership arising from the exile community.
The politics of Iraq are dominated by the country’s sectarian problem. While Shi‘i Arabs and Kurds, who are largely Sunni, constitute 75 percent of the population, Iraq is ruled by the 20 percent of the population that is Sunni Arab. In fact, the regime’s base does not extend even that far, as it is Saddam and his family circle that actually run Iraq, with backing from the clans around his hometown of Takrit, which lies in the Sunni Arab triangle between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers north of Baghdad. That two decades of authoritarian Ba’athist rule have exacerbated, rather than ameliorated, Iraq’s sectarian problem was vividly and painfully demonstrated by the revolts against the regime in March 1991, the most widespread in Iraq’s modern history.
Authoritarian governments everywhere are under siege. The Arabs’ military regimes, essentially a product of the 1950s, are no exception. For two decades Iraq’s Ba’athist government has pursued a relentless modernization program, fueled by immense oil wealth, and in the process has changed the Iraqi population, which has grown more educated and more middle class. It has also forced the Iraqi people to bear tremendous burdens-twenty years of harsh authoritarian rule, eight years’ war with Iran, an even more destructive war with the United States, and the country’s bloodiest civil strife ever. With Iraq standing at this historical juncture, does it still make sense to think that there is no alternative to Saddam Hussein better than another version of Sunni minority rule? Though the Bush administration has placed its hopes in a palace coup, does it still make sense to look to the army to govern Iraq?
The third section analyzes U.S. policy toward the question of a future government in Iraq. It then presents an alternative approach toward the future of Iraq. None of the future scenarios for Iraq is especially hopeful, and all potential courses are fraught with uncertainties and risks. The question is which course is likely to be least bad.
I The Institutional Bases of The Iraqi Regime
This section seeks to answer two questions. First, what are the institutions by which Saddam Hussein rules Iraq? And second, can any of them provide the basis for a future government in Iraq that is neither belligerent to its neighbors nor so abysmally abusive of its own population’s human rights that the United States cannot deal with it.
The Ruling Family And The Security Services
Iraq is ruled by a narrowly-based elite, linked by family and clan ties. Power lies with Saddam Hussein, supported by his close relatives, who hold the key positions. They are backed more broadly by Sunni Arab clans from the region north of Baghdad between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Saddam’s home town of Takrit lies in that area and constitutes the center of the regime’s power base.
The ruling inner family core consist of three kinship groups: 1) Saddam’s three step-brothers, Barzan, Sabawi, and Wathban, the sons of his step-father, Ibrahim Hassan; 2) Saddam’s paternal cousins, the nephews of his father, Hussein al-Majid, most notably Hussein Kamil al-Majid, who is also …
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