Iraq and the Role of the Big Powers

As the U.S.-British aggression against Iraq continues, Modern Communism is featuring a series of background articles on the role played by the imperialist powers, primarily Britain and the United States, in Iraq during the past century. The following is the second article in the series.

Part 2 - 1958 to 1979

The 1958 popular uprising, led by Abd al-Karim Kassem, which ended British control in Iraq and established the country as a republic, occurred at a time of increasing Arab nationalism throughout the region. In response to events in Iraq the U.S. and Britain immediately moved their forces into Lebanon and Jordan to prevent the unrest from spreading.

It was also a time when the U.S. was replacing Britain as a dominant world power. In 1948, George Kennan of the U.S. State Department had described America's goals in the post-World War Two world when he wrote: "The US has about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. In this situation…our real task…is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming, and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives."(1) To this end the U.S. would continue to assert its influence and manipulate events in Iraq and throughout the region.

The decade following the 1958 uprising was a period of instability and uncertainty. In 1959 members of the Pan-Arabist Iraqi Ba'ath Party, including the young Saddam Hussein, tried to assassinate the new republic's leader, Kassem. The attempt failed and Hussein and the other conspirators were forced to flee the country. Four years later they tried again with a coup widely believed to have been aided by the CIA. This time they were successful, managing to kill Kassem and seize power for a short time. However, a counter-coup by the army regained power within a few months.

The secular Ba'ath Party finally returned to power for good in1968 with Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr as President and Prime Minister. His deputy was Saddam Hussein. While the two men gradually began to eliminate their rivals, they also remained intent on modernizing the country and shaking off foreign influence. The previous year Iraq had severed all diplomatic relations with the U.S. following the 1967 Arab-Israeli war in which Israel had seized and occupied large tracts of land from neighbouring Arab countries.

In 1972, under the slogan of "Arab oil for the Arabs", President al-Bakr announced the nationalization of the Iraqi oil industry as part of what he called a decisive battle against imperialism and its oil monopolies.(2) The assets of the British, U.S. and French owned Iraq Petroleum Company were seized. In the same year the U.S. placed Iraq on its list of nations supporting terrorism.

Following the nationalization, the Ba'athist government began pouring its new oil revenues into modernizing the country. Roads were built, electricity was extended throughout the country, literacy campaigns were launched and schools, universities and hospitals were built leading to significant improvements in living standards. Iraq became a modern, urban country with an educated population. At the same time money was also spent on developing its military capabilities.

In the same year that Iraq nationalized its oil resources, U.S. President Nixon made an agreement with the Shah of Iran for that country to arm the Iraqi Kurds. The Shah had been installed in power by the Americans in 1953 following a successful CIA plot that overthrew the democratically elected Iranian government of Mohammed Mossadegh. This was the first of many examples of American manipulation of relations between Iran and Iraq, with the U.S. supporting whichever country best served its interests at the time.

Even though the Iraqi government had agreed in 1970 to establish an autonomous Kurdish area in the north of the country, conflict broke out between the Kurds and Iraqi government forces in 1974. The following year, in response to U.S. pressure on Iraq, then Vice-President Saddam Hussein reached an agreement with the Shah in which Iraq agreed to cede control of the Shatt-al-Arab waterway between the two countries to Iran. In return Iran stopped supplying arms to the Kurds. In response to this abandonment of the Kurds, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger simply stated: "Covert operations should not be confused with missionary work".(3)

As the economic strength and prosperity of Iraq increased through the 1970s, power became more and more concentrated in the hands of the political leadership who developed an increasingly authoritarian system based on control of oil revenues and repression of any opposition. In 1979, Saddam Hussein forced President al-Bakr to resign and took over the presidency himself. He immediately claimed the discovery of a plot against himself and the regime, and brutally purged the Revolutionary Command Council. Since that time he has maintained a firm grip on power, building a military dictatorship which has crushed all opposition.

By the time Saddam Hussein seized power, the Shah of Iran had been overthrown. A popular uprising in January 1979 had forced him to flee the country and brought a fundamentalist Islamic government to power in Tehran. Recognizing the threat this Islamic revolution would pose to American interests, the U.S. now shifted its support to the secular Iraqi regime. U.S. National Security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski publicly encouraged Iraq to attack Iran to take back the Shatt al-Arab waterway, which the Americans had pressured Iraq to give up only four years earlier.(4) As the year progressed relations between the two countries deteriorated.

1. Quoted in "Iraq History", a chronology prepared by Larry Kerschner for the Western Washington Fellowship of Reconciliation and the Seattle Community Network. Posted at www.scn.org/wwfor/iraqhist.html

2. BBC World radio documentary, "The Rise and Rule of Saddam Hussein", February 12, 2003. Transcript posted at www.theworld.org/Iraq/part2.html

3. Quoted in "Iraq History" op. cit.

4. Ibid.