GOVERNMENT IN IRAQ

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80T00634A000400010048-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 29
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 21, 2006
• Sequence Number: 48
• Publication Date: October 31, 1978
• Content Type: IM

0040Qp100 -0
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
National Foreign Assessment Center
31 October 1978
Government In Iraq
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PRINCIPAL JUDGMENTS
In the ten years the Baath Party has ruled Iraq, it has
brought a relative measure of stability and unity to a
country long known for its instability, disunity, and high
level of political violence. There are elaborate institu-
tional mechanisms which ostensibly represent the divergent
ethnic and political groups in Iraqi society and politics,
but real power lies with President Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr,
Revolutionary Command Council Deputy Chairman Saddam Husayn,
and a few close advisers.
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--Bakr and Saddam Husayn are in firm control of the
country. They use economic and political carrots-
and-sticks to create an impression of national
solidarity and widespread support for the govern-
ment, but their power is dependent on their control
of the party and the state security and intelligence
organizations, and on the acquiescence of the
military.
--The relationship between Bakr and Saddam is one
marked more by consensus on major issues than
conflict over who wields power. They share close
This memorandum was coordinated within the Central
Intelligence Agency. The principal author is
Middle East Division, Office of Regional and Political
/
Comments and queries are
Analysis.
welcome.
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family ties and a common perception of the direc-
tion Iraq's policies should take. Their primary
concerns are the stability of the regime, the unity
of the country, and military and economic independ-
ence.
--Saddam's position has been strengthened considerably
in the past four years. The ailing President Bakr
apparently has willingly relinquished much of the
conduct of government to the younger and healthier
Saddam. Saddam, in turn, has orchestrated major
governmental and party reorganizations which have
consolidated his hold on both institutions and
virtually assure his succession to the presidency.
--Institutions like the Revolutionary Command Council
(RCC), once the dominant governmental body, and the
Baath Party's Regional Command, the party's policy-
making body, have only a limited input in the decision-
making process. They have symbolic importance, however,
and could play a decisive role in any succession crisis.
--The party and the government are dominated, for the
most part, by the country's Sunni Arab minority.
Promotions and awards are frequently dependent more
on family and village ties and personal loyalty than
on party service.
--Although Communists and Kurds are represented in the
Cabinet and the National Front, their presence is
essentially cosmetic. There is no power-sharing and
no room for political dissent.
--Saddam Husayn appears to rely on a half-dozen advisers,
including Defense Minister Talfah, his brother-in-law,
for advice on economic planning, military reorganiza-
tion, and oil affairs. He seems to have no special con-
sultant on foreign affairs and has developed no dis-
cernible relations of trust with anyone in either the
government or the party.
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--Bakr and Saddam Husayn have few rivals for power.
The opposition--,-be it Communists Kurds rival Baath-
ist, or military---seems to be in disarray, unable to
mount an effective challenge to Saddam or alter the
present governmental or political structure.
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INTRODUCTION
When the Baath Party of Iraq seized power in July 1968,
few observers gave it much chance of success. In the previous
decade, Iraqis had witnessed the murder of their Hashimite
king and his prime minister Nuri al-Said in the streets of
Baghdad, four coups, and a protracted rebellion by the Kurds.
Once a member of CENTO and a staunch ally of Great Britain,
Iraq in the ten years since the 1958 revolution had become
isolated from both the Arab and non-Arab world. It was a
country perceived by many as doomed to political instability
and disunity, an easy target for manipulation by internal
forces and external pressures.
Contrary to these expectations, the Baath Party in the
decade it has ruled Iraq has brought a measure of stability
and unity to the country. Its leaders have modernized the
country's military forces, ended the chronic threat posed by
the rebellious Kurds, reduced tensions with some of its
traditionally hostile neighbors, introduced agrarian reforms
and industrial modernization, and nationalized the country's
primary resource, oil. At the same time, they instituted
repressive measures to ensure the regime's safety and began
a ruthless pursuit of all possible opposition elements.
Iraq today has a constitution, the promise of a national
assembly, and occasional, allegedly democratic, local party
elections. It is ruled by a president and a Revolutionary
Command Council, with elaborate mechanisms to guarantee the
rights of Iraq's political and ethnic minorities--the Popular
and Progressive National Front created in 1973, a separate
executive council for the Autonomous Region (the official
euphemism for the predominantly Kurdish provinces in northern
Iraq) established in 1974, and a vice-president chosen from
the Kurdish minority, first appointed in 1974.
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Much of this is political fiction. In fact,, Iraq's
government is a closed system ruled more by Deputy Chair-
man* Saddam Husayn than President Ahmad Hasan al,-Bakr;
there is no room for either power-sharing or dissent.
Kurdish vice-president Taha Marut is a figurehead who can-
not succeed the president in the event of his deathr while
the Autonomous Region's executive council is powerless to
make any meaningful decisions. At the same time, an extra-
governmental body--the Regional Command of the Iraqi Baath
Party, the party's policymaking body--has also wielded an
inordinate amount of power since the revolution.
Bakr and Saddam Husayn
Ahmad nasan al-Bakr and Saddam Husayn have ruled Iraq
since 1968 and controlled the Iraqi Baath Party since 1966.
They owe their survival to support from the military, control
of the party apparatus and its ruthless intelligence network,
and their adroit manipulation of their rivals for power.
Despite speculation over the years on the level and extent
of discord between the two, Bakr's relations with Saddam are
marked more by consensus than conflict. They share close
family ties** and a common perception of the direction Iraq's
policies should take. Publicly, they both talk in vague,
jargon-laden terms about Baathist principles of unity, inde-
pendence, and socialism, and decry the forces of evil which
threaten to encircle the Arab world. Their primary concerns
are the stability of the regime, the unity of the country,
*The RCC ostensibly "elects" the president of Iraq but
the institutional method of choosing the second-in-command is
unclear. Bakr himself appointed Saddam to his current posts.
While the terminology preferred by Iraq's leadership is confus-
ing, Bakr is president of the republic and chairman of the RCC;
Saddam is deputy chairman of the RCC and, in effect, functions
as a vice president; the constitution was changed in the early
1970s so that he alone can stand in for the president in his
absence and succeed him in the event of his death. The Kurdish
titular vice president is sheer tokenism.
**The involved relationship is set forth in a footnote on
page 19.
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and military and economic independence; they are as were
their non-Baathist predecessors, "Iraq Firsters."
Their differences are more generational at this point
than political, a contrast of styles and skills marked by
the differences in their ages, temperaments, and background.
To Bakr and his generation, educated in the 1930s and 1940s
and experienced in military, legal, or teaching professions,
Baathism offered a vague theory of Arab nationalism and unity,
an explanation of the country's ills, and a rallying point
for opposition to the unpopular Hashimite regime. The enemy
was clearly British colonialism and a feudal political and
economic system. To Saddam's generation, coming to political
awareness in the late 1950s and 1960s, Baathism offered a
different view. It now appealed to young men like Saddam,
whose only known enemies were other Baathists, whose only
experiences werein clandestine activity, and whose knowledge
of the world outside Iraq and the making of foreign and
domestic policies came for the most part from party tracts.
A devout Sunni Muslim, Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr represents
the more traditional and conservative values in a system
which prides itself on its radical political stances and
socialist economics. He was born in the village of Tikrit
in 1912, the son of a farmer, and graduated from the Baghdad
Teacher's College in 1932. In 1938 he took advantage of the
government's opening up of the military to enter the Royal
Military College. He joined the Baath Party in the mid-1950s
and participated in the 14 July 1958 revolution which over-
threw the Hashimite monarchy.
From the 1958 revolution to the 1968 coup which brought
the Baath Party to power in Iraq, Bakr was involved in count-
less plots against successive Iraqi governments. He served
as prime minister in the short-lived Baath government of
February-October 1963 and was appointed vice-president in the
regime which overthrew the Baathists that fall. The position
in the post-Baathist regime was nominal and abolished the
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following January. Refusing to accept either an assignment
in the Foreign Ministry--tantamount to exile--or actual
exile in Beirut, Bakr retired temporarily from politics.
A respected and competent military officer, an Arab
nationalist, and a party moderate, Bakr continued to attract
the support of military men of similar views and during the
mid-1960s rebuilt the Baath Party in Iraq. Since the party
has been in power, he has managed to retain the officers'
support while working with the civilian faction of the party,
led by Saddam Husayn, to restrict the role of the military in
the government.
How much power Bakr wields is unclear. He is, at 66,
president of the republic, chairman of the RCC, prime minister,
field marshal and supreme commander of the armed forces, secre-
tary-general of the BPI Regional Command, and deputy secretary-
general of the party's National Command. His function appears
to be mainly ceremonial, however. Aged and in poor health--
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1he has relinquished
much of the conduct o governmental and party affairs to the
younger and healthier Saddam. A stroke in 1976 and the deaths
of several close family members, including his sister, youngest
son, and son-in-law in the winter of 1977-78 may have contrib-
uted to a further deterioration in his health. Bakr remains,
however, the important symbol of continuity and consensus in
a system which has yet to experience its first major transition
of power.
Saddam Husayn's Background
Less popular, and occasionally less visible, is Saddam
Husayn, Bakr's deputy and "nephew." Saddam's career and
political style offer a distinct contrast to those of Bakr.
He was born in Tikrit in 1937, the son of poor peasants. A
complex man who apparently trusts no one, he earned a reputa-
tion for courage, ruthlessness, and shrewdness early in life.
His political rite-of-passage was his participation in a 1959
assassination attempt on then Prime Minister Qasim. From that
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attempt until the 1968 coup, Saddam was either in exile or
prison. While in exile, he supported Bakr in the bitter
factional feuds which were dividing the party. With Bakr,
he reorganized the party in Iraq following the 1966 split
with the Syrian Baathists, and used his position as deputy
secretary and his control of the party's security apparatus
to eliminate those who opposed him and Bakr. In 1969 Bakr
appointed Saddam deputy chairman of the RCC. For the next
several years, the two worked together, first to eliminate
the more extreme leftist elements from the party, and then
to isolate and eliminate rightist military rivals.
Relations between Bakr and Saddam have been strained
over the years by policy and personnel differences. They
apparently disagreed, for example, over the conduct of the
Kurdish rebellion of 1974-1975; Bakr reportedly was uncom-
fortable with Saddam's decision to press for a final military
solution. They have disagreed on the degree of support to be
extended to other Arab countries and for the Palestinian
fedayeen. Their supporters constantly jockey against each
other for positions of power. Their bases of support are
different, too. Where Bakr's support has come from the senior
military officers, Arab nationalists and non-party members,
Saddam's support comes from the junior military ranks and the
party rank-and-file.
Bakr and Saddam are careful not to challenge each other
directly or openly. They may in the past have mistrusted each
other, but neither has been willing to risk an open confronta-
tion which could split the party and threaten the survival of
the regime. Saddam is careful not to upstage Bakr and has
encouraged the creation of a "cult of personality" around the
"struggler president." He is solicitous of Bakr and apparently
spends much time with him, discussing issues and giving the
appearance of consensus on all major decisions. They are
determined not to repeat the mistakes of the 1960s, when open
confrontation between party leaders, between military and
civilian factions, and between Iraqi and non-Iraqi Baathists
nearly destroyed the party and invited the counter-coup of
1963.
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The Deputy as Decisionmaker
In the past four years Saddam Husayn has made several
major domestic and foreign policy decisions which have
represented major shifts in Iraq's policies. These include
the decisions to reopen the Kurdish war; to sign the 1975
accord with Iran (in which Iraq gave up its claim to Arab
Khuzistan and the Shatt al-Arab in exchange for Iran's agree-
ment to end its support for the Kurds); to normalize relations
with Kuwait, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the smaller Gulf states?
to begin a policy of arms diversification which could ultimate-
ly reduce Iraq's heavy dependence on the Soviet Union; and to
expand trade relations with non-Communist Bloc nations. In
the past two years he has reorganized both party and govern-
mental structures and redefined the party's relationship with
the government.
If these decisions represented an about-face in Iraq's
domestic and foreign policies, they also reflected a new
assertiveness and self-confidence on Saddam's part. Since
1974 Saddam has maintained almost total control of Iraq's
government and the Baath Party. He is deputy chairman of
the RCC, and deputy secretary-general of the Baath Party's
Regional and National Commands. All institutions of the
government and the party are subordinate to him, and he has,
in the past four years, installed loyalists in a majority of
positions in the RCC, the Regional Command, and the Cabinet.
At times pragmatic and calculating in his approach to
government decisionmaking, Saddam can also be opportunistic
and vengeful. These conflicting characteristics are evident
in his deliberate and cautious approach to improving relations
with Iran and the conservative Gulf states while maintaining
rigid opposition to reconciliation with Baathist Syria and to
any negotiated settlement in the Arab-Israeli conflict, his
singular reliance on boyhood cronies not known for their
intellectual competence or abilities, and his relentless pur-
suit of "enemies of the state."
Saddam is proud, ambitious, and competitive, a man in
search of prestige, power, and influence. He would like to
play a major role in Arab and Gulf affairs and would like
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Iraq to be accepted as a legitimate and responsible partner
in the formulation of Arab and. Gulf strategies. However, he
is unable, perhaps because of party constraints, or unwilling
because of his personal and long-range perspectives, to pay
the price such acceptance requires.
Saddam believes Iraq should be independent, non-aligned,
socialist, and anti-imperialist in its foreign policies. This
has had an interesting impact on Iraq's relations with the
USSR and explains Baghdad's recent push for a prominent posi-
tion in the non-aligned movement. Saddam was, to a large
extent, the prime mover in Iraq's signing a Treaty of Friend-
ship with Moscow in 1972. Despite Soviet dominance over Iraq's
military and technical assistance programs, however, Saddam
never acceded to Soviet wishes that the Iraqi Communist Party
be accorded a wider representation in the government and a
share of political power. Rather, he has insisted on Soviet
recognition of Iraqi sovereignty and on treatment as an equal,
not a client, state. The execution of at least 21 Iraqi
Communists in the military in spring 1978 for conspiring to
overthrow the government further served to warn Moscow that
it exercises no influence on Iraq's internal affairs.
Institutional Mechanisms
Two institutions play decisive roles in the decisionmaking
process in Iraq--the Revolutionary Command Council and the
Regional Command of the Baath Party. Other institutions, in-
cluding the Popular and Progressive National Front, the Cabinet,
and the Baath Party's National Command, have only a limited
political significance; they are used by the leadership for
"show" purposes, for their propaganda value, and, to a great
extent, as a means for the government to maintain unofficial
contacts with politically unsavory external groups.
The Revolutionary Command Council
A relatively important body at the time of the 1968 coup,
the RCC has functioned in recent years more as a decision-
approver than a decisionmaker. The top legislative and execu-
tive body in the government, the RCC promulgates laws, approves
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M 1? Ih TITUTIONAL rECHANISMS--THF GOVERNMENT-
Revolutionary Coi nd Council (RCC)
Ahmed Hasan al-Bakr,
President of RCC
President of the Republic
Saddam Husayn,
RCC Deputy Chairman, RCC
F,nerr}yrvices Defense Agricul- Civil Planning
tore Aviation
ItcIi:;lou^ Edtucnllmml Trade Regu-? lligl,er Military Youth
AlLi irs iiannIog Iatlons Education Buredu Affairs
and
Scientific
Research
Special Office Follow-up Com- Develop- Atomic Energy
(possibly for Intelli- mittee on Oil meat Fund Commission
gene,- and Security Alto Ira and
Affair) Imp1cmenft11 ton
of OiL Agreements
Agriculture irriga- Trade Industry Justice Higher
and Agrarian Lion and Education
Reform Minerals and Scien-
tific Researc
Defense Interior Planning Foreign Public Works
Affairs and Housing He
Labor and
Social Af-
fairs
Finance
Infor-
mation
Trans- Oil CovLmunica-
port Lion
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development plans and programs, discusses budgetary, defense,
and foreign policy matters, and approves all treaties and
international agreements. RCC members hold their positions
because of their support for the leadership, and/or their
importance in party politics. RCC bureaus are each headed
by a member of the Council.
If the RCC seems not to play a substantive role in the
day-to-day decisionmaking process, it does have a symbolic
improtance and could be a powerful force in determining con-
trol of the government in a succession crisis, The RCC
"elects" from among its own members the president of the
republic and its deputy chairman, who acts as head of state
during the president's absence and succeeds him in case of
death. While the mechanics of a transfer of power have never
been tested, control of the RCC could determine the succes-
sion.
This may have been the primary reason for the govern-
ment's reorganization of the RCC in September 1977. At that
time, the RCC was expanded from five to 22, adding all the
members of the Baath Party's Regional Command. The move
brought the RCC directly under party control, enhanced Saddam
Husayn's position by upgrading his supporters in the party,
and further isolated potential sources of the opposition on
the RCC.
The Party
The Baath Party of Iraq has two top-level components--
the Regional Command, which is the policymaking and executive
arm of the party, and the National Command, which is composed
of both Iraqi and non-Iraqi members and is responsible for
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C1LkLiL2 L_j sjjivuom cxA sMs--TF1E PARTY,
Beath Party of. Iraq
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