Saddamism
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Saddamism (Arabic: صدامية, romanized: Ṣaddāmiyah), also known as Saddamist Ba'athism (Arabic: البعثية الصدامية, romanized: al-Baʿthīyah as-Ṣaddāmiyah),[1] is a Ba'athist political ideology based on the political ideas of Saddam Hussein, who served as the President of Iraq from 1979 to 2003.[2][3] It espouses Arab nationalism, Arab socialism and Pan-Arabism, as well as an Iraq-centred Arab world that calls upon Arab countries to adopt Saddamist political discourse and reject "the Nasserist discourse" that it claims collapsed following the Six-Day War in 1967.[2] It is militarist and views political disputes and conflict in a military manner as "battles" requiring "fighting", "mobilization", "battlefields", "bastions", and "trenches".[3] Saddamism was officially supported by Saddam Hussein's government and promoted by the Iraqi daily newspaper Babil owned by Saddam's son Uday Hussein.[2]
Saddamism has often been described as an authoritarian and totalitarian ideology that aimed to control all aspects of Iraqi life, and has been accused by critics of incorporating "Sunni Arab nationalism, confused Stalinism, and fascist zeal for the fatherland and its leader", as well as enabling Saddam to generate a cult of personality revolving around him.[4]
Etymology[edit]
The term "Saddamism" (Saddamiyyah) or "the new Arab era" was coined by the Iraqi media, embodying Saddam Hussein's special leadership qualities and the strong connections between him and the people.[5]
Tenets[edit]
Ba'athism[edit]
Saddam Hussein based his political views and ideology upon the views of Michel Aflaq, Ba'athism's key founder. Saddam Hussein was also an avid reader of topics on moral and material forces in international politics.[3] Saddam Hussein's government was critical of orthodox Marxism and opposed the orthodox Marxist concepts of class conflict, dictatorship of the proletariat, and atheism; as well as opposing Marxism-Leninism's claim that non-Marxist-Leninist parties are automatically bourgeois in nature - claiming that the Ba'ath Party is a popular revolutionary movement and that as such the people rejected petit bourgeois politics.[3]
Saddam Hussein claimed that the Arab nation did not have the class structure of that of other nations and that class division was more along national lines between Arabs and non-Arabs than within the Arab community.[3] However he spoke fondly of Vladimir Lenin and commended Lenin for giving Russian Marxism a uniquely Russian specificity that Marx alone was incapable of doing. He also expressed admiration for other communist leaders, such as Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, and Josip Broz Tito due to their spirit of asserting national independence rather than their communism.[3]
Arab nationalism[edit]
Saddam Hussein and his ideologists sought to fuse a connection between ancient Babylonian and Assyrian civilization in Iraq to the Arab nationalism by claiming that the Bablyonians and ancient Assyrians are the ancestors of the Arabs. Thus, Saddam Hussein and his supporters claim that there is no conflict between Mesopotamian heritage and Arab nationalism.[3]
Saddam portrayed Iraq as the bulwark of the Arab world against Iranian expansion during the Iran–Iraq War from 1980 to 1988.[6]
Islamism[edit]
During the Iran–Iraq War, Saddam emphasized his Prophetic descent and used his sharifian descent to draw on a classical form of religious legitimacy.[7]
In June 1993, Saddam initiated the Faith Campaign, under the supervision of Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri. This new policy aimed to promote Islamism and encourage popular devotion to Islam within Iraqi society.[7] This has been described as a Ba'athist "full-scale politicisation of Islam" and marked a shift away from the more secular rule of the 1980s and 1970s.[7] The campaign granted greater freedoms to Islamist groups, allocated more resources into religious programmes, increased use of Islamic punishments, and a greater emphasis being put on Islam in all sectors of Iraqi life.[8]
Saddamist policies[edit]
Economic and social policy[edit]
According to Phebe Marr, Saddam "provided widespread health, education, and social benefits that went well beyond those of any previous regime".[4] Saddam implemented land reform, made hospitals and education free, doubled the number of students in schools and developed infrastructure such as roads, access to electricity and water, in addition to increasing life expectancy and decreasing child mortality.[4]
Saddam imposed tariffs and protected domestic industries. He also sponsored industrialization programs. Oil proceeds increased from $1 billion in 1972 to $33 billion in 1980.[4] Following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the ensuing Gulf War in 1991, the United Nations imposed sanctions on Iraq. This caused extreme economic decline as Iraq's GDP declined from $66.2 billion in 1989 to to $10.8 billion in 1996 while per capita annual income decreased from $3,510 in 1989 to $450 in 1996.[4]
Saddam introduced social security programs such as disability benefits which granted disabled people financial assistance.[9] He also introduced healthcare coverage to ensure that Iraqi citizens had access to healthcare and medication when needed.[10] Healthcare worsened in the 1990s due to the UN sanctions restricting basic-medical equipment and supplies from getting into Iraq.[11] The UN sanctions are believed to have inflicted about 500,000 Iraqi deaths due to the shortages in food and medicine caused by the blockade.[4]
Purges and executions[edit]
Saddam was known for employing terror against his own citizens. The Economist described Saddam as "one of the last of the 20th century's great dictators, but not the least in terms of egotism, or cruelty, or morbid will to power."[12] Saddam's regime brought about the deaths of at least 250,000 Iraqis[13] and committed war crimes in Iran, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International issued regular reports of widespread imprisonment and torture. Saddam also used Iraq's oil wealth to develop a patronage system for supporters of his regime.[14]
The Anfal campaign of 1988 was undertaken in the northern regions of Iraq in response to the Iranian-backed Kurdish insurgency. Human Rights Watch estimates that between 50,000 and 100,000 people were killed.[15] Following the disastrous Gulf War, Shias rebelled in southern Iraq and executed Ba'athist officials during the 1991 Iraqi uprisings. Saddam responded with repression, killing enemies and suspected political dissidents, resulting in the deaths of about 150,000 Iraqi Shias.[4]
References[edit]
- ^ al-Marashi, Ibrahim (2008). Iraq's Armed Forces: an Analytical History (Paperback). Oxon, England, UK; New York, New York, USA: Routledge. p. 108. ISBN 9780415400787.
- ^ a b c Bengio, Ofra (1998). Saddam's Word: Political discourse in Iraq (Paperback). Oxford, England, UK; New York, New York, USA: Oxford University Press. p. 208. ISBN 9780195114393.
- ^ a b c d e f g Niblock, Tim (1982). Iraq, the contemporary state (Paperback). London, England, UK: Croom Helm, Ltd. p. 62-71. ISBN 9780709918103.
- ^ a b c d e f g MacDonald, Michael (October 2014). Overreach: Delusions of Regime Change in Iraq. Harvard University Press. pp. 213–215. ISBN 978-0-674-72910-0.
- ^ Ayalon, Ami (December 1994). Middle East Contemporary Survey, Volume Xvi, 1992. The Moshe Dayan Center. p. 453. ISBN 978-0-8133-2133-2.
- ^ Jillani, Anees (1991). "Nasser, Saddam and Pan-Arabism". Pakistan Horizon. 44 (2): 75–88. ISSN 0030-980X.
- ^ a b c Jordan, David (10 November 2021). ""So Let Today Be All the Arabs Muḥammad": The Prophet in the Discourse of the Iraqi Baʿth Party". The Presence of the Prophet in Early Modern and Contemporary Islam. 2. Brill: 323–345. doi:10.1163/9789004466753_014. S2CID 244288193. Retrieved 10 September 2023.
- ^ "From Militant Secularism to Islamism | Wilson Center". www.wilsoncenter.org. Retrieved 2024-05-25.
- ^ "Evolution of Disability Rights in Iraq" JMU 2015, Retrieved April 2024.
- ^ "Health services in Iraq" University of Edinburgh 2013, Retrieved April 2024.
- ^ epicmatthew (2017-03-07). "Iraq's Public Healthcare System in Crisis". EPIC - Enabling Peace in Iraq Center. Retrieved 2024-05-25.
- ^ "Saddam Hussein – The blundering dictator". The Economist. 4 January 2007.
- ^ "War in Iraq: Not a Humanitarian Intervention". Human Rights Watch. 25 January 2004. Retrieved 31 May 2017.
Having devoted extensive time and effort to documenting [Saddam's] atrocities, we estimate that in the last twenty-five years of Ba'ath Party rule the Iraqi government murdered or 'disappeared' some quarter of a million Iraqis, if not more.
- ^ Sassoon, Joseph (February 2017). "Aaron M. Faust, The Ba'thification of Iraq: Saddam Hussein's Totalitarianism [Book Review]". International Journal of Middle East Studies. 49 (1). Cambridge University Press: 205–206. doi:10.1017/S0020743816001392. S2CID 164804585.
First, Faust totally ignores the economy in his analysis. This oversight is remarkable given his attempt to trace how the regime became totalitarian, which, by definition, encompasses all facets of life. ... Second, the comparison with Stalin or Hitler is weak when one takes into consideration how many Iraqis were allowed to leave the country. Although citizens needed to undergo a convoluted and bureaucratic procedure to obtain the necessary papers to leave the country, the fact remains that more than one million Iraqis migrated from Iraq from the end of the Iran–Iraq War in 1988 until the US-led invasion in 2003. Third, religion under Stalin did not function in the same manner as it did in Iraq, and while Faust details how the Shia were not allowed to engage in some of their ceremonies, the average Iraqi was allowed to pray at home and in a mosque. ... it is correct that the security services kept a watch on religious establishments and mosques, but the Iraqi approach is somewhat different from that pursued by Stalin's totalitarianism.
- ^ "Iraqi Anfal, Human Rights Watch, 1993". Human Rights Watch. Retrieved 20 September 2013.