THE Baath party, which ruled Iraq until the US-
led invasion in 2003, has forged an unlikely
alliance with Daesh (the so-called IS) militants.
The party was secular, but in the 1990s late
president Saddam Hussein embarked on the
Return to Faith Campaign, which resulted in a
more religious school curriculum in schools, to
garner more support from conservatives.
After the toppling of Saddam in 2003 and the
dismantling of the Baath party, it seemingly
fizzled into thin air, with its leftover members
targeted by the United States.
However, it continued to survive underground.
“Izzat Al-Douri was the most high-profile
Baathist official to successfully evade capture in
2003,” Dan Gabriel, a former CIA covert action
officer, told Al Arabiya News.
“As the leader of the Northern Offensive and
commander of the Naqshbandi Army, Douri
had some serious bona fides among disaffected
Sunnis.”
The Northern Offensive, by Daesh and aligned
forces, against the Iraqi government began on
June 5, 2014. It led to the capture of Iraq’s
second-largest city Mosul on June 10, and
Saddam’s home city Tikrit the day after.
Observers say Baathists and Islamists were able
to receive support from Sunnis who felt
marginalized by the Shiite-dominated
government, paving the way for an alliance.
“These aggrieved Sunnis found common ground
with Daesh on their shared objective to take
down [former prime minister Nouri] Al-Maliki’s
government, and to end Iranian influence in
Iraq,” Gabriel said.
According to senior Iraqi officers on the
frontlines against Daesh, its top command is
dominated by officers from Saddam’s military
and intelligence agencies.
“Daesh Czar Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi has sought
to win the support and loyalty of the so-called
‘former regime elements’ since the early days
of Operation New Dawn,” Gabriel said.
Operation New Dawn was a joint US-Iraqi
offensive against the insurgent stronghold of
Fallujah city in 2004.
Baghdadi “has been successful,” said Gabriel.
“He recruited two top leaders into his
movement: Fadel Al-Hayali, his top deputy for
Iraq who once served Saddam as a lieutenant
colonel; and Adnan Al-Sweidawi, a former
lieutenant colonel who headed Daesh’s military
council until his demise in late 2014.”
‘Marriage of convenience’
Under the de-Baathification law of 2003, some
400,000 members of the defeated Iraqi army
were removed from government employment
and denied pensions, leaving many disgruntled
and angry.
Justin Marozzi, a strategic communications
expert at NATO, said the alliance between
Daesh and Baath remnants is “entirely
opportunist,” and “if it’s a marriage of
convenience, the husband and bride are united
by their ghastliness.
“Although the Baathists provide much of the
brainpower and some of the steel, they’re
subordinate within what is a pseudo-religious
experiment.”
Baathist ideology not ‘static’
Asked how a formerly secular party could mix
with a militant group, Gabriel said: “Baathist
ideology isn’t a static concept in post-Saddam
Iraq.”
It is “erratic, wavering, self-serving and
amorphous.” While both sides are taking
advantage of each other, changes on ground
will later show the real cracks of the
“temporary” union.
“Both groups are taking advantage of a perfect
combination of failed states, civil wars,
sectarian tensions, outside funding, and costly
mistakes by the United States,” Gabriel said.
“But if and when the negotiating begins for new
lines to be drawn across Mesopotamia, it will
be the Baathists at the table opposite the
Iranian surrogates, not Daesh.”
What made Baath attractive?
Since its establishment in 1951, when Iraq was
still ruled by the monarchy, the Baath party’s
ideology stemmed from minority groups.
The party’s main supporters were secular,
Western-influenced Arabs and members of
religious minorities, including Christians, who
feared the “government of the majority,” said
Mathieu Guidere, an academic at the University
of Toulouse in France.
However, initially the party was “not attractive
to average Iraqis, not even to the elite,” said
Guidere. Baathist doctrine at the time was
largely secular, recognizing the role of Islam in
the rise of Arabs in history, but separating
politics from religion.
“But once in power, Baathists used religion
either to counter the growing political
opposition of the Islamists, or to promote their
own clan in the regime’s structure,” Guidere
said.
Due to the party’s strong political apparatus and
high levels of organization, a 1968 coup
resulted in Baathist General Ahmed Hassan Al-
Bakr becoming Iraq’s leader.
A decade later, Saddam took over from the
then-weak and aging Bakr. He would rule Iraq
until the US-led invasion.
Transformation
Only six days after he was declared president,
Saddam — at a meeting of the Revolutionary
Command Council on July 22, 1979 — read a
list of “enemies of the state.”
He ordered the execution of at least 22 of
them within 21 hours of their names being
read. However, besides his ruthlessness,
Saddam enacted reforms that lent him some
credibility.
They included universal free schooling up to
the highest education levels, not only for Iraqis
but for Arab nationals, making Saddam even
more popular regionally.
UNESCO awarded Saddam for creating one of
the most modernized public-health systems in
the Middle East. However, soon his war-
mongering started to dampen the Baath party’s
appeal.
The accumulated death toll from wars and
sanctions left many Iraqis desperate and angry.
So what still remains from the once-feared
Baath party after the death of Al-Douri, the last
remainder of its big bosses, in April this year?
“The Iraqi Baath party still denies his death,”
Dan said. “My sense is that he’s dead, but the
Baathists won’t acknowledge this until they
have a suitably prominent successor to take his
place,” for the legacy to live on. — Al Arabiya
News
Source: www.saudigazette.com.sa/mobile/index.cfm?method=sphome.spcon&contentid=20150822254127