By Liam Anderson and Gareth Stansfield
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 1403963541
Pages: 272

Given that a year of turmoil has come to its first bloody anniversary in Iraq with no end in sight and no viable political contract at the end of the tunnel, The Future of Iraq - Dictatorship, Democracy or Division? is a rather strong reminder that to predict what the future may hold one must resort to the lessons of the past.

Authors Liam Anderson and Gareth Stansfield are to be commended for a brilliantly presented study of Iraq - the two seem to have thoroughly researched their material and encased themselves in a series of rather veritable sources.

Although this 272-page book is the most comprehensive, well-studied, well-articulated and clearly defined book on Iraq I have ever come across, it is but the tip of the iceberg of Iraq’s complexities, intricate social and sectarian divisions, and turgid political back channels.

Unlike in most books on Iraq, Anderson and Stansfield stray from the chronological presentation of events and historical figures and focus on introducing topics in terms of political connectivity; for example, the longest chapter on the Kurdish minority of Iraq is left for the end, ostensibly to signal that Iraq’s future - in the end - may be determined by the fate of the Kurds.

In fact, the history, political aspirations, and future of the Kurds weigh heavily in this book - perhaps due to the fact that Anderson admits his Kurdish heritage in the introduction. Indeed, the book’s authors seem to tip the scale in favor of Kurdish independence when in the introduction they write, “If, as seems likely, the Kurds opt to pursue their historical dream of an independent Kurdish state, then this outcome must be accepted and respected by the international community.”

Nevertheless, and despite the use of the word division in the title - the word is highlighted in color red, standing out from the rest of the title on the hard cover - this is still the fairest and most objective book I have ever read on the rise (and demise) of the Iraqi Ba’ath party, Saddam’s ironclad rule and the effect of outside forces at play in Iraq.

Early on in the book, the authors (and rightly so) hint that Iraq’s problems started long before Saddam was even born, a brave move on their part since it has become fashionable to blame the Iraqi president for everything that fails in Iraq. Very little credit is given to his economic and social achievements early in his tenure. Anderson and Stansfield hint at faulting the British for many of Iraq’s modern problems, saying that the sectarian divisions and political dilemma existed “long before Saddam Hussein arrived on the scene.”

But as any Arab historian can attest, Iraq’s political scene has been fraught with murderous bloody coups (four military coups between 1958 and 1968). Therefore, the authors write that “Ba’ath party rule was the logical response to the prevailing political context, not an historical aberration” as many US analysts have claimed. It is rather refreshing that Iraq’s Ba’ath party has not been painted with the broad brush of demonization. In fact, throughout the book the authors stress two rather valid, if not overlooked, facts: The first fact is that foreign power has always been at work in Iraq and attempted to tear the political framework asunder by funding a faction or coup. Point in case is the involvement of Israeli, American and Iranian intelligence agencies in funding the Kurdish resistance as early as 1972, four years after Saddam’s Ba’ath took hold of Iraq and less than two years after Iraq’s oil nationalization drive; and the second fact is that the Ba’ath party inherited the socio-political problems of past governments, chiefly the Kurdish problem and how to deal with the Shiite majority in Iraq.

With so many coups in such a short time, it was also no surprise that the Ba’ath party would seek methods to fortify itself against internal and external forces; survivability was its undeclared ethos. Perhaps, this helps explain why Saddam revelled in the fact that he came away unscathed in 1991’s defeat to some 31 nations and ouster from Kuwait. Having participated in an assassination attempt himself in 1963, Saddam understood that victory in Iraq meant sustainability. And the Iraqi Ba’ath party did just that, existing as a viable, if not feared and dreaded, political mechanism for nearly 50 years, 35 of which were spent ruling the country.

But not everything is black and white in Iraq; Anderson and Stansfield spend a good part of the book revealing the Ba’ath party’s (and by default, Saddam’s) successes and socio-economic achievements. For example, Saddam realized that the only way to appease the various ethnic factions in Iraq was to introduce an equitable system of wealth appropriation to all Iraqis. The authors show how the Ba’athists were successful in creating the best public health care system in the Middle East, focused on desalination, and equipped outlying villages with refrigerators, TVs and phone systems; “[i]n the economic and social sphere [they] were truly impressive”.

So what happened?

The authors, while not belittling (nor condoning) the authoritarianism, ruthlessness, and dictatorship of Saddam’s Ba’athists, point to outside forces that were from the beginning trying to offset Iraq’s rise to power. Nowhere does this point come through than when considering the Kurdish dilemma. According to Anderson and Stansfield, Saddam had decided in 1970 that there would have to be a political settlement with the Kurds - under the so-called March Memorandum, the Kurds were granted autonomy, the right to speak and teach Kurdish, Kurdish newspapers and a cut of the oil proceeds coming from Kirkuk. However, US and Israeli intelligence agencies wreaked havoc on the understanding between Saddam and the Kurds.

“In a Washington Post interview in the summer of 1973, Barzani had deliberately dangled a tempting carrot in front of the Unites States… ‘If America will protect us from the wolves we would control the Kirkuk [oil] field and give it to an American company to operate.’” This of course angered the Baghdad government. The deal with the Kurds was broken and “full-scale hostilities looked inevitable and duly erupted in March 1974.” Hoping to weaken the central Baghdad government and punish it for the 1972 nationalization of oil, US and British intelligence units influenced Iran to deploy two full regiments in the north of Iraq.

It would only be when Saddam caved in to Iranian pressures and effectively signed over the Shatt-Al-Arab waterway in the Persian Gulf in 1975 that the Shah of Iran pulled his forces and stopped supporting the Kurds. By the end of 1975, the Kurds were crushed.

This book is a must for any student of Iraqi history. It packs quite a punch as an introduction and offers a perspective on Iraq that is far from demonization and the “bully of the area” theories.

Unfortunately, history is repeating itself in Iraq (which was under British mandate from 1917 to 1932) and the country today is in the paroxysm of chaos.