April, 2003

The Role of the Army in Post-war Iraq

Beshir Abdel-Fattah

The Iraqi army has always been closely linked to the politics and aims of the ruling elite in Baghdad. Founded in the early 1920s, the army was essentially established by the British to repress domestic acts of revolt against their domination. As successive regimes relied more and more on the army to establish their hold on power, the army's composition and structure came to reflect the prevailing religious, regional and ethnic balances in the Iraqi system, as well as the elite's ideology and political aims.

With the Baathists' ascent to power through the 1968 coup d'état, the party's organisation quickly spread throughout the army. Regular and open political meetings were held including soldiers and officers from various military branches. Each military unit had a Baathist 'political officer' who enjoyed authorities equal to its military commander. A failed coup against Hassan Al-Bakr in 1973 revealed the significant weight of the Baath Party within the army, and the dangers some of its leaders posed to the regime. Saddam Hussein did not ignore this lesson, and on assuming power undertook a wide purge of Baathist groups within the army and executed their leaders. He thereby effectively ended the control over power this party enjoyed, and it became an auxiliary agency to the intelligence and special security organisations that came to hold real power.

The policies of Saddam Hussein's regime towards the army:

Throughout the 1980s, Saddam Hussein intensified the presence of his clan, the Tikritis, in the army. By the end of the Iraq-Iran War in 1988, they had seized control of the nerve centres of both state and military. During the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein promoted his closest relatives and in-laws to the highest security posts, believing in their total support and loyalty to his person. Following the war, the president appeared on Iraqi television with a group of these relations and cronies, including his two sons Uday and Qusay, presenting them to the Iraqi people as members of the new Iraqi National Security Council that would represent both the army and the state. Sensitive posts, such as those in the ministries of defence and internal security, were allocated to this group.

At the same time, large numbers of officers were removed from the army and others were executed - with no reasons given. Secret instructions were given to remove Shia officers from sensitive posts, even at medium or low levels of command. Shia, Kurdish and Turkmen officers were to be transferred out of posts in the ministry of defence. Thus the sectarian discrimination in favour of Sunni Tikritis and against Shia, Kurds and Turkmen became well established within the army. Saddam Hussein also adopted several measures aimed at weakening the army's cohesion, removing any possibility of a challenge to his power. These measures included:

- Dividing the army into what has in effect become five different armies with different missions, tasks and privileges.

- Establishing the principle that the army's primary role is to defend Saddam Hussein's person, regime and family.

- Rendering loyalty to the regime and to Saddam Hussein personally the criterion determining whether or not a person could join the army, and in which division he could be placed.

- Deploying military units around villages and inside cities to protect the regime and the property of Saddam's family.

- Using extreme violence against any sign of rebellion or opposition from the army, effectively destroying any momentum for change within it.

Saddam Hussein's harsh policies led many officers to flee - either to neighbouring countries like Turkey or to European capitals. Senior officers in exile formed the 'opposition military council.' Seventy of these officers met in a conference in London July 2002, announcing the formation of a military command council in exile to pursue means of toppling Saddam Hussein and his regime. They appealed to the Iraqi army inside Iraq to help in this respect. These officers enjoy a level of credibility and legitimacy as they were never involved in acts of repression or brutality against the Iraqi people, as opposed to some other military figures in exile.

Attempts to revolt against Saddam Hussein were recurrent during the 1990s, not only from regular army units, but also from the prestigious, and presumably loyal, Presidential Guard. US intelligence reports reveal that elements within this guard made several attempts to overthrow the president. The most prominent of these attempts took place in 1999, when tanks from the Presidential Guard surrounded Saddam Hussein's palace in Baghdad and his home in Tikrit and demanded he hand over power.

Although this attempt enjoyed popular support, Qusay Saddam Hussein was able to suppress it and executed dozens of officers and soldiers that were involved. The president's trust in the army was therefore greatly diminished by this constant state of rebellion. His decision, in March 2003, to divide Iraq into four geographic sections, allotting the leadership of each to a trusted ally was, in part, an attempt to maintain control over the army.

The US and the Iraqi military:

In the run-up to its war on Iraq, the US administration, having become increasingly disillusioned as to the role the civilian opposition could play in overthrowing Saddam Hussein's regime, began exploring the possibility of gaining support from within the Iraqi army. Direct and indirect channels of communication were opened between the US and some Iraqi military leaders to convince them to rebel against the president in return for specific privileges and rewards in the post-Saddam era. They were not successful in this endeavour, and as a US military official announced after hostilities began, no cracks had appeared in Iraq's military forces.

No surrenders or revolts similar to those that took place in 1991 have occurred. For the first time, the relatively small group of the Fedayeen Saddam -around 20,000-, have assumed a prominent role and are giving fierce resistance. The forces of the Presidential Guard as well are putting up strong resistance to the allied invasion. They are bolstered by the general upsurge of nationalist, as well as religious, feelings throughout the Arab world. Volunteers from different Arab and Islamic countries set out for Iraq to fight the allies. Saddam Hussein has capitalised on these nationalist and religious feelings, as well as on the international opposition to the war to shore up his position.

The US administration has plans in place to deal with the Iraqi armed forces after the conflict ends. According to a report by the Centre for International & Strategic Studies in Washington, this plan is to reduce the number of the army from 350,000 to 150,000, in addition to disarming it and putting it under the strict control of allied military forces.

The army will be 'rehabilitated' to perform specific tasks in reconstruction, internal security and the protection of Iraq's borders. Leaders and other military elements known to have supported Saddam Hussein will be disposed of. The allied forces gave a preview of this intended policy in the manner in which they dealt with the first 'liberated' Iraqi town. In the port of Umm Al-Qasr, the allies arrested all the pro-Saddam military leaders and political officials and left only civilians under direct allied military control.

The allies aim to deny the Iraqi army any political role in the post-Saddam era as a result of the fierce resistance these forces have put up to the allied invasion.