Human rights in pre-Saddam Iraq
Encyclopedia
Human rights in pre-Saddam Iraq were often lacking to various degrees among the various regimes that ruled the country. Human rights abuses in the country predated the rule of Saddam Hussein
.
(predecessor of the United Nations
), British occupational forces, under the command of Arthur Harris
, used mustard gas and delayed action bombing to suppress Iraqi resistance to British rule, leading to numerous civilian casualties.
Prime ministers, and at one point the leaders of a military coup, had enormous influence during the era of the monarchy, and civil rights varied at different points. According to a United States Library of Congress history of Iraq:
On numerous occasions in 1949, Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri as-Said
suggested to foreign diplomats that Iraq might expel its Jewish population, which then numbered roughly 160,000, largely in Baghdad. On one occasion, in late January or early February 1949, Nuri made the suggestion to Samir El-Rifa'i, the prime minister of Jordan, at the British Embassy in Amaan, Jordan.
Alec Kirkbride, the British ambassador in Amman, wrote of Nuri's reaction to the Jordanian's initially polite refusal to allow a convoy of expelled Jews to traverse Jordan into Israel (which had just become a state):
In a brief period from 1950 to 1951, over 120,000 Jews fled the country for Israel, making the mass emigration "one of the largest airlift operations ever in the history of population transfers". In "Operation Ezra and Nehemiah" the Israeli government helped airlift Jews from Iraq to Israel. "Iraq, the most anti-Zionist state, insisted that its Jewish population go forthwith to Israel. At one point, the Israeli authorities gained leverage over their Iraqi counterparts by not taking in as many immigrants as Baghdad wanted to go. At other times, the two enemies were effectively cooperating, as when the Israelis decided to increase the pace of absorption and the Iraqis soon after responded by permitting direct flights from Baghdad to Tel Aviv." Rumors abounded that Israeli agents used terrorism to get the Iraqi Jews to move, and some bombs went off in Iraq that terrorized the Jewish population. According to Moshe Gat, the author of The Jewish Exodus from Iraq, 1948-1951 (1997), "there was no connection between the bomb-throwing incidents and the departure of the Jews." Daniel Pipes
, in a review of Gat's book, wrote, "The sudden rush to leave Iraq overwhelmed Israel's capacities and resulted not from mischief but from the Iraqi Jews' well-grounded sense of impending doom unless they took advantage of a unique chance to escape."
in southeastern Turkey
and northern Iran
, about 50,000 survivors streamed over the border into northern Iraq, which was largely populated by Kurds and Turkomen. The refugees were housed in British-run refugee camps. Similar upheavals in 1918 in Iran led to more flows of refugees into Iraq, where Assyrian communities already had existed for centuries. These influxes led to decades of ethnic conflict.
Under the British mandate, Assyrians were organized into militia groups called "the Assyrian Levies" and were used to put down revolts and support the British military presence in Iraq. The Assyrians were abandoned by the British once Iraq achieved independence in 1933. In the summer of that year an armed group of 800 Assyrians crossed from Iraq into Syria, where there were many other Assyrians, to "assert what they perceived as their legitimate national rights", according to Jonathan Eric Lewis, a political analyst. French colonial authorities in Syria forced them back into Iraq where the Iraqi military attacked them. On August 7, "the Iraqi army and Kurdish irregulars, with genuine popular support, committed a massacre at Simele
." According to Assyrian sources, the dead numbered 3,000 (other estimates put the number in the "hundreds". "No event has shaped Iraqi Assyrian collective identity more", Lewis wrote.
The second regime of the Ba'ath Arab Socialist Party began with a coup in July 1968, with Saddam Hussein, one of the leaders of the coup, growing in power and eventually assuming the presidency of the country in 1979. He was overthrown in the United States-led invasion of 2003.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Iraqis and many other Arabs often supported the idea of a strong leader "along the lines of Stalin
or Mao
, Ho Chi Minh
or Castro
" who would act as "a political savior", acting with great power, a sense of mission and ruling with justice. Saladin
, the eleventh-century Islamic hero who defeated the Crusaders
, was looked on as a model and even Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey
, was viewed as a leader from whom an example could be drawn. In Iraq, many felt a strong leader was needed to hold the country together despite its ethnic divisions and other problems.
According to Shafeeq N. Ghabra, a professor of political science at Kuwait University, and, in 2001, director of the Kuwait Information Office in Washington D.C.:
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis fled the country within four years of the 1958 revolution.
Assyrians fared rather well under the five-year regime, but since Baathist rule began again in 1968, they fared much worse, according to Jonathan Eric Lewis. "As Baathist power increased, Assyrian influence and rights within Iraq decreased," he wrote in 2003.
A power struggle developed among the coup leaders Brigadier Abd al Karim Qasim and Colonel Abd as Salaam Arif. Arif's pro-Nasserite sympathies were supported by the Baath Party, while Qasim found support for his anti-union position in the ranks of the communists. Qasim eventually emerged victorious, first dismissing Arif, then bringing him to trial for treason. He was condemned to death in January 1959, then pardoned in December 1962.
Aware of plotting for a coup by officers opposed to Qasim's increasing links with the communists, Qasim had his communist allies mobilize 250,000 of their supporters in Mosul in March 1959. The coup attempt never materialized, but the communists massacred nationalists and some well-to-do Mosul families. As a result of the killings, and a riot in Kirkuk, Baath Party leaders decided assassination was the only way to dislodge Qasim. Their attempt to kill him, led by Saddam Hussein
, failed while injuring Qasim, and the dictator reacted by aligning himself more with the communists and by suppressing the Baath and other nationalist parties. But by 1960 and 1961, Qasim decided the communists had become too strong and he moved against them, purging communists from sensitive government positions, cracking down on trade unions and on peasant associations, and shutting down the communist press.
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
.
The British occupation of Iraq (1920-1932)
In the 1920s, when Britain held a mandate from the League of NationsLeague of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...
(predecessor of the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
), British occupational forces, under the command of Arthur Harris
Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet
Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Travers Harris, 1st Baronet GCB OBE AFC , commonly known as "Bomber" Harris by the press, and often within the RAF as "Butcher" Harris, was Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of RAF Bomber Command during the latter half of World War...
, used mustard gas and delayed action bombing to suppress Iraqi resistance to British rule, leading to numerous civilian casualties.
The Hashemite monarchy (1932-1958)
The Hashemite monarchy that took over Iraq from the British has been described as imperfect in terms of human rights, but in many ways better than the regimes that followed:- "After the creation of Iraq as an independent kingdom in 1932, the monarchy [...] sought to maintain the status quo of Sunni dominance, prompting conflict between the Arab Sunni establishment and several minorities (such as the Assyrians and the Kurds). But the monarchy also sought solutions, compromises, and certain forms of elections and democratic expression." Because the regime's legitimacy derived from its history in Arabia and its long experience in administration and ability to work with the British, it was able "to lead with less repression and coercion."
Prime ministers, and at one point the leaders of a military coup, had enormous influence during the era of the monarchy, and civil rights varied at different points. According to a United States Library of Congress history of Iraq:
- In 1952 the depressed economic situation, which had been exacerbated by a bad harvest and by the government's refusal to hold direct elections, triggered large-scale antiregime protests; the protests turned especially violent in Baghdad. In response, the government declared martial law, banned all political parties, suspended a number of newspapers, and imposed a curfew. The immense size of the protests showed how widespread dissatisfaction with the regime had become. The middle class, which had grown considerably as a result of the monarchy's expanded education system, had become increasingly alienated from the regime, in large part because they were unable to earn an income commensurate with their status. Nuri as Said's autocratic manner, his intolerance of dissent, and his heavy-handed treatment of the political opposition had further alienated the middle class, especially the army. Forced underground, the opposition had become more revolutionary.
Repression and exodus of Jews during the monarchy
In 1948 the Penal Code of Baghdad was amended, "adding Zionism to other ideologies and behavior (communism, anarchism, and immorality) whose propagation constituted a punishable offense. Laws in 1950 and 1951 the [sic] deprived Jews of their Iraqi nationality and their property in Iraq, respectively."On numerous occasions in 1949, Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri as-Said
Nuri as-Said
Nuri Pasha al-Said was an Iraqi politician during the British Mandate and during the Kingdom of Iraq. He served in various key cabinet positions, and served seven terms as Prime Minister of Iraq....
suggested to foreign diplomats that Iraq might expel its Jewish population, which then numbered roughly 160,000, largely in Baghdad. On one occasion, in late January or early February 1949, Nuri made the suggestion to Samir El-Rifa'i, the prime minister of Jordan, at the British Embassy in Amaan, Jordan.
Alec Kirkbride, the British ambassador in Amman, wrote of Nuri's reaction to the Jordanian's initially polite refusal to allow a convoy of expelled Jews to traverse Jordan into Israel (which had just become a state):
- Nuri lost his temper at being rebuffed and he said: "So, you do not want to do it, do you?" Samir snapped back: "Of course I do not want to be party to such a crime." Nuri thereupon exploded with rage and I began to wonder what the head of the diplomatic mission would do if two Prime Ministers came to blows in his study. We then broke up in disorder, but I got them out of the house whilst preserving a minimum of propriety.
In a brief period from 1950 to 1951, over 120,000 Jews fled the country for Israel, making the mass emigration "one of the largest airlift operations ever in the history of population transfers". In "Operation Ezra and Nehemiah" the Israeli government helped airlift Jews from Iraq to Israel. "Iraq, the most anti-Zionist state, insisted that its Jewish population go forthwith to Israel. At one point, the Israeli authorities gained leverage over their Iraqi counterparts by not taking in as many immigrants as Baghdad wanted to go. At other times, the two enemies were effectively cooperating, as when the Israelis decided to increase the pace of absorption and the Iraqis soon after responded by permitting direct flights from Baghdad to Tel Aviv." Rumors abounded that Israeli agents used terrorism to get the Iraqi Jews to move, and some bombs went off in Iraq that terrorized the Jewish population. According to Moshe Gat, the author of The Jewish Exodus from Iraq, 1948-1951 (1997), "there was no connection between the bomb-throwing incidents and the departure of the Jews." Daniel Pipes
Daniel Pipes
Daniel Pipes is an American historian, writer, and political commentator. He is the founder and director of the Middle East Forum and its Campus Watch project, and editor of its Middle East Quarterly journal...
, in a review of Gat's book, wrote, "The sudden rush to leave Iraq overwhelmed Israel's capacities and resulted not from mischief but from the Iraqi Jews' well-grounded sense of impending doom unless they took advantage of a unique chance to escape."
Repression of Assyrians
In 1915, facing massacres that led to the deaths of up to two-thirds of the AssyriansAssyrian people
The Assyrian people are a distinct ethnic group whose origins lie in ancient Mesopotamia...
in southeastern Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
and northern Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
, about 50,000 survivors streamed over the border into northern Iraq, which was largely populated by Kurds and Turkomen. The refugees were housed in British-run refugee camps. Similar upheavals in 1918 in Iran led to more flows of refugees into Iraq, where Assyrian communities already had existed for centuries. These influxes led to decades of ethnic conflict.
Under the British mandate, Assyrians were organized into militia groups called "the Assyrian Levies" and were used to put down revolts and support the British military presence in Iraq. The Assyrians were abandoned by the British once Iraq achieved independence in 1933. In the summer of that year an armed group of 800 Assyrians crossed from Iraq into Syria, where there were many other Assyrians, to "assert what they perceived as their legitimate national rights", according to Jonathan Eric Lewis, a political analyst. French colonial authorities in Syria forced them back into Iraq where the Iraqi military attacked them. On August 7, "the Iraqi army and Kurdish irregulars, with genuine popular support, committed a massacre at Simele
Simele massacre
The Simele Massacre was a massacre committed by the armed forces of the Kingdom of Iraq during the systematic targeting of Assyrians in northern Iraq in August 1933...
." According to Assyrian sources, the dead numbered 3,000 (other estimates put the number in the "hundreds". "No event has shaped Iraqi Assyrian collective identity more", Lewis wrote.
Between the monarchy and Saddam Hussein (1958-1969)
In the decade following the overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy in 1958, various regimes ruled the country, each responsible for the government's treatment of its citizens and for protecting citizens, until the 1968 coup that brought the Ba'ath Party to power with Saddam Hussein as one of the coup leaders:- Military government of Abd al-Karim Qasem and the "Free Officers" (1958–1963);
- First regime of the Ba'ath Arab Socialist Party (February–November 1963);
- Governments of the Arif brothers and Abd al-Rahman al-Bazzaz (1963–1968).
The second regime of the Ba'ath Arab Socialist Party began with a coup in July 1968, with Saddam Hussein, one of the leaders of the coup, growing in power and eventually assuming the presidency of the country in 1979. He was overthrown in the United States-led invasion of 2003.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Iraqis and many other Arabs often supported the idea of a strong leader "along the lines of Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
or Mao
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
, Ho Chi Minh
Ho Chi Minh
Hồ Chí Minh , born Nguyễn Sinh Cung and also known as Nguyễn Ái Quốc, was a Vietnamese Marxist-Leninist revolutionary leader who was prime minister and president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam...
or Castro
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
" who would act as "a political savior", acting with great power, a sense of mission and ruling with justice. Saladin
Saladin
Ṣalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb , better known in the Western world as Saladin, was an Arabized Kurdish Muslim, who became the first Sultan of Egypt and Syria, and founded the Ayyubid dynasty. He led Muslim and Arab opposition to the Franks and other European Crusaders in the Levant...
, the eleventh-century Islamic hero who defeated the Crusaders
Crusades
The Crusades were a series of religious wars, blessed by the Pope and the Catholic Church with the main goal of restoring Christian access to the holy places in and near Jerusalem...
, was looked on as a model and even Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
, was viewed as a leader from whom an example could be drawn. In Iraq, many felt a strong leader was needed to hold the country together despite its ethnic divisions and other problems.
Abd al-Karim Qasem and the "Free Officers" Regime (1958-1963)
The 1958 military coup that overthrew the Hashemite monarchy brought to power members of "rural groups that lacked the cosmopolitan thinking found among Iraqi elites". Iraq's new leaders had an "exclusivist mentality [that] produced tribal conflict and rivalry, which in turn called forth internal oppression [...]"According to Shafeeq N. Ghabra, a professor of political science at Kuwait University, and, in 2001, director of the Kuwait Information Office in Washington D.C.:
- After the 1958 revolution, Iraq's ruling establishment created a state devoid of political compromise. Its leaders liquidated those holding opposing views, confiscated property without notice, trumped up charges against its enemies, and fought battles with imaginary domestic foes. This state of affairs reinforced an absolute leader and a militarized Iraqi society totally different from the one that existed during the monarchy.
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis fled the country within four years of the 1958 revolution.
Assyrians fared rather well under the five-year regime, but since Baathist rule began again in 1968, they fared much worse, according to Jonathan Eric Lewis. "As Baathist power increased, Assyrian influence and rights within Iraq decreased," he wrote in 2003.
A power struggle developed among the coup leaders Brigadier Abd al Karim Qasim and Colonel Abd as Salaam Arif. Arif's pro-Nasserite sympathies were supported by the Baath Party, while Qasim found support for his anti-union position in the ranks of the communists. Qasim eventually emerged victorious, first dismissing Arif, then bringing him to trial for treason. He was condemned to death in January 1959, then pardoned in December 1962.
Aware of plotting for a coup by officers opposed to Qasim's increasing links with the communists, Qasim had his communist allies mobilize 250,000 of their supporters in Mosul in March 1959. The coup attempt never materialized, but the communists massacred nationalists and some well-to-do Mosul families. As a result of the killings, and a riot in Kirkuk, Baath Party leaders decided assassination was the only way to dislodge Qasim. Their attempt to kill him, led by Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...
, failed while injuring Qasim, and the dictator reacted by aligning himself more with the communists and by suppressing the Baath and other nationalist parties. But by 1960 and 1961, Qasim decided the communists had become too strong and he moved against them, purging communists from sensitive government positions, cracking down on trade unions and on peasant associations, and shutting down the communist press.
Various regimes (1963-1968)
After Qasim was overthrown in 1963, the Baath Party took over. The party was small, with only 1,000 active members, and lacked a coherent program, having been held together largely by opposition to Qasim. Saadi, the leader of the Baathists, established a one-party state with little tolerance for opposing views. The Baath was overthrown by November 1963 in a military coup led by a small group of officers. For the next five years power shifted among the officers until 1968, when another coup brought the Baath back to power.The early Baathist regime (1968-1969)
When the Baathists came back to power, two men, Saddam Hussein and Bakr, increasingly dominated the party. Although Bakr was the older and more prestigious of the two, by 1969 Saddam "clearly had become the moving force behind the party."Ethnic conflicts
Human rights violations in Iraq often came from conflicts between the country's rulers and members of distinct ethnic communities, especially the Kurds and Shiite Arabs, although Sunni Arabs, members of the minority that filled the top positions in the regimes after 1958 and through Saddam's years in power, could feel the wrath of the rulers for reasons unrelated to ethnic conflict.Conflict with the Shi'a
Ghabra has called the treatment of the Shi'a one of the worst political mistakes of the regimes after 1958. Writing in 2001, Ghabra said the post-1958 regimes dismissed the "Shi'a majority and its rights, alienating them despite their commitment to Iraq."Conflict with the Kurds
In the regimes that followed the 1958 overthrow of the Iraqi monarchy, human rights violations in Kurdistan occurred frequently as Kurdish nationalism conflicted with the goals of various Iraqi regimes, causing violence to break out when political negotiations broke down:- [T]he Kurds encountered a familiar pattern under each of the regimes that followed: first a period of negotiations that invariably failed to satisfy Kurdish demands for autonomy, and then, when the talks broke down, renewed outbreaks of violence. Rural villages were bombed and burned and Kurdish fighters hunted down relentlessly. The name that they adopted expressed accurately the condition of their existence. They called themselves peshmerga — "those who face death."
See also
- Human rights in Saddam's IraqHuman rights in Saddam's IraqIraq under Saddam Hussein had high levels of torture and mass murder.Secret police, torture, murders, rape, abductions, deportations, forced disappearances, assassinations, chemical weapons, and the destruction of wetlands were some of the methods Saddam Hussein used to maintain control...
- Human rights in post-Saddam Iraq