On record:
Lost glory
Before Saddam Hussein assumed power in 1979, and before he launched a devastating war with neighbouring Iran that lasted most of the 1980s, Iraq was the envy of many countries in the region having used the enormous revenues from selling its oil to build up its economy and cultural infrastructure. At the end of the war, which left hundreds of thousands of people dead or wounded and the economy in tatters, Iraqis enjoyed only the briefest of respites in which to dream of rebuilding before Saddam took them to war again by invading neighbouring Kuwait.
Iraq's vast oil reserves and an educated and ambitious middle-class had seemed to position this Arab country for a promising future. Revenues from oil exports increased from $896 million in 1970 to $7.6 billion in 1974. Saddam, who was then deputy chairman of the ruling Revolutionary Command Council, headed an economic planning council that embarked on an "explosive development plan" -- an ambitious scheme for building giant industrial plants, huge housing projects, eight-lane highways, bridges, airports and communication infrastructure.
Iraqi economist Suleiman Al-Munthari, who has researched Iraq's 1970s experiment, recalls that when oil revenues further redoubled later that decade, owing to high crude prices, "the whole country suddenly turned into a big workshop".
"The country looked as if it was ready to leave its backward past and become an oasis of prosperity in the Middle East,'' Al-Munthari, who now works for the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Centre for Strategic Studies, said in an interview. Millions of Iraqis were able for the first time in their lives to enjoy Brazilian poultry, Swiss chocolate and bananas imported from countries as far afield as Columbia, splash on French perfume, wear Italian suits and drive German cars -- all at government subsided prices.
Baghdad was a hub for Arab men of letters, painters and film makers who gathered at annual art festivals. An Iraqi development fund was set up to provide economic aid to poor nations in Asia and Africa.
Tens of thousands of Iraqi students were sent to the United States and Europe on state-paid scholarships to learn at institutions such as George Washington University, Cambridge and the Sorbonne. Among those who returned were scientists who helped Iraq establish an extensive educational and research system that included dozens of new universities and institutes of higher education.
Iraq's technical and cultural achievements were stunning for a country that in some ways was a fiction. Ismail Al-Rubia'ee, an Iraqi professor of history, said with the 1258 conquest of Baghdad by the Moguls and the collapse of the Abbassid Islamic dynasty that had ruled Baghdad, Iraq ceased to be a factory that exported not only fine products but also knowledge.
Hundreds of years later, said Al-Rubia'ee, who now lectures at the Jordanian University, the Iraqi elite failed to modernise the state after its 1921 creation by British occupiers as a monarchy following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I.
Its first British-installed regime, the Hashemite monarchy, had no ties to the Gulf country and Iraqis showed little love towards the regime they saw as a puppet of the British. Even after Iraq became an independent state in 1932, it remained under British influence.
Iraq was a religious, ethnic and ideological mosaic that was difficult to rule as a united entity. Saddam's Ba'ath Party, which took power in 1968 in a military coup, resorted to force to suppress internal divisions within and promote itself in the region as a champion of pan-Arabism and a leading Arab force.
The oil boom heralded economic expansion and spurred on development, but it also ushered in an era of heavy-handed, centralised decision-making. In the 1975 state budget some $13.7 billion -- or 27 per cent of the public expenditure -- went to "unspecified purposes"; in other words, to the army, the police and security forces. Iraq, with one of the largest and most sophisticated armies in the Arab world, driven by Saddam's ambitions and the bellicose pan-Arabism of his ruling Ba'ath Party, suppressed opponents within and embarked on military adventures abroad.
The war on Iran, which Saddam portrayed as a fight against the Persians on behalf of all Arabs, drained the economy and killed hundreds of thousands before Iran accepted a UN-brokered cease-fire on 20 August 1988.
Weary soldiers returned home to few jobs. Soon the regime found itself in the throes of a deep and multifaceted crisis. For the first time in many years, Iraqis were protesting the presence of millions of Arab workers -- most of them Egyptian -- brought by Saddam to work in the factories, construction projects and farms while Iraqis were away fighting the Iranians.
Economic stagnation and fear of political backlash forced Saddam to initiate a privatisation programme, which put up some 70 state-owned enterprises for sale. Other market-oriented policies were adopted, although reluctantly, as Saddam feared that a broad economic liberalisation would weaken his grip on power.
Funds were slashed for development and imported Western goods, and Saddam, desperately in need of cash, demanded that Kuwait and Saudi Arabia forgive debts incurred in the long battle against Iran.
When Kuwait refused, Saddam accused the tiny Gulf emirate of stealing Iraq's oil through wells pumped under the two countries' border. On 2 August 1990, he invaded Kuwait, saying the southern neighbour was historically an Iraqi province.
The invasion turned the Gulf emirate into a graveyard for pan-Arabism and brought the Gulf War and UN sanctions. Gulf War resolutions also demanded Iraq give up nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, and those resolutions are now being used to justify a war to topple Saddam.
Egyptian historian Abdel-Azim Ramadan said Saddam's foreign adventures and internal oppression ''turned a country with a promising future back some 80 years, when Iraqis were trying to restore their flourishing past". He added, "Saddam pushed it into the abyss.''
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 6 - 12 February 2003 (Issue No. 624)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/624/sc12.htm