Review of "The Ba'thification of Iraq"

As a writer, the author of  The Ba'thification of Iraq (2015) can be commended for his command of Arabic political terminologies. He also has a penchant for Stalin and Nazi rants. He offers the Baath-Nazi-Commie analogies liberally in almost every chapter, which reveal his obvious ideological leanings as an advocate of the 2003 U.S. intervention. The U.S.-led post-invasion debathification process used the experience of de-nazification from the 1940s rather dogmatically, as documented by Dr. Aysegul Keskin Zeren in her 2017 work "From De-Nazification of Germany to De-Baathification of Iraq."

Published November 15th 2015 by University of Texas Press

If the author went beyond facile analogies of Stalin and Saddam, he could possibly see clearly that many strategies and slogans of the Baath Party was copied and / or adopted from the Iraqi Communist Party. The 20th century analytical theme--the party system functioned as a crucial apparatus for state formation--is lacking. The author is primarily focused on establishing the Baath Party as an exception rather than the rule.

As a historian, the author of this book stresses certain contexts out of proportion and overlooks other contexts, such as British imperialism. He portrays Ottoman political culture as faction-ridden and corrupt and uses this distortion to explain the lack of coalition building in Iraq and the demise of Abd al-Karim Qasim in the 1958 coup. Iraq seems to appear out of Oriental chaos, only to be saved. 

This author has used his privilege as an American (official) to access the Baath Party documents which have been housed in Hoover Institution Archives, courtesy of an agreement with the Iraqi Memory Foundation; the negative implications of this arrangement for the historiography of Iraq and ordinary citizens have been explained by historian Saad Eskander (http://libraryjuicepress.com/blog/?p=439).
Finally, this review could not have been possible if I did not have years of engaged readings on the functioning of the Chinese Communist Party. More cross-region comparisons should be employed for de-Orientalizing histories of the 20th century.

Some Moments from the film "Forget Baghdad"

The documentary film Forget Baghdad, made in 2002, is actually a remembrance of Baghdad. Four Iraqi Jewish writers living in Israel recount their childhood watching Egyptian and Indian cinema. They also recalled their Communist youth before they emigrated to Israel. Only one of the interviewees remained a communist after he left Iraq. Communism seemed to have been a very historically specific quest that resonated with them at the time, rather than a dogma. One interviewee recalls how he would participate in Marxist reading groups. He gave a very literal take on idealism and materialism, while the discussant leader wanted something more theoretical. Then a worker who had a nickname of “Big Thumb” provided an answer about how idealism and materialism were related in a dialectic sense. The interviewee felt disappointed in himself. I was surprised that such deep discussions took place in those times of Baghdad.

Trailer

All of them recall the protests in 1946 and how many strangers in the city were in solidarity with communists. I had read about Communist movements in Iraq before but I never read first-hand accounts. The site of protest—the British embassy— was close to the red light district, and one interviewee hid with the help of the prostitutes. Another interviewee, Sami Michael, is an award-winning novelist. During the protests, he found himself under the body of his friend which was being kicked by a police. He was so mad, he attacked the police while shouting, "He is an intellectual and he is about to die!" The police would have shot him if it wasn't for a woman in an abaya who stood between them. He ran to the river and was given a boat to escape. He escaped all the way to Mashhad and was hidden in a mosque, even though under normal circumstances he would not have been allowed. I did not know about the restrictions on Jewish people entering Mashhad before watching this documentary.

All the interviewees expressed the sentiment that most of the Iraqi Jews were not Zionists and did not want to leave Iraq as late as 1950. But there were bombs (allegedly planned by Zionists) in Jewish areas that scared many of them away.

Director Samir and his cousin Jamal Al Tahir in front of the Kremlin in Moscow. Originally from Dschoint Ventschr Filmproduktion.

In addition to the accounts given the by the interviewees, the filmmaker Samir provides a lot of context and paints a very complex picture. He shows how there were more politically-sharp newspapers accessible in Israel compared to the situation in Iraq. Many of the interviewees contributed to newspapers and reflected on their relationship with Arabic and Hebrew. The filmmaker  comments on how much of the Arab hostility towards Israel forgets that there are also Arabic-speaking people in Israel. The filmmaker also interviews the film studies scholar, Ella Shohat, who is also a Baghdadi Jew. She discussed how certain Israeli films tend to harmonize the issues of the nation by presenting Ashkenazi and Mizrahi Jews as culturally different but ultimately suitable for marriage and reconciliation. She is a Mizrahi Jew who felt a deep sense of alienation from Israeli society. She recalled how Iraqi Jews were forcibly sprayed with DDT when they landed in Israel. European-style bread would be subsidized by the state, while pita bread was not. Many Iraqi Jews labored on farms in order to win their position in society.

Shohat recounted her first time meeting an Iraqi Arab for the first time when she was in New York. Yet he was also foreign to the concept of Iraqi Jews and had not heard of the Farhood (pogroms). She exclaimed that people’s memories often forgets history. Now, fortunately, there is a Babylonian Jewry Heritage Museum dedicated to the history of people like Shohat.

The writer Sami also admits that sometimes he feels that “In the Arab world we are Jews, in Israel we’re Arabs.” He later laughs and says he is a baklava, a mix of both cultures. He complained that Israel is an ideologist country, superficial and small. Yet he said that he became more accustomed to settling in Israel once his daughter was born: for her, Israel will be her home; and for this reason, he decided to place his roots here for good.

In terms of the language, I could understand the word “fish” when Sami reminisced about the Iraqi specialty. I also understood the words spy (jasoos) and nationalism (al-qaumiyya). Overall it was a deep and engaging documentary film that clearly required a lot of effort.

Towards a Non-State Centric Understanding of Iraqi History

While reading historian Eric Davis's Memories of the State, I came across his description about how the British colonizers favored a compliant chess piece, Faisel II, and his regent, Prince Abdullah among the successors for the Hashemite royal family in the mid-1930s. Davis argued that the compliant Prince saw that the British could help him stay in power, and thus allowed for more British interference in Iraq.

Book cover

This description struck me because it seemed that the state harbors a magical "seat" where the person who manages to sit in that place, would become more invincible than other political actors. Thus generations compete for power at the magical seat, which replicates the preexisting organs and arrangements of the state, including colonialism arrangements such as the British mandate. It does not seem to be that much different from a pre-French revolution "monarchy," even though it is clear that the 20th century Hashemite monarchy was anything but like it. While Davis is aware of the differences and impact of colonial designs on the Hashemite monarchy, he still presumes a rather monolithic, state-centered narrative in the unraveling of the Hashemite monarchy for his readers.


The implicit question seems to be the age-old one: How can a "modern historical account" explain how an "Oriental despotic regime" becomes a "modern state," which has institutions providing checks and balances?

But this frame seems to be exactly the problem. The frame assumes that everyone is power-hungry as rational decision makers, and thus would definitely seize the opportunity to enter the power vacuum when available. In the Iraqi case, the colonialists could presumably offer anyone that magical seat, and anyone would capitulate. Even idealists such as leftists and nationalists might squander the opportunity during the power machination process. At the same time, states are also in competition with each other, and thus, they would all have to maintain internal stability to "get ahead" in the race. In Arab Spring, Libyan Winter, scholar Vijay Prashad has also noted how "regional stability" is also a key code word for U.S. foreign policy decisions in the Middle East. In this sense, one could see how there are people who support a state-centered narrative (including a wide range of people from U.S. foreign policy heads to certain Ba'athists and Communists), and those who would differ.

Rather than state-centered narratives, I find Foucault's conception of power more nuanced in order to understand these processes. He critiques the idea of power as a magical seat in Society Must Be Defended (p13):

In the case of the classic juridical theory of power, power is regarded as a right which can be  possessed in the way one possesses a commodity, and which can therefore be transferred or alienated, either completely or partly, through  a juridical act or  an act that founds a right—it does not matter which,  for the  moment—thanks to the surrender of something or thanks to a contract. Power is the concrete  power that any individual can hold, and which he can surrender, either as  a  whole or in  part, so  as to constitute a power or a political sovereignty. 

Under the Iraqi state's eyes, "Communists," "Shias," "minorities,"and "women" are separate categories. Davis takes cue from Gramsci in his formulation of the state and anti-state resistance. While Davis's book emphasized that there had been functioning political institutions and democratic activity in Iraq in 1954 and complicates a despotic stereotype of pre-1960s Iraq, his state-centric understanding of power is still limiting and replicates these monolithic categories of women, Shias, minorities and communists. Similarly, the good-intentioned policymakers have made and would continue to make the same mistake while navigating through ethnic loyalties and political affiliations of Iraq if they continue to view society from a state-centric vantage point.

Rather than staring at the magical seat, we should pay more attention to where the power projects itself toward and how it is embodied. Foucault also admits that there are not so many methods outside of this model to understand power. One can read more about that in his lectures. While recognizing the Iraqi Left-leaning intellectuals' enormous contribution in historicizing sectarianism, documenting "voices from below" and analyzing class formation in Iraq, I would also like to see more Foucauldian or non-state-centric analyses of Iraqi history.

Overall, the mainland Chinese academia also suffers from obsession with state-centric narratives. They are also using the same paradigms to understand the outside world as well. That is why I find studies on the effects of colonialism so curative to the current academic obsession. As Timothy Mitchell as written in 1991 in the article "The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and Their Critics," "Political subjects and their modes of resistance are formed as much within the organizational terrain we call the state, rather than in some wholly exterior social space." This understanding would also become beneficial to critiquing and resisting the communist government: currently many dissidents cannot formulate a strong response to the assumption that "without the communist government, China will surely become chaotic." This assumption similarly uses the overempowering ideal of a sovereign that keeps things in check: Without that sovereign, any opportunist will seize the magical seat. To have any meaningful resistance against the increasingly prevelant communist state, dissidents and resisters have to undo this understanding of the magical seat.