Property relations, communal identity or nationalism? Roger Owen* discusses some Iraqi politico-social dynamics During the last few months I have been thinking a lot about President Bush Senior's decision not to send troops rushing to Baghdad after the liberation of Kuwait in 1991. He has, over the years, made a good case for this much-criticised decision: the limitations imposed by the United Nations mandate, the opposition from Arab allies like Saudi Arabia, the lack of an obvious exit strategy and, on one occasion at least, the difficulties of finding Saddam Hussein himself. Now, whatever Senior may think about Junior's invasion of Iraq twelve years later, it is tempting to imagine that he sees the difficulties the United States faces as further proof that his decision not to invade was indeed correct. What if the collapse of Ba'ath Party authority in much of the country had driven some sections of the Sunni community, led by Saddam Hussein loyalists, to defend themselves against the danger posed by a Shi'i takeover of Baghdad? What if it had encouraged a Kurdish secession followed by the invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan by the Turks? What if the American army had been even less well-equipped with the skills needed to impose order and to establish a new, pro-American government than it is now? It is not often that history provides an opportunity to find out if one had made the right decision the first time around. But, in the case of the two Bushes and Iraq, this may be just such an occasion. Much more usual are the ways in which the lessons of the past can be used to throw light upon the present. This has become the staple diet of lecturers who, for example, compare the first British occupation of Basra in 1914 with the second in 1991. Or General Maude's hyperbolic proclamation of a new era for the people of Baghdad in the spring of 1917 to General Garner's similar address some 86 years later. More useful, I find, is to return to the work of scholars of the Iraqi Revolution of 1958 like the late Hanna Batatu and those inspired by him. Batatu himself was living in Baghdad at the time of the Free Officer's coup and already much occupied with the difficult task of finding the tools to analyze the dynamic of Iraq's social structure, divided, as it then seemed to be, into overlapping communities of class, religion, ethnicity and tribe checkered by formal partnerships and informal family linkages. As Batatu was later to confess, his vast accumulation of data had a 'paralysing effect'. Nevertheless, his monumental book, The Old Social Classes, does make a compelling case for the argument that, at root, the revolutionary events of 1958 could best be understood in terms of a class of property owners, united in defence of their own privileged position, being swept away by forces further down the social scale. Supporting evidence came from a detailed analysis of the profound changes in relations of commerce and of property which had taken place over the previous century, as well as from the way in which the popular mass mobilisations of the early Qasim period were conducted as much along national as along sectarian lines. Batatu's work remains an inspiration for those who try to attempt a similar analysis today. But the problems they face are, if anything, even greater than before. Not only is there even less data about Iraqi social structure but there is also very incomplete knowledge about the ways in which the old communal links were disrupted by the Ba'athists and new ones created. Nor is it possible to do more than guess as to the ways in which the old property regime has been disrupted by fifty years of land reforms, land seizures, and, now, the reappropriation of some of these houses and lands by men blessed by the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). Fifty years ago, Batatu's analysis could rest, quite securely, on the notion that Iraqi society was progressing towards a local version of capitalist relations. It is much less easy to do so today, a situation which opens the way for a return to the dangerously simple-minded social vision of the British mandate officials with their division of the country into just three large religious and ethnic communities, smaller minorities and the ever-present tribes. Nevertheless, some of the dynamics ascribed to the different sections of Iraqi society identified by Batatu remains. Re-reading the papers presented at a conference organised in his honour at the University of Texas at Austin in 1989 I was struck by the ways in which his work continued to stimulate interesting insights into Iraqi politico-social dynamics. One outstanding example was provided by a subtle reflection on Batatu's themes by Sami Zubaida of Birkbeck College London. It is Zubaida's contention that members of Iraq's different communities can only be present in what he calls the national political field as a result of a conscious process of mobilisation by politicians. And that this process, in turn, cannot simply be seen as the result of some knee-jerk communal or class interest but as the result of a conscious calculation as to what national political organisation appears to serve their interests best. In other words Iraqis have choices which are not pre-determined by a single communal identity. Zubaida also posits that even when different Iraqis are mobilised behind a single communal identity, their leaders cannot simply do so in terms of purely communal interests but must, at the national level, do so via an agreed national framework through which their community can cooperate with other communally-organised groups to achieve a balance between all their aims. To do otherwise would be simply self-defeating. This is true today as it was in 1958. As Iraq moves towards national elections we shall certainly see more of communal leaders mobilising their communities behind national as much as communal ends. We shall also become increasingly aware of the pressures forcing all politicians working at the national level to do so in accommodation with their rivals. Whether it will produce a satisfactory result is quite another matter. Mutual distrust and fear will certainly play an even more pernicious role than it did in 1958-63, while the ability of members of the shattered middle class to mobilise people behind national rather than simply communal projects seems much reduced. We may indeed be faced with something that looks much more like Lebanon in 1943 than Iraq a decade or so later. It is here that we reach the point at which history is no longer much of a guide. * The writer is professor of history at Harvard University's Centre for Middle Eastern Studies.
