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| Volume VI, October 1998, Number 2 |
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| Book Review |
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For a printable version of this book review, click here.
Saddam's Word: Political Discourse in Iraq, by Ofra Bengio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. 266 pages, with notes and index. $49.95, hardcover.
Guilain Denoeux
Associate professor of government, Colby College
One of the distinguishing features of the Iraqi Baath regime has been its surprising resilience in the face of devastating wars, domestic uprisings, economic collapse, diplomatic isolation and mass pauperization since 1991. Time and again, in the wake of military strikes against Iraq or when the ruling elite has faced such domestic challenges as military coup attempts or the defection of some of its key members, commentators have told the public that "we are entering the endgame in Iraq." And yet, almost eight years after one of the most humiliating military defeats in world history, Saddam Hussein is still in control, more defiant than ever.
In trying to account for this puzzle, much attention has been paid to the unprecedented apparatus of violence, intimidation and intelligence-gathering that the Baath has built over the past three decades. In Saddam's Word, Ofra Bengio focuses on another, less well-understood cause of the regime's longevity: its manipulation of language, history and myths. To uncover the mechanics of indoctrination, Bengio draws on a broad variety of primary sources, including Hussein's speeches and writings, Iraqi newspapers, Baathi publications, and Iraqi government documents. In doing so, she has written the most important book on Baathi Iraq since Kanan Makiya's Republic of Fear (published in 1989 under the pseudonym of Samir al-Khalil). Her well-written, easily accessible yet sophisticated analysis of political language makes a major contribution to our understanding of contemporary Iraq.
Bengio shows how Baathi ideologues have emptied of their original meaning powerful concepts such as freedom, Arab unity, revolution and socialism merely by constantly associating these terms with the slogans and causes propounded by the regime over the years. By systematically weaving these words into its rhetoric and claiming them as inspirations for its policies, the Baath has partially neutralized the threat posed by the ideals embodied in them. The Baath thus has done to language what it has done to so many people, implicating words in its discourse and actions in order to corrupt and compromise them. Similarly, the party's endless repetition of blatant lies, misrepresentations and distortions of actual events has been conducted with a view to blurring the line between truth and untruth, reality and fantasy. In this and other ways, the regime has successfully endeavored to lull the mind of the Iraqi public -- stifling independent thinking and thwarting balanced analysis while constantly appealing to the population's feelings and instincts through the use of emotionally charged terms.
The regime has also been effective at harnessing language to justify changes in its domestic and foreign-policy agenda and to de-legitimize real and potential enemies. When seeking to emphasize its commitment to pan-Arab interests and causes, it has used the word qutr ("country" or "state") in a negative sense implying separatism or egotism, as in "the mentality of qutriyya" (p. 95). When intent on strengthening a sense of distinct Iraqi identity, it has sung the praise of wataniyya (patriotism) and downplayed qawmiyya (pan-Arabism). To rally Sunni Arabs around it or to de-legitimize Kurdish and Shii demands, the Baath regime has used words meant to fuel apprehensions about the danger of a breakup of the Iraqi state. For example, Kurdish and Shiite demands for political and cultural recognition have been associated with fitna (sedition) and taifiyya (sectarianism). Shuubiyya -- with its connotation of a racially motivated, Persian-inspired plot to undercut the Arabs' central role in the Islamic community -- has been yet another term used against enemies, in this case critics of Sunni domination of society and politics.
Pervasive in Baathi political discourse is the notion that Iraq is the constant target of a vast, perpetual conspiracy concocted by the country's many enemies -- among whom imperialism, Zionism and Iran feature prominently. In trying to account for this rhetoric, it is hard to differentiate between genuine fears and propaganda. Certainly, as Bengio suggests, both play a role. On the one hand, the regime does have a marked paranoid streak and a propensity for conspiratorial thinking. On the other hand, it has also invented plots to justify its regional ambitions; to cause the population to rally around it; to legitimize its elimination of domestic enemies by portraying them as the pawns of hostile foreign powers; to divert attention from the domestic situation; and to attribute internal problems to the presumed machinations of Iraq's external enemies. But Bengio is right to emphasize that, in the end, even genuine and sometimes justified perceptions of hostility have had a self-fulfilling nature. Indeed, in order to face up to both real and imagined dangers, the regime has repeatedly engaged in a massive military build-up and aggressive rhetoric and posturing. Unfortunately, such actions have frequently spun out of control, dragging the country into international crises and devastating wars. These, in turn, have prompted new forms of foreign involvement in Iraq's domestic affairs, thus further straining relations with the outside world and reinforcing suspicion of outsiders.
Tied to the regime's emphasis on ever-present dangers has been its glorification of strength, force and violence. In extolling martial virtues and promoting an ethos of self-sacrifice, the Baath has relied heavily and increasingly over time on a vocabulary borrowed from traditional Arab society. For instance, the rhetoric of honor (sharaf) became pervasive during the 1990-91 Gulf War, when Baghdad's resistance to American "aggression" was portrayed in the Iraqi media as a courageous stance meant to protect the honor of all Arabs. In its search for legitimization, the regime now ceaselessly evokes values such as shajaa (courage), butula (heroism), furusiyya (knighthood), izz (strength), ird (family honor), waqar (dignity), and rujula (manliness).
More generally, Bengio demonstrates how extensively the Baath has drawn on symbols and phraseology from ancient Muslim and Arab political history and discourse. Significant are constant references to Saddam Hussein as the sun, a lion, an eagle or a fortress. As Bengio notes, "All these metaphorical images are found in the descriptions of medieval Islamic rulers, and the writers working for Hussein used them just as the court poets of earlier times had" (p. 79). Common as well have been descriptions of Hussein as a faris (knight) or sayf (sword) -- words borrowed from earlier Arab-Muslim times and intended to exemplify traditional Arab virtues. During the 1980s, the building of an entire myth around Hussein also involved equating him with Imam Ali, so as to give him the attributes of an authentic Shii hero and counter the propaganda emanating from Iran. Saladdin (who, like Hussein, was a native of Tikrit) is yet another historical figure with whom the Iraqi leader has sought to associate himself. The image of Saladdin, a Kurd who fought the European crusaders, has been particularly useful as a way of evoking Arab-Kurdish unity for the sake of defending the homeland against foreign intruders.
The last section of the book, entitled "Epic and Apocalypse" (pp. 159-202), makes a particularly strong contribution to our understanding of modern Iraq. It documents the instrumentalization of history by the Baath, showing how the regime has revived and reconstructed historical events in order to give meaning to present situations. For example, the decisive battle of Qadisiyya, during which the army of the then-incipient Arab-Muslim empire inflicted a disastrous defeat on Persia in 637, became a constant theme of official discourse throughout the Iran-Iraq War. Significantly, official Iraqi rhetoric came to refer to the conflict with Iran as "Saddam's Qadisiyya" or "The Second Qadisiyya." By cultivating the memory of certain historical events whenever it has been faced with contemporary situations that bear some resemblance to the context in which these events took place, the Iraqi regime has blurred the lines separating past, present and future (p. 173). This practice has enabled the Baath to convey an impression of powerful historical forces and cycles inevitably repeating themselves over time. By creating that impression, the regime has sought to ascribe meaning and a sense of predetermination to the disastrous situations which it has repeatedly forced upon the country.
The regime's increasing resort to symbols and myths from the Arab-Muslim past was reflected in "Islamization" of its political discourse over time. Bengio identifies three distinct phases in the Baath's attitude toward religion. During the first period, which stretched from the party's rise to power in 1968 to the Shii riots of 1977, the regime's rhetoric adhered to the strong secular and socialist tenets of original Baathi doctrine. In its public pronouncements, the ruling elite simply refrained from raising the issue of religion. The February 1977 Shii demonstrations in Karbala and Najaf ushered in a new phase, which lasted until approximately 1989. On the one hand, the regime adopted a tough line against what it called "the politicization of religion." Religious activists were warned of the dire consequence of their actions. Indeed, it was in the late 1970s that the Shii underground group al-Daawa was crushed by the government. On the other hand, it was also during this second period that Hussein began to use Islamic symbols and myths with increasing frequency. For instance, it was in the late 1970s and early 1980s that he urged party and state not to lean toward irreligion; that he called upon them to recognize the critical contribution of Islam to Arab civilization; that he multiplied religious references in his speeches and undertook a series of highly publicized visits to the Shii holy places; and that for the first time he even claimed to be descended from Ali.
Bengio attributes this process to the pressures placed on the regime by the Iranian revolution and, subsequently, by a grueling, eight-year-long war with Iran. She argues that Husseinn initially attempted to ride the crest of the Islamic wave sweeping across the region, trying to manipulate religion so as to release pressures that otherwise might have led to a fundamentalist revolution (pp. 160-161). After the war began to exact a heavy toll on Iraqi society, religion also provided a means of mass mobilization. It helped motivate individuals and was used to evoke the vision of a better future. An entire discourse was developed around the notion of istishhad (martyrdom), in an effort to justify the senseless and horrible conflict with Iran by giving it a higher spiritual meaning (p. 158). The escape into religious rhetoric was also seen as necessary to counter Iranian propaganda portraying the Iraqi regime as atheist and even heretical. However, as Bengio notes, Hussein's increasing reliance on religious themes and symbols also amounted to an implicit recognition that "in the clash between Iran's Islamic ideology and the secular ideology of the Baath, the latter was palpably inferior" (p. 184). After he realized that religious imagery deeply rooted in the collective memory of his people could evoke far more powerful emotions than the empty slogans of the Baath, Hussein felt compelled to fight Khomeini's religious propaganda with the ayatollah's own ideological weapons.
A third and still on-going phase in the regime's shifting attitude toward religion began in 1989. Bengio describes this period as one of "deliberate Islamic flag-waving" (p. 176). The passing of the Baath's earlier, militant secularism was underscored when Hussein declared in mid-1990 that whenever the principles of Arabism and Islam clash, then the former "must be changed or eliminated for the greater good of the exalted law," since Iraqis "are the party of God, hizb Allah" (p. 194). Throughout the international crisis that followed, the regime's rhetoric became imbued with religion-laden terms. Thus, the war with the U.S.-led coalition was portrayed as a jihad for justice (haqq) and faith (iman). The Iraqi population was described as responding to the call for Islam (ad-daawa), rejecting oppression (zulm) and fighting both the infidels (kafirun) and those Muslims who collaborate with them, "the hypocrites" (munafiqun, which in the Quran refers to those seventh-century inhabitants of Mecca who failed to accept Muhammad's mission). Significantly, as Bengio notes, Hussein was no longer referred to as a munadil (fighter), but as a mujahid, with all the religious connotations of this term. Meanwhile, the Revolutionary Command Council also became known as the Leading Mujahid Institution (al-muassasa al-qiyadiyya al-mujahida); all military operations were given code names with Islamic connotations; and Hussein's family came to be called "the family who trusts in God" (al-aila al-mutawakkila ala Allah) (pp. 186-190).
During the 1990s, the regime also went beyond its earlier comparisons of Hussein with Ali, going so far as to use expressions evoking the Iraqi leader's presumed ties to, or likeness with, Prophet Muhammad himself. Thus, Hussein was sometimes called rasul al-Arab -- the word rasul being associated with Prophet Muhammad, who in Islam is known as rasul li-llah (the messenger of God). Similarly, Hussein's official biography was called sira (the word used for the written account of Muhammad's life), while his personal aircraft was named al-Buraq, which in the Quran refers to the steed that bore Muhammad from Mecca to Jerusalem and back in a single night (pp. 83-84). Ultimately, as Bengio shows in Chapter 14, the atmosphere of constant crisis and increasing pain and suffering created by two successive wars, diplomatic isolation, domestic upheavals and economic sanctions prompted the regime to escape into the world of the mythological and supernatural. By then, perhaps only messianic and eschatological rhetoric could impart any logic and hope to the senseless and cruel world into which the regime had plunged the country. Whether, when and how Iraq overcomes this legacy will undoubtedly have a profound impact on the region as a whole. |
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