Visit our website for other free publication 

downloads

http://www.StrategicStudiesInstitute.army.mil/

To rate this publication click here.
STRATEGIC

STUDIES

INSTITUTE

The Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) is part of the U.S. Army War 

College and is the strategic-level study agent for issues related to 

national security and military strategy with emphasis on geostrategic analysis.

The mission of SSI is to use independent analysis to conduct strategic 

studies that develop policy recommendations on:

• Strategy, planning, and policy for joint and combined 

 employment of military forces;

• Regional strategic appraisals;

• The nature of land warfare;

• Matters affecting the Army’s future;

• The concepts, philosophy, and theory of strategy; and

• Other issues of importance to the leadership of the Army.

Studies produced by civilian and military analysts concern topics 

having strategic implications for the Army, the Department of Defense, and the larger national security community.

In addition to its studies, SSI publishes special reports on topics of 

special or immediate interest. These include edited proceedings of 

conferences and topically-oriented roundtables, expanded trip reports, and quick-reaction responses to senior Army leaders.

The Institute provides a valuable analytical capability within the 

Army to address strategic and other issues in support of Army participation in national security policy formulation.
Strategic Studies Institute Monograph

LESSONS OF THE IRAQI DE-BA’ATHIFICATION 

PROGRAM FOR IRAQ’S FUTURE 

AND THE ARAB REVOLUTIONS

W. Andrew Terrill

May 2012

The views expressed in this report are those of the authors and 

do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. 

Government. Authors of Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) publications enjoy full academic freedom, provided they do not disclose 

classified information, jeopardize operations security, or misrepresent official U.S. policy. Such academic freedom empowers them to offer new and sometimes controversial perspectives 

in the interest of furthering debate on key issues. This report is 

cleared for public release; distribution is unlimited.

*****

This publication is subject to Title 17, United States Code, Sections 101 and 105. It is in the public domain and may not be copyrighted.
ii

*****

Comments pertaining to this report are invited and should 

be forwarded to: Director, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army 

War College, 45 Ashburn Drive, Bldg. 47, Carlisle, PA 17013-

5046. 

*****

I would like to thank Dr. Steven Metz and Mary J. Pelusi for 

useful and insightful comments on earlier drafts of this monograph. All mistakes in this work of fact, omission, interpretation, 

and speculation are, nevertheless, entirely my own.

*****

All Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) publications may be 

downloaded free of charge from the SSI website. Hard copies of 

this report may also be obtained free of charge while supplies 

last by placing an order on the SSI website. SSI publications may 

be quoted or reprinted in part or in full with permission and appropriate credit given to the U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, PA. Contact SSI 

by visiting our website at the following address: www.Strategic

StudiesInstitute.army.mil.

*****

The Strategic Studies Institute publishes a monthly e-mail 

newsletter to update the national security community on the research of our analysts, recent and forthcoming publications, and 

upcoming conferences sponsored by the Institute. Each newsletter also provides a strategic commentary by one of our research 

analysts. If you are interested in receiving this newsletter, please 

subscribe on the SSI website at www.StrategicStudiesInstitute.

army.mil/newsletter/.

ISBN 1-58487-527-5
iii

FOREWORD

In December 2011, the last U.S. combat troops were 

withdrawn from Iraq after an almost 9-year presence 

in that country. This day was welcomed by the U.S. 

public after years of sacrifice and struggle to build a 

new Iraq. Yet, the Iraq that U.S. troops have left at the 

insistence of its government remains a deeply troubled nation. Often Iraqi leaders view political issues 

in sharply sectarian terms, and national unity is elusive. The Iraqi political system was organized by both 

the United States and Iraq, although over time, U.S. 

influence diminished and Iraqi influence increased. In 

this monograph, Dr. W. Andrew Terrill examines the 

policies of de-Ba’athification as initiated by the U.S.-

led Coalition Provision Authority (CPA) under Ambassador L. Paul Bremer and as practiced by various 

Iraqi political commissions and entities created under 

the CPA order. He also considers the ways in which 

the Iraqi de-Ba’athification program has evolved and 

remained an important but divisive institution over 

time. Dr. Terrill suggests that many U.S. officials in 

Iraq saw problems with de-Ba’athification, but they 

had difficulties softening or correcting the process 

once it had become firmly established in Iraqi hands. 

Other U.S. policymakers were slower in recognizing 

the politicized nature of de-Ba’athification and its devolution into a process in which both its Iraqi supporters and opponents viewed it as an instrument of Shi’ite 

revenge and political domination of Sunni Arabs.

Dr. Terrill’s monograph considers both the future 

of Iraq and the differences and similarities between 

events in Iraq and the Arab Spring states. He has examined both Ba’athism as a concept and the ways in 

which it was practiced in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. He 
iv

notes that the initial principles of Ba’athism were sufficiently broad as to allow their acquisition by a tyrant 

seeking ideological justification for a merciless regime. His comprehensive analysis of Iraqi Ba’athism 

ensures that he does not overgeneralize when drawing potential parallels to events in the Arab Spring 

countries. Dr. Terrill considers the nature of Iraqi 

de-Ba’athification in considerable depth and carefully 

evaluates the rationales and results of actions taken 

by both Americans and Iraqis involved in the process. 

While there are many differences between the formation of Iraq’s post-Saddam Hussein government 

and the current efforts of some Arab Spring governing bodies to restructure their political institutions, 

it is possible to identify parallels between Iraq and 

Arab Spring countries. Some insights for emerging 

governments may, correspondingly, be guided by a 

comprehensive understanding of these parallels. The 

Arab Spring revolutions that have overthrown the 

governments of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen at 

the time of this writing are a regional process of stunning importance. While these revolutions began with 

a tremendous degree of hope, great difficulties loom 

in the future. New governments will have to apportion power, build or reform key institutions, establish 

political legitimacy for those institutions, and accommodate the enhanced expectations of their publics in a 

post-revolutionary environment. A great deal can go 

wrong in these circumstances, and it is important to 

consider ways in which these new governing structures can be supported, so long as they remain inclusive and democratic. Any lessons that can be gleaned 

from earlier conflicts will be of considerable value to 

the nations facing these problems as well as to their regional and extra-regional allies seeking to help them. 
v

The Strategic Studies Institute is pleased to offer 

this monograph as a contribution to the national security debate on this important subject as our nation 

continues to grapple with a variety of problems associated with the future of the Middle East and the 

ongoing challenge of advancing U.S. interests in a 

time of Middle East turbulence. This analysis should 

be especially useful to U.S. strategic leaders and intelligence professionals as they seek to address the complicated interplay of factors related to regional security issues, the future of Iraq, and the support of local 

allies and emerging governments. This work may also 

benefit those seeking a greater understanding of longrange issues of Middle Eastern and global security. It 

is hoped that this work will be of benefit to officers of 

all services as well as other U.S. government officials 

involved in military and security assistance planning.

 

DOUGLAS C. LOVELACE, JR.

Director

Strategic Studies Institute 

vii

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

W. ANDREW TERRILL joined the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) in October 2001, and is SSI’s Middle 

East specialist. Prior to his appointment, he served as 

a Middle East nonproliferation analyst for the International Assessments Division of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). In 1998-99, Dr. 

Terrill also served as a Visiting Professor at the U.S. 

Air War College on assignment from LLNL. He is a 

former faculty member at Old Dominion University in 

Norfolk, Virginia, and has taught adjunct at a variety 

of other colleges and universities. He is a retired U.S. 

Army Reserve Lieutenant Colonel and Foreign Area 

Officer (Middle East). Dr. Terrill has published in numerous academic journals on topics including nuclear 

proliferation; the Iran-Iraq War; Operation DESERT 

STORM; Middle Eastern chemical weapons and ballistic missile proliferation, terrorism, and commando 

operations. He is also the author of Global Security 

Watch-Jordan (Praeger, 2010). Since 1994, at U.S. State 

Department invitation, Dr. Terrill has participated in 

the Middle Eastern Track 2 talks, which are part of 

the Middle East Peace Process. He has also served as 

a member of the military and security working group 

of the Baker/Hamilton Iraq Study Group. Dr. Terrill 

holds a B.A. from California State Polytechnic University and an M.A. from the University of California, Riverside, both in political science, and a Ph.D. 

in international relations from Claremont Graduate 

University, Claremont, California. 

ix

SUMMARY

The presence of U.S. combat troops in Iraq has now 

come to an end, and the lessons of that conflict for the 

United States and other nations will be debated for 

some time to come. It is now widely understood that 

the post-invasion policy of de-Ba’athification, as practiced, had numerous unintended consequences that 

made building Iraqi civil society especially difficult 

following the U.S.-led invasion. The U.S. approach 

to this policy is often assessed as having underestimated both the dangers of increased sectarianism in 

Iraq and the need for strong efforts to manage ethnicsectarian divisions. The Iraqi government’s approach 

to de-Ba’athification was, nevertheless, much more 

problematic due to its openly biased and sectarian 

nature. However well-intentioned, de-Ba’athification 

originally was as a concept, in practice it had a number of serious problems. These problems intensified 

and became more alarming as the de-Ba’athification 

process became increasingly dominated by the Iraqis 

and American oversight over that program gradually 

evaporated. At that time, it came to be viewed as an 

instrument of revenge and collective punishment by 

both the Iraqis that administered de-Ba’athification 

and those that were targeted by these policies. 

A comprehensive review of Iraqi de-Ba’athification 

is necessary before making any assertions about the 

lessons of these policies for either Iraq or the larger 

Arab World. Understanding de-Ba’athification begins 

with a consideration of U.S. policies and goals for Iraq. 

After the removal of the Saddam Hussein regime, the 

U.S. leadership had a choice of implementing limited 

de-Ba’athification or seeking a much more sweeping 

program. They initially chose the latter course because 
it was deemed especially important to eliminate the 

last vestiges of Saddam Hussein’s regime to prevent 

a similar type of government from reestablishing 

itself. In making this choice, advocates of deep deBa’athification pointed to the history of Ba’athist conspirators rising to power through infiltrating government institutions and seizing power in undemocratic 

ways. This comprehensive approach nevertheless 

made it extremely difficult for Iraq’s Sunni Arab leaders to accept the post-war political system. Many U.S. 

leaders became concerned about this problem over 

time, but they had increasing difficulties moderating 

Iraqi administration of de-Ba’athification efforts.

Despite the time that has elapsed since the initial 

decisions on de-Ba’athification, these issues remain 

vital for the future of Iraq. The Sunni Arab insurgency 

that developed after the U.S.-led invasion reinforced 

the popularity of de-Ba’athification among many of 

Iraq’s Shi’ite Arabs, thereby keeping the policy alive. 

Many Shi’ites also agreed with U.S. concerns about 

the potential emergence of a new Sunni-dominated 

regime that would once again seize and retain power. 

A quasi-legal de-Ba’athification Commission (now 

known as the Justice and Accountability Commission) continues to exist in Iraq and recently played 

a dramatic role in disqualifying some leading Sunni 

candidates in the 2010 parliamentary elections. This 

commission could not have remained relevant without the support of a variety of important Iraqi politicians, including the current prime minister. Likewise, 

Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki arrested large numbers of 

so-called “Ba’athists” in 2011, shortly before the final 

withdrawal of U.S. troops. Under these circumstances, 

the legacy of de-Ba’athification and the future of this 

concept within the Iraqi political system may yet have 

x
xi

serious consequences for Iraq’s ability to build a unified and successful state. 

Many Americans and Iraqis of diverse political orientations have argued that de-Ba’athification and the 

nature of sectarianism in Iraq involved a large number 

of lessons that other countries may wish to consider in 

the context of future political transitions. This argument has found considerable resonance among some 

citizens in the “Arab Spring” states where popular 

uprisings have ousted some long-serving dictators. 

Many of the new revolutionaries consider Iraq’s problems as a cautionary tale that must be understood as 

they move forward in establishing new political systems. In particular, it is now understood that loyalty 

commissions led by politicians and set up to identify 

internal enemies can take on a life of their own and 

become part of a nation’s power structure. Once this 

occurs, such organizations are exceedingly difficult to 

disestablish. Likewise, the basic unfairness of collective punishment has again been underscored as an engine of anger, resentment, and backlash. Conversely, 

the importance of honest and objective judicial institutions has also been underscored, as has the importance 

of maintaining a distinction between revenge and justice. Moreover, officers and senior non-commissioned 

officers (NCOs) of the U.S. Army must realize that 

they may often have unique opportunities and unique 

credibility to offer advice on the lessons of Iraq to 

their counterparts in some of the Arab Spring nations. 

The U.S. Army has a long history of cooperating with 

some of the Arab Spring militaries and has a particularly strong relationship with the Egyptian military. 

These bonds of trust, cooperation, and teamwork can 

be used to convey a variety of messages beyond exclusively military issues.
xii

All of the Arab Spring states may usefully consider the potential insights offered by events in Iraq, 

but the two Arab countries where the lessons of deBa’athification may be most relevant are Libya and 

Syria. Libya is currently organizing a post-Qadhafi 

government, while Syria is undergoing a process of 

revolution that seems increasingly difficult for the authorities to extinguish. In Libya, post-Qadhafi leaders 

are openly concerned about avoiding what they identify as the mistakes of Iraq. It remains to be seen if they 

are able to do so, or if they fall into new systems of 

internal warfare and perhaps new dictatorship. Syria 

maintains both a society and a style of rule that has 

notable similarities to the Saddam Hussein government. Its future is deeply problematic, as revolutionaries struggle against an entrenched, well-armed, and 

increasingly desperate dictatorial regime that is also 

deeply sectarian in nature.
1

LESSONS OF THE IRAQI DE-BA’ATHIFICATION 

PROGRAM FOR IRAQ’S FUTURE 

AND THE ARAB REVOLUTIONS

There was a tendency among promoters of the [2003-

2011 Iraq] war to believe that democracy was a default 

condition to which societies would revert once liberated from dictators. 

Francis Fukuyama1

I pleaded with Bremer not to dissolve the [Iraqi] army, 

and warned him that it would blow up in our faces. 

I told him that I understood the rationale behind the 

process of de-Baathification, but that it needed to apply 

only to those at the top with blood on their hands....I 

said I hoped he understood that if he was going to deBaathify across the board, he would be setting himself up for major resistance and would create a power 

vacuum that someone would have to fill.

King Abdullah II of Jordan2

You cannot build a country if you don’t have reconciliation and forgiveness. 

Aref Ali Nayed

Libyan National 

Transitional Council3

INTRODUCTION

The presence of U.S. combat troops in Iraq has now 

come to an end, and the lessons of that conflict, including those involving de-Ba’athification, will be debated 

for some time to come. De-Ba’athification for Iraq was 

initiated by U.S. policymakers in 2003 as the process 

of eliminating the ideology of the Iraqi Ba’ath Party 
2

from public life and removing its more influential adherents from the Iraqi political and administrative system. This policy constituted a central part of the effort 

to eliminate all significant aspects of the Saddamist 

state and remake Iraq into a democratic nation. It has 

also emerged as one of the most controversial aspects 

of U.S. post-war activities in Iraq. While supporters 

claim that the approach was unavoidable if Iraq was 

to be reformed, critics maintain that the approach, as 

practiced, amplified sectarian divisions in Iraq and 

also served as an important enabler of enhanced sectarianism and the post-invasion Iraqi insurgency. 

U.S. Government decisionmaking about the nature 

and depth of the de-Ba’athification effort centered on 

the conflict between pragmatists who were attempting to prevent U.S. and Iraqi post-war authorities from 

losing their capacity to manage the emerging crisis in 

Iraq and various hardliners—often called neoconservatives—calling for a fundamental restructuring of 

Iraqi society. The dominant fear of the first group was 

that Iraq would degenerate into chaos without some 

effort to rehabilitate and retain those Ba’athist bureaucrats and officials not directly implicated in the Saddam Hussein regime’s crimes. For the second group, 

the primary concern appeared to be ensuring that a 

favorable outcome for regime change was permanent. 

Their greatest fear was often that a system of “Saddamism without Saddam” would dominate the postwar environment unless large-scale societal restructuring took place within Iraq.4

 In both groups, there 

was a wide range of opinion, and some individuals 

(perhaps most prominently National Security Council 

[NSC] Advisor and later Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice) were open to the arguments of both sides and 

sought to synthesize them into coherent policy.
3

While de-Ba’athification still retains some defenders in the United States, most Middle Eastern politicians and observers consider it to have been deeply 

misguided, and many Arabs view it as a warning of 

the ways in which a transition from dictatorial rule 

can go wrong and lurch dangerously close to civil 

war. A strong exception to this belief can sometimes 

be found among Iraqi and other Arab Shi’ites, who basically approve of a policy that punishes Iraq’s Sunni 

Arab community from which Saddam drew most of 

his supporters and that suffered less than other Iraqi 

communities under the dictatorship. The future of 

Iraq as a cohesive and modernizing country remains 

uncertain, and it is unclear if that society can overcome simmering sectarian differences, which current 

approaches to de-Ba’athification continue to inflame. 

The ways in which Iraq deals with the legacy of deBa’athification, as well as ongoing policies for national 

reconciliation, will have a great deal to do with deciding the Iraq future. While Iraqis often dream of building a society as prosperous as the Arab Gulf states, the 

danger remains of an Iraqi society that looks more like 

Lebanon during its 14-year sectarian civil war.

The onset of the Arab Spring has revived a 

number of questions about the problems with deBa’athification. At the time of this writing, Tunisia, 

Egypt, and Libya have experienced Arab Spring 

popular uprisings in which long-standing dictators 

have been ousted. Syria is also experiencing a serious 

mass uprising led by brave and extremely committed 

revolutionaries struggling against an entrenched and 

ruthlessly tenacious dictatorship. None of these states 

has ever experienced a government as authoritarian 

as Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, although the Syrian dictatorship clearly comes the closest to the Saddamist 
4

model. All of these states face considerable difficulties in establishing legitimate and moderate post-revolutionary governments, and some face the danger of 

prolonged civil conflict. Lessons that can be gleaned 

from the Iraqi experience may therefore be especially 

important for their future. 

THE BA’ATH PARTY AS AN INSTRUMENT OF 

SADDAM HUSSEIN’S DOMINATION OF IRAQ 

In order to understand problems surrounding the 

effort to remove Ba’athism from Iraq, it is necessary 

to give some consideration to the central tenets of 

Ba’athism as a political ideology and then to examine 

the ways in which this ideology was applied and practiced within Iraq under Saddam Hussein. In undertaking this analysis, it is worthwhile to consider that a 

number of dictatorial regimes have used official ideologies to justify the power of a particular elite rather 

than to guide their actions. Some individuals within 

the ruling elite of such systems may view themselves 

as seeking to adjust their approaches to emerging 

problems by emphasizing those aspects of the ideology that seem most useful for addressing a given problem, while de-emphasizing those that are less useful. 

Such people remain ideologues despite their willingness to show a limited degree of flexibility. Others do 

not take the national ideology particularly seriously 

but value its supporting party infrastructure to justify 

and generate support for the decisions of the political 

leadership, regardless of how ideologically inconsistent those decisions may be. These people are political 

opportunists in ideological garb.

The Ba’ath movement was founded in the 1940s by 

two Syrian teachers, Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din Bi-
5

tar, and stressed Arab unity, socialism, and efforts to 

modernize the Arab World. The party, which emerged 

in its modern form in 1947, sought to unite all Arab 

states and to provide them with a set of modernizing principles to help them overcome problems with 

poverty and backwardness. The word Ba’ath means 

renaissance or rebirth in Arabic. The movement also 

sought to address the problems of the entire Arab 

World and was not to be confined to any individual 

country. Ba’athists throughout the Arab World were 

often viewed as committed Arab nationalists who 

were particularly devoted to the concept of a strong, 

unified Arab nation. Their slogan is, “One Arab nation 

with an eternal mission.” 

Aflaq and Bitar met at the Sorbonne in Paris, 

France, in 1929 where both of them became especially 

interested in Western literature and philosophy with 

an emphasis on Marxism and socialism. This form of 

study was a fairly conventional approach for Arab 

students in France, since only the French communists 

and socialists showed much sympathy for Syrian independence within the political spectrum of Paris in the 

1930s. Moreover, Marxism’s emphasis on modernization and scientific socialism appealed to the two men 

as they struggled for a solution to widespread Arab 

impoverishment and underdevelopment. The Ba’ath 

Party. Thus began as a secular organization seeking to 

modernize the Arab World in ways that were rooted 

in leftist, European political and social thought. Islam was not seen as a major part of this modernizing 

outlook. In this regard, Aflaq was not even a Muslim, 

having been raised as an Orthodox Christian.5 Batar 

was a Sunni Muslim and, like Aflaq, had no interest 

in religion as a basis for the state. Within the context 

of Ba’athist ideology, Islam was primarily viewed as 
6

part of the Arab heritage rather than a way to organize 

contemporary political life. Their outlook was correspondingly deeply secular.

Like Marxist-Leninist organizations, the Ba’ath 

Party sought to enter power through the actions of 

a revolutionary elite operating in a variety of states, 

including Iraq. In the 1950s and 1960s, these tactics 

caused the Ba’ath to compete with a number of other 

conspiratorial movements to infiltrate the military 

and other centers of state power. Subversion and 

coups seemed the only way in which to achieve power since contested elections were almost never held 

in any Arab country except perhaps Lebanon. Major 

emerging political trends throughout the Arab World 

included communist and Nasserite movements as 

well as the Ba’ath. Thus, to achieve power within the 

various Arab countries Ba’athists had to operate clandestinely as one of many secretive opposition movements dealing with government counterintelligence 

units and their own splinter groups. Despite these difficulties, Ba’athists seized power in Syria and Iraq in 

1963.6 The Iraqi Ba’ath Party remained in power for 

less than a year but once again seized power in 1968 

partially as a result of the maneuverings of a young 

revolutionary named Saddam Hussein. Additionally, 

the previous Iraqi government had been unable to 

provide significant help to the other Arab countries 

at war with Israel in June 1967. Iraqi Ba’athist leaders 

portrayed this failure as a form of treason, and made 

anti-Israeli invective a centerpiece of their rhetoric following their seizure of power.7

The Iraqi Ba’ath Party began its existence with a 

commitment that all party members should have a 

broad set of rights to elect officials and present their 

views in party forums. Unfortunately, this approach 
7

changed rapidly over time, and by 1964 Aflaq was 

complaining about the stratification of the party and 

the consolidation of power by a limited number of 

“active members” with influence that dramatically exceeded that of the rank and file. He stated that such an 

approach “was wholly out of keeping with the spirit 

of our party’s rules.”8 Nevertheless, the requirement 

for the Ba’ath Party to carry out its activities in secret 

until it seized power for the second time in 1968 remained a central part of Ba’ath organizational culture 

throughout the organization’s existence. During its 

underground years, the Ba’ath became increasingly 

hierarchical, secretive, and accustomed to violence 

as a political tool. These mindsets carried over to the 

years in power when such an approach was viewed as 

equally necessary to cope with real and imagined internal and foreign enemies. The Ba’ath leaders continued to see conspiracies against their government from 

a variety of sources including the Western powers and 

Israel. The failure of Iraq’s first Ba’ath government to 

remain in power more than a year underscored the 

looming danger of a countercoup.

Ba’athism appeared to have some problems establishing a popular base in the first years after the 1968 

coup. Some Iraqi citizens appreciated Ba’ath ideology 

for its emphasis on modernity and its rejection of ethnic/sectarian divisions, tribalism, and religion as the 

basis for a modern state. Unfortunately, in both Iraq 

and Syria, these principles had a more insidious function as well, helping to serve as a smokescreen for the 

domination of one social group over the others in each 

country. Secular principles in Syria were used to mask 

the almost complete domination of Syrian society 

by the Alawite minority, which is usually identified 

as an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam. In Iraq, the Ba’athist 
8

regime was dominated by Sunni Muslims, especially 

from the areas around Tikrit. The initial leader of the 

1968 Ba’ath revolution in Iraq was General Ahmad 

Hassan al-Bakr, but he was progressively eclipsed by 

his young cousin, the hard-working, pragmatic, intelligent, and ruthless Saddam Hussein. 

Saddam Hussein emerged as the strongman behind the scenes of the regime by the early 1970s and 

replaced Bakr as president in July 1979. Although Saddam permitted some loyal Shi’ites to rise to high-profile positions in government and the military, the core 

of his support was composed of Sunni Arabs. Shi’ite 

political leadership was traditionally drawn from the 

Iraqi Communist Party, the al-Dawa Islamiya (Islamic 

Call) Party, and the Shi’ite clergy. Both the Iraqi Communist Party and the Dawa Party were outlawed by 

the Ba’athists, and their members were ruthlessly 

massacred during Saddam’s years in power. The 

Shi’ite clergy also faced massive repression under the 

Saddam Hussein regime, although the regime could 

not actually wipe them out without severe internal 

and regional repercussions. Instead, Saddam sought 

to silence the clerical leaders or force them to speak 

in favor of the regime. He also demanded that Sunni 

clerics adopt a nonpolitical role but never saw them as 

the same type of threat as the leading Shi’ite ayatollahs.

Saddam’s relationship with Ba’athism is complex. 

His ability to emerge as a key Ba’athist leader is directly attributable to party co-founder, Michel Aflaq, 

who befriended Saddam in exile after the younger 

man was forced to flee Iraq following his participation in an unsuccessful assassination attempt against 

Iraqi President Abdul Karim Qassim. During his years 

outside Iraq, Saddam was able to gain Aflaq’s patron-
9

age as a way to achieve high rank within the party. 

Saddam’s ongoing relationship with Aflaq was useful 

to him throughout his life. Unlike the Syrian Ba’ath 

Party, which ousted Aflaq and Bitar from power in 

February 1966, Saddam remained aware of the value 

of maintaining Aflaq as an honored but powerless 

member of the Iraqi leadership. Aflaq, for his part, 

had hoped to be a positive and moderating influence 

on Saddam once the dictator achieved power, but 

most of his suggestions on important issues were ignored. Saddam did flatter the older man by agreeing 

to some of his minor concerns. Such cosmetic concessions were an acceptable trade-off for the public support of one of Ba’athism’s co-founders. By consorting 

with the dictator, Aflaq allowed Saddam to exploit 

him and Ba’athism as window dressing for one of the 

world’s most oppressive regimes. Bitar, by contrast, 

spent the remainder of his life in Europe. Aflaq died 

in 1989 in Paris, and Saddam let it be known that he 

used his personal funds to build a suitable tomb for 

the co-founder of Ba’athism. 

Saddam was not a military man, and as a youth 

was rejected for entry into the Iraqi military academy 

due to poor performance on his entrance examinations.9

 Throughout his rise to power, Saddam was correspondingly wary of the danger of a military coup 

and used the Ba’ath Party to help him secure full 

control over the Army. This concern is easily understandable since coups were the traditional means of 

ousting an Iraqi leader once his enemies were able to 

organize against him. In establishing an iron grip over 

the military, Saddam made heavy use of Ba’athist political officers and frequently promoted cronies within 

the military over more qualified officers. Officers with 

particularly heroic reputations in the Iran-Iraq war, as 

well as brilliant planners, were quietly sidelined, since 
10

there was room for only one “military genius” in Saddam’s Iraq. Saddam understood the value of efficient 

officers during times of war, but tended to place these 

officers in less important positions when he no longer 

had an immediate need for them. 

The Ba’ath Party was also useful to Saddam in 

other ways than simply controlling the military and 

providing an ideological veneer for the regime. The 

creation of the Saddam personality cult had nothing 

to do with original Ba’ath ideology, but it was administered and energized by Ba’ath Party activists. As 

Saddam Hussein consolidated his rule over Iraq, he 

consistently viewed the Ba’ath Party as an instrument 

of dictatorial power and social mobilization. He did 

not take its ideology and values seriously as principles 

for leadership, and individuals at the highest levels 

were noted for their public and ostentatiously blind 

loyalty to the President rather than their knowledge 

of Ba’athist principles and political thought. While 

many members of the top leadership were Sunni, this 

was not an absolute requirement. Proven Saddam 

loyalists included Shi’ites, Kurds, and various sects 

of Christians.10 If Saddam believed a subordinate was 

a proven and committed loyalist, he did not particularly care what that person’s sect or ethnicity was. On 

the other hand, Saddam often viewed his own family 

and Sunni Arabs from the Tikrit area as having a head 

start on loyalty.11 Saddam and his cronies also seemed 

to view Sunni Arabs as being more likely to remain 

loyal, because they were usually more hostile to the 

traditional enemy of Iran and were likely to fear a new 

Shi’ite government in which they could be viewed as 

accomplices in Saddam’s crimes. Consequently, the 

Sunni Arabs were disproportionately represented in 

the Ba’ath’s senior ranks and the regime’s security 

units. 
11

Once in power, the Ba’ath Party did follow through 

on some of its modernization rhetoric. Saddam was 

committed to building a modern state, although he 

basically sought this goal primarily to improve the efficiency of the dictatorship rather than to benefit the 

Iraqi people. Consequently, serious and intense Ba’ath 

Party literacy drives did more than teach Iraqi citizens 

how to read.12 They also opened an intellectual pathway that allowed them to be more thoroughly bombarded with regime propaganda. Efforts to reduce the 

power of the tribes and to limit the role of religion in 

public life were similarly presented as modernization 

efforts, although their primary purpose was to further 

centralize power in Baghdad. Moreover, such policies 

could be reversed when they were no longer convenient to the regime, as occurred in the late 1980s and 

throughout the 1990s when Saddam’s regime sought 

to encourage some increased religious devotion, so 

long as such sentiments were properly channeled into 

activities that the regime viewed as useful.13 Additionally, Saddam was also willing to work through tribal 

elements when it suited his purposes.

On the eve of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, Saddam’s 

Iraq was a one of the most rigid totalitarian states in 

the world, with a privileged elite composed of military leaders and Ba’ath Party members, virtually all of 

whom were terrified of the leader.14 The Ba’ath Party 

had at least two million members at that time, with 

some estimates reaching 2.5 million. Nevertheless, 

membership in the senior ranks of the Ba’ath Party 

did not protect individuals from Saddam’s terror, 

which was applied to them to ensure that rival centers 

of power did not develop within the party.15 Saddam 

was particular wary of ambitious “overachievers” 

who might be interested in political advancement in 
12

ways that could eventually lead to the rise of political 

competitors. He was also deeply wary of those officials 

who began to appear too pious. Saddam further had 

an occasional need for visible Ba’athist victims to reinforce the determination of the remaining Ba’athists 

to show unquestioning obedience and subservience. 

Senior leaders such as Tariq Aziz were sometimes 

publicly embarrassed by Saddam, as when he was 

told to lose weight and had his weekly progress reported in the newspaper.16 More ominously, a casual 

joke about Saddam or his priorities could result in the 

loss of a senior leader’s tongue.17 Everyone within the 

Iraqi political leadership understood that they had 

no rights that Saddam could not immediately nullify 

if he chose to do so for whatever reason. This principle applied to the top elite as well as the oppressed 

masses. Thus, when Saddam was ousted in 2003, some 

Ba’athists as well as non-Ba’athists were open to the 

idea of participating in the building of a new Iraq if 

they had the opportunity. The most likely exceptions 

to this approach would be those Ba’athists who were 

implicated in Saddam’s crimes. These people knew 

there would never be any kind of future for them in 

an Iraq without Saddam or at least a Saddamist type 

of system. 

THE DE-BA’ATHIFICATION ORDER 

OF MAY 16, 2003

Under the circumstances noted above, the Iraq 

population was confused and uncertain about what 

would happen to the Ba’athists once Saddam’s regime was removed from power. While General Tommy Franks had abolished the Ba’ath Party in a 2003 

message to the Iraqi people, he gave little indication 
13

of how individual Ba’athists outside of Iraq’s top 

circles would be treated. In the immediate aftermath 

of Saddam’s ouster, both the U.S. military and the 

newly established Organization for Reconstruction 

and Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) seemed to be 

showing some clear flexibility. ORHA was willing to 

allow former Ba’athist administrators and professionals such as doctors and professors to keep their jobs 

so long as they were not implicated in regime crimes 

and were willing to renounce their previous Ba’athist 

affiliations.18 This approach was viewed as necessary 

to keep the economy from further declining or even 

collapsing. The U.S. Army also showed considerable 

pragmatism by sponsoring renunciation ceremonies 

in which thousands of people burned their Ba’ath 

membership cards, renounced violence, and pledged 

to help build the new Iraq.19 This approach was particularly successful in the area around Mosul, where 

then Major General David Petraeus presided over 

such ceremonies. Mosul, at this time, remained quiet, 

despite its tradition of supplying large numbers of 

Sunni Arab officers to the Iraqi military. Later, after more comprehensive de-Ba’athification policies 

were instituted over the objection of the U.S. military 

leadership there, everything changed, Mosul became 

much more difficult to manage, and a strong al-Qaeda 

presence was established in the region. 

As noted above, the more tolerant approach of 

ORHA was not to last. An order to de-Ba’athify Iraqi 

society was the first major official act of Ambassador L. 

Paul Bremer upon his arrival in that country to assume 

control of the newly created Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), which replaced ORHA. Bremer issued 

this order on May 16, 2003, after being provided with 

the directive in draft form by Undersecretary of De-
14

fense for Policy Douglas Feith. According to Bremer, 

Feith told him that such an order was absolutely essential to Iraq’s rehabilitation.20 The order disestablished the Ba’ath Party and removed members of the 

four highest ranks of the party from government positions. It also banned them from future employment in 

the public sector. Additionally, the order required that 

anyone holding positions in the top three management 

layers in government institutions be interviewed to 

determine their level of involvement with the Ba’ath 

Party as well as their possible involvement in criminal 

activities. Those determined to be senior members of 

the party were to be removed from their positions and 

banned from any future public employment. The order also called for the creation of a rewards program 

to pay individuals providing information leading to 

the capture of senior Ba’ath Party members.

The supporters of the de-Ba’athification program 

frequently maintained that this approach was inspired 

by the de-Nazification efforts that followed World 

War II in Germany. Iraqi exiles were fond of the term, 

which they may have viewed as loaded in a way that 

made it a useful public relations tool to advocate war 

and to help clear a way for prominent roles for themselves in the new Iraq. Additionally, some U.S. senior 

officials had, by this time, begun viewing Iraq through 

the lens of Nazi Germany with Saddam as Hitler and 

the Ba’ath Party as the Nazis.21 Such analogies correctly point out the moral repugnancy of the Saddam 

Hussein regime, but they also allow one to glance over 

the particulars of Iraqi society and argue about Iraq’s 

future on the basis of analogies rather than conditions 

within Iraq itself. In just one important difference, it 

may be significant that the Nazis rose to power as a 

large and powerful mass movement, whereas the 
15

Ba’athists rose to power in Iraq through the actions of 

a group of conspirators. Individuals joining the Ba’ath 

movement after it seized power may have done so 

with motives other than loyalty to Saddam Hussein. 

 The de-Ba’athification order and the subsequent 

CPA Order #2 (issued shortly afterward on May 23 

to disband Iraq’s military and intelligence forces) reflect the priorities of both Under Secretary Feith and 

Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. These 

priorities centered on the destruction of all forces 

previously involved in supporting the old regime 

and particularly those forces that they believed had a 

chance of reconstituting that regime. The Ba’ath had a 

long history of underground activity as well as a past 

pattern of infiltrating key institutions and then attempting to seize power by illegal means. The revival 

of Ba’athism through conspiracy and intrigue therefore seemed a realistic danger. Unfortunately, such a 

revival was not the only serious danger facing Iraq at 

this time, and it was not clearly so dangerous as to 

trump all other security concerns. It is also not clear if 

the U.S. leadership fully understood the numbers of 

enemies that they were making by undertaking such 

policies or the backlash such actions could produce. 

The possibility that such a backlash could lead to a 

serious Sunni military challenge to the new Iraq was 

apparently dismissed on the grounds that such “deadenders” were a marginalized force and would not be 

able to establish a popular rather than a conspiratorial 

movement within Iraqi society. Ahmad Hashim, in 

his insightful study of the Iraqi insurgency, quotes an 

anonymous U.S. policymaker as stating, “We underestimated their [the Iraqis] capacity to put up resistance. 

We underestimated the role of nationalism. And we 

overestimated the appeal of liberation [as trumping 
16

all other considerations for Iraqi political behavior].”22

Another even more biting critic stated that the civilians within the George Bush administration had made 

the fundamental mistake of confusing strategy with 

ideology.23

Some authors also claim that the CPA’s policies 

were deliberately anti-Sunni and pro-Shi’ite because 

of a belief within the Bush administration that Sunnis 

were more dangerous to U.S. interests, while Shi’ites 

were more likely to be grateful to the United States for 

ousting Saddam, since they had suffered more under 

his regime.24 This charge about administration policymaking is more popular in the Arab World than in the 

United States and is difficult to confirm. Some Bush 

policymakers did speak forcefully against Sunni control in Iraq, but they justified their concerns around 

the theme of democracy rather than the inherent untrustworthiness of the Sunni Arabs.25 In some regional 

media, as well as in Iraq, the de-Ba’athification policy 

was sometimes referred to as “de-Arabization.”26 The 

central tenets of the Ba’ath Party are Arab nationalism, 

anti-imperialism, and Arab socialism. Such ideals are 

not usually viewed as offensive by themselves, and 

many Arabs consider them to be noble and praiseworthy. Treating Ba’athism, instead of Saddam’s version 

of Ba’athism, as corrupt was therefore a problem for 

many Arabs and the pan-Arab media including the 

satellite television stations where Iraqis often sought 

to get the news. 

In an effort that further complicated the situation, 

some leading Iraqi Shi’ites attempted to play upon 

U.S. fears by suggesting that Sunnis were “Arab nationalists.” This is a label that is seldom viewed as a 

slur in the Arab World, but in this instance was apparently used to suggest an anti-American and anti-
17

Israeli worldview. Throughout the years following 

the invasion, some Shi’ite leaders consistently sought 

to convey the view that Sunnis were irredeemably 

wedded to radicalism, and needed to be marginalized 

to protect both Iraqi and Shi’ite interests. In one particularly revealing incident, Shi’ite leader Abdulaziz 

Hakim made it clear that he supported democracy so 

long as his organization and sect benefited from that 

democracy. In conversations reported by journalist 

Bob Woodward and others, Hakim told members of 

the Baker/Hamilton Iraq Study Group that the government of Iraq represented 80 percent of the population of that country (Shi’ites and Kurds) so democracy 

was served, and nothing had to be done about the remaining Sunnis.27

When Bremer informed the senior staff of the CPA 

(and especially the ORHA holdovers) of the new deBa’athification approach, he met immediate resistance 

over the scope of the order that he had brought from 

Washington. Retired Lieutenant General Jay Garner, 

the outgoing Director of ORHA, was reported to have 

been disturbed by the order, which he characterized 

as “too deep.”28 Charlie Sidell, the Baghdad Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Chief of Station who 

worked with Garner during this period, stated, “Well 

if you do this, you’re going to drive 30,000 to 50,000 

Ba’athists underground by nightfall, and the number 

is closer to 50,000 than it is to 30,000.”29 Garner and 

Sidell went to Bremer to attempt to dissuade him from 

issuing the order until it had been moderated to reflect 

the realities that they were facing. They recommended 

eliminating the top two levels of Ba’athist leadership, 

which was about 6,000 people.30 According to Garner, 

Bremer stated, “Look, I have my orders. This is what I 

am doing.”31 Since Bremer held the rank of Presiden-
18

tial Envoy in direct communication with the President, 

it is not immediately clear who issued such orders. 

Undersecretary Feith could not have done so on his 

own authority. President Bush had previously given 

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld managerial control of the occupation, so it is possible that Feith spoke 

for Rumsfeld who spoke for Bush and Vice President 

Dick Cheney.32 A complicating factor in this situation is that throughout his time in office, Bremer was 

willing to ignore the advice of the Defense and State 

Departments on other issues later in his tenure. If he 

did not do so in this instance, he probably believed in 

the policy that was being put forward or considered 

it to have come directly from the President. It is also 

likely that he did not fully understand the importance 

of the advice he was receiving from Garner and the 

CIA, since he later stated that he did not recall the conversation.33 Garner left Iraq shortly afterward, sharing 

his concerns over de-Ba’athification with U.S. Central 

Command (CENTCOM) Deputy Commander then 

Lieutenant General John Abizaid, who also feared that 

the deep de-Ba’athification effort would feed the developing resistance.34 General Abizaid would become 

CENTCOM commander after General Franks’ retirement.

In a related event, President Bush later appeared 

to blame Bremer for disbanding the Iraqi Army (although not for deep de-Ba’athification), suggesting 

that presidential guidance on one of the most important issues of the occupation was not reflected in CPA 

decisionmaking. Rather, Bush told journalist Robert 

Draper, “The policy had been to keep the [Iraqi] army 

intact. Didn’t happen.”35 Bremer responded angrily 

to the President’s statement, saying that he had been 

ordered to disband the Army by Rumsfeld, and the 
19

White House had approved the move. He also made 

the unusual claim that disbanding the Iraqi Army had 

been the correct choice, but he was not the one responsible for this decision.36 Clearly, these are very different versions of the truth, and no one wants to take 

responsibility for disbanding Iraqi security forces in 

spite of Bremer’s professed belief that it had been the 

correct approach. Despite this inconsistency, Bremer’s 

arguments have a certain level of resonance, since it is 

difficult to believe that he would have implemented 

such dramatic policy changes without at least a general understanding of President Bush’s priorities on 

de-Ba’athification and the future of the Iraqi military. 

At this point, Bremer was imposing Washington’s 

priorities and appeared primarily concerned about 

preventing the possible reconstitution of the Ba’ath 

regime. These fears may have been enhanced by Saddam’s status as a fugitive at that time. Moreover, 

Bremer also entered Iraq with the determination to 

establish himself quickly as a decisive leader willing 

to make decisions that were unpopular with his staff, 

the military, and others in the U.S. Government. In his 

book, Bremer relates an incident in which his son gave 

him a pair of desert combat boots as a going away gift 

with the note that they were to help him “kick some 

butt.”37 He was apparently in total agreement with 

that sentiment.38 Bremer clearly felt that asserting his 

will over subordinates was exceptionally important if 

he was to maintain effective control of the CPA and 

Iraqi policy.39 He made this effort in the face of considerable local unhappiness about CPA policy, and deBa’athification was especially unpopular in the U.S. 

military because U.S. officers lost their hardest working and most competent counterparts.40 In response to 

the order, some commanders, and most notably Gen-
20

eral Petraeus, sought wide authority to grant waivers from the de-Ba’athificaiton requirements for local 

individuals to limit the disruptions caused by this 

policy.41

Bremer claims in his book that he expected the 

de-Ba’athification order to be applied to only about 

20,000 people, or what he identified as 1 percent of all 

party members. The program would therefore include 

the ranks officially designated as “Senior Party Members.” Bremer also claims to have been sensitive to the 

needs of lower-ranking Ba’ath Party members to join 

the organization to make a living. He later maintained 

that his order was applied in ways that he never intended, and that many more people were purged than 

he had envisioned under the original program. This 

included people of much lower rank than the levels 

of Ba’ath membership outlined in the order as well as 

individuals whose links to the Ba’ath Party leadership 

were tenuous at best. He was also apparently unresponsive to Ambassador Barbara Bodine’s argument 

made earlier to General Garner that some senior members of the party were not criminals, while various junior members had engaged in serious crimes, making 

a blanket approach based on rank alone unfair and 

ineffective.42

Another problem for the CPA was that the justice 

of the de-Ba’athification order was not clear to many 

Iraqis. Joining the Ba’ath Party in Saddam’s Iraq was 

a rational decision for anyone seeking to feed their 

family and live in conditions other than squalor and 

poverty. The best and most numerous jobs in Iraq are 

found in the government and in state-controlled enterprises such as the oil industry. In Iraq, as in most 

Middle Eastern countries, there is not a strong private 

sector with a wide variety of good jobs. Socialism and 
21

state control of the economy were official parts of the 

Ba’ath ideology, further weakening the nongovernmental sector, while years of United Nations (UN) 

sanctions (1990-2003) undermined foreign investment 

in the Iraqi economy and also retarded private sector 

development. Yet, it is also within the government 

that one was most vulnerable to pressure to show 

enthusiasm for Saddam’s rule. In this environment, 

the greatest and most direct system of rewards and 

punishment had been put into place for rewarding 

loyalty to the government and the party. In Iraq, a 

non-Ba’athist primary school teacher would usually 

be paid the equivalent of U.S. $4 per month, while a 

Ba’athist in the same position, doing the same work, 

would be paid around $200 per month.43

Unfortunately, Bremer’s estimate of 20,000 people 

being purged as a result of his order did not hold up. 

While exact numbers are impossible to obtain, most 

estimates place the number as at least 30,000 and 

possibly up to 50,000 individuals.44 A few estimates 

place it even higher and note that the party members’ 

families, as well as ousted Ba’athists, were harmed 

by the mass firings.45 Blanket de-Ba’athification punished Iraq’s managerial class merely for being part 

of that class, and not because of individual misconduct, abuse of power, or other crimes. Moreover, 

other choices were available to address the problem, 

although they clearly would have been more cumbersome. According to one observer, the best alternative 

would have been to place the Ba’athists on trial and 

then punish those found guilty of human rights violations, corruption, incompetence, and other crimes. A 

truth and reconciliation commission could then have 

been established along South African lines. Such an 

option would have avoided the approach of treating 
22

all Ba’athists in responsible positions as criminals.46

Additionally, there was also the possibility supported 

by Garner and others to dismiss only the top two levels of the Ba’ath Party leadership and thereby try to 

avoid plunging Iraq into an administrative vacuum 

by eliminating managers and technocrats, many of 

whom were only “nominal Ba’athists.”47

As will be examined later, Bremer maintains that 

his de-Ba’athification order was issued with a full understanding of the complexities of Iraqi society, but it 

was overzealously applied. Yet, if Bremer’s authority 

and the approach of his order were abused, he still 

cannot be fully absolved for the difficulties that followed. In addition to problems with the decision itself, it is unclear that the CPA leadership paid enough 

attention to how his order was being implemented 

throughout the process rather than simply issuing a 

fiat and expecting it to be carried forward without difficulty, first under the authority of the CPA and then 

by the Iraqi government. Lieutenant General Ricardo 

Sanchez, a former commander in Iraq, excoriated the 

CPA on these grounds noting, “[T]he CPA treated [deBa’athification] like they were issuing an academic, 

theoretical paper. They simply released the order and 

declared success. But there was no vision, no concept, 

and in my opinion, no desire to ensure that the policy 

was properly implemented. On the other hand, it did 

look good on paper.”48

While Bremer was to become more pragmatic over 

time, his first few days in Iraq resulted in what have 

arguably emerged as some of the worst mistakes associated with the war, and these mistakes were impossible to reverse by the time he started to understand 

their negative implications.49 It is nevertheless also 

useful to understand the context of Bremer’s actions 
23

by looking at the reaction to these policies in Washington. In his memoir, Douglas Feith minimizes the chaos 

created by de-Ba’athification, and takes issue with 

Bremer’s later second thoughts about the policy.50 Unlike Bremer, he was unprepared to admit that the deBa’athification policy may have been producing bad 

results. Rather than adjust his focus to the real and 

emerging problems as Bremer eventually did, Feith, at 

least publicly, continued to support policies that were 

proving disastrous. 

ADMINISTRATION OF THE 

DE-BA’ATHIFICATION PROGRAM

Nine days after the issuance of CPA Order Number 1, Bremer established a de-Ba’athification Council, which he was to supervise and which would 

report “directly and solely” to him.51 Later, on November 3, 2003, the responsibility for implementing 

de-Ba’athification was passed from the CPA to the 

U.S.-created Iraqi Governing Council (IGC).52 The IGC 

made de-Ba’athification the responsibility of Governing Council member Ahmad Chalabi, who was placed 

in charge of the newly-created “Supreme National 

Commission for De-Ba’athification.” Chalabi was supported in his efforts at deep de-Ba’athification by the 

Shi’ite religious parties such as Dawa and the Supreme 

Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI, later 

the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq) and by various Kurdish groups. Former post-Saddam Defense 

Minister Ali Allawi (not to be confused with Ayad 

Allawi) describes Iraqi Kurds as favoring broad deBa’athification, but with so many exceptions that their 

actual priorities were difficult to sort out.53 Most Sunni 

Iraqi Arabs did not favor deep de-Ba’athification, al-
24

though many of them had also suffered under Saddam 

Hussein. Additionally, it did not escape Sunni Arab 

attention that the primary Iraqi champions of deep deBa’athification were formerly exiled Shi’ite politicians 

such as Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress 

and Abdul Azziz Hakim of SCIRI. Many Sunni Iraqi 

Arabs considered “de-Ba’athification” to be synonymous with “de-Sunnization,” a strong and deliberate 

effort to marginalize the role of the Sunni Arab community in Iraq’s political future.54

The de-Ba’athification process impacted every important aspect of Iraqi economic life, due to the centrality of state-run enterprises to the Iraqi economy. 

These included the educational system, utilities, food 

distribution centers, and the oil industry. The possibility that Ba’athists would be educating young people 

was of special concern to those in favor of deep deBa’athification. Consequently, the de-Ba’athification 

order was used to justify the immediate firing of 1,700 

university professors and staff throughout Iraq, although no one maintained that they were all complicit 

in Saddam’s crimes or even that they were committed 

Ba’ath ideologues.55 Rather, they were often simply attempting to get by within the Saddamist system that 

permeated the state. The post-Saddam former prime 

minister Ayad Allawi has referred to this approach 

as Iraqi citizens using Ba’athist membership as a “vehicle to live.”56 Later, Bremer expressed unhappiness 

that “tens of thousands” of school teachers (K-12) 

had been dismissed from their jobs, even though they 

were only low-ranking members of the Ba’ath Party 

who had been forced to join as a condition of their employment.57 He strongly disapproved of such actions, 

but by this time much of the de-Ba’athification process had moved out of his direct control and was be-
25

ing managed by either Chalabi or by local committees 

that had set themselves up using Bremer’s order as the 

rationale for their activities. Chalabi, who had strong 

allies in the U.S. civilian leadership of the Pentagon, 

may have been particularly difficult for Bremer to 

moderate. Much later, in retrospect, Bremer indicated 

that de-Ba’athification should have been conducted 

by a judicial body rather than a commission led by 

Iraqi politicians.58

The collapse of large segments of the Iraqi educational system harmed not only teachers but students 

and Iraqi families by rendering schools and universities increasingly dysfunctional. It also created pools of 

high school and college age males who could sometimes be approached about the possibility of participating in the insurgency. Other state-controlled bureaucracies were decapitated as well, but these leadership 

gaps did not always last for long. In the south and the 

Shi’ite sections of Baghdad, Shi’ite clergy and their 

supporters quickly established their leadership over 

a variety of local government institutions.59 Many of 

these people were affiliated with Muqtada Sadr’s Sadr 

II movement (so named to indicate continuity with his 

murdered father’s charitable activities). Holdover officials within the establishments seized by the Sadrists 

or other groups were quickly made to feel unwelcome 

or even in danger unless they pledged loyalty to the 

new leadership. These new political leaders often had 

no concept of the technical or administrative issues 

associated with the enterprises that they seized. Nevertheless, the rise of Shi’ite clerics to fill the political 

vacuum in their own community is not surprising. 

The Shi’ite political establishment was one of the only 

organized forces outside of the Ba’ath Party in Iraq 

at the time of the invasion. Moreover, it had a strong 
26

and loyal following, a system of self-financing, and 

a record of long-standing persecution by the regime. 

Later, the Sadrists lost some of their initial power following Muqtada Sadr’s political and military confrontations with the Iraq government led by rival Shi’ite 

politician Nuri al-Maliki. 

Many Ba’athists who held ranks below the highest 

four levels of the Ba’ath Party were also purged under the 2003 de-Ba’athification order, because it was 

often difficult to discern an individual’s rank within 

the Ba’ath Party. Often such standing was not clear 

to those around the person, and a large number of records were destroyed in the immediate aftermath of 

the invasion and the looting of Iraqi government offices that occurred following the fall of the Saddam 

regime. Individuals who held important administrative positions were therefore often simply assumed to 

be high-ranking Ba’athists and removed from office. 

Ironically, some individuals who were not important 

in the Ba’ath Party were strong pro-Saddam sympathizers, while some important Ba’athists sought to rise 

within the Iraqi government and bureaucracy through 

whatever means available. Allowing junior officials 

to assume the jobs of their former superiors did not 

necessarily lead to a bureaucracy that was inherently 

more anti-Saddam or pro-democracy. 

The decision to place Chalabi in charge of the deBa’athification process was also unfortunate. At least 

some U.S. leaders were aware of exactly what they were 

getting with a Chalabi-led de-Ba’athification Commission, and they should have understood that he was 

not likely to show restraint on this issue.60 Chalabi had 

been an advocate for wide-ranging de-Ba’athification 

well before the war against Saddam had begun in 

2003. He had previously published his concerns that 
27

the United States would invade Iraq but would not attempt to eliminate all aspects of the Ba’ath Party with 

the comprehensiveness that he favored. In a February 

19, 2002, Wall Street Journal editorial, Chalabi attacked 

what he called the plans for the future occupation of 

Iraq, which he apparently believed he understood on 

the basis of testimony before Congress by U.S. military and Bush administration officials. According to 

Chalabi, “[T]he proposed U.S. occupation and military administration of Iraq is unworkable. Unworkable because it is predicated on keeping Saddam’s existing structures of government in place—albeit under 

American officers.”61 He went on to claim that, “Iraq 

needs a comprehensive program of de-Ba’athification 

even more extensive than the de-Nazification effort in 

Germany after World War II.”

Chalabi has often been identified as the least popular member of the Governing Council among the Iraqi 

population at the time of his appointment by the IGC 

to head the de-Ba’athification Commission. His status as an exile caused at least some to view him as 

an outsider who had no experiences of the challenge 

of living under Saddam.62 The strong and public ties 

Chalabi held to both Israelis and pro-Israeli figures 

in the U.S. Government were well-known and not 

universally appreciated throughout Iraq.63 Later, the 

December 2005 elections underscored his unpopularity when his political party failed to win a single 

seat in the 475-person Parliament, despite a massive 

political campaign under the slogan, “We Liberated 

Iraq.”64 The decision to move forward with Chalabi 

at the head of the Commission rather than seeking a 

more reconciliation-oriented figure indicated a continuing determination to impose a harsh peace on the 

Sunnis and anyone associated with the old regime. 
28

This approach was consistent with the priorities of the 

senior Pentagon civilians who remained concerned 

that a regime similar to the one led by Saddam could 

reemerge. This danger was also worrisome to many 

of Iraq’s Shi’ite and Kurdish leaders who were aware 

that the Ba’ath had previously come to power twice 

through coups. 

As noted, the Shi’ite religious parties and other 

community leaders were among the groups most interested in comprehensive de-Ba’athification priorities. 

U.S. policymakers seeking to justify a more sweeping 

de-Ba’athification policy were quick to point out that 

failure to do this would potentially harm U.S. relations 

with these parties.65 Nor is it difficult to understand 

the intense hatred Shi’ites and Kurds held for Saddam 

and the Ba’ath. Shi’ite religious parties, as well as the 

Shi’ite-dominated Iraqi Communist Party, had suffered intensively under Saddam, and most prominent 

members of these organizations had lost a number of 

friends and family members to torture and execution 

by the regime. The rise of a Shi’ite Islamic republic in 

Iran through revolution was particularly frightening 

to Saddam, who unleashed an especially high level of 

brutality against Iraqi Shi’ites who seemed even the 

slightest bit comfortable with the Iranian concept of 

Islamic government. An overly political definition of 

Shi’ite identity during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war was 

especially dangerous. Nevertheless, revenge (or justice) was not the only motivation for the Shi’ite parties in supporting de-Ba’athification. Many of these 

groups also wanted as much power as possible for 

themselves. Destroying the political viability of the 

Sunni leadership in Iraq helped to move them toward 

that goal. Some Shi’ite leaders may have also hoped 

to reverse the situations of Sunnis and Shi’ites perma-
29

nently. In contrast to Iraq’s first 8 decades of existence, 

Shi’ites would hold the important positions, and Sunnis would be politically marginalized. Under these 

circumstances, some Sunni Arabs believed that they 

were being offered second-class citizenship at best. 

The CPA de-Ba’athification order was sometimes 

taken as at least a partial green light for some Iraqis 

to exact revenge on former Ba’athists who had persecuted them or were their personal enemies. Indeed, a Shi’ite assassination campaign against former 

Ba’athists did take place, although it is doubtful that 

a more reconciliationist approach by the CPA would 

have prevented these outbreaks of violence, once the 

dictatorship had been removed. 66 Many of these assassinations were carried forward in a highly professional manner, rather than as frenzy or sloppy revenge attacks. It is correspondingly possible, if not likely, that 

Iranian intelligence units coordinated with friendly 

Shi’ite groups to ensure that Ba’athist enemies of Tehran were never in a position for them to cause trouble 

for Iran again.67 According to the London-based newsmagazine, The Middle East, Iranian Supreme leader Ali 

Khamenei put the commander of the al-Quds Force 

in charge of setting up a network of covert operatives 

in Iraq as early as September 2002, with the mission 

of expanding Iranian influence in that country in the 

aftermath of the invasion.68

If Chalabi hoped to use the de-Ba’athification Commission as an avenue for his own rise to power, he 

was deeply disappointed by the outcome of the 2005 

election. While he may have helped to create a power 

vacuum by purging a number of potential rivals, he 

did not have the ability to fill it through the electoral 

process. Rather, the most important players in Iraq at 

this stage were quickly proven to be the Shi’ite reli-
30

gious parties who were also enthusiastic supporters of 

de-Ba’athification. After the election, Chalabi moved 

in and out of a variety of governmental jobs, which 

he held for various lengths of time. Throughout his 

political maneuvering, he was unable to obtain real 

power within the top leadership of the government. 

As noted above, many Iraqi Sunnis viewed the 

effort to remove large numbers of Sunni leaders and 

bureaucrats from power through the vehicle of deBa’athification as part of a new political system in 

which Shi’ites would dominate Sunnis. The politicization of sectarian differences also led Iraqi political parties to adapt an approach whereby they viewed failing 

to fill a political post with one of your supporters or 

allies as tantamount to allowing that post to be filled 

by enemies.69 In addition to Sunni Muslims, some 

“establishment Shi’ites” had also risen to high ranks 

within the Ba’ath Party and were also caught up in deBa’athification. A key problem here is that Saddam actively reached out to secular Shi’ites to serve as “democratic ornaments,” while attempting to marginalize 

the Shi’ite clergy, which he felt was at least potentially 

loyal to Iran. 70 Some secular Shi’ite leaders, including 

those with advanced degrees from Western universities, took the bait for a variety of reasons including 

the hope that they could gain some reasonable level of 

patronage for their own communities. Some of these 

people were also well-educated and talented enough 

to be of real use to the regime in performing administrative tasks. These links with the regime allowed such 

individuals to become targets for de-Ba’athification in 

ways that the more persecuted opposition clerics did 

not once the regime had been removed.71

The most prominent example of the problems 

faced by “establishment Shi’ites” was the case of Saa-
31

doun Hammadi, the former Iraqi premier who died 

of leukemia in Germany in March 2007.72 Saadoun 

Hammadi had previously served as Iraq’s Foreign 

Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, Prime Minister, and 

most recently, Saddam’s last Speaker of the Assembly, thus becoming the highest ranking Shi’ite within 

the regime. Hammadi held a Ph.D. in economics from 

the University of Wisconsin and has been described 

as having a “thoughtful and scholarly demeanor.”73

He also is the author of a number of academic articles 

on Arab affairs and political philosophy.74 Hammadi 

favored economic and political liberalism in the past, 

and was presented to the world as a reform prime 

minister after the 1991 Gulf War. He apparently took 

his reform charter a little too seriously for Saddam 

and was removed for overzealousness after 7 months 

in power.75

As an articulate, respected Shi’ite intellectual who 

held high-profile/high-prestige government positions, Hammadi helped give Saddam’s government 

the appearance of broad-based Iraqi support across religious sects. Saddam thus presented Hammadi with 

the option of being co-opted and in return gaining a 

few crumbs of power for himself and some economic 

assistance for his Shi’ite supporters. This Faustian 

bargain was occasionally made available to Westerneducated secular intellectuals, but it was almost never 

an option for important members of the Shi’ite clergy. 

Although Saddam sometimes sought to appear religious, formal clerical participation in the Ba’athist 

government was largely unacceptable to him. Certainly, no ayatollah would hold any of the governmental 

positions Hammadi held. Hammadi was arrested and 

placed in prison shortly after the U.S.-led invasion, 

while his son and members of his al-Karakshah tribe 

stringently protested his arrest on grounds that he did 
32

not take part in any crime against the Iraqi people.76

He was released in February 2004, in partial response 

to the uproar within the Shi’ite community. He then 

traveled to a series of Arab countries and then to Germany where he died.

Other secular Shi’ite leaders were also tarnished 

by their association with Saddam’s government, although they collaborated for a mix of personal, communal, and national motives. They were, however, 

not always subject to the same level of punishment as 

Sunni Ba’athists. According to the International Crisis 

Group (ICG), Shi’ite political parties involved with the 

de-Ba’athification process often allowed Shi’ite Ba’ath 

Party members to repent and keep their jobs. In doing so, the former Ba’athists became subservient to the 

parties that allowed them to remain in their positions 

and vulnerable to pressure from these parties so long 

as they remained a relevant political force.77 Any former Ba’athists showing much independence from the 

new political leadership at this stage usually found 

themselves accused of leaking information to terrorists 

or a variety of other crimes, regardless of whether or 

not they had done anything wrong. De-Ba’athification 

consequently may have helped the Shi’ite clergy and 

religious parties establish almost full control over the 

Shi’ite community during the first years following the 

invasion. While Shi’ite secularists, including those associated with the Ba’ath, were not punished to the extent of Sunni Ba’athists under de-Ba’athification, they 

were also not in a position to seek the leadership of 

the Shi’ite community. At this time, there seemed to 

be limited room for a reformed anti-Iranian secularist 

leadership that included ex-Ba’athists in Iraq.78

The removal of Ba’athist officials also created 

problems in finding suitable replacements with satisfactory political credentials. Some individuals who 
33

had been fired by Ba’athists from various bureaucracies under the Ba’athist regime became strong candidates to replace them following the change of regime. 

The problem here is that such individuals sometimes 

(perhaps often) were fired for nonpolitical reasons, 

including incompetence and corruption. Upon being 

returned to their former jobs or those of their former 

supervisors, they returned to old patterns of behavior, 

showing little responsibility, effectiveness, or commitment to even a limited work ethic. To be fair, it might 

be noted that these people had no monopoly on the 

shortcomings noted here. Most Iraqis had never had 

any preparation to work in an efficient, modernizing 

bureaucracy, and corruption permeated the society 

during the Saddam years as it still does.79

At various times, the Iraqi government announced 

that it was relaxing the de-Ba’athificiation policy, often as a response to U.S. pressure. Chalabi would usually announce the policy “changes” and then provide 

grandiose projections of how many people would be 

rehabilitated under new more lenient rules. In early 

2007, for instance, he publicly agreed to soften the 

de-Ba’athification policy, announcing that his office 

had begun removing hiring restrictions from former 

Ba’athists who had not committed crimes during the 

Saddam years. Elaborating on this change, he stated 

that more than 2,300 former high-ranking Ba’ath Party 

members were either being reinstated in their former 

jobs or granted pensions.80 On the same day, Chalabi 

stated that over 700 former Ba’athists had returned to 

their old government jobs, suggesting that the balance 

of the 2,300 people he cited were given pensions if his 

figures are correct.81 Chalabi’s commitment to reform 

nevertheless remained tactical, and there is no independent evidence for the figures he cited. Additional-
34

ly, Chalabi opposed any new law on de-Ba’athification 

that would contain a sunset clause that would abolish 

the commission at some future point.82

An interesting window into the impartiality of the 

de-Ba’athification process occurred with the August 

2008 arrest of Ali Faisal al-Lami, then the executive director of the de-Ba’athification Commission. Al-Lami 

was arrested as he returned home from Lebanon as 

a “suspected senior special group leader,” according 

to journalistic sources.83 Various offshoots of Muqtada 

al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army and other pro-Iranian terrorist organizations are known as “special groups” and 

are among the most extreme forces within the Iraqi 

political system. Some of these groups are controlled 

by Iranian intelligence organizations such as the alQuds Force.84 The idea that someone comfortable with 

this ideology was presiding over de-Ba’athification 

is bone-chilling. Chalabi nevertheless demanded alLami’s release following the arrest.85 He stated that 

al-Lami played “a great essential role [in] fighting 

and confronting Saddam’s regime despite the risks 

that surrounded him.”86 He further added that U.S. 

forces pay “no attention to Iraqi human rights.” While 

many details of this situation were not disclosed and 

al-Lami’s guilt remained publicly unproven, his purported admiration for Tehran further reinforced the 

image of the de-Ba’athification Commission as hopelessly biased against Sunni Arabs. Al-Lami remained 

in detention until August 2009, when he was released 

as part of an agreement between the Iraqi government 

and various Shi’ite parties.87 After his release, al-Lami 

returned to political and de-Ba’athification activities, 

as noted later in this monograph. Al-Lami’s role in 

de-Ba’athification ended in May 2011 when he was assassinated by unknown gunmen who were probably 

members of al-Qaeda.88
35

MILITARY IMPLICATIONS OF 

DE-BA’ATHIFICATION

The decision to dissolve the Iraqi Army and the 

Ba’ath Party within the first few days of establishing the CPA administered an overwhelming blow to 

organized Iraqi life. This radical shock therapy was 

deemed by some members of the Bush administration 

as vital to the establishment of a stable democracy in 

Iraq. Of all of the CPA actions in this time frame, the 

abolition of the Iraqi Army was the most controversial 

and disconcerting to many Iraqis, who often viewed 

the military as something more than a pillar of the Saddam Hussein regime. Supporters of the decision often 

claim that the Iraqi Army dissolved itself, and that the 

reality of the post-war situation was simply being recognized. This argument implies that the United States 

only had only two choices, reconstituting the 600,000-

man Iraqi Army in its Saddamist form or bringing the 

Iraqi Army down to zero. The choice, however, was 

never that binary, and the CPA order was issued at a 

point when U.S. Army General David D. McKiernan 

and various CIA officials were already working on a 

third option, that of reconstituting certain units of the 

Iraqi military on a voluntary basis under vetted officers.89 These efforts had to be discontinued following 

the CPA announcement. 

Armed resistance to U.S. forces at some level following the invasion was probably inevitable, no matter how well the post-war reconstruction effort was 

handled. The question was, would this resistance 

comprise small groups of terrorists or would it encompass much larger forces drawn from alienated 

social groups that were able to organize into a strong 
36

network of resistance organizations. At this stage in 

the conflict, the Bush administration was loath to admit that segments of the Iraqi population were waging 

war against U.S. forces rather than welcoming them. 

At a June 2003 press conference, Secretary of Defense 

Rumsfeld stated, “I guess the reason I don’t use the 

phrase ‘guerrilla war’ is because there isn’t one.”90 In 

general, the administration seemed to believe that the 

Iraqis would be sufficiently grateful for liberation that 

they would be granted sweeping ability to do anything 

they wanted in Iraq without much of a backlash.91 This 

view was emphatically reinforced by some of the most 

pro-war Iraqi exiles who maintained that Iraqis were 

so oppressed that they did not care about much else 

other than their deliverance from Saddam Hussein.92

The de-Ba’athification order, as unpopular as it was 

with Sunni Arab Iraqis, was not as unpopular as the 

disbanding of the Iraqi Army. Yet, if the United States 

was determined to implement a de-Ba’athification 

order, the rationale for dissolving the Army becomes 

much less clear. Senior Ba’athist officers could have 

been retired under the de-Ba’athification order, and 

low-ranking Ba’athists and non-Ba’athists could have 

been offered the option to remain in the military provided that they were not complicit in regime crimes. 

Ba’ath political officers, who were often resented by 

regular army officers, could easily have been removed 

from service, and elite units with special loyalty to 

Saddam could have been dissolved.93 The Iraqi Army 

under new leadership could then have been used to 

help provide order rather than be left disgraced with 

many of its members facing destitution. The special 

relationship of the Iraqi Army to Iraqi society went far 

beyond Saddam. Even a number of anti-Saddam Iraqi 

exiles urged that it not be abolished.94
37

The alternative to abolishing the Army in addition 

to wide-ranging de-Ba’athification would have been 

to purge and restructure the Army. This would involve removing the political functionaries and special 

security forces that served throughout the military to 

ensure loyalty to Saddam’s regime. The special security forces involved in this effort were commanded 

by Saddam’s younger son, Qusay, and were given 

sweeping powers to meddle in the operations of military units despite their lack of competence in military 

matters. The political officials were generally detested 

by the professional military, who would have welcomed efforts to rid the Army of such officials.95 Most 

would also have been pleased to end the long hours of 

ideological instruction that were supposed to support 

morale and readiness, but in effect detracted from unit 

preparation for military missions. The presence of 

these political units, the use of purges, and the general 

distrust Saddam felt for any gifted military leaders often caused many Iraqi Army officers to feel that they 

were victims of the regime rather than a part of it. It 

was, therefore, a deep shock to such individuals when 

the order was issued to disband them including those 

units that had chosen not to fight against the U.S.-led 

invasion. 

Additionally, Saddam’s primary means of control 

over the military was the Ba’ath Party functionaries 

(“commissars”) noted above rather than insisting that 

all high-ranking officers join the Ba’ath. According 

to Colonel John Agoglia who served as a CENTCOM 

planner during this time frame: 

[I]n June, we found the personnel records of the Iraqi 

Army at the Ministry of Defense, and we had those 

computers that contained those personnel records ex-
38

amined by special technical experts. The special technical experts confirmed in fact that the records were 

authentic and not tampered with. One of the key findings of those records which was shared with [CPA Director for National Security and Defense] Mr. [Walter] 

Slocombe, was that in fact you did not have large-scale 

Ba’ath issues in the army until you got to the major 

general rank, and at the major general rank, 50 percent 

of the major generals were Ba’athists and 50 percent 

weren’t.96

An important caveat is in order here, since the 

Iraqi Army was extremely top heavy and had more 

than 10,000 generals.97 Nevertheless, the database that 

Colonel Agoglia mentions could have been an invaluable tool in reconstituting the Iraqi Army and then 

using it to help provide security for the new government. This effort would have to include extensive use 

of other intelligence means to confirm all aspects of 

the database to the greatest extent possible. 

In the aftermath of CPA Orders 1 and 2, Ba’ath officials became natural allies to the angry and financially 

troubled ex-soldiers of the Iraqi Army after the Army 

was disbanded, with no effort made to recall those 

former soldiers who may have remained interested in 

serving. The ability of senior Ba’ath leaders to obtain 

and provide funding to the insurgency was particularly important in helping to organize it into an effective 

force able to include unemployed and desperate Iraqis 

willing to strike at U.S. forces for money. Ba’ath funding for such efforts appears to have been drawn from 

a variety of sources. Some Ba’ath leaders had significant reserves of cash within Iraq when the invasion occurred. This group included many mid-level Ba’athist 

officials as well as more senior leaders.98 Others had 

access to funds in foreign banks, particularly in Syria. 
39

The Syrians, at this time, seemed willing to turn a 

blind eye to many provocative Iraqi Ba’athist activities 

out of some ideological kinship and, more concretely, 

from a fear that Damascus might also be targeted for a 

U.S.-led regime change, unless the United States was 

bogged down elsewhere. Saddam loyalists who were 

trusted enough to have access to millions of dollars 

from the old regime were naturally few in number, 

but their ability to provide funding to unemployed exsoldiers at the early stages of the occupation served as 

the lifeblood of the emerging insurgency. Later, the insurgency was to become dominated by al-Qaeda radicals, with their own funding sources from outside the 

country (as well as various “taxes” and asset seizures 

within Iraq). The senior Ba’athists able to distribute 

money would probably have remained committed enemies of the new Iraq under any conceivable scenario, 

but it would have been much more difficult for them 

to establish the initial insurgent networks without the 

large and discontented groups created by CPA Orders 

1 and 2. 

According to Stanford professor and former CPA 

senior administrator Larry Diamond, there were important warning signs that the former Iraqi officers 

would create severe problems if they were not given 

other options than simply walking away from their 

military careers with virtually nothing. Bremer did not 

seem prepared to listen or initially adjust his policies 

on military pensions and possible return to service by 

vetted individuals in the face of changing events. According to Diamond, “Bremer has set out on a decisive 

course—establishing the American political occupation of Iraq, dissolving the Iraqi Army and instituting a sweeping process of de-Ba’athification—and he 

did not want to be steered off course.”99 The refusal 
40

to adjust course may also have been reinforced by the 

mindset continuing to pervade the highest levels of 

the U.S. Government that almost all Iraqis were happy 

to be liberated from Saddam and that the resistance 

had no real social or political base to draw upon. 

CPA Order 22 issued in August 2003 created the 

New Iraqi Army. The order forbade the inclusion of 

senior Ba’ath Party members in the Iraqi Army without the specific permission of the CPA. Additionally, 

all officers who had held the rank of colonel or above 

were excluded from being rehired, including those 

who had not resisted the U.S. invasion and were not 

members of the Ba’ath Party. CPA guidance suggested that all colonels and above were to be considered as 

committed Ba’athists, despite the bloated senior ranks 

of the Iraqi military, in which colonels did jobs that 

would be assigned to much lower-ranking officers in 

Western armies. The initial U.S. decision to recreate 

the Iraqi Army as a small force of only around 40,000 

troops equipped with only light arms was an additional problem.100 The abolition of the Ba’ath Party and 

the old army created a vast pool of enemies for the 

United States to deal with, while the decision to create 

only a small Iraqi military to cope with the discontent 

was a major problem. The most frequent explanation 

for this action is that U.S. leaders feared a militarized 

state that would threaten its neighbors and possibly 

mount a coup against a democratic government. The 

second point is particularly important since it relates 

back to the central U.S. fear that a new Ba’athist regime could somehow emerge through the vehicle of 

a military coup. Such concerns are valid, but no Iraqi 

government would be able to establish domestic legitimacy without being able to provide security for its 

population, and the Iraqi government was being set 
41

up to fail on these grounds. The U.S. delay in recognizing the dangers inherent in Iraq’s lack of adequate 

military forces correspondingly gave the Iraqi insurgents huge advantages in establishing control over areas that would subsequently be outside the control of 

the central government. The U.S. leadership therefore 

made a deliberate decision to deny Iraq the type of 

force that could allow the Iraqi government to survive 

in the absence of U.S. forces in order to ensure that a 

Ba’athist coup from the military could not take place, 

although U.S. leaders did not seem to see this as the 

trade-off at the time. 

The Ba’ath Party’s “Political and Strategic Program,” issued after Saddam’s ouster, stated that 

its immediate priority was to “expel the occupation 

forces from Iraq and preserve the country as a unified 

homeland for all Iraqis.”101 Alienated Ba’athists did 

not, however, always join Ba’ath resistance organizations to fight against the Coalition and the Iraqi government. Many who wanted to fight reached out to 

violent Islamist groups after repenting their “sins” of 

supporting Saddam’s secular regime.102 These people 

then fought against the United States and the Iraqi 

government as supposed Islamic warriors. Some of 

this solidarity may have resulted from a decision by 

various Sunnis to resist the Shi’ite-dominated government by whatever means available. More pragmatically, there is also the possibility that over time the 

Islamist groups would be more effective than the 

Ba’athists in finding foreign sources of funding. Some 

Sunni Iraqi leaders were also forced, or at least strongly pressured, to support the fighting by al-Qaeda once 

it had established itself in that country. Many insurgents would again change sides when their al-Qaeda 

allies became too authoritarian to tolerate and when 
42

the United States offered to fund the anti-al-Qaeda, 

“Awakening Councils.”

The ability of Iranian intelligence and paramilitary 

organizations to function in Iraq was also aided by the 

portion of CPA Order 2 dissolving Iraqi intelligence 

organizations. This order and the de-Ba’athification 

order made it difficult, if not impossible, to return 

key personnel to intelligence duties focused on antiIranian counterintelligence and the containment of 

Iranian power. This situation is especially tricky since 

the intelligence organizations were important pillars 

of the regime, and were correspondingly riddled with 

potential war criminals and human rights violators. 

Saddam first came to power by consolidating his control over these organizations, and it appears that his 

youngest legitimate son, Uday, was being groomed 

to assume future powers as president by serving an 

apprenticeship within the intelligence organizations. 

Under a less sweeping purge, trade-offs would have 

had to be considered in assessing the criminality of 

various officials as juxtaposed against their usefulness in opposing Iran. The example of the CIA’s use 

of former German Nazi-era general Reinhard Gehlen 

and his intelligence gathering organization against the 

Soviet Union after World War II may have served as 

a starting point for consideration of how this could be 

done.103

EFFORTS TO REVERSE THE EXCESSES OF 

DE-BA’ATHIFICATION

The idea that the United States could enter Iraq 

and then rapidly depart after removing much of the 

leadership from all major administrative structures, as 

well as the military as a whole, reflected an optimism 
43

that was difficult to justify. This belief was influenced 

by the experience of some Eastern European countries 

where various communist parties were removed from 

power without the types of problems that were to occur in Iraq.104 Feith suggests that Iraq could have been 

turned over to exiles, but it was certainly not clear how 

these people could have established civil order or implemented a set a policies that had already been seen 

to create a major Sunni insurgency. In the years since 

the invasion, various neoconservatives have stressed 

that the United States should have trained a large exile 

army prior to invading Iraq and that by choosing not 

to do so helped to foreclose the option of installing 

exiles.105 This approach was supposed to be based or 

at least inspired on the model of the French resistance 

in World War II and in some extreme versions may 

even have considered Chalabi to be a latter-day General Charles De Gaulle. Even if one accepts the logic 

of such an argument, the fact remains that the United 

States did not have such a force in place in 2002-03, 

and this in no way altered the ideologically based belief that the Iraq war would not require a significant 

occupation force to keep order after the Iraqi regime 

was defeated and the Iraqi Army was disbanded. 

The U.S. difficulties in Iraq may also have increased 

due to the hostility of neighboring Arab governments 

and populations to policies that they viewed as antiSunni, such as de-Ba’athification. After the ouster of 

Saddam’s regime, there were few credible news outlets for average Iraqis to use in an effort to understand 

the situation within their country. Newly emerging 

Iraqi newspapers were often hopelessly biased and 

based on a poor understanding of journalistic standards, which were unknown in Saddam’s Iraq where 

the media’s chief function was propaganda dissemi-
44

nation. The fledgling Iraqi television network was 

almost totally ignored in preference to the pan-Arab 

news stations such as al-Jazeera and, to a much lesser 

extent, al Arabibiya as well as Iran’s al-Alam news 

broadcasts in Arabic. Some of the pan-Arab media 

outlets, especially al-Jazeera satellite television, were 

particularly hostile to de-Ba’athification Commission 

leader Ahmad Chalabi for a variety of reasons, not all 

of which involved his activities on the commission. 

In response, Chalabi was interviewed on al-Arabiya 

television where he stated that al-Jazeera was completely infiltrated by Iraqi intelligence. This statement 

is widely viewed as untrue, reckless, and a little desperate. This feud between Chalabi and al- Jazeera continued for some time. 106

Moreover, as the difficulty of stabilizing Iraq became increasingly clear, Bremer became more openly critical of Chalabi’s methods of conducting deBa’athification, which went beyond the scope of the 

original order. In April 2004, Bremer moved to narrow 

de-Ba’athification in response to the abuse of the system and to establish a more reasonable set of policies 

to reverse Iraq’s escalating violence. He stated that the 

policy had been applied “unevenly and unfairly.”107

By this time, the crisis between the Sunnis and Shi’ites 

was exceptionally serious, and the outlines of a potential civil war were becoming increasingly clear. In 

response, Bremer hoped to empower a more reconciliationist Iraqi leadership that would be able to help 

stem the tide of insurgency. He believed that he found 

the right individual to lead this effort in the person 

of Ayad Allawi, a secular Shi’ite leader who believed 

in achieving national unity by reaching out to Sunni 

Arabs and Kurds. 
45

Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi was installed in office by the United States on June 1, 2004. 

On June 28, 2004, the CPA handed over formal political power to Allawi and the Iraqi Interim Government. Allawi was a longtime opponent of deep deBa’athification, and sought to limit the scope of the 

de-Ba’athification effort throughout his time in office. 

In a strategic vision that anticipated the Awakening 

Councils, he also strongly favored efforts to reconcile 

with Iraq insurgents and thus draw them away from 

hardcore Saddamists, Iraqi al-Qaeda members, and 

foreign terrorists. He also hoped to negotiate with 

Iraqi Sunnis and peel them away from their emerging 

alliance with foreign fighters such as al-Qaeda in Iraq 

leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Allawi pushed forward with his efforts at reconciliation by seeking to allow Ba’athists without blood on their hands to return 

to state jobs. Chalabi’s de-Ba’athification Commission 

seems to have significantly reduced its purges in response to Allawi’s pressure. In justifying this policy, 

Allawi stated, “This country needs every single citizen” and “we will not repeat the policies of Saddam 

Hussein, who favored some while excluding most of 

the population.”108 He is also the only post-2003 Iraqi 

Prime Minister not to visit Iran, although he was invited to do so.109

Bremer presented the decision to appoint Ayad Allawi as Interim Prime Minister of Iraq as a decision 

made by the Iraqi Governing Council more or less on 

its own, which he was asked to ratify. This interpretation of events is almost universally discounted as a 

useful fiction designed to help Allawi by indicating 

that he was selected by other Iraqis and not by the U.S. 

leadership. Most Iraqis believe that the U.S. Government chose Allawi, and this interpretation permeates 
46

most published accounts of the event. Whatever the 

origins of Allawi’s appointment, he nevertheless appeared to have maintained a well-reasoned and forward-looking agenda for the Iraqi future, although 

he also had his shortcomings on such issues as controlling corruption. Allawi met Iraqi opposition to 

his relaxation of de-Ba’athification from predictable 

sources. The leadership of SCIRI stated that “improper persons” were being given positions in the security 

field and this was a violation of the principles of the 

new Iraqi government.110

Feith states in his memoir that the CIA and State 

Department favored the Allawi appointment, but 

he felt that Allawi and his party were insufficiently 

committed to democracy. He noted that Allawi’s Iraq 

National Accord (INA) Party had leaders who were, 

“supported by Sunni-controlled Arab governments 

[and] wanted the country’s Sunni-controlled military 

to continue to play a key role in Iraq.”111 It is interesting that Feith was concerned not simply about the 

dangers presented by a Ba’athist leadership for the 

Iraqi Army, but he also seems to have been worried 

about a Sunni leadership, in general, becoming powerful within Iraq. Additionally, it is not clear why an 

exile group receiving support from other Arab countries allied with the United States was considered as 

dangerous as Shi’ite parties accepting support from 

Iran. Feith also notes his own serious concern about 

the Iranian connection to other Iraqi political parties, 

but does not appear to view them as any more or less 

troubling than Allawi’s links to Arab nations such as 

Saudi Arabia.112

Prime Minister Allawi’s strongly reconciliationist approach might have made progress in defeating 

the insurgency over time, but the decisive defeat of 
47

his party in the 2005 elections ended the chances for 

his approach to go forward. Sunni Arabs boycotted 

the election, and most Shi’ite and Kurdish voters supported parties with a clear and direct sectarian or ethnic agenda. Allawi was also undermined by reports of 

staggeringly high levels of corruption in his government (although this scandal did not involve him personally).113 Allawi’s term as prime minister ended on 

April 7, 2005, when he turned power over to Ibrahim 

Jaffari of the Shi’ite Islamist party, al-Dawa. Jaffari 

remained in power until May 2007 and was then followed by Nouri al-Maliki of the same party. Both individuals were selected through a process of internal 

bargaining in a Parliament dominated by Shi’ites and, 

to a lesser extent, Kurds. Distrust among the Shi’ite 

groups led to the choice of two consecutive Dawa 

Party prime ministers, since Dawa unlike many of the 

other parties has no militia, and its leaders were therefore considered safe compromise candidates.

The principles of the 2003 de-Ba’athification decree were also enshrined in the 2005 Iraqi Constitution 

that was largely put together by Shi’ites and Kurds 

(Sunni Arabs unwisely boycotted the election for the 

Constitutional Assembly). According to Article 131 

of the Constitution, “The High Commission for DeBa’athification shall continue its functions as an independent commission, and in coordination with the Judicial Authority and the Executive institutions within 

the framework of the laws regulating its functions. 

The Commission shall be attached to the Council of 

Representatives.” The inclusion of this statement in 

the Constitution was not taken well by many Sunnis, 

although there were a few limited efforts to reassure 

them. The de-Ba’athification Commission became 

much more active after Allawi left office and the new 
48

Constitution was ratified. One of their chief functions 

seems to have been removing people who managed 

to regain their jobs while Allawi was prime minister. 

By the summer of 2006, there was another softening of 

de-Ba’athification with significant numbers of people 

reportedly returned to the Ministries of Information, 

Interior, and Defense.114 By this time, various political 

parties had established control over at least some important ministries and the domestic situation in Iraq 

appeared at its nadir. Many within the Iraqi government may have felt pressure to announce some progress on reconciliation-related issues simply to prevent 

the United States from giving up on Iraq. 

THE “ACCOUNTABILITY AND JUSTICE 

ACT OF 2008”

The passing of the Accountability and Justice Act 

in Parliament came in early 2008 and was meant to 

reform the process of de-Ba’athification, as well as reverse some of its earlier excesses. The law was passed 

after long and tortured debate within the Iraqi Parliament in which many Shi’ite leaders made it clear that 

they were content with a political system that marginalized the Sunni Arab community, which they noted 

was only 20 percent of the Iraqi population. An earlier 

effort along the lines of the 2008 act has been derailed 

by Shi’ite opposition, including statements made by 

Grand Ayatollah Sistani and the three other most senior Grand Ayatollahs in Iraq.115

The 2008 law was enacted to respond to one of 

18 benchmarks set by the U.S. Government to measure political reconciliation in Iraq. Moreover, U.S. 

observers often viewed it as a particularly important 

benchmark since it dealt with an effort to heal the 
49

Shi’ite-Sunni divide that was poisoning Iraqi politics 

and undermining national reconciliation. The Iraq 

Parliament was correspondingly under tremendous 

pressure to produce some sort of a restructured and 

reformed de-Ba’athification law. It was also supposed 

to be designed to convey the message that there was 

now a place for the Sunni Arab elite in helping to govern Iraq. Many Ba’athists who were purged from their 

former positions were told that they could apply for 

pensions and even reinstatement in their jobs as a result of this law. 

There were nevertheless problems with the new 

law. Many Sunnis did not view the law as liberal reform. Rather, they charged that the obtuse and ambiguous language of the law could be used to conduct further purges of ex-Ba’athists and fire soldiers 

and state bureaucrats who were then employed by 

the government. More dramatically, some former 

Ba’athists claimed that the law was a ploy to lure them 

into situations in which they could be killed.116 Those 

Ba’athists in exile outside of the country have been 

particularly suspicious. Others assume that there is 

no future for them in ministries dominated by Shi’ite 

politicians and activists, even if their lives are not actually threatened by working there. The law therefore 

did not bridge differences between the Sunni and 

Shi’ite communities to the extent that U.S. observers 

had hoped it would. 

Under the 2008 law, the Parliament was to appoint a new board and a new staff for the restructured 

commission. The individuals appointed to the board 

were supposed to act under amended rules and take 

a more reconciliationist approach to the issue of deBa’athification. Unfortunately, Parliament failed to 

meet its obligations to make these changes at the time 
50

of this writing. This failure occurred through both procrastination and possibly because some Members of 

Parliament were unprepared to approve a list of government appointments to the commission for fear that 

a successful effort to address this issue could be politically beneficial to Prime Minister Maliki. Under these 

circumstances, de-Ba’athification board chairman Ali 

Faisal al-Lami (then released from detention) stated in 

January 2010 that his board should continue to function as the new Accountability and Justice Commission (AJC) until a new board was in place. This argument was not accepted by a number of critics, and 

the organization continued to exist under an uncertain 

legal status. Although Chalabi was no longer playing 

a day–to-day role, it was widely believed throughout 

Iraq that he continued to pull most of the strings. 

THE CONTINUING LEGACY OF 

DE-BA’ATHIFICATION IN IRAQ

A new crisis for Iraqi national unity arose on January 6, 2010, when the AJC under Chalabi and al-Lami 

announced the disqualification of 511 candidates in 

the March 7 parliamentary elections for supposed 

Ba’athist connections. This was done under the old 

quasi-legal commission’s board in a sloppy and hurried manner that introduced an earthquake into the 

Iraqi political system. Fifty-nine of those identified for 

disqualification were cases of mistaken identity where 

individuals had names similar to those found on the 

commission’s database. Ayad Allawi’s Iraqiya Alliance suffered most under these initial rulings, with 72 

of its candidates identified as disqualified. Most of the 

individuals identified for disqualification were from 

Sunni religious or secular parties, which were often 
51

supportive of Sunni Muslim political rights. Many 

of the most powerful Shi’ite politicians, including 

Muqtada al-Sadr, supported the ban. To his credit, 

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani strongly denounced the 

ban. Iraqi critics began referring to the election process 

as the “Iranian form of election.” In Iran, a Council of 

Guardians evaluates the credentials of each candidate 

for parliament and makes a decision about their fitness 

to hold office as a way to constrain democracy and 

limit voter choice. Numerous international observers 

question the legitimacy of these Iranian procedures. 

American presidents and other political leaders have 

often been among those most critical of such a vetting 

process.

The commission’s decision to disqualify such a 

large number of candidates in a highly opaque process 

also threatened to undermine the legitimacy of the 

election with Sunni voters. In response to complaints 

about the commission’s actions, an appeals court initially ruled that these candidates could run for election 

and clear up the issue of Ba’athist affiliation later. Under reportedly heavy pressure from Maliki, the court 

then reversed itself on February 12, 2010, and disqualified 145 candidates.117 If these reports are true, the AJC 

was enjoying political cover from the Prime Minister’s 

office. Nevertheless, these candidates and some who 

were disqualified earlier were quickly replaced on 

their party slates so that their coalitions could continue to contest the elections with minimal disruptions. 

The Iraqiya political coalition was particularly hardhit by these changes because of the disqualification of 

two of its leading Sunni candidates, Salah al-Mutlaq 

and Dhafir al-Ani. Mutlaq, who headed the National 

Dialogue Front of the Iraqiya coalition, was replaced 

by his brother on the national slate. Later, in December 2010, he became one of Iraq’s two vice presidents.
52

 As this process unfolded, the legal and ethical limbo of this entire approach to candidate disqualification was severely tainted by the fact that both Chalabi 

and al-Lami were running for seats in Parliament, and 

thereby may have hoped to benefit from the disqualification of rivals through the commission, which they 

dominated. The senior U.S. military leadership in Iraq 

was deeply disturbed by this process, and accused both 

Chalabi and al-Lami of being under the sway of Iran, 

whose leadership had a potential interest in a weak, 

divided Iraq that could not rise to become a regional 

power. In a public presentation at a Washington, DC, 

event, General Raymond Odierno stated that the two 

Iraqi politicians “are clearly influenced by Iran.”118 He 

added that, “We have direct intelligence that tells us 

that.”119 General Odierno’s comments seem to raise 

the concern that Iran was using Chalabi as a tool to 

undermine Iraqi national unity. Many Iraqi leaders 

were more direct and strongly raised the possibility 

that both Chalabi and al-Lami were implementing 

Iraqi election procedures in coordination with Tehran 

for their mutual benefit. 

Ironically, Chalabi and al-Lami’s quasi-legal activities seem to have boosted Sunni Muslim turnout 

and may have caused the two leaders to lose support 

among Shi’ite voters. Al-Lami was not elected in the 

2010 election, although Chalabi won a seat because of 

his party’s inclusion within the Iraq National Alliance 

coalition list. More generally, the 2010 election did not 

lead to a clear outcome. Rather, strong competing political blocs emerged and were unable to put together 

a coalition government for 9 months. Iraqiya won a 

plurality of 91 seats in Parliament, but was unable to 

put together a coalition government. Maliki’s State of 

Law alliance, which won 89 seats, was eventually able 
53

to do so, but only by including around 40 followers of 

radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. 

A few months prior to the U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq, the Maliki government seemed intent on 

repeating previous mistakes by alienating Sunni Muslims. This time Maliki’s actions occurred in a political 

environment where the United States had a decreasing 

level of influence. In October 2011, Iraqi authorities arrested at least 240 individuals whom they identified as 

former leading members of the Ba’ath Party or former 

important members of Saddam Hussein’s army. The 

charges seem to imply that the arrests involved a plot 

by these individuals to seize power after U.S. forces 

depart the country.120 Some Iraqis also appear to believe that the arrests may not have involved a specific 

plot as much as a general feeling that these individuals 

were a threat and that arresting them was a useful precaution. In defending his actions, Maliki stated that he 

continued to be concerned about Ba’athist “coups and 

conspiracies.”121 In a Washington Post opinion article 

addressed to the American public, he also asserted 

that, “I refute characterizations that the detentions 

were a sectarian action based on political motives.”122

Nevertheless, Iyad Allawi’s Iraqiya political bloc has 

been harshly critical of the arrests and demanded the 

release of “all detainees held on false charges.”123

Serious Sunni-Shi’ite differences began to escalate 

further, 1 day after the completion of the U.S. military 

withdrawal from Iraq in December 2011. At this time, 

Maliki moved against one of his most important Sunni 

rivals by issuing an arrest warrant for Vice President 

Tareq al-Hashemi for supporting terrorism by running a death squad. The Maliki government also arrested three of Hashemi’s bodyguards and charged 

them with terrorism. More Sunni arrests on similar 
54

charges were expected. In describing the Prime Minister’s actions, Iyad Allawi stated, “It reminds me personally of what Saddam Hussein used to do, where 

he would accuse his political opponents of being terrorists and conspirators.”124 Hashemi emphatically 

maintained his innocence, and many Sunnis assumed 

that the charges were politically motivated. To avoid 

arrest, Hashemi fled to Iraq’s Kurdish north where he 

remained a guest of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.125

This move made it difficult for Maliki to arrest Hashemi since the Kurdish area has its own security forces 

which are not controlled by the Iraqi Prime Minister. 

While the Kurds and Sunni Arabs have not always 

been particularly close, Kurdish sensitivities were 

nevertheless raised by Maliki’s forceful effort to consolidate power. The legacy of the Saddam Hussein 

regime has led many Kurds to fear a strong central 

government in Baghdad.

During this time frame, Maliki also sought the removal by Parliament of Deputy Prime Minister Saleh 

al-Mutlak of the Iraqiya bloc in response to his bitter criticism of the Prime Minister and his policies. 

Although serving as deputy prime minister, Mutlak 

had earlier been barred from standing in the March 

2010 elections by the Accountability and Justice Commission.126 In December 2011, he stated, “Maliki is 

worse than Saddam Hussein, because the latter was 

a builder, but Maliki has done absolutely nothing.”127

Additionally, while Maliki moved harshly and effectively against Sunni leaders, his government remained deeply forgiving of Shi’ite groups that had a 

clear history of terrorism. A variety of Shi’ite leaders 

are known to maintain their own militias and to have 

been involved with death squads and sectarian assassination. Muqtada al-Sadr serves as a particularly 

compelling example.
55

The increasing Sunni-Shi’ite differences within 

Iraq also paralleled the reemergence of al-Qaeda in 

many parts of the country. According to an August 

2011 statement by Iraqi Lieutenant General Hussein 

Ali Kamal, Iraq’s Deputy Interior Minister for Intelligence, “There was a thought that al-Qaeda had ended 

in Iraq. No, they regrouped and now the third generation of al-Qaeda is working actively to reorganize 

itself with weapons and training.”128 These words are 

difficult, if not impossible, to dispute. Terrorist bombings continue throughout the country, some of them 

with spectacular coordination and large numbers of 

casualties. Pilgrims visiting Shi’ite religious sites are 

a favored target. The government has responded to 

these outrages with considerable brutality against 

suspected Sunni terrorists to avoid charges of incompetence.

Iraq is now in a position where it will have to manage its sectarian differences without U.S. forces in 

that country. While the United States initiated the deBa’athification campaign, the Iraqi leadership twisted 

these policies into instruments of sectarian revenge, 

which its Shi’ite-dominated government is never quite 

willing to give up. This legacy will have to be borne by 

Iraqis in the absence of U.S. troops who attempted to 

contain sectarian differences in that country for almost 

9 years. Both Iraqi Sunnis and Shi’ites (although not 

Kurds) celebrated that final departure of U.S. combat 

troops from their country, but such celebrations were 

held separately. Iraq will either manage its sectarian 

problems, or it will fail to do so. This is the choice that 

awaits Iraqis and will have to be faced at some point 

except in the event of a permanent U.S. military occupation, which is unacceptable to both countries. Any 

actions against the Sunnis that appear to be war crimes 
56

have infinite potential to make the situation in Iraq 

much worse. Iran already has a major role inside Iraq, 

and the Sunni Arab nations are unlikely to allow this 

influence to go uncontested. No Sunni nation wanted 

to supply arms to Iraqi insurgents and then find that 

American soldiers had been killed with weapons that 

could be traced to them. Now, in the absence of U.S. 

forces (except contractors), the rules have changed.

EVALUATION OF THE IRAQI 

DE-BA’ATHIFICATION PROGRAM

The de-Ba’athification program as it was practiced 

in Iraq is widely understood to have been deeply 

flawed in both its original conception and in the way 

that it was carried out. It seriously complicated all 

of the major challenges that the United States and 

its allies within Iraq faced after the ouster of Saddam Hussein’s regime. These problems included the 

alienation of Sunni Arabs, the politicization of sectarian differences, and the rise of the Sunni insurgency. 

De-Ba’athification also helped to cause a number of 

Sunni Arab populations in neighboring countries to 

become more virulently opposed to the U.S. presence 

in Iraq, helping to undermine the U.S. presence in the 

Middle East and create difficulties for pro-American 

governments throughout the Arab World. A less dramatic approach to restructuring the Iraqi government 

would have substantially reduced these problems, 

but it would also have been seen as rendering it less 

likely that the United States could completely change 

the character of the Iraqi nation to be a close and reliable ally. Many Bush administration leaders believed 

that such a transformation was possible and that a 

new Iraq would favor permanent U.S. bases, seek U.S. 
57

investment, support cheap oil sales, and work with 

U.S. allies. The decisions that were made with the idea 

of maximizing these goals nevertheless did very little 

to advance them, while instead aggravating massive 

problems with security and stability. A key failure 

here may be a lack of understanding about the limits 

of what can be accomplished in the aftermath of extraregional coercive regime change in countries that are 

disinclined to accept foreign tutors for very long. 

U.S. decisionmakers did not want to allow Ba’athist 

values to continue in Iraq, nor did U.S. leaders wish to 

allow any kind of a reformed Ba’ath to be used as a 

vehicle to oppose the U.S. presence and agenda in Iraq 

through participation in the government and administration of the country. This approach may have been 

aggravated by the embarrassing failure to find an Iraqi 

nuclear weapons program or even residual chemical 

and biological weapons programs. The administration, by every indication, believed such weapons existed prior to the war and, in their absence, needed to 

justify the intervention in other ways. The emergence 

of a disarmed Iraq in which some Ba’athists were still 

present in the government was probably not something they would view as acceptable within these parameters. Nor was a new Iraq with a traditional Arab 

foreign policy of opposing the West and Israel seen 

as a particularly compelling result for U.S. casualties 

and the financial cost of the war. The new Iraq was 

expected to look a lot more like America, or at least 

Turkey, than the Arab World.129

The worst U.S. decision made in Iraq during this 

time frame was not, however, a single choice. Rather, 

it was a combination of two decisions that reflected 

the desire of the United States to destroy real and 

imagined vestiges of the old regime at any cost. The 
58

decision by the CPA to engage in comprehensive deBa’athification and dissolve the Army simultaneously 

created the building blocks of the insurgency and provided it with the organizational capacity to create that 

insurgency. As noted, the Ba’ath Party did not control 

the military primarily through propagandizing the 

senior officers. Instead, it used a system of political 

officers and counterintelligence officers throughout 

the military as a way of bending the military to the 

regime’s will. While still on balance an unwise policy, 

deep de-Ba’athification would seem to have precluded the need for the even worse decision of disestablishing the military. This one major advantage of deep 

de-Ba’athification was squandered when the second 

CPA order was issued. As the increasingly harsh U.S. 

approach unfolded, people treated like enemies correspondingly became enemies. 

Attempting to understand Saddam Hussein’s rule 

by assuming that he was a committed Ba’athist seeking to live up to Aflaq’s ideals was also a serious mistake. Modern totalitarian regimes never rule in the 

name of naked power. They have an ideological cloak 

that is meant to mask the centrality of a terror state. 

Iraq under Saddam had a parliament, but parliamentary power was known to be a fraud. No one could 

have seriously held Iraq’s Parliament responsible for 

Saddam’s crimes. In the same way, the principles of 

Ba’athism are not necessarily offensive to all anti-Saddam Iraqis or Arabs more generally. Saddam did not 

build a criminal regime to serve Ba’athism. He built a 

Ba’athist infrastructure to support a criminal regime. 

The United States was correct to outlaw the Iraqi 

Ba’ath Party due to its hijacking by a criminal regime, 

but there also should have been a much greater willingness to tolerate individual noncriminal Ba’athists 
59

even if they did believe in Arab nationalism, secularism, and Arab modernization. 

It might also be noted that Ba’athism is not widely viewed as the wave of the future in Middle East 

politics. Angry young men are seldom inspired by it, 

and are much more likely to join radical Islamist organizations if they seek to confront the West. In their 

struggle with the Israelis, Palestinian radicals are now 

much more likely to turn to the Islamist organization 

Hamas than they are to work with Fatah, the mostly 

secular former torchbearer of the Palestinian cause. 

A few Palestinians even consider Hamas and Islamic 

Jihad to be too tame and are seeking to affiliate with 

al-Qaeda-like organizations.130 Some vigilance against 

the virulent alternatives to Ba’athism might have been 

considered. The simplistic belief that the Ba’athists 

were all Nazis and most other Iraqis were waiting 

for a Chalabi-like figure to lead them into a secular, 

pro-Western government created a situation in which 

many of the best options and opportunities for the 

United States were squandered. 

Retrospectively, it might be noted that the problems identified with de-Ba’athificaiton in Iraq do not 

clearly suggest a need for changes in the structures of 

the military organizations involved in the war or in 

the ways in which they interface with civilian leaders. 

Many military officers were working well with former Ba’athists and saw clearly the disadvantages of 

a deep de-Ba’athification program. General Petraeus 

was doing especially well in the Mosul area in the immediate post-war time frame by implementing generous peace terms, which he eventually had to revise 

and make more punitive in response to orders from 

higher authorities. ORHA Director Garner, General 

Abizaid, and the senior CIA representative in Gar-
60

ner’s staff were horrified by the implications of deep 

de-Ba’athification but were unable to argue against it 

effectively. The practical concerns of officers and intelligence professionals on the ground seem to have 

been overruled by civilian leaders who felt that the 

invasion of Iraq offered a historic opportunity to remake the Middle East in ways that benefited both the 

United States and the region. Once civilian authorities, 

including the President, had embraced this vision, the 

military did its best to achieve favorable results within 

the parameters set by civilian leaders. All leaders involved in the effort desperately wanted Iraq to be successful, but ultimately the de-Ba’athification policies 

proved counterproductive to achieving that goal.

PARALLELS AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN 

IRAQ AND THE ARAB REVOLUTIONARY 

NATIONS

As noted throughout this work, some U.S. politicians feared a Saddamist restoration in Iraq to 

the point that they supported a policy of deep deBa’athification, which became a major and ongoing 

problem in Iraqi nation-building. Such logic was 

based on the Ba’ath Party’s conspiratorial history and 

its past ability to infiltrate government and military 

institutions and then use them to infiltrate the government. The threat was especially serious to Bush 

administration leaders, since the Ba’athists in Iraq 

were ousted by a foreign military campaign and not 

a popular uprising. Consequently, the United States 

was placed in the position of attempting to manage 

what constitutional scholar Andrew Arato called, “an 

externally imposed revolution.”131 These U.S. policymakers believed that they had to build a radical new 
61

kind of political system in Iraq while remaining uncertain about the level of Iraqi public support for such an 

enterprise, which could appear to Iraqis as a foreign 

project designed to serve U.S. and perhaps even Israeli interests. This situation inclined some civilian U.S. 

leaders at the Defense Department and CPA to push 

for the deep de-Ba’athification that was so damaging 

to Iraq’s national unity, causing many Sunni Muslims 

to believe that they were facing an externally imposed 

revolution that was directed primarily against them. 

In the Arab Spring countries, few seem to believe that 

regimes based on the old values and elites are likely 

to reestablish themselves, although equally dismal regimes could still emerge in these societies and regime 

“remnants” can still create difficulties. The political 

edge that the Arab Spring countries have is that they 

do not appear to have the same level of fear about the 

old regimes reemerging as the Bush administration 

leaders did about Iraq. This difference may reflect the 

contrast between an imposed revolution and an indigenous one. 

Many Arabs involved in the 2011-12 revolutionary 

wave consider post-invasion Iraq to be an example of 

what can go wrong following the fall of a long-standing 

dictator. Some Arab revolutionary activists are correspondingly seeking to learn from the Iraqi experience 

despite the very different circumstances under which 

Saddam and the other Arab dictators were ousted. 

While many within the Arab World tended to blame 

the United States for all of the problems associated 

with de-Ba’athification, this monograph has shown 

that many of the worst excesses resulted from Iraqi 

government policies undertaken long after responsible U.S. leaders had become concerned about such 

activities and attempted to moderate them. The horror 
62

of Iraq in 2005-06 reminds the world of the capacity 

of some human beings to slaughter people who lived 

quietly for decades as their neighbors once the restraints of a crushing dictatorship have been removed. 

Revolutions by their nature are illegal, and questions 

of law and authority are often thrown open in eras of 

revolutionary transformation. The new governments 

established in 2011 clearly wish to avoid such a phase 

in their own revolutions, although many face equally 

daunting challenges, including the dangers of new 

kinds of dictatorship and civil war. 

Like Iraq, some of these states, including Syria and 

Libya, have no democratic tradition. Others, such as 

Tunisia and Egypt, have had more open societies and 

limited power-sharing among diverse elites at earlier 

points in their history, although authoritarian traditions have tended to be much more prevalent, especially in recent years. Moreover, at least currently, 

there are no leading opposition figures with the dignity, moral authority, and heroic status of a Nelson 

Mandela or Vaclav Havel. Such individuals can use 

their standing as towering historical figures to lead 

an effort to build a tolerant and progressive society. 

Weaker politicians face more serious obstacles, no 

matter how well intentioned they might be.

The two countries where the lessons of deBa’athification may have the most relevance are probably Libya and Syria, should the regime in Syria be 

overthrown by the revolutionaries currently struggling against it. Both of these countries have long histories of especially intense repression and no tradition 

of democracy. This approach contrasts with many 

of the Arab monarchies that are organized along the 

lines of a patriarchal model. In these instances, the 

monarch often feels the need to show that he cares 
63

about the population and is making strong efforts to 

ensure their welfare. While such regimes are inherently undemocratic, they are often much less brutal 

than the governments of nonmonarchical dictators. 

Social mobilization regimes, by contrast, are much 

more inclined to demand the society grant its full support to the self-anointed guiding leader. Monarchs 

have obligations to their citizens that they usually 

freely acknowledge. The recently deposed dictators in 

Iraq and Libya needed only to implement their vision 

for society as they defined it, while maintaining solid 

control over the instruments of repression. Ba’athism 

in Iraq was what Saddam said it was, while Libya was 

supposed to be guided by Colonel Muammar Qadhafi’s incoherent, “Third Universal Theory.”132 Syria is 

organized along similar lines as Iraq with its form of 

Ba’athism used to legitimize rather than guide actions 

undertaken by the regime. Citizens in such systems 

have obligations to the government, but they have no 

right to question the leadership or the leader’s vision 

in any public way. The Qadhafi and Assad political 

systems made only cosmetic concessions to more liberal or tolerant societies. 133 Nevertheless, it remains 

appropriate to begin the discussion of the lessons of 

de-Ba’athification and the Arab Spring with the two 

countries where the Arab Spring began, Tunisia and 

Egypt. These were the first and easiest of the 2011 

Arab revolutions.

Tunisia and Egypt.

The first two Arab Spring dictators overthrown in 

2011 were President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia and then President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. 

While parallels between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and 
64

these countries exist, differences vastly outnumber 

similarities. The Tunisian and Egyptian regimes were 

clearly dictatorships, but they were also dramatically 

less repressive than that of Saddam Hussein. Torture 

and violence were used against dissidents in both 

countries, but systematic, crushing repression on the 

scale of the Iraqi regime was absent. Additionally, 

there was not a clear ethnic-sectarian dimension to either of these regimes, as there was in Iraq, where a minority Sunni-led Arab regime brutally oppressed the 

large and important Kurdish and Shi’ite elements of 

the population, although no Sunni was ever immune 

from government repression either. Under normal circumstances, the interest in revenge should be milder 

in Tunisia and Egypt than in Iraq, and there should 

be no calls to oppress one element of the population 

on a sectarian basis as a part of that revenge. In this 

regard, the occasional, but harsh brutality including 

murder that has been unleashed against Egyptian 

Coptic Christians has not been the result of antiMubarak anger, but rather the expression of religious 

prejudices that a weak caretaker government has been 

unwilling or unable to contain fully. Thus, violent Islamic extremists seem to have taken advantage of a 

more permissive environment for the abuse of Coptic Christians.134 In this instance, the Iraqi example is 

quite disturbing, since Iraq’s Christian community 

was persecuted and shattered by newly empowered 

Islamists after Saddam was ousted in 2003.135

In Egypt and Tunisia, the militaries of both countries remained intact during the revolutionary process 

and continued to play a significant post-war role. In 

both countries, the military made an early decision not 

to support a crumbling dictatorship and to instead side 

with demonstrators; the military, therefore, avoided 
65

going down with the old regime. The Tunisian Army 

set the example by refusing to fire on anti-government 

demonstrators.136 This behavior contrasted with that of 

the Tunisian police who were more deeply complicit 

with the 23-year dictatorship of the Ben Ali regime.137

The Egyptian Army also emerged from its country’s 

revolution completely intact, having quickly refused 

to back President Mubarak’s efforts to retain power 

and being particularly unwilling to strike against the 

civilian population. The rapid decision by the Egyptian military leadership to support the demonstrators 

may have been facilitated by their strong aversion to 

the idea of serving under President Hosni Mubarak’s 

son, Gamal, if he succeeded his father (as was widely 

expected). Gamal Mubarak had no military service, 

traveled in circles of extreme crony capitalist wealth, 

and was widely viewed as likely to rise to power without much merit through the backing of his father. Even 

those generals who were not adverse to a new strongman, seldom liked the idea of a “ruling family” or “republican monarchy.”138 Consequently, to the Egyptian 

military, the uprising was an important opportunity 

to avoid eventual subordination to Mubarak’s widely 

disliked son. This coincidence of interest among opposition groups and the military allowed the regime 

to be deposed after only 18 days of unrest, but this victory only temporarily suppressed the profound differences between the military and the civilian opposition. 

Currently, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces 

(SCAF), which established a caretaker government after Mubarak was ousted, is viewed with considerable 

distrust by many revolutionaries, political parties, and 

particularly the Islamists. 

There was no equivalent to de-Ba’athification 

in either Tunisia or Egypt, although both states had 

dominant parties that functioned primarily to support 
66

the dictator. Tunisia’s ruling party, the Constitutional 

Democratic Rally (RCD) Party, was forced from power 

in February 2011, not long after Ben Ali fell. The RCD 

had served as Tunisia’s ruling party since that country 

achieved independence in 1956, and was often viewed 

as a path of political advancement. Party leaders attempted to save the organization and their own power 

base after Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia by formally expelling him and his closest associates from the RCD.139

This act had no practical effect and was largely viewed 

as a desperate public relations stunt. Some senior politicians also quit the party during this time frame in 

an effort to remain in office, although these machinations usually did not save their positions. The RCD 

was formally dissolved in March 2011 by the post-Ben 

Ali leadership, and its funds were impounded. Concurrently, a number of senior party officials were arrested but always on specific charges, usually related 

to corruption.140 Other government and party leaders 

fled into exile to avoid trial. This orderly and respectable approach to the old regime is not surprising. In 

January 2011, Dr. Moncef Marzouki, one of Tunisia’s 

leading dissidents, who was soon to become the first 

post Ben-Ali president, commented on the RCD by 

stating, “We don’t want any revenge, but we are fast 

with our principles that this horrible party does not 

return.”141 A variety of other Tunisian revolutionaries 

echoed these statements, while explicitly maintaining 

that they did not want to repeat the mistakes of Iraqi 

de-Ba’athification.142 Their focus remained arresting 

those at the top of the regime, although Saudi Arabia ignored repeated requests to extradite the former 

Tunisian dictator. Around 40 other senior leaders are 

currently being prosecuted for the killing and wounding of anti-Ben Ali protestors.143
67

On October 23, 2011, competitive elections were 

held in Tunisia for a 217-member National Assembly 

to draft a new constitution. The newly legalized Ennada Party won 41 percent of the total votes, translating into 91 seats within the National Assembly.144

This party is usually viewed as moderately Islamist, 

although some Tunisian secularists and others fear it 

could become more dogmatic if it is able to obtain and 

consolidate power.145 Much of the support for Ennada 

appears to have been a result of the organization’s unflinching opposition to the Ben Ali dictatorship, which 

outlawed and persecuted it for a number of years. 

Even some secular voters cast their ballots for this organization in the belief that an empowered Ennada is 

the most likely way to ensure that former Ben Ali supporters never regain power. Additionally, during the 

election campaign, Ennada strongly emphasized its 

sterling record of confronting the previous regime.146

The challenge in Tunisian society now seems to be 

between secular, European-oriented citizens and those 

interested in a government more closely guided by 

Islamic religious principles. There are parallels with 

Iraq’s first competitive elections. Islamists did quite 

well in those instances, although extremists such as 

Muqtada al-Sadr are not as important in the Tunisian 

system.147 As in Iraq, it appears that the defeat of a corrupt but secular dictatorship helped to open a serious 

path for Islamist political victories in at least the short 

term. Such victories are not inherently alarming unless the Islamists attempt to consolidate their power 

and remain in office through undemocratic means. 

Ennada’s current success is a result of a “backlash 

election” in which its popularity directly mirrored the 

unpopularity of the RCD. As that party involves itself in the more mundane aspects of governance, such 
68

popularity will probably fade. Additionally, other 

parties can be expected to catch up with Ennada’s 

superb campaign organization if the Tunisian system 

remains democratic and the new constitution reflects 

a basic fairness to all legal political organizations.

Egypt under Mubarak, like Tunisia, was officially 

a multiparty system, but election laws were manipulated and outcomes rigged to ensure that members 

of the President’s National Democratic Party (NDP) 

dominated the Parliament. This party had around 3 

million members in the days leading up to the revolution. In the aftermath of Mubarak’s ouster, the NDP 

was abolished by an Egyptian court in April 2011. Its 

property and funds were ordered to be turned over 

to the Egyptian government, and its former members were prohibited from running for office in one 

province. While these restrictions occurred only in 

one province, the Egyptian judiciary did not tolerate 

this curtailment of civil rights. The Supreme Administrative Court overturned the prohibitions preventing these individuals from running for office.148 This 

approach should be understood to be fundamentally 

different from de-Ba’athification, since all citizens are 

invited to participate in political life in the new regime. Indeed, at the time of this writing, a plausible 

candidate for the new presidency was Amr Moussa, 

Mubarak’s popular one-time foreign minister, whose 

international contacts may be useful in restoring desperately needed foreign investment for the Egyptian 

economy. Additionally, some former NDP members 

have now re-emerged as members of various minor 

political parties such as the Freedom Party.149 Nevertheless, as new elites consolidate power, they could 

turn more forcefully on former NDP members, and 

calls for banning them from standing for elections 
69

continue and could intensify over time. Even this approach would nevertheless be significantly milder 

than de-Ba’athification, which fired large numbers 

of people from state bureaucracies as well as leading 

politicians. 

As in Tunisia, Islamists did exceptionally well in 

Egypt’s first set of openly contested elections. The 

Muslim Brotherhood’s newly established Freedom 

and Justice Party won the most seats of any political 

party, while the more hardline Islamist Nour (light) 

Party came in second in the elections for the lower 

house of Parliament. The Muslim Brotherhood’s impressive performance is not surprising. Even while 

illegal, this organization had been deeply involved in 

charitable activities, including, in particular, providing support for the poor. The Mubarak government 

tolerated the Brotherhood’s charitable role because 

it had no interest in diverting its own resources to 

address the problems of the poor. This background 

strongly parallels that of the Sadr Movement in Iraq 

both before and after the U.S.-led invasion. Moreover, 

although tolerated, the Muslim Brotherhood was illegal, and its leadership was sometimes subject to arrest 

and persecution. 

This Islamist electoral success may pave the way 

for these organizations to take power, although this is 

not fully certain. The SCAF is still playing a significant 

potential role, and presidential elections may still produce a strong secular leader. Additionally, even if the 

Islamists are able to dominate Egyptian political institutions, they will almost certainly have to behave in a 

way that does not isolate Cairo from important U.S. 

and European sources of foreign aid, international 

investment, and tourism income. Any new Egyptian 

government that presides over an economic down-
70

ward spiral, let alone a freefall, cannot be expected 

to last for very long. The Muslim Brotherhood seems 

to understand this situation and has already asserted 

that they will not renounce Egypt’s peace treaty with 

Israel.150 The leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood 

has also indicated that it is interested in working with 

secular parties. 

The Egyptian Revolution therefore seems to be less 

comprehensive in reordering society than the process 

that occurred in Iraq due to the U.S.-led invasion. 

While the NDP has been outlawed, the SCAF remains 

dominated by colleagues and decades-long friends of 

President Mubarak. Moreover, during the Mubarak 

regime, the military was repeatedly scrutinized to 

make certain that Islamists did not infiltrate its ranks. 

The result of this process is a senior leadership that 

is deeply wary of the Muslim Brotherhood and other 

Islamists, such as the Salafis associated with the Nour 

Party. Egyptian politics correspondingly seems to be 

increasingly dominated by the conflict between the 

military leadership and the emerging Islamists with 

a declining economy serving as the domestic context. 

Secular parties are also a player in this struggle, although their influence is limited by failures in competitive elections with the Islamists. As this struggle 

continues, the military seems focused on maintaining 

its role as a powerful autonomous actor in the Egyptian political system, including control over significant economic resources that are unrelated to military 

functions. Under such a scenario, the military role 

will remain similar to its situation under Mubarak. 

Moreover, state television and print media tend to 

portray SCAF leader Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi 

in the same fawning light as they applied to President 

Mubarak during his years in power, providing some-
71

thing of an echo of the earlier regime.151 Conversely, in 

a key difference, the nonstate media can be extremely 

critical of the military’s actions as was seen during the 

February 2012 soccer riots.

Libya.

There are a number of differences between the Iraqi 

and Libyan situation, but events in Iraq do have limited parallels to Libya, because the legacy of long and 

brutal dictatorships in both countries. Fortunately, a 

number of Libyans appear to see Iraq as a cautionary 

tale for them.152 At least some Libyans view the near 

civil war in Iraq as a result of a cycle of revenge and 

backlash between Iraq’s Sunni and Shi’ite communities, which carries important lessons for them. Although Libya is not factionalized along sectarian lines 

such as those in Iraq, there are important regional, 

tribal, and some ethnic differences. Responsible Libyans are consequently concerned about maintaining 

national unity and avoiding internal armed conflict. 

They are also aware of how quickly national unity can 

break down following the ouster of a brutal dictator. 

More ominously, building a unified and functioning 

society in Libya will be significantly more challenging than rebuilding Tunisia or Egypt, since both of the 

earlier revolutions were much less violent, and both 

of these countries retained a functioning political, economic, and institutional infrastructure that survived 

the dictatorships. In the aftermath of Qadhafi’s defeat 

and death, it is not even fully clear that Libya will be 

able to maintain itself as one nation. Libya only became a unified nation under its first and only king 

in the 1950s, after having been liberated from Italian 

fascism. The major regions are Cyrenaica in the east, 
72

Tripolitania in the west, and Fezzan in the southern 

part of the country. Political integration of these regions occurred to some extent under the monarchy, 

but not under the Qadhafi regime, which sought to 

take advantage of regional disagreements. 

Libya had no political parties under the Qadhafi 

regime, and there was no direct equivalent to the 

Ba’ath Party. There was, however, the Revolutionary 

Committees Movement set up by the regime to create 

vehicles for pro-regime activism. Like the Iraqi Ba’ath 

Party, these organizations are sometimes identified 

as important components of government, although 

real power has always resided with the dictator, his 

family, and his closest associates. Such organizations 

were nevertheless charged with a role in “defending the revolution,” and were often used as a tool of 

political and ideological surveillance as well as key 

enablers of corruption. Under these circumstances, 

the National Transitional Council (NTC) decision to 

abolish these organizations appears wise and gives up 

very little administrative talent, unlike the process of 

de-Ba’athification. While Qadhafi was probably just as 

ruthless as Saddam Hussein, his regime was nowhere 

near as well-organized for repression as Iraq.153 Many 

individuals associated with these groups have a lot to 

answer for, including human rights abuse and torture. 

The questions that remain are; how to establish a clear 

dividing line between the worst offenders and the others, as well as how to ensure that justice is dispensed 

on an individual basis and does not expand into collective punishment. The Iraq example indicates the 

vital role of fair judicial institutions rather than highly 

political commissions for such tasks. As noted earlier in this work, Ambassador Bremer has openly acknowledged his mistake in not engaging the judiciary 

on these kinds of issues. 
73

Future armed conflict in Libya could occur among 

squabbling victors or between the new government 

and former supporters of the old regime, including 

traditionally pro-Qadhafi tribes, cities, and regions. 

As in Iraq, long-established rivalries and feuds are beginning to re-emerge as a side effect of the collapse of 

the old regime’s repressive apparatus. The new Libyan leadership is aware of this problem, but has only 

limited tools for preventing or containing it. Building 

new institutions and agreeing upon the rules to prevent and regulate post-Qadhafi conflict will not be a 

simple or minor set of tasks. One positive factor is that 

during the fighting, the anti-Qadhafi leadership of the 

NTC was deeply concerned about maintaining international support for the anti-Qadhafi struggle, and this 

attitude may extend into the post-war period when 

the new government is seeking international support 

for trade and economic development. Since the overthrow of the Qadhafi regime, a variety of Libyan leaders have indicated their concern that ongoing conflict 

or large-scale acts of revenge would create problems 

for international backers and potential international 

investors in post-Qadhafi Libya. Unfortunately, there 

are a variety of incentives to seek revenge. Libyan 

sources maintain that around 30,000 Libyans were 

killed in the course of the revolution to overthrow the 

Qadhafi regime.154 Such numbers are not inconceivable for the long months of bitter struggle. 

A key problem is that the new government has 

only limited control over the erratically-trained militia forces that are nominally subordinate to them. 

In order to build a system based on law and order, 

something will have to be done to either professionalize or disarm militia forces. This is expected to remain 

a long-term problem, since many of these forces view 
74

maintaining their arms as an important way to ensure 

that they are not losers in establishing a new order. 

Many also believe that they have an essential role in 

providing local security against criminals and rivals. 

On a few occasions since Qadhafi’s death, fighting has 

broken out between rival militias.155 Establishing the 

rule of law will be an especially difficult challenge in 

Libya, where a number of different militias report to 

different commanders, and arrests often seem to be 

arbitrary. 

Rebuilding a modern professional Libyan military 

force is therefore a serious challenge. During the dictatorship, the military was deliberately kept weak because of Qadhafi’s fear that a new coup could emerge 

from their ranks. Such fears were well-founded. There 

have also been repeated reports of serious coup and 

assassination attempts against Qadhafi from the ranks 

of the military in the years prior to the revolution. 

More dramatically, a large-scale army mutiny took 

place in October 1993, with up to 2,000 troops participating in the effort to overthrow the dictator.156 The 

center of the uprising was the city of Misurata where 

local troops nominally under government authority 

were not trusted to quash the uprising. The Air Force 

was therefore used to bomb the rebels until they surrendered. This incident did not end military discontent with the regime, and coup attempts in 1996-97 

may also have involved military coordination with 

Qadhafi’s Islamist enemies.157 Qadhafi attempted to 

address the danger of a rebellious military by creating special army brigades under the authority of his 

sons, Khamis and Moatassim. Khamis’ 32nd Brigade 

was responsible for the dictator’s personal security 

and was considered his most loyal unit. Each of these 

units nevertheless fragmented badly in the last part of 
75

the 2011 civil war and experienced a number of desertions.158

Most of the prisoners from the pro-Qadhafi units, 

such as the Khamis Brigade, now claim that they never fired their weapons, they joined only for the money, and they were not involved in torture. Nevertheless, pro-Qadhafi troops did commit a variety of war 

crimes throughout the conflict. Before the imposition 

of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) NoFly Zone over Libya, Qadhafi ordered the Libyan Air 

Force to bomb urban areas in the hands of the uprising. Most pilots involved in the conflict followed these 

orders, although a few defected to Malta or Italy. A 

willingness to refuse unlawful orders was therefore 

the exception and not the rule. Another particularly 

ghastly set of crimes against civilians involved the regime siege of Misurata, Libya’s third largest city. This 

siege involved regime efforts to retake the city thorough a variety of means, including the use of artillery 

and multiple rocket launchers to fire indiscriminately 

into civilian areas. These attacks included the use of 

cluster munitions against the civil population. Orders 

for such tactics are almost certain to have come from 

the regime’s leadership. Other war crimes, including the massacre of prisoners and the use of rape as 

a weapon of war, have also been charged, although it 

is not clear where the orders for these atrocities actually originated. It therefore seems likely that many of 

Libya’s citizens will seek justice in the aftermath of the 

conflict. 

It is, of course, known that some anti-regime 

forces committed war crimes as well, but these appear to have occurred at the small unit level and were 

not part of any overall National Transitional Council 

(NTC) strategy. Senior NTC figures did not order war 
76

crimes, and, because of their limited control over the 

militias, probably had no real ability to halt excesses 

at the tactical level. Such excesses were serious but 

appear more limited compared to the actions of the 

regime, where a furious Qadhafi seemed willing to 

do just about anything to crush the people he called 

“rats.” Libyan authorities are unlikely to pursue excesses by their own militia troops at this time due to 

an urgent concern to limit future fissures within the 

ranks of the revolutionary movement. At this time, it 

may be more important for them to begin to professionalize the individuals who are expected to remain 

in the new Libyan Army so that they behave with 

restraint and military discipline in the face of future 

challenges and particularly domestic unrest that may 

continue to plague Libya. Some crimes committed on 

the rebel side may nevertheless be too serious to overlook indefinitely, and it may be less divisive to address 

them rather than ignore them. The unsolved murder 

of NTC General Abdul Fatah Younes on July 28, 2011, 

may be an example of such a crime. This assassination 

is widely believed to have been a result of internal differences in the anti-Qadhafi forces, possible because 

of Younes’ background as a former Qadhafi interior 

minister.159

In addition to former soldiers, there are questions 

of the future of pro-Qadhafi tribesmen in the new Libya. Libya is a highly tribalized society with around 140 

tribes and clans, of which 20 to 30 are considered large 

and important. Qadhafi’s own tribe, the Qadadfa, is 

sufficiently small and weak, that the dictator had no 

choice except to reach out to individuals from other 

tribal units to help establish a base of power. Unsurprisingly, members of pro-Qadhafi tribes (such as the 

Magarha) have dominated the Qadhafi regime’s secu-
77

rity forces, and it may be difficult to fully disentangle 

individual actions from those encouraged and abetted 

by tribal leaders and authority figures. This situation 

could invite the prospect of collective punishment 

from a vindictive successor regime. Some of the most 

important tribes, such as the Werfella, had combatants 

on both sides of the struggle to overthrow Qadhafi. 

This situation helps to mitigate the danger of collective punishment to some extent.

Beyond the dangers of unrestrained revenge, many 

of the new Libyan leaders are also concerned about 

the potential problems of building a new government 

with effective and legitimate institutions. Colonel Qadhafi had some unusual ideas about government, and 

his divisive and bizarre approaches to governance left 

little foundation on which to build. Qadhafi was openly contemptuous of political institutions and claimed 

to have developed a new form of government based 

on revolutionary democracy expressed at the grassroots level. As seen with a variety of oil-rich countries, 

Colonel Qadhafi organized a strong public sector in 

Libya which he used to increase popular dependency 

on the government and to support claims of limited 

unemployment. 

While the Libyan government has a number of serious problems, there are also some positive factors 

for the country’s future. One of the most important 

of these factors is the country’s economic potential. 

Like Iraq, Libya is an important oil-producing state, 

but it also has only about a fifth of the Iraqi population. Moreover, it now appears that Qadhafi diverted 

huge sums of money to various secret bank accounts 

and investments, which are now available to the 

current Libyan leadership. One estimate suggests 

that there may be as much as $200 billion in such ac-
78

counts.160 While economic potential did not save Iraq 

from large-scale sectarian conflict, the possibility of a 

dramatically higher standard of living for virtually all 

Libyans would seem to be a positive factor in addressing problems such as youth unemployment, which 

can increase the potential for unrest. The experience 

of both Iraqi de-Ba’athification and the disbanding of 

the Iraqi Army illustrated the severe dangers of spikes 

in youth unemployment in post-revolutionary systems. The Iraq experience suggests that the sooner the 

government is able to use its considerable resources to 

create reconstruction jobs, the safer Libya will be from 

a downward spiral into instability.

Syria.

Unlike Egypt and Tunisia, the ouster of the Syrian regime may take years of struggle, if it occurs at 

all. At the time of this writing, more than 5,500 Syrian 

civilians had been killed by the military and security 

forces as part of this conflict, and the rate of civilian 

deaths may yet increase rather than decline. Syria is 

ruled by a Ba’athist dictatorship, which has a number 

of similarities with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Current 

President Bashar al-Assad rose to become the leader 

of Syria in 2000 following the death of his father. Syria 

is, for all practical purposes, a one-party state with its 

own branch of the Ba’ath Party providing the ideological façade for a system of government designed 

to protect the privileged position of those currently in 

power.161 Syria, also like Iraq, is a patchwork of different sectarian groups, and Syria’s ongoing revolutionary struggle has profoundly sectarian overtones. 

Since 1970, Syria has been led by presidents from the 

Assad family, members of the Alawite sect, which is 
79

generally considered to be a branch of Shi’ite Islam. 

The Alawites of Syria, at 10 percent of the population, 

are a much smaller portion of the Syria’s total population than the Arab Sunnis of Iraq who comprise 20 

percent of the population of their country. Most of the 

most important members of the government, military, 

and Ba’ath Party are from the Alawite sect or other 

minority communities allied with the Alawites. Sunni 

Muslims constitute around 70-75 percent of the population, whereas Christian and other minorities comprise the remaining portion. 

 Throughout much of Syrian history, Alawites 

were an ill-treated, impoverished religious minority 

who were seldom able to obtain anything more than 

the worst employment that the society had to offer. 

Their fortunes improved somewhat when opportunities to serve in the French colonial army became 

available after France occupied Syria as a League of 

Nation’s mandate following World War I. The legacy 

of being near the bottom of Syria’s socioeconomic 

ladder weighs heavily on many current members of 

the Alawite community as they contemplate their future under either a Sunni-dominated democracy or a 

Sunni-led dictatorship. If post-Assad Syria was to be 

dominated by Islamists, their views of the Alawites 

could be even further poisoned by claims their sect is 

heretical. Such beliefs are widespread among Sunni 

Islamist hardliners. Additionally, many Alawites undoubtedly fear Sunni revenge for 40 years of brutality and misrule under the Assads. The bloody conflict that has raged over the last year has also added 

horrendous new grievances to the already long list 

of injustices for which the Alawites may be held accountable. Saudi writer Essam al-Zamel has acidly 

summed up this situation with almost literal gallows 
80

humor by stating, “The greater the tyrant’s resistance 

to his people, the worse his punishment. It seems that 

Bashar [Assad] will be crucified to death in the center 

of Damascus.”162

While many Alawite leaders and even ordinary 

Alawite citizens fear that they will be punished should 

the regime be deposed, they may not be alone in such 

fears. Many non-Alawite minorities, especially the 

large Christian community, are concerned that the Syrian revolution may create a Sunni-dominated Muslim 

government that will severely curtail their rights.163

Unsurprisingly, many members of these groups show 

some reluctance to support the anti-Assad uprising, 

although they also fear that any highly visible support 

for the government could cause them to experience 

more problems in the aftermath of a successful revolution against Assad. Christians looking at the fate of 

their co-religionists in post-Saddam Iraq cannot help 

being disturbed about their potential fate in the aftermath of successful revolution. Additionally, the rapid 

rise of Islamists in Tunisia and Egypt following the 

ouster of the dictatorships raises concerns that a similar result may occur if there is a successful revolution 

in Syria. 

It has already been noted that the Arab Ba’ath 

movement began in Syria and spread to Iraq from 

there. In Syria, as in Saddam’ Hussein’s Iraq, the 

Ba’ath Party is primarily a policy implementation tool 

and an instrument for mobilizing the society to support the government. While the party is a bulwark of 

the regime, it does not have much input to the president or other key decisionmakers. Real power is concentrated in the Assad inner circle and the top ranks of 

the security forces, which are dominated by Alawites 

with strong links to the Assad family. Interestingly, 
81

a significant number of lower-ranking Ba’ath Party 

members resigned in protest from the organization at 

the early stages of the uprising, indicating some disagreement within the party.164 It is likely that many of 

these dissenting individuals are Sunni Muslims who 

joined the party to improve their ability to obtain jobs, 

money, and privileges. Their resignations appear to 

have been only a minor inconvenience for the regime 

as it shifted its strategy for controlling the uprising to 

one dominated by force and brutality. 

Throughout the over 40 years of the Assads’ defacto dynasty, the Syrian government has made an extraordinary effort to immunize the regime from coups 

or uprisings. This approach has involved a relentless 

effort to neutralize the Army’s capability to engage 

in anti-regime action of any kind. Bashar’s younger 

brother, Maher Assad, commands the Syrian Army’s 

elite Republican Guard Division and the equally wellequipped Fourth Armored Division, both of which 

are composed predominantly of Alawites and are 

completely loyal to the regime.165 Non-elite units are 

led by loyalist officers throughout their chain of command, and military personnel are monitored carefully 

by the security services. The independence shown by 

the Egyptian Army during the Tahrir Square demonstrations is unthinkable in Syria.

Assuming that they avoid summary execution in 

the aftermath of being overthrown, Assad and his key 

supporters will almost certainly be tried for mass murder, and they know this. With the possible exception 

of Iran, there seems to be relatively few places where 

they can flee. Additionally, Bashar understands that 

his safety and that of his associates depends upon retaining an unreformed police state, which he views as 

the only guarantee of Alawite privileges and safety. 

Qadhafi is reported to have asked his executioners, 
82

“What did I ever do to you” in his last hour of life, apparently stunned at the depth of hatred against him. 

Bashar is under no such illusions. He is aware of his 

crimes and aware that only a strong dictatorship can 

prevent him from sharing Qadhafi’s fate.

The Syrian regime will probably never be overthrown by nonviolent protesters, whom they are 

willing to kill in whatever numbers they need to in 

order to remain in power. Since these tactics are increasingly viewed as ineffective, the opposition seems 

more willing to consider armed opposition. If Assad is 

to be overthrown, this will have to be done by armed 

struggle, and the effort to oust the dictator may well 

continue to evolve into an increasingly bitter civil war. 

The other side of this approach is that the Syrian regime will use armed opposition to justify increasing 

its own level of repression, which is already at extremely high levels. All of these factors indicate that 

the Syrian government will use all of the repression 

of which it is capable rather than liberalize the regime 

in a way that fundamentally threatens the power of 

the current elites. Many reports cited by Western 

news agencies have accused Syrian military units of 

indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas thought to be 

opposition strongholds.166 The use of such tactics was 

later confirmed by Arab League monitors, whom the 

Syrian regime accepted into their country to buy time 

before its case was sent to the UN Security Council. 

These monitors have now departed Syria.

The Syrian military has held together extremely 

well throughout much of the uprising, although there 

are increasing reports of defections.167 Some of these 

defectors have fought against pro-regime units, but 

they have neither the organizational infrastructure 

nor the logistics and supply network necessary to 

maintain themselves as a conventional military force. 
83

Various spokesmen for the defectors call these forces 

the Free Syrian Army (FSA). While some units of the 

FSA have been allowed to seek sanctuary on Turkish 

soil, there is no indication that Ankara is involved in 

any effort to arm, equip, or train these units.168 Moreover, at the time of this writing, FSA forces in Turkey 

did not seem to comprise more than a few hundred 

individuals. Nevertheless, as the carnage continues, it 

is likely that Sunni conscripts will feel increasing psychological pressure to defect. The conscripts make up 

the majority of forces in the non-elite military units. 

In light of the above considerations, any program 

of de-Ba’athification in Syria could be especially brutal 

because of the ever-growing list of crimes the regime 

has committed against the Syrian people to remain in 

power. It has been noted that some Iraqis spoke of deBa’athification as de-Sunnization, and the prospect for 

all Syrian Alawites to be viewed as regime supporters 

suggests that de-Ba’athification in Syria would take 

on a sectarian character as well. While most Alawites sympathize with the Assads, not all Alawites have 

committed crimes to support them. The prospect of 

a post-revolutionary Alawite bloodbath is therefore 

something that all responsible friends of a new Syrian government would have to guard against. It is not, 

however, clear that neighboring Arab governments 

will push hard in that direction, since all of them, except Iraq, have Sunni leadership. Many Lebanese fear 

that sectarian hatred in Syria could spill over into their 

own country, but Lebanon has very little ability to 

moderate actions within Syria. Perhaps the best hope 

is that a post-revolutionary government will need a 

great deal of aid for reconstruction and development, 

and any anti-Alawite bloodbath would inevitably 

cause the United States and Europe to suspend such 

aid and call upon Arab states to do so as well. 
84

Yemen.

At this time, only one additional Arab leader has 

been ousted as part of the Arab Spring upheavals, former President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen. There are 

probably relatively few lessons that Yemen can draw 

from Iraq’s experience with de-Ba’athification. Yemen has never maintained a strong centralized government such as could be found in Iraq under Saddam. President Saleh ruled by political opportunism, 

manipulation, and bribery as much as by repression. 

One of Kuwait’s post-1991 foreign ministers once 

characterized him as a dictator like Saddam Hussein, 

but this is not true. Saleh never had the apparatus of 

repression that Saddam maintained, and many of his 

leading officers appear almost as opportunistic as the 

former president. In situations such as this, Yemeni 

officers have often had the political space to consider 

their own interests in deciding if they will continue to 

support Saleh. 

Yemen is a multiparty system, and while former 

President Saleh’s political party, the General Peoples 

Congress, may not be abolished, it will almost certainly be weakened. The powerful Islamist party, Islah, is 

its most likely successor. Such an ascendancy would 

hardly be good news for the United States, which 

had designated the Islah party leader as a terrorist 

supporter. Nevertheless, no new leader in Yemen is 

likely to establish a strong central government. The 

powerful Yemeni tribes and the military will probably 

continue to dominate the political system. General Ali 

Moshen, a former Saleh lieutenant who defected to the 

rebels along with the forces under his command, may 

emerge as an especially important post-Saleh leader. 
85

Indeed, Saleh has largely viewed the entire process as 

an effort by Moshen and his supporters to replace him. 

CONCLUSION

The United States had a level of involvement in 

the Iraq de-Ba’athification program in 2003 that will 

not be duplicated in efforts to support contemporary 

Iraq or to construct new political systems in the Arab 

Spring states considered in this work. The United 

States will therefore be in a position to grant advice 

and support to friendly states, but it will not be able to 

play a major role in organizing new political systems 

as it once sought to do in Iraq. Yet, the experiences 

with de-Ba’athification are probably too valuable 

to be completely dismissed and provide a number 

of important examples of the difficulties inherent in 

establishing a post-dictatorial government. In everything it does regarding both contemporary Iraq and 

the Arab Spring nations, Washington will therefore 

have to draw from relevant experience, while remaining aware of its more limited influence. Such influence 

must be used wisely. In Libya, this approach seems to 

offer some promise. The U.S. decision to work behind 

the scenes of the NATO intervention into Libya rather 

than play a leading role has limited U.S. responsibility for the aftermath in that country. While the United 

States provided essential support to the Libyan operation, the decision to play a limited role in the actual 

fighting seems to have helped Washington avoid General Colin Powell’s famous, “you break it, you own 

it,” pottery barn rule. This situation suggests that the 

United States can offer advice and support when this 

seems prudent, while remaining in the background in 

other cases when that seems wise. Within these guide-
86

lines, the following recommendations are offered for 

addressing concerns about the future of Iraq and the 

Arab Spring with the lessons of de-Ba’athification 

as a consideration. Some of these recommendations 

may also be relevant for non-Arab countries, including Iran, if their populations rise against oppressive 

regimes in Arab Spring-type revolts. Regional experts 

and policymakers might wish to consider such parallels on a case-by-case basis.

1. The United States must continue to do whatever it can to support a process of national conciliation in Iraq. In order to do this, U.S. leaders must remain attuned to problems in Iraq and elsewhere that 

may push the country toward state failure. The Bush 

administration often seemed to view democracy as a 

wholly positive transformative system without fully 

understanding the ways in which it can go wrong in 

deeply polarized and sectarian societies. As noted, 

these mistakes were eventually understood by many 

U.S. leaders over time, but, by then, the dynamics of 

sectarian conflict were especially difficult to contain 

and roll back. The United States must nevertheless 

continue to express its disapproval for politicized and 

reckless de-Ba’athification procedures in Iraq. Washington must also stress that political institutions used 

as instruments of sectarian oppression always hold 

the potential to incite civil war in societies that have 

not been totally crushed by their governments, one of 

the worst outcomes imaginable.

2. Officers and senior non-commissioned officers 

(NCOs) of the U.S. Army must realize that they may 

often have unique opportunities and unique credibility to offer advice on the lessons of Iraq, including the problem of de-Ba’athification, to their counterparts in some of the Arab Spring nations. The U.S. 

Army has a long history of cooperating with some 
87

of the Arab Spring militaries and has a particularly 

strong relationship with the Egyptian military. These 

bonds of trust and teamwork can be used to convey 

a variety of messages beyond exclusively military issues. Additionally, many U.S. Army officers gained a 

great deal of experience in Iraq from which they can 

draw upon to highlight the ways in which revolutionary change can go wrong.

3. The United States will have to use the lessons learned about Iraqi de-Ba’athification to assess 

ways in which Arab Spring countries may be failing. U.S. leaders must also consider ways to advise 

or otherwise help struggling governments. One of 

Iraq’s key problems was the rapid development of the 

view among some Iraqis that democracy is a winnertake-all form of government. The activities of the deBa’athification Commission often helped to reinforce 

that view among both Shi’ites and Sunnis. All Arab 

Spring governments will need to take care that new 

post-authoritarian institutions do not reflect a similar 

winner-take-all mentality among leaders, sects, tribes, 

political groups, or regions. The United States can 

draw upon its experiences in 2003 Iraq to make this 

message known to new governments, but unlike Iraq, 

the United States is not in a situation where it must 

take ownership of the Arab Spring. This means that 

U.S. leaders will have to have the dexterity to recognize when their advice is helpful and welcome and 

when it may be a source of resentment and conflict. 

4. The United States needs to help strengthen and 

support judiciary institutions in the Arab Spring 

countries and strongly emphasize the need to resolve issues of guilt or innocence within a judiciary 

framework rather than a commission composed of 

politicians or any similar organization. The United 
88

States should laud any efforts in these countries to advance the concepts of rule of law and support the activities of UN specialized agencies and other nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) seeking to provide 

aid to judicial bodies in the post-revolutionary states. 

It has already been noted that Iraq’s de-Ba’athification 

Commission was administered by politicians, and 

that these politicians were running for office against 

people who they disqualified for participation in the 

election. In no part of the planet can this be considered 

fair. Seeking to honestly establish the guilt of those accused of political crimes as well as their punishment 

is best left to judges if a fair court system can be established and maintained. Eligibility for particular individuals to run for office should likewise be addressed 

by unbiased judicial institutions.

5. The United States needs to be careful to avoid 

the appearance of publicly picking out and then lobbying for favorite leaders in the new Arab Spring 

governments, as it did with Ahmad Chalabi in Iraq.

If these countries are lucky, they may find a dignified 

and fair-minded national leader, although it would 

be a mistake for outside forces to attempt to generate 

one. The U.S. experience with Chalabi in Iraq might 

be particularly instructive here. U.S. leaders should 

not underestimate the distrust that many Arab populations feel for the United States. U.S. support for a 

leader with strong connections in Washington is not 

always well received by a populist electorate. No nations are so close that their publics want another state 

to choose their leadership for them. Additionally, 

problems have already resulted when Qatar chose 

to support some Libyan politicians and factions over 

others in their aid programs. Qatar was the strongest 

Arab backer of the Libyan revolution, and Doha has 
89

a lot more latitude to get away with this type of approach than does the United States. In spite of this 

situation, there are already numerous complaints that 

Qatar is interfering in Libyan internal affairs when it 

does so.169

6. In Iraq, the United States learned that free elections produced a great deal of hope but also a variety of problems, and U.S. leaders must consider the 

lessons of this experience as they formulate policy 

involving the Arab Spring states. Competitive elections are clearly a positive development, but they do 

not always indicate an increase in stability or tolerance within a society. It is therefore important that 

elections are viewed as the beginning of a process of 

democratization and not as the culmination of such a 

process. Protection of minority rights and the importance of peaceful transitions of power from one elected 

government to another are also key pillars. 

7. The United States needs to indicate a willingness to work with Islamist governments so long as 

those governments remain democratic, respect human rights, respect minority rights, and show some 

level of cooperation on key regional problems such 

as counterterrorism and nuclear nonproliferation. In 

Egypt, the United States needs to be willing to engage 

the Muslim Brotherhood and communicate the need 

for that organization to continue a variety of important Egyptian policies, including respect for democratic procedures, willingness to work with the military, and respect of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. 

The United States has a reputation with some Middle 

Eastern citizens, including many Iraqis, of favoring 

democracy only when regional democracy produces 

pro-American candidates. A U.S. unwillingness to 

judge any Egyptian government by its actions can 

only feed that narrative, and U.S. leaders need to be 
90

open to the possibility of partnership with a democratic Muslim Brotherhood-led government. Conversely, any new Egyptian leadership should be made 

aware of policy changes and red lines that might seriously disrupt normal relations. U.S. policymakers and 

military officials dealing with foreign militaries will 

have to remain nimble in making judgments about the 

differences among Islamic groups and the degree to 

which U.S. cooperation with new leaders is wise or 

even possible.

8. The U.S. Army and other services also need to 

work closely with the Egyptian military through a 

variety of programs already in place, if this is at all 

possible. The U.S. civilian and military leaderships 

should do everything possible to resolve whatever 

problems it might have with the Egyptian leadership, 

while leaving such programs in place. Such an effort 

must be based on an understanding that the military 

exists to serve democracy and must avoid policies 

that violate human rights. Nevertheless, another reason to cultivate the Egyptian military is that it is in a 

key position to keep politicians honest. A military that 

views itself as above politics will resist governmental 

efforts to act in extra-constitutional ways and should 

be particularly unwilling to serve as the repressive 

arm of any government that seeks to retain power by 

overriding democratic procedures. Any effort by the 

Islamist parties to purge the military for political reasons is correspondingly a cause for serious concern. 

9. The United States must be exceptionally wary 

about involving itself in the Syrian revolution 

against the Assad regime, in the full understanding 

that Syria is just as complicated as Iraq and not every Middle Eastern problem has an American solution. It is not yet clear how the Syrian revolution will 

play out, but it seems highly unlikely that NATO will 
91

adopt similar policies to those in Libya. The words of 

journalist Michael Hirsh, “What happens in Libya, 

stays in Libya,” correctly suggest that a unique set of 

factors enabled international action against the Qadhafi regime, and that this set of factors is unlikely to 

be duplicated elsewhere in the Arab World.170 Syria, 

in contrast, would present a hornets’ nest of problems 

comparable in intensity to those the United States encountered in Iraq. Even without foreign intervention, 

it seems unlikely that the Assad regime will be able 

to crush the opposition by force, which remains its 

goal at this time. It also seems unlikely that the regime 

will offer more than simply cosmetic efforts at powersharing. If the regime is overthrown, the United States 

must seek to work with post-Assad revolutionaries, 

but ultimately may be viewed with distrust in the 

Arab World for any effort to involve itself in combat. 

Like the Iraqis, the Syrians have enduring decades 

of propaganda about U.S. conspiracies to control the 

Middle East. 

10. The U.S. leadership must also understand 

that, to an even greater extent than the Iraqis, Syrian 

citizens may be susceptible to anti-Western conspiracy theories and distrustful of U.S. intensions. The 

close U.S. friendship with Israel is especially likely to 

create Syrian distrust about any U.S. agenda for their 

country. Despite some occasional Iraqi participation 

in the conflict with Israel, including the 1973 ArabIsraeli War and the 1991 Scud missile strikes, Iraq is 

usually a peripheral player in the Arab-Israeli conflict, 

while Syria is at the core of the conflict. The Iraqis 

viewed the U.S. presence in their country with steadily increasing criticism, with Washington receiving 

very little credit as a liberator, due to a local belief that 

the United States invaded their country to advance its 
92

own agenda for obtaining cheap oil and establishing 

military bases that could be used to dominate the region. In Syria, suspicions of an alternative U.S. agenda 

favorable to Israel could only be stronger. This situation is not an insurmountable problem, but it may also 

indicate the need for the United States to allow other 

friendly nations to play a major role in helping to resolve problems in Syria should Assad be overthrown. 

11. The United States must maintain an ongoing dialogue with its closest regional allies, including Israel, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, about the 

changes that are occurring in the Arab World, and 

Washington would do well to consider their views 

in the formulation of policy. This type of behavior 

was not always apparent in Iraq on the issue of deBa’athification when some allies such as Jordan and 

Saudi Arabia considered the United States to be dismissive of their views in favor of its own poorly informed assumptions. These assumptions included the 

belief described by Professor Fukiyama that the default position for a defeated dictatorship is always a 

liberal democracy. The Jordanians and the Saudis had 

been living in that region long enough to know better. 

The Jordanians had even seen a branch of their own 

ruling family ousted by a military coup in Iraq and 

then watched a succession of new and more brutal 

dictatorships emerge in that country culminating in 

the rule of Saddam Hussein. While the United States 

may ultimately disagree with these countries, their 

views have earned serious consideration.

12. The United States must understand that the 

rise of Islamists in the Arab Spring countries is not 

an aberration and is likely to continue to occur in 

additional cases, although it is uncertain that Islamists will dominate any of these countries in the 
93

long term so long as democratic institutions persist. 

The U.S. leadership will need to understand that in 

the aftermath of a dictatorship, those individuals and 

organizations that the dictator most violently oppressed often emerge with vastly enhanced prestige. 

In some cases, they may emerge as a new set of elites. 

In many countries, these people will be Islamists. All 

of the regimes that have been overthrown as part 

of the Arab Spring were basically secular just as the 

Saddam Hussein regime was predominantly secular, 

although greater religious expression was allowed in 

the regime’s last decade as a safety valve to relieve 

popular misery and discontent. In Tunisia, Egypt, and 

Libya, Islamists poised the main opposition to the regimes and were consequently subjected to the greatest degree of repression. Unsurprisingly, in all of these 

countries, the status of Islamists has been enhanced 

by the degree of opposition that they presented to the 

former regimes. Moreover, the Islamists, by virtue of 

their years of opposition and persecution, are sometimes seen as presenting the clearest break from the 

old regime. Some Islamic parties also have a network 

of mosques and Islamic charities that can be called 

upon to aid in the election of Islamic candidates and 

help to fill a vacuum created by the collapse of other 

institutions. 

13. The United States must seek to support economic stability in the Arab Spring countries so long 

as they remain friendly and democratic, while reminding Arab leaders of the economic problems associated with failed efforts at national unity in their 

countries. In Iraq, the difficulties of the Sunni Arabs 

led to an insurgency that routinely attacked Iraq’s 

economic infrastructure, including the oil industry. 

Building democratic, accountable, and transparent 
94

governments will not be easy for any of the Arab 

Spring governments. Libya will be harder than Egypt 

or Tunisia, and all countries need to understand the 

importance of avoiding a downward spiral. 

14. The U.S. Army will have to be aware that it 

may be asked to play a limited role in rebuilding the 

Libyan military. The United States will also have to 

deal with the Libyan government on a variety of issues, such as shoulder-fired anti-aircraft weapons accountability, and has a stake in the new government’s 

success. This situation suggests that various forms of 

military expertise and training may be provided to a 

responsible Libyan government at some future point. 

Such efforts will undoubtedly complement efforts by 

other countries to help Libya, including its major trading partners in Europe and the Arab League. It may 

also be possible, although not likely, that Libya may 

have the building blocks of an insurgency. Pro-regime 

holdouts conducted impressive defense of Sirte and 

Bani Walid for some time after the rest of the country 

was liberated. 

15. The United States might wish to offer advanced military training and education to Libyan 

officers that includes Western concepts of civil-military relations. Such training is already provided to 

officers of other Arab Spring militaries. Additionally, 

army officers who defected from the Libyan army and 

fought for the rebels have a clear expectation that they 

will have a role in the future of Libyan national security. These concerns need to be channeled in ways that 

allow democratic processes and institution building 

to move forward. If the Syrian government is overthrown, the United States may wish to consider ways 

to reach out to help professionalize the military and 

keep it out of politics. U.S.-Syrian relations may nev-
95

ertheless be complicated by issues involving Israel 

and the Palestinians in ways that will not occur with 

Libya.

ENDNOTES

1. Francis Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads, Democracy, 

Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy, New Haven, CT, and London, UK: Yale University Press, 2006, p. 116.

2. King Abdullah II of Jordan, Our Last Best Chance: The Pursuit of Peace in a Time of Peril, New York: Viking, 2011, p. 226.

3. As quoted in Tom Heneghan, “Libyans Stress Harmony to 

Avoid Iraq-Style Chaos,” Reuters, September 4, 2011. 

4. On the use of this phrase, see Douglas J. Feith, War and Decision, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008, p. 202.

5. Saddam Hussein’s regime later claimed without evidence 

that Aflaq had made a deathbed conversion to Islam in 1989, at a 

time when his propaganda machine was attempting to respond 

to Iranian charges that his regime was “Godless.” See Amatzia 

Baram, Culture, History and Ideology in the Formation of Ba’athist 

Iraq, 1968-89, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991.

6. The Syrian and Iraqi branches of the Ba’ath displayed a 

long-standing inability to work with each other and a continuing 

struggle for leadership of the Ba’athist movement. Brief periods 

of partial reconciliation were usually followed by long periods of 

hostility and conflict. 

7. Baram, p. 13.

8. Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary 

Movements of Iraq, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978, 

p. 1010.

9. Efraim Karsh and Inari Rautsi, Saddam Hussein: A Political 

Biography, New York: The Free Press, 1991, p. 15.
96

10. The Next Civil War? Sectarianism and Civil Conflict, Brussels, 

Belgium: International Crisis Group, February 2006, p. 7. 

11. This was not always the case due to the vicious family politics practices among Saddam’s relatives. In one instance in 1995, 

Saddam’s two sons-in-law defected to Jordan after they became 

concerned that Saddam’s son, Uday, might kill them either in a 

fit of rage or as part of an organized plan. When they foolishly returned to Iraq after being unable to establish themselves as viable 

opposition leaders, Saddam had them killed. See Said K. Aburish, 

Saddam Hussein, New York: Bloombury, 2000, pp. 337-339.

12. On the literacy programs, see Majid Khadduri, Socialist 

Iraq: A Study in Iraqi Politics since 1968, Washington DC: The Middle East Institute, 1978, p. 140.

13. Baram, p. 137.

14. On this political culture, see Wendell Steavenson, The 

Weight of a Mustard Seed: The Intimate Story of An Iraqi General and 

his Family during Thirty Years of Tyranny, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2009. 

15. Karsh and Rautsi, pp. 112-119.

16. In keeping with the nature of the political system, Aziz 

thanked the leader slavishly for concerns about his health.

17. This type of punishment occurred in the case of a senior 

general in 1990. He appears to have been executed after the amputation. See Neil MacFarquhar, “Saddam believed he would rule 

forever,” International Herald Tribune, December 31, 2006, Internet.

18. Gordon W. Rudd, Reconstructing Iraq: Regime Change, Jay 

Garner, and the ORHA Story, Lawrence, KS: Kansas University 

Press, 2011, pp. 146-147, 249.

19. Linda Robinson, Tell Me How this Ends: General David Petraeus and the Search for a Way out of Iraq, New York: Public Affairs 

Press, 2008, pp. 70-72.

20. Bremer, pp. 39-40.
97

21. See, for example, Feith, War and Decision, p. 240; and Don 

Eberly, Liberate and Leave: Fatal Flaws in the Early Strategy for Postwar Iraq, Minneapolis, MN: Zenith Press, 2009, p. 27.

22. Ahmed S. Hashim, Insurgency and Counter-insurgency in 

Iraq, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006, p. 15. 

23. Andrew J. Bacevich, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2008, 

p. 165.

24. Hashim, chap. 5.

25. Feith, p. 202.

26. On the concept of “de-Arabization,” see Hashim, p. 385. 

27. Bob Woodward, The War Within, New York: Simon and 

Schuster, 2008, pp. 120-121.

28. Transcript of Interview with Lieutenant General Jay Garner, “The Lost Year in Iraq,” PBS.org, posted October 17, 2006.

29. Ibid.; Rudd, p. 313.

30. Colonel John Agoglia, as quoted in Charles H. Ferguson, 

No End in Sight, New York: Public Affairs Books, 2008, p. 155.

31. Public Broadcasting Corporation Transcript, “Frontline: 

The Lost Year in Iraq,” October 17, 2006.

32. Vice President Cheney was an exceptionally strong supporter of deep de-Ba’athification. See Graham, p. 462.

33. Bremer interview as cited in Public Broadcasting Corporation Transcript, Frontline: The Lost Year in Iraq, October 17, 2006.

34. Bob Woodward, State of Denial: Bush at War Part III, New 

York: Simon & Schuster, 2006, pp. 196-197. The author has also 

heard a similar account from an officer who worked with General 

Abizaid during this time frame. This officer also maintained that 

no one who knew General Abizaid at this time could fail to understand his opposition to harsh and sweeping de-Ba’athification.
98

35. Draper interview with President Bush as cited in Robert 

Draper, Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush, New York: 

Simon & Schuster, Inc. 2007, p. 211.

36. L. Paul Bremer III, “How I Didn’t Dismantle Iraq’s Army,” 

New York Times, September 6, 2007. 

37. Bremer, p. 21. 

38. Chap. 2 of Bremer’s book is entitled “Taking Charge.” See 

Bremer, p. 23. 

39. Rudd, pp. 307-308.

40. Packer, p. 240; Rudd, pp. 310-311. 

41. Rudd, p. 327. 

42. Ibid, p. 132.

43. Allawi, p. 149. 

44. Ibid., p. 150. 

45. For an exploration of these issues, see Christian Caryl, 

“Iraq’s Young Blood,” Newsweek, January 22, 2007, pp. 25-28.

46. Packer, p. 192.

47. On nominal Ba’athists, see Rudd, p. 270.

48. Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez, Wiser in Battle, A 

Soldier’s Story, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2008, p. 186.

49. According to a 2008 article co-authored by Bremer, the 

CPA sought to reverse deep de-Ba’athification. But by the time 

it did so, “the CPA’s authority was waning, and the dominant 

[Shi’ite] and Kurdish political factions in Baghdad had little or 

no interest in allowing even innocent Ba’athists back into public 

office.” See L. Paul Bremer, James Dobbins, and David Gompert, 

“Early Days in Iraq: Decisions of the CPA,” Survival, August/September 2008, p. 31.
99

50. Feith, p. 431.

51. Sanchez, p. 184.

52. Bremer, Dobbins, and Gompert, p. 30. 

53. Allawi, p. 147.

54. Hashim, pp. 280-283. The author has met with numerous 

Iraqis and other Arabs who have strongly asserted this view and 

none who disagree with it. 

55. Diamond, pp. 192-193.

56. Allawi, p. 151. 

57. Bremer, p. 341. 

58. “Interview with L. Paul Bremer” in “Key Controversies 

and Missteps of the Postwar Period,” as cited by PBS in website 

supporting documents for Frontline: The Lost Year in Iraq, October 

17, 2006.

59. Packer, p. 168. 

60. Bremer maintains that he asked the IGC to take over deBa’athification, and they chose Chalabi to lead this effort without 

his input or advice. This seems surprising since Chalabi clearly 

had strong allies among the leading Pentagon civilians pushing 

for de-Ba’athification and since Chalabi’s base of power was then 

in Washington and not in Iraq. See interview with L. Paul Bremer 

III,” Public Broadcast Service,” Frontline: The Lost Year in Iraq: Documents, Key Controversies and Missteps of the Postwar Period, 2007, 

available from www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/yearin Iraq/analysis/fuel.html.

61. Ahmad Chalabi, “Iraq for the Iraqis,” Wall Street Journal, 

February 19, 2003. 

62. Packer, p. 202.
100

63. For some of Chalabi’s highly positive statements on Israel 

and the potential for Iraq-Israeli relations, see Tom Brokaw, “A 

Conversation with Ahmad Chalabi,” Council on Foreign Relations Event, June 10, 2003, available from www.cfr.org/iraq/conversation-ahmad-chalabi/p6044.

64. “Chalabi’s Defeat Presents Quandary,” MSNBC.com, December 22, 2005, Internet.

65. Don Eberly, Liberate and Leave: Fatal Flaws in the Early Strategy for Postwar Iraq, Minneapolis, MN: Zenith Press, 2009, p. 159. 

66. Packer, p. 336.

67. Hashim, p. 91. 

68. “Iran’s ‘Invisible man’,” The Middle East, August/September 2008, p. 31.

69. “Iraq: Your Man or His?” Economist, October 7, 2006, p. 56.

70. On the concept of a democratic ornament, see Heribert 

Adam, Modernizing Racial Domination; South Africa’s Political Dynamics, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1972.

71. The Next Iraqi War, pp. 9-10. 

72. Associated Press, “Saadoun Hammadi, 77, Premier and 

Top Aide to Saddam Hussein, Dies,” New York Times, March 18, 

2007.

73. Christine Moss Helms, Iraq Eastern Flank of the Arab World, 

Washington DC: Brookings, 1984, p. 91.

74. Helms, p. 106. 

75. Dilip Hiro, Neighbors, Not Friends: Iraq and Iran After the 

Gulf War, London, UK, and New York: Routledge, 2001, pp. 50-

51; Charles Tripp, A History of Iraq, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 258.
101

76. Doha Al-Jazirah Satellite Channel Television, “US Troops 

Ignored Tribe’s Request for Release of Hammadi,” July 5, 2003, as 

reported by Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), now 

the Open Source Center, July 5, 2003.

77. The Next Iraqi War, p. 10. 

78. The exception to this principle included ex-Ba’athists such 

as Ayad Allawi, who fled into exile and then became active in 

anti-Saddam opposition movements. 

79. Corruption Perceptions Index 2011, Berlin, Germany: Transparency International Secretariat, 2011. Note Iraq is currently tied 

with Haiti for the rank of 175 out of 183 governments for its perceived levels of public sector corruption, with one being best and 

183 being worst.

80. Borzou Dargahi and Said Rifai, “In policy reversal, Chalabi reaches out to Baathists,” Los Angeles Times, January 18, 2007. 

81. Damien Cave, “Iraqis Answer Global Critics by Tackling 

Troubling Issues,” New York Times, January 18, 2007. 

82. Rajiv Chandrasekaran, “On Iraq, U.S. Turns to Onetime 

Dissenters,” Washington Post, January 14, 2007.

83. “U.S Arrests Key Iraq Official for Suspected Ties to Militia,” Los Angeles Times, August 29, 2008. 

84. Benedetta Berti, “Salafi-jihadi Activism in Gaza: Mapping 

the Threat,” West Point Center for Combating Terrorism Sentinel, 

May 2010, pp. 5-9. 

85. Al-Sharqiyah Television (Dubai), August 29, 2008, as recorded by BBC Worldwide Monitoring.

86. As cited in Robert H. Reid, “Senior Iraqi official suspected 

of Militia Links,” Associated Press Online, August 28, 2008.

87. Rod Nordland, “U.S. Will Release More Members of an 

Iraqi Militia,” New York Times, August 17, 2009. 
102

88. “Iraqi Official Who Ousted Baathists Is Slain,” Washington 

Post, May 27, 2011. 

89. The author has held discussions on this topic with a senior 

officer involved in this effort. Also see Bradley Graham, By His 

Own Rules: The Ambitions, Successes and Ultimate Failures of Donald 

Rumsfeld, New York: Public Affairs, 2009, p. 402.

90. Packer, p. 302.

91. Fukuyama, pp. 115-116.

92. Packer, p. 97.

93. Hashim, pp. 5-6.

94. The author of this report is a co-author (with Conrad 

Crane) of a pre-war report urging that the United States purge, 

but not abolish, the Iraqi Army if it chose to invade Iraq. Much of 

this same case was made by at least some well-known Iraqi exiles, 

such as my friend, Dr. Mustafa Alani. When in 2006, I travelled to 

Dubai, I again met Dr. Alani, who asked, “Andy, why didn’t anybody listen about the Iraqi Army?” I had no answer. See Conrad 

C. Crane, W. Andrew Terrill, Reconstructing Iraq: Insights, Challenges, and Missions for Military Forces in a Post-Conflict Scenario, 

Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 

February 2003, pp. 32-33.

95. Hasim, pp. 5-8. 

96. As quoted in Ferguson, No End in Sight, p. 176. 

97. James Fallows, “Why Iraq Has No Army,” The Atlantic 

Monthly, December 2005, p. 64.

98. Hashim, p. 29.

99. Larry Diamond, Squandered Victory, New York: Times 

Books, 2005, p. 54.

100. Thom Shanker, “U.S. is Speeding up Plan for Creating a 

New Iraqi Army,” New York Times, September 18, 2003.
103

101. Hashim, p. 121.

102. Ibid., p. 117. 

103. On the Galen unit, which became the nucleus for West 

German intelligence, see Leonard Mosley, Dulles, NY: Dial Press, 

1978, pp. 236-238, 240-242. For a somewhat more skeptical view, 

see Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, New York: 

Doubleday, 2007 pp. 42-43. 

104. “Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz interview with 

Lucian Mandruta,” Pro TV [Romania], U.S. Department of Defense Press Release, Internet; and Michael Dobbs, “For Wolfowitz, 

A Vision May Be Realized,” Washington Post, April 7, 2003, p. A17. 

105. “Talk with former CIA Director James Woolsey,” 

CNN.com, October 30, 2003, Internet.

106. Hugh Miles, Al-Jazeera: The Inside Story of the Arab News 

Channel that is Challenging the West, New York: Grove Press, 2005, 

pp. 289-294.

107. “Help from the Baathists,” Christian Science Monitor, May 

6, 2004.

108. As cited in Zaki Chehab, Inside the Resistance: The Iraqi 

Insurgency and the Future of the Middle East, New York: Nation 

Books, 2005.

109. Mahjoob Zweiri, “Arab-Iranian Relations,” in Anoushiravan Ehteshami and Mahjoob Zweiri, eds., Iran’s Foreign Policy: 

From Khatami to Ahmadinejad, Reading, Bershire, UK: Ithaca Press, 

2008, p. 118.

110. Hashim, p. 56. 

111. Feith, p. 240.

112. “Ahmadinejad, Saudi King hold more phone talks: 

IRNA,” Agence France Presse (AFP) October 21, 2010.
104

113. Corruption Perceptions Index 2011, Berlin, Germany: Transparency International Secretariat, 2011. 

114. “Inside Iraq: Ex-Ba’athists get their jobs back,” Reuters, 

August 7, 2006.

115. “Sistani opposes Bill on the Baathists,” Irish Times, April 

3, 2007.

116. “A Hint of Political Compromise at last,” Economist, January 19, 2008, p. 48.

117. Ernesto Londono and Leila Fadel, “Chalabi is back, and 

the U.S. isn’t happy,” Washington Post, February 27, 2010.

118. Thom Shanker, “General Say 2 Iraq Politicians have Ties 

to Iran,” New York Times, February 17, 2010.

119. Ibid.

120. Ahmed Rasheed and Suadad al-Salhy, “Iraq rounds up 

Baathists ahead of U.S. pullout,” Reuters.com, October 25, 2011.

121. Nouri al-Maliki, “Building a Stable Iraq,” Washington 

Post, December 5, 2011.

122. Ibid.

123. “Allawi says Iraq headed for ‘sectarian autocracy’,” Kuwait Times, December 29, 2011. 

124. “Iraqi Sunni leaders denounce PM Maliki,” Khaleej Times, 

December 21, 2011. 

125. “Sunni lawmakers keep up Iraqi parliament boycott,” 

Jordan Times, January 4, 2012.

126. “Iraq PM moves to oust deputy as US forces leave,” Jordan Times, December 19, 2011.

127. Ibid.
105

128. “Qaeda, Shia militias pose threat to Iraq,” Gulf Times, August 29, 2011.

129. Turkey was sometimes cited as a favored model for Iraq 

in the 2004-05 time frame.

130. Benedatta Berti, “Salafi-Jihadi Activism in Gaza: Mapping the Threat,” West Point Center for Combating Terrorism, 

Sentinel, May 2010, pp. 5-9. 

131. Arato’s concept is quite complex, and it is worth referring 

to his study for a fuller explanation. See Andrew Arato, Constitution Making Under Occupation: The Politics of Imposed Revolution in 

Iraq, New York: Columbia University Press, 2009, Chap. 1.

132. On the “Third Universal Theory,” see Ronald Bruce St. 

John, Libya: From Colony to Independence, Oxford, UK: Oneworld, 

2008, pp. 157-59.

133. For example, see Alexandra Zavis and Alexandra Sandels, “Syria holds local elections as deadly clashes reportedly continue,” Los Angeles Times, December 13, 2011. 

134. Yasmine Saleh, “Egypt Christians in two minds over Islamist Gains,” Jordan Times, December 9, 2011. 

135. Peter Durkovic, “Iraq’s Christians, Lebanon’s Shame,” 

The Daily Star, November 4, 2011; “Iraq’s dwindling Christian 

community faces new uncertainty,” Los Angeles Times, December 

17, 2011. 

136. “Tunisia Army Pivotal to Ben Ali Ousting-Reports,” Jordan Times, January 18, 2011. Note that Admiral Jacques Lanxade, 

a former French Chief of Staff and later Ambassador to Tunisia, 

stated that the Army decision not to fire on demonstrators was 

key to the collapse of the dictatorship. 

137. Alexis Arieff, Political Transition in Tunisia, Washington, 

DC: Congressional Research Service, September 20, 2011, p. 10. 

138. Discussions held with senior Egyptian military officers. 
106

139. “Tunisia coalition hits trouble on day two,” Jordan Times, 

January 19, 2011. 

140. Ibid. p. 3. 

141. “Tunisia ministers quit government as protests resume,” 

BBC News, January 18, 2011. 

142. Kemel Riahi, “A Night in Tunisia,” New York Times, January 18, 2011. 

143. “Tunisia says Saudi silent on requests to extradite exleader,” AFP, January 4, 2012.

144. For a complete breakdown of the election results, see 

Erika Atzori, “Tunisia leads the way,” The Middle East, December 

2011, p. 19. 

145. The party’s name is French for “Renaissance,” so, ironically, an Arabic translation would render it as the Ba’ath Party. 

Nevertheless, the name is used in a completely different context, 

and Ennahda has nothing to do with Saddam’s Ba’ath Party.

146. “Islamists to the fore,” Economist, October 29, 2011.

147. Bouazza Ben Bouazza, “Tunisia’s Islamist party slams 

anti-Semitic chants,” Associated Press, January 9, 2012.

148. “Mubarak party members allowed to run in Egypt vote,” 

Jordan Times, November 15, 2011; Leila Fadel, “Egyptians Fear Return of Mubarak Allies,” Washington Post, November 17, 2011. 

149. Abdelrahman Youssef, “Mubarak-era figures recycle careers in rural Egypt,” Reuters, January 9, 2012. 

150. “Brotherhood’s ‘laxity’ on Israel treaty stuns Hoss,” The 

Daily Star, January 14, 2012.

151. Jeffrey Fleishman and Amro Hassan, “Egypt Military 

Giving Signs of Not Wanting to Relinquish Power,” Los Angeles 

Times, November 3, 2011. 
107

152. Tom Heneghan, “Libyans Stress Harmony to Avoid IraqStyle Chaos,” Reuters, September 4, 2011.

153. This is not to say that repression was not severe. For a 

moving novel on this subject, see Hisham Matar, In the Country of 

Men, New York: Dial Press, 2008.

154. “Libyan Estmate: At least 30,000 died in the war,” Associated Press, September 8, 2011. 

155. “Rival Libyan militias clash near army base,” Kuwait 

Times, November 14, 2011.

156. Ronald Bruce St. John, Libya: From Colony to Independence, 

Oxford, UK: Oneworld, 2008, p. 223. 

157. Ibid.

158. Thomas Erdbrink, “Vaunted Khamis Brigade Fails to Offer Much Resistance to Libyan Rebels,” Washington Post, August 

21, 2011. 

159. Rami al-Shaheibi and Hadeel al-Shalchi, “Libyan Rebels 

Try to Impose Control,” TIME, August 10, 2011. 

160. Paul Richter, “As Libya takes Stock, Moammar Kadafi’s 

Hidden Riches Astound,” Los Angeles Times, October 22, 2011. 

161. In Syria, some smaller political parties have been allowed 

to operate as Ba’athist allies in a cosmetic effort to make the regime appear more democratic. These parties might be best viewed 

as democratic ornaments which have no political role other than 

to suggest broad support for the regime.

162. As quoted in Liz Sly and Leila Fadel, “In wake of Libyan 

uprising, attention turns to Yemen, Syria,” Washington Post, October 21, 2011. 

163. “Syrian Stalemate,” The Middle East, November 2011, 

p. 18. 
108

164. Liz Sly, “Report Hint at Cracks in Syria Regime,” Washington Post, April 28, 2011; Elizabeth A. Kennedy and Diaa Hadid, 

“Syrian Army Units Turn on Each other Amid Crackdown,” Boston Globe, April 29, 2011. 

165. Kathierine Zoepf and Anthony Shadid, “Syrian Leader’s 

Brother Seen as Enforcer of Crackdown,” New York Times, June 7, 

2011. 

166. “Defiant Assad Praises Troops after Deadly Syria Crackdown,” Jordan Times, August 2, 2011. 

167. Khaled Yacoub Oweis, “Anti-Assad fighters defy odds in 

Syrian town,” Jordan Times, September 29, 2011.

168. Liam Stack, “In Slap at Syria, Turkey Shelters Anti-Assad 

Fighters,” New York Times, October 27, 2011. 

169. Sam Dagher, “Tiny Kingdom’s Huge Role in Libya 

Draws Concern,” Wall Street Journal, October 17, 2011. 

170. Michael Hirsh, “What Happens in Libya Stays in Libya,” 

National Journal, October 20, 2011. 
U.S. ARMY WAR COLLEGE

Major General Gregg F. Martin

Commandant

*****

STRATEGIC STUDIES INSTITUTE

Director

Professor Douglas C. Lovelace, Jr.

Director of Research

Dr. Antulio J. Echevarria II

Author

Dr. W. Andrew Terrill

Director of Publications

Dr. James G. Pierce

Publications Assistant

Ms. Rita A. Rummel

*****

Composition

Mrs. Jennifer E. Nevil