IRAQ

Abstract

At the end of 1979 when the fall of the Shah of Iran was imminent, all eyes were set on Iraq. Iraq was then seen as the new giant of the Gulf. It had remained completely aloof from all the major inter-Arab disputes and contnwersies for almost a decade and had exclusively focused its attention on its own socio-economic development. Its development performance during the 1970s had been phenomenal. Iraqi economic planning was rated by international development experts as the most prudent, rational and well-implemented in the entire Middle East. Notwithstanding-or perhaps because of- its oppressive political apparatus, the Ba'thist state had imposed a code of strict, puritanical financial ethics on its international economic transactions. Iraqi development experience was thus regarded as unique in the Third World in that it was the least hog-tied by malpractices, pay-offs and personal empire-building by the leadership. Iraq in 1979 was thus a nation with great promise. The size of its oil reserves and potential oil revenues, its capacity for sustained economic development based on a non-oil economy, and its vast water resources that offered the possibility of an expanded economic base in both agriculture and industry, were some of the major advantages Iraq enjoyed over other Arab oil-producing states. Its geographical position bordering Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Syria, Jordan, Turkey, and Iran placed it in an area of great geostrategic concern for both regional and global ewers. Its pivotal position between Israel to the west and the Gulf to the east, where it forms what Christine Moss Helms has called "the eastern flank of the Arab World" was regarded as unique in the Middle East. But then, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein took the greatest gamble of his life-and lost. He misjudged the vulnerability of the newly installed Islamic Republic of Iran under the leadership of Ayatullah Khomeini and, believing in his own rhetoric about the invincibility of the Iraqi armed forces, decided to invade Iran on some filmsy pretexts. Five and a half years after the war ...