Looking back at Gulf history: "Lines drawn on a map..."

Labour Briefing no. 107, 12 September 1990, p. 9

Transcribed or corrected by hand from the printed page.

By-line as printed: Phil Hearse (Islington North CLP).

The Gulf has been an arena of instability since the fall of the US's trusted ally, the Shah of Iran, in 1978. Just two years later Saddam Hussein undertook his first invasion — against Iran.

Then, the US view was that Iran posed the greater danger. US firepower was used to give support to Iraq during the "tanker war" and in the conflict over Iranian mining of Gulf waters.

But Saddam Hussein could not be trusted to play the role of imperialism's key ally in the region. Unlike Iran, Iraq is an Arab power, just hours away from the Jordanian border with Israel.

Israeli alarm at the dangers involved in the emergence of Iraq as a strong Arab power was shown in 1981 when Israeli planes bombed Iraq's nuclear reactor (a raid carried out with US logistical support).

Since the early 1980s the US has been building a massive force for emergency intervention in the Middle East: first the "Rapid Deployment Force" and then the 300,000 strong "Central Command", which is undertaking the current operation.

Iraq was in hock to Kuwait for its loans during the Iran-Iraq war: these debts have now been spectacularly cancelled.

Kuwait and the other Gulf statelets were preventing Iraq pushing through oil-price rises.

These were the immediate spur to the invasion of Kuwait, but the longterm ambition of the ruling group in Baghdad is to make itself the dominant Arab power, to control a larger share of the world's oil, and to seek the financial tribute that the Arab states always give to the country seen to be "confronting Zionism".

To understand the origins of the present conflict, it is necessary to go back to 1899, when Britain carved out the territory of Kuwait from the old Ottoman (Turkish) empire when a local emir appealed for help.

Mespotomia (Iraq) remained part of the Ottoman empire until 1918.

Turkey sided with Germany during the First World War and its empire was dismembered by the victorious powers. Britain was given Iraq as a League of Nations "mandate" territory; when the mandate ran out in 1932, Britain installed a monarchy in the now supposedly independent country.

The king was under the domination of the British, given instructions directly by the British ambassador.

In 1958 the king was overthrown in a massive popular revolution, led by army officers but strongly influenced by the Iraqi Communist Party.

The revolution's leader, Colonel Qassim (Kassem), acquiesced in many progressive social reforms, including land reform, free education and a massive housing programme.

At this point the Ba'ath party, which had been founded in Syria in 1946, was comparatively small.

Qassim threatened to annex Kuwait in 1961, but the rapid despatch of British troops blocked him.

A political crisis developed in Iraq over Qassim's opposition to Arab unity. The Iraqi Communist Party uncritically backed Qassim.

He was overthrown in an army coup, in which the Ba'ath party was complicit. Communists were massacred.

But after only a few months the Ba'ath itself was ejected from government.

A "coup within a coup" brought the Ba'ath back to power in 1968. Saddam occupied the No. 2 position, but increasingly acted as the real boss.

The Ba'ath Party had sided with the army against the Communists to bring itself to power. But it paid the price.

What had been a real Arab nationalist mass movement became totally subordinate to the military dictatorship.

Iraq is now controlled by a super-rich "bureaucratic bourgeoisie" which owes its power to its role in the state apparatus.

Oil is controlled by the state and in the end it is state patronage which gives wealth and power.

The three key prongs of power are the army, the security apparatuses and the Ba'ath party which acts with the secret police as the regime's eyes and ears.

Conflicts in the Ba'ath hierarchy are usually settled by assassinations.

Saddam Hussein has been careful to build a pyramid of power in which the key players directly depend on his personal patronage. All opposition is crushed by torture and mass murder.

The worst suffering has been borne by Iraq's two and a half million Kurds against whom a genocidal war has been waged since 1972.

Saddam's claim that Kuwait is "really" part of Iraq is a tall story.

Both Iraq and Kuwait are inventions of imperialism; their borders are lines on a map drawn by imperialist powers after World War 1.

Kuwait itself is a semi-feudal relic, ruled by a dynastic caste, with no democracy. The majority of the population are immigrant workers.

But while socialists shed no tears for the Kuwaiti state, the people of that country should have the democratic right to decide whether or not to be integrated into Iraq.

The tens of thousands of Iraqi exiles in Kuwait, who are probably already [b]eing shipped back for execution, would certainly not have made that choice.

transcribed from the page image, 2 Nov 2026; spelling as printed (Mespotomia; longterm). Damaged print: "already [b]eing" - the b is broken in the scan and supplied in brackets. On the page "Feature: Gulf crisis", kicker "Looking back at Gulf history" in a band. The by-line (By Phil Hearse, Islington North CLP) is set between rules at the head of the third column, mid-article. The bold opening paragraphs are given as the bold standfirst. The article ends in a short fourth column below the photo. No jumps. Left out: the photo of Iraqi demonstrators in 1954 and its caption; "Saddam's imperialist bedfellows: He was their man" (credited to Alexander Cockburn, The Nation), "Said speaks" by Edward Said, and "Panama: America's last invasion" by Mike Phipps, all on the same page.