Professor Eric Davis of Rutgers University is an acknowledged expert on modern Iraq, focusing his research not only on the current political situation, but also on the relationship between state power and historical memory. In a telephone interview with AM candidate Julia Buchmann on January 5, 2006, Professor Eric Davis responded to questions on his latest book Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq (see about the book below) as well as on the current social and political situation in Iraq.

Julia Buchmann: In the introduction to your book, you quoted Saddam Hussein as saying: “If we can capture Iraqi youth, then we can capture the future” (“Naksib al-shabab, naksib al-mustaqbal”). Although Iraqi youth do not form the nucleus of your study, could you briefly elaborate the ways in which the regime under the leadership of Saddam Hussein convinced Iraqi youth to support a Ba'athist model of society?

Eric Davis: In answer to that question, you have to make a distinction between what type of Iraqi youth you are talking about. For example, many young Iraqis, who were recruited to the Pioneers or the Vanguards organizations, were often more interested – as were their parents – in obtaining new clothing, food, education, all of which they received in the camps run by these organizations. One can argue that Iraqi youth often came to these organizations with a political tabula rasa, but through time they were socialized or inculcated with some views of the Ba'ath Party, ancillary to why they were there in the first place. We need to remember that very few youth were predisposed to Ba'athist ideology. However, when they realized that internalizing this ideology could both offer immediate material rewards, and eventually perhaps even the possibility of upward mobility, some youth accepted Ba'athism, not necessarily enthusiastically, but often for instrumental reasons. I think this is a subject that still needs to be studied in greater detail.

When we turn to youth at the university level, we find that, during the 1980s, a very interesting magazine was published called The Literary Vanguard (al-Talica al-Adabiya). This was begun by the regime to solicit articles on the Iran-Iraq war by Iraqi youth- primarily university students - from a literary perspective. The journal evolved to become somewhat of a wider forum for young people who submitted literary pieces. In that sense, one can argue that The Literary Vanguard was attractive because young people felt they had some way to express themselves on cultural matters. I think some of the contributors also developed some affinity with Ba'athist ideology.

Where some older young people were attracted to Bacthist ideology, I think it was not so much in terms of the ideology itself, namely Pan-Arabism, but rather due to the Ba'ath’s emphasis on folklore, which is another way of saying that many Iraqis – both young and old - were interested in knowing more about their origins, because most came from rural backgrounds, from villages and had migrated at some point during the 1920s and after to urban areas. It is a very complex tableau to try to distinguish between those people who actually adhered to Ba'athist ideology because they read the ideology, understood it and accepted it; those people who became interested in the ideology because they saw it as a way of promoting themselves in terms of careers or education; or those people who were attracted to Ba'athism peripherally, not so much because of its intrinsic value, but due to its emphasis on certain aspects of Iraqi culture and society that they found interesting, for example, folklore, folk poetry, folk dancing, and so on.

J.B.: In the Ba'athist “Project for the Rewriting of History,” was there a systematic attempt to reach the illiterate part of the Iraqi populace? And if so, how did it resonate with them?
E.D.: That is an excellent question. I think one of the problems with the Ba'athist regime’s “Project for the Rewriting of History” was that it was primarily based in a specific social class. It was largely directed at urban elements, the particularly educated sectors of the middle classes, including the lower middle classes, the solid middle class and the upper middle class. It did not really speak to the wealthier members of Iraqi society, many of who were expropriated or marginalized by the Bacth Party, or to the bulk of the society, which is made up, of course, of peasants and workers. However, the fact that Saddam had many murals made and many photographs enlarged of him and placed on large buildings, which showed him in various types of dress that would resonate with the poorer classes of society, for example, tribal or military, were meant to use visual imagery as a mechanism for transcending illiteracy. I think this process can also be seen in television programming. For example, there was a very popular television program during the 1980s called Baghdadiyat, which would roughly translate as “aspects of Baghdadi culture,” which focused on folkloric dimension of old Baghdad, such as its popular (shacbi) quarters, artisan activity, and folk poetry. Here illiterate people could be incorporated into the Ba'athist regime’s efforts to structure how Iraqis thought of their past and cultural heritage because this programming was, of course, visual rather than textual.

J.B.: The Dutch historian and philosopher Johan Huizinga once said that “[h]istory is the intellectual form in which a civilization renders account to itself of its past”. What attempts are currently being undertaken by Iraqi nationals to tell the events of the years 1968-2003 from the new vantage point?

E.D.: That is another excellent question. To date, not that much has been done to understand what allowed Iraq to be ruled by such a repressive dictatorship between 1968 and 2003. I think the reason for this is the widespread fear of opening up a Pandora’s Box. In other words, I think that the era of Ba'athist rule is still, for many Iraqis, a very sensitive issue. It necessitates going into the question of who did what, because in many ways almost everyone in Iraqi society, especially members of the middle classes, was implicated in one way or another. It is similar to conditions in Nazi Germany. If you part of the urban middle class, you had to have some relationship to the Nazi Party if you were going to accomplish anything. For Germans, that did not necessarily mean at all that you supported the party. You could have actually been opposed to Nazism, but nevertheless were forced to maintain some type of nominal membership in the Nazi Party.

Given the current efforts of political elites in Iraq to manipulate ethnic politics, I think this only compounds the difficulties of coming to terms with the past. The raison d’être of Saddam’s rule was to use ethnic sectarianism as a “divide and conquer” strategy. This meant that rural Sunni Arabs in particular both benefited the most from Bacthist rule, but also dominated the security services and the officer corps and thus were responsible for most of the regime’s human rights abuses.

Understandably, there is much resentment on the part of other ethnic groups, such as the Shica and Kurds, towards the Sunni Arab community, even if it is unfair to tar them all with the same brush.

To confront the past, I think that, first and foremost, the Iraqi government has to find mechanisms whereby a sense of trust can first be built up among the country’s different ethnic groups, so that these various ethnic groups can see that they can work together to achieve certain common ends. I think that, only after that sense of trust has been reestablished to a significant degree, will Iraqi society be able to examine its past and try to understand what really took place under Saddam’s rule.

In the spring of 2004, I attended a very interesting conference organized by the United States Institute of Peace and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, on “Trauma and Transitional Justice in Divided Societies.” I was very struck by one of the points that was hammered home again and again by many participants that oftentimes “truth and reconciliation commissions” can actually exacerbate problems of confronting the past, rather than achieving true reconciliation. Problems can occur if the timing is bad, meaning that society is not yet ready to confront the past, or if the processes employed by these commissions are not conducted in a sensitive manner. As someone who reads the Iraqi press on a consistent basis, I am struck by the fact that, while there are all sorts of illusions to what happened in the past, often in the form of “sloganeering” about the evils of Saddam’s regime, there has been relatively little in the way of concrete statistical and empirical analysis of what actually transpired under Ba'athist rule. That is something I think most Iraqis are still avoiding at the moment. It is perfectly understandable that Iraqis are not yet ready to come to terms with the Ba'athist era given the ongoing insurgency, distrust among Iraq’s main ethnic groups, external interference in the country’s domestic politics, and the political uncertainty that still exists about the future political and economic direction of the country.

J.B.: How do you see the long-term prospects for the development of a strong civil society and an Iraqi political arena that fosters involvement of all ethnicities in light of the December 2005 elections?

E.D.: I am someone who still believes – I’m probably in a minority – that ethnicity is really not some type of primordial element in Iraqi society. I am sure you are familiar with the whole literature on the so called “ancient hatreds”, of which Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations is recent manifestation. For example, let us look back at Lebanon: Lebanon in the 1970s experienced an extremely vicious civil war which pitted various ethnic groups against one another. This, in turn, led people to begin to think according to an identity politics defined in ethnic terms. But having spent some time recently in Lebanon, I am struck by the extent to which groups that were at loggerheads and fighting one another back in the 1970s, are now working together, e.g. to extract Syrian forces from the country.

The kind of fluidity that we see in many societies in terms of ethnic relations belies the fact that these are not primordial relations. Rather, ethnic politics are frequently organized around efforts by political elites who are trying to manipulate members of their community, especially under conditions of economic deprivation and lack of trust. One thing I have been struck by in talking to many Iraqis is the extent to which they are constantly pointing out the mixed ethnicity of the families they themselves come from. Here we are not so much talking about the poorer segments of society, but about the urban and more educated classes. My point here is that I really do not think sectarianism is a long-term viable political strategy. I think if Iraqis saw some serious economic development and progress in their society right now, we would see a precipitous drop in ethnic cleavages, and ethnic identity politics, because all of Iraq’s ethnic groups would realize that, by themselves, they cannot bring about real economic and political change. I am not trying to say that a kind of unified political community is around the corner, but I do see a federal Iraq, in which considerable progress is taking place, especially at the political and sociocultural levels. I think segments of the populace at large are anti-sectarian, if only because they see the devastation that sectarianism brought to the country under Bacthist rule.

Another point is that Western analysts who study Iraq often fail to take into account cross-cutting cleavages. Within the Shi‘a religious community in Iraq, itself a subset of the larger Shi‘a community, the various sects continue to vie with each other for power. And if we turn to the Sunni community, we find many insurgents furious that the “Association of Muslim Scholars” would become involved to a certain extent, or the “Iraqi Accord Front” would get involved in the elections, or even talk to members of the government or members of the Shi‘a community. And then, as I said, few analysts are seriously taking into account social class cleavages, or urban-rural or generational cleavages, which often cross-cut ethnic identities. When we start develop a more complex model of Iraqi society and politics by examining these cross-cutting cleavages, we find that the simplistic statements constantly put forth by the Western media are highly problematic. That is not to say that ethnicity is not a salient category of analysis, it is very salient, but to see it functioning in uni-dimensional ways is the main problem. All these social and political factors, it seems to me, complicate the idea that a rigid and sectarian ethnic politics will prevent any type of progressive civil society from developing in the future.

About the book

Eric Davis’ most recent monograph, the long-awaited Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq, examines the relationship between state power and historical memory in modern Iraq. First published in 2005, the book benefits from the author’s vast experience and immense knowledge gained from his time spent in Iraq; it also gains from his activities as Professor of Political Science and former Director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Rutgers University. Drawing on a wide range of personal recollections and interviews with Iraqi intellectuals, Davis meticulously analyzes a variety of publications by the Bacthist regime after 1968, as well as by the opposition. This micro-level study of the political arena is used to enhance a more global examination of Ba'ath Party attempts at altering understandings of Iraqis of the history of their country. From the first page onwards, Davis makes it evident that the Gramscian theory of hegemony, which he uses as a basis for his own study, has strongly influenced him. Tightly argued, vivid in prose and illustrative examples, as well as revealing in insights and original thoughts, Memories of State is a must-read for everyone interested in modern Iraq.

Book details

Title: Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq
Author: Eric Davis
Publication date: February 2005
Publisher: University of California Press
Language: English
ISBN: 0520235460

Julia Buchmann is a Fulbright Scholar from Germany pursuing an AM degree at CMES.