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The Power of Influence:

How Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath Party influenced children to becoming obedient citizens

        As we have grown up here in America and are given more responsibilities to fill, we often think back to our childhood and wish we could just be children forever. We had fewer responsibilities to worry about because our parents took care of them. We were full of energy and used that energy playing sports and other made up games with our friends. We had choices in what we ate, who we hung out with, and what to do each day. Life was good. Unfortunately, life for children has not been that way for many children in other parts of the world. It is sometimes hard for us to realize how good life really was until we look at the lives of children in other parts of the world whom had a different experience. Iraqi children are among those whose story has been a sad one. During the reign of Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath Party these children have been under a watchful eye and are told what they are to believe in. For nearly forty years these children have been faced with many horrific and tragic situations that most of us will never know in America.  It is a wonder why these children have not fought back to get their freedoms and create an Iraq that has a government of the people. For the children of Iraq, they have been the victims of a government of influence.  The government has controlled the children and taught them to be obedient citizens who are too scared to fight back.

        The Ba’ath Party was originally a party designed to reform Iraq into a modern state. The goals of the party were focused around secularism, socialism, and the creation of a pan-Arab state. The party gained power for the first time in 1963. At the time, Saddam Hussein was studying in Egypt, where he fled to in 1959 after he made a failed attempt to assassinate King Faisal II. Upon the Ba’ath Party success in 1963, Saddam moved back to Iraq to take part in the revolution. He took a job as an interrogator with the Ba’ath party, a job that was nearly synonymous with torturer. His strengths at the job quickly moved him up the chain of command within the party.

        While still in this job, Saddam was arrested and thrown in jail by some military officers who were not fond of the Ba’ath regime. In 1966, after being jailed for two years, Saddam managed to escape and started his personal aspirations to take power. He set up an internal security group called Jihaz Haneen. The goal of this organization was to watch for opposition building within the party. In 1968, General Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr seized power in the Ba’ath Party. President Bakr appointed Saddam as the Deputy Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council, a position that also placed him in charge of internal security. For the next ten years, Saddam held this position and built up the internal security of the Ba’ath Party. He appointed family members to other positions throughout the department. He also builds a huge spy network that will span across most of Iraq and will haunt the Iraqis in nearly all aspect of daily life.

        In 1978, Iraq and Syria talked of joining together in a federation. Should this merger happen, Saddam stood to lose his number two seat in the Iraqi government to President Assad of Syria. Faced with this prospect, Saddam insisted that President Bakr resign from office, an action that put Saddam as the president. In 1979, Saddam got his wish. Along with the removal of Bakr, Saddam also had twenty other high ranking officials arrested and, soon after, killed along with over four hundred military officers. With this move, Saddam was left without any real opposition.

        Since the Ba’ath Party originally had come to power in 1963, the only goal that it had accomplished was secularism. A socialist state was never sought after as the only ones who would receive sufficient money were those loyal to the Ba’ath Party and who were willing to prove it time and again. With the collapse of the Iraqi/Syrian federation and the extreme opposition to Egypt, the pan-Arab movement in Iraq would also crumble.

        Secularism was, however, achieved to a large extent. Saddam, who was raised Sunni Muslim, was not a practicing Muslim. Though he claimed to be religious, he did little that would prove his faith. He did, however, have his bloodline traced back to the descendants of the Prophet Mohammed and have a Quran written out entirely with his blood.[1]

        The secular movement made a large change in the school system. A large portion of the Iraqi population was supportive of the secular movement as the majority of the country was Shiite Muslim. A smaller, but still significant, portion of the population was Sunni Muslim. Only a handful of the overall population practiced religions other than these. College students, of which many were interested in politics, were supportive of the secular movement. With the government and the people in agreement, secularism was successful within the government and public schools. Daily prayers and religious studies were removed from schools throughout Iraq.

        Instead of religion, the curriculum was replaced with Ba’ath Party ideals. Every morning the students would have to recite the accomplishments of the Ba’ath revolution.[2] The students had to memorize these accomplishments in order to recite them. These accomplishments were also placed just inside the door of every classroom as well, so it would be among the first things that the children saw when they went into the room. To further indoctrinate the minds of the Iraqi children, the students were tested on speeches that were given by either Saddam Hussein or any other high ranking Ba’ath Party member.

        Students of these Iraqi schools would receive new text books during the earlier years of the Ba’ath reign and, again, when Saddam seized power. The books were filled with new material and propaganda that all concluded that the Ba’ath Party and Saddam were the best things that happened to Iraq. To further the control over literature, book stores were now under close watch of the regime. Books and Magazines were screened prior to being placed on the shelves for purchase. Many books were censored or banned from sale throughout Iraq. Magazines were also censored or banned and, often times, had pages physically removed from them.[3] The only other literature where students or citizens could attain information was the Iraqi newspaper. The newspapers, however, were also controlled by the regime as well. Under Saddam’s rule, the paper was headed by one of his son’s to ensure that it was in the right hands.

        Television and radio, the last of the media outlets were also controlled by the government. The only channels broadcast on television were the few that the Iraqi government allowed. Satellite and cable television was not an option for the citizens. News that was broadcast was highly biased and could not be trusted for legitimate news coverage.

        With all of the propaganda floating around, it seemed that parents would be sure to notice the influence of the regime over what their children were learning, and they did. Unfortunately, they felt that there was little that they could do to change things. The internal security network that was originally created by Saddam in the 1960’s was now in full effect. The system was so intricate that even an Iraqi parent could have no idea who was working with the party and who was just protecting themselves. Family members could not even be trusted anymore in a society where family has strong ties. Family members could only assume that the immediate family was still intact and either with the party or secretly opposed to it.

        Children would sometimes come to school to be called out of class and interrogated without parental consent or knowledge. Members of the Ba’ath Party’s secret police would come in and ask students questions to find out if their parents and family was loyal to the regime or not.[4] For the younger children, this was an especially useful technique because it was hard for parents to explain to their children what to tell to these interrogators. The younger the child, the more intimidating an interrogator could seem to be. These were the same men who would brutally torture people not loyal to the Ba’ath Regime. For the older Iraqi kids, they knew this, and their worst fear was that they would get caught in their lies by contradicting what they had already said.

        Throughout the stages of school there were slight variations to the curriculum based on gender. While girls and boys both studied art education and physical education, the two were separated by gender. Additionally, girls also had the additional subject of home economics while the boys had extra time in physical education.[5] Women of Iraq have been considered unequal to men for hundreds of years. Many women were taught only to read and not to write prior to the Ba’ath Revolution. Under the Ba’ath education system, women were now required to go to school. Though they were required, it has been documented from 1963 to 1973 that approximately only 30 percent of the school’s population was girls. The numbers also show that the test scores of the girls throughout the same time period was consistently higher than the scores of the boys.[6] Despite these results, often times it would be the boys who would continue on to higher education.

        Despite the mild differences in the between genders, all students would study many of the same subjects that are practiced in the United States. Among these would be the sciences, such as, chemistry, physics, biology, and health. Math subjects would consist of algebra and geometry. Literary subjects, though varying by region, would oftentimes include Arabic, Kurdish, and English. The students also had a wide amount of humanity courses that they would be taught throughout their twelve school years to include social studies, history, geography, civics, sociology, philosophy and economics.[7]

        During the final two years of preparatory school, students would either pursue a literary or science course of study. The science education was slightly more rigorous and involved two more hours of school per week. The literary course of study was chosen more often though it had been determined that the needs of the nation would suggest that more students would be needed in the sciences.

        Some students chose to take a path in vocational education rather than traditional schooling. Students in vocational education would study in a focused subject ranging from agricultural skills, factory skills, craftsmen skills, and various other labor skills. During the 1963 to 1973 time frame only sixteen percent of students were female.[8]

        Some families were able to send a child to college if the child’s grades were good enough. The grades, however, were only partially based on the students’ performance. Oftentimes, the students were given extra points if their parents were loyal to the Ba’ath Regime or if the student had completed a two month course in military training over a summer. Students lucky enough to attend college were not lucky enough to pick their course of study. They were assigned a program based on their scores on standardized testing at the end of basic schooling. The highest ranking students would be chosen to be doctors and scientists. Many of those who were not able to meet the required test scores found themselves in a less desirable situation. They were not qualified to move on to college level education, but they were too educated to take on roles of the low class. Retesting on the final examination at the end of their preparatory school, which is equivalent to high school, was banned because this would not reflect the student’s actual knowledge of the subject. Likewise, tutoring and practice examinations were also banned for the same reason. Partially due to these banned practices, and partially because of an inadequate education system, the failure rates were between 43% and 53%, which left many of the students trying to decide what to do next.

        In the early 1980’s, UNESCO drew up a plan for education as a template to suggest to various countries trying to work out new educational systems. As noted in “Youth Education in Iraq and Egypt”, there were some major differences in the UNESCO educational plan and the Iraqi educational system.[9] The author points out that the Iraqi system had less modern subjects than the UNESCO plan and that the arrangement of materials in Iraqi textbooks was less likely to facilitate discovery.  The Iraqi program relied on rigor and taught only one method to arrive at the conclusion of math problems while UNESCO’s program allowed for common sense and taught multiple methods to solve complicated math problems.

        The education in many subjects during the late 1990’s was less than substantial as U.S. sanctions took a toll on the money that was being invested in educational tools and updated procedures. When U.S. sanctions went into effect, Saddam allowed the sanctions to hurt the citizens before it hurt the government.[10] U.N. programs designed to help the affected Iraqi citizens who were struggling under the sanctions were headed off by the govern and Saddam blamed the U.S. government with the intention that the citizens would compel more hatred to the western world.

        Outside of the school, family life was similarly pressed to hide disloyalties to the Iraqi Government. Neighborhoods soon became under the eye of the Ba’ath Party. Circles were formed in the majority of neighborhoods in Iraq. These circles were made up of Ba’ath Party members with the highest ranking member as the head of the circle. The circles were used to inform the members of what was happening in the neighborhood relevant to the regime. All members were required to attend the meetings though some of the circle heads could be paid off to ignore the absence. For the children and the families that lived in these neighborhoods who were only loyal to the Ba’ath Regime in the open, it made life rough. They were constantly under the watch of the members who would report them for any sign of opposition to the government for their own well being.

        There were advantages to reporting your neighbors, co-workers, or anyone else who might seem to be opposed to the party. The more merit one received in the within the party, the more he or she could get paid for their loyalty to the regime. If one were caught not reporting someone for their questionable activities, then he or she may come under government scrutiny.

        It would become apparent when one of the members had reached higher levels of trust within the party because they would be rewarded with a pay increase and sometimes even gifts, such as new cars. Cars in good condition were a commodity in Iraq. Most cars in Iraq were not in good condition because the Ba’ath Regime wanted to limit the mobility of the Iraqi citizens. Many families had cars prior to when the party came to power but it was even hard to keep the cars running as parts were hard to come by. Many children had to walk to school as there was no public transportation for them to use, and it was not necessary to waste the car usage on that. The use of the cars was normally reserved for the parents’ trip to work if it was far away, or to make important trips. Long trips in the car were difficult as many of them did not have air conditioning. Even an hour long trip could be dangerous in the heat of the day.

        Families who were well off could afford to have live-in maids stay with them, often from Egypt, to help tend to the daily chores at home. As some found out though, these maids were sometimes hired by the government to spy on the family. These spies were often highly effective as they would become very close to the family, including the children.[11] Spies, such as this kind, who were not part of the Ba’ath Party, were threatened and kept under close watch by the regime. Though they couldn’t be watched all the time, the third party spies would be just as scared as anyone else to resist the regime’s orders.

        Healthcare for children throughout Iraq slowly diminished as time went on. While at the beginning of Saddam’s reign in the early 1980’s healthcare was doing well, medicine was hard to come by in the 1990’s. Diseases which had once been extinct in Iraq, such as cholera and polio, were returning with haunting results. This is because the medicines were being withheld from the healthcare facilities. Many of the medicines intended to treat these illnesses and other were being resold to other countries.[12] Saddam also took many of the medicines for himself, his family, and those in his party rather than those who were in need of the medicines the most.

       As it has been documented many times throughout the reign of the Ba’ath Party and the rule of Saddam Hussein, the children of Iraq were denied their right to think for themselves. By denying the children the means of free thought and discovery in the educational system the government has only produced literate children who are, on the outside at least, obedient citizens. Using methods that do not entirely reflect a child’s true potential or that is entirely based on academic merit the government has hurt itself by not allowing opportunity for economic growth. The only reason Iraq was able to survive in such a system was due to the large quantities of oil that produce money for the country. The government-run oil industry allowed for the country to be run by a small minority of scholars and created a large peasant class who were unable to seek white collar jobs because they were not scholastically qualified for them according to the Ba’ath educational program. To further instill the fear of the children to live the way the government wanted them too, the children have witnessed many atrocities to friends and family members to serve as a reminder of what the punishments were to try and live a life other than what the government intended for them to live. Though every person has had their share of hard times in life, it is hard to find such extensive examples of helpless children who are left with no options than to comply with the evil tyrannical ways of an oppressive government or die trying to fight for freedom.

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[1] Bowden, 2002

[2] Kubba, 2003, pg. 6

[3] ibid. pg. 13

[4] State Department, 2001, pg. 1

[5] al-Kasey, 1983, pg. 142

[6] Kufaishi, 1977, pg. 57

[7] ibid, pg. 42

[8] al-Kasey, 1983, pg. 113

[9] al-Kasey, 1983, pg. 113 - 114

[10] State Department, 2001, pg. 4

[11] Kubba, 2003, pg. 117

[12] State Department, 2002, pg. 12
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