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Ethics: Questions & Morality of Human Actions, 3rd Edition

Iraq

by Thomas Tandy Lewis

Identification: Predominantly Arab Middle Eastern nation that has experienced an unusual amount of conflict and suffering

Type of Ethics: Modern history

Significance: The modern history of Iraq has been afflicted by tyrannical leaders, abuses of human rights, religious and ethnic hostilities, power struggles among rival clans, and disastrous wars

Situated in the northwest of the Persian Gulf, Iraq stands in the heart of western Asia. Except for a portion of the Shatt al-Arab (River of the Arabs), its national boundaries are generally arbitrary. A lack of common bonds for a national union has been one of the great problems of the country. Early in the twenty-first century, Iraq’s proven oil reserves were surpassed only by those of Saudi Arabia. Until the disastrous war over Kuwait in 1991, which was followed by more than a decade of economic sanctions, the Iraqi population enjoyed a moderately high living standard.

Ethnic and Religious Conflict

Almost 80 percent of Iraq’s 22.6 million people are Arabs—people who speak the Arabic language and share a common Arab culture. The Kurds, the other major ethnic group, constitute about 17 percent of the population. The Kurds speak their own language, which is related to Persian, and most of them live in the mountainous regions of northern Iraq, next to Kurdish regions of Turkey and Iran. Having a strong sense of nationalist identity, they have long desired a separate country, to be called Kurdistan, an idea that the Iraqi government has long opposed. In 1988, the Iraq government used poison gas against Kurdish villages.

Small groups of other minorities are scattered throughout the country. Turkmen make up about 2 percent, while Iranians, Assyrians, Lurs, and Armenians each have less than 1 percent. Almost 3 percent of the people belong to various Christian churches. Before 1948, Iraq had about 150,000 Jews, but since then, forced emigration has reduced their numbers to about nine thousand. Except for Jews, small ethnic minorities have generally been tolerated so long as they have not opposed official government policies.

About 97 percent of Iraqis are Muslims—followers of the Islamic religion. Almost all Kurds and one third of the Arabs are Sunni Muslims, who accept the orthodox Sunni interpretations of the Quran. The government has traditionally been controlled by Sunni Muslims. Approximately two-thirds of the Arabs are Shi?ites, who have different views of Islam and look to Ali as Mu?ammad’s true successor. Located primarily in the country’s south, they have separatist tendencies. Their 1991 rebellion against the central government was brutally suppressed.

A Violent Political Culture

Conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1515, Iraq was part of the Ottoman Empire until 1917. Great Britain then administered the country as a League of Nations mandate until 1932. During the first year after independence, Iraq’s army massacred Assyrian Christians. A bloody coup d’état of 1936 added to political instability, and a series of eight military governments ruled the country until 1941, when the British returned in force. With Iraqi self-rule in 1945, chaotic conditions allowed the Kurds to form a shortlived Kurdish Republic, which was brutally suppressed by the national army.

In the post-World War II years, Prime Minister Nuri al-Said shared power with the regent for the young king Faisal II. Iraqis fought in the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, which intensified anti-Zionist and anti-Western attitudes among the population. During the Suez Crisis of 1956, al-Said’s refusal to condemn Great Britain and France infuriated Arab nationalists.

Two years later, a group of left-wing military officers, led by General Abdul Karim Kassim, took over in a coup, killing both al-Said and the young king. The newregime executed scores of politicians and officers who had been connected with the monarchy. Democratic institutions were abolished. In 1961, attempts to suppress Kurdish nationalists led to a guerrilla war.

In 1963, a left-leaning group of military officers seized power in a coup, executing Kassim and his close associates. The new president, Colonel Abdul Salam Arif made an alliance with the Baath Party, a radical organization endorsing violence in pursuit of socialism, Arab nationalism, and anti-Western policies. In November, 1963, President Arif staged a successful anti-Baath coup. The next year, Baath members failed in an attempt to assassinate Arif, but in 1968, Baathist officers seized power in a violent coup.

Iraq Since 1968

Between 1968 and 1979, Colonel Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr was president of Iraq as well as chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council. Real power, however, was firmly in the hands of his assistant, Saddam Hussein, who controlled the internal security apparatus. When Bakr resigned in 1979, probably for health reasons, Hussein was quickly installed as president. Hussein’s first act was to purge the Baath Party of senior officers suspected of disloyalty, making it clear that opposition would not be tolerated. Most historians agree that Hussein’s regime became one of the most violent and repressive in the modern history of the Middle East.

Hussein led his country into three destructive wars. In 1980, he ordered the invasion of Iran, apparently with the goal of annexing an oil-rich Iranian province where Arabs were in the majority. The destructive conflict lasted eight years. Two years later, Hussein’s army occupied the oil-rich kingdom of Kuwait. In the Gulf War of 1991, a massive U.S.-led coalition forced the Iraqis to leave the small country.

The United Nations passed numerous resolutions authorizing inspectors to determine whether Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction (WMD). When Hussein failed fully to comply, a coalition of the United States, Britain, and a few other countries invaded Iraq and ended Hussein’s regime. Observers debated about whether the coalition’s preemptive war met the usual criteria of a just war.

Following Hussein’s overthrow, coalition authorities appointed an Iraqi governing council, with representatives from the major religious and ethnic communities. The council was given the difficult task of producing a democratic constitution by the summer of 2004. Kurds wanted to gain independence, while Shiites and Sunnis disagreed about how political leaders should be chosen. Numerous Iraqis bitterly resented the continued presence of foreign military forces, and some expressed their discontent with sniper attacks and terrorist bombings. Meanwhile, coalition inspectors failed to find any WMDs, the major reason given for intervention. Americans and British citizens became increasingly dissatisfied with the costs of the occupation.

Further Reading

1 

Bengio, Ofra. Saddam’s Word: Political Discourse in Iraq. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

2 

Hakim, Sahib. Human Rights in Iraq. London: Middle East Watch, 1992.

3 

Makiya, Kanan. Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.

4 

Miller, John, and Aaron Kenedi, ed. Inside Iraq: The History, the People, and the Modern Conflicts of the World’s Least Understood Land. New York: Marlowe, 2002.

5 

Shawcross, William. Allies: The United States, Britain, Europe, and the War in Iraq. New York: Perseus, 2004.

6 

Tripp, Charles. A History of Iraq. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

7 

Vaux, Kenneth. Ethics and the Gulf War. Boulder: Westview Press, 1992.

See also: Biochemical weapons; Chemical warfare; Hussein, Saddam; Intervention; Israeli-Palestinian conflict; National security and sovereignty

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Lewis, Thomas Tandy. "Iraq." Ethics: Questions & Morality of Human Actions, 3rd Edition, edited by George Lucas & John K. Roth, Salem Press, 2019. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Ethics_0502.
APA 7th
Lewis, T. T. (2019). Iraq. In G. Lucas & J. K. Roth (Eds.), Ethics: Questions & Morality of Human Actions, 3rd Edition. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Lewis, Thomas Tandy. "Iraq." Edited by George Lucas & John K. Roth. Ethics: Questions & Morality of Human Actions, 3rd Edition. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2019. Accessed December 14, 2025. online.salempress.com.