The Report
of the Iraq Inquiry
1.
This Section
addresses:
•
the
decision to remove some members of the Ba’ath Party from public
office
after May
2003, a process known as de‑Ba’athification;
•
the
implementation of that decision; and
•
the impact
it had on Iraq.
2.
This Section
does not address:
•
pre‑invasion
analysis of, and planning for, de‑Ba’athification, which is
addressed
in Sections
6.4 and 6.5;
•
the
decision to disband the Iraqi Army, which is described in Section
12.1; and
•
the
creation of the Coalition Provisional Authority, which is covered
in
Section 9.1.
3.
The Inquiry’s
conclusions in relation to the events described in this Section can
be
read in
Section 11.2.
The Arab
Socialist Party or Ba’ath Party was founded in Damascus in 1947
by
Michael Aflaq
and Salah al‑Din al‑Bitar.1
Its core
objective was the creation of a single,
united Arab
State.
Having
established itself in Syria, the Ba’ath Party then spread to other
Arab countries.
The Iraqi
Ba’ath Party was formally established in 1952.
The Ba’ath
Party took power in Syria through a coup in 1963, where it was
enshrined
in the
Constitution as “the leading party of society and state”. The party
seized power
in Iraq
after a revolution in the same year but was manoeuvred out by the
military a few
months later.
The Ba’ath
Party returned to power in Iraq in 1968 in a coup led by Ahmad
Hasan al‑Bakr,
supported
by Saddam Hussein. Ba’ath members and party organisations were
imposed
on the
Iraqi military shortly after.
Saddam
Hussein succeeded President al‑Bakr in 1979, after which point the
party was
increasingly
dominated by individuals linked to him by family or tribal
ties.
An
ideological split in 1966 led to the Syrian and Iraqi parties
becoming estranged and
bitterly
antagonistic toward each other. The Syrian Ba’ath Party maintained
a focus on
Arab unity
while Iraqi Ba’athists focused on Iraqi nationalism.
1
Paper DIS,
1 February 2002, ‘The Iraq Ba’ath Party – Its History, Ideology and
Role in Regime Security’.
2