-Caveat Lector- >From http://www.infoplease.com/ce5/CE003962.html Encyclopedia Ba'ath party Pronunciation: [b��th] Arab political party, in Syria and in Iraq. Its main ideological objectives are secularism, socialism, and pan-Arab unionism. Founded in Damascus in 1941 and reformed, with the name Ba'ath, in the early 1950s, it rapidly achieved political power in Syria. In 1958�with one of its founders, Salah al-Din Bitar, as foreign minister�it led Syria into the ill-fated United Arab Republic (UAR) with Egypt. The Ba'athists, like most other Syrians, quickly came to resent Egyptian domination, and the Ba'athist members of the union government resigned in Dec., 1959. Syria withdrew from the UAR in 1961. In 1963 a military coup d'etat restored the Ba'ath to power in Syria, and it embarked on a course of large-scale nationalization. From 1963 the Ba'ath was the only legal Syrian political party, but factionalism and intra-party splintering led to a succession of governments and new constitutions. In 1966 a military junta representing the more radical elements in the party displaced the more moderate wing in power, purging from the party its original founders, Michel Aflaq and Bitar. Subsequently the main line of division was drawn between the so-called progressive faction, led by Nureddin Atassi, which gave priority to the firm establishment of a one-party state and to neo-Marxist economic reform, and the so-called nationalist group, led by Gen. Hafez al-Assad. Assad's following was less doctrinaire about socialism, favoring a militant posture on the Arab union and hostility toward Israel. Despite constant maneuvering and government changes, the two factions remained in an uneasy coalition of power until 1970, when, in another coup, Assad succeeded in ousting Atassi as prime minister. As of 1992, Assad, one of the longest-ruling leaders of the contemporary Middle East, and the Ba'athist party remained at Syria's political helm. In Iraq the Ba'athists first came to power in the coup d'etat of Feb., 1963, when Abd al-Salem Arif became president. Interference from the Syrian Ba'athists and disputes between the moderates and extremists, culminating in an attempted coup by the latter in Nov., 1963, served to discredit the extremists. However, the moderates continued to play a major role in the succeeding governments. In July, 1968, a bloodless coup brought to power the Ba'athist general Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr. Wranglings within the party continued, and the government periodically purged its dissident members. Since their inceptions the Ba'athist regimes of Syria and Iraq have often been diametrically opposed. As of 1992 relations remained strained and antagonistic between the two nations' leaders, Assad and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Bibliography: See Majid Khadduri, Socialist Iraq (1978); David Roberts, The Ba'th & the Creation of Modern Syria (1987); Raymond Hinnebusch, Authoritarian Power and State Formation in Ba'thist Syria (1989). See also bibliography under Iraq; Syria. + + + + + + + + + + + + Encyclopedia Bakr, Ahmad Hasan al- Pronunciation: [�khm�d� h�s�n� �l-b�k�ur] 1914�82, president of Iraq (1968-79). He served as an officer in the Iraqi army but was forced to retire (1958) because of his participation in revolutionary activities. A member of the Ba'ath party, an ultranationalist left-wing group, he became prime minister after the Ba'athists seized power in 1963. He left the government later in that same year when conservative military leaders forced the Ba'athists from power. Bakr became president in 1968 after leading another Ba'athist coup d'etat, and was replaced by Saddam Hussein in 1979. + + + + + + + + + Encyclopedia Assad, Hafez al- Pronunciation: [h�fez� �l-�s-s�d�] 1928�, president of Syria. He graduated (1953) from the Syrian Military Academy and advanced through the ranks to become a general. He served (1965�70) as Syria's Minister of Defense and commander in chief of the air force. Using that position, Assad was able to become the most powerful figure in Syria, and in 1971 he became the country's president after leading a coup d'etat. He maintains an uneasy alliance between support of more militant Arab leaders and peaceful relations with the West. + + + + + + + + + Encyclopedia Hussein, Saddam Pronunciation: [s�d�m� hOOsAn�] 1937�, Iraqi political leader and president (1979�). A member of the Ba'ath party, he fled Iraq after participating (1959) in an assassination attempt on the country's prime minister; in Egypt he attended law school. Returning to Iraq in 1963 after the Ba'athists briefly came to power, he played a significant role in the 1968 revolution that secured Ba'ath hegemony. Hussein held key economic and political posts until becoming Iraq's president in 1979. He focused on strengthening the Iraqi oil industry and gaining a greater foothold in the Arab world. In 1980 he escalated a long-standing dispute with Iran over the Shatt al Arab waterway into a full-scale war (see Iran-Iraq War) lasting eight years. On Aug. 2, 1990, Hussein sanctioned an Iraqi invasion of neighboring Kuwait; however, Iraq was forced out in early 1991 by an international military coalition (see Iraq; Persian Gulf War) + + + + + + + + + Encyclopedia Shatt al Arab Pronunciation: [sh�t �l �r�b] tidal river, 120 mi (193 km) long, formed by the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, flowing SE to the Persian Gulf, forming part of the Iraq-Iran border; the Karun is its chief tributary. The Shatt al Arab flows through a broad, swampy delta that contains one of the world's largest date-palm groves. The river supplies fresh water to S Iraq and Kuwait and is navigable for oceangoing vessels as far as Basra, Iraq's chief port. Iraq and Iran have disputed navigation rights on the Shatt al Arab since 1935, when an international commission gave Iraq total control of the Shatt al Arab, leaving Iran with control only of the approaches to Abadan and Khorramshahr, its chief ports, and unable to develop new port facilities in the delta. To preclude Iraqi political pressure and interference with its oil and freight shipments on the Shatt al Arab, Iran has built ports on the Persian Gulf to handle foreign trade. Iran and Iraq negotiated territorial agreements over the Shatt al Arab waterway in 1975, but by the end of the decade skirmishes in the area became prevalent. Full-scale war between the two countries broke out in Sept., 1980. Waterway ships, the Persian Gulf, and the ports of both countries were bombed, leading to eight years of attacks on coastal areas (see Iran-Iraq War). The Shatt al Arab remains a source of conflict, as limited water access and unresolved maritime boundaries in the region persist. + + + + + + + + + >From http://muslimedia.com/archives/features/saddam.htm How west helped Saddam gain power and decimate the Iraqi elite By Mohamoud A Shaikh Iraqis have always suspected that the 1963 military coup that set Saddam Husain on the road to absolute power had been masterminded by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). New evidence just published reveals that the agency not only engineered the putsch but also supplied the list of people to be eliminated once power was secured - a monstrous stratagem that led to the decimation of Iraq's professional class. The overthrow of president Abdul Karim Kassim on February 8, 1963 was not, of course, the first intervention in the region by the agency, but it was the bloodiest - far bloodier than the coup it orchestrated in 1953 to restore the shah of Iran to power. Just how gory, and how deep the CIA's involvement in it, is demonstrated in a new book by Said Aburish, a writer on Arab political affairs. The book, A Brutal Friendship: The West and the Arab Elite (1997), sets out the details not only of how the CIA closely controlled the planning stages but also how it played a central role in the subsequent purge of suspected leftists after the coup. The author reckons that 5,000 were killed, giving the names of 600 of them - including many doctors, lawyers, teachers and professors who formed Iraq's educated elite. The massacre was carried out on the basis of death lists provided by the CIA. The lists were compiled in CIA stations throughout the Middle East with the assistance of Iraqi exiles like Saddam, who was based in Egypt. An Egyptian intelligence officer, who obtained a good deal of his information from Saddam, helped the Cairo CIA station draw up its list. According to Aburish, however, the American agent who produced the longest list was William McHale, who operated under the cover of a news correspondent for the Beirut bureau of Time magazine. The butchery began as soon as the lists reached Baghdad. No-one was spared. Even pregnant women and elderly men were killed. Some were tortured in front of their children. According to the author, Saddam who 'had rushed back to Iraq from exile in Cairo to join the victors, was personally involved in the torture of leftists in the separate detention centres for fellaheen [peasants] and the Muthaqafeen or educated classes.' King Hussain of Jordan, who maintained close links with the CIA, says the death lists were relayed by radio to Baghdad from Kuwait, the foreign base for the Iraqi coup. According to him, a secret radio broadcast was made from Kuwait on the day of the coup, February 8, 'that relayed to those carrying out the coup the names and addresses of communists there, so they could be seized and executed.' The CIA's royal collaborator also gives an insight into how closely the Ba'athist party and American intelligence operators worked together during the planning stages. 'Many meetings were held between the Ba'ath party and American intelligence - the most critical ones in Kuwait,' he says. At the time the Ba'ath party was a small nationalist movement with only 850 members. But the CIA decided to use it because of its close relations with the army. One of its members tried to assassinate Kassim as early as 1959. Saddam, then 22, was wounded in the leg, later fleeing the country. According to Aburish, the Ba'ath party leaders - in return for CIA support - agreed to 'undertake a cleansing programme to get rid of the communists and their leftist allies.' Hani Fkaiki, a Ba'ath party leader, says that the party's contact man who orchestrated the coup was William Lakeland, the US assistant military attache in Baghdad. One of the coup leaders, colonel Saleh Mahdi Ammash, former Iraqi assistant military attache in Washington, was in fact arrested for being in touch with Lakeland in Baghdad. His arrest caused the conspirators to move earlier than they had planned. Aburish's book shows that the Ba'ath leaders did not deny plotting with the CIA ro overthrow Kassim. When Syrian Ba'ath party officials demanded to know why they were in cahoots with the US agency, the Iraqis tried to justify it in terms of ideology comparing their collusion to 'Lenin arriving in a German train to carry out his revolution.' Ali Saleh, the minister of interior of the regime which had replaced Kassim, said: 'We came to power on a CIA train.' It should not come as a surprise that the Americans were so eager to overthrow Kassim or so willing to cause such a blood bath to achieve their objective. At the height of the cold war, they were causing similar mayhem in Latin America and Indo-China overthrowing any leaders that dared show the slighest degree of independence. Kassim was a prime target for US aggression and arrogance. After taking power in 1958, he took Iraq out of the Baghdad Pact, the US-backed anti-Soviet alliance in the Middle East, and in 1961 he dared nationalise part of the concession of the British-controlled Iraq Petroleum company and resurrected a long-standing Iraqi claim to Kuwait ( the regime which succeeded him immediately dropped the claim to Kuwait). But the cold war does not by itself explain Uncle Sam's propensity to violence. When president George Bush bombed Iraq to smithereens, killing thousands of civilians, the cold war was over. Clinton cannot cite the cold war for insisting that the brutal regime of sanctions imposed on the country should stay. In fact the brutal, blood-stained nature of Uncle Sam goes back all the way to the so-called 'Founding Fathers,' who made no attempt to conceal it. As long ago as 1818, John Quincy Adams hailed the 'salutary efficacy' of terror in dealing with 'mingled hordes of lawless Indians and negroes.' He was defending Andrew Jackson's frenzied operations in Florida which virtually wiped out the indigenous population and left the Spanish province under US control. Thomas Jefferson and his colleagues were not above professing to be impressed by the wisdom of his words. Muslimedia: August 16-31, 1997 Go to amazon.com <<search on title>> A Brutal Friendship : The West and the Arab Elite by Said K. Aburish <Picture: cover> Try express shopping with 1-ClickSM and Gift Click List Price: $27.95 Our Price: $19.57 You Save: $8.38 (30%) Availability: This title usually ships within 2-3 days. Hardcover - 416 pages (August 1998) Dunne Books; ISBN: 031218543X ; Dimensions (in inches): 1.37 x 9.59 x 6.50 Amazon.com Sales Rank: 65,876 Avg. Customer Review: <Picture: 4.5 out of 5 stars> Number of Reviews: 2 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Write an online review and share your thoughts with other readers! Customers who bought this book also bought: �Arafat : From Defender to Dictator; Said K. Aburish�Weathered by Miracles : A History of Palestine from Bonaparte and Muhammad Ali to Ben-Gurion and the Mufti; Thomas A. Idinopulos�The Arab Predicament : Arab Political Thought and Practice Since 1967 (A Canto Book); Fouad Ajami Click here for more suggestions... ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Reviews Commentary, Daniel Pipes Aburish's explanation for Arab tyranny dwells not on the foibles of culture in Arabic-speaking countries; not on their premodern legacy of dictatorship; and not on the winner-take-all atmosphere that dominates their politics. What emerges from Aburish's pages, in a nutshell, is that nearly all the problems of the Middle East are due to a vast British and American conspiracy that aims to perpetuate "Western political hegemony" in the regime. To anyone not versed in matters Middle Eastern, the extremist bent of A Brutal Friendship might make it seem like the slightly deranged musings of one out-of-touch intellectual. Unhappily, its outlook cannot be so easily dismissed. Outlandish as it may be, the book represents a main line of Arab thinking, one that is embraced as well by any number of leading politicians, military officers, religious authorities, journalists, and academics. In polished and pleasant English prose, but without euphemism, A Brutal Friendship makes available to the world what many Arab Muslims are currently thinking, and thus removes one more excuse for Westerners to pretend otherwise. In A Brutal Friendship, Said K. Aburish traces the true origins of the region's present turmoil to the manner in which corrupt Arab rulers have subordinated the welfare of their subjects to their cultivation of cozy relationships with the West. Using direct evidence from his unrivaled range of Arab sources, he describes how the West - mostly the CIA - sponsored Islamic fundamentalism in the 1950s and '60s in an effort to contain Nasser and thwart Soviet designs on the region, how American and British leaders have turned a blind eye to repressive governments when they suit their interests (and toppled them when they do not), and how it is these very machinations that set Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein on his bloody road to power. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Customer Comments Average Customer Review: <Picture: 4.5 out of 5 stars> Number of Reviews: 2 A reader from London, UK , November 6, 1998 <Picture: 5 out of 5 stars> An exciting and troubling read. Said Aburish's book does a number of tasks. It exposes Britain and the USA's complicity in the current state of affairs in the Middle East more clearly than any other book I have read, (perhaps with the exception of Chomsky's World Orders Old and New.) At the same time, he brings out the truth, (or what appears to be the truth,)about the various coups in the region. In addition to this, his analysis of the situation in the Lebanon is masterly; but it was his exposure of the Saudi Regime for what it really is, which shocked me. Aburish's analysis of the progressive leaders of the Gulf, (Nasser and Kassem in particular,) is also very rewarding. He goes on to analyze the behaviour and attitude of the main Orientalists as well. But perhaps the two most important messages of Aburish's book are these: 1.) With the undermining of Arab nationalism and socialism in the Middle East, the final radical force left in the area is Islamic fundamentalism, and this is the one force which the region's rulers cannot overcome. They and the West nurtured it, and now will suffer for it. 2.) The Arab 'elite' (i.e. the Beirut on the Thames,) is so distant from the Arab population, that it is simply unfit to rule it. One senses a strong element of class warfare between the Westernized, hedonistic elites, and the radicalized, puritanical, masses. The former, in countries like Saudi Arabia use Islam to justify their corrupt rule - but it is the latter who are truly Islamic. Given its vast survey of the situation in the Middle East and its origins, I can only conclude that Aburish's book is well worth reading, and is a sharp guide not just to the Middle East, but to the Western powers who must share responsibility for the mess it's in. A reader from South Africa , August 24, 1998 <Picture: 4 out of 5 stars> Essentail Reading for MidEast Understanding I have spent 11 years in Israel. 4 of these years I served in the Israeli Defense Forces in the occupied Gaza Strip as assistant Military Attorney General. Thereafter, in private practise, as alwyer in Israel - Gazan businessmen used me as their interlocutor in Israel and in the world. I forged deep and lasting friendships in Gaza - and managed to gain a refreshing insight into the mainstream mindframe of leading Palestinian businessmen - the men who, before the advent of Arafat, were sustaining the Gazan people. Said Aburish more or less articulates the thoughts and feelings of this business class. He misses the mark - as far as I can discern - mainly in the sense that the majority of the thinking Palestinians I encountered are not familiar with the history upon which his thesis is predicated. He is accurate in his contempt for the illigetimate Arab regimes and has hit the nail on the head when he claims that the majority of Palestinians see Arafat as a brutal traitor. The true leaders of Gaza - Heider Abdel Shafi - for example (whom I prosecuted) - have been silenced by Arafat. Not being an Arab- and being on the opposing side - I venture to say that - in so far as the Gazan business elite is concerned - Aburish is off the mark. This elite - especially in Gaza - has seen the benifits of western democracies - having lived under Israeli rule which can be compared to Arafat's rule - and they so despearately want to be part of that world. Aburish is eloquent. There are truths in what he says. To me as an Israeli - he is a more formidable foe than Arafat BUT Aburish - like those he speaks for - has integrity and honesty. I'd rather him as a partner than Arafat. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ A<>E<>R The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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