Talk:Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party – Iraq Region

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Removed text

Unreferenced; moved per WP:VERIFY: Cheers, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 19:38, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Regional Congress

The Regional Congress was, in theory, the de jure decision-making organ on Iraqi regional affairs when in session, but was in practice it was a tool in control of the party leadership.

Congresses held (while in power);

• 7th Regional Congress (1969)
• 8th Regional Congress (1974)
• 9th Regional Congress (1982)
• 10th Regional Congress (1991)
• 11th Regional Congress (1993)
• 12th Regional Congress (2001)

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Nonsense in infobox

In brief, the mess of list of "ideologies" and "positions" in the infobox is misleading and non-factual. The party never advocated "Iraqi nationalism" as such (although Saddam flirted with Iraqi national symbolism at a certain point), "neo-Baathism" is a neologism, etc., etc. --Soman (talk) 14:40, 6 May 2018 (UTC)

Per your comments here, my preferred version of the article is more stable than your preferred version of the article as it stood unchallenged for a longer period of time (almost an entire month) before all of this shitty edit warring began; in any case your revert violates WP:BRD as I reverted the changes that YOU were trying to make to the consensus version of the article. Also your OP doesn't explain why the ideology and the political description items are nonsensical all that you've done is describe what your problem with the article is; moreover, as it specifically relates to the political description issue, you'll note that you have less reason by even your own logic to exclude that item per your comment here as Iraq is not a one-party state. In the interest of compromise-building, I've removed some of the more controversial/less obvious ideologies (eg Iraq nationalism and neo-Baathism) but kept, among other content, the political description item. You're free to ignore what I've written and done, but as you're the one who is getting reverted, it's your responsibility to escalate the dispute resolution process. Wingwraith (talk) 06:28, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

Why does this say almost nothing about Saddam Hussein's time in power?

In describing the history of the party, it says that they took over Iraq, then Saddam pushed someone else out of power to take over, then it describes a few things done beforehand by the guy he pushed out, then jumps to after he lost power due to the US invasion. Is someone deliberately trying to scrub all info about Saddam from articles about his own political party despite him being the leader of a country with that party for decades?--108.86.123.83 (talk) 05:35, 13 July 2019 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

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Move discussion in progress

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Move discussion in progress

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Con Coughlin's problematic 2005 book dominant in this article

I found this article from another one and noticed that the references in this article are disproportionately from Con Coughlin's 2005 book Saddam: His Rise and Fall. This book has been problematic on other Wikipedia articles since it comprises refuted claims with substantial implications (even at the time of publishing), the author's own fringe theories and conjecture, and old wives' tales with no basis. I wouldn't make this section it were not such a controversially poor source on Wikipedia. Just to give a couple examples regarding famous events, he extensively claims that Iraq and Hussein were behind 9/11 and long-time ally and supporter of Al Qaeda, but with no actual argument or evidence to back this up. He also claims that US and UN intelligence and inspections prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq doubting the alleged existence of WMDs was part of Iraqi deception and that Blair and Bush were right. And plenty of little strange tales like heating up iron stakes and stabbing animals for entertainment.

While the source itself is not balanced nor reads like any typical biography, it's further odd that this source dominates a Wiki article on something it tangentially covers. The source itself is not focused on the former Iraqi regime's ruling party, but more of a polemic and political sensationalism piece regarding the overthrown dictator Hussein, taking advantage of the Iraq War period, seemingly in an attempt to recover waning support for the Iraq War. Given Coughlin's famously strong pro-war sentiments, I can only surmise his goal was to try and bring more support for the rapidly unpopular war in the UK and USA because having read this this work, big chunks of it amount to yellow journalism.

Objectively, this is a poor source on the topic of this article or on Hussein, which it is more focused on. Not only is the ba'ath party not the focus of the work, but it's so distorted at points as to paint an alternative reality of things, such as with regards to the lead-up to the Iraq War and various details of the party and Hussein's life. As a point of comparison, Joseph Sassoon's book which is also heavily cited has a few of its own issues, but he's far more careful not to push disproven claims of immense implications and sensationalist conjecture and poorly-thought theories. Majid Khadduri's work Socialist Iraq provides a lot more insight and balance than other works, albeit it was published in 1978. The Old Social Classes & The Revolutionary Movement In Iraq (2004) by Batatu is good too but overly detailed if anything. Saucysalsa30 (talk) 21:28, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I think so too. I think Coughlin was the one who first reported on the mythical Atta-Prague-Iraq "9/11 connection." I just re-wrote the "Qasim's Iraq: 1958–1963" section using better quality sources that touch upon this murky period during Iraq's recent history, although I did leave Coughlin cited for some of the more uncontroversial statements.

Skornezy (talk) 19:41, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

Al-Douri and Al-Ahmed

This article says Mohammed Younis al-Ahmed has succeeded Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri as the Secretary General of the Regional Command. Does this mean that they're two factions have reconciled? Charles Essie (talk) 20:24, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

The Ba'ath Party in Iraq was not an Islamistic party.

The Iraqi Ba'ath never had Islamism as it's ideology. The Ba'ath party cracked down on Islamistic parties thoughout the years of their rule. The Faith Campaign was intended to appease a population that was becoming more religious and to prevent a islamist, sectarian revolt headed by Islamistic parties with backing by Islamistic countries, such as Iran like in 1991. KiddKrazy2 (talk) 14:19, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

Political orientation

What level of mental gymnastics have been conducted in order to label this party as “center to right wing?” “Within the Ba’ath system” is not a valid clarifier. This party was far-left and efforts to label it otherwise are very revisionist. 2600:1012:B31D:8768:38B4:9156:7A77:6897 (talk) 22:02, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

Left-Right Spectrum

First of all I would like to preface that as a Ba'athist myself who subscribes to the Iraqi Branch of Ba'athism, I find that the labeling of my ideology as a "Center or Right Wing" ideology is absolutely erroneous. One of the sources argues that the Ba'ath party is right wing and their reasoning for labeling them right wing is due to the persecution of Communists and other progressive movement, which is just absolutely fallacious. Are we implicating that 2 different Socialist/Communist parties in no circumstance can have differences in their beliefs and methodologies on socialism or on how to acheive it, and thus lead to fights between both sides? To imply that group A attacks group B which subscribes to ideology 1, therefore this must mean that group A subscribes to ideology 2 which is opposing to ideology 1 is LITERALLY a false dichotomy and a non-sequiter. The author of the source has a closed fixed dichotomy in his mindset as the example I provided before, not considering the BASIC fundamental fact that 2 different Socialist/Communist groups can hate eachother because of their differences in, as said before, their interpretation of Socialism or methodologies or how to reach Socialism, etc. If you read any publications put out by the Ba'athist government and Michel Aflaq on the Iraqi Communist Party, they argue that their end goals and policies they advocate are inefficient and not good enough, and won't truly help the Arabs in their pursuit of liberation. Essentially, Ba'athists like Aflaq and the Iraqi Ba'ath argue their form of Socialism is superior. Ba'athists took a more radical left wing approach to pursue mass expropriation, land collectivization, and nationalization policies en masse throughout all society. In 1980, the socialist sector in total domestic production was 82% in the economy. This number kept rising. Agriculture rose from 0.003% in 1968, to 39% in 1979. Commerce went from 11% in 1968, to 61% in 1979. The Ba'ath government set up worker democratic coops throughout every major sector in the economy, especially agriculture. in 1968 when the Ba'ath first took power, there were 473 agricultural coops with 63k total members, to 1,987 coops with 355k members in 1979. (Read "Revolution and Development in Iraq", published by the Iraqi Ministry of Culture and Information, 1980) Seizure and expropriation of private property was very common in Iraq, and not to bring an anecdote in this discussion, but my uncle owned many Araq (a middle eastern alcoholic drink) factories and tobacco companies, all of which were expropriated by the Ba'athist government, take it or leave it, its an anecdote so I understand if you won't take it seriously or disregard it which is understandable, just wanted to put it out there for your own consideration. Also the Ba'athist government was extremely secular and egalitarian and progressive. Women for example were granted equal rights by the government and many programs were instituted to empower women, and unprecedently, under the Ba'athist regime, women en masse entered virtually every area in the workforce, dominating even some areas for the first time in Iraqi history, including the army. In 1980, according to statistics in "Iraq: The Contemporary State", edited by Tim Niblock, 37 percent of oil-project designers working for the Ministry of Oil were women and 30 percent of construction supervisors were women. By 1982, women comprised 46 percent of teachers, 29 percent of doctors, 46 percent of dentists, 70 percent of pharmacists, 15 percent of accountants, 14 percent of factory workers, and four percent of senior management positions in Iraq (https://www.wrmea.org/1989-july/iraqi-women-preserve-gains-despite-wartime-problems.html). The University of Baghdad in 1980's had more female staff and professors than the University of Princeton today (Tariq Ali talks about this in his lecture "The Unfinished Project of the Arab Spring", you can watch the 1 hour lecture on YouTube). What even is right wing anymore? You throw out these labels yet never define them and frankly it is so ambiguously attributed to anyone for different reasons that we dont even know what it means and why it is attributed to a person or group. But I can certainly tell you Iraqi Ba'athism was absolutely left wing. But why don't we discuss Hafez Al-Assad's widespread "Infitah" (translated: "oppenness", contextual meaning: "economic liberalization/privatization") program throughout all of Syria where he liberalized his economy and privatized many areas in the economy (Read "Ba'th v. Ba'th")? All the sources for this claim just label them right wing for no reason and do not care to elaborate on it whatsoever. If anything one could argue Iraq was left wing, but Syria was right wing. I urge you to change this immediately and not peddle false information based off the personal conjecture of a few authors who clearly have no idea of what they are saying, it is pure conjecture and thus baseless. Garry Davis Smith (talk) 19:15, 18 March 2026 (UTC)