Did opposition against regime policies exist in Ba'thist Iraq and how can we detect it?

What is it about?

This article intervenes in debates about the historiography of Ba'thist Iraq. It questions the narrative that has emerged in recent years based on newly available sources from within the party and security apparatus by offering a fresh reading into open sources that have long been used by scholars, namely, print media. My findings resonate with a strand of scholarship on the history of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) that portrays the differentiation of East German society into what was termed a Nischengesellschaft (a society of social niches), which created spaces for different kinds of non-conformity and a degree of oppositional activities. This conceptualization of GDR history questions the homogenizing image of an administered mass society mobilized in the spirit of a totalitarian ideology. My work makes the same case regarding Ba'thist Iraq.

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Why is it important?

Despite their extraordinary value for the historiography of Baʿthist Iraq, the newly accessible sources from within the former ruling apparatus reflect specific elite perspectives and bureaucratic processes and do not easily disclose much information regarding the dynamics of state–society relations, regarding differences of opinion and power struggles within the Baʿth party and the state apparatus, or the reasons for issuing and the level of implementation of any given policy or directive on the ground. Open sources like print media published during Saddam Hussein's rule remain useful for understanding the functioning of this dictatorship despite or because of their limitations.

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