[StrategyPage] Arab Socialism Takes A Baath| Very long in-depth article at the link. |
When Japan and Germany were occupied after World War II, you could ignore, in most cases, that key government officials were members of the former ruling party. This was because such party membership was required of senior officials, whether they believed in the party or not. But in Iraq, these senior officials belong to a religious and tribal minority that depended on those key jobs to defend their comfortable lifestyles. These Sunni Arabs may not have believed in Baath philosophy, but they surely believed in Sunni Arab domination. This created a tricky problem as not only were the Sunni Arab technocrats qualified to get the country operating again, but they are also hated by most of the population and likely to start conspiring to put the Sunni Arabs back in charge as they did in the 1950s. This would eventually mean another Saddam Hussein (a Sunni Arab strongman running a dictatorship for the benefit of the benefit of the Sunni Arab minority.) The Sunni Arabs still had weapons, organization, local leaders and a lot of attitude.