Deck 21: The Consolidation of the Authoritarian Rule in Syria and Iraq: the Regimes of Hafiz Al-Asad and Saddam Husayn

Question 1

In 1963, who carried out a coup d'état in Syria to bring the Ba'th into power?

A) the Sunni masses in Syria
B) young Alawite military officers, including Hafiz al-Asad
C) the Muslim Brotherhood
D) Syrian elites educated in the United States, including Hafiz al-Asad

Answer 1

B

Question 2

In 1970, what title(s) did al-Asad of Syria obtain?

A) president and head of the People's Council
B) head of the Ba'th Party
C) head of the People's Council
D) both president and head of the Ba'th Party

Answer 2

D

Question 3

Which opposition group in Syria was most powerful during the 1980s?

A) the Muslim Brothers
B) the PLO
C) Jihad
D) None of these answers is correct.

Answer 3

A

Question 4

What did the secular Syrian government of President al-Asad do in Hama in 1982?

A) It established the new capital of Syria.
B) It launched a deadly assault on a large part of the city in order to destroy the Muslim Brothers who had been leading an insurgency against the regime.
C) It ousted the religious leadership there because of the antiregime rhetoric spread in mosques and religious schools.
D) It successfully defended the city from militants invading from northern Lebanon.

Question 5

All of the following efforts of the al-Asad regime improved the living conditions of the peasantry EXCEPT __________________.

A) extending educational and medical services in the countryside
B) developing transportation and irrigation systems
C) free university tuition for those who managed to complete a secondary education
D) land distribution schemes

Question 6

Which state "broke ranks" with the Arab world by siding with non-Arab, Shi'a Iran during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s?

A) Egypt
B) Saudi Arabia
C) Kuwait
D) Syria

Question 7

Which of the following was NOT a reason Iraq went to war with Iran?

A) Iran won an arms deal from France that Iraq desired, which included Mirage fighter aircraft and 200 tanks
B) Iranians aided the Kurdish rebellion by violating the terms of the 1975 agreement and offering Kurds sanctuary in Iran
C) Ayatollah Khomeini encouraged a Shi'a uprising in Iraq
D) Ayatollah Khomeini denounced the legitimacy of Ba'thist rule

Question 8

Why did the United States aid Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War?

A) In the 1980s, the United States was more concerned with Ayatollah Khomeini than with the brutality of the Husayn regime
B) The United States sought to prevent the spread of Khomeini's brand of Islamic radicalism and anti-American sentiment
C) The United States sought to protect the oil reserves in Iraq, lest Iraq and other Gulf states fall to Iran
D) All of these answers are correct

Question 9

What happened after the Iranians launched an offensive in 1988 and successfully captured the Kurdish town of Halabja in northern Iraq?

A) The Iraqi military liberated it
B) The Iraqi air force bombed the town with poison gas
C) The town was formally surrendered and today exists as Iranian territory
D) The Iranians fled when the citizens of Halabja took up arms and forced them out

Question 10

What did the establishment of al-Asad's cult of personality in the 1980s reveal?

A) His authority did not rest on popular consent or civilian institutions; it rested on the loyalty of his armed forces
B) As the regime became more repressive and remote, the orchestrated adulation of al-Asad became more pronounced
C) The regime's unpopular politics could be explained away by raising the image of the president to one whose wisdom was beyond that of the average citizen
D) All of these answers are correct

Question 11

Which of the following was NOT a major source of similarity between the regimes of al-Asad and Saddam?

A) Both had significant levels of oil wealth
B) Both leaders had cults of personality
C) Both employed socialist economic policies
D) Both regimes based their power on the Ba‛th party and the military

Question 12

Which of the following does NOT accurately describe the educational achievements under al-Asad?

A) His government made significant reductions in illiteracy
B) Central government tightly controlled all levels of education, including Ba‛thist indoctrination of students and screening of all faculty
C) Free tuition and open admissions encouraged university attendance
D) Rapid population growth led to overcrowded classrooms and shortage of teachers

Question 13

Which of the following best captures the sectarian similarities between the regimes in Iraq and Syria?

A) Both regimes' leaders were of a different religious sectarian affiliation than the majority of their respective countries' populations
B) Both leaders' sectarian affiliations were remnants of Ottoman administrations
C) Both leaders ruled over Sunni majority countries
D) Both largely rejected their sectarian affiliations in favor of secular Ba‛thism

Question 14

Which of the following best characterizes the Iraqi political transformation in 1977, in which all ruling Ba‛thist council members became members of the RCC?

A) It meant the transformation of the government into a ruling military junta
B) It allowed for Saddam Husayn, lacking any previous military experience, to rise to power
C) It essentially ended any distinction between the party and the Iraqi state
D) It reduced the ideological influence of Ba‛thism

Question 15

Which of the following is true of the Algiers Agreement?

A) It was an agreement between Iraq and Algeria that spelled out a plan to settle the Kurds among tribal communities in North Africa
B) It was a net gain overall for the Kurds
C) Iran agreed to close its border to Iraqi Kurds and to cease assisting the Kurdish rebellion in Iraq
D) It addressed Iranian concerns over Iraqi Kurds as well as Iraqi Shi'a

Question 16

Which of the following supported Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war?

A) Soviet Union
B) Egypt
C) US and France
D) All of these countries supported Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war.

Question 17

Which of the following does NOT accurately describe agricultural policies under the regimes of al-Asad and Saddam Husayn?

A) Agricultural policies became highly bureaucratized under Ba'th party officials
B) Cotton production increased in Syria during the 1970s and 1980s
C) Agriculture received a low priority by both regimes, resulting in the rise in food imports
D) Ba‛th party policy under both regimes marginalized rural peasants

Question 18

Which of the following best explains Ba‛thist foreign policy in Iraq regarding the Soviet Union?

A) Ba‛thist Iraq aligned closely with the Soviet Union, on which it depended for arms purchases and technical expertise
B) Ba‛thist Iraq sought efficient technical and marketing assistance wherever it could find them, including Japan and the West
C) With rising oil revenues in the 1970s, Iraq implemented a pragmatic approach to economic development in which it did not remain tied solely to the Soviet Union
D) All of these statements accurately characterize Ba‛thist foreign policy towards the Soviet Union

Question 19

Which of the following most accurately describes what occurred in Halabja in northern Iraq in spring 1988?

A) Iraq responded to an Iranian attack on Halabja by using chemical weapons on the town, killing 5,000 of its own civilians
B) Iran attacked Halabja with chemical weapons, killing 5,000 Iraqi civilians
C) Iran attacked Halabja, justifying this with its ethnic affiliations with the Kurds living there
D) Iran and Iraq both launched poison gas at one another during this instance of conflict

Question 20

Which of the following best characterizes how Iraq's Shi‛a responded to the Iran-Iraq war?

A) The vast majority of Iraq's Shi‛a chose to side with their Arab identity over their religious affiliation, remaining loyal to the government during the war
B) There was a major division among Iraqi Shi‛a, with a substantial number supporting Iran out of religious affiliation on the one hand and others siding with their own Iraqi government
C) Ethnic differences with the Iranian government and religious ones with the Iraqi government left the Arab Iraqi Shi‛a highly marginalized
D) Iraq's Shi‛a emigrated en masse to Syria

Question 21

The power seized by Hafiz al-Asad of Syria and Saddam Husayn of Iraq in the 1970s represented the rise of a new elite from rural origins.

Question 22

Saddam Husayn did not attain significant power in ruling Iraq until he became president in 1979.

Question 23

The original version of the Syrian constitution considered in 1973 required the president of the republic to be a Muslim.

Question 24

In Iraq, the rise of the Takriti villagers into positions of power was comparable to the rise of the Alawites in Syria.

Question 25

Prior to 1967, both Iraq and Syria had notoriously unstable regimes.

Question 26

Hafiz al-Asad belonged to the __________________ religion.

Question 27

The rhetoric of ______________ inspired a popular revolution in Iran, which led to the shah being deposed.

Question 28

Syrians felt the loss of __________________ more keenly than more distant Arab states because, during the late Ottoman period, the territory was regarded as part of southern Syria.

Question 29

Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr and Saddam Husayn, in stocking regime positions within the Revolutionary Command Council, favored those from their shared hometown, __________________.

Question 30

Iraq is enormously diverse; the majority Shi'a live mainly in the south and a large __________________ minority inhabits the oil-rich north.

Question 31

Describe the differences between the original Ba'th Party of Aflaq and the Ba‛th Party of al-Asad.

Question 32

In what ways did Iraq seek to address the Kurdish question in the early 1970s?

Question 33

How did the nationalization of the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) lead to the acceptance of the Ba‛thist regime?

Question 34

In what ways was the Iran-Iraq War a war of attrition?

Question 35

In what ways was the Ba‛th Party used as an instrument of control by Husayn and al-Asad?

Question 36

Why did al-Asad choose to intervene in Lebanon on the side of the Maronite Christians?

Question 37

What were the motivations of the Islamic opposition to al-Asad-were they primarily concerned with foreign policy decisions or domestic issues?

Question 38

Briefly explain the difference between sectarian tensions of the Iraqi Shi‛a with those of the Kurds during Saddam Husayn's regime. What role did geography play in these differences?

Question 39

Briefly describe the effects that Saddam Husayn's social welfare policies had on Iraqi women.

Question 40

Briefly describe the effects of the Iran-Iraq war on Saddam Husayn's foreign policy.

Question 41

Compare and contrast the degree to which the regimes of al-Asad and Saddam Husayn fulfilled the Ba‛thist ideology-did one of the two come closer to resembling Aflaq's ideal Ba‛th Party? If yes, how so, and if not, were the two regimes more similar to one another than they were with the Ba‛th ideology?

Question 42

Should the Iran-Iraq war be categorized as one driven more by changing internal factors within one or both of these states on the one hand, or external threats between these two rivals on the other?