BEIRUT: Most works on Iraq and its deposed president are criticized because they present the foreign perspective of the writers. That is not true of Lebanese journalist Hatem Saghieh’s book, one of the most authoritative works on the rise and fall of Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party.

Written in Arabic and published by Saqi Books earlier this year, Saghieh’s “The Iraqi Baath” skillfully combines thorough research with an impeccable flow of ideas written in an entertaining style that sometimes borders on sarcasm.

Despite the large number of books on Saddam Hussein and Saddam’s Iraq, most of these works either focused on the brutality of Saddam’s regime, and his treacherous entourage and his miscalculated foreign policy, or reported the hardships of Iraqi exiles under his leadership.

“The Iraqi Baath”, however, is one of the few books that penetrates the brutality to highlight the damage that the Baath regime inflicted on different aspects of life in Iraq, including the economy, culture and social activity.

The book starts when three students of Zaki Arsouzi one of the Baath’s founders and ideologues moved from Syria to Baghdad to pursue their studies. During their stay in Baghdad they preached an ideology that later inspired the founding of one of the most disastrous parties ever to rule an Arab country.

To invite the readers to understand the rivalry between the two branches of the Baath parties in Iraq and Syria, Saghieh puts the rift within a greater pan-Arab context when Arab nationals in the party disputed the arguments of Baathists who lobbied for the interests of their own countries. The author also places the Baathist schism in the context of the cold war and its regional consequences.

While narrating the story of the rise of Saddam Hussain, Saghieh is particularly cautious not to adopt any of the several versions of Saddam’s biographies widely available, but restricts himself to mentioning accounts of the incidents without verifying them, saying that it was hard for researchers to confirm information about Iraq due to the nature of its repressive regime.

Saghieh writes that after the brief tenure of some Baathist leaders, Saddam succeeded in rising through the Baath’s ranks supported by recommendations from the Baath party godfather, the Syrian Michel Aflaq.

Once he attained a junior ranking within the Baath party, Saddam focused his attention on changing the party’s structure and rebuilding it in to a structure that was more suited to tribalism. Saddam was also keen to subdue the army and remove prominent figures of the bureaucracy. Once he had removed his rivals, Saddam shifted his attention to eliminating the threat from Northern Iraq’s Kurdish population.

According to Saghieh, the Kurdish problem was connected to the former Soviet Union; even though it equipped Saddam’s military, it supported the Kurds. Another external factor was Iran’s Shah, who tried to pressure Saddam by arming the Kurds and demanding that Iran be granted full sovereignty over the Persian Gulf.

Tension with Iran later led Saddam to embark on an eight-year war with Tehran that was enormously destructive for both countries. While his war with Iran was not as rewarding as he first thought it would be, Saddam tried to extend his influence over Syria under the pretext of pan-Arabism. The mounting tension with Syria never developed into a full-scale war.

Saghieh writes that with Syria’s success in Lebanon and the wider Arab world, Saddam limited his regional activity to verbal support for the Palestinian cause.

His invasion of Kuwait and the consequent American war of liberation and sanctions on Iraq resulted in unprecedented poverty and destruction.