Saghieh writes the history of the Iraqi Baath and its deposed leader

While most of the works on Iraq and its deposed president have been often discredited on charges of the foreign perspective of their writers, Lebanese journalist Hatem Saghieh succeeded in producing one of the most authoritative books on the rise and fall of Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party.

Published in Arabic by Saqi Books earlier this year, Saghieh's The Iraqi Baath skillfully combined thorough research with an impeccable flaw of ideas packaged in an entertaining style that sometimes neared sarcasm.

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

The Iraqi Baath, however, is one of the few books that penetrated the brutality epic to highlight the damages that the Baath regime incurred on the different aspects of life in Iraq including its 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, they preached what later became one of the most disastrous parties to rule an Arab country ever.

In order to invite the readers to understand the rivalry between the two branches of the Baath in Iraq and Syria, Saghieh put the rift in a greater pan-Arab context when Arab nationals in the party disputed the arguments of Baathists who lobbied for the interest of their own countries.

The author also put the Baathist schism against an international background then dominated by the Cold War and its regional consequences.

When telling the story of Saddam's ascendance, Saghieh was particularly cautious not to adopt anyone of the several versions of Saddam's biographies but restricted himself to mentioning accounts without verifying them saying that it was hard for researchers to confirm information about Iraq due to the nature of its repressive regime.

Saghieh said that after a brief tenure of some Baathist leaders, Saddam succeeded in ascending the party's ranks supported by recommendations from the Baath's godfather, the Syrian Michel Aflaq.

Once he attained a junior ranking, Saddam focused his attention on deforming the party's structure and rebuilt it in a way that best suited his tribal links. Saddam was also keen to subdue the army and do away with prominent figures of the bureaucracy.

Once he had removed his rivals, Saddam shifted his attention to eliminate the threat of northern Iraq's Kurdish population. According to Saghieh, the Kurdish problem was connected to the former Soviet Union that even though it armed Saddam's military, it supported the Kurds.

Another external factor was Iran's Shah who tried to extort Saddam by arming the Kurds and requesting that Iran be granted full sovereignty over the Persian Gulf.

Tension with Iran later led Saddam, who always sought to play a regional role, to embark on an eight-year war that was destructive for both countries. While his war with Iran was not as rewarding as he first thought it would be, Saddam tried to practice his hegemony over neighboring Syria under the pretext of pan-Arabism.

The mounting tension with Syria never developed into a full-scale war. However, a Syrian-Iraqi war was waged by proxy with each country arming and supporting its protégé factions in the Lebanese civil war.

Saghieh wrote that with an apparent Syrian superiority in foreign policy, Saddam limited his regional activity to verbal support of the Palestinian cause. This did not mean that the Iraqi leader dropped his claims to regional leadership as he invaded Kuwait in 1990.

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

Despite the catastrophic outcome of his adventures and the ensuing poverty in the country, Saddam still found time to tighten his grip on Iraq by repressing his nation including his close family and relatives.

Saghieh argued that the deposed Iraqi president never eased his iron fist rule even after hisn regional defeats as he persisted in forcing his cult-worship rule therefore destroying a famed Iraqi brilliance in arts, music, education and other cultural aspects.