Demographic trends
(Social systems)
The impact of Western penetration on the indigenous
social and demographic structure in the nineteenth century was profound.
Western influence took the initial form of transportation and trading
links and the switch from tribal-based subsistence agriculture to cash
crop production--mostly dates--for export. As this process accelerated,
the nomadic population decreased both relatively and in absolute numbers
and the rural sedentary population increased substantially, particularly
in the southern region. This was accompanied by a pronounced
transformation of tenurial relations: the tribal, communal character of
subsistence production was transformed on a large scale into a
landlord-tenant relationship; tribal shaykhs, urban merchants, and
government officials took title under the open-ended terms of the newly
promulgated Ottoman land codes. Incentives and pressures on this emerging
landlord class to increase production (and thus exports and earnings)
resulted in expanded cultivation, which brought more and more land under
cultivation and simultaneously absorbed the "surplus" labor represented by
the tribal, pastoral, and nomadic character of much of Iraqi society. This
prolonged process of sedentarization was disrupted by the dismemberment of
the Ottoman Empire during and after World War I, but it resumed with
renewed intensity in the British Mandate period, when the political
structure of independent Iraq was formed.
This threefold transformation of rural
society--pastoral to agricultural, subsistence to commercial,
tribal-communal to landlord-peasant--was accompanied by important shifts
in urban society as well. There was a general increase in the number and
size of marketing towns and their populations; but the destruction of
handicraft industries, especially in Baghdad, by the import of cheap
manufactured goods from the West, led to an absolute decline in the
population of urban centers. It also indelibly stamped the subsequent
urban growth with a mercantile and bureaucratic-administrative character
that is still a strong feature of Iraqi society.
Thus, the general outline and history of Iraqi
population dynamics in the modern era can be divided into a period
extending from the middle of the nineteenth century to World War II,
characterized chiefly by urbanization, with a steady and growing movement
of people from the rural (especially southern) region to the urban
(especially central) region. Furthermore, the basic trends of the 1980s
are rooted in the particularly exploitive character of agricultural
practices regarding both the land itself and the people who work it.
Declining productivity of the land, stemming from the failure to develop
drainage along the irrigation facilities and the wretched condition of the
producers, has resulted in a potentially harmful demographic
trajectory--the depopulation of the countryside--that in the late 1980s
continued to bedevil government efforts to reverse the decades-long
pattern of declining productivity in the agricultural sector.
The accelerated urbanization process since World War II
is starkly illustrated in the shrinking proportion of the population
living in rural areas: 61 percent in 1947, followed by 56 percent in 1965,
then 36 percent in 1977, and an estimated 32 percent in 1987; concurrently
between 1977 and 1987 the urban population rose from 7,646,054 to an
estimated 11,078,000. The rural exodus has been most severe in Al Basrah
and Al Qadisiyah governorates. The proportion of rural to urban population
was lowest in the governorates of Al Basrah (37 percent in 1965, and 1
percent in 1987) and Baghdad (48 percent in 1965 and 19 percent in 1987).
It was highest in Dhi Qar Governorate where it averaged 50 percent in
1987, followed closely by Al Muthanna and Diyala governorates with rural
populations of 48 percent. Between 1957 and 1967, the population of
Baghdad and Al Basrah governorates grew by 73 percent and 41 percent
respectively. During the same years the city of Baghdad grew by 87 percent
and the city of Basra by 64 percent.
Because of the war, the growth of Al Basrah Governorate
has been reversed while that of Baghdad Governorate has accelerated
alarmingly, with the 1987 census figure for urban Baghdad being 3,845,000.
Iranian forces have mounted an offensive each year of the war since 1980,
except for early 1988, seeking to capture Basra and the adjoining area and
subjecting the city to regular bombardment. As a result, large numbers of
the population fled northward from Basra and other southern areas, with
many entering Baghdad, which was already experiencing overcrowding. The
government has attempted to deal with this situation by moving war
refugees out of the capital and resettling them in other smaller cities in
the south, out of the range of the fighting.
Rural Society
Rural Iraq contains aspects of the largely tribal mode
of social organization that prevailed over the centuries and still
survived in the 1980s--particularly in the more isolated rural areas, such
as the rugged tableland of the northwest and the marshes in the south. The
tribal mode probably originated in the unstable social conditions that
resulted from the protracted decline of the Abbasid Caliphate and the
subsequent cycles of invasion and devastation.
In the absence of a strong central authority and the
urban society of a great civilization, society developed into smaller units
under conditions that placed increasing stress on prowess, decisiveness,
and mobility. Under these conditions, the tribal shaykhs emerged as a
warrior class, and this process facilitated the ascendancy of the
fighter-nomad over the cultivator.
The gradual sedentarization that began in the
mid-nineteenth century brought with it an erosion of shaykhly power and a
disintegration of the tribal system. Under the British Mandate, and the
monarchy that was its creation, a reversal took place. Despite the
continued decline of the tribe as a viable and organic social entity, the
enfeebled power of the shaykhs was restored and enhanced by the British.
This was done to develop a local ruling class that could maintain security
in the countryside and otherwise head off political challenges to British
access to Iraq's mineral and agricultural resources and Britain's
paramount role in the Persian Gulf shaykhdoms. Through the specific
implementation of land registration, the traditional pattern of communal
cultivation and pasturage--with mutual rights and duties between shaykhs
and tribesmen--was superseded in some tribal areas by the institution of
private property and the expropriation by the shaykhs of tribal lands as
private estates. The status of the tribesmen was in many instances
drastically reduced to that of sharecroppers and laborers. The additional
ascription of judicial and police powers to the shaykh and his retinue
left the tribesmen-cum-peasants as virtual serfs, continuously in debt and
in servitude to the shaykh turned landlord and master. The social basis
for shaykhly power had been transformed from military valor and moral
rectitude to an effective possession of wealth as embodied in vast
landholdings and a claim to the greater share of the peasants' production.
This was the social dimension of the transformation
from a subsistence, pastoral economy to an agricultural economy linked to
the world market. It was, of course, an immensely complicated process, and
conditions varied in different parts of the country. The main impact was
in the southern half--the reverie economy-- more than in the sparsely
populated, rain-fed northern area. A more elaborate analysis of this
process would have to look specifically at the differences between Kurdish
and Arab shaykhs, between political and religious leadership functions,
between Sunni and Shia shaykhs, and between nomadic and reverie shaykhs,
all within their ecological settings. In general the biggest estates
developed in areas restored to cultivation through dam construction and
pump irrigation after World War I. The most autocratic examples of
shaykhly power were in the rice-growing region near Al Amarah, where the
need for organized and supervised labor and the rigorous requirements of
rice cultivation generated the most oppressive conditions.
The role of the tribe as the chief politico-military
unit was already well eroded by the time the monarchy was overthrown in
July 1958. The role of some tribal shaykhs had been abolished by the
central government. The tribal system survived longest in the
mid-Euphrates area, where many tribesmen had managed to register small
plots in their names and had not become mere tenants of the shaykh. In
such settings an interesting amalgam occurred of traditional tribal
customs and the newer influences represented by the civil servants sent to
rural regions by the central government, together with the expanded
government educational system. For example, the government engineer
responsible for the water distribution system, although technically not a
major administrator, in practice became the leading figure in rural areas.
He would set forth requirements for the cleaning and maintenance of the
canals, and the tribal shaykh would see to it that the necessary manpower
was provided. This service in the minds of tribesmen replaced the old
customary obligation of military service that they owed the shaykh and was
not unduly onerous. It could readily be combined with work on their own
grazing or producing lands and benefited the tribe as a whole. The
government administrators usually avoided becoming involved in legal
disputes that might result from water rights, leaving the disputes to be
settled by the shaykh in accordance with traditional tribal practices.
Thus, despite occasional tensions in such relationships, the power of the
central government gradually expanded into regions where Baghdad's
influence had previously been slight or absent.
Despite the erosion of the historic purposes of tribal
organization, the prolonged absence of alternative social links has helped
to preserve the tribal character of individual and group relations. The
complexity of these relations is impressive. Even in the southern,
irrigated part of the country there are notable differences between the
tribes along the Tigris, subject to Iranian influences, and those of the
Euphrates, whose historic links are with the Arab Bedouin tribes of the
desert. Since virtually no ethnographic studies on the Tigris peoples
existed in the late 1980s, the following is based chiefly on research in
the Euphrates region.
The tribe represents a concentric social system linked
to the classical nomadic structure but modified by the sedentary
environment and limited territory characteristic of the modern era. The
primary unit within the tribe is the named agnatic lineage several
generations deep to which each member belongs. This kinship unit shares
responsibilities in feuds and war, restricts and controls marriage within
itself, and jointly occupies a specified share of tribal land. The
requirements of mutual assistance preclude any significant economic
differentiation, and authority is shared among the older men. The primary
family unit rests within the clan, composed of two or more lineage groups
related by descent or adoption. Nevertheless, a clan can switch its
allegiance from its ancestral tribal unit to a stronger, ascendant tribe.
The clans are units of solidarity in disputes with other clans in the
tribe, although there may be intense feuding among the lineage groups
within the clan. The clan also represents a shared territorial interest,
as the land belonging to the component lineage groups customarily is
adjacent.
Several clans united under a single shaykh form a tribe
(ashira). This traditionally has been the dominant
politico-military unit although, because of unsettled conditions, tribes
frequently band together in confederations under a paramount shaykh. The
degree of hierarchy and centralization operative in a given tribe seems to
correlate with the length of time it has been sedentary: the Bani Isad,
for example, which has been settled for several centuries, is much more
centralized than the Ash Shabana, which has been sedentary only since the
end of the nineteenth century.
In the south, only the small hamlets scattered
throughout the cultivated area are inhabited solely by tribesmen. The most
widely spread social unit is the village, and most villages have resident
tradesmen (ahl as suq--people of the market)
and government employees. The lines between these village dwellers and the
tribe's people, at least until just before the war, were quite distinct,
although the degree varies from place to place. As the provision of
education, health, and other social services to the generally impoverished
rural areas increases, the number and the social influence of these non
tribal people increase. Representatives of the central government take
over roles previously filled by the shaykh or his representatives. A
government school competes with the religious school. The role of the
merchants as middlemen--buyers of the peasants' produce and providers of
seeds and implements as well as of food and clothing--has not yet been
superseded in most areas by the government-sponsored cooperatives and
extension agencies. Increasingly in the 1980s, government employees were
of local or at least rural origin, whereas in the 1950s they usually were
Baghdadis who had no kinship ties in the region, wore Western clothing,
and took their assignments as exile and punishment. In part the
administrators provoked the mutual antagonism that flourished between them
and the peasants, particularly as Sunni officials were often assigned to
Shia villages. The merchants, however, were from the region--if not from
the same village--and were usually the sons of merchants.
Despite some commercial developments in rural areas, in
the late 1980s the economic base was still agriculture and, to a lesser
but increasing extent, animal husbandry. Failure to resolve the technical
problem of irrigation drainage contributed to declining rural
productivity, however, and accentuated the economic as well as the
political role of the central government. The growth of villages into
towns and whatever signs of recent prosperity there were should be viewed,
therefore, more as the result of greater government presence than as
locally developed economic viability. The increased number of government
representatives and employees added to the market for local produce and,
more important, promoted the diffusion of state revenues into impoverished
rural areas through infrastructure and service projects. Much remained to
be done to supply utilities to rural inhabitants; just before the war, the
government announced a campaign to provide such essentials as electricity
and clean water to the villages, most of which still lacked these. The
government has followed through on several of these projects--particularly
in the south--despite the hardships caused by the war. The regime
apparently felt the need to reward the southerners, who had suffered
inordinately in the struggle.
Impact of Agrarian Reform
One of the most significant achievements of the
fundamentally urban-based revolutionary regime of Abd al Karim Qasim
(1958-63) was the proclamation and partial implementation of a radical
agrarian reform program. The scope of the program and the drastic shortage
of an administrative cadre to implement it, coupled with political
struggles within the Qasim regime and its successors, limited the
immediate impact of the program to the expropriation stage. The largest
estates were easily confiscated, but distribution lagged owing to
administrative problems and the wasted, saline character of much of the
land expropriated. Moreover, landlords could choose the best of the lands
to keep for themselves.
The impact of the reforms on the lives of the rural
masses can only be surmised on the basis of uncertain official statistics
and rare observations and reports by outsiders, such as officials of the
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The development of
cooperatives, especially in their capacity as marketing agents, was one of
the most obvious failures of the program, although isolated instances of
success did emerge. In some of these instances, traditional elders were
mobilized to serve as cooperative directors, and former sirkals,
clan leaders who functioned as foremen for the shaykhs, could bring a
working knowledge of local irrigation needs and practices to the
cooperative.
The continued impoverishment of the rural masses was
evident, however, in the tremendous migration that continued through the
1960s, 1970s, and into the 1980s from rural to urban areas. According to
the Ministry of Planning, the average rate of internal migration from the
countryside increased from 19,600 a year in the mid-1950s to 40,000 a year
in the 1958 to 1962 period. A study of 110 villages in the Nineveh and
Babylon governorates concluded that depressed rural conditions and other
variables--rather than job opportunities in the modern sector-- accounted
for most of the migration.
There was little doubt that this massive migration and
the land reform reduced the number of landless peasants. The most recent
comprehensive tenurial statistics available before the war broke out--the
Agricultural Census of 1971--put the total farmland (probably meaning
cultivable land, rather than land under cultivation) at over 5.7 million
hectares, of which more than 98.2 percent was held by "civil persons."
About 30 percent of this had been distributed under the agrarian reform.
The average size of the holdings was about 9.7 hectares; but 60 percent of
the holdings were smaller than 7.5 hectares, accounting for less than 14
percent of the total area. At the other end of the scale, 0.2 percent of
the holdings were 250 hectares or larger, amounting to more than 14
percent of the total. Fifty-two percent of the total was owner-operated,
41 percent was farmed under rental agreements, 4.8 percent was worked by
squatters, and only 0.6 percent was sharecropped. The status of the
remaining 1.6 percent was uncertain. On the basis of limited statistics
released by the government in 1985, the amount of land distributed since
the inception of the reform program totaled 2,271,250 hectares.
Political instability throughout the 1960s hindered
the implementation of the agrarian reform program, but after seizing power
in 1968 the Ba'ath regime made a considerable effort to reactivate it. Law
117 (1970) further limited the maximum size of holdings, eliminated
compensation to the landowner, and abolished payments by beneficiaries,
thus acknowledging the extremity of peasant indebtedness and poverty.
The reform created a large number of small holdings.
Given the experience of similar efforts in other countries, foreign
observers surmised that a new stratification has emerged in the
countryside, characterized by the rise of middle-level peasants who,
directly or through their leadership in the cooperatives, control much of
the agricultural machinery and its use. Membership in the ruling Ba'ath
Party is an additional means of securing access to and control over such
resources. Prior to the war, the party seemed to have few roots in the
countryside, but after the ascent of Saddam Husayn to the presidency in
1979 a determined effort was made to build bridges between the party cadre
in the capital and the provinces. It is noteworthy that practically all
party officials promoted to the second echelon of leadership at the 1982
party congress had distinguished themselves by mobilizing party support in
the provinces.
Even before the war, migration posed a serious threat
of labor shortages. In the 1980s, with the war driving whole communities
to seek refuge in the capital, this shortage has been exacerbated and was
particularly serious in areas intensively employing mechanized
agricultural methods. The government has attempted to compensate for this
shortage by importing turnkey projects with foreign professionals. But in
the Kurdish areas of the north--and to a degree in the southern region
infested by deserters--the safety of foreign personnel was difficult to
guarantee; therefore many projects have had to be temporarily abandoned.
Another government strategy for coping with the labor shortage caused by
the war has been to import Egyptian workers. It has been estimated that as
many as 1.5 million Egyptians have found employment in Iraq since the war
began.
Urban Society
Iraq's society just before the outbreak of the war was
undergoing profound and rapid social change that had a definite urban
focus. The city has historically played an important economic and
political role in the life of Middle Eastern societies, and this was
certainly true in the territory that is present-day Iraq. Trade and
commerce, handicrafts and small manufactures, and administrative and
cultural activities have traditionally been central to the economy and the
society, notwithstanding the overwhelming rural character of most of the
population. In the modern era, as the country witnessed a growing
involvement with the world market and particularly the commercial and
administrative sectors, the growth of a few urban centers, notably Baghdad
and Basra, has been astounding. The war, however, has altered this pattern
of growth remarkably--in the case of Baghdad accelerating it; in the case
of Basra shrinking it considerably.
Demographic estimates based on the 1987 census
reflected an increase in the urban population from 5,452,000 in 1970 to
7,646,054 in 1977, and to 11,078,000 in 1987 or 68 percent of the
population. Census data show the remarkable growth of Baghdad in
particular, from just over 500,000 in 1947 to 1,745,000 in 1965; and from
3,226,000 in 1977 to 3,845,000 in 1987.
The population of other major cities according to the
1977 census was 1,540,000 for Basra, 1,220,000 for Mosul, and 535,000 for
Kirkuk (detailed information from the October 1987 census was lacking in
early 1988). The port of Basra presents a more complex picture:
accelerated growth up to the time the war erupted, then a sharp
deceleration once the war started when the effects of the fighting around
the city began to be felt. Between 1957 and 1965, Basra actually had a
higher growth rate than Baghdad--90 percent in Basra as compared with
Baghdad's 65 percent. But once the Iranians managed to sink several
tankers in the Shatt al Arab, this effectively blocked the waterway and
the economy of the port city began to deteriorate. By 1988 repeated
attempts by Iran to capture Basra had further eroded the strength of the
city's commercial sector, and the heavy bombardment had rendered some
quarters of Basra virtually uninhabitable. Because of the war reliable
statistics were unavailable, but the city's population in early 1988 was
probably less than half that in 1977.
In the extreme north, the picture was somewhat
different. There, a number of middle-sized towns have experienced very
rapid growth--triggered by the unsettled conditions in the region. Early
in the war the government determined to fight Kurdish- guerrilla activity
by targeting the communities that allegedly sustained the rebels. It
therefore cleared whole tracts of the mountainous region of local
inhabitants. The residents of the cleared areas fled to regional urban
centers like Irbil, As Sulaymaniyah, and Dahuk; by and large they did not
transfer to the major urban centers such as Mosul and Kirkuk.
Statistical details of the impact of these population
shifts on the physical and spatial character of the cities were generally
lacking in the 1980s. According to accounts by on-the- spot observers, in
Baghdad--and presumably in the other cities as well--there appeared to
have been no systematic planning to cope with the growth of slum areas.
Expansion in the capital until the mid-1970s had been quite haphazard. As
a result, there were many open spaces between buildings and quarters.
Thus, the squatter settlements that mushroomed in those years were not
confined to the city's fringes. By the late 1950s, the sarifahs
(reed and mud huts) in Baghdad were estimated to number 44,000, or almost
45 percent of the total number of houses in the capital.
These slums became a special target of Qasim's
government. Efforts were directed at improving the housing and living
conditions of the sarifah dwellers. Between 1961 and 1963, many
of these settlements were eliminated and their inhabitants moved to two
large housing projects on the edge of the city-- Madinat ath Thawra and An
Nur. Schools and markets were also built, and sanitary services were
provided. In time, however, Ath Thawra and An Nur, too, became
dilapidated, and just before the war Saddam Husayn ordered Ath Thawra
rebuilt as Saddam City. This new area of low houses and wide streets has
radically improved the lifestyles of the residents, the overwhelming
majority of whom were Shias who had migrated from the south.
Another striking feature of the initial waves of
migration to Baghdad and other urban centers is that the migrants have
tended to stay, bringing with them whole families. The majority of
migrants were peasant cultivators, but shopkeepers, petty traders, and
small craftsmen came as well. Contact with the point of rural origin was
not totally severed, and return visits were fairly common, but reverse
migration was extremely rare. At least initially, there was a pronounced
tendency for migrants from the same village to relocate in clusters to
ease the difficulties of transition and maintain traditional patterns of
mutual assistance. Whether this pattern has continued into the war years
was not known, but it seems likely. A number of observers have reported
neighborhoods in the capital formed on the basis of rural or even tribal
origin.
The urban social structure has evolved gradually over
the years. In pre-revolutionary Iraq it was dominated by a well- defined
ruling class, concentrated in Baghdad. This was an internally cohesive
group, distinguished from the rest of the population by its considerable
wealth and political power. The economic base of this class was landed
wealth, but during the decades of the British Mandate and the monarchy, as
landlords acquired commercial interests and merchants and government
officials acquired real estate, a considerable intertwining of families
and interests occurred. The result was that the Iraqi ruling class could
not be easily separated into constituent parts: the largest commercial
trading houses were controlled by families owning vast estates; the
landowners were mostly tribal shaykhs but included many urban notables,
government ministers, and civil servants. Moreover, the landowning class
controlled the parliament, which tended to function in the most narrowly
conceived interest of these landlords.
There was a small but growing middle class in the 1950s
and 1960s that included a traditional core of merchants, shopkeepers,
craftsmen, professionals, and government officials, their numbers
augmented increasingly by graduates from the school system. The Ministry
of Education had been the one area during the monarchy that was relatively
independent of British advisers, and thus it was expanded as a conspicuous
manifestation of government response to popular demand. It was completely
oriented toward white-collar, middle-class occupations. Within this middle
class, and closely connected to the commercial sector, was a small
industrial bourgeoisie whose interests were not completely identical with
those of the more traditional sector.
Iraq's class structure at mid-century was characterized
by great instability. In addition to the profound changes occurring in the
countryside, there was the economic and social disruption of shortages and
spiraling inflation brought on by World War II. Fortunes were made by a
few, but for most there was deprivation and, as a consequence, great
social unrest. Longtime Western observers compared the situation of the
urban masses unfavorably with conditions in the last years of Ottoman
rule. An instance of the abrupt population shifts was the Iraqi Jews. The
establishment of the state of Israel led to the mass exodus of this
community in 1950, to be replaced by Shia merchants and traders, many of
whom were descendants of Iranian immigrants from the heavily Shia
populated areas of the south.
The trend of urban growth, which had commenced in the
days immediately preceding the revolution, took off in the mid-1970s, when
the effects of the sharp increases in the world price of oil began to be
felt. Oil revenues poured into the cities where they were invested in
construction and real estate speculation. The dissatisfied peasantry then
found even more cause to move to the cities because jobs--mainly in
construction--were available, and even part-time, unskilled labor was an
improvement over conditions in the countryside.
As for the elite, the oil boom of the 1970s brought
greater diversification of wealth, with some going to those attached to
the land, and some to those involved in the regime, commerce, and,
increasingly, manufacturing. The working class grew but was largely
fragmented. A relatively small number were employed in businesses of ten
or more workers, whereas a much larger number were classified as wage
workers, including those in the services sector. Between the elite and the
working masses was the lower middle class of petty bourgeoisie. This
traditional component consisted of the thousands of small handicraft
shops, which made up a huge part of the so-called manufacturing sector,
and the even more numerous one-man stores. The newer and more rapidly
expanding part of this class consisted of professionals and
semiprofessionals employed in services and the public sector, including
the officer corps, and the thousands of students looking for jobs. This
class became particularly significant in the 1980s because former members
of it have become the nation's elite. Perhaps the most important aspect of
the growth of the public sector was the expansion of educational
facilities, with consequent pressures to find white-collar jobs for
graduates in the non commodity sectors.
Stratification and Social Classes
The pre-revolutionary political system, with its
parliament of landlords and hand-picked government supporters, was
increasingly incompatible with the changing social reality marked by the
quickening pace of urban-based economic activity fueled by the oil
revenues. The faction of the elite investing in manufacturing, the petty
bourgeoisie, and the working classes pressured the state to represent
their interests. As the armed forces came to reflect this shifting balance
of social forces, a radical political change became inevitable. The social
origins and political inclinations of the ”Free officers” who carried out
the 1958 overthrow of the monarchy and the various ideological parties
that supported and succeeded them clearly reflect the middle-class
character of the Iraqi Revolution. Both the agrarian reform program and
the protracted campaign against the foreign oil monopoly were aimed at
restructuring political and economic power in favor of the urban based
middle and lower classes. The political struggle between the self-styled
radicals and moderates in the 1960s mainly concerned the role of the state
and the public sector in the economy: the radicals promoted a larger role
for the state, and the moderates wanted to restrict it to the provision of
basic services and physical infrastructure.
There was a shift in the distribution of income after
1958 at the expense of the large landowners and businessmen and in favor
of the salaried middle class and, to a lesser degree, the wage earners and
small farmers. The Ba'ath Party, in power since July 1968, represented the
lower stratum of the middle class: sons of small shopkeepers, petty
officials, and graduates of training schools, law schools, and military
academies. In the 1980s, the ruling class tended to be composed of high
and middle echelon bureaucrats who either had risen through the ranks of
the party or had been co-opted into the party because of their technical
competence, i.e., technocrats. The elite also consisted of army officers,
whose wartime loyalty the government has striven to retain by dispensing
material rewards and gifts.
The government's
practice of lavishing rewards on the military has also affected the lower
classes. Martyrs' benefits under the Ba'ath have been extremely generous.
Thus, the families of youths killed in battle could expect to receive at
least an automobile and more likely a generous pension for life.
