Word: iraq
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Since 1974, Iraqi President Ahmed Hassan Bakr, 64, has been quietly moderating his government's foreign policy even as he modernized his country's landscape. Last week TIME's Cairo bureau chief, Dean Brelis, visited Iraq, a California-size country of 12 million people, with 34,500 bbl. in proven oil reserves. His report...
...merger with Syria is consummated, Iraq's movement toward moderation is likely to accelerate. Until now, Iraq has been one of the most adamant opponents of negotiations between the Arabs and the Israelis. But when Bakr and Syrian President Hafez Assad met in Baghdad last October, they agreed to base their foreign policy toward Israel on two demands: a return of all Arab lands occupied by the Israelis since the 1967 war, and the creation of a Palestinian state. Though neither Bakr nor Assad believes that the Israelis are prepared to make such concessions, it is significant that...
Last year, Iraq's oil earned the country $9.6 billion, and hardly a week passes without bringing rumors of new discoveries. The force of the latest strike, it is said in the bars and bazaars, was so great that a 30-ton bulldozer was hurled 50 feet into the air. This year the Iraqis are importing $1 billion worth of Western goods. In less than a decade, the country's per capita income has jumped from $200 to $1,500. Yet the Iraqis have managed to hold their inflation rate to 8%. They have also held foreign influence...
Iraqis remain distrustful of the U.S., largely because of its support for Israel. They also complain that Washington, until 1975, gave covert support to a now quiescent Kurdish rebellion in northern Iraq. Though the Iraqis have been politically close to the Soviet Union for the past decade, there are signs today that they are moving toward a more independent course. One Iraqi official recalls that in 1972 Baghdad sold the Soviets some oil at bargain prices and agreed to be paid in rubles. The Iraqis later discovered that the Russians had turned around and sold the same oil in Western...
...Iraq is a tough socialist police state. Political troublemakers disappear routinely. Nobody knows how many political prisoners are behind bars, but last summer the Bakr regime celebrated its tenth anniversary by releasing 7,000 of them. The Baath Party's strongest opponents are the Communists, of whom at least 3,000 have been killed since...