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Poster Session 1, 10:30 AM - 11:15 AM: Room 165 [D6]

Presenter: Yousuf Al Attar

Faculty Sponsor: Deepika Marya

School: UMass Amherst

Research Area: Globalization and Development

ABSTRACT

The Iraqi state was quickly undermined and destroyed in spite of its sustainable economic development in the 1970s that made it a powerful country in the Middle East. This thesis will examine the Western intervention that structurally dismantled a functioning state and replaced it with a broken system that halted the country’s development and devastated its industries. Neoliberalism in Iraq led to a significant increase in homelessness, illiteracy, violence, and political corruption. This thesis will argue that the destruction of the Iraqi government was not due to the inevitable failure of authoritarian governance, but systemic neoliberal intervention. The first section examines the Ba’athist party from its rise to power in Iraq in 1968 until 1980 and explains the party’s ideological foundation, institutional structure, and economic strategy serving as a baseline to what followed in the country’s history. The second section examines the systemic erosion of the Ba’athist government from 1980 until 2003. It demonstrates the economic shocks the West put the country through using war and sanctions to collapse the country’s economy and utilize debt to halt its development. The final section will analyze post- 2003 Iraq examining the role of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in the neoliberal reconstruction the country underwent. It demonstrates the devastation privatization and deregulation caused to the population. Iraq’s current condition demonstrates the failure of neoliberalism with rampant corruption, degraded education and healthcare system, and collapsed industries. However, a cheap and continuous stream of oil is flowing which was the ultimate end goal of this reconstruction framed as liberation, but ended up as dependence.