Abstract
Abstract This article presents rarely seen glimpses into life in the barracks of the Iraqi Army during the Gulf War (1990–91). We analyse fifteen diaries of Iraqi soldiers found in the Kuwait Dataset of the Iraqi Ba’th Party Archives, which was first opened to researchers in July 2015. These diaries shed new light on the mind-sets, ideological frameworks, morale and daily lives of Iraqi rank-and-file soldiers. We ask the following questions: did Iraqi soldiers support the invasion and occupation of Kuwait and accept Saddam Hussein’s rationales for the war? How did Iraqi soldiers view the United States and its coalition partners? These diaries also provide clues about why so many retreating soldiers rose up against Saddam in country-wide protests one week after Iraq’s defeat in the war. Although diaries from the US Civil War and the First and Second World Wars have been thoroughly examined by historians and literary scholars, few diaries of soldiers from the modern Arab world have been studied. This article fills an important gap in knowledge about the experiences of soldiers in modern authoritarian regimes and about the Gulf War.
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