The Iraqi parliament has finally approved a law denoting the country’s official national holidays, but there is debate about how ‘national’ some of these holidays are. For instance, the law allocates a holiday on ‘Al-Ghadir Day’. Al-Ghadir was an Iranian Shiite scholar. Critics say this fosters sectarianism.
Religious holidays and events are included. International Workers’ Day is also now an official national Iraqi holiday, even though the country’s ‘working-class’ appears to have been replaced by a class of bureaucrats dependent Iraq’s oil revenue.
Holidays for Muslims, Christians, and Mandaeans (an ethno-religious group whose numbers have dropped) are included in the legislation, as is the Kurdish celebration of Nowruz. The date of the Halabja massacre against the Kurds is also an official holiday.
The only holiday that could be said to represent a national symbol is Iraqi Army Day. This begs the question: is the Iraqi ‘nation’ important to Iraq’s politicians?
An Iraqi ‘nation’?
The idea is used in political debates, hoisted aloft in speeches and slogans, and often during election campaigns, but it can seem like they are simply using words like ‘nation,’ ‘national,’ and ‘homeland’ for branding. Among those justifying this bill, there was no mention of emphasising national events, only of “highlighting official occasions connected to the lives and sentiments of the Iraqi people.”
Perhaps a lack of agreement over the principles and values of Iraqi patriotism meant that these notions of state would always dissolve into catchphrases and rhetoric. Perhaps there are no ‘national constants’ to guide Iraqi conduct or distinguish them from their adversaries. Iraqis must decide whether the values that underpin their national identity should be rooted in their history, geography, or common experiences.
As if to prove the point, Iraqi leaders have spent more than two decades trying and failing to reach a consensus on a national anthem. Likewise, they could not agree on altering the national flag, thus preserving an emblem that signifies an unsuccessful attempt at unity between Egypt and Syria. These are merely symbols, but symbols are important to build a sense of ‘nation’.
Agreeing on Iraq’s national day is also problematic. In recent history, the leaders of military coups designated the national day as the day they were confirmed in post.
After the US invasion of 2003, political elites sought to designate 9 April as an official holiday, possibly with a view to making it the ‘national day.’ On that date in 2003, resistance in Baghdad collapsed, letting American troops take the city. Yet this designation sparked a debate over whether the collapse constituted liberation and occupation.
Disagreeing has become a national sport. Iraqi politicians have spent the last two decades embroiled in sectarian and political disputes. When one former government established 3 October as the national day because on that date in 1932 Iraq joined the League of Nations, the Kurds objected because former President Jalal Talabani (a Kurd) died on 3 October 2017.
Iraqis cannot agree on one historical event that was pivotal in the formation of the Iraqi state, which emerged in the 1920s. Cultural, academic, and political elites are at odds owing to diverging ideological allegiances and sectarian ties. One idea is to commemorate the establishment of the Iraqi monarchy, another is to mark the declaration of the Iraqi Republic, and others suggest that it should reference the Iraqi Revolt against the British that began in earnest in 1920.
