ABSTRACT
Iraq's education sector witnessed dramatic fluctuations in performance over the forty years since the Ba'th party achieved lasting power in the summer of 1968. Throughout the 1960s, the Iraqi state had engaged on an ambitious expansion of primary education, which the Ba'thist government continued. Iraq in History sums up the Ba'thist view of Iraq's history, a view which remains quite resonant to this day within Iraqi society. Since 2003, Iraq's education sector, like most of the rest of Iraqi society, has struggled to cope with violent dislocation while attempting to continue delivery of services and meet expectations of curricular reform. In the wake of the 1991 Gulf War, Kurdish parties in Northern Iraq gradually gained de-facto independence under international protection. Consistent with United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's "creative chaos" doctrine, American officials first fostered the instant privatization of state assets by allowing mass looting, then enacted a series of reforms intended to reorient Iraq's education system.
