In the post-Cold War era, national integration has become increasingly important in the face of fragmentation within the nation-state. This phenomenon has been spurred on by political changes in general and ethnic conflicts or civil wars in particular. These political changes affect the process of national integration in post-conflict societies enormously. It sees a new regime attempt to impose its vision of the nation from above by utilizing both cultural resources and official education. When it comes to re-constructing the collective identity of the nation, education has played a significant role. This paper thus attempts to examine policies of national integration and how they have changed over time. It focuses on the case of Iraq, a country that has experienced massive political change following the U.S. invasion in 2003 and subsequent civil war in 2006.
This paper will look at the school textbooks of both the old Ba‘thist regime and the new regime in Iraq. It will plot the way that history, geography, national social education, and religion are taught from the first year of elementary school to the third year of high school, and then analyse how external factors—those that brought about the regime change—influenced a shift of national integration policies. To understand the comprehensive characteristics of national integration policies, the policies are analysed from three perspectives: legitimatization of the regime, description of the enemy of the nation, and pride of the nation.
The paper makes three main findings. It demonstrates that the old regime attempted to legitimatize itself as revolutionary, focusing on its leader’s charismatic characteristics and intended to develop national integration on these bases. The new regime, however, emphasized historical coherence of the nation,patriotism, and the fundamental principle of rule of law, which it held as essential for nation building. The second finding is that, as far as the enemy of the nation is concerned, the old regime positioned Iran as the its enemy throughout its history, and attempted to emphasize national integration to protect the Iraqi nation against Iranian invasion. By contrast, the new regime was not able to define an external enemy. When it came to instilling pride in the nation, the old regime linked its society to Mesopotamian civilization as well as the glorious history of Islamic civilization, whereas the new regime, inheriting these Mesopotamian and Islamic heritages, created a new ‘national history’, stressing the Iraqi nation and its implementation of democracy and freedom as that which should bestow the pride for nationals. Centrally, the new textbooks emphasized democracy as that which ensured equality within the nation, which consequently cultivated a sense of national identity.
It can thus be said that policies of national integration shifted to emphasize integration based on democracy and equality, and that these new elements of national integration were not only de-historical, but also external in terms of a so-called ‘ethnie’. The new national history stresses the Iraqi nation’s victory to achieve democracy and freedom, and paints this as essential to legitimatize its policy of national integration.

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