| |||||||||||||||
|
It is not clear what prompted Husain to say these things. He had, of course, never been a friend of the Ba`ath party. But his observations should be read in the light of the recent revelation that he has been since 1957 in the pay of the C.I.A. It is perhaps pertiment to add that a member of the 1963 Iraqi Ba`ath Command, who asked anonymity, asserted in a conversation with this writer that the Yugoslav embassy in Beirut had warned certain Ba`athi leaders that some Iraqi Ba`athists were maintaining surreptitious contacts with representatives of American power. The majority of the command in Iraq was, it would appear, unaware of what was said to have gone on. Be that as it may, it is necessary, in the interest of truth, to bring out that, insofar as the names and addresses of Communists are concerned, the Ba`athists had ample opportunity to gather such particulars in 1958-1959, when the Communists came wholly into the open, and earlier, during the Front of National Unity Years – 1957-1958 – when they had frequent dealings with them on all levels. Besides, the lists in question proved to be in part out of date. They at least did not lead the Ba`ath immediately to the Communists of senior standing. Some of the latter were, anyhow, out of the country. ‘Abd-us-Salam an-Nasiri was in Moscow on an undisclosed mission. ‘Aziz al-Hajj in Prague on the staff of the World Marxist Review. Zaki Khatiri had been in People’s China and, returning at this juncture, sought refuse with Tudeh. ‘Amer ‘Abdullah lived in exile in Bulgaria, by order of the party. Baha-ud-Din Nuri was recuperating from an illness somewhere in Eastern Europe. Other Communist leaers had slipped into Kurdistan or had changed their addresses. However, Hamdi Ayyub al-‘Ani, a member of the Baghdad Local Committee, fell into the net that the Ba`ath had cast. Losing courage under examination, he gave away party secretary Hadi Hashim al-A`dhami, from whose lips more secrets were forced, but only after he had been laid limp with a broken back. Ultimately, on 20 February, First Secretary Husain ar-Radi himself was taken. Although various means were employed to make him speak, he did not yield. Four days later he died under torture. When eventually the new government gave notice of his death, it circumstanced the facts after its own manner: on 9 March it announced that ar-Radi, together with Muhammad Husain Abu-l-`Iss, an ex-member of the Politbureau, and Hasan `Uwainah, a worker and a liaison member of the Central Committee, had been condemned on the firth to be handed until they were dead for bearing arms “in the face of authority” and inciting “anarchist elements to resist the revolution” and that the sentences had been carried out on the morning of the seventh. One adversity after another now pounded the party. It was the 1949 ordeal reenfacted, but on a wider and more intense scale. The hurt to the cadre went this time very deep. Not a single organization in the Arab part of Iraq remained intact. Violence was perpetrated even upon the women. Executions by summary judgment grew rife. Sympathizers were paralyzed by despondency. The influence of fear became extreme.
Peter and Marion Sluglett, in their authoritative book Iraq Since 1958 (London, I.B. Taurus, 1990) have this to say about these events: (p. 86) Although individual leftists had been murdered intermittently over the previous years, the scale on which the killings and arrests took place in the spring and summer of 1963 indicates a closely coordinated campaign, and it is almost certain that those who carried out the raid on suspects' homes were working from lists supplied to them. Precisely how these lists had been compiled is a matter or conjecture, but it is certain that some of the Ba`athist leaders were in touch with American intelligence networks, and it is also undeniable that a variety of different groups in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East had a strong vested interest in breaking what was probably the strongest and most popular Communist Party in the region. (p. 117) The Communists . . . were astonished to find themselves offered three ministerial portfolios at the beginning of August [1968]. This was all the more remarkable, as [Le Monde correspondent] Eric Rouleau comments, since al-Bakr, who was now 'extending the hand of friendship to them, was the same man who, in 1963, had presided over a government responsible for the death of tens of thousands of sympathisers or militants of the extreme left and the arrest of more than a hundred thousands other.' The Communists refused to participate unless full civil liberaties were restored, political parties legalised and democratic elections held, demands to which the Ba`ath was either unable or unwilling to respond. FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Policy Forum distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C § 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
|