IS there a communistCommunist party in Iraq?
If so, what has it been doing? This is a question which was often asked during the
invasion of Iraq and its occupation. The news that the first newspaper to be
circulated in Baghdad after the American occupation was of the communistCommunist party came as a
surprise to many. There are very few people in India, even among the communistCommunists, who know much
about the Iraqi CommunistCommunist Party.
A brief description of the stormy and heroic story of the
Iraqi CommunistCommunist Party (ICP) is
given here. It is only a bare sketch of the main events, but it should help the
reader to understand the eventful and tragic history of a party which grew to
be the largest communistCommunist party in the Mmiddle East. It became the most
influential force in the country at the time of the “July 1958 revolution”
which overthrew the British supported regime and established a republic. The
ICP suffered serious bouts of repression, the worst being in 1963. No other Communist party, with the exception of
the Indonesian party, faced such brutal terror as the party in Iraq.
The saga of the ICP and its tortuous ups and downs is most vividly and
authoritatively documented in Hanna
Batuta’s The
Old Classes and Revolutionary Movements in Iraq: A Study of Landed and
Commercial Classes and of its Communists, Ba’thists and Free Officers (Princeton 1978). This
remarkable book is the basis for much of the information on the ICP in this piece.
There is an interesting
parallel in the way Communist ideas developed in India and
Iraq, both British
colonies in the 1920s. In both countries, the
anti-imperialist fighters
got inspiration from the October revolution. In fact, the first Iraqi to imbibe
Marxist ideas did visit India.
The first intellectual to be influenced
by Marxist ideas in Iraq was Husain al-Rahhal. His parents decided to send him
for studies in Europe. He
and he boarded
a ship from Basra which went to Karachi enroute to Europe. Rahhal got down at
Karachi and spent more than a year in India. It is reported that his stay in
India brought him in touch with radical ideas which further matured during his
studies in Europe. Like many western educated young people of his generation, the
reading of Labour Monthly edited by Rajani Palme Dutt, which was available
in Baghdad, helped him to understand communistCommunist politics. The first Marxist study circle (Jamati) was set up by Rahhal
along with some of his friends in 1924 which included Mahmud Ahmad Sayyid, one
of the first novelists of Iraq.
The years 1920 to 1932 was the period of direct British rule of Iraq under the mandate provided by the League of Nations. It is in this period that industry and railways developed throwing up a modern working class. The first organised strike was by the railway workers in 1927 and the first union was set up by the railway workers in 1929.
The formation of the Communist
party inICP
was founded in 1934. It was preceded by the work of communistCommunist groups in
places like Basra in southern Iraq which threw up the first organisoer and outstanding leader
of the CommunistCommunist party. His name
was Yusuf Salman Yusuf who came to be known as Fahd (the Leopard).
Fahd was selected by the Comintern to study at the CommunistCommunist University of
the Toilers of the East. The Fahd was arrested in 1933 and he
became the first Iraqi to defend himself in court as a communistCommunist.
REPRESSION OF IRAQI
GOVERNMENTS
The CommunistCommunist party became
the leading Left force in the country fighting against imperialism and the
oppression of the feudal landlords. Right from the beginning, the fledgling
party had to face severe repression at the hands of the successive Iraqi
governments which were under the tutelage of the British. In 1935, the
secretary of the party Asin Flayyeh was arrested and its printing press
confiscated. In August 1937, the parliament declared communism in Iraq illegal.
The penal code provided for punishment by death or penal servitude for life for
dissemination of communism among the armed forces or the police. Fahd took over
as General Secretary of the party in 19431 and under his
leadership the party consolidated its organisation and his activities enhanced
the prestige among the people. The heroic struggle of the Soviet people against
Nazi Germany attracted more people to the communistCommunist ideology. In
1944 the first party conference was held which drafted the party’s national
charter. This charter was approved by the first national congress of the party
in April 1945. The Congress elected a central committee.
The Iraqi Communist Party was not based on any single community or
ethnic group. Right from the outset it attracted the best men and women from
all sections of the
working people and the intelligentsia. In the 1940s, the cadres and leaders were drawn
from Arab Shias and Sunnis and the Kurds were always a significant proportion.
From amongst the minorities, Christians and Jews (till the
fifties) were found in the leadership. In fact, Fahd, the most important leader was of
Christian origin. The Baath Party, which forcibly supplanted the ICP, borrowed many of the progressive features of the Communists, though it distorted them in
practice. The only
legacy of the days of the anti-imperialist struggle which the Baath could not
abandon was the secular character of the State.
The period 1944 to 1946 saw the
expansion of trade union activities and out of the 16 trade unions formed in
this period 12 were led by the communistCommunist party. During this period, the communistCommunist party set up
its units in Iraqi Kurdistan. The party consistently supported the right of
self-determination of the Kurdish people and later for their autonomy. The
first peasant uprising against a landed sheikh in the Iraqi countryside took place in village
Arbat in 1947. The growing activities and mass influence of the ICP alarmed the
puppet government and their British mentors. A serious blow was struck at the
party when Fahd and several leaders were arrested in January 1947. They were
charged with conspiring to overthrow the government. Fahd and another member of
the Polit Bureau Zaki Basin were sentenced to death. Because of an
international campaign to save their lives, the sentence was commuted to life
imprisonment.
It is during this period that the
ICP emerged as the key political force in the country when the great national
uprising known as Al-Wathbah (the Leap) took place in January 1948. The
uprising was sparked off by the signing of the Portsmouth Treaty between
the British and Iraqi governments. The treaty continued to subjugate Iraq with
military bases and other curbs on its sovereignty. Hundreds of thousands of
people, led by the communistCommunists, demonstrated in the streets of
Baghdad. 400 people were shot dead in the streets of the city by police manning
machine guns. The prime minister fled the country and the government was forced
to repudiate the treaty. Along with the mass upsurge came a wave of workers
strikes and in April 1948 the historic march from Haditha oil pumping station
by 3000 workers to Baghdad 250 kms away electrified the country.
The reactionary government
gradually regained control after declaring a state of emergency. The repression
that followed saw hundreds of communistCommunists being held and sentenced in
summary trials. General Secretary Fahd and two members of the Polit Bureau Zaki
Basimn
and Al Shabibi who were in prison were retried and sentenced to death. Their
sentences were carried out in the middle of the night. As he was led to the
gallows Fahd declared defiantly that “we have bodies and thoughts; you may
destroy outr bodies but not our thoughts”. The
bodies of the three leaders were hung for display in three different parts of
the city to terrorise the people. The repression against the communistCommunists made the ICP
known as the `party
of martyrs’ and the
respect and admiration of the people for the party grew immensely.
In the early fifties, the
Communist party rebuilt itself and a new youthful leadership took up the
challenge. Another wave of mass struggles developed culminating in the Intifada
(uprising) in November 1952. A feature of this was the struggle of
peasants against the landlords under the leadership of the peasant societies
organised by the party. The army was called in to suppress the revolts. In end
1954, the party decided to organise a national committee for the union of
soldiers and officers as more and more soldiers became politically active in
the mass struggles and movements. The period upto from 1952 to 1958
saw the steady ascent of the party and the growth of its mass organisations.
Thus the party was placedositioned to be the main force in the
revolutionary uprising which took place in July 1958 which overthrew the hated puppet regime
and saw a
section of the nationalist
armyarmed forces led by Gen. Qasim takinge power. By 1959, 250,000
workers had joined trade unions; there were 3000 peasant associations in the
villages representing 200,000 peasants; the Iraqi Women’s League had 20,000
members and the Democratic Youth Federation 84,000 members. Significantly, a
number of army officers and soldiers had also joined the CommunistCommunist party.
The communistCommunists played a significant
role in the revolutionary upheaval of 1958. It frightened the new ruling
circles and the national bourgeoisie with its growing power. The influence of the communistCommunist party was at
its height and land reform measures and labour laws had to be brought in to
meet the popular demands. Big demonstrations took place demanding that the communistCommunists be included in
the new government but the nationalist army officers and the bourgeoisie
refused to consider such a demand. On the 1st of May 1959, 300,000 people
marched through Baghdad raising the demand for the participation of the communistCommunist party in the
government. The party withdrew the
demand for being part of the government in July 1959. The Central Committee
took this decision stating that there were serious misgivings among various
sections of the bourgeoisie and moderate forces. The reformist section in the
party leadership prevailed. The giving up of this demand led to stepping up of
the repression against the communistCommunists. By 1960 a new round of attacks
began. The Qasim regime refused to legalise the communistCommunist party when it
applied for a licence when all other parties were granted recognition. Later
the party recognised its mistake in retreating from theis slogan of setting up of a
revolutionary democratic government with communistCommunist participation.
The line of capitulating to Qasim and the national
bourgeoisie was also adopted because of the influence of the CPSU. It may be recalled that it was in the late
fifties (after the 20th Congress of the CPSU) that the Soviet party began
advocating the line of uniting with the national bourgeoisie and undermining the independent role of the Communist party. The Iraqi
party, like many other parties in the third world, did not escape the
consequences of the Soviet dictated approach.
The new republic set up in 1958
marked the emergence of the truly independent state of Iraq. Qasim under the
influence of progressive forces introduced a whole range of measures which broke
with the old pro-imperialist regime. Iraq withdrew from the Baghdad Pact and
the British military bases were vacated, a programme of land reforms and legal
rights for trade unions and other democratic organisations were announced. An
important step taken by the Qasim government was to clip the wings of the Iraq
Petroleum Company which was owned by the Anglo-American oil companies. The
government decided to severely restrict the company’s right to exploitation of
the concessions granted to it. But a radical regime relying on communistCommunist support was
something which the national bourgeoisie could not countenance for long. The
Qasim regime weakened itself by striking at the main pillar of its support –
the communistCommunists.
Qasim became increasingly
isolated from other political parties due to his autocratic ways and the stage
was set for the reactionary coup in February 1963. A section of the nationalist armed forces officers joined hands with
the Baath Party to overthrow Qasim who was executed. It was only the communistCommunists who brought
out the people from the slums of Baghdad armed with sticks to face the tanks
and machine guns. The resistance to the coup was crushed by the superior military
force.
The ouster of Qasim led to the
ferocious bloodbath of the communistCommunists. It was the darkest period for the
ICP. At least 3000 communistCommunists were executed and thousands more
were jailed. It is reported that the CIA handed over lists of communistCommunists to the Baath
leaders and the coup plotters before the coup began. The first secretary of the
party, Salem
AdilHusain
ar-Radi, was arrested from his hideout. He was brutally tortured for four
days and died without divulging anything to the torturers. The terror against
the communistCommunists and
progressives in the days after the coup d’etat was worse than what the Pinochet
regime inflicted upon the Left in Chile a decade later. The National Guard of
the Baathist party dragged out communistCommunists held in detention under the Qasim
regime and shot them. The Iraqi CommunistCommunist Party sources put the number of
their members and supporters killed during the first three days of the coup at
5000. Sports grounds, military camps and schools were turned into concentration
camps and interrogation centres for tens of thousands of people from all walks
of life. The party had to retreat and set up its partisan forces in the Kurd
areas.
The Baath regime did not last long
and fell in November 1963. Those who took over the reins of power consisted of
a coalition of army officers who were pan-Arab nationalists and Nasserites who
looked to Egypt for inspiration. The military regime lasted till 1968 when the
Baath party staged a comeback through a military coup carried out with the help
of a section of the army officers. From then onwards the Baath party manoeuvred
to consolidate its position while eliminating all opposition. In its drive for
total hegemony, the Baath party continued its repression of the communistCommunist party. Till
1971 the brutal suppression of the communistCommunists continued even though the ICP
called for a constitutional framework embodying democratic principles with free
elections, the solution of the Kurdish problem based on autonomy and the
abolition of concessions to foreign companies. The ICP called for the formation
of a patriotic front of all progressive forces and a coalition government. The
Baath party was faced with an international situation where it could take steps
to break the stranglehold of the Iraq Petroleum Company. The necessity to
modernise capitalism required the using of oil resources for accumulation of
capital. Relations with the Soviet Union took a new turn when the Iraqi government
turned sought to its help in oil production
and the first agreement was signed in 1969.
After
prolonged negotiations in 1971-72 the Baath party came to an agreement with the
ICP to form a progressive and patriotic national front on the basis of a national
action charter. Two communistCommunist ministers joined the government. Ever since the Baathists came to power they sought
to suppress the Kurds by military activities. Between March 1974 and early 1975
a large number of civilians were killed in the Kurdish areas due to the Iraqi
army operations. By 1978 the Baath party turned against the communistCommunists once again. It
removed all representatives of the ICP in the patriotic front and they were
arrested. In May 1978, 31 members and supporters of the ICP were executed on
the pretext that they had set up communistCommunist party cells in the armed forces. Underlying this new attack on
the Communists was the burgeoning oil income after the sharp rise in oil prices
in 1974. An understanding was arrived at with the Shah of Iran which helped the
regime to stabilise. The Iraqis conceded the vital Shatt-al-Arab waterway to
Iran in return for an undertaking to close the Iranian border to the Kurdish
fighters from Iraq and suspension of military aid to them. In April 1979,
the ICP declared that the patriotic front had ceased to be an alliance and had
been converted into an instrument of the Baath party. The ICP announced its
open opposition to the Baath regime in 1979, the year Saddam Hussein took over
full powers as President. Later that year the communistCommunist partisan units
were set up in the Kurd areas.
Ever since the Baathists came to power they sought
to suppress the Kurds by military activities. Between March 1974 and early 1975
a large number of civilians were killed in the Kurdish areas due to the Iraqi
army operations. Underlying this new attack on the communists was
the burgeoning oil income after the sharp rise in oil prices in 1974 and an
understanding arrived at with Iran which was under the Shah. The Iraqis
conceded the vital Shatt-al-Arab waterway to Iran in return for an undertaking
to close the Iranian border to the Kurdish fighters from Iraq and suspension of
military aid to them. The Iraqi CommunistCommunist Party forged an
alliance with the Kurdish Democratic Party and the Kurdish Socialist Party in
1980 and vowed to continue the armed struggle against the regime. Since then,
the party has been an underground opposition force having suffered terrible
losses with
following the
policy of Baathisation of Iraqi society and the establishment of a one-party authoritarian
regime..
Many years later, when the US was set to attack Iraq, the ICP
opposed any military intervention by America.
Faced with the prospects of an
American invasion of Iraq, the ICP refused to join the meeting of the
opposition groups sponsored by the Americans in London in November 2002 which
was meant to prepare the ground for setting up a pliant regime after the
occupation of Iraq. The ICP gave the slogan stand was “No to
oppose the Saddam
regime, and No to the American Occupation.”.
As the Iraqi people brace
themselves up for a prolonged resistance to the American occupation and the
imposition of a puppet regime, the ICP is once again poised at the crossroads.
It has to face up to the challenge of developing a powerful democratic
resistance to the imperialist occupation while building up the mass base of the
party. In doing so, it will have to contend with the Islamist forces who wish
to convert Iraq into a theocratic state. The rich and heroic legacy of the ICP
in its first six decades should stand it in good stead in the difficult but
challenging days ahead.