[R-G] Iraqi Communist Party: A Heroic Legacy

[Michael Pugliese]

People's Democracy [CP of India (M)]
May 11, 2003
 
Iraqi Communist Party: A Heroic Legacy
by Prakash Karat
 
IS there a Communist 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
Communist party came as a surprise to many. There are
very few people in India, even among the Communists,
who know much about the Iraqi Communist Party.
 
A brief description of the stormy and heroic story of
the Iraqi Communist 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
Communist party in the Middle 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.
 
BEGINNING OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY
 
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 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 Communist 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 ICP was founded in 1934. It was preceded by the
work of Communist groups in places like Basra in
southern Iraq which threw up the first organiser and
outstanding leader of the Communist 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 Communist University of the Toilers of
the East. Fahd was arrested in 1933 and he became the
first Iraqi to defend himself in court as a Communist.
 
 
REPRESSION OF IRAQI GOVERNMENTS
 
The Communist 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 1941 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 Communist 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 Communist party.
During this period, the Communist 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. Aserious 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 Communists, 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 Communists being held
and sentenced in summary trials. General Secretary
Fahd and two members of the Polit Bureau Zaki Basimand
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 our 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
Communists made the ICP known as the `party of
martyrs’ and the respect and admiration of the people
for the party grew immensely.
 
ANOTHER WAVE OF MASS STRUGGLES
 
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 1958 saw the
steady ascent of the party and the growth of its mass
organisations. Thus the party was positioned to be the
main force in the revolutionary uprising which took
place in July 1958 which overthrew the hated puppet
regime and saw the nationalist army led by Gen. Qasim
take 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 also joined the
Communist party.
 
The Communists 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 Communist 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
Communists 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 Communist 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 Communists. By 1960 a new round of attacks
began. The Qasim regime refused to legalise the
Communist party when it applied for a licence when all
other parties were granted recognition. Later the
party recognised its mistake in retreating from the
slogan of setting up of a revolutionary democratic
government with Communist 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 emergenc 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
Communist supportwas 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 Communists.
 
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
Communists 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.
 
DARKEST PERIOD
 
The ouster of Qasim led to the ferocious bloodbath of
the Communists. It was the darkest period for the ICP.
At least 3000 Communists were executed and thousands
more were jailed. It is reported that the CIA handed
over lists of Communists to the Baath leaders and the
coup plotters before the coup began. The first
secretary of the party, Husain 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 Communists 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 Communists held in
detention under the Qasim regime and shot them. The
Iraqi Communist 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 Communist party. Till 1971 the brutal suppression
of the Communists 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 sought
its help in oil production and the first agreementwas
signed in 1969.
 
After prolonged negotiations in1971-72 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 Communist ministers
joined the government.  By 1978 the Baath party turned
against the Communists 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 Communist 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 Communist
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. The Iraqi Communist 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 following the policy of
Baathisation of Iraqi society and the establishment of
aone-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
Londonin November 2002 which was meant to prepare the
ground for setting up a pliant regime after the
occupation of Iraq. The ICP stand was to oppose the
Saddam regime and 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.
 


-- 
Michael Pugliese