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Today in history:
Feb. 8, 1963 was the first Ba’thist coup d’état in #Iraq. They started a reign of terror until their banishment in November, same year. They toppled the govt of General Abdulkarim Qassim, who overthrew the Monarchy 5 years earlier — July 1958. (1)
Feb. 8, 1963 was the first Ba’thist coup d’état in #Iraq. They started a reign of terror until their banishment in November, same year. They toppled the govt of General Abdulkarim Qassim, who overthrew the Monarchy 5 years earlier — July 1958. (1)
The Ba’thists were politically lightweight in #Iraq at the time. So, they installed a non-Ba’thist senior military officer, Abdussalam Arif, who was in jail for opposing Qassim. They planned to get rid of him once they are in full control, but he outmaneuvered them. (2)
From Feb 8 to Nov 18, 1963, the Ba’thists ran the #Iraq through their newly established militia, called the National Guard (al-Haras al-Qawmi). Iraqis who witnessed that era kept vivid memories of the Ba’thist horrendous rule that crossed all social, political & legal lines. (3)
It became a conventional wisdom that the Ba’thist coup was aided by the US. My research in recently declassified US Govt documents proves the opposite. They show top US political & national security officials had no idea who carried out the coup. (4)
The too-famous & often cited statement attributed to the coup leader Ali Salih al-Sa’di, “We came to power in an American train”, has never been credibly authenticated.(5)
The proponents of narratives about a US role relied on the warm relation between Qassim & the Iraqi Communist Party. But the US Intelligence already reassessed their earlier estimate of the ICP threat in #Iraq, saying their early estimate was “exaggerated”. (6)
But Gen. Qassim did not antagonized the US alone. His plans to nationalize oil & demand that oil is bought by the Iraqi Dinar made the British unhappy, his Iraqi nationalism made Egypt’s President Abdel Nasser mad, his attempt to annex Kuwait alienated the Arab Gulf States... (7)
Gen. Qassem also alienated many powerful Iraqi fronts, most importantly the Shia marja’iya in Najaf, led by Grand Ayatollah al-Hakim, who rejected Qassem’s 1959 Civil Status Law & early alliance with the Iraqi Communist Party; and the pan-Arab nationalists in #Iraq hated him. (8)
