On this day in 1963, Arab Nationalists violently overthrew the government of the Iraqi Republic led by PM Abd al-Karim Qasim. In this thread I'll go over the events of the coup, and its consequences.

The Iraqi Communist Party tragically had warned Qasim of the Arabist plan to overthrow him, but he had ignored them and believed the amnesty that he had given to the Arabists who tried to coup him in 1961 was good enough to appease them.

The coup began early in the morning, with Baathist forces clashing with pro-Qasim sections of the army. Communists would also join the fight against the Baathists, which would have severe consequences. Qasim offered surrender the next day, but the Baathists refused.

The Baathists would eventually capture him and kill him on national television in a short video titled "The End of the Criminals" in which they disrespected and spit on his dead corpse. American media would praise this episode as the overthrow of the "Pro-red dictator".

The coup was backed by both the United Arab Republic and the United States, the USSR would accuse the new Baathist government of genocide, but they never truly attempted to aid the communist party in stopping the new fascist regime.

The Iraqi Communist Party would suffer the most in this coup, its leader Hussein ar-Radi (more commonly known as Salam Adil) would be tortured for 4 days and then executed, he was never given a burial. Thousands more communists were killed, and the ICP would never recover.

The revolutionary fervor that had swept through Iraq in 1958 was gone, the dream of a secular republic was crushed, and Iraq would be ruled under Arab Nationalist regimes for the next 40 years, each worse than the last.