Iraq

F

Republic of Iraq

The UAR, bitterly antagonistic to the pro-Western Arab Union, issued repeated radio calls urging the people, police, and army of Iraq to overthrow their government. On July 14, 1958, in a sudden coup d’état led by the Iraqi general Abdul Karim Kassem, the country was proclaimed a republic. King Faisal II, the crown prince, and Said were among those killed in the uprising. On July 15 the new government announced the establishment of close relations with the UAR and the dissolution of the Arab Union. However, Kassem made attempts to gain the confidence of the West by maintaining the flow of oil.

In March 1959 Iraq withdrew from the Baghdād Pact, which was then renamed the Central Treaty Organization. In June 1959 Iraq also withdrew from the sterling bloc (a group of countries whose currencies are tied to the British pound sterling). The Kassem government’s initial refusal to allow Communists into the government produced massive protests in 1959. Kassem eventually relented and began a land reform program to redress the maldistribution of wealth. Steady petroleum revenues and other economic advances allowed a doubling of the urban population in the 1960s.

Following the termination of the British protectorate over the emirate of Kuwait in June 1960, Iraq claimed the area, asserting that Kuwait had been part of the Iraqi state at the time of its formation. British forces entered Kuwait in July at the invitation of the Kuwaiti ruler, and the UN Security Council declined an Iraqi request to order their withdrawal.

Meanwhile, on the domestic front, the Iraqi government claimed in 1961 and 1962 that it had suppressed Kurdish revolts in northern Iraq. The Kurdish unrest persisted, however. The long conflict was temporarily settled in early 1970, when the government agreed to form a Kurdish autonomous region, and Kurdish ministers were added to the cabinet.

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F

1

Rise of the Baath Party

On February 8, 1963, Kassem was overthrown by a group of officers, most of them members of the Baath Party. Kassem was assassinated the following day. Abdul Salam Arif became president, and relations with the Western world improved. In April 1966 Arif was killed in a helicopter crash and was succeeded by his brother, General Abdul Rahman Arif.

During the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War (1967), Iraqi troops and planes were sent to the Jordanian-Israeli border. Iraq subsequently declared war on Israel and closed its oil pipeline supplying the Western nations, which it accused of siding with Israel. At the same time diplomatic relations with the United States were severed. In July 1968 Baath Party officers overthrew General Arif’s government. Major General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, a former prime minister, was appointed head of the newly established Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), the country’s supreme executive, legislative, and judicial body.

In the following years Iraq maintained general hostility toward the West and friendship with the USSR. The positions of individual Arab countries with regard to Israel caused some friction between Iraq and its neighbors. In 1971 Iraq closed its border with Jordan and called for its expulsion from the Arab League because of Jordan’s efforts to crush the Palestinian guerrilla movement operating inside its borders.

Iraq aided Syria with troops and matériel during the Arab-Israeli War of 1973. Calling for continued military action against Israel, Iraq denounced the cease-fire that ended the 1973 conflict and opposed the interim agreements negotiated by Egypt and Syria with Israel in 1974 and 1975.

From 1972 to 1975 Iraq fully nationalized the foreign oil companies operating in Iraq. The country enjoyed a massive increase in oil revenues starting in late 1973 when international petroleum prices began a steep rise. The discovery of major oil deposits in the vicinity of Baghdād was announced publicly in 1975. The petroleum wealth largely went to Baath Party members and officials, and was spent disproportionately on the Sunni Arab areas. Average per capita income rose in Iraq during the 1970s, as the country began to industrialize in earnest. The Baath Party began cracking down on its rival, the Shiite Da`wa Party, occasionally arresting party activists. A major Shiite urban revolt in 1977 in the slums of East Baghdād caused the regime to share slightly more of the petroleum income with Shiites, providing increased social services.

F

2

Kurdish Revolt

In early 1974 heavy fighting erupted in northern Iraq between government forces and Kurdish nationalists, who rejected as inadequate a new Kurdish autonomy law based on the 1970 agreement. The Kurds, led by Mustafa al-Barzani, received arms and other supplies from Iran. After Iraq agreed in early 1975 to make major concessions to Iran in settling their border disputes, Iran halted aid to the Kurds, and the revolt was dealt a severe blow.

G

Saddam Hussein’s Rule

In July 1979 President al-Bakr retired and was succeeded by Saddam Hussein, believed to have been the true holder of power in Iraq for years. Hussein purged the Baath Party of al-Bakr loyalists, executing 55 senior party activists and army officers for treason. The reason for the purge was either opposition to Hussein’s replacing al-Bakr or a dispute over the way in which Hussein would be elected. A series of executions for disloyalty from 1982 to 1986 sent a clear message that no one could question the new president’s decisions and survive.

G

1

Iran-Iraq War

In 1979 Islamic revolutionaries in Iran led by Ayatollah Khomeini succeeded in overthrowing the country’s secular government and established an Islamic republic there. Tension between the Iraqi government and Iran’s new Islamic regime increased during that year, when unrest among Iranian Kurds spilled over into Iraq. Iraqi Shiites grew restive and some supported Khomeini, who was also a Shia Muslim. The Baath Party cracked down hard on the Da`wa Party leadership, making membership in the party a capital crime and executing its chief theorist, Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr. Many Iraqi Shiite activists fled to Iran. In September 1980 Iraq declared its 1975 agreement with Iran, which drew the border between the countries down the middle of the Shatt al Arab, null and void and claimed authority over the entire waterway.

The quarrel flared into a full-scale war (see Iran-Iraq War). Iraq quickly overran a large part of the Arab-populated province of Khūzestān (Khuzistan) in Iran and destroyed the Ābādān refinery. In June 1981 Iraq sustained a humiliating blow, but not from Iran. A surprise air attack by Israel destroyed a nuclear reactor near Baghdād. The Israelis charged that the reactor was intended to develop nuclear weapons for use against them. In early 1982 Iran launched a counteroffensive, and by May it had reclaimed much of the territory conquered by Iraq in 1980. In Tehrān, the capital of Iran, Iraqi Shia expatriates formed the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which developed a paramilitary wing, the Badr Corps. Badr conducted guerrilla attacks inside Iraq against the Baath. The Da`wa Party leadership was also active in Tehrān and was involved in anti-U.S. terrorist actions in Kuwait and Lebanon in reprisal for U.S. support and weapons sales to Iraq. In 1988 Iraq and Iran signed a cease-fire, ending the war.

As Hussein negotiated the cease fire with Iran, the Iraqi government again moved to suppress the Kurdish insurgency. In 1988 the Iraqi military used a variety of chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians, especially in the Iraqi town of Ḩalabjah, killing approximately 5,000 people. During the late 1980s Iraq rebuilt its military machine, in part through bank credits and technology obtained from Western Europe and the United States.