A FIGHTER’S JOURNEY ON THE ROAD TO REVOLUTION

By Amer Islander

Translated by Hassan Selim

Chapter 1

Humble Beginnings

There is something about the desert, which always leaves us with a feeling of contradiction. How quickly is this limitless expanse broken, however distant its horizons, where the sky meets the earth or the earth meets the sky. How soon does this clarity, bright as the blade of a sword, become shrouded in obscurity, like the cloak of a wandering Beduin. How readily is this gentle warmth, this cordial familiarity, this glowing intimacy replaced by a savage loneliness like the loneliness of a dying man and a cruelty as hard and rough as a grindstone and a sullen, dull, gloomy and cold indifference. That deep peace and all-pervading silence and tranquility is but the mark of eternity and has no permanence. For how easily is it thrown into confusion by winds and raging storms, as though by the Last Trump. The desert is the greatest hidden being, its outward appearance is not its inner reality and what shows on its surface is not necessarily what goes on in its depths.

It would perhaps not be fanciful to suggest that the desert poses all the universal questions, which have troubled the consciousness of man since he first appeared on the earth. Nor would it be astonishing if all the great monotheistic religions had sprung from its seething heart. For here it was, surely, amid these sandy wastes that the first explanation of life was revealed to man, and here too that he formulated his final tentative theories about how the world might be changed. But this is no ordinary desert, for there lie stored in its memory, stretching back thousands of years, recollections of the most illustrious of ancient human civilizations, a civilization which used its discovery of writing to record, on tablets of clay, the sum of human experience in regulating the individual's relations with society in the laws of Hammurabi: the civilization of Summer, Assyria and Babylon.

Although the desert enfolded in its bosom all these civilizations and has kept them to itself for hundreds of years, years of intellectual and creative drought, this does not mean that the idea of civilization here is at an end. Far from it. It was rather as though it had withdrawn into a kind of mystical seclusion, where the hard road of suffering and endeavour will lead it, not to dissolution and decline, but towards a greater and more profound and complete union with struggling humanity, where man alone would ultimately achieve the highest goal.

And so it was that with the appearance of Islam bearing the torch of revelation this stretch of desert quickly came to life, witnessing the Abbasid era, the most brilliant period of Arab civilization. Indeed it became the center of Arab civilization at its zenith. And when, in due course, Baghdad became one of the most important and opulent centers of civilization in the whole world, this was only the logical expression of the laws of nature, society and man, which are manifest, in essence, in the forward march of progress..

But by this progress we do not mean an automatic and constant advance in a straight line. The road which history follows is full of twists and turns; and though progress may be the final destination there are bound to be many temporary setbacks on the way, long or short in their duration, according to the many factors and circumstances involved. Thus, when Arab civilization had reached the peak of its perfection and the Arab nation, within its orbit, had achieved a greater degree of unity and integration than at any time in its history, Hulagu and the Tartars were at the gate. A raging human sandstorm, hostile to civilization, came to flatten, destroy and annihilate the most sublime and noble of man's works, and the desert, which had been hiding its face behind the rich cornfields and flower gardens of the Abbasids, returned to cover with its sand dunes the heaps of human skulls, and the Tigris, with which the Abbasids had managed to tame the desert, quenching its thirst with its waves, was now stained with blood and ink. For the recorded memories of the human race, stored in the libraries of Baghdad, had been tossed by the Tartars into the river, where they had been transformed into a black torrent and the two colours, red and black, at that fateful moment in human history, had acquired a profound and eternal significance for concord and unity between men.

A long period of darkness now ensued marked not only by a decline in material and cultural wealth and in the nation's level of civilization. For its dismal manifestations included not only a realignment of international trade routes so that they by-passed the formerly flourishing Arab cities, leaving them to atrophy, or the influx of the crusading hosts, the Tartars from the west into the heart of the Arab homeland. Worse than any of these was the break-up of the Arab nation itself. For although the Caliph an-Nasser, one of the last of the Abbasids, strove to restore some semblance of unity to the mutilated Arab state, the time for this was past, for history could no longer bring back what had been lost. It was to be several centuries before, out of the pain and suffering of a long and bitter struggle against the anfractuosities of history, a star appeared to herald a new time of travail. The moment of awakening had come.

It was at that very moment in Arab history that Saddam Hussein was born. It was perhaps more than pure chance, which ordained that his birth should coincide with that historic moment of awakening. For once the scene had been set and the leading role was waiting for a hero to fill it, Saddam Hussein was already standing in the wings ready, and worthy, to answer history's summons.

His birth in 1937 was not a joyful occasion, and no roses or aromatic plants bedecked his cradle. He was born an orphan, his father having died before he was born, and a poor boy of peasant stock. Like the great majority of true leaders in history, he was obliged, from the moment he first became aware of himself, to face the challenges of life and to fashion his own existence. It was in the spring, on the twenty-second of April 1937, that Mrs. Sabhah Talfah al-Musallat gave birth to her son in the house of her brother al-Haj Khairallah Talfah and it was his paternal uncle, Hassan al-Majid; who gave him the name of Saddam. The house is situated in the region known as "al-Harah", a place in which Saddam Hussein has many relatives. In that little town, lying on the right bank of the Tigris which derives its name, Tikrit, from its earlier Latin name Meonia Tigrides, meaning "fortress on the Tigris" and which is surrounded by an octagonal wall with four gates. The Department of Islamic Education says that this town was known in the old Syriac writings as "Tijrit" and Baladhuri mentions that it was liberated from the rule of Byzantium in the year 20 A.H. (644 A.D.) by the Arab general 'Uqba bin Farqad.

However, nobility of descent is not necessarily associated with wealth. Saddam Hussein, born in this house of mud resting like most of the houses in this little town on wooden piles hardly able to support its weight, the offspring of poor peasants, belongs in fact to one of the most illustrious families in Arab political and religious history. If Arab historians were interested in constructing family trees, a study of the family tree giving the descent of Saddam Hussein would show us that it goes right back to the noblest family of all, whose greatest scion was the Imam' Ali bin Abi Talib. He himself has never mentioned this fact in any of the conversations, and meetings the author has had with him, possibly because he scorns to lay claim to religious and historic lineage in

the presence of those who can make no such claim, and is striving to give a secular and contemporary meaning to the traditional concepts of nobility and honour, viz. that a man's nobility stems from the nobility of the country whose citizen he is and that a fighter's honour derives from the honourable nature of the revolutionary struggle in which he is engaged. But at a moment of bitter and agonizing confrontation with those who had sought to betray him when he had become the foremost revolutionary leader in his country, he said in a speech, famous at the time (1): "We are the descendants of 'Ali."

And no doubt this expression had for him a personal significance, unsuspected by the thousands who heard him, just as great as its historical and political import.

Saddam Hussein's childhood was not easy. He was moved back and forth during the first ten years of his life between the house in which he had been born, which belonged to his maternal uncle, and the house of his paternal uncle, al-Haj Ibrahim, who had married Saddam Hussein's mother after the death of his father, as was the custom in such circumstances in that part of Iraq. He had, from his early childhood, to fend for himself. A sense of his own orphanhood might either have driven him to introversion and a melancholy self-sufficiency or led him to seek solace and compensation for his loneliness beyond himself in the company of others. Fortunately, and social and geographic environment doubtless played a part in this, Saddam Hussein refused to withdraw into his shell and chose to face up to life, hard and difficult though it was. For even at a tender age, his temperament was that of a man, and a fighter to boot. The difficulties of life, which surrounded him in his early environment, where a poor peasant's land withholds a crop as often as it yields one, taught him certain basic virtues, which were to remain with him throughout his life. Patience, endurance, tenacity, self-reliance, courage, the ability to face and overcome danger, grim determination, the ability to appraise accurately his own feelings, moral discipline, and above all, affection for the poor and sympathy with ordinary people.

Such inferences as can be drawn from studying his early childhood and listening to the testimony of those who were in daily contact with him at that period of his life, indicate that he possessed, even at that early age, the basic qualities, mental and moral, which go to make up the picture of an Arab paladin, preparing himself, or being prepared by Destiny, to play the role of leader of his country. As he himself once said: "No man's political doctrine can remain unaffected by his previous history, or by his birth, or by his life, or by the circumstances of his life."

One of those who were close to him in his early childhood, his elder brother, Adham (he was in fact the son of Ibrahim al-Hassan, his mother's husband, and his relationship with Saddam was that of a full brother because they lived as children in the same home) tells how he was always surrounded by a troop of children whose leader he was and to whom he was constantly attached and who were constantly attached to him, so that the neighbours, as well as members of his own family, would immediately say, when they heard the children shouting, "Here comes Saddam".

But he was never rough or domineering with his early "mass following". The local people thought that he was, on the contrary, a friendly, well-behaved boy. But to his young followers he was perhaps more than that-altruistic, often putting their interests before his own; and when he saw one of his playmates wearing a jacket which was worn or torn he would take off his own jacket and give it to him, and go home jacket-less; and when he was asked where it was he would simply say, as though he had only done his bounden duty: "I gave it to my friend because his jacket was no good." He would take no notice of any resultant scolding, remembering, even at that early age, the words of Christ: "Whosoever hath two, let him give one of them to him who hath none."

But the small child who had so taken to heart the chivalrous ethic was a real horseman. Nothing delighted him more than to ride his horse. His horse was the living creature nearest to his heart. He would get on its back and gallop through the neighbouring countryside until it tired, for it was fond of him too. A relationship between man and animal can sometimes be more affectionate, intimate and unselfish, than a relationship between two human beings. But the young boy was to suffer a cruel blow, the first in his life. His horse died. He heard the news of its death when he was in the fifth class of the primary school and living with his uncle in Tikrit. His horse was at Qaryat al-' Aujah waiting for his return on Friday during the spring and summer holidays. For the first time he was unable to control his emotion. Man is always powerless in the face of death. It is a time of loneliness and a deep and pervasive sense of loss and deprivation. His hand suddenly became paralysed and remained so for more than ten days. His people treated him with folk-remedies until the circulation returned once again to his forearm. A dark cloud descended on his soul that day, suffusing his bright eyes with tears.

Chapter 2

From Country to City

Poor peasant families did not at that time usually send their children to school. A boy had to grow up in the village, learning just the rudiments of farming so as to help his family, and acquiring a trade by which to earn his living. Schools were not numerous or widespread in that agricultural region of Iraq. The thousands of children who had it in them to become scientists, philosophers, artists and political leaders were in those years transformed into mere pawns in the army of poor and illiterate peasants, always forgotten in the plans and schemes of the reactionary politicians in the distant capital.

Every circumstance and environmental factor bid fair to make Saddam Hussein, as an orphan perhaps more than others, just one more of this forgotten and lost generation, so that the thirsty earth and the fierce encompassing desert would have utterly swallowed him, snuffing out the flame of his intelligence, had not a capacity for resisting circumstances and for striving tirelessly to overcome them, been among his virtues.

In 1947, when he was ten and living with his uncle, al-Haj Ibrahim, in a village called ash-Shawish, they were visited by a child of the same age, a relation of his mother.

This visit, and its consequences, was an important landmark and watershed in his development.

In the open space in front of the mud house the two small children would sit chatting, and one day Saddam heard his friend say something, which he had never heard from his other friends. The boy told him that he was going to school every day, that he was in the second primary class, and that he could already read and write. He then proceeded, with his finger, to write his name in the dust. Then he looked at him and explained the letters of the alphabet, and then the numbers.

The young Saddam was entranced. A new, fascinating and astonishing world unfolded before his eyes in that instant. He too must go to school and learn to write his name and how to memorise the multiplication tables and learn the rudiments of arithmetic. His eyes took on a look of intense determination, which puzzled his companion.

The next day he decided to put the matter to his family. Of course the idea was turned down. Every day, which passed, seemed to him to be irreparably lost. The schools opened and pupils were being enrolled for the new school year. He could think of nothing but those school benches and the fortunate pupils sitting on them. He suggested that he should go to his uncle, al-Haj Khairallah, in Tikrit, but this idea too was brusquely rejected. But he was not to be deflected from his course. He resolved to break off negotiations with his family and to adopt other measures. When night came, the little ten-year-old boy slipped out of bed and, with his few belongings in a bundle on his back, set out, alone as always, to face his destiny. He made for a place called al-Fatha, where he knew he would find some of his cousins who worked as watchmen for a local company. He was sure that they would tell him the way to Tikrit. Al-Fatha was only two hours' walk from his village and he arrived before sunrise. His relations were surprised to see him at such an early hour. "What is it, Saddam, " they asked, "what has happened?"

He told them that he had decided to go to school, but that his people would not hear of it. So he was on his way to Tikrit where he would be able to do what he had set

his mind on. He reminded them that they themselves had been to school and that their people had forced them to leave. His relations raised no objection. Indeed they encouraged him. They took him to the taxi stop and put him in a taxi, which would take him as far as the crossroad: instructing the driver to put him in another taxi for Tikrit. The relatives did not forget to provide him with something with which to ensure his safety on the road-a revolver! It was the first revolver he had ever had in his life.

When he arrived at Tikrit he knew the way to his uncle's house, since he had helped them move from the old house to this one four years earlier, when he was six. So he was able to find his way to his uncle's house unaided. He found the door open and walked in. Once more his arrival caused surprise. In reply to their eager questioning he said, quietly but resolutely: "I want to go to school."

This time he met with no rebuff. On the contrary his decision met with general approval and encouragement, "Well done, Saddam", they said. "Your people are mistaken. Of course you must go to school. You must enroll tomorrow, and keep at it. " It was the first time he had heard this kind of talk. A new chapter in his life had begun. Indeed the impression he had made on his uncle was to play an important part in deciding his future. His uncle, who was the senior male member of his family, was, as luck would have it, an educated man. He had qualified as a teacher and then entered the Military Academy and passed out from the Officers College, although he had not remained long in the army. He had been arrested at the time of Rasheed ' Ali al-Kilani's rebellion and had spent five years in prison. For this reason, Saddam, like all the members of his family, held him in high regard, as an example to be followed, and he still mentions how, when he was living with his mother he would often ask: "Where is uncle? Why has he gone away?" And they would tell him where he had gone and why. In this way he learned his first lesson in patriotism and hatred for the reactionary rulers, the agents of imperialism and for British colonialism whose troops desecrated the soil of Iraq at that time. The lessons would often reach back further into history, when she would tell him how, in the agricultural region of Iraq, his ancestors had resisted the Turkish occupation and Ottoman oppression. His family had furnished a whole company of martyrs, among them his mother's grandfather and two of his great uncles, one of whom had been only fourteen years old and another sixteen, on the day when the Turks came across them and killed them all. Their struggle against the Turks never ceased, but after this it acquired a new meaning, namely that of revenge for the family and tribe. Later they killed a group of Turkish officers and soldiers; the leader in this encounter was his mother's father. Hordes of Turks fell upon them, burning all their houses, and they fled to the mountains in the north of Iraq, returning after a while to continue the struggle. The stories told to him in childhood were stories of struggle and resistance, arrest and imprisonment, stories which were to crystallize in his awakening consciousness into basic concepts which would direct and guide him throughout his life: hatred of colonialism; hatred, no less bitter, of reactionary and oppressive authority; resistance in order to liberate the home-land; struggle in order to free his fellow-countrymen from poverty, degradation and dishonour.

He pursued his primary studies at Tikrit and when his uncle moved to Baghdad he remained alone in Tikrit in his uncle's house for two years to complete his studies there. Then, having completed the sixth year at the primary school and one year at the intermediate school, he also moved to Baghdad where he entered the Karkh secondary school. This school was a stronghold of nationalism and was always to be a human arsenal ready to explode in the face of the forces of occupation and their agents and lackeys. In its explosive atmosphere this young lad, whose fierce vibrant patriotism made him ready, at any time, to sacrifice his life for his country, found a fitting environment in which his political ideas and his latent qualities of leadership could develop to the full. On every level of national life the time was ripe for change as Saddam Hussein successfully pursued his studies in the fourth class of his secondary school.

With Baghdad poised on the rim of a volcano, another role awaited him.



Chapter 3

The Fourteenth of July.

A Gamble that Failed.

If anyone doubts the unity of this nation and of its destiny, he has only to recall the picture presented by the greater homeland in the fifties to be convinced that the strongest and deepest feeling among its masses, and the idea most firmly and widely held among its younger generation, are the feeling and idea of unity. So that when Gamal ' Abdul-Nasser, from Cairo, called upon Arabs to "rise up and free and unite our homeland", Arabs everywhere, from Iraq to Algeria, became as one man, with one voice and one goal.

In the mid-fifties, after Bandung, the Arab Liberation Movement gathered strength, and it was in Egypt that the decisive moment in the battle drew near. America refused to arm the nationalist regime in Egypt after it had intensified its campaign against the colonialist Baghdad Pact, and Dulles had withdrawn the offer to finance the High Dam, and Cairo revealed that it had breached the arms monopoly by concluding the famous arms deal for the first time with the Socialist Camp. Gamal ' Abdul- Nasser earned for himself the title of hero of Arab Nationalism by proclaiming, on Egyptian Revolution Day 1956, that revolutionary Egypt had, from that day, regained possession of the Suez Canal, thus taking completely by surprise not only the obsolete and crumbling colonialist world, but the whole world, and demonstrating that it had pushed wide open the door to the modern age and to a future worthy of their past.

An unimaginably deep sensation of victory took possession of Arabs everywhere at that moment. Political leaders in Europe and America have recorded in their diaries and memoirs how great and complete was the confusion, which prevailed at that time in the ranks of the old colonial powers, England and France. The Suez campaign, launched by the two colonial powers, abetted by their ally and factotum, "Israel", was but the futile and despairing gesture of powers whose knell had already been sounded by history, and for whom nothing remained at Suez but to collect their death certificates. Perhaps the reaction of the Arabs and of the nascent third world at that time may be counted as one of the positive results of this sorry episode, if indeed anything positive for the peoples of the world can be found in the death-bed follies of a moribund colonialism. The prospects for the whole Arab world seemed at once to have been transformed and all its aims and aspirations to be capable of realization now that colonial imperialism had been shown, by the judgment of history itself, to be a paper tiger .It was in this heady atmosphere that Saddam Hussein, the revolutionary political leader, was born. News of the tripartite aggression against Egypt carried by the radio and the press had transformed Baghdad into a battlefield in which chanting crowds, shoulder to shoulder and with clenched fists, confronted with unexampled vehemence the forces of Nuri al-Sa'id's reactionary puppet regime, demanding that the Baghdad Pact and the regime which existed to further the schemes of the colonialists should be overthrown and that support and assistance should be given to Egypt in its hour of struggle. The consciousness of the youthful fighter had begun to take form, as little by little, with firm and confident steps, he approached the stage which awaited him and on which he was to play his historic role.

In not more than a few months Saddam Hussein was enrolled in the Arab Baath Socialist Party. At that time the whole of Iraq expected the explosion at any moment. In the inner councils of the political parties the outline of a united front had begun to take shape by February-March 1957. There were, at this time, five political parties in Iraq, viz. the Arab Baath Socialist Party, the Iraqi Communist Party, the Istiqlal Party, the Patriotic

Democratic Party and the Democratic Party of Kurdistan. The "Front" was composed of those five parties.

What were the Front's aims? Its minimum aims, "unanimously accepted by all the patriotic forces and by the masses of the people, may be summarized as: Complete liberation from colonial influence and the construction of an independent, prosperous and progressive national economy; complete liquidation of feudalism; removal of the monopoly capitalism associated with colonialism from its dominant position so that it would no longer be able to oppress the working class and would be subjected to progressive national planning; creation of a democratic system of government suited to the nation's circumstances; strengthening of national unity between Arabs and Kurds on a firm democratic basis; creation of strong fighting forces and their preparation for the battle for Palestine and other usurped parts of the Arab homeland; effective contribution to the Arab struggle against colonialism, Zionism and reaction and the realization of a practical and effective form of unity with the liberated Arab countries (2)."

On 14th July 1958 the volcano erupted and the sound of its eruption was heard throughout the world. This historic Arab victory was achieved by a fighting union between the Iraqi people, through its political parties, and the national army. The reactionary puppet regime fell and the people sent its leaders to the gallows. One more citadel of colonialism in the Arab world had fallen and it seemed that all the main centres of the Arab east would soon be free. Gamal ' Abdul-Nasser, who was at the time on a visit to Yugoslavia, decided to return at once to Cairo. He had been profoundly moved by this historic event. The regime which had been his enemy and which had made its territory a base for attack on Egypt had been trampled under the feet of the Arab masses. But President Tito advised him not to return from Yugoslavia direct to Egypt via Hungary, as he had come. For colonialist fleets, provoked by the events, were on the move in the Mediterranean Sea. So from Brioni ' Abdul-Nasser went to Moscow and from Moscow to Cairo, and in the capital of the United Arab Republic its leader declared that "any aggression against the Republic of Iraq would be aggression against the United Arab Republic".

These were, for the Arabs, the most glorious moments in their contemporary history. After the union between Egypt and Syria in February 1958, another new and brilliant star seemed about to be added to the new constellation. Unity seemed no longer unattainable by any country whose fighting forces decided to fight colonialism to the end. Unity was just another facet of liberation and the struggle for liberation involved essentially a struggle for unity.

At the time of the revolution of July 1958, its leadership largely reflected on the one hand the situation in which the Arab nationalist movement found itself, and, on the other hand, the particular form of the political national movement within Iraq. The nationalist stamp which characterized the revolution at its outset did not stem only from the strong national tendency in the militant political movement within Iraq, but drew its moral strength, its logic and its exuberance from the nationalist tide, which flowed strongly on every Arab, shore, making each country's individual struggle part of a general struggle for the whole Arab homeland.

The most prominent feature of the nationalist stamp which the revolution bore in its early days was its declared commitment to linking the future of the country with that of the Arab nation and its commitment also to the Arab nationalist aims of the people of Iraq. This was reflected by the markedly nationalist tendency discernible among the members of the first government formed after the revolution, whereas the Communist party depended for Its representation on certain " democratic" elements affiliated to it (3) .It is worth enquiring at this point: What were the ingredients of the various political parties which participated in the revolution as reflected in their attitudes and in their fighting record? After the revolution, five different attitudes reflected five different ingredients. The difference between them quickly turned to antagonism, then to conflict and finally to outright war, which became day-by-day more bloody.

The Iraqi leadership of the Arab Baath Socialist party regarded the revolution as having realized Arab nationalist aspirations so far as Iraq was concerned. Foremost among them at that time was the strengthening of relations with the youthful Arab United Republic and the achievement of a degree of unity with it. In this the party was true to its central ideological concept, viz. that the growth of a revolutionary Arab movement in any country could be realized, at the level aspired to, through the revolutionary Arab movement and that the federal state represented, at that period, one of its historical forms, since regional self-sufficiency would mean that the revolution would atrophy, wither and ultimately die because it would fall an easy prey to local reactionary forces, led by the bourgeoisie, which would see in unity a threat to its interests, and it would also be threatened by imperialism and its agents who would seek to confine, contain and strangle it.

A secret internal publication, put out by the Secretariat General of the Iraqi Leadership of the Arab Baath Socialist Party in March-May 1959, expressed the idea in this way: "Liberation from reactionary colonialism qualifies the Iraqi region to join the federal state (4)." It stated, "It is not only the differences created by regionalism which prevent this but the reactionary political and economic interests within the region and colonialism. It is these, which must be resolutely and intelligently resisted (5)... Unification is a revolutionary operation, which can only be accomplished by disregarding all local considerations and the interests associated with regionalism. (6)"

But these ideological assumptions did not prevent the party from viewing in a patriotic light the internal problems weighing on the masses of the people within the Iraqi region, such as the need for radical agrarian reform which had been one of the aims of the patriotic forces before the revolution and its concentration on the demand for political democracy, in addition of course to the other aims on which all the patriotic forces were agreed.

But the Iraqi Communist Party, whose assessment of the situation within the region proceeded from different ideological assumptions, held views on what was theoretically desirable and what was practically possible, which were completely at variance with those of the Arab Baath Socialist Party. From the outset, the Iraqi Communist Party rejected the watchword of unity with the United Arab Republic which had overwhelming support in Iraq and wished to substitute for it the pallid slogan of "federal union" to which it did not forget to add "and friendship with the Soviet Union (7)". Then it proceeded to water down "federal union" into something even more anaemic, acceptable even to the reactionary states, viz. " Arab solidarity". By way of compensation it proposed a seemingly brilliant internal slogan: "Our duty is to guard the Republic and national independence (8)" as though Arab unity constituted a threat to the Republic or a diminution of national independence. The Communist Party regarded that slogan as the fundamental principle from which all other principles should be derived and from which all executive measures should proceed, even on the level of changing the internal social structure itself; Amer ' Abdullah, a member of the Political Bureau of the Iraqi Communist Party wrote, early in 1959: "No useful purpose is to be served at the present time by talking too much about a single Arab state, although it may be useful to talk about a liberated nation, able to defend its independence. To realize the Arab dream of a united Arab nation is no easy matter, neither is it within reach at present. . The Arab countries are not moving at a uniform pace either as regards their general development or as regards their progress towards unity. The facts show that the Arab countries will continue to follow their own numerous and diverse paths (9)." He then goes on to draw his own theoretical conclusions upon which were based all the attitudes subsequently taken up by the Communist party: "Fragmentation is a fact. Special circumstances cannot be ignored. The experiment in Syrian-Egyptian unity has given a negative result in halting Syrian rapid progress towards general development and has put her many steps back (10)." Indeed, in a statement issued on 3 September 1958, the Political Bureau of the Iraqi Communist Party said: "The masses of the people are alarmed at the thought of joining the United Arab Republic, because accession will not offer the Iraqi national economy and capital an adequate chance of prosperity and development and will not afford fair conditions for economic co-operation between Iraq and the United Arab Republic, in view of the disparity in their respective levels of development (lil)."

It seems clear from the last two quotations that the Iraqi communists, as represented by their official party, regarded regionalism as an insuperable "fait accompli", and the mere thought of joining an already existing Arab union between two countries in differing stages of development was something calculated to alarm the masses of the people. But which masses did they mean? The masses which feared that unity would threaten their economic ambitions? The masses of national Iraqi capital? It is odd to find the Communist Party defending capitalist ambitions. And even odder to expect the " Arab bourgeoisies" to achieve their own development and prosperity in such a way that it would be possible to think of Arab unity in any form which could accommodate the earlier concept. No one can believe that the masses of the people are the capitalist or bourgeois masses, even if we were to add the epithet "national" .For the real masses of the people are the toiling masses who have nothing to lose now or in the future and thus have no cause to fear unity. It is futile to imagine that any popular Arab union could be based on a bourgeois Arab union in which the component parts were at an equal stage of development. At the best, it could be no more than a union of exploiters exploiting to the utmost "the masses of the people".

Although this concept of unity adopted by the Iraqi Communist Party is derived essentially from the Stalinist concept of nationalism and unity which regards nationalism as a manifestation of capitalism and unity as a bourgeois aim, in the manner of nineteenth century Europe, the Iraqi Communist Party in fact imagined that, by rejecting unity and supporting and encouraging the individualistic tendencies in' Abdul-Kareem Qasim, it would be able to get closer to the seat of power and to share or eventually monopolize it. Its rejection of the watchword "unity" found a soothing echo in the title of "Sole Leader" bestowed upon Qasim at that time, but more important it gave encouragement to and set a seal- of approval on those who supported him. The leadership of the Communist Party at that time imagined that they could achieve their ends by linking their destiny with that of' Abdul-Kareem Qasim and proceeding direct to socialism without passing through a bourgeois phase, a view which was in clear contradiction with their apparently basic concept which rejected a unity proceeding from a position of unequal development as between the Iraqi bourgeoisie and the other Arab bourgeoisies, invoking in support of this view, statements made at the twentieth congress of the Soviet Communist Party of 1956, the validity of which there had, as yet, been no opportunity to test in practice, viz. "It is not necessary for backward countries to pass through a capitalist phase of development, which can be by-passed by the working class leadership and its Communist Party(12) ."

For this reason the communists neglected to seek the Support of the other patriotic parties within Iraq for their alliance, nor did they bother to re-affirm their adherence to the National United Front after the revolution had taken place. They were mainly concerned with what they called: "defending the Republic's national independence", so that in their reply to the demand of the patriotic parties for radical agrarian reform they said: "This essential demand must be subordinated to a greater and more important task, viz. the task of defending the independence of the Republic, and any measure in the field of agrarian reform shall be subordinate to this basic task (13)." In their reply to the patriotic parties' demand for. political democracy in order to achieve the people's social objectives for the sake of which the revolution had been brought about, they wrote: "These differences and conflicts of interests and ideas are definitely of secondary importance so far as the course of the revolution and the progress and independence of the country are concerned. Such disputes as may arise in the rural areas between peasants and landlords, and in the towns between employers and workers, will remain secondary and can be resolved within the framework of the common interest and in the interest of defending the security and stability of the Republic (14)."

The Communist Party was subsequently to acknowledge, once more, that it had "adopted isolated, leftist attitudes in handling the democratic situation in the country and had fallen into the error of over-estimating its own strength and under-estimating the role of authority and of the nationalist forces in defending the Republic since it had considered itself and' Abdul-Kareem Qasim as being alone, capable of defending the Republic. It had thereby excluded the patriotic forces from any effective role in influencing the course of event (15)". But this self-criticism, which the Communist Party leadership did not begin to take to heart until after it had been issued, had come too late. The rift was already all too apparent, the bridges were already down and the chapter of tragic disasters was already under way. Unfortunately, the leaders of the Iraqi Communist Party failed to realize at that time, mesmerized as they were by the prospect of power and intoxicated as they were by their fleeting and illusory authority over the mass political organs, how heavy the price would be, and that it would have to be paid, not by Iraq alone, but by nationalist and progressive forces throughout the Arab east.

As regards the Istiqlal Party, its intellectual sterility and ideological emptiness caused it to lose its balance and lapse into paralytic confusion under the pressure of events, so that it seemed that its role in history had ceased with the revolution, as what remained of its leadership rushed to join the Baath Party. For the Patriotic Democratic Party, the revolution had, for the time being, offered an opportunity for growth and relative expansion, representing as it did the capitalist middle-class. Although it saw, in the growth of the Communist Party, a strategic danger and a threat to what it imagined to be its class interests and ambitions, it regarded the call to Arab unity as a danger much more serious and imminent, so that its conflict with the Baath was pushed into the forefront while that with the communists was, for the time being, put into cold storage. But it lacked clear ideological cohesion and was not always able to present a unified political stance, even in its higher echelons.

Such then were, in general, the distinctive attitudes of the five parties, which were active in the political arena in Iraq after the July 1958 revolution. The sum of these attitudes was a rift in the Front leading to its dissolution.

An attempt was made in November 1958 by the nationalist forces to draw up a charter of joint action, which would ensure the continued operation of the Front. It enshrined the following political principles:

1. That Iraq is part of the Arab nation and that it should strive to establish .the best possible links with the United Arab Republic in the future, with a view to comprehensive Arab unity.

2. That the Front should strive to apply the terms of the provisional constitution of 27 July 1958 relating to the national rights of the Kurdish people.

3. That the Government must pursue a patriotic policy and satisfy the people's demand for political and economic liberation from colonialism.

4. That support for the Republic and the revolution should be affirmed and that the need should be acknowledged for a sound democratic life, which would give the political, parties the right to function openly (6).

Nevertheless, what was the practical result of this charter? The Arab Baath Socialist Party had advocated support for the common struggle and a closing of the ranks of all the parties, bodies, ethnic groups and creeds on the basis of the principles and aims of the revolution.

But the attitude of the Communist Party was negative. It received the charter coolly, clinging to its illusions which led it to believe that it could hold' Abdul-Kareem Qasim in check and secure power for itself through an absolute personal dictatorship. For at that time no other political party, with the possible exception of the Democratic Party of Kurdistan, could muster enough weight to turn the scales.

The gamble that failed had begun. Crazed mobs poured into the streets, like serpents crawling through jungles untrodden by human feet. The sun of revolution was setting. The hour of crucifixion had come. Iraq was to bleed to death.


Chapter 4

The Revolution’s sinking sail

There have been many revolutions which have followed a violent course and which have involved the spilling of blood. But the violence has been directed against the revolution's enemies and the bloodshed has been, in a sense, necessary in order that the revolution should take root, grow and bear fruit.

But what happened in Iraq, during that tragic and melancholy period of its history, was more like some dreadful nightmare. It is impossible to imagine how men' s mental processes can become so distorted and ossified and fall so completely under the sway of their own ready-made phrases that thy are driven in their thousands into new forms of savagery and collective carnage.

The strange thing is that all this took place in the name of the finest and noblest concept to which man can aspire: socialism. All humanity, and most of all progressive humanity, will never forgive Stalin the crimes he committed in the name of democracy and freedom against those among the masses of his people whom he described as the enemies of socialist development, notwithstanding all his achievements within his country and in the Second World War. The report delivered by Khrushchev at the secret session of the twentieth congress of the Soviet Communist Party, in which he revealed for the first time the scale and magnitude of those crimes, fell like a thunderbolt on all those whose minds and hearts had been drawn to the socialist paradise over which Joseph Stalin had presided on behalf of the International. The breakdowns and schisms which ensued in many Communist parties all over the world were a tragic and vehement expression, both on the collective and "individual levels, of a keen awareness among socialists everywhere and of their sudden discovery that they had been worshipping a body without a soul and that man lives not by bread alone, but also by freedom and democracy.

Nevertheless all this had taken place within the framework of an historic experiment, which had challenged the servitude of man for the first time. And although this does not justify its denial of what was supposed to be its essence, it can at least be advanced as an explanation-and how many explanations have been advanced-of the abuse which has been leveled at that historic experiment. But what was it which drove the liberating Iraqi revolution, within a few months of its having been successfully accomplished, months of solidarity between the nationalist elements and cohesion between the parties, into morass? Why did it rush, or allow itself to be pushed, so quickly into that bloody quagmire? And how did all its noble aims and ideals of freedom, unity and socialism-all facets of the same jewel, lose themselves amid those endlessly rancorous and bitter struggles between armies defending the same positions and dreaming the same dreams?

It would take an accomplished writer of horror stories or a great historical tragedian to describe what happened in Mosul in March 1959 and again in Kerkuk in July 1959.

It was not feudalism, reaction or monopoly capitalism, nor even the colonialist oil companies, which were the victims of these blood baths. On the contrary it was the patriots and the nationalists who fell victim to the demented mobs and whose desecrated corpses lay about the streets, while the feudal landlords clung to their estates, and capital, monopoly and the colonialist oil companies continued to flourish unmolested.

The Communist Party tried to organize in Mosul a grand review of its forces under the title "Grand Festival of Peace", on the sixth of March 1959 and thousands of people flocked thither in a special free train which left the capital bearing a placard on which was written "Peace train to Mosul". It went on publishing in its newspapers inflammatory slogans like "Come to Mosul to take part in the Grand Festival of Peace", "To the heroic city, city of revolutionary glory", "Peace train leaves Baghdad this evening"(17). Of course, world peace was not at risk, nor was world war imminent.

The Festival was a manifestation of a bitter and unjustifiable struggle against other patriotic and nationalist forces. Naturally (for that indeed was its purpose), there were clashes between the communists and the nationalist forces in the city. The army officers subsequently met and instructed the officer commanding the fifteenth brigade, Staff-Colonel ' Abdul-Wahhab ash-Shawwaf, to go to Baghdad, see' Abdul-Kareem Qasim and give him a picture of the situation in Mosul, so that he might take prompt action to quell the disturbance before it got out of hand. But Qassam’s mind was on other things. He was happy to see the patriotic forces exhausting themselves in a struggle against one another, in order that he might, as he imagined, strengthen his hold on the reins of government. He did nothing. Nor did he offer any solution to the tense situation, other than a few unhelpful platitudes. And, so the tension worsened.

Once more ash-Shawwaf went to Baghdad to see Qasim. But as before he returned without any decision which might have restored the situation, although he had, in his suitcase, a picture of the "Sole Leader" on which the great .man had written: "To my noble brother, Abdul-Wahhab ash-Shawwaf." Meanwhile Mosul was in turmoil and tremors had begun to be felt in Baghdad itself. Ministers were resigning; senior officers were asking to be placed on the retired list. The "Popular Resistance" was beginning to sharpen its swords on the people's necks. Colonel Fadhil ' Abbas al-Mahdawi, President of the Peoples Court, was turning his court-room into a theatre in which the drama of the struggle against the nationalists in Iraq and against the United Arab Republic was staged each night.

Ash-Shawwaf went to Baghdad for the third time. Again he met Qasim, who, brushing aside the urgent matters which ash-Shawwaf had come to see him about, whispered that he would tell him a secret, which he had never yet divulged to anyone. He then thrust into ash-Shawwaf’s pocket a medal on which was inscribed the words "We will return." "Return?" asked ash-Shawwaf, "Return where?" "To Palestine, of course." "When will that be, Leader?" asked ash-Shawwaf. "I shall announce it at the proper time"(18), was the enigmatic reply.

This playful little scene was, in itself, an indication that the ship of state was without a captain and that Iraq was heading for, or was being propelled by unseen forces towards, an unknown destination.

In the streets of Mosul, the nation's forces were divided against themselves. One section had allowed itself, either by some spiritual affinity with the "Leader" or with his wickedness, to be persuaded that he was capable of crushing the others and of "eliminating" all those who stood in his way.

What happened subsequently was the natural result of its tragic prologue. The grand festival was held in that tense and critical climate. The Sole Leader's office sent

a telegram to ash-Shawwaf telling him to keep the army units in their barracks on the two days, 5th and 6th of March, while the "Festival" was being held. On the 7th of March a further telegram was sent asking the officer commanding the military region to continue to keep the army units in barracks.

After the Festival was over and the participants had dispersed, the nationalist forces attempted, in their turn, to organize some manifestation of their real presence in the city. The communists objected and asked that the military forces, which had had orders to remain in barracks during the Festival, should be called out to disperse the nationalist gathering. But the nationalist demonstration went ahead in the city, its numbers increasing. Then shots rained down on it and fires were started at bookshops, cafes and other premises owned by elements sympathetic to the nationalist movement. A counter-demonstration, led by the communists, tried to encircle the first demonstration. In a quarter of the city called Bab al Baidh, which was completely under nationalist control, the communist demonstrators began to get out of hand. Some of them started attacking houses, dragging out the occupants and subjecting them to all kinds of violence. The army had no alternative but to begin to do its duty. It came out on to the streets and imposed a curfew, but only after much burning, looting and bloodshed.

In a country without an effective government, the officers who had joined with ash-Shawwaf after the curfew decided upon an armed uprising, in the belief that they alone were capable of keeping the country on a proper course. On the 8th of March, ash-Shawwaf, at the head of his armed division, declared his first, and last, uprising.

This action had not been precisely planned, nor had it any organization to ensure that it would be supported by the military forces in other parts of the country. As ill luck would have it, the circumstances were not propitious. Qasim sent his air force to nip the rising in the bud and ash-Shawwaf was wounded in an air raid. He tried to reach the hospital to have his wound dressed, but on the way he was shot at and killed, and his body was hung up for all to see, a melancholy witness to the tragic culmination of the bloody struggle between communists and nationalists.

The prompt suppression of ash-Shawwaf’s rising was the signal for an indiscriminate campaign of terror to be unleashed against those suspected of having supported it. Doors were broken down, houses were wrecked, old men, women and children were strangled, bodies, among them the naked bodies of young girls, were hung from electricity pylons. Meanwhile, demonstrating mobs poured on to the streets of Baghdad, not satisfied with what had happened at Mosul, and chanting "Kill them, kill them". The newspaper "Ittihad ash-Sha'ab", the Iraqi Communist Party's mouthpiece, came out with the following item on its front page: "After the corpse of, Abdul-Wahhab ash-Shawwaf had been dragged through the streets of Mosul, on Tuesday night it was the turn of the others, when the indignant masses dragged their dead bodies through the streets as an example)." A short while after came a call from the trade union organizations affiliated to the Communist Party, saying: "We will turn the whole of Iraq upside down, so that every town and village, every inch of Iraqi soil, will teach anyone who dares to thwart our Republic a harder lesson than they learned at Mosul (20)." Then, two days later, "Ittihad ash-Sha'ab", assessing the "revolutionary" experiment conducted by the communists at Mosul, published a salute to the "fighter al-Barazani", the feudal Kurdish

Leader, in which it said: "The presence of the fighter, al-Barazani, in Kurdistan during the mutiny by al-Shawwaf’s traitorous band had a great influence on the readiness of the Kurds to help in crushing the mutiny and in nipping ash-Shawwaf’s conspiracy in the bud (21)."

After the festival of terror and murder in the streets and alleys, another festival began in al-Mahdawi's "court", where the proceedings, for all their intensely tragic character, at times degenerated into something bordering on farce. For in no criminal court in the world, not even in the trials of the second world war criminals at Nuremberg, have the crowds stood yelling as though crazed with fury: "Kill them! Kill them!" while a group

of nationalist officers who, whatever their offence in the eyes of the regime, were nevertheless out and out patriots, stood in the defendants' cage waiting while the president of the court heaped abuse on Arab nationalism and unity and on the United Arab Republic and Gamal ' Abdul-Nasser until, amid the cheers and acclamation, he pronounced sentence of death upon them.

In U mm at- Tubul Place, in the capital Baghdad, a gallows was erected to rip off the heads of the finest and noblest of those who had borne arms in the Iraqi army in defence of the honour of their country and the dignity of their fellow-countrymen.

What occurred after that in Basra was more than matched by what happened in Kerkuk. Both were tragedies after the Mosul pattern. Even Abdul-Kareem Qasim himself, at a meeting with a delegation from professional organizations and trade unions affiliated to the Communist Party, told its members, in disgust: "I will now hand round a few pictures to show you the chaos which has been created among our Turcoman brothers and fellow-citizens. Look and see whether any of you would permit himself to take the law unto himself and to attack his fellow countrymen and commit these atrocities against them. Those who stand for freedom and those who stand for democracy do not perpetrate these acts of savagery. The events of Kerkuk are a disgrace to Iraq. Did Hulagu, even, do anything like this? Is this the twentieth century? (22)"

Nevertheless, the "Ittihad ash-Sha'ab" could still write: "The show-down in Kerkuk is another splendid example of the only effective method of crushing the enemies of the republic (23)." And again: "The republican forces demonstrated their overwhelming strength and struck a decisive blow in Kerkuk, by the same shrewd method that was used to crush ash-Shawwaf’s conspiracy (24)."

Karl Marx, who said: "Man is the most valuable form of capital (25)", must have turned in his grave during those unhappy days, when so many crimes were being committed in his name. He no doubt repeated once more the famous phrase by which he used to disclaim association with those who sought to lay their crimes at his door. "If these are Marxists, then all I can say is that I am not a Marxist (26)."


Chapter 5

A Break in the Clouds

Who was the winner? Who had anything to gain from this bloody contest?

The nationalists were intended to be the sacrificial lambs, to be offered to' Abdul-Kareem Qasim on the altar of his personal dictatorship, so that the communists alone should be the keepers of the temple and its high priest. But it did not escape the "Sole Leader" who, at that stage, was an adept at the game of "divide and rule", that the communists imagined themselves capable of manipulating him just as he imagined himself capable of manipulating them. Although he had supported them in their attack on and their attempt to liquidate the Baathists, there was a limit beyond which he would not allow them to go, since he was determined to retain in his hands the balance of power. Despite all their efforts, the communists were unable to obtain a formal share of power. It is true that, but for them, the political arena was empty after the Patriotic Democratic Party had declared its political activity suspended in protest at their improper conduct. But this vacuum did not turn out to be in their interests, because it made them alone seem responsible for the state of political and economic collapse in the country.

This moment represented, for the nationalist forces, a political low water mark. They were to a wait in vain a genuine turn of the tide. The peacock, inflated with his own conceit strutted alone on the summit of his power, while the masses of the people, at every level, continued to suffer their everlasting pains, rendered more acute by the anarchy prevailing throughout the land.

About this time, a man called Sa'dun an-Nasiri was killed in Tikrit. He was one of the most enthusiastic and devoted henchmen of' Abdul-Kareem Qasim, and the security organs could find no one on whom to pin the responsibility for his murder other than that quiet and level-headed young man who used to go back to his village at the end of term to share the life of a peasant with his relatives: Saddam Hussein. It was not that there was any real case against him, but merely. that he was a Baathist militant, well known in the neighbourhood.

He now entered prison for the first time in his life, the Sarai Prison, where he, as a young member of the Arab Baath Socialist Party, was to welcome successive batches of his comrades. The prison had become the only place in which militants were safe from random acts of murder and terrorism on the streets. The prisoners would even plead with the wardens to let their fellow militants come in with them behind bars. They would spend the day in safety and then creep off home under cover of darkness, until sunrise when they would again seek asylum behind bars.

One day he was told that his case had been transferred from the court martial to the revolutionary tribunal, i. e. al-Mahdawi's court. He was certain that they would execute him along with his relatives and friends who were accused with him. Saddam's first reaction was to try to escape by force from the trap that had been set for him. He arranged with a man called' Awni Rifa'i to bring him revolvers while they were going for questioning. With the help of these they would try to escape before the trial began, and he, with his comrades became tasty fodder for al Mahdawi's guillotine. He explained to his fellow accused what he was planning. One was his mother's cousin and the other his own cousin, both young men like himself. He did not take into his confidence his two uncles, who were also accused. But, on consideration, he -postponed carrying out his plan, since he feared that the authorities would deal with his uncles separately and that they would be unable to get away. A short while after, when the nationalist tide had again begun to flow, the papers in the case were returned to the first court martial and he gave up his plan to escape trial by the use of force. He remained in prison for six months after which the court released him, having found him innocent of the charges made against him.

He went back to his village, and every evening he would go out and write Baathist slogans on the walls of houses and company buildings. Every morning people going from al' Aujah to Tikrit could read fresh slogans written by some unknown hand. Some of these graffiti are still to be seen on the walls of Tikrit.

One day a party comrade named' Ata Hussein as-Samarra'i, from' Aujah (where he still lives with his uncle and his mother) came to him and said: "The party wants you in Baghdad."

The next day he set out for Baghdad where he went to the house of his party superior, at that time' Abdul-Khaliq as-Samarra'i. But the latter had no clear idea of what the party wanted of him, nor of the task which it wished to entrust to him. As-Samarra'i told him: " Ahmad Taha al ' Azuz will call on you. All I know is that he will take you to the party organization, which has asked for you. They will tell you what you will have to do."

An hour later, Ahmad Taha al' Azuz knocked at his door and took him to see another man called Iyad Sa'id Thabit. Ayad looked at him intently and said in a quiet, serious, but clear voice: "Your task is to kill' Abdul-Kareem Qasim. Are you ready?" Saddam Hussein replied at once, a ring of gladness in his voice: "Of course I am ready."

He regarded it as an honour to be entrusted with this task. For such an important assignment, entrusted to so recent a recruit to the ranks of the party's militants, could only mean that he was held in especial esteem.

Abdul-Kareem Qasim was in the habit of passing along Rasheed Street on his way to and from his home in al Alawiya and his office in the Ministry of Defence. Therefore Rasheed Street had to be the scene of operations. The party hired an apartment in Rasheed Street in which it installed Saddam Hussein along with his comrades who were to help him in carrying out the plan.

Another man was to be stationed outside to watch the road and find out which route Qasim was to take. If he came from the direction of al-Bab ash-Shari the code word was "Shukri" and if from the Ministry of Defence it was to be "Mahmud". The difference between the two was the side of the road along which the "Sole Leader's" limousine would pass, in order to pass directly under the trajectory of the shots from the automatic rifles.

On the seventh of October 1959 a group of young men were standing on the pavement in Rasheed Street, along which traffic passes in the direction of al-Bab ash-Sharqi, their eyes fixed on the passing vehicles, their fingers on their triggers. Among them, one might have picked out a slender young man wearing a long jacket, which looked as though it did not belong to him (which indeed it did not). It was his uncle's jacket, which he had borrowed from his wardrobe without even knowing whether it would be long enough to conceal the sub-machine gun he was carrying at his side. This young man's task was to give covering fire to his comrades who were to open fire on the "Leader's" car, and to cover their retreat after they had carried out their task. He himself would be the last to leave.

But when he found himself face to face with the dictator, he was unable to restrain himself. He forgot all his instructions and immediately opened fire. Bullets rained down on the car from the other sub-machine guns and automatic rifles. There were five of them. But two of the sub-machine guns jammed. The other three spewed out on to the "Sole Leader's" car all the venom stored up in the hearts of the masses. "This for the martyrs of Mosul! This for the martyrs of Basra! This for Kerkuk, this for Baghdad! This for the old men, women and children who died a gratuitous death, sacrifices to the lust for power! And this for the terror which stalks the land, making it unfit for human beings to li