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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Iraq
Index
The Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) has seen its fortunes rise
and fall repeatedly since its founding by Yusuf Salman Yusuf
(known as Comrade Fahd, or the Leopard) in 1934. During the next
fifty years, the party's fortunes fluctuated with the successes
of particular regimes in Baghdad. Although the ICP was legalized
in 1937, and again in 1973, the Baath Party regularly suppressed
it after 1963 and outlawed it altogether in 1985
(see Political Opposition
, ch. 4).
In general, Iraqis rejected communism as contrary to both
Islam and Arab nationalism. Yet, the clandestine ICP survived
under the repressive policies of the monarchy, which had
determined that because of its widespread appeal, the
dissemination of communist theory among the armed forces or the
police could be punished with death or with penal servitude for
life. This persecution under the Hashimite monarchy raised
communists to a status near that of martyrs in the eyes of the
antimonarchical postrevolutionary leaders plotting the 1958
uprising. Ironically, the ICP was able to use the army to promote
its goals and to organize opposition to the monarchy. In August
1949, for example, one of the army units returning from Palestine
smuggled in a stencil printing machine for the ICP.
Between 1958 and 1963, the ICP became closely aligned with
the Qasim regime, which used the communist militia organization
to suppress its traditional opponents brutally
(see Republican Iraq
, ch. 1). By 1963 Qasim's former allies, except the ICP, had
all deserted him. When he was overthrown in February 1963, the
new Baathist leaders carried out a massive purge in which
thousands of communists were executed for supporting the hated
Qasim. Survivors fled to the relatively isolated mountainous
regions of Kurdistan. This first Baathist rise to power was
short-lived, however, and under Abd as Salam Arif (1963-66) and
his brother, Abd ar Rahman Arif (1966-68), both ICP and Baath
cadre members were suppressed, largely because of their close
connections with the Communist Party of Egypt and, in turn, the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Although the Baath hierarchy
had earlier perceived the ICP as a Soviet arm ready to interfere
in internal affairs, after the successful 1968 coup d'etat, Baath
leaders joined ICP officials in calling for a reconciliation of
their decade-long rivalry.
This reconciliation was short-lived, however, and in May 1978
Baghdad announced the execution of twenty-one ICP members,
allegedly for organizing party cells within the armed forces.
Foreign observers contended that the executions, which took place
long after the alleged crimes were committed, were calculated to
show that the Baath would not tolerate communist penetration of
the armed forces with the ultimate aim of seizing control,
probably with Soviet assistance. Attempts to organize new
communist cells within the armed forces were crushed, as the
government argued that according to the 1973 agreement creating
the Progressive National Front (PNF), only the Baath Party could
organize political activities within the military
(see The Politics of Alliance: The Progressive National Front
, ch. 4).
Unverified reports suggested that several hundred members of the
armed forces were questioned at that time concerning their
possible complicity in what was described as a plot to replace
Baath leaders with military officers more sympathetic to the
Soviet Union.
Despite several decades of arrests, imprisonments,
repression, assassinations, and exile, in the late 1980s the ICP
remained a credible force and a constant threat to the Baath
leadership. After the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War in 1980, the
ICP came to depend heavily on outside support for its survival.
Syria, for example, provided material support to the ICP's
struggle against the Saddam Husayn regime, and the Syrian
Communist Party cooperated with the ICP in strongly condemning
the war with Iran.
In addition to relying more heavily on outside financial and
moral support, the ICP initiated significant structural and
ideological changes in the 1980s. Four Arab leaders (two Shias,
two Sunnis) were dropped from the Politburo, and four Central
Committee members were reportedly expelled from the party in
1984. Although the reasons for these changes were not clear,
observers speculated at the time that party boss Aziz Muhammad
and his Kurdish compatriots had gained control of the ICP and
that Kurdish interests therefore outweighed national interests.
Muhammad's tenacity in supporting the armed struggle of Iraqi
Kurds and in totally opposing the Iran-Iraq War helped to bring
about a split in the ICP leadership. His keynote address to the
1985 Fourth Party Congress analyzed in detail the course of the
Iran-Iraq War; he assigned partial responsibility for the war to
Iran, but he blamed the Baath government in Baghdad for
prolonging the conflict. In September 1986, the ICP declared the
communists' fight against the Baath regime to be inextricably
linked to the achievement of peace between Iraq and Iran. A 1986
joint statement of the Tudeh (the Tudeh Party being the leading
Marxist party of Iran) and the ICP called for an end to the war
and for establishment of "a just democratic peace with no
annexations whatsoever, on the basis of respect for the two
countries' state borders at the start of the war, each people's
national sovereignty over its territory, and endorsing each
people's right to determine the sociopolitical system they
desire."
Reliable data on ICP membership were unavailable in early
1988. One 1984 estimate was 2,000 members, but other foreign
sources indicated a considerably larger ICP membership. Because
it was a clandestine party fighting for the overthrow of the
Baathist regime, the ICP's true membership strength may never be
known, especially because it directed its organizational efforts
through the Kurdish Democratic National Front (DNF). The ICP
headquarters was partially destroyed in May 1984 following
limited Turkish incursions to help Iraq protect its oil pipeline
to and through Turkey and was apparently relocated in territories
controlled by the DNF in 1988. Ideologically split and physically
mauled, the ICP may have lost much of its strength, and it had no
influence in the People's Army, which remained in the hands of
the Baath Party.
Data as of May 1988
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