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Iraq
The Iraqi Communists and Baathist Iraq
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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