A History of the Iraqi Communist Party 1934-1963: Part 2
By "Comrade Mudarisov"
This chapter will look at the founding and the early development of the ICP. The ICP was known for being a party which attracted a wide range of minorities from across the religious and sectarian divide, unlike other political parties who consisted of notables, the traditional land owning classes, and the elite of society. However, this was not always the case. Thus, this chapter will look at the composition of the ICP’s membership between the years 1934-1949 in order to understand its structure and make up, as well as to determine who it attracted and why. It is also important to examine both internal and external events that shaped Iraq in this period, such as the Bakr Sidqi coup of 1936, the coup of Rashid ‘Ali al-Gaylani in 1941, opposition to the monarchy and British influence, the ICP’s relations with other political parties of the time, the impact of the Second World War on Iraq, as well as the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, and the ICP’s responses and policies towards all these factors. The development of ideology and organisation of the ICP was very crucial in this period, due to the leadership, for much of the 1940s, of Yusuf Salman Yusuf (Fahd), which will be looked at in detail in this chapter.
The Founding of the ICP
The first reference to communism in Iraq appears in Iraq in 1924, with the establishment of a ‘Marxist’ study circle in Baghdad. In 1927 the first communist cell in Iraq was established in Basra. In addition, the first placard carrying the symbol of the hammer and sickle appeared in the city of Nasirriya in 1932. There are also Iraqis attending the KUTV University in Moscow at this time (most notably ‘Asim Flayeh). Thus, although some Marxist influence was present in the early days of the Iraqi state, a coherent party was not established until the 31st March 1934, when the three main cells of Basra, Baghdad and Nasirriya merged to become the first central committee. However, there appears to be no activities by the newly formed ICP between 1934 and 1935. By March 1935, the founders of the ICP also founded another organisation: The Association Against Imperialism (Jam‘iyyat dudd-il isti’mar). The founding of this association marked an important turning point for the communists, since, for the first time, they were now under the umbrella of the Association, and not scattered around the country as they had previously been. The Association, however, collapsed due to factionalism and infighting. No sooner had the Association collapsed, than the ICP established its first illegal newspaper Kifah-ish Sha‘b (The Struggle of the People). The paper regarded itself as the ‘guardian over the interests of the masses of workers and peasants’ , and it is in this period that a coherent policy begins to emerge. Evidence of the emergence of a coherent ICP policy was shown in the second issue of Kifah-ish Sha‘b; it advocated, firstly, the expulsion of the ‘imperialists’, and complete independence to the Kurds. This was unprecedented in the history of Iraq, since no other political party (except the Kurdish ones) ever mentioned the Kurds, let alone the issue of independence. Secondly; the distribution of lands to the peasantry; thirdly, the abolition of all debts and land mortgages; fourthly, the seizure of all properties belonging to the ‘imperialists’ including banks, oilfields and the railways, fifthly, the concentration of power in the hands of the workers and peasants, and finally; the immediate launching of social revolution. Nevertheless, it is clear, that none of these demands could have or would have been met by the Iraqi government. In addition, while these aims represented radical leftist views, it is also significant to note that it appeared at the same time as the Comintern, which was supported by Kifah-ish Sha‘b and the ICP, was introducing the policies of the ‘popular-front’ and ‘national-front’. It is also worth mentioning that after the publishing of this statement, the ICP never expressed their demands in such a revolutionary fashion again, not even after the July 1958 revolution when they were at the climax of their power and influence.
By 1936 two main movements of opposition to what was seen as a corrupt government began to form, and both movements were the offshoot of completely different ideologies. The first was the Ahali group. It was formed in 1931 by a few enthusiastic young men with liberal ideas. They advocated socialism and democracy, but the group was not a political party, but rather a coalition of people with ‘progressive’ ideas. Among the Ahali group was one known communist, Abdul Qader Isma’il, while the others were Iraqis from notable families who were educated in the west. The Ahali group did not command much popular support, but often spoke in the interests of the poor and under privileged. The other movement of opposition was from the army, who professed nationalism and sought the eventual establishment of a military dictatorship. The army were supported by almost all national organisations, and had won higher prestige due to their roles in putting down Kurdish uprisings and the Assyrian affair of 1933. Thus, plans were put in place for a coup against the government. The Ahali and the army worked together primarily because Bakr Sidqi, the head of the army, and Hikmat Suleyman (who was very close to the Ahali) enjoyed a very close friendship. Unlike the 1940s, and onwards, however, opposition was not directed at the monarchy, but rather at the cabinets. Opposition to the monarchy was to rise due to the unpopular policies of the regent and his closeness to Britain.
The coup took place on 29th October 1936, and was successful in achieving its aims. But what is important for this study is how the ICP reacted to the coup and how much influence it gained or exerted. Following the coup, the ICP worked hand in hand with the Ahali group, who were invited by the King to form a government under Hikmat Suleyman. At this time the ICP was still in its infancy, however, they adhered to Moscow’s line. Thus, since the coup came about at a time when the ‘national front’ policy was in place, it would not have made sense for the ICP to withhold its support and assistance to the Ahali group. Having said that, however, one must ask whether the communists really had any influence at this time at all. The simple answer is no and if it did it was very minimal. The demonstrations that took place in support of the coup were organised by the Ahali group, who were in the public eye. In addition, the popular support of the people was directed towards the army officers, who differed greatly in ideology with the ICP. Furthermore, the army officers and the Ahali group eventually split, leading Bakr Sidqi to expel many of them alleging they were ‘communists’. While the allegations were untrue it led to the suppression of suspected communists and organisations, forcing the ICP further underground.
Having looked at the very early days of the ICP, we will now turn our attention to the composition of its membership in order to determine who was attracted to it, and for what reasons, and what this could tell us about both Iraqi society in the late 1930s and the 1940s, and about the ICP in its infancy.
Membership (Part 1)
From the three main cells of Baghdad, Basra, and Nasirriya, of whose members formed the nucleus of the ICP in 1935 there were seventeen members of whom five were Christians, eight Sunni Muslims, and four Shi’ite Muslims. It is interesting to note that until 1941 there were no Jewish members. This is primarily because of two reasons: firstly, the Jews in the 1930s in Iraq were a well off community, and primarily involved in money lending and finance, and secondly it was not until the early 1940s that a strong and uncompromising nationalism had taken hold of Iraq following the Rashid ‘Ali coup of 1941. Thus, it is not until 1941 that a Jewish member of the central committee of the ICP appears, and this trend increases, and then abruptly ends in the 1950s with the mass exodus of the Iraqi Jewry to Israel. The ICP’s central committees between 1941 and 1949 are numerically dominated by Sunni Muslim Arabs, followed by Christians. It is clear, therefore, that despite the numerical dominance of the Shi’ite community in Iraq, the ICP in this period is similar to the composition of parties that were running for seats in parliament, except for those that were specifically Shi’ite parties i.e. Islamic parties.
Table 1: Religious composition of ICP central committee 1935-1949
Year of Central Committee*
Sunni Muslim, Shi’ite Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Sabean
1935-1941
8, 4, 5, 0, 0
1941-1942
1, 1, 2, 1, 0
1942
4, 2, 3, 1, 0
1942-1945
3, 1, 2, 0, 0
1945-1947
6, 4, 3, 2, 1
1947-1948
5, 3, 2, 1, 1
1948-1949
5, 4, 1, 2, 0
As the above table shows, the ICP represented all cross sections of Iraqi society albeit unproportionally. This table, however, ignores the ethnicity of its members, and this will be addressed in the subsequent chapter, since it should be assumed that all members of the central committees of the 1940s were Arabs or at least Arabised. Furthermore, the social backgrounds of the central committee members must also be briefly examined. All but three central committee members in this period were professionals i.e. school teachers, clerks and lawyers, the exceptions being Ghali Zuwayyid, who was a slave for the notable Sa’dun family, Sharif Mullah Uthman (central committee 1945-1948), who was a coffee vendor, and Isma’il Ahmed (1945-1948), who was a shoemaker. Hence, it is clearly evident that the ICP attracted mainly ‘petty bourgeoisie’ members, and not working class people. One reason for this attraction to the ICP is put forward by the British secret documents of the time. A dispatch sent from the embassy in Baghdad to the foreign office on the subject of the rise of communism in Iraq states: ‘The lower paid government officials have had a bad time, especially during the last two years. Not only have house rents been exorbitant but in some cases…no suitable house is available…the cost of living bears very heavily on these officials.’ The same dispatch also reads: ‘Owing to the unbalanced system of education in this country a large number of budding ‘Effendis’ are turned out from the schools for whom there is no possibility of the type of work they want. These young men are specially dangerous as they readily become subversive leaders.’ Nevertheless, the attraction of the under represented Shi’ite community and religious minorities, such as the Christians, Jews and Sabeans, excluding the Sunnis to the ICP towards the end of the 1940s is an indication of the rising tide of frustration they faced in a period that was dominated by a clique of Sunni Arab Muslims close to the royal family. The British embassy, in a despatch to London stated: ‘…membership of the ICP very definitely exceeds 6000 members…its influence is steadily increasing in terms of labour…it has a strong group amongst lawyers (especially in the law college), the army, amongst school teachers and more advanced students and in all the various unions.’
Fahd
From its founding until 1941 the ICP was ideologically weak and divided. However, it was Fahd’s leadership between 1941 and 1947 that turned the party into an effective political force with a mass base of support and belief. To understand this transformation it is important for one to look at Fahad’s character and early life. Little is known of Fahd and what we do know tends to attribute super human strength to Fahd (i.e. from his supporters and Iraqi Communists) or super human faults (namely from his enemies). One therefore has to decipher between myth and reality.
Fahd was born Yusuf Salman Yusuf on June 19th 1901 in Baghdad. His family came from a remote Chaldean village. Fahd himself was a quiet character. He despised what some people called ‘coffee-house communists’; nevertheless he had an enormous grasp of Marxist-Leninist ideology, was very persuasive, and spoke in a clear and simple manner. Fahd set up the first communist circle in Basra in 1927. In 1935 he went to Moscow’s KUTV University and remained there until 1937. On his return to Iraq he remained a member of the central committee of the ICP, until the arrest of the secretary general of the party, Abdullah Mas’ud, in 1941. From 1941 onwards Fahd worked to create a well-structured and well-administered party. The result of this being a strong party administration in the south of the country linking the provinces of Basra, ‘Amarah and Muntafiq together.
Our attentions shall now briefly turn to the Rashid ‘Ali coup of 1941 and the ICP’s reaction towards it. When World War Two broke out in 1939 the Iraqi government severed diplomatic relations with Nazi Germany. This decision was not very enthusiastically received by wide sections of the public and certainly not by the army. Thus, when Rashid ‘Ali engineered a successful coup, the British instantly refused to recognise it. This put Britain and Iraq on a collision course to war. On 29th April war broke out between Britain and Iraq, which lasted for thirty days. This ended in defeat for the pro-axis government.
The ICP’s attitude to the coup was, on the whole friendly. While they had little sympathy for the fascist views of some of the Rashid ‘Ali camp, they nevertheless shared some important goals. Rashid ‘Ali wanted the British out of Iraq, so did the communists. On the other hand, one must not underestimate Moscow’s influence on the ICP. Despite clear ideological differences, the USSR instantly recognised the Rashid ‘Ali government even before the axis powers had. This was probably done as a friendly gesture to the axis powers as well as a desire to gain favour with Arab nationalists in the long term. With the destruction of the pro-axis regime by the British, and Hitler’s attack on Russia, the ICP promptly offered their cooperation to the British ambassador. This shows that the ICP, in this period, was very strict in following Moscow’s line, as seen throughout the rest of the 1940s when it came to international affairs. Laqueur argues, however, that this period is not so significant in terms of ICP history since no party actually existed. But, this fails to take into account that Fahd had begun reorganising the party and continued to do so.
Further evidence of better party administration is shown after 1945 where there was a multiplication of underground cells in Baghdad. It was also in Fahd’s time that a National Charter (1944) for the ICP was adopted. The National Charter combined democratic and patriotic principles with a petty bourgeois perspective. According to Batatu, had the ICP not mentioned itself in the charter, it would have been very difficult to believe that this was a programme adopted by a communist party. The charter called for ‘true independence’, and ‘a genuinely democratic regime’. These were not the only points of the programme; other points referred to the economy and agriculture, and only briefly mentioned the working class and the fellahin. Almost a year after the adoption of the charter, the first congress of the ICP took place, which amended the charter and made important additions to the internal rules of the party, prohibiting members from working with the intelligence services or leaving their town or party organisation without advance notice to the party. In addition, Fahd advocated the idea of setting up a People’s Party to create a legal platform in which his followers could come out in the open. At the first party conference in 1944, his idea received the blessings of the party. Nothing, however, took concrete shape until June 1944 when the ICP approached a group of lawyers and persuaded them to petition the government for the licensing of the People’s Party. But it was not until August 1944, that the group of lawyers approached by the ICP supported Aziz Sharif, a judge, and a friend of Khalid Bakdash (the head of the Syrian Communist Party), for the leadership of the People’s Party. The government eventually granted a licence to the party in 1946; party members, however, were out campaigning and canvassing support in Baghdad even before the government’s decision to grant the licence. These developments worried Fahd, since Aziz Sharif was unwilling to take orders from Fahd. To add to this, Sharif quietly ignored Fahd’s letters and requests and led the party independently of the ICP. Tensions were further raised when the People’s Party advocated the dissolution of the ICP. It felt that since a legal party existed, an underground clandestine party was no longer needed. As a result, Fahd flooded the People’s Party with his own supporters and also set up another party, the National Liberation Party, to act as a counter to Sharif’s party. It later turned out that the People’s Party had the support of the Syrian Communist Party (SCP), whose publications ignored the ICP, but gave much publicity to the less well-known People’s Party. In order to show the breadth of the cooperation between the SCP and the People’s Party, one has to look only at the organizational structure of both parties. The People’s Party was modelled on the SCP and like its prototype emphasised that it was strictly a national party. The main objectives of both parties were national independence and democratic freedoms. Further to this, was the fact that both parties’ membership requirements were identical.
On the 17th January 1947 Fahd was arrested by the police. He was at first sentenced to death, but this was later commuted to life imprisonment. In January 1949, the Iraqi government re-tried Fahd and this time imposed the death sentence, citing that he had continued to pursue a revolution from his prison in Kut. The British foreign office was opposed to such an action given Iraq’s fragile situation in the late 1940s. Correspondence from the British embassy in Baghdad states: ‘…the opportunity to organise revolution must be very limited from a prison in Iraq, and the political motive in such a re-trial must be obvious even to a simple mind.’ Despite British opposition to the death sentences, Fahd and two of his comrades were executed on the 14th February 1949; their bodies left hanging on the entrance to the ministry of defence for three days. This action gave enormous public sympathy to the ICP, and, it could be argued, fostered resentment to the monarchy from a large portion of the Iraqi population.
Al-Wathba (the leap)
Al-Wathba took place in the early months of 1948, and was in essence a reaction against the signing of a new treaty with Great Britain. The demonstrations against the treaty eventually led to four hundred deaths , but were to gain the ICP public sympathy and support. The Iraqi government, at the beginning of 1948, felt it was time to redefine its relationship with Britain, with the hope of securing a final British withdrawal from Iraq. As a result, it was described as a revision of the 1930 Anglo-Iraqi treaty. In addition, Nuri as-Said resigned as Prime Minister, and Salih Jabr was named as his successor. This was done in order to placate the Shi’ite community, since Jabr was a Shi’ite originally from the holy city of Najaf. This was an attempt at curbing the ill-feeling the re-emergence of the issue of the Anglo-Iraqi treaty would have on the people. Upon hearing of the pending negotiations between the Jabr government and Britain, the Independence party (Istiqlal) organised a student protest on the 4th January. The protest was met with severe police brutality, which led directly to a student’s strike that lasted until the 6th January, after the authorities had relented. This can be seen as the preliminary stage of the wathba and no others apart from students took part. It also must be noted that this preliminary phase’s initiative belonged to the Independence party, since they called and organised the strike. In the meantime the ICP, having seen this preliminary success, began to mobilise its student cells by setting up a ‘co-operation committee’ and a ‘students co-operative committee’ and began to call for the abolition of all treaties with Great Britain and the overthrow of the Jabr government. Between the 8th and the 15th January all protests stopped in order to wait for the final confirmation of the signing of the treaty. The signing of the treaty on the 16th January led to a three-day protest by students, workers and the poor of Baghdad alike. In addition to this all the political parties, such as the National Democrats, the Ba’ath, the Independence Party as well as the ICP, worked together for the first time in co-ordinating the protests. The government response was severe. Nuri advocated the repression of the protestors, while Jabr begged for calm before sending out more police to quell the demonstrators. Eventually, the sheer number of deaths and the pressure put on the government by the protestors forced the abrogation of the treaty; it also led to the fall of the Jabr government, who fled to England for his life. The result of the wathba was the enhancement of the ICP’s base of support. It also gained wider appeal amongst the population, despite the fact that the protests were initiated by the Independence Party and the nationalists associated with it. Despite the increased popularity of the ICP, its support for the partition plan in Palestine in the same year led to many abandoning the party. The party decided on toeing Moscow’s line, and as a result the support gained from the wathba was lost. Opponents of the party seized the opportunity to accuse it of betraying the Palestinians, thus betraying the Arab world. This could be seen as one of many missed opportunities by the party to consolidate the support base it had built.
* It has been hard to convert the form of the table from the paper to the forum. So basically it works like this. The first number under each year corresponds to the first ethnicity/religion in the list. i.e. 1935-41, the number eight refers to Sunni Muslims and so on. Hope this helps
====================
Previous Part << 1 {2} 3 4 >> Next Part
====================
