IRAQ: The Helpful Communists

In the four months since he took over Iraq by a brutal army revolt, General Karim Kassem has learned that power is not to be wielded without politics. At first, he tried to rule by rigid army control. But his top lieutenant in the July revolt, hotheaded Colonel Abdul Salam Mohammed Aref, soon took the burning issue from the barracks to the streets. He rushed about the country stirring up crowds for speedy union with Nasser’s United Arab Republic. Kassem preferred to talk fervently of brotherhood with Nasser, while keeping Iraq independent.

Despite all the emotional appeal of Arabic unity to illiterate and hungry people, there were powerful reasons for independence: Baghdad’s traditional rivalry with Cairo, neighboring Syria’s melancholy experience as a Nasser satellite, the fact that Iraq’s $200 million-a-year oil royalties would probably all go to oilless Egypt. Besides, Iraq’s more than a million Kurds, a restless minority, have no desire to be drowned in a wider Arab sea. A month ago Kassem, unwilling to sit too hard on the only fellow conspirator privy to the timing of the overthrow of Nuri asSaid and the royal family, made Aref Ambassador to West Germany. But Aref, though he turned up at the Brussels Fair, never reported for duty in Bonn. And last week, against orders, he popped up back in Baghdad.

At Baghdad’s airport, Aref was spotted at once by an alert army officer, and his taxi was followed by two army jeeps. Escorted to Kassem’s office, he refused to quit the country again. Kassem thereupon arrested his old comrade. Moving to head off the expected explosion among Aref’s army and political followers, Kassem quietly ordered an estimated dozen of Aref’s army buddies taken into custody. Then, repeating his maneuver of last September, when he coupled the promise of land reform with the announcement of Aref’s demotion, Kassem softened the late-night radio broadcast of Aref’s arrest “for plotting against the national safety” by a timely decree boosting pay for the armed forces and police, alloting free seed for farmers, and promoting to the next class all students who failed last spring’s exams.

Rule of Thumbs. Soon thousands of petitions, many signed by the thumbprints of illiterates, began pouring in, in praise of Kassem’s leadership. Next morning the greatest crowd to assemble since the July revolt jammed Baghdad’s Rashid Street for more than a mile chanting, “We are behind you, Karim,” and “Long live the solidarity of the army and the people.” Government officials privately conceded this massive muster was largely organized, like the anti-Aref demonstrations last month, by Iraq’s Communists.

The Communists are the only street organization Kassem has, and, playing the game they played so long with Sukarno in Indonesia, they show themselves more loyal than anyone else to the nation’s boss, increasing his dependence on them. Moscow obviously wants (as does the U.S. and Britain) an independent Iraq as a counterweight to Nasser.

Their underground cadres reinforced by scores of leaders released from the old regime’s jails, the Communists have now emerged as the strongest political force supporting Premier Kassem. Still technically illegal, they flaunt no made-in-Moscow labels. But last week’s show had plenty of telltale signs: banners calling Kassem “hero of peace partisans,” scores of Picasso peace doves, tightly disciplined units with banners bearing such names as “Democratic Youth Organization” and “Peoples Peace Fighters.

From Arms to Arms. Premier Kassem tells callers that 1) he can and will suppress the Communists if necessary, and 2) the revolution is so threatened by its enemies that he must accept any help available. But U.S. and British help is discouraged or goes uncredited: it is too linked with Nuri’s day, and with continuing propaganda against the imperialists. Within the government, Economics Minister Ibrahim Kubba and Propaganda Boss Fakhri are extreme left-wingers if not Communists, and party members have infiltrated as the government replaced 4,000 sacked civil servants of the old regime. Says a U.S. observer: “If things go on like this, we shouldn’t be surprised if Iraq becomes a Communist state within twelve months.” The outcome as of now appears to turn almost entirely on the firmness and sagacity of Abdul Karim Kassem and on his ability to shuck off the Communists at the critical moment, as he so casually boasts he can.