Year 1963 - Part 3: The 8 February 1963 Coup in Iraq and the Fall of Abdel Karim Qasim

Friday, 8 February 1963, corresponding to 14 Ramadan 1382: A Coup in Iraq

We were taken by surprise, and the world was taken by surprise along with us, by news of a coup in Iraq this very blessed morning. The coup-makers chose this day precisely because it was a holiday, and launched their own attack at half past seven in the morning, an hour not usually chosen for coups, which normally take place a little after midnight.

It is certain they chose the morning deliberately, since movements at that hour arouse no particular suspicion, unlike armored columns stirring under the cover of dawn's own darkness.

The first to inform me of it was the Director-General of Insurance and Pensions, my friend and fellow student from Paris, Mr. Abdel Aziz Othman, an Arab nationalist to the very marrow of his own bones, who hates the secession and the secessionists with a near-religious loathing.

I confess I did not believe the news at first, given everything we had heard of Abdel Karim Qasim's own vigilance, and the wakefulness of his own Communist supporters, officers and civilians alike.

Moments later, the family of my friend the engineer Mahmoud al-Fahham telephoned me, confirming the joyous news. This fine family, Syrian by origin and birth but Iraqi by nationality, had left Iraq for their own homes in Damascus, among their own relatives there, fleeing Iraq's own Communists.

It was through them that a friendship grew between myself and the eminent lawyer Abdel Razzaq Shabib, head of the Iraqi Bar Association and a friend of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, and son-in-law of this fine family, being married to the daughter of the pharmacist Muhammad al-Fahham, well known for his own nationalist convictions and the firmness of his own unionist faith.

We used to find, in this good family, real moral support whenever the secessionists' own rancor bore down hardest on us. The al-Fahham family's own joy at this coup defied description.

I sat by the radio, listening to Baghdad radio despite its faint signal, and to the world's own radio stations, all carrying news of this grave event.

God alone knows the full measure of my own joy, delight, and satisfaction at the fall of this repugnant regime, one allied with Nazim al-Qudsi's own regime.

And now, the Syrian secessionists' own turn looms on the very horizon.

I now reproduce what I recorded in my own papers at the time about this event, followed by what I later heard directly from one of Abdel Salam Aref's own ministers, Staff Brigadier General Abdel Ghani al-Rawi, once a large Iraqi delegation came to visit us, after the Syrian coup of 8 March took place.

"An official communiqué, broadcast by Baghdad's own radio authority, reads as follows: 'This morning, the army put an end to the regime of Abdel Karim Qasim, an enemy of the people, a regime that divided the country, suspended constitutional guarantees, tortured its own citizens, stabbed the Arab liberation movements in the back, and blocked the progress of the Iraqi people.

Our revolution, supported by every popular bloc, has two goals:

The first, achieving national unity.

The second, allowing the people to take part in governing the country, and enforcing the rule of law.

The National Council wishes to form a government resting on the people, whose own task will be realizing the true goals of the 1958 revolution.

This government pledges to respect the resolutions of the Bandung Afro-Asian Conference, and will support the liberation movements in the Arab countries, and the struggle of every Arab people against colonialism.

Finally, it guarantees every foreign concession-holding company complete freedom to invest in Iraqi oil.'"

A short while later, Baghdad radio broadcast a second communiqué, retiring a number of senior officers who had cooperated with Qasim's own era, among them General Fadhil Abbas al-Mahdawi, who had won a wide and filthy reputation presiding over the State Security Court, which had executed senior unionist officers, becoming, truly and honestly, a laughable, tragic circus of a courtroom. He had been an extreme Communist.

He used to insult and curse the accused, telling them he would sentence them to death.

The trials were attended by rabble mercenaries, whose own task was to curse and threaten the accused, and chant anthems hostile to Arab nationalism.

He would give the floor to "poets," who would stand in the courtroom itself and recite verses glorifying Leader Qasim, and cursing anyone who resisted his own era.

These verses would be met with a storm of applause and cheering.

Among those retired was General Majid Amin, well known for his own Communist sympathies.

This same communiqué called on these officers to surrender themselves, "to protect them from the people's own wrath against them."

Iraqi radio broadcast a fresh appeal, reading:

"O sons of our free people, today is the day of your revolution, today is the day of your freedom. Today the souls of your own army's martyrs hover over Baghdad's own sky, rejoicing at their own vengeance. Today the souls of the martyrs Salah al-Din al-Tabba', Rifat al-Hajj Sirri, Nazim al-Tabaqchali, Abdel Wahab al-Shawwaf, and Fadhil al-Shukr hover above us, and we, in this blessed month of Ramadan, avenge our own martyrs. Today the treacherous remnants flee in terror before our own great people's advance, its advance in the cause of freedom and social justice. So take your own vengeance, O our masses, for your own sons, and strike every saboteur with an iron fist."

Communiqué No. 3 was then broadcast, announcing the formation of National Guard forces "to defend the people and the homeland," reading: "We call on the forces of the valiant army and the national police to cooperate with the National Guard in carrying out their own sacred duties."

The coup movement closed the borders and the airports, barring entry and exit alike.

A curfew was imposed from three in the afternoon (of the movement's first day) until further notice, with citizens permitted to contact the nearest military commander for urgent needs. Anyone violating this order would be shot on sight, without warning.

Saturday, 9 February

Baghdad radio broadcast the following statement this morning:

"Pursuant to the authority vested in the National Council, the National Council has elected, from among its own ranks, Mr. Abdel Salam Muhammad Aref as President of the Republic, until the transitional period comes to an end."

The National Council formed a new government headed by Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr, with Ali Salih al-Sa'di (Minister of Interior), Talib Shabib (Minister of Foreign Affairs), Staff Lieutenant Colonel Salih Mahdi Ammash (Minister of Defense), and Dr. Ahmad al-Jawari (Minister of Education) among its members, along with seventeen other ministers.

It was confirmed that among the ministers were seven Baathists: Ali Salih al-Sa'di, Talib Shabib, Sa'dun Hammadi, Hazem Jawad, Izzat Mustafa, Hamid Khalkhal, and Salih Mahdi Ammash.

We learned that the assault on Leader Qasim's own headquarters had begun Friday morning, with aerial bombardment carried out by military aircraft, backed by a tank assault on the same headquarters at the Ministry of Defense.

Qasim tried to negotiate with the attackers, but they refused anything short of unconditional surrender. He then tried to flee, but was captured, and executed on the spot.

The newspaper Al-Ra'i al-Aam, in a column by Ahmad Assa, commented on this victorious coup, saying "that every (Syrian) citizen must raise the banner of no leniency with the Nasserists," and that "every believer in Syria's own being and the necessity of its own safety must share in the responsibility of confronting Nasserism," and that "no one should be allowed among us but he who carries his own cudgel on his shoulder, and dedicates himself to defending our homeland's own safety against the covetous and the enemy, to the very end." "And I am just as certain that Syria can prevail in this very battle now facing it."

Yet when the hour of reckoning finally arrived, a month later, His Excellency was the very first to take to his own heels, carrying his own empty saddlebag around to whichever "men of goodwill" he could find.

In the fray, I have never once tested my own courage,

but in retreat, I run like a gazelle.

Recognition of the new situation in Iraq began pouring in from other states. Cairo's government recognized it, as did Yemen's and Kuwait's. London radio said: "It had been entirely clear, over the past year and a half, that Lieutenant General Abdel Karim Qasim's own regime had been drifting aimlessly, without any real direction. It enjoyed little respect in the Arab world, and no genuine positive support from the Iraqi people itself. The machinery of government had fallen into a state of chaos."

British radio spoke of the chaos gripping the Iraqi economy, alongside the toll of the civil war against the Kurds, and Qasim's own threats against Kuwait, "considering it an inseparable part of Iraq."

Baghdad radio later broadcast that the leaders of the Qasim era, Abdel Karim Qasim, Abbas al-Mahdawi, Wasfi Taher, and Taha al-Sheikh Ahmad, had been killed or executed.

Iraqi radio called on citizens "to annihilate the Communists."

Syrian radio, at a quarter past two this Saturday afternoon, broadcast the Syrian government's own recognition of the Iraqi revolution, sensing its own end drawing near, since the Iraqi coup had cut its very jugular, foretelling its own inevitable fate.

There is real fear that its own scattered remnants might rally what strength remains to them and resort to violence, to prolong their own survival a while longer. As the old saying goes:

Fear the blow struck by the frightened coward.

As a precaution, the Syrian government moved up the start of the mid-year school holiday, deciding to close the schools twenty days ahead of their own legally scheduled break, anticipating trouble. This is not an act any government with even the smallest sense of real responsibility should ever resort to.

Rushdi al-Hamid told us, relaying what he had heard from the ailing Prime Minister Khaled al-Azm, that the National Security Council, meeting today under Dr. al-Qudsi's own chairmanship, had discussed three proposals:

1. Declaring comprehensive martial law across the entire territory of the republic.

2. Arresting the five of us, "the Nasserist Five."

3. Arresting a number of army officers suspected of unionist (Nasserist) sympathies.

The President of the Republic approved these proposals, under pressure from the military, but Khaled al-Azm, as we were secretly told, rejected all three proposals himself.

Our friend al-Hamid commented on this news by saying he believed our own arrest would actually serve our own interest, and secure our lives more surely, and that if we were not arrested, then "our own interest, and the country's interest alike, would be better served by our going underground."

We decided that our own lifespans rest in God's hands alone, and that whether we were arrested or not was never truly ours to decide or refuse. But we would never go underground. We would remain, on the surface, a sharp thorn lodged in the secession's own throat.