Iraq's Pre-1950 History Revisited: Part 7

(See below for parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.)

Nearly 150,000 U.S. military troops and 200,000 private contractors are still in Iraq trying to exercise a special influence on Iraqi history, by waging an imperialist war on behalf of special U.S. corporate interests. Yet most people in the United States probably didn't learn very much about Iraqi history in their high school social studies courses. But some knowledge of pre-1950 Iraqi history may be of use to U.S. anti-war activists when arguing with U.S. opponents of immediate withdrawal from Iraq and U.S. supporters of the Democratic Obama Regime’s war in Iraq, during the next 16 months.

Iraq Communist Party leader Fahd’s life imprisonment sentence in July of 1947 did not stop the anti-imperialist protests in Iraq from continuing. Under the feudal monarchy’s 1930 treaty with the UK government, the British imperialists were allowed to occupy two air bases on Iraqi soil. After the Iraq Communist Party’s newspaper called for the overthrow of the monarchy’s latest regime, the Salih Jabr regime, anti-imperialist Iraqi students demonstrated on January 4, 1948 to demand that no re-negotiated agreement to allow the UK government to retain its bases in Iraq be signed by the Iraqi monarchy’s government. But on January 16, 1948, the terms of the Iraqi puppet government’s new Portsmouth treaty with UK imperialism were announced: the British military was going to still be allowed to occupy two air bases in Iraq and only minor changes in the 1930 treaty were going to be made.

To protest against this Portsmouth Agreement, the Iraqi university students immediately began a 3-day strike on January 16, 1948; and the Iraq Communist Party activists who led the Student Cooperation Committee organized a mass protest march in Baghdad, which included Iraqi workers, on January 20, 1948. In response, the Iraqi puppet government’s police first beat protesters and then shot at the protest march--killing two Iraqi demonstrators and wounding seventeen demonstrators after the Iraqi protesters began to fight back.

The following day, on January 21, 1948, the Iraqi puppet government cancelled its Portsmouth Agreement with the British government. But Iraq Communist Party activists kept the demonstrations going; and enormous crowds were mobilized to pack the streets on January 23, 1948 and during the next few days.

Near the Royal Hospital in Baghdad on January 27, 1948, however, Iraqi police again fired on a crowd of protesters and killed four more anti-imperialist Iraqi demonstrators. The Iraqi monarchy’s police then brought armored cars and machine guns to the scene and, when the protesting crowds began to regroup, the Iraqi police began to fire their machine guns at the unarmed people. According to the 1978 book The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq, “the total figure for dead and injured” on January 27, 1948, “is commonly set at between 300 and 400.” (end of part 7)

Iraq's Pre-1950 History Revisited: Part 6

(See below for parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.)

Nearly 150,000 U.S. military troops and 200,000 private contractors are still in Iraq trying to exercise a special influence on Iraqi history, by waging an imperialist war on behalf of special U.S. corporate interests. Yet most people in the United States probably didn't learn very much about Iraqi history in their high school social studies courses. But some knowledge of pre-1950 Iraqi history may be of use to U.S. anti-war activists when arguing with U.S. opponents of immediate withdrawal from Iraq and U.S. supporters of the Democratic Obama Regime’s war in Iraq, during the next 16 months.

To again prop up its puppet regime in Iraq by means of another “surge”, the UK imperialist government again sent more British troops into Iraq in August 1946. But the surge of increased UK troops in Iraq in August 1946 provoked more street protests that eventually led to the resignation of the monarchical puppet regime’s premier, Al-Umari, on November 16, 1946.

The puppet royal government’s new premier, Nuri as-Said, then promised free elections for the people of Iraq. But on November 26, 1946 the Iraq Communist Party leader Fahd called for the overthrow of the puppet monarchy’s government and an end, finally, to British imperialist control of Iraq.

On January 18, 1947, however, the Iraqi monarchy’s Nuri as-Said government arrested Iraq Communist Party leader Fahd and another party leader, Zaki Basim, in the house of a Baghdad pharmacist. Fahd and Zaki Basim were then taken to the Iraqi police investigation department in Central Baghdad, flung into latrines and beaten with canes. According to the 1978 book The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq by Hanna Batatu, “the police preferred to cane first and interrogate after.”

When the Iraqi police beatings failed to break the rebel spirit of Fahd and Zaki Basim, they were both transferred to cells in the Abu Ghraib military prison. The cells were “narrow, damp, and without air, and so dark that they soon lost the sense of day and night,” according to The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq. They were allowed to exercise only half an hour each day; and a petition to transfer Fahd and Basim to healthier cells was ignored by the Iraqi puppet monarchy’s regime.

Yet in April 1947, there were still 3,000 to 4,000 members of the repressed Iraq Communist Party in Iraq. Fahd and other imprisoned leaders of the Iraq Communist Party then declared a hunger strike on June 13, 1947. In response, Fahd and some other party leaders were brought to trial before the Iraqi High Criminal Court on the 8th day of their hunger strike and charged with “incitement to armed insurrection” and “propagating communism among members of the Iraqi armed forces.”

On June 23, 1947, Fahd, Zaki Basim and the Iraqi pharmacist at whose home they had been arrested, Ibrahim Naji Shmayyel, were next found “guilty” and were sentenced to death. Thirteen other Iraq Communist Party activists were sentenced to hard labor. The severity of the death sentences for Fahd, Basim and Shmayyel provoked world-wide protest. So in response to this protest, Shmayyel and Basim’s death sentences were reduced on July 13, 1947 to less than 15 years imprisonment; and Fahd’s death sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life. And on August 14, 1947, Fahd and Basim were then transferred to Kut prison in Iraq. (end of part 6)

Iraq's Pre-1950 History Revisited: Part 5

(See below for parts 1, 2, 3 and 4.)

Nearly 150,000 U.S. military troops and 200,000 private contractors are still in Iraq trying to exercise a special influence on Iraqi history, by waging an imperialist war on behalf of special U.S. corporate interests. Yet most people in the United States probably didn't learn very much about Iraqi history in their high school social studies courses. But some knowledge of pre-1950 Iraqi history may be of use to U.S. anti-war activists when arguing with U.S. opponents of immediate withdrawal from Iraq and U.S. supporters of the Democratic Obama Regime’s war in Iraq, during the next 16 months.

After martial law was lifted by the Iraq’s monarchical regime on March 2, 1946, press censorship was ended, Iraq’s detention camp was closed and five Iraqi political parties were finally allowed to engage in above-ground legal political activity. On May 23, 1946, however, the government of Arshad al-Umari reversed the monarchical regime’s liberalization policy.

But then a new wave of anti-imperialist Iraqi popular revolt soon began to sweep the country again after June 1946. Organized by a coalition of the Iraq Communist Party-led League Against Zionism and the illegal non-communist National Liberation Party of Iraq, 3,000 Iraqi students and workers in Baghdad marched on the British Embassy on June 28, 1946 to demand both the expulsion of the UK imperialists from Iraq and justice for the Palestinian people.

The police of the puppet Iraqi monarchy first clubbed the anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist Iraqi protesters; and then they started shooting at them. One demonstrator, an Iraq Communist Party member named Shaul Tuwayyeq, was killed and four other protesters were wounded.

The June 28, 1946 Iraqi police shooting of Iraqi demonstrators marked the first time that the Iraqi monarchy’s police had ever shot at peaceful Iraqi protesters since the British government had set up its puppet regime in 1921. A few days later, on July 3, 1946, 5,000 workers at the Iraq Petroleum Company facility in Kirkuk, under the leadership of Iraq Communist Party activists, then went out on strike for higher wages; and in the Iraqi town of Gawurpaghi, the striking workers began holding mass meetings.

On July 12, 1946, however, the police of Iraq’s puppet monarchy tried to break up a meeting of the striking workers in Gawurpaghi by shooting at the Iraqi oil workers. Ten Iraqi oil workers were killed and 27 oil workers were wounded in what is known in Iraqi history as the “Massacre of Gawurpaghi.” (end of part 5)

Iraq's Pre-1950 History Revisited: Part 4

(See below for parts 1, 2 and 3.)

Nearly 150,000 U.S. military troops and 200,000 private contractors are still in Iraq trying to exercise a special influence on Iraqi history, by waging an imperialist war on behalf of special U.S. corporate interests. Yet most people in the United States probably didn't learn very much about Iraqi history in their high school social studies courses. But some knowledge of pre-1950 Iraqi history may be of use to U.S. anti-war activists when arguing with U.S. opponents of immediate withdrawal from Iraq and U.S. supporters of the Democratic Obama Regime's war in Iraq, during the next 16 months.

In April and May 1941, an attempt was made by some nationalist Iraqi military officers to finally eliminate British special influence in Iraqi politics. Four nationalist Iraqi colonels marched their troops into Baghdad and installed Rashid Ali-al-Gailani as Iraq’s new premier on April 1, 1941. Besides being supported by anti-fascist, left-wing Iraqi nationalists, Rashid Ali’s anti-British regime was apparently also supported by pro-fascist, right-wing Iraqi nationalists. So some of the mass anti-imperialist street support for the new Rashid Ali regime in April and May 1941 apparently was manipulated and expressed in anti-Semitic attacks on Iraqis of Jewish religious background.

Despite the Rashid Ali government being recognized in a few days by the Soviet Union, this Iraqi regime prohibited Iraqi political parties and Iraqi trade unions; and it was apparently unable to stop the anti-Semitic attacks by its nationalist supporters in the streets on Iraqis of Jewish religious background. So after more British troops were sent, in a "surge", to re-occupy Iraq on June 1, 1941 and the right-wing nationalist Rashid Ali regime collapsed, several hundred Iraqis of Jewish religious background were killed by the disappointed nationalist Iraqi street demonstrators on June 1 and June 2, 1941. In a June 1943 self-criticism of its role in Iraq between April and June 1941, Iraq Communist Party leaders later concluded that their support of the Rashid Ali regime and movement had been a political mistake, because the pro-Rashid Ali right-wing nationalist movement was too pro-fascist in its political orientation.

Following the collapse of Rashid Ali’s regime and the imposition of martial law in Iraq by UK imperialism's puppet government between June 3, 1941 and March 2, 1946, the most influential Iraqi left-wing anti-imperialist political leader during the 1940s was Yusuf Salman Yusuf—who was more popularly known in Iraqi left circles as “Fahd.” Under Fahd’s leadership between 1941 and 1947, the underground Iraq Communist Party attracted a mass base of Iraqi support and became more politically influential in Iraqi society.

Between February 1942 and April 1945, when the imperialist UK government was a World War II ally of the Soviet Union, the Iraq Communist Party did not work for the overthrow of UK imperialism’s puppet feudal monarchy in Iraq. But in April 1945 the Railway Workers Union, whose leaders were members of the Iraq Communist Party, held a 15-day strike in Iraq. As a result of their strike, the Iraqi railway workers were granted wage increases. But, following the strike, Iraqi government authorities also then declared the Railway Workers Union to be an “illegal organization.” (end of part 4)

Iraq's Pre-1950 History Revisited: Part 3

(See below for parts 1 and 2.)

Nearly 150,000 U.S. military troops and 200,000 private contractors are still in Iraq trying to exercise a special influence on Iraqi history, by waging an imperialist war on behalf of special U.S. corporate interests. Yet most people in the United States probably didn't learn very much about Iraqi history in their high school social studies courses. But some knowledge of pre-1950 Iraqi history may be of use to U.S. anti-war activists when arguing with U.S. opponents of immediate withdrawal from Iraq and U.S. supporters of the Obama Regime's war in Iraq during the next 16 months.

By May 1935, unsuccessful rural tribal uprisings had also broken out in the mid-Euphrates area of Iraq. An underground political group, the Central Committee of the Iraq Communist Party, then began publishing an illegal Iraqi newspaper in July 1935, Kifah-ish-Sha’b (“The Struggle of the People”), in the cellar of a Baghdad hospital.

In its August 1935 issue, the Iraq Communist Party’s illegal newspaper indicated that the underground party’s immediate political goals in Iraq during the 1930s Great Depression were the following:

“Expulsion of imperialists; independence to Kurds; cultural rights to all Iraqi minorities; distribution of land to Iraqi peasantry; abolition of all debts and land-mortgages; seizure of all properties belonging to the imperialists—including the banks, the oil fields, and the railroads—and the expropriation of the vast agricultural estates of Iraq’s feudal landlord rulers; concentration of power in the hands of Iraqi workers and peasants; and launching social revolution without delay in all areas of Iraqi life.”

After this newspaper developed a circulation of 500, however, police agents of the British imperialist-backed monarchy began to arrest members of the underground political group; and, after December 1935, further publication of the newspaper was prevented.

The unpopularity of the puppet regime enabled an Iraqi general named Bakr Sidqi to overthrow the Iraqi government in an October 1936 coup and members of the Iraq Communist Party organized popular support for the coup in Baghdad’s working-class neighborhoods. Mass demonstrations in support of the new coup regime were then held in Iraqi towns on November 2 and November 3 of 1936.

On March 17, 1937, however, General Bakr Sidqi began threatening to crush the Iraq Communist Party. Twenty thousand Iraqi workers who had been influenced by the underground Iraqi communist group, including Iraq Petroleum Company workers, then went out on strike on April 5, 1937. But following the assassination of General Bakr Sidqi on August 10, 1937, the coup regime’s police began to suppress Iraq Communist Party agitators. By the end of 1937, Iraq Communist Party leaders were either exiled or in jail; and four pro-fascist Iraqi Army colonels, who were also loyal to British imperialism and the Hashemite monarchy, now controlled the coup regime until 1941.

But in December 1940 the underground Iraq Communist Party launched a new party newspaper, Ash-Shararah (‘The Spark”), which was secretly produced until 1942 by using government stenciling machines belonging to the Land Registry’s Typewriter Division. And by 1942, this newspaper had a readership of 2,000. (end of part 3)

Iraq's Pre-1950 History Revisited: Part 2

(See below for part 1.)
Nearly 150,000 U.S. military troops and 200,000 private contractors are still in Iraq trying to exercise a special influence on Iraqi history, by waging an imperialist war on behalf of special U.S. corporate interests. Yet most people in the United States probably didn't learn very much about Iraqi history in their high school social studies courses. But some knowledge of pre-1950 Iraqi history may be of use to U.S. anti-war activists when arguing with U.S. opponents of immediate withdrawal from Iraq during the Obama Era.

By 1924, students at Baghdad's School of Law had formed a study circle, led by the first Iraqi Marxist, Husain ar-Rahhal, which published a journal on December 28, 1924 that called for both the liberation of Iraqi women and the overthrow of Iraq's traditional feudal landlord leadership. As late as 1958, 55% of all privately-owned land in Iraq was still owned by 1% of all Iraqi landholders and mullahs; and 17% of all privately-owned Iraqi land was held by only 49 Iraqi landlord families. So it was not surprising that Baghdad students in the 1920s saw that the democratization of a predominantly agrarian Iraqi society required the redistribution of land ownership in a more equitable way and the disempowerment of Iraq's feudal landlords, as well as the ouster of foreign imperialists like the British. Predictably, British colonial authorities in Iraq undemocratically shut down Husain ar-Rahhal's newspaper in the 1920s before it could make an impact on Iraqi public opinion.

UK imperialism's support for the Zionist movement's settler-colonization activity in Palestine during the 1920s also created fear among Iraqi students that their British rulers were planning to support the creation of another Zionist colony in Iraq. When Sir Alfred Mond visited Baghdad on February 8, 1928, students demonstrated against his visit and his support for Zionism and 20,000 protesters marched to Baghdad's railway station.

Despite the desire of people in Iraq to be free of foreign imperialist domination, the British imperialist government had, in 1921, set up a puppet Hashemite feudal monarchy in Iraq during the pre-1932 British Mandate period. The British imperialists next created the Iraq Petroleum Company, which was jointly owned by British, Dutch, French and U.S. oil companies. The Iraq Petroleum Company was then granted a lucrative 75-year concession of Iraq's oil resources by the UK imperialists' puppet monarchy.

The foreign oil company profits from Iraq's oil resources, however, were not used to minimize the effects of the Great Depression on Iraqis after 1929. By 1930, the decline in the value of Iraq's date and grain exports had dropped by 40% and Iraq puppet government revenues began to decline. Over the next few years, salaried employees were dismissed, salaries were reduced and the wage rates for unskilled workers in Basra's railways and oil fields were decreased. By March 8, 1935 an Association Against Imperialism had been founded in Baghdad which, in its March 11, 1935 manifesto, summarized the economic situation of Iraq at this time:

"Today, the English and the ruling class are partners in a compact that aims at perpetuating the oppression and exploitation from which we suffer…The oil and other raw materials of the country have become a preserve for the English and Iraq has been turned into an outlet for their goods and surplus capital and into a war base…The ruling class, for its part, plunders the proceeds of taxes, misappropriates lands, and builds palaces on the shores of the Tigris and Euphrates. The millions of peasants and workers, in the meantime, continue to starve, and bleed, and writhe in anguish."

The Association Against Imperialism's March 1935 manifesto ended by listing as its immediate goals the following demands:

"the cancellation of all debts owed by the peasants; their deliverance from all onerous taxes; the distribution to the poor of state lands; and the granting to them of the necessary credits;

"the guaranteeing to the workers of freedom of assembly and of speech; the reopening of their clubs and trade unions; the enactment of a law protecting the workers…against arbitrary dismissals and ensuring them against starvation in their old-age; and the realization of the eight-hour day in all Iraqi and foreign-owned places of work…

"Down with English imperialism!
"Down with all enslaving treaties!" (end of part 2)

Iraq's Pre-1950 History Revisited: Part 1

Nearly 150,000 U.S. military troops and 200,000 private contractors are still in Iraq trying to exercise a special influence on Iraqi history, by waging an imperialist war on behalf of special U.S. corporate interests. Yet most people in the United States probably didn't learn very much about Iraqi history in their high school social studies courses. But some knowledge of pre-1950 Iraqi history may be of use to U.S. anti-war activists when arguing with U.S. opponents of immediate withdrawal from Iraq during the Obama Era.

Prior to the Zionist movement's 1947-49 expulsion of Palestinian Arabs and establishment of an undemocratic state of Israel, between 130,000 and 150,000 people of Jewish background lived in Iraq, including 30,000 Kurds of Jewish background. About 109,000 Iraqis of Jewish background, for example, lived in Baghdad in 1948. Prior to 1948, people of Jewish background had been living in Baghdad for over 2,500 years, many in a relatively prosperous way.

When Iraq was under Turkish rule in the 19th century as part of the Ottoman Empire, people of Jewish background in Iraq (unlike people of Jewish background in Russia in the 19th-century) apparently did not experience any special economic oppression. As the 1971 Encyclopedia Judaica recalled:

"The economic situation of the Jews during the 19th century was good. They controlled the country's commerce and exerted considerable influence in government circles. Some of them were appointed as high-ranking officials in Baghdad, Basra and Mosul…

"The Jewish merchants traded with Syria, India, Singapore, Persia, London, Vienna, and other commercial centers. They engaged in all branches of trade, especially in those of textiles, silk, indigo, precious stones and pearls, ironware, glassware and porcelain, gallnuts, foodstuffs and liquor,…and medicine."

In the early 20th century, several Iraqis of Jewish background were elected to the Turkish parliament as delegates of Iraq after the new Young Turk rulers of Turkey established equal legal rights and freedom of religion for non-Muslims within the Ottoman Empire. The economic situation of Iraqis of Jewish background also "improved greatly" between 1917 and 1932, after the UK imperialist government took control away from the Turkish government in 1917 and established a "British Mandate" in Iraq in 1921, according to the Encyclopedia Judaica.

Following the UK imperialist government's granting of formal independence to a puppet Hashemite monarchical government in Iraq in 1932, the economic situation of people of Jewish background in Iraq did not noticeably deteriorate prior to the Zionist movement's establishment of the undemocratic state of Israel. In 1947, for instance, Iraqis of Jewish background held top posts in Iraqi banking and commerce; and they handled 70% of Iraqi imports and 40% of Iraqi exports. According to the Encyclopedia Judaica, immediately prior to the 1947-49 expulsion of Palestinian Arabs, "30% of Iraqi Jews were engaged in trade, 25% were official or professional men, 3% were farmers (almost all of them in Kurdistan), and the rest artisans, building workers and workers in services." Many Iraqi bank clerks, railway officials and postal officials were also of Jewish background in 1947.

Despite the relative affluence of about 55% of the Iraqis of Jewish background within pre-1948 Iraqi society, most people in Iraq did not prosper between the arrival of British imperialist troops in Baghdad on March 11, 1917 and the establishment of the undemocratic state of Israel in 1948. So, predictably, resistance to both UK imperialism and the domination of Iraqi society by the traditional Iraqi feudal landlords began as early as July 1920 with a failed Iraqi uprising against British imperialism. About 10,000 Iraqis, mostly rural tribesmen, were killed by the UK's occupation army of 101,000 troops (many of whom were colonized Indian soldiers from Britain's India colony) before the rebellion was finally suppressed in October 1920. Over 450 British soldiers were also killed while putting down the Iraqi insurgency of 1920. (end of part 1)