After the Blood Bath

As Iraq's new revolutionary government settled down to consolidate its rule, one of its first efforts was to erase the memory of the bloody regicide that brought it to power.

One Cairo news agency went so far as to declare that 23-year-old King Feisal died of a heart attack after his uncle, Crown Prince Abdul Illah. slapped his face for wanting to surrender to the rebels. In Manhattan, Iraq's new delegate to the U.N. shrugged that the King's death was just one of those things. "Feisal," said he, "was very much liked, but unfortunately he was under the complete control of his uncle. The poor chap was young, with very little experience."

Though the number of people killed probably exceeded no more than 30, the rebels had an uphill job in hiding the bloodthirsty work of their own assassins and the permitted fury of the street mobs. Last week 10.000 Iraqis a day were trooping through the gutted mansion of 70-year-old former Premier Nuri asSaid, whose naked body was dragged through the streets a few days before. While the rebels begged newsmen to "see things as they are today, not as they were last week," and even closed the ransacked royal palace as if to erase the memory of the massacre there, grim tales of the revolt continued to come to light. In Athens a Belgian reported how the body of Nuri's son Sabah was dragged through the streets by a mob waving knives and portraits of Egypt's Nasser. And from his bed in Amman, 36-year-old British-trained General Sadiq Shara recited the gruesome events that took place around the swank New Baghdad Hotel.

"You Just Cannot Imagine." At 9:30 on the morning of the coup, a group of rebels arrived at the hotel in search of a general and three Jordanian ministers of the Arab Union. They ripped out telephones and ransacked the front office. With about 20 other foreigners, apparently seized at random, the Jordanians were loaded into a truck that started off for the Ministry of Defense. Among those seized were three Californians: Robert Alcock, George S. Colley Jr., senior vice president of Bechtel Corp. of San Francisco, and Eugene Burns, former A.P. correspondent. The truck drove slowly through milling streets. In front of the ministry gates the truck was trapped by a stalled vehicle in front of it, and the mob attacked.

"They tore off the tarpaulin and started pulling people into the street. One of my colleagues, Ibrahim Hashim, the Arab Union's Deputy Premier, who was sitting beside me, died from a stone hit in the head. Everyone who was pulled down was cut to bits. I saw a young German or Swiss of about 30 grabbed by the head and pulled down by the mob. About eight people started slashing and stabbing him and beating him with rods. Then they cut off his head. I did not see the death of the American, Burns, but later, one of our people told me he was pulled down and killed like the others. You just cannot imagine it.'' Finally someone got the gates open, and "those of us who were still alive on the truck tried to jump and run for it. Anyone who could not reach the gate was killed and dismembered." Shara made it.

"For God's Sake . . ." That night, after being treated for head injuries, the young general was taken to see "the new ministers who made the revolt." They apologized for his injuries and the deaths of the Jordanian ministers, and gave him safe passage back to Amman.

Trying to live down the blood bath, the new government sent soldiers all over Baghdad with green paint to erase extremist anti-Western slogans. Photographs of violence (including pictures of the naked corpse of the Crown Prince hanging footless from a post, and the dismembered body of Premier Nuri being dragged through the streets) disappeared from shops. Strict orders were issued to the public against molesting foreigners. The violently anti-Western newspaper Al-Bilad was told to stop its inflammatory editorials; the radio kept issuing reassuring reports on the oil industry, whose refineries went on producing and whose foreign technicians were not bothered. Outside the burned-out hulk of the British embassy appeared a sign saying: "You should not have acted this way. These people are our guests and our friends." Premier el-Kassim himself reportedly told his London embassy: "For God's sake, make it clear to the West that we are still their friends."

Outwardly, the rebels seemed determined not only on a policy of business as usual, but also one of reform. Accepted with almost universal joy, they confidently began planning the trials of nearly 100 "traitors" ("The government is grateful," said the Minister of Guidance with a perfectly straight face, "that the people did not exert justice themselves but awaited due process of law"). They boosted their popularity by slashing the price of bread and gasoline.

At his first press conference, Premier el-Kassim, 42, who sleeps on a pallet in front of his desk and is regarded as a rugged, strict and upright soldier, appeared to be anxious to show his good faith. He told of how he dreamed of wiping out corruption way back when he was in military college, of how he slowly gathered his band of followers, of how "the agents and spies" of the old regime almost caught up with him in 1956. Finally, when in early July he was ordered into Jordan to bolster King Hussein, El-Kassim "read in the eyes and movements of the people" that the time to strike had come. He had no appetite for putting down Jordan troubles, for, as members of the junta like to say,

"Arabs don't kill Arabs." * Foreign sympathizers, El-Kassim added pointedly, knew nothing of his timing: "My brother President Nasser was outside his country."

The Big Question. Sir Michael Wright, 56, Britain's canny ambassador in Baghdad, cabled the Foreign Office that El-Kassim's regime is composed of liberal reformists and that there is no alternative and no better administration in sight. Result: the Bank of England released -L-80 million in frozen Iraqi funds. El-Kassim and his government knew only too well that any sudden exodus of Western capital and technical knowledge would be a disaster. Aside from Nasser's popularity with the masses, there seemed little advantage for Iraq to become a full-fledged member of the United Arab Republic at the moment. The big question in Western eyes is just how long the grab-bag bunch of plotters who make up the new government will get along with one another.

Aside from the soldiers, almost all members of the government--most of them revolutionaries for 20 years--have had close dealings with either the Communists or the Nazis, a fairly common practice among extreme Arab nationalists. If the politically inexperienced El-Kassim fails, power is likely to shift to one of two men: egocentric Naji Talib, a Britain-hating Sandhurst graduate who was once aide-de-camp to Crown Prince Abdul Illah and is now Minister of Social Affairs; or the Deputy Premier, Colonel Abdul el-Sallam Mohammed Aref, 38, a pupil of El-Kassim's at military college and one of Nasser's most fanatical fans.

* Though, of course, the King, the Crown Prince, Premier Xuri asSaid and the slain palace servants were all Arabs.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.