The Revolt That Failed

Sooner or later, the situation in Iraq was bound to explode. All the inflammatory ingredients were there: increasing Communist control of the streets, continuing dissatisfaction in the country, restlessness in the army over the course Iraqi Soldier-Dictator Karim Kassem was taking. Last week the explosion came--and it was premature.

Arab nationalism in Iraq centers around the northern oil city of Mosul, on the banks of the Tigris. Surrounded by the powerful and hostile Kurds, whom the Communists have been busy infiltrating, Arab zealots in Mosul wanted to join Nasser's one big Arab nation, and blamed Kassem for keeping them out. Mosul hardly seemed the place to stage a Communist rally, unless Iraq's wily and wiry strongman wanted to provoke trouble.

Last week, in special trains from Baghdad and in buses from the countryside, thousands of Kassem's supporters, members of the Communist-led "Peace Partisans" movement, converged on Mosul (pop. 200,000), near the ancient Biblical city of Nineveh. Seeing them, the local army commander, stocky, swarthy Colonel Abdel Wahab Shawaf, 40, member of a prominent Iraqi family (his brother is Kassem's Minister of Health) and himself an ardent Arab nationalist, began to fret. After last July's revolution Shawaf had proclaimed: "Naturally, Iraq will become part of the Arab Union." That was not Kassem's desire, nor that of the Communists who supported him.

"Rise & Kill." In the streets of Mosul, the Peace Partisans, toting rifles as members of the Communist-led "Popular Resistance" militia, began scuffling with local Nasser supporters and burned down a Nasserite restaurant. Colonel Shawaf telephoned Kassem in Baghdad, asking permission to use troops to keep order. Kassem hedged. At this point, apparently on impulse, Shawaf decided to put into effect a revolt that was only half-formed in his mind. His fifth brigade, loyal to him, rounded up 300 Peace Partisans. He ordered the leader of the parading Communists, Kamil Kazanchi, a well-known Baghdad politico and lawyer, shot.

To give himself more supporters. Shawaf flashed word to brother northern commanders to join him; he sent troops to kidnap a British technician and his portable radio transmitter from the Iraq Petroleum Co.'s nearby camp so that his countrymen could be summoned to his side. "O great people," cried the new voice of Radio Mosul, "rise and kill the dictator who has betrayed the revolution's aims!" Knowing which tribesmen in the vicinity could be counted on, Shawaf sent word to the Shammar tribesmen, Bedouins who roam the countryside near the Syrian border. In thousands, the Shammars, clad in long woollen skirts and white headdress bound in black, drifted into Mosul.

The crucial moment of the revolt came early next morning. Shawaf sent two young pilots in old piston-engined Furies to bomb Radio Baghdad's transmitting station twelve miles north of the capital. They did little damage. But four Iraqi air force planes loyal to Kassem counterattacked Shawaf's top headquarters on a bluff above Mosul. First they bombed it and then came in low to strafe. Six or seven officers were killed. Shawaf, wounded, staggered out of his command post, trying to bandage himself. One of his sergeants, figuring the game was up, finished him off with machine gun and bayonet.

Settling Scores. With Shawaf's death. Mosul became a scene of bloody anarchy. Rebel soldiers fought with loyalist comrades; Peace Partisans gunned for Nasser sympathizers; bedouins moved in to pillage and burn, and in the chaos many old private scores were settled. Shawaf's riddled, smashed body was dragged through the streets, then dumped in a car and driven off to Baghdad. Through two days' wild shooting and looting, three Americans huddled in the Station Hotel bar to save being torn to pieces by the mobs. At the government's call, the non-Arabic Kurdish tribesmen had poured into Mosul to carry the battle to their ancient foes, the skirted Shammar warriors. The Kurds were easily identifiable by their baggy trousers, wide cummerbunds and fringed headgear. They spotted Sheik Ahmed Ajil, paramount chief of the Shammars, riding in a car and killed both him and his driver. They hung the stripped bodies by the heels from a bridge across the Tigris. From the hotel bar the horrified Americans watched an armored car go by dragging another naked body by the heels. An onlooker rushed to the body, emasculated it. By the fourth day, when government patrols began clearing away the scores of burned-out cars and trucks, a witness counted 45 naked, mutilated bodies hanging from lampposts, bus-stop shelters and bridges. Total estimated dead: at least 500.

Egyptians Go Home. Kassem had won, but he had yet to pay the bill for his victory. Until last week's revolt, the army had served Kassem as a balance against the growing Communist influence in the streets. Now the army could no longer be fully trusted, and Kassem was more than before beholden to the Communists, whether he wanted to be or not. In the streets of Baghdad, Kassem was still plainly the hero of the hour.

Assured of his popularity, Kassem toured in his yellow station wagon, waving to the cheering crowds. They were in a holiday patriotic mood, celebrating a nationalism not subservient to Egypt. The impulse came naturally to Iraqis, but Communist cheerleaders organized their cries for them. Nasser's United Arab Republic had fomented the Mosul rebellion, cried Kassem, ordering the expulsion of nine Egyptian diplomats. "The curtain is raised," trumpeted Baghdad's daily Al Thawra. "Abdel Nasser is revealed as the great plotter, enemy, dictator, and shedder of blood. Those who proclaim pan-Arabism and raise Abdel Nasser to the rank of prophet have been exposed. Gamal Abdel Nasser has sent arms to Mosul for fighting because he wanted to annex Iraq and add it to his kingdom."

Next day Communist-led mobs burned Nasser in effigy in Baghdad's main street. When the body of Kamil Kazanchi, the Communist lawyer executed in Mosul, was brought to the capital for burial, a funeral procession six miles long wound like a slow river through the city center. Behind the coffin marched Iraqis who short months ago acclaimed the dictator of the Nile their idol, and now shouted: "Death to Nasser! Death to Nasser!"

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