One Year Later

It was the first anniversary of the July 14 revolution in Iraq and for a week Baghdad was all holiday celebration. Down the hot, dusty streets where a year ago mobs dragged the mutilated bodies of Nuri asSaid and Crown Prince Abdul Illah, clowns danced, balloons bobbed, Girl Scouts marched, a giant papier-mache fist rolled by on a float, clutching the viper of imperialism, and a military camel in the parade, poked playfully by happy patriots, turned and spat expertly in their eyes. And under the crisp salute of Premier Karim Kassem--hero of the revolution and a year later still very much the enigmatic hero of the Republic--Soviet T-54 and British Centurion tanks rumbled by in a two-hour parade of military might to the anomalous music of British marches.

For the austere, aloof and tense Premier, it had been anything but an easy year. He had kept Iraq from a Nasser takeover, despite anxious moments such as the Mosul revolt in March, but only at the cost of accepting more help from the street-organizing Communists than was healthy. In a characteristic compromise last week before the holiday began, Kassem reshuffled his Cabinet, adding three minor-league Communist sympathizers (including Iraq's first woman minister, a practicing gynecologist), but effectively demoting the once powerful fellow-traveling Minister of Economics Ibrahim Kubba to Minister of Agrarian Reform.

But Kassem saved his real news for the middle of the Big Week. Addressing a graduation throng at Iraq's military college in his controlled staccato, he said: "I assure you that by next Jan. 6 we shall celebrate the formation of political parties," and went on--amid shouts of "Kassem for first President of the Republic"--to promise a new constitution and free elections within a year. Whether in fact General Kassem and his army will dare freely surrender the fruits of their revolution to civilians remains to be seen: the experience of Middle East politics is all against it.

In the northeastern oilfield region of Kirkuk last week, street fighting broke out between Kurds and Turks, with the Communists mixing in; about 20 were killed. Kassem remains emotionally antiWestern, but seems belatedly learning to suspect Communists. After the Kirkuk flare-up he warned the Communists that it was the government's job, and no one else's, to determine who are "enemies of the people," and "we will settle accounts with all who attack the liberty of the people."

Lebanon. Last year's Iraq revolt threatened to ignite Lebanon too. But the day after, at Lebanon's request, 3,500 U.S. marines landed. When the U.S. troops, more than 14,000 at one point, left three months later, not a single Lebanese had been killed or injured by the Americans. Tank treads in the sand have long since been obliterated; a four-man Cabinet under President Fuad Chehab, the relaxed army boss, still governs Lebanon by legislative decree; business is good once more. Net effect: the Middle East learned that the U.S. is ready to intervene (and ready to leave peacefully) and that the U.S.S.R. threatened noisily but did not arrive.

Jordan. In the same anxious week a year ago, British troops returned to Jordan. The loneliest ruler in the Middle East when the British troops pulled out in the fall, 23-year-old King Hussein has held his shaky military regime together with his own courage and $50 million from the U.S. Nasser, caught up in a struggle for power with Kassem, has quit his vicious radio attacks on the little King, now talks of resuming relations with Jordan.

Saudi Arabia. The relaxed pressure of Arab nationalism has saved the day for the wealthy autocratic Saud family. Brother Feisal, now in charge, is introducing tightfisted budgeting at long last, while financially strapped King Saud has just left for Germany to look at some of his greenbacks sequestered there and to see a doctor.

Yemen. Temporarily in charge of the reform-minded Prince Badr (TIME, June 29) while his father, the gory Imam, is off in Rome. Chances are that when papa returns shortly, things will go from Badr to worse.

Egypt. Nasser, chastened by forced coexistence with Kassem, and wiser in the ways of Communist purposes in the Middle East, seems less tense than he was, less eager for adventures, more mindful of mending fences and improving the economy at home. The fact that the most pervasive propaganda weapon in the Middle East, Nasser's Cairo radio, now outspokenly attacks the Communists in the Middle East is a gain for the U.S.

Tranquillity is the most unlikely outcome of events in the Middle East, when one pistol shot can change so much and passions flare so easily in the hot sun. But things are now quieter--and on the whole, more stable--than in that churning week of July 14, 1958.

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