The Plot That Failed

Iraq, said President Abdul Salam Aref, "is a factor for the production of coups d'etat." Aref should know: he himself seized power last November, ousting the Baathist regime of Premier Hassan Bakr which had itself over thrown Dictator Kassem last year.

Last week the Middle East heard details of the latest attempted coup to come off the Iraqi assembly line. It was scheduled for noon last Sept. 4 as Aref and most of his Cabinet boarded a Viscount turboprop en route to the Arab summit at Alexandria. The Viscount was to be escorted by a squadron of six MIG fighters of the Iraqi air force--and all six pilots were members of a Baathist cell, who had agreed to blast the presidential plane to bits as it took off.

Taped Anthems. As soon as the MIGs struck, the 4th Armored Brigade, at Camp Rashid outside Baghdad and commanded by Colonel Ahmed el Jabouri, a covert Baathist, would storm into the city, seize the radio station and the government buildings. They would be supported by 10,000 Baathist cadres from all over Iraq, who had been quietly assembling in Baghdad. Everything was complete, down to recordings of Baathist anthems to be played over Radio Iraq on the day of the coup.

But there was a single flaw, and it was fatal. Lieut. Harfad Sardoun, one of the six pilots, passing himself off to the conspirators as a secret Baathist, was in fact working for the regime. As the plotters' plans firmed up in late August, Sardoun fed details to Aref's police. Aref made no move until Sept. 3, eve of the coup. Then, overnight, loyal army units and police swooped down on Camp Rashid. The five Baathist pilots were rounded up and executed. Colonel El Jabouri and most of his officers of the 4th Armored Brigade were clapped in jail. Baathist ex-Premier Hassan Bakr was hustled to Selman fortress, deep in the southern desert, and mercilessly grilled. He took full responsibility for the plot and implicated other Baathist leaders at home and abroad. In Baghdad alone, 3,000 Baathists were imprisoned.

Restive Kurds. Although the coup was smashed, President Aref could be certain that more trouble lay ahead for the troubled regime. In Vienna last spring, a band of Baathist exiles met under the leadership of Brigadier Hardan Takriti, the former Baathist commander in chief of the Iraqi army, who this year was exiled to Europe as Iraq's Ambassador to Sweden. Vowed Takriti: "By the beard of the Prophet, I swear I will overthrow the traitor Aref."

Last week, acknowledging the regime's fear of Takriti, Aref published a decree removing the ambassador from government service altogether. Such steps are hardly likely to provide permanent security for a regime that is bitterly opposed by almost all of Iraq's powerful minority groups. The 3,000,000 Shia Moslems of the south are unhappy over Aref's recent Nasser-style nationalization of imports and exports, as well as his growing dependence on Cairo and Moscow. In the northern mountains, the 1,500,000 Kurds once again are restive, suspecting that Aref's promise to provide Kurdish "national rights" is little more than hollow words.

If Iraq's simmering discontent bubbles over again, Aref's foes could be more than a match for the strong, specially selected armed force with T-54 tanks that guard his presidential palace day and night.

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