are Shia.
Oil exploration began in 1927, with large deposits being found near Kirkuk later in that year. Three years later the Iraq Petroleum Company (a consortium of Anglo-Iranian, Shell, Mobil and Standard Oil - previously the Turkish Petroleum Company forced the Iraqi government to extend its concession area from 192 sq. miles to 35,000 sq. miles and, by 1938, IPC had a monopoly on oil rights throughout the whole country.
By then Iraq was nominally independent and had been admitted into the League of Nations in 1932. Anti-British strikes and demonstrations swept the country following the 1930 Anglo-Iraqi Treaty (which maintained RAF bases in Iraq for an indefinite period) and the concessions to the IPC.
The RAF flew over Basra and other cities to demonstrate its power. The granting of formal independence was a very small concession for Britain. It helped preserve Faisal's rule in order to preserve British domination.
Real power remained with the Royal Air Force and, increasingly, the Iraq Petroleum Company. Trade unions were banned, their leaders jailed and all opposition, including the Iraqi Communist Party, founded in 1934, forced into clandestinity.
King Faisal died in 1933 and was succeeded by his son Ghazi. By the mid 1930s the army (which had been trained by the
• • For the last 75 years the Kurds have been repressed in all the states they occupy .... .... British) was becoming more involved in politics: there were seven coups d'état between 1936 and the outbreak of the second world war, though none challenged the legitimacy of the monarchy. In 1937 the army played a major role in suppressing a number of strikes.
Following •Ghazi's death in 1939 a regency was established under Abdullah, though real power remained in imperialist hands through the pro-British Nuri al-Said, effective ruler of Iraq for most of the next two decades.
Nuri and the royal family were briefly forced into exile following an anti-British revolt led by Rashid Ali in May 194l, which challenged Britain's right under the 1930 Anglo-Iraqi Treaty to land and deploy troops in Iraq. Following the crushing of the revolt Britain once again took military control of
Because of the wartime alliance with the Soviet Union British domination of Iraq initially led to a lessening of repression against the labour movement and the recognition of some trade unions. However this did not even last until the start of the Cold War.
In early 1945 the Railway Workers Union called a strike after their demands for wage increases of 30-50 percent were rejected by the British management.
In order to break the strike the union was banned, and the strike leaders arrested. Despite the repression rail workers struck again in 1946 and three times in 1948. Dock workers at Basra struck in 1947: again the union was suppressed.
The most brutal repression took place in the Kirkuk oil fields in 1946. The IPC refused to allow the oil workers to form a union and rejected pay demands. After ten days on strike a peaceful meeting of oil workers near Kirkuk was charged by mounted police. Ten workers were killed and many injured.
The events at Kirkuk led to a major change in consciousness among Iraqi workers. Although all the strikes between 1944 and 1948 were for economic demands, the eagerness of the Iraqi authorities to suppress them on behalf of British owners led to a growing anti-imperialist mood.
At about the same time important developments took place in Kurdistan with the agreement at Portsmouth, replacing the 1930 Anglo-Iraqi Treaty. The Portsmouth Treaty retained the right of Britain to maintain air bases in Iraq.
The mass of Iraqis were outraged, and organised a wide scale insurrection. Although the insurrection was brutally repressed the level of opposition meant that the Portsmouth Treaty was never ratified, even by a decidedly pro-British government.
Hostility to imperialism continued to increase, especially after the Anglo-FrenchIsraeli invasion at Suez in 1956 in an attempt to overthrow Egyptian President Nasser. By 1958 the Arab world was in open revolt, with US marines invading Lebanon, backed up by the threat of using nuclear weapons, to crush an insurrection that united both Muslims and Christians.
In Iraq the pro-British monarchy was overthrown by a mass explosion of popular anger. Political parties were legalised, including the Communist Party. This legalisation of the CP followed massive demonstrations. Over 300,000 took to the streets to demand the inclusion of the CP in the government at a time when the party was still illegal. (Proportionately this is about the same size as February 15!)
All political prisoners were immediately released, political refugees returned to Iraq and overtures were made to the Kurds.
Instead of waiting for government decrees, peasants expropriated the land from the big landowners. While the government advised the peasants to wait until a law on agrarian reform was passed it did not resort to repression of the peasants.
In fact the government - in which the army played a role but was not dominant -immediately introduced a law restricting the level of rents and threatened the big landowners with heavy fines if they failed to comply.
Law 80 of December 196l restricted the concession to the Iraq Petroleum Company to the area it was already exploiting, leaving 99.5 per cent in Iraqi hands. This move was vigorously resisted by imperialism and the US Central Intelligence Agency began to turn its attentions to Iraq.
The Iraqi revolution destroyed the imperialist created Iraq-Jordan federation and
page 15 of the scan
The next invaders are starting their engines and loading up with high explosive threatened to spill over into Jordan to unseat King Hussein, as well as challenging British imperialist interests in Kuwait, which the Iraqi masses clearly felt belonged to them.
As a result Britain sent troops to both Jordan and Kuwait to defend its client regimes. Such was the strength of the Iraqi revolution that Britain made no attempt to regain the military bases from which it was evicted
The popular nature of the Iraqi revolution also had an effect on the United Arab Republic, newly formed by Egypt and Syria. It was precisely this fear of uncontrolled, spontaneous uprisings of the masses that led to the refusal by Nasser to immediately extend the UAR to include Iraq. Fusion with Iraq would have enormously strengthened the opposition forces in Syria, who were difficult enough for Nasser to control on their own.
There was also opposition to the UAR within Iraq. For General Quasim, Prime Minister, fusion would have meant subservience to Nasser. For the Communist Party it meant repression, since Nasser had banned the CP in Egypt and tolerated no political parties beyond his Arab Social Union.
In March 1959 Nasser attempted a coup to install a pro-Egyptian regime. This was put down with much bloodshed. However violence continued between pro and antigovernment forces, which led to Quasim breaking the alliance with the CP.
This was not enough for the pro-Nasser forces and the Ba'athist party, and in October 1959 an assassination attempt on Quasim was carried out by Ba'athists, one of whom was a young student called Saddam Hussein.
Following the attempted pro-Nasser coup the CIA concluded that Quasim had to go. In February 1963, helped by the French Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionage, the CIA organised a SET Duane coup which brought the Ba'ath party to power.
The coup was fiercely resisted by Iraqi workers but they were defeated. Quasim was summarily executed while thousands of Communists were murdered. The Communist Party was driven underground.
At first the Ba'athists made overtures to the Kurdish national movement, which had previously been in conflict with Quasim. They offered to grant autonomy to the Kurdish region and invited two or three Kurds to join the government. However, by May 1963 clashes between Kurds and the Iraqi army were already taking place. A full scale genocidal war soon followed.
The Ba'athist coup was welcomed by the oil companies who had high hopes that Law 80 would be repealed. Resistance from the Iraqi masses, however, ensured that Law 80 remained, though significant concessions were made to the Iraq Petroleum Company.
Following a military coup the Ba'athists also came to power in Syria in 1963. This once again opened up discussions about Iraq joining the United Arab Republic. However, hostility by Nasser to both Ba'athist regimes and an attempted Nasserite coup in Syria led to the rapid demise of the UAR.
Within a few months Iraqi and Syrian Baathists were denouncing one another with ever increasing vehemence, a mutual loathing that continues to the present time.
The conflict with Nasser led to a growing opposition within the army to Ba'athist rule in Iraq and splits within the Ba'ath party itself. On 18 November 1963 its brutal rule came to an end, overthrown in a military coup.
ahe new government - an alliance of military pan-Arab nationalists, Nasserists and some Ba'athists -largely continued the policies of the previous regime. Yet again overtures were made to Egypt: in order to bring the Iraqi economy in line with Egypt's all banks and insurance firms were nationalised, along
3014 with 32 manufacturing and trading establishments.
Retired military figures were given leading roles in the management of the nationalised companies.
These nationalisations, however, were largely directed at the weak, indigenous bourgeoisie; the imperialist owned oil industry was untouched, despite the setting up of the Iraq National Oil Company in 1964. By 1965 the government was attempting to reduce the state sector and advocating joint ventures with foreign capital.
In the countryside distribution of land to the peasants was brought to a halt and compensation to the big landowners trebled. Peasant uprisings were put down by the military.
The jails remained filled with thousands of political prisoners, many of them subjected to torture while the war in Kurdistan continued for a further three months. The truce lasted for only a year before the Iraqi army renewed its offensive, though this time they suffered heavy casualties and the regime found itself in serious crisis. A new ceasefire was agreed in June 1966. D espite the repression mass
opposition continued. Between 1965 and 1968 strikes were widespread, involving large numbers of workers. Students were also actively opposing the regime. Colleges were surrounded by tanks and armoured cars.
In January 1968 all the colleges in Baghdad and Basra went on strike in protest against the shooting of students, for the release of arrested students and for the removal of the security forces from the colleges. The strike lasted 13 days and was only broken by armed attacks by Ba'athist students, once again including Saddam Hussein. the problems facing Iraq and the continued strength of the mass movement, despite the repression, led to a further coup on 17 July 1968, which once again brought the Ba'ath party to power. And once again the CIA was almost certainly involved.
The Ba'athists remained virulently antiCommunist and hostile to the Kurds, but they were also aware of the strength of the mass movement. This time around they combined repression of political opponents with the introduction of populist measures in the economic field, such as the nationalisation of the Iraq Petroleum Company in 1972.
At times the Ba'athists were even prepared to enter into alliances with opposition forces, including the Kurdish nationalist parties and the Communist Party. However, these were merely tactical manoeuvres to gain time and space.
By 1975 repression was once again B the norm with the Communist
Party being decimated and Kurds being driven from their lands. The process of 'Ba'athization' of the state was accompanied by Arabization' of Kurdish lands, especially in the oil rich region of Kirkurk.
More than 350,000 Kurds were deported from Kurdistan and 240 villages burned down between 1975 and 1978.
In 1979 Saddam Hussein became head of state. Under his rule brutal terror continued, eventually reaching new heights in Kurdistan and in his wars with Iran and Kuwait.
However, Saddam did not invent rule by brutal terror; he was continuing the policies of previous Ba'athist regimes, policies that had received the full support of western powers. It was, after all, the CIA that brought the Ba'athists to power.
Saddam was welcomed by the west precisely because he was a brutal, murderous thug. When he massacred the Iraqi Communist Party there was no outpouring The failure of the regime to solve any of of protests from western governments. Nor were there many protests about Saddam's treatment of the Kurds, even after the attack on Halabja where, following the example of the Royal Air Force, he ordered ance March 2003 15 the use of poison gas.
Kurdish struggles threatened to break up the Iraqi state, which no imperialist power favoured. They also threatened to break up Turkey, a change which imperialist powers favoured even less since Turkey was a key member of NATO, strategically situated on the borders of the Soviet Union. So western governments continued to arm Saddam.
The Iranian revolution of 1979 was seen as a far greater threat to the west. So when Saddam went to war with Iran in 1980 he was supported by the west. Even after Iraq sank the US warship Stark the US government continued to back him.
It was only after Saddam's invasion of Kuwait that western governments began to demonise him. The problem wasn't that Saddam was a brutal thug who oppressed his own people: the problem was that Saddam acted independently and therefore could no longer be relied upon to guarantee western interests.
Even then western governments gave Saddam a free hand to destroy the uprisings among Kurds and Shia, because they threatened the stability of Iraq.
Western governments may have backed Saddam, but plenty of people in the west organised opposition to him. They worked with Iraqi and Kurdish exiles to draw attention to the suppression of human rights in Iraq and the oppression of Kurdistan (including in Turkey).
Virtually all those involved in the Committee Against Repression and for Democratic Rights in Iraq (CARDRI) and the Kurdistan Solidarity Campaign are today opposed to war against Iraq.
Bush and Blair's war has nothing to do with democratic rights for Iraqis, and still less for Kurds. They make no secret of their intention to install American officers to run Iraq and force Kurds to live within unitary Iraqi, Iranian and Turkish states, despite the long history of repression Kurds have suffered.