The tragedy of Iraq?s Communists

[Bijan Li Causi X]

Early on the mornings of 14 and 15 February 1949 a macabre sight met the eyes of passers-by in Baghdad. Bodies dangled on public display from gibbets erected in three of the city?s main squares. Notices posted nearby informed the general public that the three dead men were Yusuf Salman Yusuf, otherwise known as Comrade Fahd, secretary general of the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP); Zaki Basim and Husain al-Shabibi, two leading Communist activists.

Just over a year earlier Iraq had been shaken by a popular uprising against the imposition of a new treaty with Britain. School and university students, railway workers and the vast mass of the urban poor?migrants from the impoverished south who filled the mud shacks around Baghdad?combined in gigantic protests, forcing the regent to disown the treaty.

[Bijan Li Causi X]

The ICP played a crucial role in the uprising and the wave of strikes which followed, although tragically the protests lost momentum in late spring 1948, allowing the pro-British politicians who ruled Iraq to weather the storm. The hangings in February 1949 were their revenge on the Communists, who had dared to challenge both the Iraqi monarchy and its imperial backers in Whitehall.

In the uprising of 1948 Iraqi Communists risked death to lead protests against a treaty that perpetuated the British military occupation of Iraq. How then could the leaders of the same Communist Party, who continued to lay claim to the legacy of Fahd and his murdered comrades, join the governing council set up by the US occupying forces in 2003?

[chegitz guevara]

We have a history forum for this kinda thing.

[Bijan Li Causi X]

you also have a politics section for this kind of thing, if revlefters got their revolution, it would be a fucking beauracratic sarcastic pepermint nightmare.