There are various forms of his name: Abdel Kasem, Abdel-Karim Qasim or Abdel Karim Kasem. During his reign, he was widely known as al-Zai?m (??????), which means “leader” in translation.

early years

Abdel Kerim Kasem was born into a poor carpenter family in Baghdad. His father, a Sunni by origin, died after the birth of his son, participating in the First World War as a soldier Ottoman Empire. The mother of the future prime minister was a Shiite by origin and the daughter of a Kurdish farmer.

When Kasem was six years old, his family moved to Shuwayra, a small town near the Tigris, and then in 1926 to Baghdad. Kasem was an excellent student and he entered high school on state scholarship. After graduating in 1931, he taught at primary school(from October 22, 1931 to September 3, 1932). His dismissal was due to the fact that he entered the military college, which he graduated in 1934 with the rank of second lieutenant.

Abdel Kerim Qassem took an active part in the suppression of tribal unrest in the Euphrates region, as well as in the Anglo-Iraqi war in May 1941 and in military operations in Kurdistan in 1945. Qasem also fought in the Arab-Israeli War from May 1948 to June 1949. In 1955 he was promoted to brigadier general. Became a leader revolutionary movement in the army, which made plans to overthrow the monarchy, based on the experience of the seizure of power by Egyptian President Abdel Nasser. In 1956, the secret revolutionary organization "Free Officers" was created in the Iraqi army, and a year later the National Unity Front was created in the country, which included the National Democratic Party, the Arab Socialist Renaissance Party "Baath", "Istiqlal" and the Iraqi communist the consignment.

Revolution 14 July

On July 14, 1958, Abdel Qasem led a coup. The nineteenth and twentieth brigades of the 3rd division of the Iraqi army, located near Baghdad, in Baakub, led by colonels Abdel Kerim Kasem and Abdel Salam Aref, were ordered to go to Jordan. However, the officers of the brigades led by Qassem and Aref decided to take advantage of the favorable situation in order to occupy Baghdad and overthrow the pro-imperialist regime. At 3 o'clock in the morning, revolutionary-minded army units entered Baghdad, crossed the Faisal bridge, and then occupied the radio center, the central telegraph office and surrounded the royal palace of Qasr ar-Rihab. The civilian population joined the military.

By five o'clock in the morning, a brief skirmish ensued between the rebels and the detachments guarding the royal palace. The security chiefs - Kurdish officers Lieutenant Colonel Taga Bamarni and Lieutenant Mustafa Abdallah did not resist and themselves joined the units of Aref and Qasem. At 6 o'clock in the morning the palace fell. King Faisal II and his regent Abdel Ilah were offered to surrender by the putschists. The king and his entire family came out of the palace, each of them holding a Koran over their heads. While they were leaving the palace, Lieutenant Abdel Sattar al-Abosi, without orders, opened fire and shot almost the entire royal family. Faisal II later died of his wounds in the hospital where he was taken. On the morning of a new day, the Baghdad radio broadcast:

After that, the reprisal against the royal elite began, the victim of which was Prime Minister Nuri al-Said. The building of the British embassy was burned down. The people demolished the monuments to King Faisal I and the British General Maud, then drowning them in the Tigris. On the same day, Qasem, having declared Iraq a republic, headed the new government.

Prime Minister

After the overthrow of the monarchy, Qasem became Prime Minister and Minister of Defense. The cabinet included both military and civilians. The new head of government agreed to cooperate with Soviet Union. Kasem decided to re-equip the Iraqi army. In the spring of 1959, he concluded a number of agreements with the USSR on the supply of Soviet weapons and military equipment, as well as on the training of Iraqi officers and technical specialists in the USSR. He canceled the Mutual Security Treaty and bilateral relations with Britain. In addition, Iraq withdrew from a number of military agreements with the United States. On May 30, 1959, the last British soldier left the country.

On July 26, 1958, the interim constitution of the Republic of Iraq was adopted, proclaiming the equality of all Iraqi citizens before the law and granting them freedoms regardless of race, nationality, language or religion. Already in the first days of the revolution trade unions, peasant unions and many other progressive organizations arose or emerged from the underground. Political parties, including the ICP, although not formally legalized, also operated legally. The government released political prisoners and granted amnesty to the Kurds who participated in the 1943 and 1945 Kurdish uprisings. Qasem lifted the ban on the activities of the Iraqi Communist Party.

Under Kasem, more and more schools and hospitals began to be built. In Baghdad and Basra, the government provided funds for the construction of social housing. An increasingly significant part of the growing oil revenues has gradually been transferred to poverty alleviation and social programs. But, despite the popularity of the prime minister, people were not satisfied with the authoritarian style of his rule. On September 30, 1958, the agrarian reform law was promulgated. This law was half-hearted and did not completely eliminate feudal landownership, but nevertheless significantly limited it. It was planned to withdraw from the feudal lords half of the lands that belonged to them in order to distribute the confiscated surplus among the landless peasants. It provided for the payment of monetary compensation to the owners of latifundia for the land seized from them. The government introduced an 8-hour working day.

This kind of activity of the new government aroused fierce resistance from the feudal and bourgeois-comprador reaction. In conditions of political tension, the head of state, Qasem, began to strengthen his personal dictatorship, which caused discontent even among political allies. Qasem firmly kept the secret police and security forces under control, preventing several assassination attempts. From the middle of 1959, the Kasem government began to pursue a policy of balancing between right and left forces, to restrict and even suppress the activities of leftist organizations.

Kurdish problem

After the overthrow of the monarchy, the regime of Abdel Kerim Qassem made wide concessions to the Kurds: an article was included in the provisional constitution of Iraq proclaiming Iraq a common state of Arabs and Kurds (Article 3); the Kurds were brought into the government, and the KDP raised the issue of granting autonomy to Kurdistan. However, the Kasem government did not agree to this, moreover, over time, it began to support Arab nationalists more and more openly. From the second half of 1960, a campaign of attacks on the Kurds and their leaders began in the Iraqi media, who were accused of separatism and ties with Moscow. It got to the point that the variety of “Kurdish wheat” was renamed “Northern wheat” by special order. Inscriptions appeared on the walls of houses in Baghdad: "Iraq is the birthplace of Arabs and Muslims, not Kurds and Christians!" If earlier A. K. Kasem said that the Arab-Kurdish unity is the cornerstone of Iraqi statehood, now the Kurds were offered to dissolve into the Iraqi nation. In December, fleeing repression, the leaders of the Kurdistan Democratic Party leave the capital and take refuge in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan.

In 1961, Kasem decides to put an end to the "Kurdish question" and concentrates troops in Kurdistan. In June, the prime minister does not receive representatives of Kurdish parties. On September 7, the bombing of Kurdistan begins, and on September 11, Mustafa Barzani proclaimed a new uprising and called the Kurds to arms. Thus began a grandiose movement that went down in Kurdish history under the name of the September 11 revolution. The Iraqi army, having multiple numerical and absolute technical superiority, hoped to quickly defeat the Kurds. However, those, using partisan methods of struggle, began to inflict one defeat after another on her. In a short time, Barzani managed to oust government troops from the mountainous regions and completely take control of Kurdistan.

Fight on the home front

The first issue on which the struggle unfolded already in July 1958 was the accession of Iraq to the United Arab Republic (UAR), which had just been created by Egypt and Syria. Accession was advocated by nationalists and leaders of the Ba'ath Party, who believed in Arab unification. The communists were against it. Kasem vehemently opposed such a union. His position was explained by the fact that he did not want to turn Iraq into another part of a large state under the leadership of Egypt, submitting to Nasser, whom he did not like and feared. In an effort to distance himself from the communists, Kasem began repressions against the left. Then, immediately after the revolution, a struggle began between Qassem and his colleague Aref, who also advocated an alliance with Egypt. The latter lost the power struggle in September 1958. He was removed from all posts and retired. Two months later, he tried to organize a coup, along with two dozen officers. The coup failed, 19 officers were executed. Aref was sentenced to death penalty, but Kasem pardoned him and sent him as ambassador to Germany. Subsequently, his secret services uncovered 29 more conspiracies against him.

But the struggle for power sharply escalated when, on March 5-6, 1959, the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) organized the Great Peace Festival in the third largest city of Iraq - Mosul, the main stronghold of Baathism. By the beginning of the festival, 250,000 ICP activists arrived in the city. A day after the festival, when most of the participants left the city, the military command of the local garrison mutinied under pan-Arabist slogans. An armed struggle began on the streets of the city between communists, pan-Arabists, Christians, Turkmens, Arabs and others. While in Mosul there was a struggle between the main rivals - the communists and the pan-Arabists, Qasem did not intervene in order to put an end to the rebellious officers, Arab nationalists and supporters of the Muslim brotherhood with the help of the left forces. On March 8, government troops launched an assault on Mosul, and by the next day, the army and armed detachments of the communists brutally suppressed it. Rape, murder, robbery, group trials and executions followed in the presence of cheering crowds. Hundreds of people lost their lives, most of them Arab nationalists. It is believed that the executions that followed after the suppression of the rebellion became the reason for the assassination attempt on Kasem.

A month later there was another bloodshed. On the first anniversary of the Iraqi revolution, a large Kurdish demonstration took place in Kirkuk to express their support for Abdel Qasem. But instead of a rally, a mixed uprising of Kurds, communists, Muslim factions and army troops began in the Kirkuk region. Only by July 20, the uprising was crushed by government troops with heavy losses.

Relations with neighbors

Despite numerous conspiracies and repeated assassination attempts, A.K. Qasem was able to consolidate his power, weakening both the Ba'athists and the Communists. This allowed him to activate foreign policy, which, however, led to an aggravation of relations with neighbors.

After the overthrow of the Hashemist dynasty in Iraq, King Hussein of Jordan, who formally had grounds for that, proclaimed himself the head of the Arab Federation on July 14 and tried to organize an intervention in Iraq to overthrow the regime of A.K. Qasem. British troops began to arrive in Jordan, and soon the British troops took under protection all the strategically important objects of the country. On July 15, Iraq announced the denunciation of the treaty on the Arab Federation.

During his tenure as prime minister, Abdel Qasem began setting the stage for the Iran-Iraq war. At the end of 1959, a conflict broke out between Iraq and Iran over navigation on the Shatt al-Arab river. Baghdad accused Iran of violating the Iran-Iraq treaty of 1937. On December 18, he stated:

After that, Iraq began to support the separatists in Khuzistan and even declared its territorial claims at the next meeting of the Arab League

On April 19, 1961, after lengthy negotiations between Great Britain and Kuwait, an interstate agreement was signed to cancel the Anglo-Kuwaiti Treaty of 1899, and the emirate gained political independence. Qasem became the first Iraqi leader not to recognize Kuwait as an independent state. On June 25, 1961, he declared Kuwait part of Iraqi territory and called for its reunification. The commander of the armed forces of Iraq, General A. Saleh al-Abdi, announced the readiness of the Iraqi army to annex Kuwait at any moment. In the face of the threat from Iraq, Britain sent troops to Kuwait. A month later, Kuwait asked the UN Security Council to convene an emergency meeting of the Council to discuss "the complaint of Kuwait regarding the situation caused by Iraq's threats to the territorial independence of Kuwait, which could undermine international peace and security." Kuwait was supported by a number of Arab countries.

On August 13, units of the Arab armies (Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia), led by Saudi Arabia, arrived in Kuwait and took up defensive positions to repel possible aggression from Iraq, after which the UK withdrew its troops from Kuwait. But the Iraqi government continued to escalate the situation, and then at the end of December, the UK sent naval forces to the Persian Gulf in connection with the Iraqi Prime Minister's threats to annex Kuwait. In December, Baghdad said it would "review" diplomatic relations with all states that recognize Kuwait. As more and more more countries recognized Kuwait, many Iraqi ambassadors from different countries was returning home. The aggressive policy of the Iraqi government plunged the country into isolation among the Arab world. Threats to Kuwait from the growing strength of the northern neighbor temporarily ceased only after the fall of the Qasem regime.

assassination attempt

Overthrow and execution

General Kasem was very popular among the people. In early 1963, he boasted that he managed to safely survive 38 assassination attempts and conspiracies. However, former associates continued to fight against Qasem. Rapprochement with the communists, as well as the Kurdish uprising in 1961 and student strikes in 1962 further weakened the Qasem regime. General Aref returned from exile. He entered into a secret alliance with the Ba'ath Party and on February 8, 1963, they carried out a military coup. On the morning of that day, parts of the Baghdad garrison opposed the discredited government. Upon learning of the beginning of the rebellion, Abdel Kerim Qasem barricaded himself in the Ministry of Defense with his guards, reinforced by loyal soldiers and officers. The communists came to his aid. They, together with Kasem's supporters, marched with sticks in their hands against tanks and machine guns, but the forces were unequal. At the same time, Iraqi Air Force fighters took off from military base Khabania and bombarded the ministry. For two days there were bloody battles in the streets of Baghdad. Kasem contacted the putschists and offered to surrender in exchange for life, which he was promised. The next day, February 9, Abdel Kerim Kasem left the building with his generals and other supporters and surrendered to the putschists. After that, he and two other generals Tahu al-Sheikh Ahmed and Fadil al-Mahdawi were put into an armored personnel carrier and brought to the television and radio building, where coup organizers Abdel Salam Aref and Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr were waiting for them. A quick trial was organized over them, lasting 40 minutes, which sentenced them to death.

Three people were taken to a nearby TV studio and tied to chairs. Before the execution, they offered to blindfold, but they refused. The death sentence was read to them, after which the prime minister and two of his generals were shot. The corpse of Abdel Qasem was put on a chair in front of a television camera and shown to the whole country. The bloody corpse of the “only leader” was broadcast on television for several days so that the people could be convinced that General Qasem was really dead. A soldier stood next to the corpse, who took the dead head of government by the hair, threw his head back and spat in his face.

First, the deposed prime minister was buried in an unmarked grave somewhere south of Baghdad. But one of his supporters found the burial place and reburied it elsewhere. As a result, the government dug up the body of Kasem and buried it in a secret place that no one could find. On July 17, 2004, Minister for Human Rights Amin Bakhtiyar announced that they had managed to find the secret burial place of the former prime minister. The grave was discovered after a three-month search based on the testimony of one of the residents of Baghdad. In addition to Abdel Kerim Qasem, the bodies of three generals who were executed along with him were also discovered. Four corpses were dressed in military uniform. Traces of torture were found on the remains, which indicates that all the dead were tortured before death. The grave was located in an agricultural area north of Baghdad, on the way to the city of Baakuba. The found bodies were sent for DNA tests, and after their confirmation, the corpses were finally buried.

Abdel Kerim Kasem(1914 - February 9, 1963) - political and military figure in Iraq. Prime Minister and Minister of Defense of Iraq (1958-1963), Commander-in-Chief of the Iraqi Armed Forces. He carried out the revolution of 1958, as a result of which the monarchy was overthrown in the country and a military regime was established. Deposed and executed in a military coup.

There are various forms of his name: Abdel Kasem, Abdel-Karim Qasim or Abdel Karim Kasem. During his reign, he was commonly known as al-Zaim (الزعيم), which means "leader".

early years

Abdel Kerim Kasem was born into a poor carpenter family in Baghdad. His father, a Sunni by origin, died after the birth of his son, participating in the First World War as a soldier of the Ottoman Empire. The mother of the future prime minister was a Shiite by origin and the daughter of a Kurdish farmer.

When Kasem was six years old, his family moved to Shuwayra, a small town near the Tigris, and then in 1926 to Baghdad. Kasem was an excellent student and he entered high school on a government scholarship. After graduating in 1931, he taught at an elementary school (from October 22, 1931 to September 3, 1932). His dismissal was due to the fact that he entered the military college, which he graduated in 1934 with the rank of second lieutenant.

Abdel Kerim Qassem took an active part in the suppression of tribal unrest in the Euphrates region, as well as in the Anglo-Iraqi war in May 1941 and in military operations in Kurdistan in 1945. Qasem also fought in the Arab-Israeli War from May 1948 to June 1949. In 1955 he was promoted to brigadier general. He became the leader of a revolutionary movement in the army, which made plans to overthrow the monarchy, based on the experience of the seizure of power by Egyptian President Abdel Nasser. In 1956, the secret revolutionary organization "Free Officers" was created in the Iraqi army, and a year later the National Unity Front was created in the country, which included the National Democratic Party, the Arab Socialist Renaissance Party "Baath", "Istiqlal" and the Iraqi communist the consignment.

Revolution 14 July

On July 14, 1958, Abdel Qasem led a coup. The nineteenth and twentieth brigades of the 3rd division of the Iraqi army, located near Baghdad, in Baakub, led by colonels Abdel Kerim Kasem and Abdel Salam Aref, were ordered to go to Jordan. However, the officers of the brigades led by Qassem and Aref decided to take advantage of the favorable situation in order to occupy Baghdad and overthrow the pro-imperialist regime. At 3 o'clock in the morning, revolutionary-minded army units entered Baghdad, crossed the Faisal bridge, and then occupied the radio center, the central telegraph office and surrounded the royal palace of Qasr ar-Rihab. The civilian population joined the military.

By five o'clock in the morning, a brief skirmish ensued between the rebels and the detachments guarding the royal palace. The security chiefs - Kurdish officers Lieutenant Colonel Taga Bamarni and Lieutenant Mustafa Abdallah did not resist and themselves joined the units of Aref and Qasem. At 6 o'clock in the morning the palace fell. King Faisal II and his regent Abdel Ilah were offered to surrender by the putschists. The king and his entire family came out of the palace, each of them holding a Koran over their heads. While they were leaving the palace, Lieutenant Abdel Sattar al-Abosi, without orders, opened fire and shot almost the entire royal family. Faisal II later died of his wounds in the hospital where he was taken. On the morning of a new day, the Baghdad radio broadcast:

The Republic of Iraq speaks! Today is the day of victory and glory. The enemies of God and the people are killed and thrown into the street. Let us be united in the struggle against the imperialists and their agents!

After that, the reprisal against the royal elite began, the victim of which was Prime Minister Nuri al-Said. The building of the British embassy was burned down. The people demolished the monuments to King Faisal I and the British General Maud, then drowning them in the Tigris. On the same day, Qasem, having declared Iraq a republic, headed the new government.

Prime Minister

After the overthrow of the monarchy, Qasem became Prime Minister and Minister of Defense. The cabinet included both military and civilians. The new head of government agreed to cooperate with the Soviet Union. Kasem decided to re-equip the Iraqi army. In the spring of 1959, he concluded a number of agreements with the USSR on the supply of Soviet weapons and military equipment, as well as on the training of Iraqi officers and technical specialists in the USSR. He canceled the Mutual Security Treaty and bilateral relations with Britain. In addition, Iraq withdrew from a number of military agreements with the United States. On May 30, 1959, the last British soldier left the country.

Flag of Iraq in 1959-1963 (symbol of the era of Abdel Kerim Qasem)

On July 26, 1958, the interim constitution of the Republic of Iraq was adopted, proclaiming the equality of all Iraqi citizens before the law and granting them freedoms regardless of race, nationality, language or religion. Already in the first days of the revolution trade unions, peasant unions and many other progressive organizations arose or emerged from the underground. Political parties, including the ICP, although not formally legalized, also operated legally. The government released political prisoners and granted amnesty to the Kurds who participated in the 1943 and 1945 Kurdish uprisings. Qasem lifted the ban on the activities of the Iraqi Communist Party.

Under Kasem, more and more schools and hospitals began to be built. In Baghdad and Basra, the government provided funds for the construction of social housing. An increasingly significant part of the growing oil revenues has gradually been transferred to poverty alleviation and social programs. But, despite the popularity of the prime minister, people were not satisfied with the authoritarian style of his rule. On September 30, 1958, the agrarian reform law was promulgated. This law was half-hearted and did not completely eliminate feudal landownership, but nevertheless significantly limited it. It was planned to withdraw from the feudal lords half of the lands that belonged to them in order to distribute the confiscated surplus among the landless peasants. It provided for the payment of monetary compensation to the owners of latifundia for the land seized from them. The government introduced an 8-hour working day.

This kind of activity of the new government aroused fierce resistance from the feudal and bourgeois-comprador reaction. In conditions of political tension, the head of state, Qasem, began to strengthen his personal dictatorship, which caused discontent even among political allies. Qasem firmly kept the secret police and security forces under control, preventing several assassination attempts. From the middle of 1959, the Kasem government began to pursue a policy of balancing between right and left forces, to restrict and even suppress the activities of leftist organizations.

Kurdish issue Main article: September uprising in Iraqi Kurdistan

After the overthrow of the monarchy, the regime of Abdel Kerim Qassem made wide concessions to the Kurds: an article was included in the provisional constitution of Iraq proclaiming Iraq a common state of Arabs and Kurds (Article 3); the Kurds were brought into the government, and the KDP raised the issue of granting autonomy to Kurdistan. However, the Kasem government did not agree to this, moreover, over time, it began to support Arab nationalists more and more openly. From the second half of 1960, a campaign of attacks on the Kurds and their leaders began in the Iraqi media, who were accused of separatism and ties with Moscow. It got to the point that the variety of “Kurdish wheat” was renamed “Northern wheat” by special order. Inscriptions appeared on the walls of houses in Baghdad: "Iraq is the birthplace of Arabs and Muslims, not Kurds and Christians!" If earlier A. K. Kasem said that the Arab-Kurdish unity is the cornerstone of Iraqi statehood, now the Kurds were offered to dissolve into the Iraqi nation. In December, fleeing repression, the leaders of the Kurdistan Democratic Party leave the capital and take refuge in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan.

In 1961, Kasem decides to put an end to the "Kurdish question" and concentrates troops in Kurdistan. In June, the prime minister does not receive representatives of Kurdish parties. On September 7, the bombing of Kurdistan begins, and on September 11, Mustafa Barzani proclaimed a new uprising and called the Kurds to arms. Thus began a grandiose movement that went down in Kurdish history under the name of the September 11 revolution. The Iraqi army, having multiple numerical and absolute technical superiority, hoped to quickly defeat the Kurds. However, those, using partisan methods of struggle, began to inflict one defeat after another on her. In a short time, Barzani managed to oust government troops from the mountainous regions and completely take control of Kurdistan.

Fight on the home front

The first issue on which the struggle unfolded already in July 1958 was the accession of Iraq to the United Arab Republic (UAR), which had just been created by Egypt and Syria. Accession was advocated by nationalists and leaders of the Ba'ath Party, who believed in Arab unification. The communists were against it. Kasem vehemently opposed such a union. His position was explained by the fact that he did not want to turn Iraq into another part of a large state under the leadership of Egypt, submitting to Nasser, whom he did not like and feared. In an effort to distance himself from the communists, Kasem began repressions against the left. Then, immediately after the revolution, a struggle began between Qassem and his colleague Aref, who also advocated an alliance with Egypt. The latter lost the power struggle in September 1958. He was removed from all posts and retired. Two months later, he tried to organize a coup, along with two dozen officers. The coup failed, 19 officers were executed. Aref was sentenced to death, but Kasem pardoned him and sent him as ambassador to Germany. Subsequently, his secret services uncovered 29 more conspiracies against him.

But the struggle for power sharply escalated when, on March 5-6, 1959, the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) organized the Great Peace Festival in the third largest city of Iraq - Mosul, the main stronghold of Baathism. By the beginning of the festival, 250,000 ICP activists arrived in the city. A day after the festival, when most of the participants left the city, the military command of the local garrison mutinied under pan-Arabist slogans. An armed struggle began on the streets of the city between communists, pan-Arabists, Christians, Turkmens, Arabs and others. While in Mosul there was a struggle between the main rivals - the communists and the pan-Arabists, Qasem did not intervene in order to put an end to the rebellious officers, Arab nationalists and supporters of the Muslim brotherhood with the help of the left forces. On March 8, government troops launched an assault on Mosul, and by the next day, the army and armed detachments of the communists brutally suppressed it. Rape, murder, robbery, group trials and executions followed in the presence of cheering crowds. Hundreds of people lost their lives, most of them Arab nationalists. It is believed that the executions that followed after the suppression of the rebellion became the reason for the assassination attempt on Kasem.

A month later there was another bloodshed. On the first anniversary of the Iraqi revolution, a large Kurdish demonstration took place in Kirkuk to express their support for Abdel Qasem. But instead of a rally, a mixed uprising of Kurds, communists, Muslim factions and army troops began in the Kirkuk region. Only by July 20, the uprising was crushed by government troops with heavy losses.

Relations with neighbors

Despite numerous conspiracies and repeated assassination attempts, A.K. Qasem was able to consolidate his power, weakening both the Ba'athists and the Communists. This allowed him to intensify his foreign policy, which, however, led to an aggravation of relations with his neighbors.

Jordan

After the overthrow of the Hashemist dynasty in Iraq, King Hussein of Jordan, who formally had grounds for that, proclaimed himself the head of the Arab Federation on July 14 and tried to organize an intervention in Iraq to overthrow the regime of A.K. Qasem. British troops began to arrive in Jordan, and soon the British troops took under protection all the strategically important objects of the country. On July 15, Iraq announced the denunciation of the treaty on the Arab Federation.

During his tenure as prime minister, Abdel Qasem began setting the stage for the Iran-Iraq war. At the end of 1959, a conflict broke out between Iraq and Iran over navigation on the Shatt al-Arab river. Baghdad accused Iran of violating the Iran-Iraq treaty of 1937. On December 18, he stated:

We would not like to turn to the history of the Arab tribes living in Al-Ahwaz and Khorramshahr. The Turks handed over Khorramshahr, which was part of Iraqi territory, to Iran.

After that, Iraq began to support the separatists in Khuzistan and even announced its territorial claims at the next meeting of the League of Arab States.

Kuwait

On April 19, 1961, after lengthy negotiations between Great Britain and Kuwait, an interstate agreement was signed to cancel the Anglo-Kuwaiti Treaty of 1899, and the emirate gained political independence. Qasem became the first Iraqi leader not to recognize Kuwait as an independent state. On June 25, 1961, he declared Kuwait part of Iraqi territory and called for its reunification. The commander of the armed forces of Iraq, General A. Saleh al-Abdi, announced the readiness of the Iraqi army to annex Kuwait at any moment. In the face of the threat from Iraq, Britain sent troops to Kuwait. A month later, Kuwait asked the UN Security Council to convene an emergency meeting of the Council to discuss "the complaint of Kuwait regarding the situation caused by Iraq's threats to the territorial independence of Kuwait, which could undermine international peace and security." Kuwait was supported by a number of Arab countries.

On August 13, parts of the Arab armies (Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia), led by Saudi Arabia, arrived in Kuwait and took up defensive positions to repel possible aggression from Iraq, after which the UK withdrew its troops from Kuwait. But the Iraqi government continued to escalate the situation, and then at the end of December, the UK sent naval forces to the Persian Gulf in connection with the Iraqi Prime Minister's threats to annex Kuwait. In December, Baghdad said it would "review" diplomatic relations with all states that recognize Kuwait. As more and more countries recognized Kuwait, many Iraqi ambassadors from various countries returned home. The aggressive policy of the Iraqi government plunged the country into isolation among the Arab world. Threats to Kuwait from the growing strength of the northern neighbor temporarily ceased only after the fall of the Qasem regime.

assassination attempt

The new Baath Party, which was just beginning to take shape and was then small (in 1958 it had about three hundred members), decided to come to power and change the political regime. First, however, General Kasem had to be removed. On October 7, a group of conspirators attempted to assassinate the country's prime minister, among them the young Saddam Hussein. Saddam was not part of the main group of assassins at all, but stood in cover. But his nerves could not stand it, and he, putting the whole operation in jeopardy, opened fire on the general's car when it was just approaching. As a result, the Prime Minister's driver was killed, but A.K. Kasem, seriously wounded, survived. Saddam himself, slightly wounded, managed to escape through Syria to Egypt. Three weeks later, the prime minister was discharged from the hospital. Then all of Iraq heard about the Baath Party and its fighter Saddam Hussein, the future president of Iraq. After the assassination attempt, the Ba'ath Party was banned, seventeen Ba'athists were sentenced to death and shot. Most of the others received various terms of imprisonment. Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death in absentia

Overthrow and execution

Main article: February 8, 1963 coup

General Kasem was very popular among the people. In early 1963, he boasted that he managed to safely survive 38 assassination attempts and conspiracies. However, former associates continued to fight against Qasem. Rapprochement with the communists, as well as the Kurdish uprising in 1961 and student strikes in 1962 further weakened the Qasem regime. General Aref returned from exile. He entered into a secret alliance with the Ba'ath Party and on February 8, 1963, they carried out a military coup. On the morning of that day, parts of the Baghdad garrison opposed the discredited government. Upon learning of the beginning of the rebellion, Abdel Kerim Qasem barricaded himself in the Ministry of Defense with his guards, reinforced by loyal soldiers and officers. The communists came to his aid. They, together with Kasem's supporters, marched with sticks in their hands against tanks and machine guns, but the forces were unequal. At the same time, Iraqi Air Force fighter jets took off from the Habaniya military base and bombarded the ministry. For two days there were bloody battles in the streets of Baghdad. Kasem contacted the putschists and offered to surrender in exchange for life, which he was promised. The next day, February 9, Abdel Kerim Kasem left the building with his generals and other supporters and surrendered to the putschists. After that, he and two other generals Tahu al-Sheikh Ahmed and Fadil al-Mahdawi were put into an armored personnel carrier and brought to the television and radio building, where coup organizers Abdel Salam Aref and Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr were waiting for them. A quick trial was organized over them, lasting 40 minutes, which sentenced them to death.

Execution of Abdel Kerim Qassem and two generals in a TV studio

Three people were taken to a nearby TV studio and tied to chairs. Before the execution, they offered to blindfold, but they refused. The death sentence was read to them, after which the prime minister and two of his generals were shot. The corpse of Abdel Qasem was put on a chair in front of a television camera and shown to the whole country. The bloody corpse of the “only leader” was broadcast on television for several days so that the people could be convinced that General Qasem was really dead. A soldier stood next to the corpse, who took the dead head of government by the hair, threw his head back and spat in his face.

First, the deposed prime minister was buried in an unmarked grave somewhere south of Baghdad. But one of his supporters found the burial place and reburied it elsewhere. As a result, the government dug up the body of Kasem and buried it in a secret place that no one could find. On July 17, 2004, Minister for Human Rights Amin Bakhtiyar announced that they had managed to find the secret burial place of the former prime minister. The grave was discovered after a three-month search based on the testimony of one of the residents of Baghdad. In addition to Abdel Kerim Qasem, the bodies of three generals who were executed along with him were also discovered. Four corpses were dressed in military uniforms. Traces of torture were found on the remains, which indicates that all the dead were tortured before death. The grave was located in an agricultural area north of Baghdad, on the way to the city of Baakuba. The found bodies were sent for DNA tests, and after their confirmation, the corpses were finally buried.

Successor:Salih Mahdi Ammash Religion:Islam , Sunni Birth:
Baghdad Death:February 9th(49 years old)
Baghdad

There are various forms of his name: Abdel Kasem, Abdel-Karim Qasim or Abdel Karim Kasem. During his reign, he was popularly known as az-Zaym (الزعيم), which means "the only leader".

early years

Abdel Kerim Qasem was born into a poor carpenter family in Baghdad. His father, a Sunni by origin, died after the birth of his son while participating in World War I soldier Ottoman Empire. The mother of the future prime minister was by origin Shia and the daughter of a Kurdish farmer.

When Kasem was six years old, his family moved to Shuvaira, a small town near tiger and then in 1926- in Baghdad. Kasem was an excellent student and he entered high school on a government scholarship. After graduating from 1931 he taught at an elementary school 22 of October 1931 on September 3 1932). His dismissal was due to the fact that he entered the military college, which he graduated from in 1934 with the rank of second lieutenant.

Abdel Kerim Qassem took an active part in the suppression of tribal unrest in the area Euphrates, as well as in the Anglo-Iraqi War in May 1941 and in military operations in Kurdistan in 1945. Kasem also participated in Arab-Israeli war May to June 1949. IN 1955 received the rank of brigadier general. He became the leader of a revolutionary movement in the army, which made plans to overthrow the monarchy, based on the experience of the seizure of power by the Egyptian president Abdel Nasser. IN 1956 in the Iraqi army, a secret revolutionary organization, Free Officers, was created, and a year later, the National Unity Front was created in the country, which included the National Democratic Party, the Arab Socialist Renaissance Party Baath, Istiqlal and the Iraqi Communist Party.

Revolution 14 July

the 14 th of July Abdel Qasem led the coup. The nineteenth and twentieth brigades of the 3rd division of the Iraqi army, located near Baghdad, in Baakube, led by Colonels Abdel Kerim Kasem and Abdel Salam Aref, were ordered to go to Jordan. However, the officers of the brigades led by Qassem and Aref decided to take advantage of the favorable situation in order to occupy Baghdad and overthrow the pro-imperialist regime. At 3 o'clock in the morning, revolutionary-minded army units entered Baghdad, crossed the Faisal bridge, and then occupied the radio center, the central telegraph office and surrounded the royal palace of Qasr ar-Rihab. The civilian population joined the military.

By five o'clock in the morning, a brief skirmish ensued between the rebels and the detachments guarding the royal palace. Heads of security - officers - Kurds Lieutenant Colonel Taga Bamarni and Lieutenant Mustafa Abdallah offered no resistance and joined Aref's and Qasem's units themselves. At 6 o'clock in the morning the palace fell. King Faisal II and his regent Abdel Ilah, the putschists offered to surrender. The king and his entire family came out of the palace, each of them holding a Koran over their heads. While they were leaving the palace, Lieutenant Abdel Sattar al-Abosi, without orders, opened fire and shot almost the entire royal family. Faisal II later died of his wounds in the hospital where he was taken. On the morning of a new day, the Baghdad radio broadcast:

After that, the reprisal against the royal elite began, the victim of which was the prime minister. Nouri Al Said. The building of the British embassy was burned, which was an expression of the deepest hatred that the Iraqis had for British imperialism [ source not specified 416 days] . The people demolished the monuments to the king Faisal I and the British General Maud, then drowning them in the Tigris. On the same day, Qasem, having declared Iraq a republic, headed the new government.

Prime Minister

After the overthrow of the monarchy, Qasem became Prime Minister and Minister of Defense. The cabinet included both military and civilians. The new head of government agreed to cooperate with Soviet Union. Kasem decided to re-equip the Iraqi army. spring 1959 he concluded a number of agreements with the USSR on the supply of Soviet weapons and military equipment, as well as on the training of Iraqi officers and technical specialists in the USSR. He canceled the Mutual Security Treaty and bilateral relations with Britain. In addition, Iraq withdrew from a number of military agreements with the United States. May 30 1959 the last British soldier left the country.

Flag of Iraq in 1959-1963 (symbol of the era of Abdel Kerim Qasem)

On July 26, 1958, the interim constitution of the Republic of Iraq was adopted, proclaiming the equality of all Iraqi citizens before the law and granting them freedoms regardless of race, nationality, language or religion. Already in the first days of the revolution trade unions, peasant unions and many other progressive organizations arose or emerged from the underground. Political parties, including the ICP, although not formally legalized, also operated legally. The government released political prisoners and granted amnesty to the Kurds who participated in the 1943 and 1945 Kurdish uprisings. Qasem lifted the ban on the Iraqi Communist Party.

Under Kasem, more and more schools and hospitals began to be built. In Baghdad and Basra, the government provided funds for the construction of social housing. An increasingly significant part of the growing oil revenues has gradually been transferred to poverty alleviation and social programs. But, despite the popularity of the prime minister, people were not satisfied with the authoritarian style of his rule. September 30th 1958 The agrarian reform law was promulgated. This law was half-hearted and did not completely eliminate feudal landownership, but nevertheless significantly limited it. It was planned to withdraw from the feudal lords half of the lands that belonged to them in order to distribute the confiscated surplus among the landless peasants. It provided for the payment of monetary compensation to the owners of latifundia for the land seized from them. The government introduced an 8-hour working day.

This kind of activity of the new government aroused fierce resistance from the feudal and bourgeois-comprador reaction. In conditions of political tension, the head of state, Qasem, began to strengthen his personal dictatorship, which caused discontent even among political allies. Qasem kept the secret police and security forces firmly under control, preventing several assassination attempts. From the middle of 1959, the Kasem government began to pursue a policy of balancing between right and left forces, to restrict and even suppress the activities of patriotic organizations.

Kurdish problem

After the overthrow of the monarchy, the regime of Abdel Kerim Qassem made wide concessions to the Kurds: an article was included in the provisional constitution of Iraq proclaiming Iraq a common state of Arabs and Kurds (Article 3); the Kurds were brought into the government, and the KDP raised the issue of granting autonomy to Kurdistan. However, the Kasem government did not agree to this, moreover, over time, it began to support Arab nationalists more and more openly. From the second half 1960 in the Iraqi media began a campaign of attacks on the Kurds and their leaders, who were accused of separatism and ties with Moscow. It got to the point that the variety of “Kurdish wheat” was renamed “Northern wheat” by special order. Inscriptions appeared on the walls of houses in Baghdad: “Iraq is the birthplace of Arabs and Muslims, not Kurds and Christians! ". If earlier A. K. Kasem said that the Arab-Kurdish unity is the cornerstone of Iraqi statehood, now the Kurds were offered to dissolve into the Iraqi nation. In December, fleeing repression, the leaders of the Kurdistan Democratic Party leave the capital and take refuge in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan.

In 1961, Kasem decides to put an end to the "Kurdish question" and concentrates troops in Kurdistan. In June, the prime minister does not receive representatives of Kurdish parties. On September 7, the bombing of Kurdistan begins, and on September 11 Mustafa Barzani proclaimed a new uprising and called the Kurds to arms. Thus began a grandiose movement that went down in Kurdish history under the name of the September 11 revolution. The Iraqi army, having multiple numerical and absolute technical superiority, hoped to quickly defeat the Kurds. However, those, using partisan methods of struggle, began to inflict one defeat after another on her. In a short time, Barzani managed to push the government troops out of the mountainous regions and completely take control of Kurdistan.

Fight on the home front

The first issue on which the struggle unfolded already in July 1958 was the accession of Iraq to the newly created Egypt and Syria, the United Arab Republic (UAR). Accession was advocated by nationalists and leaders of the Ba'ath Party, who believed in Arab unification. The communists were against it. Kasem vehemently opposed such a union. His position was explained by the fact that he did not want to turn Iraq into another part of a large state under the leadership of Egypt, submitting to Nasser, whom he did not like and feared. In an effort to distance himself from the communists, Kasem began repressions against the left. Then, immediately after the revolution, a struggle began between Qassem and his colleague Aref, who also advocated an alliance with Egypt. The latter lost the power struggle in September 1958. He was removed from all posts and retired. Two months later, he tried to organize a coup, along with two dozen officers. The coup failed, 19 officers were executed. Aref was sentenced to death, but Kasem pardoned him and sent him as ambassador to Germany. Subsequently, his secret services uncovered 29 more conspiracies against him.

But the struggle for power sharply escalated when, on March 5-6, 1959, the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) organized in the third largest city in Iraq - Mosul, the main stronghold of Ba'athism, the Great Peace Festival. By the beginning of the festival, 250,000 ICP activists arrived in the city. A day after the festival, when most of the participants left the city, the military command of the local garrison mutinied under pan-Arabist slogans. An armed struggle began on the streets of the city between communists, pan-Arabists, Christians, Turkmens, Arabs and others. While in Mosul there was a struggle between the main rivals - the communists and the pan-Arabists, Qasem did not intervene in order to put an end to the rebellious officers, Arab nationalists and supporters of the Muslim brotherhood with the help of the left forces. March 8 government troops launched an assault on Mosul and by the next day the army and armed detachments of the communists brutally suppressed it. Rape, murder, robbery, group trials and executions followed in the presence of cheering crowds. Hundreds of people lost their lives, most of them Arab nationalists. It is believed that the executions that followed after the suppression of the rebellion became the reason for the assassination attempt on Qasem.

A month later there was another bloodshed. On the first anniversary of the Iraqi Revolution in Kirkuk there was a large demonstration of the Kurds to express their support for Abdel Kasem. But instead of a rally, a mixed uprising of Kurds, communists, Muslim factions and army troops began in the Kirkuk region. Only to July 20 the uprising was crushed by government troops with heavy losses.

Relations with neighbors

Despite numerous conspiracies and repeated assassination attempts, A.K. Qasem was able to consolidate his power, weakening both the Ba'athists and the Communists. This allowed him to intensify his foreign policy, which, however, led to an aggravation of relations with his neighbors.

Jordan

After the overthrow of the Hashemist dynasty in Iraq, King Hussein of Jordan, who formally had grounds for that, proclaimed himself the head of the Arab Federation on July 14 and tried to organize an intervention in Iraq to overthrow the regime of A.K. Qasem. British troops began to arrive in Jordan, and soon the British troops took under protection all the strategically important objects of the country. July 15 Iraq announced the denunciation of the treaty on the Arab Federation.

Iran

During his tenure as prime minister, Abdel Qasem began setting the stage for the Iran-Iraq War. At the end of 1959, a conflict broke out between Iraq and Iran over navigation on the Shatt al-Arab river. Baghdad accused Iran of violating the Iran-Iraq treaty of 1937. December 18 he declared:

After that, Iraq began to support the separatists in Khuzistan, and even announced his territorial claims at the next meeting of the League of Arab States

Kuwait

assassination attempt

Overthrow and execution

General Kasem was very popular among the people. In early 1963, he boasted that he managed to safely survive 38 assassination attempts and conspiracies. However, former associates continued to fight against Qasem. Rapprochement with the communists, as well as the Kurdish uprising in 1961 and student strikes in 1962 further weakened the Qasem regime. General Aref returned from exile. He entered into a secret alliance with the Ba'ath Party and on February 8, 1963, they carried out a military coup. On the morning of that day, parts of the Baghdad garrison opposed the discredited government. Upon learning of the beginning of the rebellion, Abdel Kerim Qasem barricaded himself in the Ministry of Defense with his guards, reinforced by loyal soldiers and officers. The communists came to his aid. They, together with Kasem's supporters, marched with sticks in their hands against tanks and machine guns, but the forces were unequal. At the same time, Iraqi Air Force fighter jets took off from the Habaniya military base and bombarded the ministry. For two days there were bloody battles in the streets of Baghdad. Kasem contacted the putschists and offered to surrender in exchange for life, which he was promised. The next day, February 9, Abdel Kerim Kasem left the building with his generals and other supporters and surrendered to the putschists. After that, he and two other generals Tahu al-Sheikh Ahmed and Fadil al-Mahdawi were put into an armored personnel carrier and brought to the television and radio building, where the coup organizers were waiting for them. Abdel Salam Aref And Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr. A quick trial was organized over them, lasting 40 minutes, which sentenced them to death.

Execution of Abdel Kerim Qassem and two generals in a TV studio

Three people were taken to a nearby TV studio and tied to chairs. Before the execution, they offered to blindfold, but they refused. The death sentence was read to them, after which the prime minister and two of his generals were shot. The corpse of Abdel Qasem was put on a chair in front of a television camera and shown to the whole country. The bloody corpse of the “only leader” was broadcast on television for several days so that the people could be convinced that General Qasem was really dead. A soldier stood next to the corpse, who took the dead head of government by the hair, threw his head back and spat in his face.

First, the deposed prime minister was buried in an unmarked grave somewhere south of Baghdad. But one of his supporters found the burial place and reburied it elsewhere. As a result, the government dug up the body of Kasem and buried it in a secret place that no one could find.

But the struggle for power sharply escalated when, on March 5-6, 1959, the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) organized the Great Peace Festival in the third largest city of Iraq - Mosul, the main stronghold of Baathism. By the beginning of the festival, 250,000 ICP activists arrived in the city. A day after the festival, when most of the participants left the city, the military command of the local garrison mutinied under pan-Arabist slogans. An armed struggle began on the streets of the city between communists, pan-Arabists, Christians, Turkmens, Arabs and others. While in Mosul there was a struggle between the main rivals - the communists and the pan-Arabists, Qasem did not intervene in order to put an end to the rebellious officers, Arab nationalists and supporters of the Muslim brotherhood with the help of the left forces. On March 8, government troops launched an assault on Mosul, and by the next day, the army and armed detachments of the communists brutally suppressed it. Rape, murder, robbery, group trials and executions followed in the presence of cheering crowds. Hundreds of people lost their lives, most of them Arab nationalists. It is believed that the executions that followed after the suppression of the rebellion became the reason for the assassination attempt on Kasem.

A month later there was another bloodshed. On the first anniversary of the Iraqi revolution, a large Kurdish demonstration took place in Kirkuk to express their support for Abdel Qasem. But instead of a rally, a mixed uprising of Kurds, communists, Muslim factions and army troops began in the Kirkuk region. Only by July 20, the uprising was crushed by government troops with heavy losses.

3.3. Relations with neighbors

Despite numerous conspiracies and repeated assassination attempts, A.K. Qasem was able to consolidate his power, weakening both the Ba'athists and the Communists. This allowed him to intensify his foreign policy, which, however, led to an aggravation of relations with his neighbors.

Jordan

After the overthrow of the Hashemist dynasty in Iraq, King Hussein of Jordan, who formally had grounds for that, proclaimed himself the head of the Arab Federation on July 14 and tried to organize an intervention in Iraq to overthrow the regime of A.K. Qasem. British troops began to arrive in Jordan, and soon the British troops took under protection all the strategically important objects of the country. On July 15, Iraq announced the denunciation of the treaty on the Arab Federation.

During his tenure as prime minister, Abdel Qasem began setting the stage for the Iran-Iraq war. At the end of 1959, a conflict broke out between Iraq and Iran over navigation on the Shatt al-Arab river. Baghdad accused Iran of violating the Iran-Iraq treaty of 1937. On December 18, he stated:

After that, Iraq began to support the separatists in Khuzistan, and even announced its territorial claims at the next meeting of the League of Arab States

On April 19, 1961, after lengthy negotiations between Great Britain and Kuwait, an interstate agreement was signed to cancel the Anglo-Kuwaiti Treaty of 1899, and the emirate gained political independence. Qasem became the first Iraqi leader not to recognize Kuwait as an independent state. On June 25, 1961, he declared Kuwait part of Iraqi territory and called for its reunification. The commander of the armed forces of Iraq, General A. Saleh al-Abdi, announced the readiness of the Iraqi army to annex Kuwait at any moment. In the face of the threat from Iraq, Britain sent troops to Kuwait. A month later, Kuwait asked the UN Security Council to convene an emergency meeting of the Council to discuss "the complaint of Kuwait regarding the situation caused by Iraq's threats to the territorial independence of Kuwait, which could undermine international peace and security." Kuwait was supported by a number of Arab countries.

On August 13, parts of the Arab armies (Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia), led by Saudi Arabia, arrived in Kuwait and took up defensive positions to repel possible aggression from Iraq, after which the UK withdrew its troops from Kuwait. But the Iraqi government continued to escalate the situation, and then at the end of December, the UK sent naval forces to the Persian Gulf in connection with the Iraqi Prime Minister's threats to annex Kuwait. In December, Baghdad said it would "review" diplomatic relations with all states that recognize Kuwait. As more and more countries recognized Kuwait, many Iraqi ambassadors from various countries returned home. The aggressive policy of the Iraqi government plunged the country into isolation among the Arab world. Threats to Kuwait from the growing strength of the northern neighbor temporarily ceased only after the fall of the Qasem regime.

4. Attempt

The new Baath Party, which was just beginning to take shape and was then small (in 1958 it had about three hundred members), decided to come to power and change the political regime. First, however, General Kasem had to be removed. On October 7, a group of conspirators attempted to assassinate the country's prime minister, among them the young Saddam Hussein. Saddam was not part of the main group of assassins at all, but stood in cover. But his nerves could not stand it, and he, putting the whole operation in jeopardy, opened fire on the general's car when it was just approaching. As a result, the Prime Minister's driver was killed, but A.K. Kasem, seriously wounded, survived. Saddam himself, slightly wounded, managed to escape through Syria to Egypt. Three weeks later, the prime minister was discharged from the hospital. Then all of Iraq heard about the Baath Party and its fighter Saddam Hussein, the future president of Iraq. After the assassination attempt, the Ba'ath Party was banned, seventeen Ba'athists were sentenced to death and shot. Most of the others received various terms of imprisonment. Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death in absentia.

5. Overthrow and execution

General Kasem was very popular among the people. In early 1963, he boasted that he managed to safely survive 38 assassination attempts and conspiracies. However, former associates continued to fight against Qasem. Rapprochement with the communists, as well as the Kurdish uprising in 1961 and student strikes in 1962 further weakened the Qasem regime. General Aref returned from exile. He entered into a secret alliance with the Ba'ath Party and on February 8, 1963, they carried out a military coup. On the morning of that day, parts of the Baghdad garrison opposed the discredited government. Upon learning of the beginning of the rebellion, Abdel Kerim Qasem barricaded himself in the Ministry of Defense with his guards, reinforced by loyal soldiers and officers. The communists came to his aid. They, together with Kasem's supporters, marched with sticks in their hands against tanks and machine guns, but the forces were unequal. At the same time, Iraqi Air Force fighter jets took off from the Habaniya military base and bombarded the ministry. For two days there were bloody battles in the streets of Baghdad. Kasem contacted the putschists and offered to surrender in exchange for life, which he was promised. The next day, February 9, Abdel Kerim Kasem left the building with his generals and other supporters and surrendered to the putschists. After that, he and two other generals Tahu al-Sheikh Ahmed and Fadil al-Mahdawi were put into an armored personnel carrier and brought to the television and radio building, where coup organizers Abdel Salam Aref and Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr were waiting for them. A quick trial was organized over them, lasting 40 minutes, which sentenced them to death.

Three people were taken to a nearby TV studio and tied to chairs. Before the execution, they offered to blindfold, but they refused. The death sentence was read to them, after which the prime minister and two of his generals were shot. The corpse of Abdel Qasem was put on a chair in front of a television camera and shown to the whole country. The bloody corpse of the “only leader” was broadcast on television for several days so that the people could be convinced that General Qasem was really dead. A soldier stood next to the corpse, who took the dead head of government by the hair, threw his head back and spat in his face.

First, the deposed prime minister was buried in an unmarked grave somewhere south of Baghdad. But one of his supporters found the burial place and reburied it elsewhere. As a result, the government dug up the body of Kasem and buried it in a secret place that no one could find. On July 17, 2004, Minister for Human Rights Amin Bakhtiyar announced that they had managed to find the secret burial place of the former prime minister. The grave was discovered after a three-month search based on the testimony of one of the residents of Baghdad. In addition to Abdel Kerim Qasem, the bodies of three generals who were executed along with him were also discovered. Four corpses were dressed in military uniforms. Traces of torture were found on the remains, which indicates that all the dead were tortured before death. The grave was located in an agricultural area north of Baghdad, on the way to the city of Baakuba. The found bodies were sent for DNA tests, and after their confirmation, the corpses were finally buried.

6. Footnotes and sources

1. Welcome to Kurdistan! - REVOLUTION IN IRAQ OF 1958

2. b0gus: Some information to understand the current

4. http://www.orient.libfl.ru/archive/2_03-04.html

5. http://krugosvet.org/countries/Iraq/istoriy.html

6. Welcome to Kurdistan! - BAZANI - KASEM. SECOND KURDISH-IRAQI WAR

7. Saddam's three wars. Part I: South Kurdistan

8. Robin J. UPDIKE. SADDAM HUSSEIN. Political biography

10. see also en:Human rights in pre-Saddam Iraq

11. What is KASEM, ABDEL KERIM - Collier Encyclopedia - Dictionaries - Word Pediatrics

13. Iraq - REPUBLICAN IRAQ

14. middle east. MODERN HISTORY OF ASIA AND AFRICA COUNTRIES. XX century. History of Kuwait. Kuwait in i960 1980s Political development

15. Iraqis Recall Golden Age - IWPR Institute for War & Peace Reporting

Literature

Ala Bashir. Saddam Hussein's inner circle. - St. Petersburg: Amphora, 2006.