Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party – Iraq Region
The Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party – Iraq Region, officially the Iraqi Regional Branch, was the Iraqi regional branch of the pan-Arab Ba'ath Party, founded in the early 1950s and officially brought to power through the 1968 coup d'état. Rooted in the ideology of Ba'athism, the party combined Arab nationalism, Arab socialism, republicanism, and anti-imperialism, though it developed a distinctive Iraqi character under Saddam Hussein's leadership, often referred to as Saddamist Ba'athism.
From 1968 to 2003, the Ba'ath Party dominated Iraq's political landscape, exerting total control over state institutions, the military, and society through an extensive and often brutal internal security network. It facilitated Saddam Hussein's rise to absolute power in 1979 and played a central role in shaping Iraq's domestic and foreign policies, including the Iran–Iraq War, the invasion of Kuwait, and the Gulf War.
Following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Ba'ath Party was officially banned by the Coalition Provisional Authority, and thousands of its members were purged from public life in a controversial policy known as de-Ba'athification. Despite the ban, remnants of the party reorganized underground and splintered into factions, most notably those led by Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri and Mohammed Younis al-Ahmed.
The party’s legacy remains controversial due to its role in authoritarian governance, sectarian repression, and widespread human rights abuses. While officially dissolved and criminalized by Iraq's 2005 Constitution, Ba'athist ideologies continue to influence insurgent movements and political discourse in Iraq and the wider Arab world.
History
Early years and 14 July Revolution: 1951–1958
The Iraqi Regional Branch of the Ba'ath Party was established in 1951 or 1952. Some historians claim that the Iraqi Regional Branch was established by Abd ar Rahman ad Damin and Abd al Khaliq al Khudayri in 1947 after their return from the founding congress of the Ba'ath Party held in Damascus, Syria the same year. In another version, Fuad al-Rikabi established the Iraqi Regional Branch in 1948 with Sa'dun Hammadi, a Shia Muslim, but became secretary of the Regional Command in 1952.The Iraqi Regional Branch was Arab nationalist and vague in its socialist orientation. Al-Rikabi, expelled from the party in 1961 for being a Nasserist, was an early follower of Michel Aflaq, the founder of Ba'athism. During the party's early days, members discussed topics regarding Arab nationalism, the social inequalities that had grown out of the British "Tribal Criminal and Civil Disputes Regulation", and the Iraqi Parliament's Law 28 of 1932 "Governing the Rights and Duties of Cultivators". By 1953, the party, led by al-Rikabi, was engaged in subversive activities against the government.
The party initially consisted of a majority of Shia Muslims, as al-Rikabi primarily recruited his friends and family, but it slowly became Sunni-dominated. The Ba'ath Party, and others of pan-Arab orientation, found it increasingly difficult to recruit Shia members within the party organisation. Most Shias saw pan-Arab as largely Sunni, since most Arabs are Sunni. As a result, more Shias joined the Iraqi Communist Party than the Ba'ath Party. In the mid-1950s, eight of 17 members of the Ba'ath leadership were Shia.
According to Talib El-Shibib, the Ba'ath foreign minister in the Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr government, the sectarian background of the leading Ba'ath members was considered of little importance because most Ba'athists did not know each other's sectarian denominations. Between 1952 and 1963, 54% of the members of the Ba'ath Regional Command were Shia Muslims, largely because of al-Rikabi's effective recruitment drive in Shia areas. Between 1963 and 1970, after al-Rikabi's resignation, Shia representation in the Regional Command had fallen to 14 percent. However, of the three factions within the Ba'ath Party, two out of three faction leaders were Shia.
By the end of 1951, the party had at least 50 members. With the collapse of the pan-Arabist United Arab Republic, several leading Ba'ath members, including al-Rikabi, resigned from the party in protest. In 1958, the year of the 14 July Revolution that overthrew the Hashemite monarchy, the Ba'ath Party had 300 members nationwide. Brigadier Abd al-Karim Qasim, the leader of the Free Officers Movement which overthrew the king, supported joining the UAR, but changed his position when he took power. Several members of the Free Officer Movement were also members of the Ba'ath Party. The Ba'ath Party considered the President of Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser, the leader of the pan-Arab movement, to be the leader most likely to succeed, and supported Iraq's joining the union. Of the 16 members of Qasim's cabinet, 12 were Ba'ath Party members. However, the Ba'ath Party supported Qasim on the grounds that he would join Nasser's UAR.
Qasim's Iraq: 1958–1963
Qasim, reluctant to tie himself too closely to Nasser's Egypt, sided with various groups within Iraq that told him such an action would be dangerous. Instead Qasim adopted a wataniyah policy of "Iraq First". To strengthen his own position within the government, Qasim created an alliance with the Iraqi Communist Party, which was opposed to the notion of pan-Arabism.Qasim's policies angered several pan-Arab organisations, including the Ba'ath Party, which later began plotting to assassinate Qasim at Al-Rashid Street on 7 October 1959 and take power. One assassin was to kill those sitting in the back of the car, the rest would kill those in front. Abdul Karim al-Shaikhly, the leader of the assassination plot, recruited a young Saddam Hussein to join the conspiracy after one of the would-be assassins left. During the ambush, Saddam began shooting prematurely, which disorganised the whole operation. Qasim's chauffeur was killed and Qasim was hit in the arm and shoulder. The assassins thought they had killed him and quickly retreated to their headquarters, but Qasim survived.
Richard Sale of United Press International, citing former U.S. diplomat and intelligence officials, Adel Darwish, and other experts, reported that the unsuccessful 7 October 1959 assassination attempt on Qasim involving a young Saddam Hussein and other Ba'athist conspirators was a collaboration between the CIA and Egyptian intelligence. Pertinent contemporary records relating to CIA operations in Iraq have remained classified or heavily redacted, thus "allow for plausible deniability." It is generally accepted that Egypt, in some capacity, was involved in the assassination attempt, and that "he United States was working with Nasser on some level." Sale and Darwish's account has been disputed by historian Bryan R. Gibson who concludes that available U.S. declassified documents show that "while the United States was aware of several plots against Qasim, it had still adhered to nonintervention policy." On the other hand, historian Kenneth Osgood writes that "the circumstantial evidence is such that the possibility of US–UAR collaboration with Ba'ath Party activists cannot be ruled out," concluding that "hatever the validity of charges, at the very least currently declassified documents reveal that US officials were actively considering various plots against Qasim and that the CIA was building up assets for covert operations in Iraq." The assassins, including Saddam, escaped to Cairo, Egypt "where they enjoyed Nasser's protection for the remainder of Qasim's tenure in power."
At the time of the attack, the Ba'ath Party had less than 1,000 members, however the failed assassination attempt led to widespread exposure for Saddam and the Ba'ath within Iraq, where both had previously languished in obscurity, and later became a crucial part of Saddam's public image during his tenure as president of Iraq. The Iraqi government arrested some members of the operation and took them into custody. At the show trial, six of the defendants were sentenced to death and, for unknown reasons, the sentences were not carried out. Aflaq, the leader of the Ba'athist movement, organised the expulsion of leading Iraqi Ba'athist members, such as Fuad al-Rikabi, on the grounds that the party should not have initiated the attempt on Qasim's life. At the same time, Aflaq secured seats in the Iraqi Ba'ath leadership for his supporters, including Saddam.
In 1962, both the Ba'ath Party and the United States Central Intelligence Agency began plotting to overthrow Qasim. On 8 February 1963, Qasim was finally overthrown by the Ba'athists in the Ramadan Revolution; long suspected to be supported by the CIA, however pertinent contemporary documents relating to the CIA's operations in Iraq have remained classified by the U.S. government, although the Iraqi Ba'athists are documented to have maintained supportive relationships with U.S. officials before, during, and after the coup. Several army units refused to support the Ba'athist coup. The fighting lasted for two days, during which 1,500–5,000 were killed. Qasim was captured on 9 February and, an hour later, was killed by firing squad. To assure the Iraqi public that Qasim was dead, as well as to terrorize his supporters, the Ba'athists broadcast a five minute long propaganda video called The End of the Criminals of Qasim's corpse being desecrated. Upon the Ba'athist ascension to power, Saddam would return to Iraq after spending nearly three years living in exile, becoming a key organizer within the Ba'ath Party's civilian wing.
In its ascension to power, the Ba'athists "methodically hunted down Communists" thanks to "mimeographed lists complete with home addresses and auto license plate numbers," and while it is unlikely that the Ba'athists would've needed assistance in identifying Iraqi communists, it is widely believed that the CIA provided the Ba'athist National Guard with lists of communists and other leftists, who were then arrested or killed. Gibson emphasizes that the Ba'athists compiled their own lists, citing Bureau of Intelligence and Research reports. On the other hand, historians Nathan Citino and Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt consider the assertions plausible because the U.S. embassy in Iraq had actually compiled such lists, were known to be in contact with the National Guard during the purge, and because National Guard members involved in the purge received training in the U.S. Furthermore, Wolfe-Hunnicutt, citing contemporary U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine, notes that the assertions "would be consistent with American special warfare doctrine" regarding U.S. covert support to anti-communist "Hunter-Killer" teams "seeking the violent overthrow of a communist dominated and supported government", and draws parallels to other CIA operations in which lists of suspected communists were compiled, such as Guatemala in 1954 and Indonesia in 1965–66.