Public purge of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party by Saddam Hussein
1979 Ba'ath Party Purge
|
Native name
| Comrades Massacre
|
---|
Date
| 22 July 1979
|
---|
Location
|
Ba'athist Iraq
|
---|
Also known as
| Khuld Hall Incident, Comrades Massacre
|
---|
Type
| Purge
|
---|
Cause
| - Failure of unity talks between Syrian and Iraqi Ba'ath Parties
- Saddam's claim that he has discovered a fifth column in the Revolutionary Command Council plotting to overthrow the party leadership in co-ordination with Hafez al-Assad
|
---|
Organised by
| Saddam Hussein
|
---|
Outcome
|
- Killing of former Secretary
Muhyi Abdul-Hussein Mashhadi
on 8 August 1979
- Saddam Hussein's domination of the Ba'ath Party
- Arrests and subsequent killings of Ba'athist opponents accused of Syrian collaboration
- Deepening rift between Iraq-based and Syrian-based Ba'ath movements
- Hafez al-Assad's support to
Iran
during the
Iran-Iraq War
|
---|
Deaths
| 21 executed
|
---|
Arrests
| 68
|
---|
The
1979 Ba'ath Party Purge
(
Arabic
:
????? ??? ?????
)`, also called the
Comrades Massacre
[1]
[2]
(
Arabic
:
????? ??????
), was a public
purge
of the
Iraqi
Ba'ath Party
orchestrated on 22 July 1979 by then-president
Saddam Hussein
[3]
six days after his arrival to the presidency of the
Iraqi Republic
on 16 July 1979.
[4]
[1]
Six days after the resignation of President
Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr
and Hussein's accession to
President of the Iraqi Republic
, Regional Secretary of the party, and Chairman of the
Revolutionary Command Council
on July 16, 1979, he organized a Ba'ath conference on July 22 in Al-Khuld Hall in
Baghdad
to carry out a campaign of arrests and executions that included Baathist comrades, who were accused of taking part in a pro-Syrian plot to overthrow Saddam.
The list included most of the comrades who opposed Saddam Hussein's rise to power after Al-Bakr,
[1]
and among these was the former president's secretary,
Muhyi Abdul-Hussein Mashhadi
. Names of people were announced and they were taken outside the hall to be executed. Ba'athist propaganda at the time showed that they were convicted of conspiracy and high treason to the party.
[2]
Iraq subsequently cut off relations with its fellow
Ba'athist regime
in Syria, accusing
Hafiz al-Assad
of organizing the plot.
[5]
Background
[
edit
]
Syria?Iraq unification talks
[
edit
]
Various rounds of unification talks were ongoing between the two Ba'athist parties at the official level, with the
Iraqi vice-president
Saddam Hussein
publicly endorsing the merger of Iraq and Syria in 1978. By then, Saddam had become the effective leader of the Ba'ath party due to Iraqi President Ahmed Hussein Al-Bakr's health issues. A major demand of Saddam was the unification of both the Syrian and Iraqi wings of the Ba'ath party, as the first step to integrate Syria with Iraq. He also sought the rehabilitation of
Michel Aflaq
, who was on the kill-list of
Syrian Ba'ath party
, and make Aflaq the head of a
re-unified Ba'ath Party
. It was reported that Syrian President
Hafiz al-Assad
objected these demands and was strongly opposed to the idea of a unified military command.
[6]
Resignation of al-Bakr
[
edit
]
On 11 July 1979, an ailing Ahmed Hussein al-Bakr announced his resignation before a meeting of the
Revolutionary Command Council
(RCC) and his intention to transfer the
presidency
to Saddam Hussein.
[7]
US government's
Radio Free Europe
claimed in 2003 that it was a "coup" orchestrated by Saddam who compelled the ailing President to retire "for health reasons".
[8]
RCC member
Muhyi Abdul-Hussein Mashhadi
fiercely objected to al-Bakr's resignation during the session and urged al-Bakr to take a temporary vacation without transferring power to his successor, a proposition that was declined by Al-Bakr. This had raised the suspicion of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi second-in-command who became president on 16 July 1979. In an assembly of party leadership convened on 22 July, Saddam staged a purge against the military wing of the Baath-Party whom he accused of collaborating with Syria to topple the regime in Iraq.
[9]
[6]
Event
[
edit
]
Saddam hurriedly convened an "emergency session" of party leaders on July 22. During the assembly, which he ordered to be videotaped,
[3]
he claimed to have uncovered a
fifth column
within the party. Abdul-Hussein "confessed" to be part of a Syrian-financed faction established in 1975 that played a major role in the Syrian-backed plot against the Iraqi government. He also gave the names of 68 alleged co-conspirators.
[10]
These were removed from the room one by one as their names were called and taken into custody. After the list was read, Saddam congratulated those still seated in the room for their past and future loyalty. Those arrested at the meeting were subsequently tried together and found guilty of treason. Twenty-two men, including five members of the Revolutionary Command Council,
[11]
were sentenced to execution. Those spared were given weapons and directed to execute their comrades.
[12]
[13]
Some of the victims are listed below:
Aftermath
[
edit
]
Details of the events were publicised on 28 July 1979, and Iraqi media began accusing Syria of backing the alleged plot. Syrian Ba'athists responded by denying any relations to the coup plotters.
[7]
On August 8, the
Iraqi News Agency
announced that twenty-one of the twenty-two Iraqis were executed by firing squad for "their part in a plot to overthrow Iraq's new president". The twenty-second man was condemned to death
in absentia
because he was "nowhere to be found", the agency said.
[11]
A tape of the assembly and of the executions was distributed throughout the country. Shortly thereafter, in early August 1979, Hussein took to the balcony of the presidential mansion in Baghdad to inform “a chanting crowd of 50,000 supporters that he had just witnessed the punishment the state court had ordered for 21 of those men: They had been executed by a firing squad. The crowd cheered.”
[14]
The events led to a complete rupture of ties between the Ba'athist governments of Syria and Iraq. Hussein’s personal conclusion, which he conveyed to Syrian president Assad, was that Syrian Ba'athists "were deep in the plot,” though he continued to provide Syria with the financial support originally offered during the
1978 Arab League summit
. This agreement was eventually halted in 1980 with the outbreak of the
Iran?Iraq War
, during which Assad overtly aligned with Iran, spurring Iraq to accuse him of betraying
Pan-Arabism
.
[15]
A 1981 secret memo issued to
Syrian Ba'ath Party
members by Assad further demonstrated the division between the two nations, with Assad declaring that Syria's policy was to prolong "the war to a degree that will facilitate the replacement of Saddam" and install pro-Syrian Iraqi Nationalist Front in Iraq. Syria would go on to support
Iraqi opposition
parties for decades, including the pro-Iranian Shia
Islamic Dawa Party
.
[16]
Iraq
in turn supported the
National Front for the Liberation of Arab Syria
, a coalition of
Syrian opposition
factions that included pro-Iraqi Syrian Ba'athists and
Syrian Muslim Brotherhood
, which opposed the
Alawite
-dominated
Ba'ath Party
rule in Syria. It also supported the
Islamist revolts in Syria
after 1980. Relations between the two countries remained strained until Saddam Hussein's overthrow in a
2003 American invasion
.
[17]
[18]
[16]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
c
???? ?????? ????????
, retrieved
2022-07-14
- ^
a
b
"??? ?????? ??????... ???? ?????? ???????"
.
???????? ?????
(in Arabic). 2021-08-28
. Retrieved
2022-07-14
.
- ^
a
b
A Documentary on Saddam Hussein 5
on
YouTube
- ^
Saddam Hussein's 'Official' Biography
- ^
Ehteshami, A. Hinnebusch, Anoushiravan, Raymond (2002).
Syria and Iran: Middle Powers in a Penetrated Regional System
. New York, USA: Routledge. p. 92.
ISBN
0-415-15675-0
.
{{
cite book
}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (
link
)
- ^
a
b
Batatu, Hanna (1999).
Syria's Peasantry, the Descendants of Its Lesser Rural Notables, and Their Politics
. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Princeton University Press. p. 282.
ISBN
0-691-00254-1
.
- ^
a
b
Batatu, Hanna (1999).
Syria's Peasantry, the Descendants of Its Lesser Rural Notables, and Their Politics
. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Princeton University Press. p. 283.
ISBN
0-691-00254-1
.
- ^
Moore, Kathleen (9 April 2008).
"Iraq: The Rise And Fall Of Saddam Hussein"
.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
. Retrieved
2023-01-16
.
- ^
"The 1979 Saddam Hussein coup d'etat in Iraq"
.
Iraq Now
. 2021-07-22
. Retrieved
2023-01-16
.
- ^
Batatu, Hanna (1999).
Syria's Peasantry, the Descendants of Its Lesser Rural Notables, and Their Politics
. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Princeton University Press. pp. 282?283.
ISBN
0-691-00254-1
.
- ^
a
b
"Iraq executes coup plotters"
.
The Salina Journal
. August 8, 1979. p. 12
. Retrieved
April 25,
2018
– via
Newspapers.com
.
- ^
Bay Fang. "
When Saddam ruled the day
."
U.S. News & World Report
. 11 July 2004.
Archived
16 January 2014 at the
Wayback Machine
- ^
Edward Mortimer. "
The Thief of Baghdad
."
New York Review of Books
. 27 September 1990, citing Fuad Matar.
Saddam Hussein: A Biography
. Highlight. 1990.
Archived
23 July 2008 at the
Wayback Machine
- ^
BEHIND IRAQ'S BOLD BID
, by Claudia Wright, 26 October 1980,
The New York Times
|url=
https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1980/10/26/114147903
- ^
Batatu, Hanna (1999).
Syria's Peasantry, the Descendants of Its Lesser Rural Notables, and Their Politics
. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Princeton University Press. pp. 283?284.
ISBN
0-691-00254-1
.
- ^
a
b
Yacoubian, Mona (2011). "6: Syria and the New Iraq: Between Rivalry and Rapprochment". In Henri J. Barkey; Phebe Marr; Scott Lasensky (eds.).
Iraq, Its Neighbors, and the United States: Competition, Crisis, and the Reordering of Power
. Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace. p. 149, 150.
ISBN
978-1-60127-077-1
.
- ^
Ehteshami, A. Hinnebusch, Anoushiravan, Raymond (2002).
Syria and Iran: Middle Powers in a Penetrated Regional System
. New York, USA: Routledge. pp. 91, 92.
ISBN
0-415-15675-0
.
{{
cite book
}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (
link
)
- ^
Arnold, Guy (2016).
Wars in the Third World Since 1945
. London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 450, 451.
ISBN
978-1-4742-9102-6
.
Changes in political power in
Iraq
|
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Revolution
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Coup d'etat
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Invasion
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Predecessors
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Founders
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Pre-split
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Post-split
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Leadership
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General Secretaries
| Pre-split
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Iraqi-dominated faction
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Syrian-dominated faction
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Regional Secretaries
| Iraq
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Jordan
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Lebanon
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Palestine
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Syria
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Members
of the
National Command
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Members of the Regional Commands
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Heads of state
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Heads of government
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* = incumbent
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Regional branches
| Iraqi-dominated faction
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Syrian-dominated faction
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Newspapers
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Popular fronts
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Wings
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Armed groups
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Breakaway groups
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Political alliances
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Political parties
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Other organizations
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Miscellaneous
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Ideology
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Literature
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Symbolism
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