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
The 1979 Ba'ath Party Purge (Arabic: تطهير حزب البعث), also called the Comrades Massacre[1][2] (Arabic: مجزرة الرفاق), was a public purge of the IraqiBa'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 Ba'athist 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 Hafez al-Assad of organizing the plot.[5]: 92
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 Iraqi Ba'ath Party due to the 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 the Syrian president, Hafez al-Assad, objected these demands and was strongly opposed to the idea of a unified military command.[6]: 282
Resignation of al-Bakr
On 11 July 1979, an ailing al-Bakr announced his resignation before a meeting of the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) and his intention to transfer the presidency to Saddam Hussein.[6]: 283 The 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".[7]
Muhyi Abdul-Hussein Mashhadi, an RCC member, 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 the party leadership convened on 22 July, Saddam staged a purge against the military wing of the Ba'ath Party whom he accused of collaborating with Syria to topple the regime in Iraq.[8][6]: 282
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.[6]: 282–283 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,[9] were sentenced to execution. Those spared were given weapons and directed to execute their comrades.[10][11]
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.[6]: 283 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.[9] 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.”[12]
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.[6]: 283–284 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.[13]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.[14][13][5]: 91–92
^ abEhteshami, Anoushiravan; Hinnebusch, Raymond A. (2002). Syria and Iran: Middle Powers in a Penetrated Regional System. New York, USA: Routledge. ISBN0-415-15675-0. OCLC36619992.
^ abcdefBatatu, Hanna (1999). Syria's Peasantry, the Descendants of Its Lesser Rural Notables, and Their Politics. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Princeton University Press. ISBN0-691-00254-1.
^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
^Wright, Claudia (26 October 1980). "Behind Iraq's Bold Bid". The New York Times. Vol. 130, no. 44748. Archived from the original on 12 August 2024.
^ abYacoubian, 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. ISBN978-1-60127-077-1.
^Arnold, Guy (2016). Wars in the Third World Since 1945. London, UK: Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 450, 451. ISBN978-1-4742-9102-6.
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