Word: iraq
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...long ago, Abdul Karim Kassem, lean and psychotic strongman of Iraq, boasted that he had survived 38 attempts to kill him over the past 4½ years. Last week in Baghdad, death kept the 39th appointment...
Even though Aref devotedly declared, "I am Kassem's son," and Bachelor Kassem fondly called Aref "my son, my pupil, my brother," the two chiefs were soon quarreling. Having become master of Iraq, Kassem was in no mood to share the prize with Aref's other hero, Egypt's Nasser. Ordered into exile as Ambassador to West Germany, Aref pulled a gun in Kassem's presence but was disarmed and finally condemned to death as a traitor. Kassem changed the sentence to life imprisonment and in 1961 sentimentally and imprudently set Aref free...
Insecurely in control, and subject to vituperative attacks from Nasser's Radio Cairo, Kassem eagerly accepted the support of Iraq's well-organized Communist Party, wangled $800 million in arms and economic aid from the Soviet bloc, and voted the Communist line in the United Nations...
Outdated Qat. Against this regime, Sallal and his friends were plotting for 20 years, ever since he qualified for training at a military academy in Iraq. "In Baghdad," he says, "I was dazzled by all the wonderful things that did not exist in Yemen. If I viewed Baghdad as progress, you can understand what Yemen is like." Involvement in plots often landed Sallal in jail. He spent ten years as a prisoner, seven of them in solitary confinement in a dungeon at Hajjah, where he was chained to an iron ball. His stomach still suffers from the diet, and Sallal...
Because of the worldwide oil glut and Iraq's shortage of skilled technicians, some Western oilmen insist that Kassem's venture is foredoomed to failure. But unlike Iran's Mossadegh. Kassem has prudently allowed the foreign oil company to continue production, thus assuring himself of a continuing income while he dickers for help in getting his own company on its feet. And help may not be hard to find. The Soviet Union might aid Kassem simply for political advantage. And in Rome sits hawk-faced Enrico Mattei, boss of Italy's state petroleum monopoly, who delights...