Word: kassem
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Rise & Kill." In the streets of Mosul, the Peace Partisans, toting rifles as members of the Communist-led "Popular Resistance" militia, began scuffling with local Nasser supporters and burned down a Nasserite restaurant. Colonel Shawaf telephoned Kassem in Baghdad, asking permission to use troops to keep order. Kassem hedged. At this point, apparently on impulse, Shawaf decided to put into effect a revolt that was only half-formed in his mind. His fifth brigade, loyal to him, rounded up 300 Peace Partisans. He ordered the leader of the parading Communists, Kamil Kazanchi, a well-known Baghdad politico and lawyer, shot...
...crucial moment of the revolt came early next morning. Shawaf sent two young pilots in old piston-engined Furies to bomb Radio Baghdad's transmitting station twelve miles north of the capital. They did little damage. But four Iraqi air force planes loyal to Kassem counterattacked Shawaf's top headquarters on a bluff above Mosul. First they bombed it and then came in low to strafe. Six or seven officers were killed. Shawaf, wounded, staggered out of his command post, trying to bandage himself. One of his sergeants, figuring the game was up, finished him off with machine...
Egyptians Go Home. Kassem had won, but he had yet to pay the bill for his victory. Until last week's revolt, the army had served Kassem as a balance against the growing Communist influence in the streets. Now the army could no longer be fully trusted, and Kassem was more than before beholden to the Communists, whether he wanted to be or not. In the streets of Baghdad, Kassem was still plainly the hero of the hour...
Assured of his popularity, Kassem toured in his yellow station wagon, waving to the cheering crowds. They were in a holiday patriotic mood, celebrating a nationalism not subservient to Egypt. The impulse came naturally to Iraqis, but Communist cheerleaders organized their cries for them. Nasser's United Arab Republic had fomented the Mosul rebellion, cried Kassem, ordering the expulsion of nine Egyptian diplomats. "The curtain is raised," trumpeted Baghdad's daily Al Thawra. "Abdel Nasser is revealed as the great plotter, enemy, dictator, and shedder of blood. Those who proclaim pan-Arabism and raise Abdel Nasser...
...friendly" Soviet Union and the local Communist troublemakers of Syria and Egypt now proclaimed from his Damascus balcony that "the Communist Party works for foreigners. Nobody in the Arab world will respond to them because they are agents of a foreign power." Next day, under the sting of Kassem's accusations of conspiracy, Nasser dropped all pretense of soldierly comradeship with Kassem and attacked him in person as a man who fights against Arab unity. Punning on Kassem's name, which in Arabic means "splitter," he shouted that "Iraq's splitter" had fought Arab brotherhood more viciously...