Word: kassem
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Unshared Prize. To Kassem the coup must have seemed only too familiar. In the same way back in 1958, Kassem seized power by ruthlessly slaughtering King Feisal II and his ironfisted, pro-Western Premier, Nuri asSaid, who was caught trying to escape the city dressed in women's clothes. In those days Kassem was a brigadier, with the reputation of being the King's most loyal soldier. Actually, he was leader of a group of army conspirators including mercurial Colonel Abdul Salam Aref, a passionate pro-Nasserite. After the young King was slain, Kassem appointed himself Premier, named...
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...
Spartan Cot. Kassem's brief regime reads like a case history in dangerous living. He savagely put down one abortive revolt, narrowly escaped death in an assassination attempt in which his arm and hand were shattered by bullets. Understandably gun-shy, he spent most of his time inside the Defense Ministry building, where he slept on a spartan cot and watched suspiciously for trouble...
There was plenty of that. Half of Iraq's army was tied down by a rebellion of the Kurdish tribesmen north and east of Mosul. Kassem began to grow suspicious of Iraq's Communists; after a series of Red-inspired strikes, Kassem jailed hundreds of Reds and condemned to death 28 Communist leaders...