Word: nuri
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...Tabakchali, one of the Iraqi army's most distinguished officers, was in command of all Iraqi troops in the Mosul area at the time of the rising. Dismayed by the unrest and drift toward Communism that have plagued Iraq since the July 1958 revolution against British-backed strongman Nuri asSaid, Tabakchali had almost certainly been involved in plans for a general army uprising against Kassem. But when the local commander in Mosul impetuously jumped the gun, Tabakchali hesitated fatally, then pulled back...
...first anniversary of the July 14 revolution in Iraq and for a week Baghdad was all holiday celebration. Down the hot, dusty streets where a year ago mobs dragged the mutilated bodies of Nuri asSaid and Crown Prince Abdul Illah, clowns danced, balloons bobbed, Girl Scouts marched, a giant papier-máché fist rolled by on a float, clutching the viper of imperialism, and a military camel in the parade, poked playfully by happy patriots, turned and spat expertly in their eyes. And under the crisp salute of Premier Karim Kassem-hero of the revolution and a year...
...present chaos. When Aref flew off to Damascus for a much-publicized meeting with Nasser, and Egyptian MIGs began operating on Iraqi airfields, Kassem recoiled, began looking for allies against the eloquent Aref and his Nasserite followers. The Communists, who, alone among Iraqi political parties, had emerged from Nuri's police state lean, hard and well organized, were only too ready to give Kassem the help he wanted-for a price...
Anti-Communists charge that the Communist bargain was urged on Kassem by his chief aide, burly, Red-lining Colonel Wasfi Tahir (who, incredibly, held the same job under Nuri). Kassem himself may have failed to see the dangers in the bargain; his enemies charge that he himself flirted with Communism in his youth, and not long ago he was still capable of declaring: "I don't care about parties . . . They can call us Communists or anything else, if they like...
...they ponder these pros and cons, Russia's cold-war planners must also be acutely aware of another complicating factor. Abdul Karim Kassem, now the Communists' most useful front man in the Arab world, was once a most useful servant of Nuri asSaid. And so long as Kassem, lifelong conspirator and dissembler, keeps any of the keys of power in Iraq, there is always the chance that he may yet teach Russia a lesson that the West has learned to its sorrow-the lesson that events in the Middle East have their own momentum...