Abd as-Salam Arif

Abd as-Salam Arif

Arif (left) with Qasim (1958)

Abd as-Salam Muhammad Arif al-Jumaili , also Abdul Salam Mohammed Arif Aljumaily ( Arabic عبد السلام محمد عارف, DMG ʿAbd as-Salām Muḥammad ʿĀrif ; * March 21, 1921 in Baghdad ; †  April 13, 1966 at al-Naschwah ) was President of Iraq from February 8, 1963 to April 13, 1966 and briefly also head of government of the country.

Political career

As a colonel in the 20th Brigade of the Iraqi Army intended for the Jordan mission , he was involved in the overthrow of the Hashimite monarchy and the proclamation of the republic on July 14, 1958, together with Major General Abd al-Karim Qasim . In the revolutionary government he was first deputy prime minister and interior minister under Prime Minister and Defense Minister Qasim. In the dispute over the direction of the revolution, however, Arif soon sided with conservative pan-Arab nationalists who demanded rapid annexation to the United Arab Republic (UAR), while Iraqi regional patriots and communists, like Qasim, rejected Gamal Abdel Nasser's domination , and at best one loose federation propagated.

Mutinous militaries encouraged Arif's efforts to overthrow Qasim, just as Nasser had done in 1954 with General Naguib (ruler since 1952). While traveling through the provinces, he prepared a coup, which Qasim anticipated with the dismissal of Arif as deputy army chief on September 10 and as minister on September 30, 1958. Arif was supposed to be deported as ambassador to Bonn , but refused to take up this post, threatened Qasim with a revolver in October and went into hiding. When he returned to Baghdad, he was sentenced to death in November 1958, but pardoned by his former comrade Qasim in February 1959 and even released after the collapse of the VAR in October 1961.

Arif immediately contacted the opposition Ba'ath Party , which still supported the revolution in 1958, but had tried to assassinate Qasim in 1959. While Qasim's troops were fighting in Iraqi Kurdistan , nationalist officers under Arif and Baathist militias carried out a coup on February 8, 1963 in Baghdad. Qasim was killed and the resistance of his supporters broken in two days of street fighting. The new President was Arif, the new Prime Minister Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr , Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Ali Salih al-Sa'di . Arif initially had as-Saʿdis Ba'athist National Guard bitterly persecuted the communists and, after another Ba'athist coup in Syria (March 8, 1963), negotiated a Syrian-Iraqi-Egyptian union in April 1963 .

After the failure of the union and the outbreak of open fighting between the right Ba'ath wing (as-Saʿdi) and the left Ba'ath wing (al-Bakr), however, at the urging of the military, he intervened, deposed al-Bakr and appointed himself Marshal and took over government with the military coup of November 18, 1963 .

In 1964 he appointed the former Baathist and new Nasserist Tahir Yahya as prime minister, and the ex-Baathist and new Nasserist Fuad ar-Rikabi also joined. With Nasser himself, Arif decided the gradual unification of Egypt and Iraq , since then the Egyptian eagle has been Iraq's heraldic animal. All political parties were dissolved and, following the Egyptian model, the Arab Socialist Union was created as the sole unity party, which, however, remained a paper tiger and could not replace the regime's lack of mass base. Arif's attempt to control the foreign oil companies (Iraqi Petroleum Company) also failed in 1965, and as soon as he had replaced Prime Minister Yahya with the Nasserist Arif Abd ar-Razzaq , this new prime minister attempted a coup that strained relations with Egypt from then on .

Arif dissolved the Revolutionary Command Council and appointed the civilian Abd ar-Rahman al-Bazzaz as Razzaq's successor as head of government. From then on, the most important pillars of his regime were his older brother and Chief of Staff Abd ar-Rahman Arif , Colonel Sa'id Slaibi and the Republican Guard , which consisted of the 20th Brigade and soldiers from Arif's home clan in al-Jumaila.

Before ex-prime minister ar-Razzaq could attempt another coup in July 1966, Arif was killed in a helicopter crash during a sandstorm in the desert. His brother Abd ar-Rahman became the new president.

family

On December 13, 2004, Arif's daughter Sana Abdul Salam and her husband Wamith Abdul Razzak Said Alkadiry were murdered by unknown persons in Baghdad. Their child, Rafal Alkadiry, 22 years old, was kidnapped and later murdered.

literature

• Marion Farouk-Sluglett, Peter Sluglett: Iraq since 1958: From revolution to dictatorship (= Edition Suhrkamp, ​​NF, 661). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1991, ISBN 978-3-518-11661-6

Web links

Commons : Abd as-Salam Arif  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ [1]
2. ↑ Cal Perry, Kianne Sadeq, Nermeen al-Mufti, Kevin Flower, Stephanie Halasz: Iraqi voter registration site attacked . CNN , December 18, 2004, accessed February 8, 2018.