Fakhri Kaddori

Fakhri Kaddori (2010)

Fakhri Yasin Kaddori ( Arabic فخري ياسين قدوري, DMG Faḫrī Yāsīn Qaddūrī ; born August 28, 1932 in Baghdad , Iraq ; died November 25, 2018 in Cologne ) was one of the founding members of the Iraqi Baʿth party , which established itself as a sister party to the Syrian Ba ​​derth party in Baghdad in the late 1940s .

After the coup in July 1968 he was first economics minister in the cabinet of ʾ Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr , the first of the Baʿthist governments in Iraq to be in power until Saddam Hussein's fall in 2003, and from 1971 head of the economic office of the Revolutionary Command Council (RKR ) the Republic of Iraq. In these functions he was instrumental in the nationalization of Iraqi oil in 1972. 1976-1978 he was also governor of the Iraqi central bank in Baghdad.

1978–1983 Kaddori held the post of General Secretary of the Council of the Arab Economic Union, first in Cairo and later in Amman (Arabic:مجلس الوحدة الإقتصادية العربية, DMG maǧlis al-waḥda al-iqtiṣādiyya al-ʿarabiyya , English: Council of Arab Economic Unity [CAEU]), one of the most influential and significant institutions of the Arab League . In 1983 he was forced to flee Iraq because of differences with Saddam Hussein. Fakhri Kaddori lived in Cologne until his death.

Origin and family

Fakhri Kaddori was born in Baghdad as the fifth of seven children. His father Yasin Kaddori, like his mother Rafiqa, came from a family of rural landowners and traders. His father had acquired agricultural land in the 1920s that he managed from Baghdad, but was primarily a lawyer. As such, he became very popular as one of the defenders of the main suspect in the murder of Colonel Leachman during the 1920 uprising against the British occupation ( ṯawra al-ʿišrīn or al- ṯawra al-ʿirāqīyya al-kubra ).

Fakhri Kaddori was married to a German for many years; This marriage resulted in three children who all studied in Germany and now live in the United Arab Emirates or in Germany.

Political and professional career

Born in 1932, Fakhri Kaddori grew up during the time of the monarchy, that is, in the early formation phase of the newly formed state of Iraq. With this he also experienced the quasi-colonial dominance of the British, French and the West in general over the successor lands of the old Ottoman Empire . Like many young people of his social class, he was strongly attracted to the idea of pan-Arabism , which he saw as a programmatic vehicle to shake off the influence of the West, which was experienced as overpowering, in the countries of the Arab world, in order to find its own Arab path in economic, political and social development of the region to go into the modern age; Last but not least, in order to withdraw the oil resources of the region from the hitherto sole exploitation by Western companies in order to make them usable for Iraq.

Already during his school days, Kaddori was politically active, one year before his Abitur he was even expelled from school for some time because he took part in the forbidden demonstrations in memory of the victims of al-Wathba (DMG al-waṯba , German: uprising, Survey ). Al-Wathba is the name given to the mass uprising with which the Iraqi population and others started in January 1948. a. had opposed the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1930 , the Treaty of Portsmouth, which was due to be re -signed and which should have continued Britain's influence on Iraq until 1973.

At the beginning of his studies in Baghdad at the end of the 1940s he came into contact with the group of Syrian students who supported the program of pan-Arab unity, freedom and Arab socialism (waḥda - ḥurrīyya - ištirākīyya) of the Baʿth party Michel ʿAflaqs and Salah al-Din al -Bitars carried to the neighboring country of Iraq in order to establish an Iraqi branch of the Baʿth: Kaddori joined them. A few years later, in 1952, he was appointed fourth party secretary (ʾamīn sir al-qīyāda) of the new party by the Syrian party leadership in Damascus - thus the Syrian Faʾiz ʾIsmaʿil, the Iraqi ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Damin and the Tunisian ʾAbu al- Qasim ʿUmar Kurru hereinafter. In 1955 the Iraqi Baʿth party had grown big enough that the first regional [= Iraqi] leadership body of the Baʿth (qīyāda quṭriyya ḥizb al-baʿṯ fi) at its 1st party congress - it took place in Kaddori's parents' house in the Baghdad district of al-ʾAʿzamiyya 'l-ʿirāq) and its General Secretary Fuʾad al-Rikabi could be elected by the Iraqi members themselves .

After completing his degree in economics in Baghdad and the USA ( State University of Iowa ) and his doctorate in Germany ( University of Cologne ) in 1964, Fakhri Kaddori became Prime Minister ʿAbd al-RahmanʿArifs under the new President ʾ Ahmad Hasan al -Bakr Minister of Economy. He held this office until 1971. Far more of a technocrat than a politician, he consistently kept out of the internal party struggles for direction and power and concentrated his work on the country's economic policy, which, as early as 1958, was carried out by ʿ Abd al-Karim Qasim and the two brothers ʿArif was set in motion according to largely socialist rules, and should now be further developed as a socialist planned economy.

For Kaddori, managed economic activity was indispensable for a developing country with few exports, as Iraq represented it at the time: the economy of the late 1960s, which was still developing, needed protectionist rules, the Baʿth party was convinced at the time, especially since the country's only resource worth mentioning that could have brought the state income, namely its huge oil reserves, since mandate periods were exclusively exploited by foreign oil companies, with only relatively low royalties to the state of Iraq. With the strictly dirigistic planned economies of communist countries such as the Soviet Union, the GDR, Cuba, etc., the Iraqi and generally the Arab understanding of socialism had little in common, it was ultimately about the protective control of an economy in which it was alongside state and semi-state Enterprises (primarily the key industries as well as aviation, rail and shipping) should continue to be purely private commercial enterprises.

In the negotiations from January 1973 with the foreign shareholders of the Iraq Petroleum Company on the nationalization of IPC, Fakhri Kaddori participated alongside the then Oil Minister Saʿdun Hammadi and the Secretary General of the Oil Committee, ʾAdnan al-Hamdani, under the leadership of Saddam Hussein's negotiations: The resulting agreement on sole Production of Iraqi oil by the Republic of Iraq came into effect on March 1, 1973 (for the IPC and MPC; for the BPC from December 1975). The oil revenues that then poured into the Iraqi treasury enabled Kaddori, as head of the RKR economic office and member of the planning council (mağlis al-taḫṭīṭ) , to develop strategies for the development and modernization of the country as part of the annual and five-year planning which should include all relevant areas - agriculture, industrialization, infrastructure, education, health care, housing. Until 1980 Iraq implemented generous economic, social and cultural projects. The Iraq-Iran war (1st Gulf War, 1980–1988) brought this development to an abrupt end.

At first it was rather disruptions in interpersonal communication, before increasingly discrepancies in substantive - economic and political - questions arose between Fakhri Kaddori and Saddam Hussein, which clouded the initially good cooperation between the two from the mid-1970s onwards. Saddam gradually developed into a despotic sole ruler. The economic expert Kaddori tried as far as possible to stay away from the power struggles in the party and in the state leadership (which were largely identical) as well as from open confrontations with Saddam (which at the time were mostly fatal for the opponents). It was thanks to al-Bakr's intervention behind the scenes that Kaddori was able to move from Baghdad to Cairo (later to Amman), where he held the post of Secretary General of the Council of the Arab Economic Union from 1978 to 1983. One year after his departure, ʾAhmad Hassan al-Bakr also had to resign from all his offices in favor of Saddam Hussein.

The problem of falling out of favor with Saddam Hussein reappeared at the end of Kaddori's five-year term in Amman. He was increasingly being given indications that he was on Saddam's list of those he intended to eliminate. He did not return to Baghdad, but emigrated to Germany with his children in 1983.

criticism

In a controversial book published in 2011 in which he subjected the Iraqi Baʿth party to an extremely critical analysis, its author Talib al-Hassan also devoted a chapter to Fakhri Kaddori. Talib al-Hassan accused Kaddori of keeping far too great a distance from the substantive disputes within the party and of not having been ideologically active in order to stop its disastrous development. His attitude z. B. towards his own regime-compliant or opportunist brother-in-law (Shafiq al-Kamali, RKR member from 1969 to 1970 and poet, he wrote the text for the Iraqi national anthem used until 2003 ), for example, is far too uncritical and especially towards ʾAhmad Hassan al-Bakr, Kaddori was much too euphemistic in his uncritical appreciation. Last but not least, according to al-Hassan, Kaddori, who had worked closely with Saddam Hussein for so many years, also missed the chance to put a stop to his development into a despotic autocrat.

The Iraqi journalist and author Abdul Monem Alassam wrote in a critical article about al-Bakr that Fakhri Kaddori's position on al-Bakr in his memoirs was one of the most honest and authentic he, Alassam, encountered in his research on this politician and this, although despite all of Kaddori's apparent sympathy for al-Bakr, she is by no means blind to his darker and criticism-worthy sides.

Gabriele Fürstenberg in Kaddori also noted the early onset of the distance from the content-related - better: the ideological - disputes within the Baʿth party. She characterizes him more as a technocrat than as a politician, for whom the concrete, practical work for his country was always more important than the ideologies or the struggle for positions of power in the state apparatus.

In Germany

In Germany, which Fakhri Kaddori had been familiar with since completing his doctorate at the University of Cologne, he built a new professional life - for the first year and a half, however, in secret for his friends and relatives in Iraq, for fear of the Iraqi secret service. He advised German companies in Arab countries, wrote comments and analyzes in the fields of economy, politics and culture for (mainly) Arab newspapers in Bonn, London, Paris, Dubai, Kuwait and Riyadh, became editor-in-chief of a specialist magazine published in London, worked for the Arabic-language business magazine of Deutsche Welle , became a member of the arbitration committee of the German-Arab and the Euro-Arab chambers of commerce in Bonn and Paris. Almost 20 years after his escape from Iraq, he started writing: first he published his political and professional memoirs, then the memories of his childhood and youth in Baghdad (both in Arabic).

Fakhri Kaddori lived in Cologne until his death. He died in 2018 at the age of 86 and was buried in the Westfriedhof .

Remarks

1. ^ Commemorative page by Fakhri Yasin Kaddori. Retrieved November 29, 2018 . 
2. ↑ Who's Who of the Arab World 1978, p. 404
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Fürstenberg 2012, p. 3
4. ↑ Kaddori 2006, pp. 198-199
5. ^ Arab League 1982, p. 48
6. ↑ On the murder of Col. Gerald E. Leachman, Gertrude Bell wrote in a letter to her father: "He (Leachman) had always used extremely unrestrained language towards the Arabs, and Sheikh Dhari had long harbored a grudge against him." Wallach 2003: 408). Kaddori's father, al-muḥāmī Yāsīn Qaddūrī, was one of the four defense lawyers in the murder trial, which was widely publicized at the time, who succeeded in alleviating the penalty, so that the expected death penalty was only life imprisonment. The population was (of course) on the side of the Sheikh and against the English and the defending lawyers enjoyed a high reputation after their success.
7. ↑ Fürstenberg 2012, p. 7
8. ↑ Fürstenberg 2012, p. 22
9. ↑ Fürtig 2003, p. 43
10. ↑ Batatu 1978, p. 741
11. ↑ Fürstenberg 2012, p. 25
12. ↑ Fürstenberg 2012, p. 30
13. ↑ Hashim 2003, pp. 69-70
14. ↑ al-Hassan 2011, pp. 280–281
15. ^ Al-Thawra February 28, 1993
16. ↑ Hana Batatu - who in his book "The Old Social Classes ..." in his description of the first years of the Iraqi Ba'th party apparently relied exclusively on conversations with Fuʾad al-Rikabi (Batatu 1978: 742 u) - leaves Kaddori as (fourth) party secretary completely unmentioned: The very ambitious al-Rikabi had obviously embellished his own role a little in the initial phase of the Iraqi Baʿth. He had wrested the post of party secretary from Kaddori in 1954 after a somewhat unsightly intrigue instigated by him, al-Rikabi (Fürstenberg 2012: 30-31).
17. ↑ Batatu 1978, pp. 1216/17
18. ↑ Kaddori 2006, pp. 69-70
19. ↑ Fürstenberg 2012, pp. 43–46
20. ↑ British Petroleum, Royal Dutch / Shell, Compagnie Française des Pétroles, Exxon, Mobil and Gulbenkian were involved in IPC (Iraq Petroleum Company) , as well as in the Basra and Mosul-based companies BPC and MPC.
21. ↑ Kaddori 2006, pp. 143-146
22. ↑ ʿAllam 1978, pp. 36–49
23. ↑ Kaddori 2006, pp. 163-175
24. ↑ Fürstenberg 2012, pp. 57–60
25. ↑ Kaddori 2006, pp. 187-189
26. ^ Arab League 1982, p. 48
27. ↑ Kaddori 2006, pp. 200-201
28. ↑ Fürstenberg 2012, pp. 66–69
29. ↑ al-Hassan 2011, pp. 275-310; Talib al-Hassan is z. Currently (2013) Governor of the Iraqi province of Thiqar
30. ↑ Alassam 2007; www.al-nnas.com/ARTICLE/MAassam/18bkr.htm, accessed on February 19, 2013, 6 p.m.
31. ↑ Fürstenberg 2012, p. 72
32. ↑ Fürstenberg 2012, pp. 69–70
33. ↑ Kaddori 2006
34. ↑ Kaddori 2008
35. ↑ Kaddori Tomb in the Find a Grave database . Retrieved October 27, 2017 (English).

literature

• ʿAllam, Saʿad: Encyclopedia of Petroleum Legislations in the Arab States - the Gulf Area . Doha / Qatar, 1978 (in Arabic)
• Arab League, General Secretariat: Al-munaẓẓamāt al-ʿarabiyya al-mutaḫaṣṣiṣa (German translation: The Arab professional organizations ), Tunis, 1982
• al-Thawra (Iraq) from February 28, 1993: ʾAḍwāʾ ʿalā niḍāl al-baʿṯ (German translation: light (er) on the struggle of the party )
• Alassam, Abdul Monem (al-ʾAʿssam, ʿAbd al-Munʿim) : ʾAḥmad Ḥassan al-Bakr - ʾaīna makānahu min al-ʾiʿrāb (German translation: ʾAhmad Hassan al-Bakr - where is his place in the system? ). www.al-nnas.com/ARTICLE/MAassam/18bkr.htm from February 18, 2007, accessed on February 19, 2013, 6 p.m.
• Batatu, Hanna: The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq. A Study of Iraq's Old Landed and Commercial Classes and of its Communists, Baʿthists, and Free Officers . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978
• Farouk-Sluglett, Marion and Sluglett, Peter: Iraq since 1958. From revolution to dictatorship . Frankfurt / Main: edition suhrkamp, ​​1991
• Fürstenberg, Gabriele: Dr. Fakhri Yasin Kaddori - A Political Career in Iraq. From the (co-) founding of the Iraqi Baʿth party in 1948 to the escape from Saddam Hussein in 1983 . Master's thesis University of Cologne, 2012 (published in March 2013)
• Fürtig, Henner: A short history of Iraq. From the foundation in 1921 to the present . Munich: Beck, 2004
• Hashim, Jawad (Hāšim, Ǧawād): Ḏikrayāt fi'l-siyāsa al-ʿirāqiyya 1967-2000. Muḏakkirāt wazīr ʿirāqī maʿa al-Bakr wa Ṣaddām . (German translation: Memories of Iraqi politics 1967-2000. Memoirs of an Iraqi minister [on his cooperation] with al-Bakr and Saddam ). London: Dār al-Saqī, 2003 ( ISBN 1 85516 616X )
• al-Hassan, Talib (al-Ḥassan, Ṭālib) : Baʿṯ al-ʿIrāq. Min al-bidāya al-murība ḥatta al-nihāya al-ġarība (German translation: The Baʿth Party of Iraq - from its obscure beginning to its obscure end ). Beirut: Ur-Press, 2011
• Kaddori, Fakhri (Qaddūrī, Faḫrī) : Hakaḏā ʿarafat al-Bakr wa Ṣaddām. Riḥla 35 ʿāmā fi ḥizb al-baʿṯ . (German translation: This is how I knew al-Bakr and Saddam. A 35-year journey with the Baʿth party . London: Dār al-Ḥikma, 2006 ( ISBN 1 904923 399 ))
• Kaddori, Fakhri (Qaddūrī, Faḫrī) : Ṭufūla fī baġdād ʿalā ṣifāf diǧla (German translation: a childhood in Baghdad on the banks of the Tigris ). London: Dār al-Ḥikma, 2008 ( ISBN 1 904923 54 2 )
• Wallach, Janet: Queen of the Desert. The extraordinary life of Gertrude Bell . Munich: Goldmann, 2003
• The International Who's Who of the Arab World 1978–1979: Dr. Fakhri Yasin Qaddouri , London 1978, p. 404