Fuad ar-Rikabi
Fuad ar-Rikabi ( Arabic فؤاد الركابي, DMG Fuʾād ar-Rikābī ), occasionally Fouad el-Rikabi (* 1931 in Nasiriya , Iraq ; † 1971 in Baghdad , Iraq) was an Iraqi politician.
The Shiite mechanical engineer Fuad ar-Rikabi was commissioned by the Syrian founding fathers of the Ba'ath party to found an Iraqi branch of the party. Together with Saadun Hammadi he founded the Iraqi Ba'ath Party and became its first general secretary. Party members were initially recruited from his family and friends or from the socially disadvantaged Shiite lower class of southern Iraq, but the popularity of the party quickly increased with nationalist officers from the " Sunni Triangle ".
The Ba'ath Party played an important role in the fall of the monarchy in 1958, and ar-Rikabi became the only Ba'athist in General Abd al-Karim Qasim's government as Minister of Public Order and Development . Dissatisfied with Qasim's refusal to join the United Arab Republic under the leadership of Gamal Abdel Nasser , ar-Rikabi and other nationalist ministers resigned on September 30, 1958; ar-Rikabi was succeeded as minister by Ibrahim Kubba, and then by Iraqi from February 1959 Communist Naziha ad-Dulaimi . On behalf of ar-Rikabi, Saddam Hussein organized an assassination attempt on Qasim in April 1959, but Qasim was only injured. Saddam Hussein, who was also injured, and ar-Rikabi then fled to Egypt. Because of the unsuccessful assassination attempt, the Syrian party founders ar-Rikabi's dismissal, and the new general secretary of the Iraqi Baath party was initially an uncle of Saddam Hussein in 1959.
From exile in Cairo, ar-Rikabi then founded and headed a Nassist Baath splinter party (National Revolutionary Command ) in June 1961 with other ex-Baathists (including the former Baath General Secretary of Jordan, Abdallah ar-Rimawi ), which, however, after the seizure of power by the Baath Party was crushed in February 1963. After the temporary overthrow of the Ba'ath party as a result of the military coup of November 18, 1963 , ar-Rikabi returned to Iraq in January 1964, became chairman of the Nassist Arab Socialist Union (ASU) and in November 1964 a minister in the ex-Baathist's cabinet Tahir Yahya . ASU General Secretary was initially General Abdul Karim Farhan . Rikabi's resignation or the resignation of the Nasserist ministers in July 1965 cleared the way for Yahya's fall and the appointment of Nasserist Arif Abd ar-Razzaq as prime minister.
After ar-Razzaq and Farhan's attempted coups, the ASU was subordinated directly to Iraqi President Arif in 1966, and a group around ar-Rikabi split off as the Arab Socialist Movement . In vain did ar-Rikabi recruit a coalition of Nasserists, communists and left-wing Baathists. When the Ba'ath party came back to power, ar-Rikabi was sentenced to death in 1968, but then pardoned to three years' imprisonment. Under circumstances that have not yet been clarified, he was stabbed to death in prison shortly before the end of his detention in 1971 or he bled to death in hospital.
literature
- Lothar Rathmann (Ed.): History of the Arabs - From the beginnings to the present , Volume 5, page 58. Akademie-Verlag Berlin 1981
- Marion and Peter Sluglett: Iraq since 1958 - From Revolution to Dictatorship . Suhrkamp Frankfurt 1991
- Dr. Werner Rosenberg : Die Welt - data, facts, information from 1964 . Dietz Verlag Berlin 1965
- Yitzhak Oron: Middle East Record Volume 2, Ed. 1961, page 271f
See also
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Rikabi, Fuad ar- |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Iraqi politician |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1931 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Nasiriya |
| DATE OF DEATH | 1971 |
| Place of death | Baghdad |