Military coup of November 18, 1963

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The military coup of November 18, 1963 in Iraq was the culmination of the power struggles that led to the temporary loss of power for the Ba'ath party after it came to power in a military coup against Abd al-Karim Qasim in February 1963 . Of Baathist opponents of the military coup is also called the November Revolution of Baathist side however as November counterrevolution called.

Foreplay

The general secretary of the Iraqi section of the Ba'ath Party, Ali Salih al-Sa'di (Ali Saleh al-Saadi), who was also interior minister and deputy prime minister under Ba'ath Prime Minister Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr, was primarily responsible for the following events . In October 1963, al-Sa'di had urged the founding fathers Aflaq and Bitar to be voted out of office at the All-Arab Sixth Party Congress (National Congress) of the Ba'ath Party in Damascus . On November 11, al-Sa'di and his supporters convened an "extraordinary party conference" to expel al-Bakr and other rivals from the party. Ba'ath officers loyal to Bakr arrested them, whereupon the al-Sa'di confidante Wandawi, deposed (but not resigned) chief of the National Guard, bombed targets in Baghdad and raged in the capital for five days. Hassan al-Bakr called on President Abd as-Sallam Arif , who was purely representative in himself and who, as commander-in-chief of the army, restored peace and order.

The fall

The opponents of the Ba'ath Party gathered around Arif took advantage of the president's increase in power. Al-Bakr was deposed as prime minister in a coup d'état loyal to Arif, and Arif himself initially took over the business of government. The Ba'ath Party portrays this event as the actual counter-revolution, the revolt against their rule. Michel Aflaq , Syria's President Amin al-Hafiz and Syria's Chief of Staff Salah Jadid tried in vain to avert the overthrow of the Ba'ath government there with a trip to Baghdad and were even arrested for a few hours by Iraqi military authorities. Hassan al-Bakr remained in the powerless vice presidency, which he also had to give up in the spring of 1964. The new prime minister was the ex-Baathist and new Nasserist Tahir Yahya .

Incidentally, the opposing factions of the Ba'ath Party as well as the Ba'ath Party and Arif accused each other of being part of the “right-wing” or reactionary forces.

Effects

With the military coup of November 1963, Iraq changed from a “parliamentary” republic (under a prime minister ) to a presidential republic under Arif (until 1966/68). From 1964 to 1968, however, the office of Vice President was abolished.

swell

  • Lothar Rathmann : History of the Arabs - from the beginnings to the present , Volume 6 (The struggle for the development path in the Arab world), page 203f. Akademie-Verlag Berlin 1963
  • Marion Farouk-Sluglett, Peter Sluglett: Iraq since 1958 - from revolution to dictatorship , pages 97ff and 104f. Suhrkamp Frankfurt / Main 1991
  • Ba'th Arab Socialist Party (Iraqi Region): The Political Report - Adopted by the Eighth Regional Congress , pages 23f, 27 and 31st Ministry of Information of the Republic of Iraq, January 1974
  • Robin Leonard Bidwell : Dictionary of Modern Arab History , p. 310. Routledge, New York 1998

See also