Ali Salih al-Sa'di

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Ali Salih al-Sa'di
علي صالح السعدي
Ministry of Interior (Iraq)
In office
February 1963 – 9 June 1963
Personal details
Born1928
DiedSeptember 19, 1977
Alma materBaghdad University

Ali Salih al-Sa'di (

Arabic: علي صالح السعدي; 1928 – September 19, 1977) was an Iraqi politician. He was General Secretary of the Iraqi branch of the Baath Party from the late 1950s until the November 1963 Iraqi coup d'état. From February 8, 1963 (Ramadan Revolution) until the November 1963 Iraqi coup d'état, he was Deputy Prime Minister under Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, Minister of the Interior and as Commander of the National Guard (Al-Hars al-Qawmi).[1]

Career

Delegations attending the 1963 unity talks between Egypt, Syria and Iraq in Cairo. From left to right: Kamel el-Din Hussein of Egypt, N/A, Anwar Sadat of Egypt, Abdel Hakim Amer of Egypt, an Iraqi officer, Ziad al-Hariri of Syria, Nahid al-Qasim of Syria, Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, and Ali Salih al-Saadi of Iraq

Ali Salih as-Sa'di was born into an Arab-Kurdish family. In 1955 he graduated from

Abd al-Karim Qasim overthrew the Hashemite monarchy.[2] Prominent members of the Baath Party violently opposed Qasim, forcing them into exile. In 1959, Saddam Hussein was injured in an attempt to assassinate Qasim and went into exile via Syria (then part of the United Arab Republic) to Cairo, Egypt.[3][4] Ali al-Sa'di remained in Baghdad
as General Secretary of the Iraqi branch of the Ba'ath Party.

Ramadan Revolution

Main article: Ramadan Revolution
See also: CIA activities in Iraq

The

Iraqi Ba'ath Party overthrew and executed Qasim in a violent coup on February 8, 1963; long suspected to be supported by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA),[5][6] however pertinent contemporary documents relating to the CIA's operations in Iraq have remained classified by the U.S. government,[7][8] although the Ba'athists are documented to have maintained supportive relationships with U.S. officials before, during, and after the coup.[9][10] Al-Sa'di himself is quoted as saying that the Ba'athists "came to power on a CIA train."[11] Initially, many of Qasim's Shi'ite supporters believed that he had merely gone into hiding and would appear like the Mahdi to lead a rebellion against the new government; to counter this sentiment and terrorize his supporters, Qasim's dead body was displayed on television in a five minute long propaganda video called The End of the Criminals that included close-up views of his bullet wounds amid disrespectful treatment of his corpse, which is spat on in the final scene.[12][13]

As the secretary general of the Ba'ath Party, al-Sa'di was effectively the new leader of Iraq; through his control of the National Guard militia (commanded by Mundhir al-Wanadawi), al-Sa'di exercised more power than the Prime Minister—prominent Ba'athist general Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr—or the largely ceremonial president, Abdul Salam Arif.[14][15] The nine-month rule of al-Sa'di and his civilian branch of the Ba'ath Party has been described as "a reign of terror" as the National Guard, under orders from the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) "to annihilate anyone who disturbs the peace," detained, tortured, or executed thousands of suspected Qasim loyalists. Furthermore, the National Guard—which developed from a core group of perhaps 5,000 civilian Ba'athist partisans but increased to 34,000 members by August 1963, with members identified by their green armbands—was poorly-disciplined, as militiamen engaged in extensive infighting, creating a widespread perception of chaos and disorder.[14] Marion Farouk-Sluglett and Peter Sluglett describe the Ba'athists as having cultivated a "profoundly unsavory image" through "acts of wanton brutality" on a scale without prior precedent in Iraq, including "some of the most terrible scenes of violence hitherto experienced in the post-war Middle East".[16]

It has long been suspected that the CIA (and other U.S. government agencies) provided the Ba'athist government with lists of communists and other leftists, who were then arrested or killed by the National Guard under al-Wanadawi's and al-Sa'di's direction.[17] Gibson emphasizes that the Ba'athists compiled their own lists, citing Bureau of Intelligence and Research reports.[18] On the other hand, Citino and Wolfe-Hunnicutt consider the allegations plausible because the U.S. embassy in Iraq had actually compiled such lists, were known to be in contact with the National Guard during the purge, and because National Guard members involved in the purge received training in the U.S.[19][20] Furthermore, Wolfe-Hunnicutt, citing contemporary U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine, notes that the assertions "would be consistent with American special warfare doctrine" regarding U.S. covert support to anti-communist "Hunter-Killer" teams "seeking the violent overthrow of a communist dominated and supported government",[21] and draws parallels to other CIA operations in which lists of suspected communists were compiled, such as Guatemala in 1954 and Indonesia in 1965-66.[22] Between 300 and 5,000 communist sympathizers were killed in street fighting in Baghdad, along with 80 Ba'ath Party members.[14]

Al-Sa'di was in favor of a radical socialist course, which was not universally accepted in the Iraqi branch of the Baath party.[23] In the first decade of its existence, it focused on pan-Arab slogans, only vaguely mentioning socialism.[23] Such a policy was also opposed by those officers who supported the new government, although they did not belong to the Baath party, but opted for pan-Arabism and the union with Egypt.[23]

Partisan maneuvers and overthrow

In October 1963, at the all-Arab Sixth Congress (National Congress) of the Baath Party in Damascus, al-Sa'di managed to get founders Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar voted out of office. On November 11, al-Sa'di and his supporters called an "extraordinary party conference" to expel al-Bakr and other rivals from the party.[24] Bakr-loyal Ba'ath officers arrested them, after which on November 13 National Guard members loyal to al-Sa'di bombed targets in Baghdad and rampaged through the capital for five days. al-Bakr summoned President Arif, who as commander-in-chief of the army restored peace and order with the military coup of November 18, 1963.[25] Despite having collaborated with al-Bakr to remove al-Sa'di, Arif purged Ba'athists, including al-Bakr, from his new government.[14][26]

References

  1. ISBN 9780813343914
    .
  2. ISBN 9781136162985
    .
  3. ISBN 978-0-520-92124-5
    .
  4. ISBN 978-0-8021-3978-8
    .
  5. ^ For sources that agree or sympathize with assertions of U.S. involvement, see:
  6. ^ For sources that dispute assertions of U.S. involvement, see:
  7. ISBN 978-1-5036-1382-9
    . What really happened in Iraq in February 1963 remains shrouded behind a veil of official secrecy. Many of the most relevant documents remain classified. Others were destroyed. And still others were never created in the first place.
  8. S2CID 159490612
    . Archival sources on the U.S. relationship with this regime are highly restricted. Many records of the Central Intelligence Agency's operations and the Department of Defense from this period remain classified, and some declassified records have not been transferred to the National Archives or cataloged.
  9. S2CID 159490612
    . [Kennedy] Administration officials viewed the Iraqi Ba'th Party in 1963 as an agent of counterinsurgency directed against Iraqi communists, and they cultivated supportive relationships with Ba'thist officials, police commanders, and members of the Ba'th Party militia. The American relationship with militia members and senior police commanders had begun even before the February coup, and Ba'thist police commanders involved in the coup had been trained in the United States.
  10. ISSN 0145-2096
    .
  11. ISSN 0145-2096
    .
  12. ISBN 9780520921245
    .
  13. ISBN 978-1-108-10755-6
    .
  14. ^
    ISBN 978-0-8047-7359-1
    .
  15. ISBN 978-1-137-48711-7
    .
  16. ISBN 9780857713735
    .
  17. ISBN 9780857713735
    . Although individual leftists had been murdered intermittently over the previous years, the scale on which the killings and arrests took place in the spring and summer of 1963 indicates a closely coordinated campaign, and it is almost certain that those who carried out the raid on suspects' homes were working from lists supplied to them. Precisely how these lists had been compiled is a matter of conjecture, but it is certain that some of the Ba'th leaders were in touch with American intelligence networks, and it is also undeniable that a variety of different groups in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East had a strong vested interest in breaking what was probably the strongest and most popular communist party in the region.
  18. ISBN 978-1-137-48711-7
    .
  19. ISBN 978-1-108-10755-6
    .
  20. ^ Wolfe-Hunnicutt, Brandon (March 2011). "The End of the Concessionary Regime: Oil and American Power in Iraq, 1958-1972" (PDF). pp. 84–85.
  21. ^ Wolfe-Hunnicutt, Brandon (March 2011). "The End of the Concessionary Regime: Oil and American Power in Iraq, 1958-1972" (PDF). pp. 84–85. One study from 1961 or 1962 included a section on "the capability of the U.S. Government to provide support to friendly groups, not in power, who are seeking the violent overthrow of a communist dominated and supported government." The study went on to discuss providing "covert assistance" to such groups and advised that, "Pinpointing of enemy concentrations and hideouts can permit effective use of 'Hunter‐Killer' teams." Given the Embassy's concern with the immediate suppression of Baghdad's sarifa population, it seems likely that American intelligence services would be interested in providing support to the Ba'thist "'Hunter‐Killer' teams."
  22. ISBN 978-1-5036-1382-9
    . The CIA had long employed the method of targeted assassination in its global crusade against Communism. In 1954, a CIA team involved in the overthrow of Guatemalan leader Jacobo Arbenz compiled a veritable "Handbook of Assassination," replete with precise instructions for committing "political murder" and a list of suspected Guatemalan Communists to be targeted for "executive action." In the 1960s, the Kennedy administration made this rather ad hoc practice into a science. According to its special warfare doctrines, covertly armed and trained "Hunter-Killer teams" were a highly effective instrument in the root-and-branch eradication of Communist threats in developing nations. In what became known as the "Jakarta Method"—named for the systematic CIA-backed purge of Indonesian Communists in 1965—the CIA was involved in countless campaigns of mass murder in the name of anti-Communism.
  23. ^
    ISBN 9788305135672
    .
  24. ^ "العباسية نيوز | علي صالح السعدي". www.alabasianews.com. Archived from the original on 2022-03-05. Retrieved 2022-03-04.
  25. ISBN 978-0-8108-7942-3
    .
  26. ISBN 978-1-137-48711-7
    .
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