Enver Hoxha: Putsch in Iraq

LUSHNJA, FRIDAY
FEBRUARY 8, 1963

Putsch in Iraq

Radio Baghdad has reported that a putsch has, been carried out in Iraq and the president of the Republic, General Kassem, has been killed. Time showed that Kassem relied neither on the people nor on the communists. The latter, following the treacherous line of Nikita Khrushchev and carrying out his specific advice, made no effort at all (and they had many possibilities, especially in the first days after the overthrow of the monarchy) to seize power. Kassem isolated and dissociated himself from the communists and forced them into illegality, while Tito continued his work and used his influence for the creation of a legal party in Iraq. Kassem on the one hand received weapons from Khrushchev and on the other hand imprisoned and killed the communists.

Now that the reactionaries of the «Baath» Party have seized power an unprecedented wave of terror will certainly burst upon our naive but well-intentioned Iraqi comrades. They will suffer severely, but this will serve as a great lesson to them and to others to see where revisionism and the treacherous policy of Khrushchev lead. The reactionaries everywhere are killing the communist comrades with Soviet weapons. The policy of Basil Zaharoff, the gun merchant, is being repeated here under the camouflage of coexistence.

 From “Reflections on the Middle East”