Iraqi Ba‘thists in America’s Cold War
Covert Action, Paramilitarism and Violence
Explores the US government's covert relations with the Iraqi Ba‘th Party as it brutalised Iraqi communists
- Reveals new details of the Central Intelligence Agency’s relationship with the Ba‘th Party
- Provides a full account of the early Iraqi Ba‘th Party
- Brings Iraqi women into the history of covert action and Cold War violence
- Draws on previously unexploited Iraqi memoirs and Ba‘th Party documents
This book reveals the covert relationship of the United States with the Iraqi Ba‘th Party in the 1960s. The book traces this relationship from the party’s underground activities, through its first seizure of power, to the party’s return to clandestine organising after its overthrow by a military coup. The administration of President John F. Kennedy armed the Ba‘thist regime, provided content for its media, and trained its personnel. A state-private network sponsored by the Central Intelligence Agency supported Ba‘th Party labour and student organizations. Simultaneously, the regime detained, tortured, and murdered thousands of Iraqi communists. It also waged a genocidal war against Iraqi Kurds. Bringing Iraqi women into the story, the book explores how both Americans and Ba‘thists imagined a democratic future for Iraq and rationalized their resort to insurgent and counterinsurgent violence.
Acknowledgements
Note on Transliteration and Translation
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Violence and Decolonization
1. The Emergence of the Iraqi Ba‘th Party
2. Rebuilding the Iraqi Ba‘th Party
3. A Coup and Counterinsurgency Doctrine
4. Extirpating the Iraqi Communist Party
5. Ba‘thists and the American State-Private Network
6. Paramilitarism and Mass Politics
Epilogue: A New Ba‘th Party
Bibliography
‘Decades after the US toppled Saddam Hussein, Matthews illuminates the 1960s origins of Ba‘thist rule. Using new Arabic and Central Intelligence Agency sources, he shows how para-state militias intensified a Ba‘thist–Communist struggle to mobilise Iraqis and define postcolonial liberation. This long-awaited study confronts Iraq’s experience with American imperialism, anticolonialism and political violence.’
