| Encyclopedia of the Persian Gulf War

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Qaqa State Establishment Explosion–Quayle, James Danforth

Qaqa State Establishment Explosion

See Bazoft, Farzad.

Qassem, Abdul-Karim

(1914–1963)

An Iraqi army officer, Abdul-Karim Qassem was the head of the Free Officers who overthrew the government of King Faisal II of Iraq in 1958. Qassem was himself overthrown by a Ba’athist coup in 1963.

Israeli writer Uriel Dann’s considerable work Iraq under Qassem: A Political History, 1958–1963, relates, “Qassem himself was near the lower end of the social scale of the Free Officer membership. He was born in Mahdiyya, a poor quarter of Baghdad on the left side of the river, on December 21, 1914, the youngest of the three sons of Qasim bin Muhammad bin Bakr. According to official data published while he held office, Qassem’s parents were both of pure Arab descent. His father’s family derived from the Qahtăniyya [southern Arab] clan and his mother’s from a clan of Adnăniyya [northern Arab] origin. Hostile biographers have denied his Arab blood, alleging that his father was a Turcoman and his mother a Kurd. According to the most reliable evidence, Qassem’s father was a Sunni Arab while his mother’s parents were Faylîs—Shi’i Kurds who had migrated to Baghdad in large numbers from territory beyond the Iranian border.”

Qassem joined the Iraqi military and was commissioned as an officer in 1938. His only known military service was as a member of the Iraqi contingent sent to fight against Israel in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. In 1956 he became a member of the “Free Officers,” members of Iraq’s military hierarchy who plotted to overthrow the monarchy of King Faisal II. On 14 July 1958, with the aid of the other Free Officers, including Abdul-Salam Aref, Qassem overpowered the government of Faisal and Prime Minister Nuri as-Said. The two men and the former regent, Abdul Illah, were executed. The British ambassador to Iraq, Sir Michael Wright, cabled London, “The Prime Minister, Brigadier Abdul Karim Qassim [sic] is soft-spoken and friendly to meet. He is said to be a devout Muslim and dedicated to the service of his country. He is unmarried and lives very simply. Apart from a few remarks in some of his speeches his conduct so far has been essentially moderate and restrained. . . . He has a good reputation as a competent army officer and as far as it is possible to judge enjoys confidence in the army.”

Middle East author Yaacov Shimoni wrote, “Qassem was interested in social affairs, and in September 1958 [he] enacted a major land reform law. Early in 1960 he tried to revive political parties; but the attempt failed, and it remains in doubt to what extent Qassem had taken it seriously in the first place. He became increasingly erratic—to an extent that he was nicknamed ‘The Mad Dictator.’ Endowed with an exalted sense of his own missions, he had not created a political base to his rule, and by 1961 he had no supporters left among the political groupings and was in serious political difficulty.” In 1961 Qassem declared that Kuwait was part of Iraq, setting the stage for the reintroduction of British troops into that small emirate, as well as for a 30-year battle for the right to own Kuwait that culminated in the Persian Gulf War of 1991.

One of Qassem’s leading critics was Abdul Hassan al-Bakr, another of the Free Officers, along with Qassem’s former partner, Aref. On 8 February 1963, known as the Fourteenth Ramadan, Free Officers belonging to the Ba’ath party used the military to attack the Qassem government. Early the next morning, according to Uriel Dann, Qassem and several of his followers surrendered. They were given a brief court martial, led into a courtyard, and summarily executed.