A People's History of Iraq: 1950 to November 1963

From Bob Feldman's article in Toward Freedom :

...To counter the continued political influence of the Communist Party of Iraq in Iraqi society during the 1950s and early 1960s, the U.S. government apparently began to encourage the growth of an anti-imperialist, pan-Arab nationalist, but anti-communist, Ba'th Party in Iraq during the Cold War Era. As Rashid Khalidi recalled in his Resurrecting Empire book: "Starting in the late 1950s, this policy ranged from covert sympathy for the Iraqi Ba'th Party to wholehearted backing for dictatorial Ba'thist regimes at various times from the 1960s through 1990."

At first linked to Syria's Ba'th Party branch, when the Iraqi branch of the pan-Arab nationalist Ba'th Party was formed in Iraq in 1952. The group apparently only had 50 members. By 1955, the Ba'th Party in Iraq still had 289 members, although Syria's Ba'th Party had gained control of the Syrian government by 1954. The Iraqi head of state prior to the 2003 U.S. military occupation of Iraq (the currently-imprisoned Saddam Hussein) apparently began his connection to Iraq's anti-communist Ba'th Party in 1955 when he was 18 years-old.

The involvement of the regime's Baghdad Pact ally in the 1956 military attack on Egypt by the UK, French and Israeli governments triggered Iraqi communist-led mass street protests in Iraq between November 1 and November 24, 1956. Although the regime's police were able to suppress the November 1956 street protests, opposition to the monarchy within Iraqi military's officer corps increased...

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