Abd al-Salam Arif

1921 - 1966

President of Iraq, 1963 - 1966.

Abd al-Salam Arif was born in al-Karkh, Baghdad, to a poor Sunni Arab rug merchant. His family had strong tribal connections in the Ramadi province (west of Baghdad) of Iraq. From 1938 to 1941, he attended military college. While he was too junior to be held responsible for the Rashid Ali al-Kaylani pro-Axis revolt of 1941, Abd al-Salam strongly sympathized with the revolutionaries. He first met Abd al-Karim Qasim in 1942. In 1948, Arif participated in the Iraqi Expeditionary Force that fought in the first Arab - Israel war.

Because of Qasim's insistence, Arif was incorporated into the central organization of the Free Officers in 1957. Until the 1958 revolution, he was regarded as Qasim's protégé. On the eve of the revolution (14 July), Arif's brigade was ordered to move to Jordan through Baghdad, but in coordination with Qasim, he entered the city and took it during the early morning hours. In the revolutionary government, he became deputy prime minister of the interior, and deputy supreme commander of the armed forces. By September 1958, he was relieved of all his posts, since he supported Iraq's unification with the United Arab Republic. In November, he was arrested and sentenced to death for attempting to kill Qasim; but he was released in early 1961, to be made figurehead president by the Baʿth regime that toppled Qasim in the Ramadan Revolution of 8 February 1963. Later that year, he ousted the Baʿth from power and became sole leader. His power base was the loyalty of the Pan-Arabian army officers, most of whom came from his family's region, Ramadi.

In 1964, he signed a unification agreement with Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser and introduced social and economic changes designed to create a similar system to that of Egypt; these included the establishment of a Nasserite political party and wide-ranging nationalizations. Actual unification with Egypt never materialized, however. His social policy caused an economic decline, and his attempt to crush the Kurdish revolt failed. Arif was killed in a helicopter crash on 13 April 1966. Despite his many failures, his charisma and devotion to Islam were highly regarded by many Sunni Arabs in Iraq. The Shiʿites feared him, but his religiosity and tolerance for their educational autonomy enabled the two Islamic sects to coexist. He was succeeded by his older brother Abd al-Rahman Arif.

Bibliography

Batatu, Hanna. The Old Social Classes and the RevolutionaryMovements of Iraq: A Study of Iraq's Old Landed and CommercialClasses and of Its Communists, Baʿthists, and Free Officers. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978.

Khadduri, Majid. Republican Iraq: A Study in Iraqi Politics since the Revolution of 1958. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1969.

— AMATZIA BARAM