Green Armbands, Red Blood

A week after the overthrow of Iraq's Dictator Abdul Karim Kassem. the crack of rifle fire still echoed in Baghdad's Liberation Square. Tanks and armored cars kept stern vigil at every important intersection. Scurrying everywhere were the little squads of men wearing green armbands--ferrets who sought to find and to crush the last remaining opposition to Rebel President Abdul Salam Aref and his mysterious revolutionary backers.

Who were these new rulers? In the modern mode, Aref, 41, gritted his teeth and presented himself at the Baghdad Hotel for the inevitable press conference with the swarm of foreign correspondents, an ordeal he seemed to regard as in some ways worse than the historic night of the coup itself. More than a hundred shouting reporters and photographers pushed aside his tommy-gun-waving guard and crowded around Iraq's boss to hear Aref speak freely about the aims and purposes of the new government. He said something about an end to one-man rule, friendship with all Arab states, and the "overcoming of all the difficulties facing the Iraqi people." But he was mysteriously silent about the size or membership of the all-powerful National Council of the Revolutionary Command, which organized and led the revolt against Kassem.

No Personalities. Said Aref: "This is a secret which must remain a secret for many reasons.'' Asked why. English-speaking Aref replied volubly in Arabic. Pressed again for an answer, Aref suddenly announced, "The conference is closed," and departed, surrounded by his guards.

The reason for such secrecy seems to be a general revulsion against the self-glorification of Kassem's four-year dictatorship. "We revolted against the cult of personality,'I explained new Foreign Minister Talib Hussein Shabib. 32. To the key question of who is boss of the new Iraq, the answer seems to be: at the moment, no one man. President Aref cannot make major decisions without the concurrence of the mysterious National Council.

But highly visible was the new 21-man Cabinet, and most Western observers liked what they saw. Said one: "In general, they're a topnotch bunch of responsible, eager, exceptionally well-educated people." Many of the ministers have lived or have been educated in the West, ranging from Foreign Minister Shabib, who graduated from London University and is married to an Englishwoman, to Finance Minister Salih Kubba, who attended the University of California and has an international reputation as an economist. Seven of the new Cabinet ministers were in Kassem's concentration camp at Rashid military base until the rebels broke down the gates during the coup.

The Baath Idea. The new government is clearly antiCommunist, and all but five ministers are either members of or closely linked to the Baath (renaissance) Party. More an idea than an ideology, the basic Baath doctrine insists that "there are no Arab nations; there is only one Arab nation." This creed is, of course, warmly embraced by Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, but Aref and Iraq's Baath Party seem hardly eager to fall under Cairo's domination. The Baathist leaders in Iraq, in fact, have reshaped their doctrine of Arab unity into a concept of federation of Arab states without a centralized dictatorship. This could mean anything, including a revival of the old concept of loose unity in the "Fertile Crescent"--Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. Already Syria, having broken free from Nasser, was proposing federation to Iraq's new leaders. The ideas of the new Iraqis seem liberal, humane and democratic. But so did Kassem's program when he first seized power; his reign swiftly drifted to brutality and degradation.

Normal Torpor. By week's end Iraq seemed settling down into the normal torpor of an Arab state after a coup d'etat. Oil flowed uninterruptedly through the pipelines to the Mediterranean. Shops, schools, and government offices reopened. The curfew was gradually extended from 3 in the afternoon until 11 at night, and in the coffeehouses men were gossiping and playing backgammon.

The local Communists, the only group still supporting the discredited Kassem regime, were being stridently urged by Moscow's powerful Arabic voice in East Germany to "struggle against the fascist imperialist regime now foisted on Iraq." Some Communists responded by sniping from rooftops, but their organization had suffered a devastating blow. Hundreds of the dogged men with green armbands, carrying mimeographed lists of Red leaders complete with home addresses and auto license numbers, methodically hunted down the Communists, who had grown strong in Kassem's final months. By last week the new regime had killed or jailed nearly 2,500 dissident Communists.

This was enough to win the applause of Western diplomats. But anyone who had witnessed the perilous passage of other, earlier revolts with laudable ambitions, could only hope that the rebels would stop the shooting and start running the country. In the long run, guns will hardly serve the new regime better than they served Abdul Karim Kassem.

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