AHC: Marxist-Leninist Arab Nation Besides South Yemen

kernals12

Banned
As it is, the Arab world is and has been dominated by secular nationalist regimes (many socialist in orientation) and several monarchies. How can we spice things up by having a Marxist-Leninist nation? South Yemen was communist but the country was too small and had too little oil to be interesting.
 
Writing in the May 1959 issue of *Commentary,* Walter Laqueur concluded that the "Communists have taken power in Iraq in all but name" http://www.commentarymagazine.com/article/as-iraq-goes-communistdays-of-decision-in-baghdad/

I discuss the possibility of a Communist Iraq at https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/communist-iraq-1959.319476/

In a later post, https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...mes-communist-1959-1961.440008/#post-16743259 I wrote:

***

I think this vignette from The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism indicates something of what went wrong for the Iraqi Communists:

"On May Day 1959 two boys were watching crowds throng the streets of Baghdad for the workers day parade. Twelve-year-old Hani Lazim was awed by the size of the demonstration: 'It was just... endless. Whenever we went to see the end of it, we couldn't.' Nine-year old Sami Ramadani, the youngest child in a large family of communist activists living in Al-Waziriyya, saw the march with his mother, sitting on the wall of a mosque in Al-Rashid Street, 'watching endless streams of people' until two or three in the morning.

"Decades later both still recalled the Communist Party's huge presence on the march: echoing in the endlessly repeated slogans calling for communist participation in the government. Lazim remembers that his father, a former party member, was worried by the communists' open call to share power with General Abd-al-Karim Qasim, the first president of the republic which had been established by the overthrow of the monarchy in July 1958.

"'I remember my father didn't like it at all. And I asked him, I said 'why Dad, why not?' He said 'nobody gives you government, you take it. It is a foolish thing to say. You don't say it. If you want it, go and take it, if you can. But don't say it, because you are actually antagonizing them and they could hit you back.' And I remember that very well'..."

https://books.google.com/books?id=5OBMAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA268
 
The Iraqi Communist Party by the way is still around and has scored recent electoral successes: "The party joined the newly established Sairoun Alliance in the 2018 parliamentary elections, who gained the highest number of votes and a total of 54 seats in the Iraqi parliament.[23] A communist woman representing the alliance, Suhad al-Khateeb, was also elected in the elections to represent the city of Najaf, deemed to be one of the holiest religious and conservative cities in Iraq. Khateeb, who is a teacher, anti-poverty and women's rights activist said upon her victory "the Communist party have a long history of honesty - we were not agents for foreign occupations. We want social justice, citizenship, and are against sectarianism, and this is also what Iraqis want"..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_Communist_Party
 

The Avenger

Banned
The Iraqi Communist Party by the way is still around and has scored recent electoral successes: "The party joined the newly established Sairoun Alliance in the 2018 parliamentary elections, who gained the highest number of votes and a total of 54 seats in the Iraqi parliament.[23] A communist woman representing the alliance, Suhad al-Khateeb, was also elected in the elections to represent the city of Najaf, deemed to be one of the holiest religious and conservative cities in Iraq. Khateeb, who is a teacher, anti-poverty and women's rights activist said upon her victory "the Communist party have a long history of honesty - we were not agents for foreign occupations. We want social justice, citizenship, and are against sectarianism, and this is also what Iraqis want"..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_Communist_Party
Curious--what's the nationality policy of the Iraqi Communist Party? Was it ever Soviet-style ethnic federalism?
 
Prevent the land reforms in countries like Iraq and Egypt, and let the social pressure due to inequality build up.

Yea, if Nasser didn't implement his land reform and other reforms in Egypt, it would be rather plausible to see a communist revolution in Egypt.
 
Curious--what's the nationality policy of the Iraqi Communist Party? Was it ever Soviet-style ethnic federalism?

At least judging from their propaganda, they seem to have advocated autonomy/federalism as the solution to the Kurdish question:

"We call for a national democratic program under our slogan, Democracy for Iraq, a united federal Iraq. And we believe federalism will solve the Kurdish question. The Kurdish people will be able to exercise their national rights and aspirations in a way that maintains Iraqi unity on a democratic basis." http://www.cpusa.org/article/interview-with-the-iraqi-communist-party/

"In line with this position, and taking into account the nationalist character of the Kurdistan region and political developments in the Kurdish issue, the decision was taken in 1993 to transform the Kurdistan organisation of the party to the Kurdistan Communist Party – Iraq. The latter enjoys an autonomous status within the organisational structure of the Iraqi Communist Party.

- A mechanism for the relationship between the two parties has been developed since then. The internal party rules endorsed by the last 10th Congress of Iraqi CP, held in Baghdad in December 2016, stated that this relationship “is built on the basis of class and national interests, a joint ideological identity, an internationalist spirit, and the joint history of struggle within a multi-ethnic country.” It added that “the Central Committees of the two parties organize the relationship between them in accordance with the developments in the administrative – political reality of the Iraqi state.." http://iraqicparchives.com/index.ph...arty-contribution-to-the-seminar-on-kurdistan
 
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