[3] Abd al-Karim's father, Qasim Muhammed Bakr Al-Fadhli Al-Zubaidi was a farmer from southern Baghdad[4] and an Iraqi Sunni Muslim[5] who died during the First World War, shortly after his son's birth.

[7] Qasim was born in Mahdiyya, a lower-income district of Baghdad on the left side of the river, now known as Karkh, on 21 November 1914, the youngest of three sons.

Qasim was nicknamed "the snake charmer" by his classmates in Devizes because of his ability to persuade them to undertake improbable courses of action during military exercises.

[13] The reason for the fall of the monarchy was its policies, which were viewed as one-sidedly pro-Western (pro-British) and anti-Arab, which, among other things, were reflected in the Baghdad Pact with the former occupying power Great Britain (1955) and in the founding of the “Arab Federation” with the kingdom Jordan (March 1958).

[17] On 14 July 1958, Qasim used troop movements planned by the government as an opportunity to seize military control of Baghdad and overthrow the monarchy.

[8] By the time of the coup in 1958, the total number of agents operating on behalf of the Free Officers had risen to around 150 who were all planted as informants or go-betweens in most units and depots of the army.

Qasim, reluctant to tie himself too closely to Nasser's Egypt, sided with various groups within Iraq (notably the social democrats) that told him such an action would be dangerous.

Unlike the bulk of military officers, Qasim did not come from the Arab Sunni north-western towns, nor did he share their enthusiasm for pan-Arabism: he was of mixed Sunni-Shia parentage from south-eastern Iraq.

[23] Qasim was said by his admirers to have worked to improve the position of ordinary people in Iraq, after the long period of self-interested rule by a small elite under the monarchy which had resulted in widespread social unrest.

[28] Qasim attempted to remove Arif's disruptive influence by offering him a role as Iraqi ambassador to West Germany in Bonn.

After a period of relative calm, the issue of Kurdish autonomy (self-rule or independence) went unfulfilled, sparking discontent and eventual rebellion among the Kurds in 1961.

Barzani had delivered an ultimatum to Qasim in August 1961 demanding an end to authoritarian rule, recognition of Kurdish autonomy, and restoration of democratic liberties.

[35] Qasim's growing ties with the communists served to provoke rebellion in the northern city of Mosul led by Arab nationalists in charge of military units.

In an attempt to reduce the likelihood of a potential coup, Qasim had encouraged a communist backed Peace Partisans rally to be held in Mosul on 6 March 1959.

[37] To strengthen his own position within the government, Qasim created an alliance with the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP), which was opposed to any notion of pan-Arabism.

The idea of assassinating Qasim may have been Nasser's, and there is speculation that some of those who participated in the operation received training in Damascus, which was then part of the United Arabic Republic.

Instead it resulted in widespread bloodshed between ethnic Kurds (who were associated with the ICP at the time) and Iraqi Turkmen, leaving between 30 and 80 people dead.

[43] Despite being largely the result of pre-existing ethnic tensions, the Kirkuk "massacre" was exploited by Iraqi anti-communists and Qasim subsequently purged the communists and in early 1960 he refused to license the ICP as a legitimate political party.

Communist influence in Iraq peaked in 1959 and the ICP squandered its best chance of taking power by remaining loyal to Qasim, while his attempts to appease Iraqi nationalists backfired and contributed to his eventual overthrow.

The KDP promised not to aid Qasim in the event of a Ba'athist coup, ignoring long-standing Kurdish antipathy towards pan-Arab ideology.

[50] On 18 December 1959, Abd al-Karim Qasim declared: "We do not wish to refer to the history of Arab tribes residing in Al-Ahwaz and Muhammareh (Khurramshahr).

"[51] After this, Iraq started supporting secessionist movements in Khuzestan, and even raised the issue of its territorial claims at a subsequent meeting of the Arab League, without success.

[63][60][59] Pertinent contemporary documents relating to the CIA's operations in Iraq have remained classified[64][65][66] and as of 2021, "[s]cholars are only beginning to uncover the extent to which the United States was involved in organizing the coup",[67] but are "divided in their interpretations of American foreign policy".

[71] On the other hand, Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt cites "compelling evidence of an American role",[55] and that publicly declassified documents "largely substantiate the plausibility" of CIA involvement in the coup.

[72] Eric Jacobsen, citing the testimony of contemporary prominent Ba'athists and U.S. government officials, states that "[t]here is ample evidence that the CIA not only had contacts with the Iraqi Ba'th in the early sixties, but also assisted in the planning of the coup".

[73] Nathan J. Citino writes that "Washington backed the movement by military officers linked to the pan-Arab Ba‘th Party that overthrew Qasim", but that "the extent of U.S. responsibility cannot be fully established on the basis of available documents", and that "[a]lthough the United States did not initiate the 14 Ramadan coup, at best it condoned and at worst it contributed to the violence that followed".

[75] To counter this sentiment and terrorise his supporters, Qasim's dead body was displayed on television in a five-minute long propaganda video called The End of the Criminals that included close-up views of his bullet wounds amid disrespectful treatment of his corpse, which was spat on in the final scene.

[76][75] About 100 government loyalists were killed in the fighting[77] as well as between 1,500 and 5,000 civilian supporters of the Qasim administration or the Iraqi Communist Party during the three-day "house-to-house search" that immediately followed the coup.

Despite its shortcomings, Qasim's rule helped to implement a number of positive domestic changes that benefited Iraqi society and were widely popular, especially the provision of low-cost housing to the inhabitants of Baghdad's urban slums.

Despite upholding death sentences against those involved in the 1959 Mosul uprising, Qasim also demonstrated "considerable magnanimity towards those who had sought at various times to overthrow him", including through large amnesties "in October and November 1961".