This was not received well in Baghdad, and as a result, Qasim began to prepare for a military offensive against the north to return government control of the region.

Meanwhile, in June 1961, the KDP issued a detailed ultimatum to Qasim outlining Kurdish grievances and demanded rectification.

French Ambassador Bernard Dorin witnessed a girl in Iraqi Kurdistan whose face was burned off by the UK made bombs.

These policies coincided with the beginning of Barzani's uprising in Iraqi Kurdistan and discovery of oilfields in the Kurdish inhabited areas of Syria.

In June 1963, Syria took part in the Iraqi military campaign against the Kurds by providing aircraft, armoured vehicles and a force of 6,000 soldiers.

Syrian troops crossed the Iraqi border and moved into the Kurdish town of Zakho in pursuit of Barzani's fighters.

Since then Iraq had on a number of occasions threatened to send forces to assist Jordan against Israel during rounds of border fighting between the two.

Iran wished to strengthen its own political and military position vis-à-vis Iraq—the only other regional power in the Persian Gulf—and perhaps wring certain territorial concessions from Iraq in return for ceasing support of the Kurds (this was achieved in 1975, during the Second Iraqi-Kurdish War, but it is not clear when the idea was originally conceived).

In November 1963, after considerable infighting amongst the civilian and military wings of the Ba'athists, they were ousted by Abdul Salam Arif in a coup.

Then, after another failed offensive on Kurds, Arif declared a ceasefire in February 1964, which provoked a split among Kurdish urban radicals on one hand and Peshmerga forces, led by Barzani on the other.

[21] In the following years, the Iraqi government overcame its internal divisions and concluded a treaty of friendship with the Soviet Union in April 1972 and ended its isolation within the Arab world.