Iraqi Communist Party – Central Command

The Iraqi Communist Party – Central Command attempted to build a guerrilla movement in the Middle Euphrates [ar] region and the southern marshes of Iraq.

While the Iraqi Communist Party – Central Command continued, it never regained a prominent role in national politics.

[1] He returned to Iraq in January 1967 and emerged as the unofficial leader of the Baghdad Regional Committee of the Communist Party.

[1][2] Tensions brewed inside the Iraqi Communist Party regarding the docile opposition to the Arif government and its ambiguous stance concerning Kurdish rights.

[2] The Cadre Faction had a certain degree of influence in Thawrah City and al-Shu'ala (two Baghdad districts), and among officers, intellectuals and peasants in al-'Amarah, al-Gharraf [ar] and the Middle Euphrates region.

[7] In the autumn of 1967 the Iraqi Communist Party–Central Command was engaged in a series of clashes with security forces in southern regions of Middle Euphrates and the marshes.

[10] The Iraqi Communist Party–Central Command guerrilla campaign in south Middle Euphrates region and southern marshes provoked fears among both Shia and Sunni religious leaders.

[2] The party-adopted tactical line document, based on Zaki's ideas, called for popular armed struggle, a position with Maoist inspirations.

[2] The Iraqi Communist Party–Central Command rejected the established Iraqi Communist Party–Central Committee tactic of supporting military coups, arguing that the army was "an instrument of the capitalist-feudalist state" and that the senior leadership of army was intimately linked to the "anti-communist, anti-working class and anti-Kurdish nationalism camp".

[2] On June 3, 1968, Zaki and two other party cadres (Mohsen Hawas and Kazem Manather) were killed in battle at Hawr al-Ghamuka [ar], in the southern marshes.

[7] For months after the coup a large number of communist cadres were killed, their bodies dumped in rivers or alleyways.

[7] In late 1968 the Iraqi Communist Party–Central Command proclaimed the launch of 'people's revolutionary war', with a campaign of raids on police posts and banks.

[...] That these tendencies appeared was due to the adventurist policy and nationalist and anti-internationalist line of the ruling group in China.

However, our party has coped with this petty-bourgeois trend, fought it ideologically until it was destroyed, crushed by its own barren sectarian ventures.

The Wihdat al-Qa'idah group responded by claiming they were the legitimate leadership of the Iraqi Communist Party–Central Command and declared al-Alawi expelled from the party.