The leader behind the murder of the prophet’s Hashemite descendants
Sheri Laizer | Exclusive to iKurd.net
The Hashemite dream of an Arab Federation between Iraq and Jordan fell victim to the brutal murders of the royal family on 14 July 1958. Deception, assassination and murder became the direct route to power thereafter– and so it remains, 65 years on.1
The Arab Federation had been proclaimed in the Jordanian capital on February 14, 1958, uniting the two Hashemite kingdoms under cousins, King Faisal II of Iraq and King Hussein of Jordan. 2Anti-monarchists had already began plotting revolution against both men. In early July 1958 Iraq was sending two brigades to Jordan to aid with a crisis caused by Syria in Lebanon one brigade instead passed instead through Baghdad under the leadership of Brigadier General Abd-al Karim Qasim taking control of the radio and key points in the early hours of 14 July 1958.3
Qasim gave orders to his officers to slaughter the royal family in the Qasr al-Rihab Palace in Harthiya (now the site of Al Salam Palace). His men surrounded the palace with tanks and took control of the area at 7 .45 a.m. King Faisal II, his uncle the crown prince, his three sisters and their staff were rounded up in the courtyard and ordered from the rear entrance to face the palace wall as a machine gun opened fire. An eyewitness, Falih Hanthal, at the time a 23-year-old officer in the Royal Guard, the same age as the young King, said “That day brought thousands of killings, it brought bloodshed, and ended politics.” He recalled: “They all fell one on the other in a mass of flesh and blood… King Faisal fell backwards on the shoulder of another victim. Then the person in charge of the execution, officer Abd al-Sattar al-Sabaa, came forward and stood over the corpses lying in front of him, and fired his machine gun again towards the king and the prince. His companion said to him: “Why?” He replied: “Until I am sure!” 4
The women of the household had also been lined up against the wall and fired upon including Princess Abadiya and her sisters, Princess Hiyam, the wide of crown prince, Abd al Ilah. She was injured but survived after reaching the hospital through not being recognised. Abd al Ilah’s mother, Princess Nafisa did not survive nor did he. King Faisal II died on the way to the hospital. The commander of the royal guards, Colonel Taha Barmini, had ordered the palace guards to cease returning fire as the King hoped to negotiate a safe exit and avoid bloodshed. It was in vain.
Princess Badiya Bint Ali, the daughter of Abdullah and Faisal’s brother, Ali Bin Hussein, managed to escape having been staying at a different location. She went on to live out the century in England bitter to the end about the senseless killing and violation of the bodies of her family.5 The Qasr al Rihab and the Flowers Palace opposite became the site of the al-Salam Palace built by Saddam Hussein in the 1990s.6
The Qasr Al Rihab7 was the second palace to have been completed in 1937 under the Crown Prince opposite the original al Zahoor Palace (Flowers Palace) built by King Faisal I completed earlier in the thirties. It was located on the river Khar or Al-Ashash. After the coup of 1958, the palace remained deserted before being used for tourism and later as headquarters for the director of Am’n with a prison attached. It was broadcast on Iraqi TV being demolished in 1973 and the site later annexed to the Al-Salam Palace.8 9 10
Brief background on Hashemite family connections
King Faisal I was the brother of Jordan’s King Abdullah I, the grandfather of King Hussein, assassinated when coming out from Friday prayers at the Al Aqsa Mosque with his grandson on 20 July 1951. He was killed by a Palestinian nationalist.
Faisal I of Iraq was succeeded in 1933 by his only son Ghazi I, who was married to Princess Badiya’s sister, Queen Aliya Bint Alia. After King Ghazi’s untimely death in a car accident, Aliya’s three-year-old son, Princess Badiya’s nephew, became the heir. Her brother, ‘Abd Al-Ilah, was appointed regent for the young King between 1939 and 1953. King Faisal II was educated at Harrow in England. In 1953, coming of age at eighteen the kingdom of Iraq passed to him. He had been about to wed his fiancée, Princess Fadila Ibrahim Sultan of Egypt, on the very day that Qasim brought about his death and ended the kingdom.11
He was just twenty-three. His twenty-two-year-old cousin and childhood playmate, Hussein, King of Jordan was devastated. A group of officers in Jordan had been plotting a similar end to his life and rule; he was tipped off in time by CIA officer and lifelong confidante, Jack O’Connell12, a gentleman secret agent with legal training, including in Islamic law, had a personal sense of justice, fairness and integrity that informed his lifelong relations with the Middle East.
The palace was sacked and looted. The body of Crown Prince, ‘Abd Al-Ilah was disembowelled and his limbs amputated with shawarma knives before being dragged through the streets of Baghdad by the lawless mob, many of whom had come into the centre from the Shi’a areas like Kadhimain and Karbala.13 The headless torso was finally hanged outside the Ministry of Defence where it was further desecrated until nothing was left but some of his hair. Trapped inside his house, Prime Minister Nuri Said had shot himself dead, but was still tracked down and his body also savaged by the mob before finally being run over by public buses. The mob had seized the corpses and roamed with them across Baghdad until they became unrecognizable.14 King Faisal II died on route to hospital and his body was hoisted from a lamppost by the coup officers. The mob also attacked and torched the British Embassy, killing the defence attaché. British and Western locations and personnel were all targeted.
Anti-British feeling had increased since the Suez crisis of 1956 and King Faisal II had remained close to the kingmakers who had installed his grandfather as King of Iraq. Decades later, in 2021, his son and heir, King Abdullah I of Jordan visited the Kings’ mausoleum after it was hastily spruced up by the al-Kadhimi government.15
The British government under Harold Macmillan sought damage limitation and for the sake of oil soon made peace with Qasim who “quickly apologized for the destruction of the British embassy, and shrewdly promised to honor Anglo-Iraqi oil agreements. The new Iraqi leadership also guaranteed the safety of foreigners. Prime Minister Macmillan “shed a few tears for past supporters, awarded a posthumous medal to the dead attaché, and set about making friends with the new government, as recalled thus in a surviving memo by the Foreign Office observing, “It looks as if the new regime is in firm control. The sooner we can get on to proper terms with it the better. Its present intentions seem respectable, particularly as regards the oil and direct Anglo-Iraqi relations. Of course we cannot immediately condone the murders and the burning of the Embassy, but soon after the Baghdad Pact meeting we ought to extend recognition of the regime.”1
Prime minister Abd al Karim Qasim’s mother, Kayfia Hassan Yakub Al-Sakini, was a Baghdadi Shiite Fayli Kurd and his father, Qasim Muhammed Bakr Al-Fadhli Al-Zubaidi a Sunni who died soon after Qasim’s birth during WWI. Qasim’s increasing cooperation with the Communists and the Kurdish revolt launched under Mulla Mustafa Barzani in September 1961 chipped away at his support base.
Under Eisenhower’s administration the US became increasingly worried about the support the Iraqi Communist Party was getting from Qasim.
Oil above loyalty for the British government
As early as August 1958, the Foreign Office had devised at a new strategy: “We hold on to the Gulf. We establish the best relations we can with the new regime in Iraq. We try to ‘neutralize’ the Lebanon and Jordan in such a way as to permit the withdrawal of United States and United Kingdom forces as soon as possible. We improve our relations with Israel. Our relations with Egypt are not affected…We try to reconstitute the Baghdad Pact as a Northern Tier without Iraqi participation…It is essential in the interests of the maintenance of our economy and standard of living to maintain our control of British oil interests in the Gulf, more particularly Kuwait. …if the Arab nations control completely all the sources of Arab oil they can hold us to ransom, but so long as the Iraqis know that we can do without Iraqi oil if necessary, by relying on Kuwait, they have a strong inducement to come to terms with us.”3 The British urged their US ally to resume shipments of weapons to the new military regime. It sounds all too familiar today…17
Zaim, the “sole leader”: Qasim wanted Kuwait and more oil money
Subsequent to taking control through the Revolution, Qasim had also refused to join Egypt and Syria to form part of the United Arab Republic (UAR). In September 1959, the UAR financed an uprising in Mosul. Those Qasim executed in response led others to seek revenge and on October 7, Qasim barely escaped death but was wounded in an attempted coup by the Ba’ath. He had enraged a large segment of the military who were Pan-Arab and accused him of being a “traitor” to Iraq’s “Pan-Arab destiny” insulted as a “Shu’ubi” supportive of Shi’a majority Iran. 18
Qasim had also tried to annex Kuwait after reigniting Iraq’s historic claim to the territory. In June 1961, Britain and Kuwait ended their agreement of 1899 and Kuwait became independent on June 19. Qasim broadcast his annexation plan on Radio Baghdad almost at once threatening force. Britain sent forces to Kuwait to stop him. They were subsequently replaced by an Arab League force, made up of forces from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the Sudan. Although Kuwait had been admitted to the Arab League, the Soviet Union blocked its entry into the United Nations at Iraq’s request.”19 Qasim’s relations with Moscow and the CPI were of increasing concern to President Eisenhower who feared a Soviet takeover of Iraq. He was governed by the same logic as had led the CIA to execute the AJAX operation against Prime Minister Mosaddegh in Iran.
London, however, prioritized its oil business in Iraq; its policy diverged from that of the United States who sought to get rid of Qasim altogether owing to its Cold War drive Although Qasim’s government included Ba’athists, there being 12 Ba’athists of 16 members, internal tensions had been present from the beginning with Colonel Abd al-Salam ‘Arif
The 1963 Ba’ath Ramadan coup and CIA hit lists
In February 1963, Iraqi nationalists, including pro-Nasser elements, and secular Ba‘thists finally caught up with Qasim after having failed to assassinate him in 1959.20 He was shot along with his closest aides in the Ministry of Defence.21 The nationalists then went after his allies in the Iraqi Communist Party.
Seven months into the bloody purges, King Hussein of Jordan told the chief editor of Al-Ahram, Muhammad Hasanein Haikal, that he knew absolutely that lists had been provided to the Ba’ath command by the Americans, saying:
“You tell me that American Intelligence was behind the 1957 events in Jordan. Permit me to tell you that I know for a certainty that what happened in Iraq on 8 February had the support of American Intelligence. Some of those who now rule in Baghdad do not know of this thing but I am aware of the truth. Numerous meetings were held between the Ba`ath party and American Intelligence, the more important in Kuwait. Do you know that . . . on 8 February a secret radio beamed to Iraq was supplying the men who pulled the coup with the names and addresses of the Communists there so that they could be arrested and executed. (Al-Ahram, 27 September 1963).”
King Hussein had become very close to the CIA and, indeed, was indebted for his personal and political safety and survival to his main contact within the bureau, Jack O’Connell, who was long based in Amman. In his frank and humanitarian memoir, O’Connell detailed how he frequently gave the king warnings – as well as advice, including of Israeli plans to go to war against Nasser’s Egypt. Nasser did not believe the king and failed to act in time to his great detriment Nasser was defeated, and an end put to the increasingly pro-Communist leader Prime Minister Qasim in Iraq. As for the United States, Eisenhower achieved what he wanted without loss to American life: The far-right Israeli lobby was also strengthened.22
Of important note, as populism and propaganda has since conflated all Iraq’s recent ills with Saddam Hussein, Saddam did not become Iraq’s president until 1979 and was only twenty years old in 1958 when Qasim murdered the royals. He would be among those Ba’athists that first tried to assassinate Qasim in October 1959. Years later, it was he who restored the royal mausoleum where King Faisal II’s marble tomb was laid beside that of his grandfather.23 Once he had become President, Saddam Hussein also received King Hussein in Baghdad and the two men paid their respects side by side at the Kings’ mausoleum. King Hussein laid flowers on his cousin Faisal’s grave and recited a prayer in his name as Saddam kept him company.24 Saddam also restored the equestrian statue of King Faisal I near the Melia Mansour Hotel that had been destroyed in Qasim’s coup.
Iraqi currency changed from the Regency to the Republic
As Iraqi bank notes bore the portraits of the late Hashemite Kings, new designs were swiftly approved after the July 1958 coup. The Arab News Agency reported a month on after the destruction of the Hashemite monarchy that new currency would be issued. The replacement (ninth issue) banknotes minted in England did not appear until February after Ordinance No. 459 took effect. The new notes used the emblem of the Republic of Iraq in place of the portrait of King Faisal II and the text was modified, removing the phrase referring to Law No. 42 of 1947. Law No. 92 of 1959, which was signed on 27 May 1959 cleared the way for the new currency to be introduced. Republican Ordinance No. 649 of 19 September 1959 authorized the design and introduction of new coins.25 An Iraqi silver dinar commemorative coin would bear the portrait of the new absolute ruler, Prime Minsiter Qasim. The smallest denominations of a quarter and half dinar were the first to appear in circulation followed by one-, five- and ten-dinar notes. At first, they were still signed by the late Crown Prince but the title became ‘Governor’ replacing ‘Governor General’ in use for the National Bank of Iraq. The bank’s name had been changed under the monarchy on July 1,1956 from the National Bank of Iraq to the Central Bank of Iraq.
In May 1959, Qasim appointed Sayid Nadhim al-Zahawi26 as the new head of the Central Bank of Iraq and his signature replaced that of the Crown Prince on the new notes. He was also appointed Oil Minister and Minister of Trade.27
The new emblem of the Republic of Iraq replaced the portrait of the king to the right and was repeated in the watermarkon the notes of the quarter-, half- and one-dinar notes is that of the emblem of the Republic of Iraq, wheras on the 5- and 10-dinar notes it is the ‘symbol of the immortal Revolution’ created by Law. No. 101 of 1959 naming Iraq Araqi, the land of the sun.
The quarter-dinar note removed the border that had surrounded the image of King Faisal, but remained unchanged for the other denominations. Law No.101 of 1959 implemented ‘The Innovation of the Symbol of the Revolution of 14 July 1958 (The Eternal Iraqi Revolution)’. This was introduced to replace the crown and the description is given in Article 3 of the law:
‘The Symbol of the Revolution of 14 July 1958 (the Eternal Iraqi Revolution) shall consist of the word “the People” embraced on the low left part by an Arabian Sword and on its right by a Kurdish dagger. At the top of them shall be the 14th July Torch which inspires the people [with] the strength of their rapid advance and which symbolizes freedom which the people gained back on 14th July 1958. “The people”, the sword and the dagger, and the 14th July Torch all shall form an oval relief ornament. In the middle of the ornament, an equilateral triangle, in the inside of which the character “J” is written in the Koofi Script as symbol of the strength of the army and its incorporation with the strength of the people.’28
An alternative reading of the emblem gives the Arab sword, left, and Kurdish dagger, right, forming the inner circle of the emblem with its red Communist star or eight pointed star, doubling with the ancient sun victory symbol on the stele of Naram-Sin of Akkad c.2190 – 2154 BCE and wheatsheaf of the people within the black wheel emblem of revolution and progress. Right, the victory stele.
The rear of each Iraqi dinar note still displayed Mesopotamian heritage designs, like the previous issues, with the text remaining in English. The 1-dinar note featured the harp of Ur in place of the equestrian statue of King Faisal I.
Ordinance 459 was signed on July 4, 1959 nd the new banknotes were issued four days after from July 8, 1959 onwards signed by CBI head, Nadhim al-Zahawi. They had no security thread. They were followed by a second issue signed by Abdul Latif al-Shawaf. The 1-dinar note was subsequently signed by Khayer al-Din Haseeb. Saleh Kubba then signed all denominations except the 1-dinar note. The notes were all printed in England.
What became of the CBI’s governor, Nadhim al-Zahawi after he left his post at the CIB (held between 1959-1961) can perhaps be deduced to some extent from Britain’s relations with him. Qasim sought ever greater control of Iraqi oil and concessions from the IPC so began negotiations via his Oil Minister. He did not nationalise Iraqi oil.
Nadhim al-Zahawi’s son, Hareth, his wife and two children, Nadhim Jnr, and his sister, Jihan, finally left Iraq in 1974 when Nadhim junior was eight years old. [31] The Zahawis arrived in London as a family that had worked with the Macmillan government and Prime Minister Qasim well into the Ba’ath era before Saddam Hussein had become president. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis had already fled from their country within the first four years of the Qasim coup:
Qasim closed newspapers, banned political parties and refused to allow democratic elections. He adopted the title of “supreme leader” (al-za’im al-awhad), and promoted the fiction that he was politically neutral (fawq al-tayyarat al-siyasiya). The result of his actions was the degradation of political discourse. Politics was reduced to binaries of good versus evil, revolutionaries versus reactionaries, nationalist heroes versus the agents of imperialism…
Immediately after the July 1958 coup d’etat , Iraq’s democratic politicians and parties were willing to work with him to hold democratic elections and create a polity based on parliamentary rule. Instead, Qasim decided to exclude them and keep all political power for himself. [32]
It was also Qasim that built the ugly sprawling city Madinat al Thawra – Revolution City (now Sadr City) for the impoverished Shi’a masses, an area devoid of green spaces and equally of architectural aesthetics.
In 1966, his former co-conspirator in the 1958 coup, increasingly his rival, Abd al-Salam ‘Arif set up the INOC (Iraqi National Oil Company) and in 1970 it fell to the first Ba’ath President, Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr to declare full nationalisation of Iraq’s oil.
Qasim hailed anew by the post-2003 regime
Abd al Karim Qasim has been rehabilitated by the post-invasion regime. Statues have been erected to him and the emblem of his Republic and photographs of him kneeling at the bedside of Ayatollah al-Hakim etc. are freely reproduced – whereas everything recalling the Ba’ath Party is prohibited. This owes as much as anything to his mixed Shi’a-Sunni family origins and his anti-monarchist, anti-Western past. The Kurds and Communists also both claim him.30
Sculptor, Khaled Rahal’s recent statue of Qasim stands in Rashid Street, erected after Qasim’s grave was discovered in 2004 by a news crew with Radio Dijlah on farmland outside Baghdad on the Baquba road.31 Another statue has been put up in Erbil.
Political murder in Iraq is today readily covered up beneath a veneer of “revolutionary heroism” and of Shi’a martyrdom because Qasim was part Shi’a. Madinat al-Thawra today renamed Sadr City is in no better a state than it was when first built because the new elite operating according to wasta patronage relations has done nothing for the poor. Building statues to Abd al Karim Qasim whose men slew the Hashemite dynasty in Iraq is one of their few cultural works that is not Shi’a dominant. Even the new highest denomination 50,000 Iraqi dinar banknote, worth around $35, depicts the Shi’a marshlands.
1 This essay looks exposes trends and is not intended as an exhaustive history of the period. I recommend the very moving memoir of Jack O’Connell on this issue, King’s Counsel, A Memoir of War, Espionage and Diplomacy in the Middle East, W.W.Norton, 2011.
2 See the wonderful archive footage at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRk_F4JnWwY
3 http://www.pjsymes.com.au/articles/cbi-first.htm
4 In Arabic only, the Last Night; The Al-rehab Palace Massacre – The Killing of The Royal Hashemite Family in Baghdad on July 14 – 1958 الدار العربية للموسوعات
5 In 2002 Princess Badiya published her Memoirs of the Heiress to the Thrones, written by Iraqi politician and lawyer, Faiq Al-Sheikh Ali.
6 See this author, https://ikurd.net/19th-anniversary-us-invasion-iraq-2022-03-20
7 The name Rihab derives from the al-Rihab village near Taif in Saudi from where the Hashemite dynasty originated.
8 https://postimg.cc/SXdY2xFx
9 Interestingly, King Faisal II`s summer palace in Sersang, Duhok, was built by Faisal in 1953 as a summer residence for the royal family. After the coup, it was used as a military barracks but later restored as part of Saddam’s presidential palaces. It was vandalised after the Kurdish uprising of 1991, but the KRG has since transferred ownership to King Abdullah II of Jordan as the heir to the Iraqi royal family and placed under renovation.
10 https://arch.uokufa.edu.iq/en/archives/5398
11 Egyptian Princess Fadila “recalled how a member of the royal household rushed to her residence a few hours later, covered in blood and cried: “They killed them, they killed the king and his family.“ “I started crying and screaming,” she said. “When the kids’ English nanny asked me what was wrong, I said: They have killed my family.”
12 Before his death, Jack O’Connell compiled his memoirs as well as those of King Hussein of his time in Amman dating from 1958. The posthumous book, King’s Counsel – A Memoir of War, Espionage and Diplomacy in the Middle East, with Vernon Loeb, was published by W.W.Norton & Co. in the US in 2011. O’Connell was determined that the truth come out. It is a fine book, recommended to me by John Nixon. The attempted coup against King Hussein is detailed between pp. 1-9 in parallel with the coup in Iraq of the same period.
13 Iraq since 1958 From Revolution to Dictatorship, Marion Farouk-Sluglett and Peter Sluglett, I.B.Tauris, revised edition 2001.
14 https://english.alarabiya.net/features/2016/10/11/Iraqi-politics-ended-after-violence-horrendous-killing-of-monarchs-
15 https://english.sawtbeirut.com/world/iraq-renovates-baghdads-royal-cemetery-before-king-abdullah-visit/
16 Poster from Les Années Mao – Une Histoire de la Chine en Affiches (1949-1979) by Jean-Yves Bajon, Les Éditions du Pacifique, 2013, p. 53, author’s collection.
17 Jack O’Connell recalled how Saddam Hussein offered to negotiate a withdrawal from Kuwait within 48 hours of Iraq’s entry via King Hussein, but George W. Bush rebuffed him and continued falsely to malign him for all the US problems with Iraq .The reverse was true. See O’Connell’s final chapters on Saddam. Former CIA agent, John Nixon said to this author if he had known these things at the time, he would have posed different questions to Saddam Hussein when he ‘de-briefed’ him. This is not widely known.
https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/bitstream/handle/2152/65296/Taylor_Kat_F%20inal%20Thesis.pdf?sequence=2
18 http://new-middle-east.blogspot.com/2013/05/abd-al-karim-qasim-and-authoritarianism.html
19 https://li.proquest.com/elhpdf/histcontext/CRS-1991-FND-0006.pdf
20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2OQ2BtOfRM
21 The Shi’a dominated post 2003 regime has erected a statue to him there.
22 https://www.mei.edu/publications/intervention-iraq-1958-1959 and Batatu, Old Social Classes, pp. 982-987.
23 https://www.arabnews.pk/node/1339046/middle-east
24 See Jack O’Connell’s memoir on the good relations maintained by King Hussein with Saddam Hussein, chapters 13-16.
25 Op. Cit. Symes
26 The grandfather of the disgraced Tory ex-chairman, Nadhim Zahawi.
27 Sayid Nadhim al-Zahawi[1] (Arabic: ناظم الزهاوي) was Governor of the Central Bank of Iraq from May 1959 to November 1960.[2] He was also Iraqi Minister of Trade.[3] https://www.intelligenceonline.com
28 Peter Symes, the author of the very detailed essay on the changing Iraqi currency acknowledged the input of Layth Al Muderis and Haider Al Saffar in this study of the notes from 2005. See old photos of King Faisal II’s final era https://iraqthelastinglove.blogspot.com/2009/09/more-from-iraqs-old-days.html
29 Nadhim Zahawi who rose through the Conservative Party ranks thanks to his mentor Jeffry Archer was born in Baghdad in 1967.
30 https://gulfif.org/60-years-after-iraqs-1958-july-14-revolution/
31 “Mementos of his rule are on sale throughout Iraq. Among them are photographs of him kneeling by the sickbed of former Grand Ayatollah Muhsin al-Hakim. https://iwpr.net/global-voices/iraqis-recall-golden-age The gravesite was located on the road to Baquba in a field and contained four bodies in military uniform buried in the middle of a farm. Witnesses has moved the bodies to protect them from further exposure.
32 Nadhim Zahawi who rose through the Conservative Party ranks thanks to his mentor Jeffry Archer, was born in Baghdad in 1967.
33 http://new-middle-east.blogspot.com/2013/05/abd-al-karim-qasim-and-authoritarianism.html
Sheri Laizer, a Middle East and North African expert specialist and well known commentator on the Kurdish issue. She is a senior contributing writer for iKurd.net. More about Sheri Laizer see below.
The opinions are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of iKurd.net or its editors.
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