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With Kassem's tolerance, if not connivance, the Communists proceeded to combat Aref's popularity with the Baghdad mob by seizing leadership of the People's Resistance, a paramilitary force originally formed to help the Kassem regime consolidate its power. And without ever coming out into the open, the Reds expanded their influence with "the street" by establishment of carefully rigged front groups —the new trade unions, the Students' League, the Peasant Front, the Peace Partisans, the League for the Defense of Women's Rights.
The turning point came one day last October, when Kassem, possessed by Communist-fed suspicions, ordered "my son, my pupil, my brother" into exile as Ambassador to West Germany. Almost hysterical, Aref refused. He pulled his pistol out of the holster. Kassem grabbed his wrist, shouted: "What are you trying to do, Abdul Salam?" Aref sobbed: "I wanted to take my own life." Said Kassem: "I forgive you for this too. But you have to leave. You are splitting the country. I want to keep you away from evil people." Then he brought Aref a glass of milk, and in a late-night session argued his friend into going.
Three weeks later the unhappy Aref flew back from Europe unannounced, was arrested. In December feckless, ignorant Colonel Aref was sentenced to death by the People's Court on a charge of trying to assassinate the Premier. As far as outsiders know, he is still awaiting the last order to the firing squad.
The Diminishing Dictator. Aref's downfall marked the beginning of Kassem's break with Egypt's Nasser—a break that has split the Arab world wide open. Unable to dominate Kassem, Nasser set out to depose him by force, or, failing that, to isolate him from the rest of the Arab world. Punning on Kassem's name (which in Arabic means splitter), Nasser pilloried "Iraq's splitter" as the enemy of Arab brotherhood. Suddenly, too, the man who brought Soviet influence into the Middle East in his 1955 arms deal with Russia became vocally aware of the threat of Communist imperialism. Nasser went into a series of slanging matches with Khrushchev (TIME, March 30); last week, when the Arab League met in Beirut in an attempt to mediate the dispute between Nasser and Kassem, Cairo's representatives called on their fellow Arabs to join in a drive against Communism in the Arab world.
From some Arab nations Cairo's appeal got lip-service support. But true Middle East anti-Communist warriors, such as Jordan's King Hussein, declined to follow Nasser's lead, fearful that the dictator of the Nile's only real concern is with his diminishing prestige in the Arab world, that if he could once dispose of Kassem, his interest in fighting Communism might disappear again.