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The Baath Idea. The new government is clearly antiCommunist, and all but five ministers are either members of or closely linked to the Baath (renaissance) Party. More an idea than an ideology, the basic Baath doctrine insists that "there are no Arab nations; there is only one Arab nation." This creed is, of course, warmly embraced by Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, but Aref and Iraq's Baath Party seem hardly eager to fall under Cairo's domination. The Baathist leaders in Iraq, in fact, have reshaped their doctrine of Arab unity into a concept of federation of Arab states without a centralized dictatorship. This could mean anything, including a revival of the old concept of loose unity in the "Fertile Crescent"—Iraq, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. Already Syria, having broken free from Nasser, was proposing federation to Iraq's new leaders. The ideas of the new Iraqis seem liberal, humane and democratic. But so did Kassem's program when he first seized power; his reign swiftly drifted to brutality and degradation.
Normal Torpor. By week's end Iraq seemed settling down into the normal torpor of an Arab state after a coup d'état. Oil flowed uninterruptedly through the pipelines to the Mediterranean. Shops, schools, and government offices reopened. The curfew was gradually extended from 3 in the afternoon until 11 at night, and in the coffeehouses men were gossiping and playing backgammon.
The local Communists, the only group still supporting the discredited Kassem regime, were being stridently urged by Moscow's powerful Arabic voice in East Germany to "struggle against the fascist imperialist regime now foisted on Iraq." Some Communists responded by sniping from rooftops, but their organization had suffered a devastating blow. Hundreds of the dogged men with green armbands, carrying mimeographed lists of Red leaders complete with home addresses and auto license numbers, methodically hunted down the Communists, who had grown strong in Kassem's final months. By last week the new regime had killed or jailed nearly 2,500 dissident Communists.
This was enough to win the applause of Western diplomats. But anyone who had witnessed the perilous passage of other, earlier revolts with laudable ambitions, could only hope that the rebels would stop the shooting and start running the country. In the long run, guns will hardly serve the new regime better than they served Abdul Karim Kassem.