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wide range of subjects such as the reality of fascism, Soviet women,
Murmansk, Soviet writers in the Red Army, Armenian workers interned in
Iraq, and so on.^32
The communists in Iraq were a small group. However, during the year
following the Gaylani interregnum, there was unmistakeable evidence that
they were growing rapidly in number by adapting their creed to the Iraqi
mentality. There was no immediate indication that communist cells were
being systematically created throughout the country, though CICI con-
sidered that to be the predictable outcome of the movement’s growth. A
‘very reliable’ CICI source close to communist circles stated at the end of
1941 that it was likely that communism would replace Nazism. ‘Iraq,’
CICI warned, ‘has proved that she runs easily after any will-o’-the-wisp.’^33
Perhaps to slow any such trend, two secondary schools originally opened
by the communist-led National Cooperative Society (NCS) were closed
by the Iraqi government in November 1941. Permission to open these
schools had been granted by the education ministry provided that the staff
list was submitted for approval. The NCS failed to do so; however, the
ministry did not take action against them until it was discovered that
among the teachers were some who had already been dismissed from the
public service because they had been blacklisted as dangerous commu-
nists. Two of them were even former Rashid Ali supporters.^34
For much of 1942 and 1943, the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) appears
to have been as disorganized as it was technically illegal, partly because it
employed too broad a definition of the term ‘communist,’ allowing all
manner of vaguely socialist liberals and progressives to join its ranks. Not
surprisingly, there were therefore several schismatic quarrels that under-
mined ICP unity. Mensheviks pitted themselves against Bolsheviks,
Marxist ideologues against social democrats, and so forth. At a time when
a united pro-Soviet front was needed for the war effort, British security
took a dim view of such disarray on the left, feeling that it could not fail to
delight the enemy. According to one security-intelligence summary:
‘Much good propaganda effort is now being diverted from downright
denunciation of local Axis sympathizers, hoarders, and highly-placed
undesirables to futile arguments which try to prove that the opposite
brand of communism is spurious.’^35 However, by early 1944, the ICP,
now ten years old, managed to hold a clandestine party conference and
began to organize for the postwar era and for legal recognition. They
numbered about 12,000 by then and were in contact with Moscow via
Tehran, as well as with communist organizations in Syria and Lebanon.^36