77
It is difficult to reconcile these facts with an obscure appendix, undated
and unattributed, attached to a CICI summary dated 1 June 1944, which
is entirely dismissive of Iraqi communism, opening with the sweeping
opinion: ‘There is no real communism in Iraq’; and concluding: ‘It is hard
to see how communism in Iraq can, in the immediate future, present a
serious problem to security.’^37
Only tenuously related to leftist politics, Zionism was another element
in Iraq that had been of some concern to the security authorities ever since
the terrible Farhud pogrom one day after the signing of the armistice in
Baghdad. On the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, around 3 o’clock in the after-
noon of 1 June 1941, the looting and rioting had begun. The only indica-
tion that trouble was brewing had been hostility shown by people in and
around the Shia holy district of Khadhimiya. But that in itself was not
remarkable, as it was always a forbidding place guarded fiercely by zealots,
especially in the vicinity of the great mosque, a vast shrine built over the
tombs of two major Shia imams. It would seem that the riot had some
organized backing, and it was certainly aimed at the Jews. However, it was
unlikely to have been rooted in religious antisemitism, as the ancient urban
minority of mostly middle-class Iraqi Jews had been traditionally well tol-
erated for centuries. Everything therefore suggested the complicity of the
Palestinian political refugees and followers of the ex-Mufti. Looting con-
tinued all afternoon and through the night. Shops were broken open and
their contents removed or flung into the streets. The police fired intermit-
tently over the heads of the looters and then took their share of the loot.
On the morning of 2 June, two Kurdish infantry battalions transported
overnight by rail from Kirkuk were marched into the city and, shooting to
kill on the Regent’s orders, quickly cleared the streets, raking them with
machine-gun fire. During the pogrom, at least 180 Jews—men, women,
and children—were killed and some 700 wounded, together with count-
less incidents of rape, torture, beating, looting, and property damage. It
was Iraq’s Kristallnacht. Some observers who had lived in Germany and
Poland even said they witnessed atrocities in Baghdad that eclipsed the
worst pogroms in Europe. The persecution of Jews on such a scale was
seen by the Zionist leadership in Palestine as sufficient motivation for the
majority of Iraqi Jews to consider emigration.^38
So, it fell to CICI’s security experts to help the Iraqi CID find out who
was really behind the Farhud, and ensure that they were brought to justice.
On 14 June 1941, CICI released a complete list of all the Gaylani officials
and supporters who had fled across the Persian border at the end of May.
RESTORING THE PEACE