79
who were responsible for the flooding of the country that so impeded the
progress of KINGCOL during its advance on the Iraqi capital.^40
Meanwhile, a Katayib ash Shabab (Regiment of Youth) HQ was set up,
and a recruiting office was opened in a Baghdad secondary school. Recruits
were readily forthcoming. The application form they were required to
complete asked if they could use a revolver or assassinate, use grenades,
carry out sabotage, use a rifle and fight, do either spoken or written pro-
paganda, or be a fifth columnist or spy. The young recruits were then
given some elementary weapons training and were issued with rifles, hand
grenades, and possibly revolvers. This motley crew of about 250 young
men consisted of teachers, students, and some Syrian boy scouts. They
appear to have remained active beyond the armistice, and their weapons
were never recovered. As unlikely as it may seem, it was these few radical-
ized young fascists who were the prime instigators of the bloody Farhud
of 1–2 June 1941. It is possible, however, that only a small, criminally
inclined splinter group within the Katayib, the Hizb al-Haras al-Fida’i
(Suicide Guard Party), was responsible for actually inciting riot.^41 In
January 1942, after the lengthy court-martial of Rashid Ali and his associ-
ates in absentia, Yunis Sabawi was among the half-dozen ringleaders sen-
tenced to be hanged. At the time, he was already on his way to Southern
Rhodesia for internment; however, Sir Kinahan Cornwallis insisted that
those sentenced to death should be returned to Iraq immediately. On 13
March 1942, Sabawi and the five other condemned men landed at Basra.
After a lengthy retrial, three of the six accused including Sabawi were again
sentenced to death. They were executed on 5 May, 11 months after the
bloody pogrom for which they were all ultimately responsible, but on
which Yunis Sabawi had clearly had the greatest influence.^42
After the Farhud, from the moment that peace returned to the streets
of Baghdad on 2 June 1941, Zionism came into active play as a factor in
the internal security of Iraq and became a feature of British concern over
the large-scale movements of people to and from Palestine, which obvi-
ously had to be monitored and to some extent controlled. However,
Zionism posed more of a proxy security threat to Palestine than a direct
security threat to Iraq. Two years after the Farhud, militant Zionists had
begun to develop considerable activity in Iraq. Covert communication
between Iraq and Palestine was maintained through the Haim Nathaniel
Transport Company, using reliable travellers and Jewish soldiers in the
Free Polish army as couriers. The main aim of the Zionist organization in
Iraq was to recruit local Jewish youths as active members. Energetic pro-
RESTORING THE PEACE