Today, Tuesday, Iraqis remembered the overthrow of the monarchy in Iraq by a group of Iraqi officers July 14, 1958, one of the most controversial events in Iraqi history.
And these events are still the focus of people's attention on this day every year, and it is considered one of the most famous transformations that took place, when the era of monarchy ended with the proclamation of the republican system.
Since 1958, and what happened in Al-Rehab Palace in Baghdad, against the royal family and to this day, many Iraqis still see it as the end of the civil state project, and the emergence of a new system that later paved for unstable political systems, which pushed the country to more coups and wars.
Al-Rehab Palace
The Iraqis know very well what the Al-Rehab Palace in Baghdad represents and its association with memory of what happened to the royal family in 1958 and the declaration of the Republic of Iraq led by the leader Abdul Karim Qasim.
Al-Rehab, the second royal palace after the Al-Zuhur Palace, was built at the expense of the royal family west of the Baghdad governorate between the Al-Harithiya area and the Baghdad International Fair, under the supervision of the regent to the throne Prince Abdul Ilah in 1937 and its name came in relation to Al-Rehab Village, the residence of the Hashemite family in the Hijaz This palace was designed and supervised by an architect from Egypt.
On the morning of July 14, 1958, King Faisal II and the royal family woke to the sounds of gunfire before a group of officers entered the palace and asked them to surrender, so they responded to the request, were gathered, shot all of them and killed them.
what happened?
Professor of history and a specialist in modern Iraq’s history says d. Haider Shahid, that in 1949, the organization of the Free Officers' Organization in Iraq was witnessed by Rifaat al-Hajri Sarri, similar to the Free Officers Organization in Egypt, which is the first nucleus of a military organization within the Iraqi army, and in 1952 some cells of the organization appeared in the ranks of the army.
And the martyr continues his speech to Al-Jazeera Net by saying that the development of events in the Arab region, especially the rise of the 1948 revolution in Yemen and the elimination of monarchy, and the 1952 revolution in Egypt and the overthrow of monarchy, contributed to the growing planning for the coup in Iraq and there were attempts but failed.
In 1956, Shahid says, the Iraqi government noticed the presence of this organization in the military ranks after a meeting in the city of Kadhimiya in Baghdad, and in response to that, it dispersed and moved the officers participating in the meeting to separate places.
He adds that in early July 1958 King of Jordan Hussein bin Talal asked King Faisal II to send Iraqi forces to Jordan, and when the army chief of staff, Lieutenant General Rafik Arif, went to him, King Hussein informed him of the presence of a military organization in the Iraqi army aimed at overthrowing the regime.
Shahid continues, "Lieutenant General Rafik Aref returned to Iraq on July 11, unhappy with the Jordanian warnings, and King Hussein, commander of the Iraqi Third Division, Lieutenant General Ghazi al-Dagestani, warned of the existence of a secret organization seeking to overthrow the regime in Iraq."
And he notes that "the arrival of Abdul Karim Qasim's name among the names of these conspiring officers made some leaders consider this to be rumors, given Qasim's relationship with King Faisal II and Prime Minister Nuri Al-Saeed."
On July 14, the Iraqi academic completes, the 20th brigade led by Colonel Abd al-Salam Aref prepared to move to start implementing the movement, and took several measures to ensure the success of the coup, including the arrest of all leaders of the military sectors who agreed to go to Jordan, where the officers succeeded in implementing the plan, and the Aref assumed the leadership of the sectors entrusted to him that led to the fall of the monarchy.
The repercussions of the coup
"The first thing we have to know is how the coup against the monarchy occurred, just as we cannot prosecute an event 62 years old with the contents of the current era. What we are witnessing today is an attack on Abdel Karim Qassem and its coup and what followed and remembering the royal era," journalist Mustafa Al Faris said. As an ideal era, it must be subject to historical standards. "
Al-Faris continues, during his talk of Al-Jazeera Net, that the monarchy did not provide all the requirements of life, and the influence of feudalism and the exploitation of peasants prevailed, and the governments that were formed at that time were confused, and that people's lives were primitive and simple, and many of them did not change in the royal era, but what It happened to the royal family, it was a crime waged forehead.
The coup was a black day for the royal family and the Iraqis, due to the bloody events and political developments that accompanied it, which ended with the coup against Abdul Karim Qassem, and then other coups after it, until the late President Saddam Hussein came to power in 1979 and entered Iraq in the tunnel of wars And death, and change in the country became governed by blood, to become a culture rooted in the hearts of Iraqis.
The journalist Haider Al-Yaqoubi believes that what happened on July 14 is literally a coup and cannot be considered a revolution. History confirms whoever comes with a coup that does not go to elections, and this rule has an exception to what happened in the coup of Sudan led by Field Marshal Abdel Rahman Swar Al-Dahab in 1985 and called To elections and did not nominate and handed the government to Sadiq al-Mahdi.
The split that takes place annually over the legitimacy of the 1958 coup, as Yaqoubi tells Al Jazeera Net, is led by leftists who call it a revolution and celebrate its achievements, although the situation at the time did not need a coup or revolution.
And every year a rift occurs among the spectrums of society on this issue, and despite that, the Iraqi government annually disrupts the official working hours on July 14, and its intentions cannot be known. Is it the legalization of the upcoming coups or is it favoring someone who considers it a revolution ?!
The Iraqis split and issued, marking the "# Black_Voltion" coup, the social networking sites in Iraq, where the Iraqis wrote down the events and re-read what happened, so they split between those who said what happened was a coup and those who see that what happened is a revolution.
I also know that for eternity a leader and a
few like you are generous and generous. # Black coup pic.twitter.com/d9a2hd9AC5
- Safaa Al-Safi🇮🇶 (@ safa_96_) July 14, 2020
The speech of Abd al-Salam Aref Al-Hamasi from the Radio Center was the reason https://twitter.com/safa_96_/status/1282953974451261440 Mainly that the Al-Rehab massacre took place.
There was no prior intention from Abdul Karim Qasim nor the free officers to kill the royal family, but they wanted to kill the regent Abd Allah and Nuri Saeed
Hamas rhetoric # Black coup
- Majed Al Jumaili, My New Account (@ M9ajid1M9ajid1) July 14, 2020
God have mercy on His Majesty King Faisal II and the other martyrs of the Hashemite family
On the fourteenth of July, Iraq bid farewell to civil life and
received years of dictatorship, tyranny, and sectarianism. And these tensions still ruin the bodies of Iraqis.
There is no power or strength except God
- 𒈬 𒄩 𒈨 𒀉 🇮🇶 (@ moh_kh13) July 13, 2020
On this day 7/14/1958
Two people toppled the king,
then one toppled the other,
then came from who toppled
someone who overthrew its owner, then America came and overthrew them all, and the
people came out after the overthrows with a broken, broken one, but he remained celebrating with everyone who came and those who left.
- Ali John Al-Khaldi (@ 0YldxsjuZ1eqQwW) July 14, 2020