Appendix I

Prole: Azz al-Sayyid Jasim

There are many reasons behind this prole. Foremost is the fact that Azz al-Sayyid Jasim was taken so seriously by Saddams regime that every piece of news about him was suppressed throughout the 1990s. The UN, Amnesty International, and PEN tried hard to get information about his case, but they failed or were misinformed. Even when I published in Egypt the rst part of Azz al-Sayyid Jasim: Srah lam tuk tab/An Unwritten Biography (Akhbar al-Adab weekly, Cairo, 1997, Azz al Sayyid Jasim: Unwritten Biography), when I was a university Professor in Tunisia, the Iraqi ambassador there made it clear that he was unhappy with this piece. When I mentioned to him it was about Azz al-Sayyid Jasims early life before the 1968 Bath coup, he said it might be manipulated. On the other hand the press attach at the embassy asked if I still have family in Iraq, insinuating reprisals if I would continue writing. The regimes ban on anything relating to Azz al-Sayyid Jasim was not the only reason behind this prole, however. The Iraqi Communist Party, under its old leadership as well as the ofcial Bath Party, usually associated with Saddam, and ideologically with Tariq Azz, were adamantly against his writings. Many mentioned to me that they could not write articles in his defense, even when they were exiles, as long as they were acclaimed as ICP members or as mere dilettantes. While we can nd reasons for the dislike of a totalitarian regime for such an intellectual, it is not easy to justify the ofcial position of ICP. The previous leadership had many dabblers in culture and literature who lived on petty recollections and misconstrued realities. Caught between pettiness and dislike to revisionism, they found his critique of their agenda and practice quite destabilizing. His popularity among the masses also inamed this opposition. His books enjoyed great popularity. His book on Abd al-Nasir (1987) sold 30, 000 copies in two weeks. More importantly, the writer disliked public relations, conferences, and ofcial meetings. His critique of opportunism, bureaucracy, sham politics, and hypocrisy made others suspicious and sensitive to his criticism. His encyclopedic knowledge, rigorous analysis, and combination of theory and practice in his intellectual interventions made his presence quite conspicuous since 1988, despite

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his Susm. In literature, politics, and thought, he developed a sharp and rich cultural critique. Taken together, these facts depict an uncompromising intellectual. Azz al-Sayyid Jasim participated in political organization as a student in Dar al Mualimn al-Ibtidaiyyah (The Primary Teachers Institute) in Al-Nasiriyyah in 1956. He was approached by the Iraqi Communist Party earlier through a middle class businessman, Dhiyab al-Haj Tahir, who hired him to run a our mill every summer in his village al-Nasr. He soon became a dynamic organizer and a brilliant intellectual who digested Marxist thought and critiqued the Party. In 1959 he was already in the city leadership, and was pen-named Morris. Thereafter he led a dissident movement, criticizing the party for its oscillation and lack of a national perspective. He was boycotted in 1960 as pro-Tito, meaning a nationalist reading of Marxist thought. When I was still young, and Azz al-Sayyid Jasim was only 20, Hasan Oudah, a brilliant boy who was my senior then, intimated to me that all the associates of the Communist Party, and he was included, were ordered to boycott Azz al-Sayyid Jasim. Although, he was back to ICP, this rapprochement lasted for a year and a half only. The ICP ran articles against comrade Morris and others for their revisionism. He began publishing articles at an early time, perhaps in 1961. His readings in literature helped to distinguish his style which evolved as a combination of rigorous logic and passionate discourse. He was imprisoned in 1961, and then in 1963. In 196670 he published numerous literary articles in the famous Lebanese journal Al Adab. He also published articles in Iraq in which he began to practice the efcacy of his thought, its marriage between nationalism and socialism, to the dismay of both, the Communists and the nationalists who had been surviving in dichotomous zones of great polarity. In 1969, he was invited to come to Baghdad and join the Bath left, led then by Abd al-Khaliq al-Samarra, and he was offered an honorary membership. When al-Samarra was imprisoned in 1973, al-Sayyid Jasim knew that a regressive line was emerging leading back to 1963. He responded with a seventy page critique in 1976 to Saddams survey of the cultural scene to assess the so-called Communist penetration in Iraqi culture. Al-Sayyid Jasims critique was the reason behind the withdrawal of the honorary membership, the ban on his books, and his removal from The Labor Voice weekly as an acting editor. He was forced into an early retirement. From 1977 onwards, he was under surveillance, and at least 11 of his books were banned. Ofcial newspapers were ordered not to publish his literary writings unless he would write in support of the war with Iran. The poet Sam Mahd, editor of Al Jumhuriyyah daily, told me as much. The writer never published in those papers. When his book on Al, the Prophets cousin, appeared he was imprisoned for six months, and books were fabricated under his name. The book was considered an oblique criticism of Saddam and an inciting document. He knew then that it was only a matter of months before the regime would get rid of him. Nevertheless, many of his books appeared in 198890. Saddams half brother, Sabaw, who was the director of the Security Directorate, confessed on 23 March 2005 that he executed the writer Azz al-Sayyid Jasim upon the orders of his brother. Azz al-Sayyid Jasim was imprisoned on 15 April 1991, and Saddams orders made it clear that no news should be divulged about his fate. The reason behind this second arrest and its harrowing aftermath was a letter which the writer

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reading iraq

sent to Saddam in early April 1991, criticizing him for the invasion of Kuwait, and for his atrocious slander of the South, its tradition and culture in a series of editorials. One of the ofcials who were in a meeting with Saddam during the alliance attacks on Baghdad and Iraq also participated in inaming Saddams anger against the writer. Yet, the fact that Saddam imposed a ban on his fate and whereabouts only attests to Azz al-Sayyid Jasims power as an intellectual.