Outside Indonesia, the largest Communist Party in the Bandung countries was the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP), which had grown in opposition to dictator Abd al-Karim Qasim. The ICP thought of making a bid for revolution—and the Soviets advised against it. But Washington backed a successful coup by the anticommunist Baath Party, which immediately moved to crush the ICP. The CIA supplied lists of communists and alleged communists to the new regime, which slaughtered untold numbers of people. A Baath Party member named Saddam Hussein, only twenty-five years old, took part in the US-backed
...more
