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Appendix IProfile: Azz al-Sayyid Jasim

There are many reasons behind this profile. 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 first part of Az z al-Sayyid Jasim: S rah lam tuk-

tab/An Unwritten Biography ( Akhbar al-Adab weekly, Cairo, 1997, Az z 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 em-bassy asked if I still have family in Iraq, insinuating reprisals if I would continue writ-

ing. The regimes ban on anything relating to Azz al-Sayyid Jasim was not the only

reason behind this profile, however. The Iraqi Communist Party, under its old leader-

ship as well as the official Bath Party, usually associated with Saddam, and ideologi-

cally 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 find rea-

sons for the dislike of a totalitarian regime for such an intellectual, it is not easy to jus-

tify the official position of ICP. The previous leadership had many dabblers in culture

and literature who lived on petty recollections and misconstrued realities. Caught be-

tween pettiness and dislike to revisionism, they found his critique of their agenda and

practice quite destabilizing. His popularity among the masses also inflamed this op-position. His books enjoyed great popularity. His book on Abd al-Nas

ir (1987) sold

30, 000 copies in two weeks. More importantly, the writer disliked public relations,

conferences, and official meetings. His critique of opportunism, bureaucracy, sham

politics, and hypocrisy made others suspicious and sensitive to his criticism. His en-

cyclopedic 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 Sufism. 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 busi-

nessman, Dhiyab al-H

aj Tahir, who hired him to run a flour 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, crit-

icizing the party for its oscillation and lack of a national perspective. He was boy-

cotted in 1960 as pro-Tito, meaning a nationalist reading of Marxist thought. When

I was still young, and Az z al-Sayyid Jasim was only 20, H

asan 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 ranarticles 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 journalAl-

Adab. He also published articles in Iraq in which he began to practice the efficacy 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 critiquein 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. Official 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 ofAl-

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 hisbooks 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 rea-

son behind this second arrest and its harrowing aftermath was a letter which the writer

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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 officials who were in a meeting with Saddam during the alliance attackson Baghdad and Iraq also participated in inflaming 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.

146 reading iraq