The Communist Ansar of Iraq

An Honourable Struggle in the History of the Left

A member of the Iraqi Communist Party delivering a speech to a crowd in Baghdad circa 1958. Captured during a period of major political transformation in Iraq following the 1958 14 July Revolution, which overthrew the Hashemite monarchy.

The experience of the Communist Ansar [1] in Iraq remains one of the finest and most sincere chapters of communist struggle in modern Iraqi history. Every struggle carries both positive and negative aspects, and no human or political endeavour is free of this, however upright its integrity or noble its aims. Yet this experience, notwithstanding the debate and differing views surrounding some of its aspects, stands as living proof that leftist thought can produce some of the most genuine and inspiring models of struggle even in the harshest and darkest of circumstances. It embodied a remarkable example of sacrifice, self-giving, and determination to pursue the path of freedom and social justice, despite the siege, persecution, and repression it faced at the hands of the fascist Ba’athist regime [2].

The Communist Ansar movement was distinguished by the diversity of its ethnic and religious composition. Its ranks included Arabs, Kurds, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Syriacs, Turkmen, and Faili Kurds, alongside Armenians. They brought together Sunni and Shia Muslims, Christians, Mandaean Sabians, Yazidis, and Shabak, with men and women serving side by side. In this, the movement exemplified a living model of fraternity among the components of the Iraqi people. This internationalist character left a lasting impression on the residents of Kurdish villages, who came to understand that their true enemy was the Ba’athist regime and its repressive policies, not Arabs as a people, contrary to the narrative that some hardline nationalist forces on both sides attempted to promote, one that reduced the conflict to a narrow ethnic dimension.

The movement also achieved a notable historic first: communist women fighters, known as the Nasirat, literally “female Ansar,” carried arms for the first time in the history of armed struggle in Kurdistan, taking part alongside their comrades in every battle and duty of the resistance. The presence of women in combat left a profound mark on the consciousness of the Kurdish villages that sheltered the Ansar, helping to entrench a more egalitarian view of women’s role in society and opening a new horizon for the women of those villages to see themselves as active agents in public life, not merely as dependents within it.

Among the most painful chapters of this journey was the Bashtashan massacre [3], carried out by forces of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan against Ansar of the Iraqi Communist Party on the first of May 1983, claiming the lives of more than one hundred and fifty comrades. This crime remains a deep wound in the memory of the Ansar movement, and its record still calls for further documentation and accountability, in fairness to the memory of the victims.

In 1988, the Communist Ansar witnessed firsthand one of the most horrific acts of genocide in modern history: the Anfal campaign [4], waged by the Ba’athist regime against the Kurdish people. It claimed the lives of more than one hundred and eighty thousand people, destroyed thousands of villages, and involved the use of internationally banned chemical weapons.

Amid those brutal conditions, the Communist Ansar played a notable role in defending Kurdish villages and standing by their people in their ordeal, earning the trust and respect of the Kurdish population and leaving a lasting mark that remains present in the collective memory of that period. This armed presence was not confined to the Communist Ansar alone; other leftist factions, such as the Communist Current organisation, also maintained a limited armed presence, which later took part in the March 1991 uprising that followed the Second Gulf War.

Before the Communist Ansar experience took the shape we came to know, the history of the Iraqi left had already seen an earlier attempt at armed struggle. It was led by the martyr Khalid Ahmad Zaki [5] in the southern marshes in 1968, drawing on the Guevarist model and the ideas of armed revolution he had absorbed through his internationalist connections. Khalid Ahmad Zaki fell alongside his comrades in the battle of Hor al-Ghomouka, yet his experience remained etched in Iraqi leftist memory, later inspiring literary and artistic works that documented that rare moment in the history of the Iraqi left.

Although I hold reservations today about armed struggle as a method of resistance, the conditions of that period, under the ferocious onslaught the fascist Ba’athist regime unleashed on leftists and other progressive forces, left, in my assessment, no option but to take up arms, if only in self-defence against repression and liquidation, and to help bring down the dictatorship of the time.

I turn here to my own personal experience with this movement. I am honoured to have been among those who took part in it through my activity within the underground organisations of the Iraqi Communist Party [6] inside Iraq between 1983 and 1990, as a member of the 31 March Organization [7], one of the party’s largest clandestine organisations, in which I had the honour of taking part in its leadership. It brought together dozens of comrades from across Iraq.

The organisation was initially linked to the Ansar movement through the Independent Fifth Battalion and at times through the Third Battalion or directly with the Badinan sector [8]. We were, to a great extent, the “Ansar of the interior,” providing the Ansar movement with continuous support through intelligence and information on the movements of military and security forces, securing weapons, equipment, medicine, and documents, facilitating movement within the cities, and helping smuggle endangered comrades out to liberated areas, in addition to agitation and political and organisational work inside the cities. We also made continuous secretpartisan”) [10], visits to Ansar military bases to meet with comrades overseeing party organisations.

Whatever our position today on this or that chapter of the Communist Ansar’s journey, and whatever our agreement or disagreement over the merits of armed struggle as a method of resistance, this experience will remain one of the significant chapters in the history of worldwide socialist struggle, alongside other experiences that walked the same path in different contexts.

These range from the Sierra Maestra rebels in Cuba, who overthrew the Batista dictatorship in 1959, to the Sandinista Front in Nicaragua, which brought down the Somoza family’s rule in 1979; from the Greek People’s Liberation Army, which resisted Nazi occupation before waging a bitter civil war against a Western-backed right, to the Dhofar rebels in Oman, who waged, between 1965 and 1976, one of the longest armed leftist revolutions in the Arabian Peninsula in defense of social justice and against British colonial presence; and on to the leftist resistance movements across Europe during the Second World War, from the French and Italian resistance to Tito’s Partisans in Yugoslavia, where communists and leftists formed the backbone of the armed struggle against Nazi occupation and fascism.

These experiences vary in their circumstances and outcomes, and each carries important lessons worth drawing on as well as mistakes that deserve frank, comradely critique. Yet they all share a common truth: that the left, when confronted with brutal repression and the closing off of any open political horizon, has proven capable of producing extraordinary forms of resistance that remain part of humanity’s shared memory in its struggle for freedom, social justice, and the socialist alternative.

In closing, the spirit of sacrifice and dedication embodied by the Communist Ansar experience and by other chapters of leftist struggle in Iraq [9] ought to be channelled into a unified energy placed at the service of working women and men alike, of hand and of mind. I renew my call for the necessity of uniting leftist and progressive forces, across their various factions and currents, and for strengthening joint action among them.

Glory and eternal memory to the martyrs of the Iraqi and Kurdistani leftist movement in all its factions, foremost among them the martyrs, women and men, of the Communist Ansar. The left, in all its factions, will remain the shining human hope in the face of the corruption and authoritarianism prevailing in Iraq, both sustained by the notorious system of ethnic and sectarian power-sharing.

This text was written on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the founding of Al-Nasir Al-Shuyu’i newspaper (literally, “The Communist Kurdishpartisan”)[10], to which I wish continued success in documenting this legacy of struggle and passing it on to new generations.

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Explanatory Notes

[1] The Communist Ansar (Partisans) movement: A militant and armed formation founded by the Iraqi Communist Party in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan starting in the late 1970s, to confront Ba’athist repression through armed struggle after overt political activity had become impossible inside the cities. It brought together thousands of militants, women and men, who were forced to leave their cities for the liberated mountain areas.

[2] The Ba’athist regime: The regime that ruled Iraq under the leadership of the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party between 1968 and 2003, under which repression against leftists, communists, and the political opposition reached its peak, particularly under Saddam Hussein. Despite its repressive character toward communists and the opposition at home, the regime received simultaneous backing from both blocs of the Cold War. The Soviet Union supplied most of its military hardware in the 1970s under the 1972 Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation and continued arming it throughout the Iran-Iraq War of 1980 to 1988, while Western capitalist states, most notably France and West Germany, provided advanced weapons and technology, some of which was later used to manufacture chemical and biological weapons, alongside indirect American economic and intelligence support during that same war.

[3] The Bashtashan massacre: An armed attack carried out by forces of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, under the leadership of Jalal Talabani and Nawshirwan Mustafa, on the first of May 1983, with backing from the Ba’athist regime, against bases of the Iraqi Communist Party in the mountain village of Bashtashan near the Qandil mountain range. It resulted in the killing of more than one hundred and fifty party members and Ansar fighters, making it one of the bloodiest and most criminal episodes in the history of the Kurdish nationalist movement in Iraq.

[4] The Anfal campaign: A series of military operations carried out by the Ba’athist regime under Saddam Hussein between February and September 1988 against the Kurdish people in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. It comprised eight phases in which chemical weapons were used, resulting in the killing or disappearance of nearly one hundred and eighty thousand people, the destruction of thousands of villages, and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of residents. It was later recognised by a number of judicial bodies as an act of genocide against the Kurds.

[5] Khalid Ahmad Zaki: An Iraqi communist militant, born in Baghdad in 1935, who left his post as secretary of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation in London to lead an armed struggle experiment inspired by the Guevarist model in the marshes of southern Iraq in 1968. He fell in battle alongside a number of his comrades at Hor al-Ghomouka in June of that same year and later became known by the epithet “Iraq’s Guevara.” His story inspired the novel A Banquet for Seaweed by the novelist Haidar Haidar.

[6] The Iraqi Communist Party: Founded in 1934, it is one of the oldest communist parties in the Middle East and played a central role in Iraqi political and labour life throughout the twentieth century. It was subjected to repeated waves of repression under successive regimes.

[7] The 31 March Organization: One of the largest underground organisations of the Iraqi Communist Party operating inside Iraqi cities during the 1980s. It worked under extremely difficult clandestine conditions amid relentless surveillance by the Ba’athist security apparatus.

[8] The Badinan sector: A geographic area in the Kurdistan region of Iraq that served as one of the most important theatres of activity for the armed Communist Ansar movement. The Independent Fifth Company and the First and Second Battalions of the Communist Ansar were active in this sector.

[9] Iraqi leftist parties: Alongside the Iraqi Communist Party, the Iraqi leftist landscape includes other organisations, among them the Kurdistan Communist Party, the Iraqi Communist Party (Central Command), the Iraqi and Kurdistan Worker-Communist Party, the Communist Alternative Organization, the Communist Left Party, and others. These organisations differ in their history and ideological orientations, but all share a common belonging to Iraq’s leftist and communist field.

[10] Al-Nasir Al-Shuyu’i newspaper (literally, “The Communist Partisan”): A periodical published by the League of Iraqi Communist Ansar. Its inaugural issue (Issue Zero) appeared in July 2021, with the aim of documenting the history of the Communist Ansar movement and passing on its legacy of struggle to new generations, particularly the youth of the 2019 Tishreen uprising. It includes testimonies, articles, and archival material written by the Ansar themselves about their experience both in the mountains and in the cities.