Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party – Iraq Region in the context of "17 July Revolution"

The Ramadan Revolution, also referred to as the 8 February Revolution and the February 1963 coup d'état in Iraq, was a military coup by the Iraqi branch of the Ba'ath Party in February 1963 that overthrew the prime minister of Iraq, Abdul-Karim Qasim in favour of a Ba'athist government. The coup was followed nine months later by a counter coup that saw the removal of the new government and a purging of Ba'ath Party members.

The most powerful leader of the Ba'athist government that emerged from the coup was the secretary general of the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, Ali Salih al-Sa'di, who controlled the National Guard militia and organized a massacre of hundreds—if not thousands—of suspected communists and other dissidents following the coup. Qasim's former deputy, Abdul Salam Arif, who was not a Ba'athist, was given the largely ceremonial title of president, while prominent Ba'athist general Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr was named prime minister.

Neo-Ba'athism is a far-left variant of Ba'athism that became the state ideology of Ba'athist Syria, after the Arab Socialist Ba'ath party's Sixth National Congress in October 1963. As a result of the 1966 Syrian coup d'état launched by the neo-Ba'athist military committee led by Salah Jadid and Hafez al-Assad, Ba'ath party's Syrian regional branch was transformed into a militarist organization that became completely independent of the National Command of the original Ba'ath Party.

Neo-Ba'athism has been described as a divergence from Ba'athism proper that had gone beyond its pan-Arabist ideological basis by stressing the precedent of the military and purging the classical Ba'athist leadership of the old guard, including Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar. The far-left neo-Ba'athist regime in Syria, which was influenced by various Marxist ideological schools, espoused radical leftist doctrines such as revolutionary socialism abandoned pan-Arabism, sought to strengthen ties with the Soviet Union, and came into conflict with Arab nationalists such as Nasserists and the Iraqi Ba'athists, particularly Saddamists, with whom they maintained a bitter rivalry. From their seizure of power in the Syrian Arab Republic as a result of the 1963 Syrian coup d'état, neo-Ba'athist officers purged traditional civilian elites to establish a military dictatorship operating along totalitarian lines.

The Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party (spelled "Ba'th" or "Baath", "resurrection" or "renaissance"; Arabic: حزب البعث العربي الاشتراكي Ḥizb al-Ba‘th al-‘Arabī al-Ishtirākī), also referred to as the pro-Iraqi Ba'ath movement, is a Ba'athist political party which was headquartered in Baghdad, Iraq, until 2003. It is one of two parties (with identical names) which emerged from the 1966 split of the original Ba'ath Party.

In 1966, the original Ba'ath Party was split in half; one half was led by the Damascus leadership of the Ba'ath Party which established a party in Syria and the other half with its leadership in Baghdad. The two Ba'ath parties retained the same name and maintained parallel structures in the Arab world, but relations became so antagonistic that Syria supported Iran against Iraq during the bloody Iran–Iraq War; it also joined the U.S.-led coalition against Iraq in the Gulf War. The Ba'athists seized power in Iraq for the first time in 1963, but were deposed several months later. The party's regional organisation governed Iraq between 1968 and 2003, for many years under the leadership of Saddam Hussein. The Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party – Iraq Region was banned in 2003 by the Coalition Provisional Authority following the invasion of Iraq by the US and its allies. Other branches of the party have continued to operate.

Munif al-Razzaz (Arabic: منيف الرزاز; 19 December 1919 – 16 September 1984) was a Jordanian-Syrian physician and politician who was the second, and last, Secretary General of the (unifed) National Command of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, having been elected to the post at the 8th National Congress held in April 1965.

Munif relocated to Iraq in 1977 and became a leading member of the Iraqi Ba'ath. Munif was among dozens of dissidents accused of plotting against then new Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in the 1979 Ba'ath Party Purge. King Hussein had advocated for Munif's release so he can return safely to Jordan, but President Saddam Hussein adamantly refused. Munif died in 1984 during his house arrest in Baghdad. His wife and doctor claimed that he was poisoned after his medication for high blood pressure medicine was replaced. He was buried in Amman according to his only will.

The occupation of Iraq (2003–2011) began on 20 March 2003, when the United States invaded with a military coalition to overthrow Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and his Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, and continued until 18 December 2011, when the final batch of American troops left the country. While the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia were the largest contributors to the coalition, 29 other countries, such as Japan, were involved in the Iraq War in a lesser capacity. Additionally, several private military contractors took part in enforcing the occupation.

It was a period of violence and political turmoil, and saw strong foreign influence exerted on Iraqi politics. In April 2003, the fall of Saddam's government was formally marked by the establishment of the Coalition Provisional Authority, which later appointed and granted limited powers to the Iraq Interim Governing Council. In June 2004, the Iraqi Interim Government was established, ending the international armed conflict that had existed between Iraq (that is, Ba'athist Iraq) and the United States. Following the January 2005 Iraqi parliamentary election, this administration was replaced by the Iraqi Transitional Government. A year later, the Al Maliki I Government took office.

Ba'athist Iraq, officially the Iraqi Republic (1968–1992) and later the Republic of Iraq (1992–2003), was the Iraqi state between 1968 and 2003 under the one-party rule of the Iraqi regional branch of the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party. The regime emerged as a result of the 17 July Revolution which brought the Ba'athists to power, and lasted until the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The Ba'ath Party, led by Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, came to power in Iraq through the bloodless 17 July 1968 Revolution, which overthrew president Abdul Rahman Arif and prime minister Tahir Yahya. By the mid-1970s, Saddam Hussein became the country's de facto leader, despite al-Bakr's de jure presidency. Saddam's new policies boosted the Iraqi economy, improved living standards, and elevated Iraq's standing within the Arab world. However, several internal factors were imminently threatening Iraq's stability; the Sunni-dominated Ba'athist government faced Shia religious separatism and Kurdish ethnic separatism. The Second Iraqi–Kurdish War was of great concern to the government as Kurdish rebels received extensive support from Iran, Israel, and the United States. Following the 1974–1975 Shatt al-Arab clashes, Saddam met with Iranian monarch Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and signed the 1975 Algiers Agreement, ceding territory to Iran in exchange for an end to Kurdish support. With the Kurdish rebellion subsequently disadvantaged, the Iraqi military reasserted the federal government's control over Iraqi Kurdistan.

Between 1968 and 2003, the ruling Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party of the Iraqi Republic perpetrated multiple campaigns of demographic engineering against the country's non-Arabs. While Arabs constitute the majority of Iraq's population as a whole, they are not the majority in all parts of northern Iraq. In an attempt to Arabize the north, the Iraqi government pursued a policy of ethnic cleansing, killing and forcefully displacing a large number of Iraqi minorities—predominantly Kurds, but also Turkmen, Yazidis, Assyrians, Shabaks and Armenians, among others—and subsequently allotting the cleared land to Arab settlers. In 1978 and 1979 alone, 600 Kurdish villages were burned down and around 200,000 Kurds were deported to other parts of Iraq.

As a part of the Iraqi–Kurdish conflict, the campaigns represent a major chapter of the historical ethno-cultural friction between Arabs and Kurds in the Middle East. Rooted in the doctrines of Ba'athism, the Iraqi government policy that served as the basis of these campaigns has been referred to as an example of internal colonialism—more specifically described by Ghanaian-Canadian scholar Francis Kofi Abiew as a "colonial 'Arabization' program" consisting of large-scale deportations of Kurds and forced Arab settlement within the country.

Ali Salih al-Sa'di ( Arabic: علي صالح السعدي; 1928 – September 19, 1977) was an Iraqi politician. He was General Secretary of the Iraqi branch of the Ba'ath Party from the late 1950s until the November 1963 Iraqi coup d'état. From February 8, 1963 (Ramadan Revolution) until the November 1963 Iraqi coup d'état, he was deputy prime minister under Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, minister of the interior and as commander of the National Guard (Al-Haras al-Watani).

Field Marshal Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr (1 July 1914 – 4 October 1982) was an Iraqi military officer and politician who served as the president of Iraq from 1968 to 1979. He was a leading member of the revolutionary Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party and later the Baghdad-based Ba'ath Party and its regional organisation Ba'ath Party – Iraq Region (the Ba'ath Party's Iraqi branch), which espoused Ba'athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism.

Al-Bakr first rose to prominence after the 14 July Revolution, which overthrew the monarchy. In the newly established government, he was involved in improving Iraqi–Soviet relations. In 1959 al-Bakr was forced to resign from the Iraqi military; the then Iraqi government accused him of anti-government activities. Following his forced retirement, he became the chairman of the Ba'ath Party's Iraqi branch's Military Bureau. Through this office he recruited members to the Ba'athist cause through patronage and cronyism. Prime Minister Abd al-Karim Qasim was overthrown in the Ramadan Revolution (8 February); al-Bakr was appointed prime minister, and later, Vice President of Iraq in a Ba'ath-Nasserist coalition government. The government lasted for less than a year, and was ousted in November 1963.