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Iraqi domestic politics understandably alarmed Kassem, however, and he rejected its over-bold demand for the grant of regional autonomy. That move provoked armed protest in Kurdistan and by the autumn of 1961 serious fighting had broken out in the north, engaging the army in a campaign of repression. The leader of the most important Kurdish group, Mulla Mustafa Barzani, a long-time opponent of the Baghdad government, returned to the field with his
peshmerga
guerrillas, who were to become a permanent cause of internal disorder during Kassem’s period in power and under Saddam.
    Kassem’s most dedicated opponents, however, came from thegroups apparently closest to him, the Arab nationalists and the army. His foreign policy pleased both, for he reasserted Iraq’s rights over Iran’s in the Shatt el-Arab and he revived the claim to Kuwait, so menacingly in June 1961 that Britain, Kuwait’s traditional protector, was prompted to send an expeditionary force to the emirate, from which it had only just been withdrawn. Because so much of the Iraqi army was committed to Kurdistan, Kassem was unable, however, to respond with a corresponding military deployment to the Kuwait border. At British representation, the Arab League, to which all Arab states belonged, recognized Kuwait as an independent country and on the withdrawal of the British troops replaced them with others of their own, largely drawn from the army of the United Arab Republic (Egypt and Syria).
    Kassem’s response was to remove Iraq’s representation from the Arab League and to break off relations with several Arab states that had recognized Kuwait’s independence. These were empty gestures. Within Iraq the Free Officers and other nationalists, and the Ba’ath, took the view that he had humiliated Iraq, left it isolated in the Arab world and, most critically of all, caved in to British imperialism.
    The Kuwait affair left Kassem in a precarious position. Outwardly he retained his popularity; his use of oil revenues for the general good, particularly by the improvement and expansion of the electrical and health care system, was widely welcomed and his reduction of the rights enjoyed by the Iraq Petroleum Company was seen as proper and patriotic; but his hold on power was maintained only by a balancing act. Believing he was accepted as ‘Sole Leader’ by the masses, he had failed to protect himself by creating a real network of power groups loyal to himself. Other power groups, covert and conspiratorial, resented his refusal to position Iraq at the centre of the Arab nationalist movement and his determination to pursue a policy of ‘Iraq First’. He had already survived several attempts to unseat him: a crude conspiracy led by the returned Rashid Ali in 1958, a rising in the north in 1959 and an assassination attempt in October of that year, in which the young Saddam Hussein had fired on his car. The decisive stroke, however,was to be launched by the Ba’ath, now a well-established and efficient force in Iraq’s unofficial politics. Its leaders, particularly Kassem’s former confederate Arif and Brigadier Hasan al-Bakr, were dissatisfied by Kassem’s isolation of Iraq within the Arab world and by his dependence on the Communists for support. They also hated his insouciant belief in his own popularity as a safeguard of his personal security. That was perceptive. Kassem, though apparently aware that trouble was brewing, merely arrested some of the leading Ba’athists. He did not deploy dependable units of the army to protect himself. On 9 February 1963 others in the Ba’ath struck against the air force, which was loyal to Kassem and also had Communist connections. Meanwhile they brought their supporters into the streets in Baghdad and sent army units they controlled to the Ministry of Defence. Had Kassem armed the Communists he might have survived but he disdained to do so. In the prolonged street battle that followed he and his supporters were eventually