The Experience of the Iraqi Communist Partisans (Ansar)... An Honorable Struggle in the History of the Left

The experience of the Communist Ansar[1] in Iraq remains one of the most remarkable and honest experiences of communist struggle in Iraq s modern history. Every struggle carries both positive and negative aspects, and no human or political endeavor is exempt from this reality, however upright its integrity or lofty its aims. Yet this experience, despite the debate and differing views surrounding some of its aspects, stands as living testimony that leftist thought is capable of producing some of the most remarkable and genuine models of struggle even under the harshest and darkest of circumstances. It embodied a magnificent example of sacrifice, self-abnegation, 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 Baathist regime[2].

The Communist Ansar movement was distinguished by the fusion of its fighters from diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds: Arabs, Kurds, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Syriacs, Turkmen, and Faili Kurds, alongside Armenians; Sunni and Shia Muslims, Christians, Mandaean Sabians, Yazidis, and Shabaks; men and women alike, all melded into a single crucible governed by a profound internationalist spirit. Ethnicity and religion carried little weight in the consciousness of those communists, for it was class identity and internationalist belonging that formed the true bond between them. In this way, the movement embodied a living model of fraternity among the components of the Iraqi people.
This internationalist character left a lasting impression on the inhabitants of the Kurdish villages, who came to understand that their true enemy was the Baathist regime and its repressive policies, not Arabs as a nationality, in contrast to the narrative that certain hardline nationalist forces on both sides tried to promote, one that reduced the conflict to a narrow ethnic dimension. The movement also achieved a notable historic first, as the Nasirat, its communist women fighters, literally "female Ansar", bore arms for the first time in the history of armed struggle in Kurdistan, taking part alongside their comrades in every battle and every task of the resistance. The presence of women in combat left a deep impression 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 envision themselves as active agents in public life.
Among the most painful chapters of this journey is 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 a hundred 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 Baathist regime against the population of the Kurdistan region. It claimed the lives of more than a 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 movement suffered a severe decline, after losing its popular base in the villages that the campaign had destroyed and whose inhabitants it had displaced, forcing many of its fighters to withdraw toward safer areas or seek refuge in neighboring Iranian and Turkish territory.
Before the experience of the Communist Ansar took the shape we know today, 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, and his experience remained etched in the memory of the Iraqi left, later inspiring literary and artistic works that documented that rare moment in the history of the Iraqi left.
Any assessment of the Ansar experience and of armed struggle, along with all the various experiences and forms of leftist struggle, must be grounded in historical context. Although I hold reservations today about armed struggle as a method of resistance, the conditions of that period, under the fascist Baathist regime s savage assault on the left and other progressive forces, left, in my judgment, no option other than taking up arms, if only in self-defense against repression and elimination, and to help bring down the dictatorship of that time.
I turn here to my own personal experience with this movement. I am honored to have been among those who took part in it, through my activity within the underground organizations of the Iraqi Communist Party[6] inside Iraq between 1983 and 1990, as a member of the March 31st Organization[7], one of the party s largest underground organizations, in which I had the honor of taking part in the leadership. It brought together dozens of comrades from across Iraq. The organization was initially linked to the Ansar movement through the Fifth Independent Battalion, and at times through the Third Battalion or directly with the Badinan sector[8].
We were, to a large extent, the “underground Ansar,” providing the Ansar movement with continuous support through intelligence and information on the movements of military and security forces, procuring weapons, equipment, medicine, and documents, facilitating movement within the cities, and helping smuggle threatened comrades out to the liberated areas, in addition to agitation work and political and organizational work inside the cities. We also made ongoing secret visits to the Ansar s military bases to meet with the comrades responsible for overseeing the party s organizations.
Whatever position we hold today toward 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 the worldwide socialist struggle, alongside other experiences that traveled the same path in different contexts: from the rebels of the Sierra Maestra 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; passing through the Greek People s Liberation Army, which resisted the Nazi occupation before waging a bitter civil war against a Western-backed right, and the Dhofar rebels in Oman, who fought, between 1965 and 1976, one of the longest armed leftist revolutions in the Arabian Peninsula in defense of social justice and against the British colonial presence; and on to the leftist resistance movements across Europe during the Second World War, from the French, Italian, and Danish 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 criticism. Yet they all share a common truth: that the left, when confronted with genocide and 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 conclusion, the spirit of sacrifice and dedication embodied by the experience of the Communist Ansar, and by other chapters of leftist struggle in Iraq[9], ought to be channeled into a unified, active energy placed at the service of the working women and men of hand and mind alike. I renew my call for the necessity of renewing and uniting the leftist and progressive forces, across their various factions and currents, and of strengthening joint action among them.
Glory and eternal memory to the martyrs of the Iraqi and Kurdish leftist movement in all its factions, and foremost among them the martyrs, women and men, of the Communist Ansar. The left, in all its factions, will remain humanity s shining hope in the face of the corruption and authoritarianism prevailing in Iraq, both sustained by the notorious system of ethnic and sectarian power-sharing in Baghdad, and by familial-tribal rule in the Kurdistan region.
This text was written in a brief, preliminary form and published in Al-Nasir Al-Shuyu i[10] newspaper on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of its founding, to which I wish continued success in documenting this legacy of struggle and passing it on to new generations, with my great appreciation for its role as one of the important leftist platforms in Iraq.
This text was published in full in English, and is available in dozens of other languages, on the international left website ZNetwork: https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-experience-of-the-iraqi-communist-partisans-ansar-an-honorable-struggle-in-the-history-of-the-left/
Explanatory Notes
[1] The Communist Ansar movement: A militant and armed formation founded by the Iraqi Communist Party in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan. It had limited military activity in earlier stages, though its large-scale, organized form began in the late 1970s, to confront Baathist repression through armed struggle after open political activity inside the cities had become impossible. It brought together thousands of militants, women and men, who were forced to leave their cities for the liberated mountain areas.
[2] The Baathist regime: The regime that ruled Iraq under the leadership of the Arab Socialist Baath 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 domestically, the regime enjoyed simultaneous support from both opposing camps 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 1980-1988, while Western capitalist states, most notably France and West Germany, supplied 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, led by Jalal Talabani and Nawshirwan Mustafa, on the first of May 1983, with the backing of the Baathist 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 a hundred 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 Baathist regime under Saddam Hussein between February and September 1988 against the Kurdish population in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. It comprised eight phases in which chemical weapons were used, leading to the killing or disappearance of nearly a hundred and eighty thousand people, the destruction of thousands of villages, and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants. It was later recognized by a number of judicial bodies as an act of genocide against the Kurdish people.
[5] Khalid Ahmad Zaki: An Iraqi communist militant, born in Baghdad in 1935, who left his position 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 was killed in battle along with a number of his comrades at Hor al-Ghomouka in June of that same year, and was later known by the epithet "Iraq s Guevara." His story inspired the novel A Banquet for Seaweed by 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 labor life throughout the twentieth century. It was subjected to repeated waves of repression under successive regimes.
[7] The March 31st Organization: One of the largest underground organizations affiliated with the Iraqi Communist Party inside Iraqi cities during the 1980s. It operated under extremely difficult clandestine conditions, under the relentless security surveillance of the Baathist regime.
[8] The Badinan sector: A geographic area in the Kurdistan region of Iraq that constituted one of the most important arenas of activity for the armed Communist Ansar movement. The Fifth Independent 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 organizations, among them the Kurdistan Communist Party, the Iraqi Communist Party (Central Command), the Worker-communist Party of Iraq and Kurdistan, the Communist Alternative Organization, the Communist Left Party, and others. These organizations differ in their history and ideological orientations, but all share a common belonging to the Iraqi 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.

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