Al-Menbar Group and the Iraqi communist movement

This article, drawing on party literature and author interviews, surveys the intellectual trajectory and ideological critique of the Al-Menbar, which started as a dissatisfied group within the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) during the 1980s and subsequently emerged as a break-away faction. The Al-Menbar critique of the ICP, which it viewed as intellectually and operationally stagnant, covered the central issues of Iraqi politics, including: a discussion of the collapse of the progressive ‘National Front’ in 1979 and the consequential repression of the ICP by the Ba’th; the accelerating Iran–Iraq war; the nature of the ‘Kurdish question’ within Iraqi communist politics; and the role of the Iraqi revolutionary movement within the context of Arab politics. Finally, this article assesses the legacy of the short lifespan of Al-Menbar within the Iraqi revolutionary movement in particular, and Iraqi politics generally.