Abdul Rahman Arif

Biography

Abdul Rahman Arif was born in Baghdad in 1916 and made his career as an officer in the Iraqi army, which he joined in 1939. He supported the 1958 coup that overthrew the monarchy and the November 1963 coup that brought his younger brother, Abdul Salam Arif, to power, after which his brother made him head of the army.

When Abdul Salam died in an air crash in April 1966, the military preferred the older brother to the civilian prime minister Abdul Rahman al-Bazzaz, and Abdul Rahman Arif became Iraq's third president. A follower of Nasser like his brother, he survived a coup attempt by the air force commander Arif Abdul Razzak, whom he then pardoned. His army suffered a heavy defeat by the Kurds at Mount Handren in 1966, and al-Bazzaz's peace plan for Kurdistan was cut short when officers forced Arif to dismiss him.

Arif sought better relations with the United States, but the Arab defeat in the Six-Day War of 1967 led Iraq to break off ties with Washington and weakened his government; he also served as his own prime minister in 1967–68. On 17 July 1968 members of his own staff and the Ba'ath Party removed him in a bloodless coup and sent him into exile in Turkey. He returned to Iraq in 1979, kept out of politics, moved to Amman after the 2003 invasion and died there in 2007.