Kamil Chadirji (1897–1968, ), also spelled Kamil al-Chadirji or Kamel al-Chaderji, was an Iraqi politician, photographer, lawyer, activist, and founder of the National Democratic Party in Iraq. He served as a member of the Chamber of Deputies of Iraq in the 1920s and 1950s. He was the father of notable modernist architect, Rifat Chadirji and political leader, Naseer al-Chaderchi. He is noted for founding the National Democratic Party with a left-wing program and was an influential political figure in political life who opposed the monarchy and pursued a social reform agenda.
Early life
Chadirji was born in Baghdad to its mayor. His family was a part of the aristocracy, with roots in Anatolia. Chaderji's father played an important role in democratic reform before British rule. During the First World War, he served in the Ottoman Army. When the British took over Iraq as Mandatory Iraq, Chadirji's family escaped to Istanbul, with Chadirji himself enrolling in the medical school there. He never graduated, and instead returned to Baghdad in 1922, following the establishment of the Kingdom of Iraq. He earned a law degree in 1925 and worked for the Municipality of Baghdad as well as for the Department of Finance, working in education.
Political career
Kingdom of Iraq
In 1925, Chadirji's reformist ideas drew him to the newly formed People's Party (Hizb al-Shab), which he joined. He joined the Ahali group, and was elected to parliament in 1927, becoming the minister of works from 1936 to 1937 under Bakr Sidqi and Hikmat Sulayman's government, resigning in protest against army interference in the government.
In 1930, Chadirji, as a member of the National Party (also known as the Ahali group), worked together with Rashid Ali, Hikmat Sulayman and Yasin al-Hashimi, the leaders of the newly created National Fraternity Party (Hizb al-Ikha al-Watani). The National Party and the National Fraternity Party issued the Coalition "Fraternal" Communique on November 23, 1930. The party was not much of an organized and legitimate political party, instead serving as an opposition from powerful Iraqi political figures to the British. Its ideals were "Immediate independence for Iraq, the evacuation of British troops, and the development of a democratic and participatory Iraqi state," and they pushed their message through their Baghdad newspaper, al-Bilad (The Country).
In 1946, Chadirji, along with other left-wing "intelligentsia" types of the landed urban bourgeoisie (the dominant tendency in these isolated urban middle and upper-class communities) organized themselves into the National Democratic Party. Previously, Chadirji and his group, made of Ahali reformists, had joined the Comintern in 1935 at the Seventh Comintern Congress in Moscow.
Chadirji was moderately anti-Zionist and advocated for strengthening the Arab League. In 1937, while serving as Economic Minister under the government of Hikmat Sulayman, Chadirji held talks with Zionist emissaries. He expressed his sympathies to the Zionist movement and his desire to reach a cooperative agreement for them. However, with the Palestinian question becoming important in Iraq towards the mid-1940s, the NDP increased its Palestine-related activity. In 1946, the Ahali Group's newspaper Sawt al-Ahali published editorials against the partition of Palestine and the creation of Israel. The NDP and other parties (including Jews), especially the Iraqi Independence Party, created the Committee for the Defense of Palestine, which organized protests in front of the American and British embassies, as well as calling for a general strike in May 1946 against Western pressure on Palestine. When the Arab-Israeli War started in 1948, Chadirji wrote and published a front-page editorial for Sawt al-Ahali titled Palestine, which called for Arab countries to come together to defend Palestine. The NDP suspended their activities voluntarily in 1948, but resumed in 1950. Due to Chadirji's will to redistribute income and achieve a more political society, he was imprisoned 2 times in the 1950s. He was sympathetic to pan-Arab ideas.
Sawt al-Ahali also served as an opposition mouthpiece. In 1949, Prime Minister Nuri al-Said had had enough of Sawt al-Ahali and its attacks, so he filed a court case against Chadirji. Chadirji arrived at the courthouse accompanied by 21 defense lawyers. Inside the court, he lectured the prosecution and the judge on democratic values. The proceedings were published in Sawt al-Ahali, and Chadirji was sentenced to 6 months of hard labor. However, the defense appealed the court ruling, and it was taken back by the court.