who wanted to take Iraq into the United Arab Republic (UAR). They objected to Qasim's apparently pro-Kurdish attitude and his friendliness towards Mustafa Barzani in particular. Qasim and Mulla Mustafa had developed a close relationship, as Qasim saw in Barzani a powerful military ally that he could employ as a counterweight to the pan-Arab nationalists, who, he feared, threatened to subvert Iraq to Nasser's Egypt. Qasim had officially named him Chairman of the KDP (a position he held on paper since the party's founding), gave him one of Nuri as-Said's old residences in Baghdad, an automobile, and a "handsome monthly stipend" (salary). Mulla Mustafa would prove his loyalty in March 1959, where he helped Qasim suppress a serious uprising in Mosul of pan-Arab nationalists and Ba'athist officers – at the behest of Mulla Mustafa, Kurds, in tandem with the Communists (also led by a Kurd) attacked Mosul wreaking havoc on Nationalists and Baathists and killing as many as 2,500 people in four days. While the Communists and Kurds settled scores, Qasim used the revolt as a pretext to purge Nationalists and Baathists from the Iraqi armed forces and government. Qasim used an almost identical event that July, but this time in Kirkuk, as a pretext to act against the KDP's closest allies, the Communists. In 1959 half of the 150,000 population of Kirkuk was Iraqi Turkmen, with the balance comprising Kurds, Arabs, Assyrians, and Armenians (in that order). Mulla Mustafa's triumphal visit to the city the previous October had resulted in bloodshed, but this time killings were carried out by Communist and Kurdish members of a group called the "Popular Resistance Force", who attacked shops and their owners. As many as 50 Turkmen were killed. Qasim held the Communists responsible and claimed to have uncovered plans for a similar action in Baghdad. During the next few months, Mulla Mustafa helped Qasim reduce the ICP and there was open conflict in Iraqi Kurdistan between the KDP, backed by Kurdish tribesmen, and the Kurdish Communists. Meanwhile, an ideological rift developed in the KDP between the intellectual and leftists Ibrahim Ahmad and Jalal Talabani on the one hand, and Mulla Mustafa and the Barzanis on the other. Mulla Mustafa "talked freely, with a bitterness amounting to hatred, against the... intellectual presumptuousness of the KDP politicians, singling out Ibrahim Ahmad for his particular dislike". While Ahmad complained of Mulla Mustafa's "selfishness, arbitrariness, unfairness, tribal