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A year ago the Communists were the masters of Baghdad's streets, lords of the Iraqi press and radio, the wire-pulling bosses controlling the country's peasant, student and labor unions. Suspicion was that they could take over the country whenever they wished.

The Communists are still a major force in the ill-disciplined life of post-revolutionary Iraq. But today in Baghdad people no longer talk of an impending Communist takeover. Overaggressive Red tactics have wearied public opinion. Though Premier Karim Kassem still accepts Communist support to balance off pro-Nasser Arab nationalist elements, he refuses to license the regular party as a lawful political entity. In Basra, once a Communist citadel, authorities have jailed about 100 Communist labor leaders on charges of misappropriating union funds. Last week the Court of Cassation forbade the Communist-run Democratic Youth League permission to open new branches in Baghdad.

Wailed the Communist daily Ittihad al-Shaab: "Why are most of the democratic organizations being so persecuted and so many labor and peasant union leaders rounded up?" As Communist power has weakened, moderate forces in the government, the army and the professions have gained strength, and some who suffered heavily under savage Red attacks after the revolution have met with a turn in their fortunes. Last week Premier Kassem commuted the death and life sentences of twelve top officials of the old monarchic regime.

Most notable beneficiary was Fadhil Jamali, one of the free world's strongest friends in the Middle East, who, as Foreign Minister and U.N. delegate, long represented and spoke for the late great and hated Nuri asSaid. Reported tortured and murdered by a street mob during the bloody 1958 revolution, Jamali turned up bruised but alive in a military jail. Tried as a traitor before Baghdad's infamous People's Court, he was sentenced to hang, a sentence commuted last week to ten years' imprisonment.

At week's end the Communist-run Peace Partisans staged a big parade.

Flanked by Indonesia's peripatetic President Sukarno, Kassem watched from a special reviewing platform, but the crowd was not so large as in the Partisans' parade a year ago. In open distress, the Communist-line newspaper Al-Hadhara beseeched Kassem for support: "A few words from you will set everything right again." A year ago, the Communists would not have had to ask.

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