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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Iraq
Index
A statue of a lion at Babylon
Courtesy Ronald L. Kuipers
Bas relief, Babylon
Courtesy Ronald L. Kuipers
On October 13, 1932, Iraq became a sovereign state, and it
was admitted to the League of Nations. Iraq still was beset by a
complex web of social, economic, ethnic, religious, and
ideological conflicts, all of which retarded the process of state
formation. The declaration of statehood and the imposition of
fixed boundaries triggered an intense competition for power in
the new entity. Sunnis and Shias, cities and tribes, shaykhs and
tribesmen, Assyrians and Kurds, pan-Arabists and Iraqi
nationalists--all fought vigorously for places in the emerging
state structure. Ultimately, lacking legitimacy and unable to
establish deep roots, the British-imposed political system was
overwhelmed by these conflicting demands.
The Sunni-Shia conflict, a problem since the beginning of
domination by the Umayyad caliphate in 661, continued to
frustrate attempts to mold Iraq into a political community. The
Shia tribes of the southern Euphrates, along with urban Shias,
feared complete Sunni domination in the government. Their concern
was well founded; a disproportionate number of Sunnis occupied
administrative positions. Favored by the Ottomans, the Sunnis
historically had gained much more administrative experience. The
Shias' depressed economic situation further widened the Sunni-
Shia split, and it intensified Shia efforts to obtain a greater
share of the new state's budget.
The arbitrary borders that divided Iraq and the other Arab
lands of the old Ottoman Empire caused severe economic
dislocations, frequent border disputes, and a debilitating
ideological conflict. The cities of Mosul in the north and Basra
in the south, separated from their traditional trading partners
in Syria and in Iran, suffered severe commercial dislocations
that led to economic depression. In the south, the British-
created border (drawn through the desert on the understanding
that the region was largely uninhabited) impeded migration
patterns and led to great tribal unrest. Also in the south,
uncertainty surrounding Iraq's new borders with Kuwait, with
Saudi Arabia, and especially with Iran led to frequent border
skirmishes. The new boundaries also contributed to the growth of
competing nationalisms; Iraqi versus pan-Arab loyalties would
severely strain Iraqi politics during the 1950s and the 1960s,
when Egyptian leader Gamal Abdul Nasser held emotional sway over
the Iraqi masses.
Ethnic groups such as the Kurds and the Assyrians, who had
hoped for their own autonomous states, rebelled against inclusion
within the Iraqi state. The Kurds, the majority of whom lived in
the area around Mosul, had long been noted for their fierce
spirit of independence and separatism. During the 1922 to 1924
period, the Kurds had engaged in a series of revolts in response
to British encroachment in areas of traditional Kurdish autonomy;
moreover, the Kurds preferred Turkish to Arab rule. When the
League of Nations awarded Mosul to Iraq in 1925, Kurdish
hostility thus increased. The Iraqi government maintained an
uneasy peace with the Kurds in the first year of independence,
but Kurdish hostility would remain an intractable problem for
future governments.
From the start, the relationship of the Iraqi government with
the Assyrians was openly hostile. Britain had resettled 20,000
Assyrians in northern Iraq around Zakhu and Dahuk after Turkey
violently quelled a British-inspired Assyrian rebellion in 1918.
As a result, approximately three-fourths of the Assyrians who had
sided with the British during World War I now found themselves
citizens of Iraq. The Assyrians found this situation both
objectionable and dangerous. Thousands of Assyrians had been
incorporated into the Iraqi Levies, a British-paid and
British-officered force separate from the regular Iraqi army.
They had been encouraged by the British to consider themselves
superior to the majority of Arab Iraqis by virtue of their
profession of Christianity. The British also had used them for
retaliatory operations against the Kurds, in whose lands most of
the Assyrians had settled. Pro-British, they had been
apprehensive of Iraqi independence.
The Assyrians had hoped to form a nation-state in a region of
their own. When no unoccupied area sufficiently large could be
found, the Assyrians continued to insist that, at the very least,
their patriarch, the Mar Shamun, be given some temporal
authority. This demand was flatly refused by both the British and
the Iraqis. In response, the Assyrians, who had been permitted by
the British to retain their weapons after the dissolution of the
Iraq Levies, flaunted their strength and refused to recognize the
government. In retaliation the Iraqi authorities held the Mar
Shamun under virtual house arrest in mid-1933, making his release
contingent on his signing a document renouncing forever any
claims to temporal authority. During July about 800 armed
Assyrians headed for the Syrian border. For reasons that have
never been explained, they were repelled by the Syrians. During
this time, King Faisal was outside the country for reasons of
health. According to scholarly sources, Minister of Interior
Hikmat Sulayman had adopted a policy aimed at the elimination of
the Assyrians. This policy apparently was implemented by a Kurd,
General Bakr Sidqi, who, after engaging in several clashes with
the Assyrians, permitted his men to kill about 300 Assyrians,
including women and children, at the Assyrian village of Simel
(Sumayyil).
The Assyrian affair marked the military's entrance into Iraqi
politics, setting a precedent that would be followed throughout
the 1950s and the 1960s. It also paved the way for the passage of
a conscription law that strengthened the army and, as increasing
numbers of tribesmen were brought into military service, sapped
strength from the tribal shaykhs. The Assyrian affair also set
the stage for the increased prominence of Bakr Sidqi.
At the time of independence, tribal Iraq was experiencing a
destabilizing realignment characterized by the waning role of the
shaykhs in tribal society. The privatization of property rights,
begun with the tanzimat reforms in the late 1860s,
intensified when the British-supported Lazmah land reform of 1932
dispossessed even greater numbers of tribesmen. While the British
were augmenting the economic power of the shaykhs, however, the
tribal-urban balance was rapidly shifting in favor of the cities.
The accelerated pace of modernization and the growth of a highly
nationalistic intelligentsia, of a bureaucracy, and of a powerful
military, all favored the cities. Thus, while the economic
position of the shaykhs had improved significantly, their role in
tribal society and their status in relation to the rapidly
emerging urban elite had seriously eroded. These contradictory
trends in tribal structure and authority pushed tribal Iraq into
a major social revolution that would last for the next thirty
years.
The ascendancy of the cities and the waning power of the
tribes were most evident in the ease with which the military, led
by Bakr Sidqi, put down tribal unrest. The tribal revolts
themselves were set off by the government's decision in 1934 to
allocate money for the new conscription plan rather than for a
new dam, which would have improved agricultural productivity in
the south.
The monarchy's ability to deal with tribal unrest suffered a
major setback in September 1933, when King Faisal died while
undergoing medical treatment in Switzerland. Faisal's death meant
the loss of the main stabilizing personality in Iraqi politics.
He was the one figure with sufficient prestige to draw the
politicians together around a concept of national interest.
Faisal was succeeded by his twenty-one-year-old son, Ghazi (1933-
39), an ardent but inexperienced Arab nationalist. Unlike his
father, Ghazi was a product of Western education and had little
experience with the complexities of Iraqi tribal life. Ghazi also
was unable to balance nationalist and British pressures within
the framework of the Anglo-Iraqi alliance; increasingly, the
nationalist movement saw the monarchy as a British puppet. Iraqi
politics during Ghazi's reign degenerated into a meaningless
competition among narrowly based tribal shaykhs and urban
notables that further eroded the legitimacy of the state and its
constitutional structures.
In 1936 Iraq experienced its first military coup d'etat--the
first coup d'etat in the modern Arab world. The agents of the
coup, General Bakr Sidqi and two politicians (Hikmat Sulayman and
Abu Timman, who were Turkoman and Shia respectively), represented
a minority response to the pan-Arab Sunni government of Yasin al
Hashimi. The eighteen-month Hashimi government was the most
successful and the longest lived of the eight governments that
came and went during the reign of King Ghazi. Hashimi's
government was nationalistic and pan-Arab, but many Iraqis
resented its authoritarianism and its supression of honest
dissent. Sulayman, a reformer, sought to engineer an alliance of
other reformers and minority elements within the army. The
reformers included communists, orthodox and unorthodox
socialists, and persons with more moderate positions. Most of the
more moderate reformers were associated with the leftist-leaning
Al Ahali newspaper, from which their group took its name.
The Sidqi coup marked a major turning point in Iraqi history;
it made a crucial breach in the constitution, and it opened the
door to further military involvement in politics. It also
temporarily displaced the elite that had ruled since the state
was founded; the new government contained few Arab Sunnis and not
a single advocate of a pan-Arab cause. This configuration
resulted in a foreign policy oriented toward Turkey and Iran
instead of toward the Arab countries. The new government promptly
signed an agreement with Iran, temporarily settling the question
of boundary between Iraq and Iran in the Shatt al Arab. Iran
maintained that it had agreed under British pressure to the
international boundary's being set at the low water mark on the
Iranian side rather than the usual international practice of the
midpoint or thalweg.
After Bakr Sidqi moved against Baghdad, Sulayman formed an
Ahali cabinet. Hashimi and Rashid Ali were banished, and Nuri as
Said fled to Egypt. In the course of the assault on Baghdad, Nuri
as Said's brother-in-law, Minister of Defense Jafar Askari, was
killed.
Ghazi sanctioned Sulayman's government even though it had
achieved power unconstitutionally; nevertheless, the coalition of
forces that gained power in 1936 was beset by major
contradictions. The Ahali group was interested in social reform
whereas Sidqi and his supporters in the military were interested
in expansion. Sidqi, moreover, alienated important sectors of the
population: the nationalists in the army resented him because of
his Kurdish background and because he encouraged Kurds to join
the army; the Shias abhorred him because of his brutal
suppression of a tribal revolt the previous year; and Nuri as
Said sought revenge for the murder of his brother-in-law.
Eventually, Sidqi's excesses alienated both his civilian and his
military supporters, and he was murdered by a military group in
August 1937.
In April 1939, Ghazi was killed in an automobile accident and
was succeeded by his infant son, Faisal II. Ghazi's first cousin,
Amir Abd al Ilah, was made regent. The death of Ghazi and the
rise of Prince Abd al Ilah and Nuri as Said--the latter one of
the Ottoman-trained officers who had fought with Sharif Husayn of
Mecca--dramatically changed both the goals and the role of the
monarchy. Whereas Faisal and Ghazi had been strong Arab
nationalists and had opposed the British-supported tribal
shaykhs, Abd al Ilah and Nuri as Said were Iraqi nationalists who
relied on the tribal shaykhs as a counterforce against the
growing urban nationalist movement. By the end of the 1930s, pan-
Arabism had become a powerful ideological force in the Iraqi
military, especially among younger officers who hailed from the
northern provinces and who had suffered economically from the
partition of the Ottoman Empire. The British role in quelling the
Palestine revolt of 1936 to 1939 further intensified anti-British
sentiments in the military and led a group of disgruntled
officers to form the Free Officers' Movement, which aimed at
overthrowing the monarchy.
As World War II approached, Nazi Germany attempted to
capitalize on the anti-British sentiments in Iraq and to woo
Baghdad to the Axis cause. In 1939 Iraq severed diplomatic
relations with Germany--as it was obliged to do because of treaty
obligations with Britain. In 1940, however, the Iraqi nationalist
and ardent anglophobe Rashid Ali succeeded Nuri as Said as prime
minister. The new prime minister was reluctant to break
completely with the Axis powers, and he proposed restrictions on
British troop movements in Iraq.
Abd al Ilah and Nuri as Said both were proponents of close
cooperation with Britain. They opposed Rashid Ali's policies and
pressed him to resign. In response, Rashid Ali and four generals
led a military coup that ousted Nuri as Said and the regent, both
of whom escaped to Transjordan. Shortly after seizing power in
1941, Rashid Ali appointed an ultranationalist civilian cabinet,
which gave only conditional consent to British requests in April
1941 for troop landings in Iraq. The British quickly retaliated
by landing forces at Basra, justifying this second occupation of
Iraq by citing Rashid Ali's violation of the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty
of 1930. Many Iraqis regarded the move as an attempt to restore
British rule. They rallied to the support of the Iraqi army,
which receiveda number of aircraft from the Axis powers. The
Germans, however, were preoccupied with campaigns in Crete and
with preparations for the invasion of the Soviet Union, and they
could spare little assistance to Iraq. As the British steadily
advanced, Rashid Ali and his government fled to Egypt. An armis-
tice was signed on May 30. Abd al Ilah returned as regent, and
Rashid Ali and the four generals were tried in absentia and were
sentenced to death. The generals returned to Iraq and were
subsequently executed, but Rashid Ali remained in exile.
The most important aspect of the Rashid Ali coup of 1941 was
Britain's use of Transjordan's Arab Legion against the Iraqis and
their reimposition by force of arms of Abd al Ilah as regent.
Nothing contributed more to nationalist sentiment in Iraq,
especially in the military, than the British invasion of 1941 and
the reimposition of the monarchy. From then on, the monarchy was
completely divorced from the powerful nationalist trend. Widely
viewed as an anachronism that lacked popular legitimacy, the
monarchy was perceived to be aligned with social forces that were
retarding the country's development.
In January 1943, under the terms of the 1930 treaty with
Britain, Iraq declared war on the Axis powers. Iraq cooperated
completely with the British under the successive governments of
Nuri as Said (1941-44) and Hamdi al Pachachi (1944-46). Iraq
became a base for the military occupation of Iran and of the
Levant (see Glossary).
In March 1945, Iraq became a founding
member of the British-supported League of Arab States (Arab
League), which included Egypt, Transjordan, Lebanon, Saudi
Arabia, Syria, and Yemen. Although the Arab League was ostensibly
designed to foster Arab unity, many Arab nationalists viewed it
as a British-dominated alignment of pro-Western Arab states. In
December 1945, Iraq joined the United Nations (UN).
World War II exacerbated Iraq's social and economic problems.
The spiraling prices and shortages brought on by the war
increased the opportunity for exploitation and significantly
widened the gap between rich and poor; thus, while wealthy
landowners were enriching themselves through corruption, the
salaried middle class, including teachers, civil servants, and
army officers, saw their incomes depreciate daily. Even worse off
were the peasants, who lived under the heavy burden of the 1932
land reform that permitted their landlords (shaykhs) to make huge
profits selling cash crops to the British occupying force. The
worsening economic situation of the mass of Iraqis during the
1950s and the 1960s enabled the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) to
establish deep roots during this period.
In addition to its festering socioeconomic problems, post-
World War II Iraq was beset by a leadership crisis. After the
1941 Rashid Ali coup, Iraqi politics had been dominated by the
pro-British Nuri as Said. The latter's British orientation and
autocratic manner increasingly were at variance with the liberal,
reformist philosophy of Iraq's new nationalists. Even before the
end of the war, nationalists had demanded the restoration of
political activity, which had been banned during the war in the
interest of national security. Not until the government of Tawfiq
Suwaidi (February-March 1946), however, were political parties
allowed to organize. Within a short period, six parties were
formed. The parties soon became so outspoken in their criticism
of the government that the government closed or curtailed the
activities of the more extreme leftist parties.
Accumulated grievances against Nuri as Said and the regent
climaxed in the 1948 Wathbah (uprising). The Wathbah was a
protest against the Portsmouth Treaty of January 1948 and its
provision that a board of Iraqis and British be established to
decide on defense matters of mutual interest. The treaty enraged
Iraqi nationalists, who were still bitter over the Rashid Ali
coup of 1941 and the continued influence of the British in Iraqi
affairs. The uprising also was fueled by widespread popular
discontent over rising prices, by an acute bread shortage, and by
the regime's failure to liberalize the political system.
The Wathbah had three important effects on Iraqi politics.
First, and most directly, it led Nuri as Said and the regent to
repudiate the Portsmouth Treaty. Second, the success of the
uprising led the opposition to intensify its campaign to
discredit the regime. This activity not only weakened the
monarchy but also seriously eroded the legitimacy of the
political process. Finally, the uprising created a schism between
Nuri as Said and Abd al Ilah. The former wanted to tighten
political control and to deal harshly with the opposition; the
regent advocated a more tempered approach. In response, the
British increasingly mistrusted the regent and relied more and
more on Nuri as Said.
Iraq bitterly objected to the 1947 UN decision to partition
Palestine and sent several hundred recruits to the Palestine
front when hostilities broke out on May 15, 1948. Iraq sent an
additional 8,000 to 10,000 troops of the regular army during the
course of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War; these troops were withdrawn
in April 1949. The Iraqis had arrived at the Palestine front
poorly equipped and undertrained because of the drastic reduction
in defense expenditures imposed by Nuri as Said following the
1941 Rashid Ali coup. As a result, they fared very poorly in the
fighting and returned to Iraq even more alienated from the
regime. The war also had a negative impact on the Iraqi economy.
The government allocated 40 percent of available funds for the
army and for Palestinian refugees. Oil royalties paid to Iraq
were halved when the pipeline to Haifa was cut off in 1948. The
war and the hanging of a Jewish businessman led, moreover, to the
departure of most of Iraq's prosperous Jewish community; about
120,000 Iraqi Jews emigrated to Israel between 1948 and 1952.
In 1952 the depressed economic situation, which had been
exacerbated by a bad harvest and by the government's refusal to
hold direct elections, triggered large-scale antiregime protests;
the protests turned especially violent in Baghdad. In response,
the government declared martial law, banned all political
parties, suspended a number of newspapers, and imposed a curfew.
The immense size of the protests showed how widespread
dissatisfaction with the regime had become. The middle class,
which had grown considerably as a result of the monarchy's
expanded education system, had become increasingly alienated from
the regime, in large part because they were unable to earn an
income commensurate with their status. Nuri as Said's autocratic
manner, his intolerance of dissent, and his heavy-handed
treatment of the political opposition had further alienated the
middle class, especially the army. Forced underground, the
opposition had become more revolutionary.
By the early 1950s, government revenues began to improve with
the growth of the oil industry. New pipelines were built to
Tripoli, Lebanon, in 1949 and to Baniyas, Syria, in 1952. A new
oil agreement, concluded in 1952, netted the government 50
percent of oil company profits before taxes. As a result,
government oil revenues increased almost four-fold, from US$32
million in 1951 to US$112 million in 1952. The increased oil
payments, however, did little for the masses. Corruption among
high government officials increased; oil companies employed
relatively few Iraqis; and the oil boom also had a severe
inflationary effect on the economy. Inflation hurt in particular
a growing number of urban poor and the salaried middle class. The
increased economic power of the state further isolated Nuri as
Said and the regent from Iraqi society and obscured from their
view the tenuous nature of the monarchy's hold on power.
In the mid-1950s, the monarchy was embroiled in a series of
foreign policy blunders that ultimately contributed to its
overthrow. Following a 1949 military coup in Syria that brought
to power Adib Shishakli, a military strongman who opposed union
with Iraq, a split developed between Abd al Ilah, who had called
for a Syrian-Iraqi union, and Nuri as Said, who opposed the union
plan. Although Shishakli was overthrown with Iraqi help in 1954,
the union plan never came to fruition. Instead, the schism
between Nuri as Said and the regent widened. Sensing the regime's
weakness, the opposition intensified its antiregime activity.
The monarchy's major foreign policy mistake occurred in 1955,
when Nuri as Said announced that Iraq was joining a British-
supported mutual defense pact with Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey.
The Baghdad Pact constituted a direct challenge to Egyptian
president Gamal Abdul Nasser. In response, Nasser launched a
vituperative media campaign that challenged the legitimacy of the
Iraqi monarchy and called on the officer corps to overthrow it.
The 1956 British-French-Israeli attack on Sinai further alienated
Nuri as Said's regime from the growing ranks of the opposition.
In 1958 King Hussein of Jordan and Abd al Ilah proposed a union
of Hashimite monarchies to counter the recently formed Egyptian-
Syrian union. At this point, the monarchy found itself completely
isolated. Nuri as Said was able to contain the rising discontent
only by resorting to even greater oppression and to tighter
control over the political process.
Data as of May 1988
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