Fattah H., Caso F. A Brief History Of Iraq

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF IRAQ

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publication were opened wide, bringing in their wake better-informed

audiences who sparked lively discussions in coffeeshops and majalis

(literary salons presided over by important patrons). Meanwhile, the

private initiative that established literary and cultural clubs catering to

Muslims, Christians, and Jews also spawned charitable organizations

such as orphanages and small training programs for the poor.

By the 1900s, too, the inﬂ uence of the more sharia-minded, literalist

religious leadership had waned, even as the more spiritual Suﬁ brother-

hoods had strengthened under imperial patronage. Religious schools

that provided the basics of an Islamic education to young boys (and

some girls) had lost their appeal; modern Jewish and Christian schools

and missions had begun to attract not only children from their own

community but, later on, Arab Muslims as well. In the south and cen-

ter, a great movement of re-Islamization took place incorporating the

tribes and urban communities that lived on the peripheries of the Shii

shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala. This movement inculcated the prin-

ciples of a renewed Shii mission among the roaming, as well as settled,

population of greater Basra. In the 1880s, Sultan Abdulhamid II took

notice and proposed the dispatch of Sunni preachers and the institu-

tion of schools to combat the upsurge of Shii reeducation of both the

settled and tribal population. Meanwhile, a large, well-organized, and

militant mystic brotherhood, the Naqshbandiya fraternity, emerged out

of Kurdistan, eventually spreading into every corner of Islamic Asia.

The latter part of the 19th and early part of the 20th centuries are

also associated with the institution, by government as well as private

agents, of large technological and economic projects such as the estab-

lishment of steamship companies, the telegraph, a tramway in Baghdad,

and the misnamed Baghdad-Berlin Railway, which actually extended to

the Gulf. The opening of Baghdad’s ﬁ rst “European” artery, later to be

called Rasheed Street, was planned in the waning days of the empire;

it was the ﬁ rst straight street between north and south and entailed

numerous negotiations between Ottoman valis, merchants, British

consuls, and shippers before it ﬁ nally materialized. Meanwhile, a more

pronounced effort to renovate and streamline the port of Basra so that

it would provide more capacity for larger ships was begun but not ﬁ n-

ished by the time of World War I.

Late Ottoman Iraq was a work in progress that would remain unﬁ n-

ished for a variety of factors, some of them being the overall lack of

trained administrative personnel, the ready availability of funds, and

the wherewithal to put ideas into practice. Good valis had great ideas

that they initiated with gusto but that languished when the ﬁ nancing

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IMPERIAL ADMINISTRATION, LOCAL RULE, AND OTTOMAN RECENTRALIZATION

stopped. Agricultural projects were started, literacy gained pace, streets

were widened, and infrastructural schemes were set in motion. But it

was too little, too late. Whatever the desires of reformist governors were

in theory, in practice the last years of Ottoman Iraq were years of lost

opportunities and unfulﬁ lled expectations on the part of the govern-

ment and the people alike.

A railroad construction camp on the Baghdad-Berlin Railway, which actually extended from

Baghdad to the Persian Gulf, in the ﬁ rst decade of the 20th century

(Library of Congress)

154

BRITISH OCCUPATION AND

THE IRAQI MONARCHY

(1914–1958)

llied with Germany and Austria-Hungary as the Central Powers

during World War I (1914–18), the Ottoman Turks were defeated,

and as a result, the empire was overthrown internally. Iraq came under

British occupation. The occupation was later modiﬁ ed to a British

Mandate, and Britain was tasked by the League of Nations to guide Iraq’s

transition to independence. Iraq attained full independence in 1932 and

joined the League of Nations as a sovereign state, even though Britain

retained a proprietary interest in Iraq’s development. From 1932 to 1958,

the country was ruled by a monarchy originally from the Hashemite fam-

ily in the Hijaz (western Arabia). In 1958, a bloody coup overthrew the

monarchy and installed the ﬁ rst of many republican regimes.

Although most histories of the nascent Iraqi state conﬁ ne themselves

to a strictly political narrative, it is worth noting that the era of the

Iraqi monarchy also saw the beginnings of cultural and social move-

ments of great originality and depth. All of these movements coexisted

in a burgeoning political era when, at least under the monarchy and in

the ﬁ rst few years of the republic, explorations in freedom and literary,

artistic, and cultural self-expression were anchored in broad social and

economic engagements that arose out of the working conditions and

economic situations of the majority of Iraqis. This chapter will explore

these themes brieﬂ y.

The British Campaign Against the Ottomans in

Iraq and the Birth of the Mandate (1914–1920)

The story of Iraqi independence begins, paradoxically enough, with

its incipient development under colonialism. World War I saw the

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BRITISH OCCUPATION AND THE IRAQI MONARCHY

emergence of two military alliances, one comprising Britain, France,

and Belgium; the other, Germany, Austria, and Ottoman Turkey.

However, Britain and France fought on two fronts: Europe and the

Middle East. Britain’s interest in the Ottoman Empire and the greater

Middle East as a whole had been nurtured for more than a century. On

the strategic front, the British coveted Iran, Iraq, and the Gulf because

they acted as a buffer to British India by protecting India’s western ﬂ ank.

Economically, British interests in Iran grew in direct correlation to the

rise of Iranian oil production. Meanwhile, sightings of oil in northern

Iraq conﬁ rmed that the territory had great potential value in the future.

For those reasons, the British (and the French) were intent on striking

wartime deals with Arab and Middle Eastern allies to subvert Ottoman

Anbar

A BRIEF HISTORY OF IRAQ

156

inﬂ uence from within, thus achieving their political and economic

objectives in the process.

Certain sectors of Iraqi society were affected by Arab nationalism;

they sought independence from Ottoman rule especially after the

Young Turk period saw a revival of a pan-Turkish ideal that mini-

mized Arab contributions to the empire. The Young Turks’ program

was a European-inﬂ uenced reform movement against the autocratic

rule of Sultan Abdulhamid II begun in the late 19th century and that

culminated with the Revolution of 1908, which centered on restor-

ing the constitution and involved nationalist army ofﬁ cers. During

the war, the class of notables of the Arab provinces of the Ottoman

Empire largely stayed on the sidelines if they did not actively side

with the Ottomans. Only a small but inﬂ uential class of intellectuals,

Arab ofﬁ cers trained at Ottoman military schools, and key members

of the landholding and merchant class attempted to work actively

for change. Making expedient alliances with the British and French,

they began an inchoate but eventually united movement to win inde-

pendence from the Ottoman Empire. Knowing their weaknesses and

relying on the strengths of other countries, Syrians, Iraqis, and Hijazis

negotiated both with the British and the French in order to receive

arms, money, and training to defeat their Turkish overlords. The Arab

Revolt, spurred on by a Hijazi notable descended from the House of

the Prophet, Sharif Hussein bin Ali (1855–1931), became the chief

symbol of anti-Ottoman resistance in 1916, which spread from Arabia

to Syria to what was to become Transjordan. Signiﬁ cantly, the major

group in support of Sharif Hussein’s campaign against the Turks was

drawn from the Iraqi-born Ottoman ofﬁ cers who had seceded from

the army to join his ranks.

It was the British attack on southern Iraq, however, that galvanized

the Ottoman front in the East. The British completed the ﬁ rst stage

of the war against Ottoman Turkey after Indian Expeditionary Force

“D” occupied Basra on November 22, 1914. Having secured the access

routes to the Abadan oilﬁ elds in southwest Iran (in which the Anglo-

Persian Oil Company had a big stake) and reassured their Arab shaykh

allies in the Gulf of their commitment, the British then decided to take

on the capital, Baghdad. Lulled into complacency by the Ottomans’ lack

of a serious defense of Basra, the British War Ofﬁ ce, India Ofﬁ ce, and

Foreign Ofﬁ ce gave conﬂ icting advice to their general command in the

ﬁ eld to continue upriver and invest the Iraqi capital as soon as possible.

Much to British chagrin, the Ottomans rallied; at the famous battle of

Kut, the Ottoman army surrounded the British forces of Major General

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BRITISH OCCUPATION AND THE IRAQI MONARCHY

Charles V. F. Townshend and besieged them for 140 days until the lat-

ter, depleted of resources and on the edge of starvation, surrendered

unconditionally on April 29, 1916.

Eventually, a new British commander, General Sir Frederick S.

Maude, began a painstaking attempt to retake central Iraq, and his

patience and skill produced results. Defeating hastily called tribal

armies and plotting his strategy with care, Maude and his forces entered

Baghdad as a “liberating” army on March 11, 1917. After he died in Iraq

of cholera, Maude’s place was taken over by yet another British general

who continued to push northward. Despite the armistice with Ottoman

Turkey, which came into effect on October 30, 1918, the British were

able to bully the Ottoman general in northern Iraq to withdraw his

troops from Mosul after the end of hostilities. Although Mosul’s status

within Iraq was not legally settled until 1924, the British incorporated

the city within their rapidly expanding sphere of control in a de facto

sense. By 1918, the British had occupied most of the country from

south to north and east to west the Ottomans had been defeated, and

Iraq was now on the cusp of a new era.

Despite British military successes, however, their political problems

had just begun. During the Mesopotamia campaign, a civil adminis-

tration for Iraq was established in paciﬁ ed areas. Based on the Indian

administrative model, it was tempered by indirect control, a novelty

that did not sit well with many British administrators, accustomed as

they were to the direct government of the Indian masses (Sluglett 1976,

16–17). U.S. president Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points for a new

world order (ﬁ rst promulgated before the U.S. Congress in January

1918 and then at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference) and his focus on

the right of self-determination had rendered outright imperialism an

archaic and immoral practice. Points 5 and 12 of Wilson’s program

directly affected British policy in the Middle East. Point 5 declared: “A

free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial

claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in deter-

mining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the popula-

tions concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of

the government whose title is to be determined.” More speciﬁ cally for

Iraq, point 12 stated: “The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman

Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationali-

ties which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted

security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autono-

mous development.” Thus, British administrators were forced to revise

their road map to Iraqi rule.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF IRAQ

158

British troops march into Baghdad on March 11, 1917, more than a year and a half before

the surrender of the Ottoman Empire.

(The Granger Collection, NY)

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BRITISH OCCUPATION AND THE IRAQI MONARCHY

GENERAL SIR FREDERICK S.

MAUDE’S PROCLAMATION TO

THE PEOPLE OF BAGHDAD,

MARCH 11, 1917

eneral Maude’s proclamation upon his entry in Baghdad has

been published and republished several times since it was ﬁ rst

read in 1917. Especially in the wake of the Anglo-American occupa-

tion of Iraq in 2003, it has been invoked by newspaper columnists,

historians, and ordinary readers alike to depict the folly of going to

war to occupy another country of which the colonizer knows nothing

and making extravagant promises only to break them all, one by one.

It reads in part:

. . . [O]ur armies do not come into your cities and lands as con-

querors or enemies, but as liberators. . . . [Y]our citizens have

been subject to the tyranny of strangers . . . and your fathers and

yourselves have groaned in bondage. Your sons have been carried

off to wars not of your seeking; your wealth has been stripped

from you by unjust men and squandered in different places. It is

the wish not only of my King and his peoples, but it is also the

wish of the great Nations with which he is in alliance, that you

should prosper even as in the past when your lands were fertile

. . . but you, people of Baghdad . . . are not to understand that

it is the wish of the British government to impose upon you alien

institutions. It is the hope of the British government that the

aspirations of your philosophers and writers shall be realized

once again, that the people of Baghdad shall ﬂ ourish, and shall

enjoy their wealth and substance under institutions which are in

consonance with their sacred laws and with their racial ideals. . . .

It is the hope of the British people . . . that the Arab race may

rise once more to greatness and renown amongst the people of

the Earth. . . . Therefore, I am commanded to invite you, through

your Nobles and Elders and Representatives, to participate in the

management of your civil affairs in collaboration with the Political

Representative of Great Britain . . . so that you may unite with

your kinsmen in the North, East, South and West in realising the

aspirations of your Race.

Source: Quoted in Robert Fisk, “The West Has Been Liberating the

Middle East for Centuries: Will We Never Learn?” The Independent,

March 7, 2003.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF IRAQ

160

The two chief administrators in Iraq in the 1920s were Sir Percy Cox

and Arnold Talbot Wilson. Both of them were gradually converted to

the idea that indirect rule meant a form of Iraqi participation, however

symbolic. Yet, their conversion had taken far too long. In 1920, shortly

after the mandate for Iraq was awarded to Britain by the League of

Nations, a large-scale, well-organized, and devastating uprising took

the British completely by surprise.

Iraq was a restive place and becoming even more so under an

arrogant and unfeeling British administration that, in Wilson’s words,

had characterized Iraqi leaders seeking independence as a “handful

of ungrateful politicians” (quoted by Lewis in Metz 1990, 34). And

while Britain’s assorted enemies in the country were not politically

integrated by any stretch of the imagination, individual leaders were

quick to realize that combating the new foreign overlord required

extraordinary and unprecedented measures. One of these measures

entailed the active solidarity of all Iraqis against the colonizer. And

so, in the years just after World War I, anticolonialist secret societ-

ies sprang up in Najaf, Karbala, Kut, Hillah, and, most important,

Baghdad. In Najaf was Jamiyat an-Nahda al-Islamiya (the League of

Islamic Awakening), whose members included tribal leaders, journal-

ists, landowners, and ulama. A second organization was al-Jamiya

al-Wataniya al-Islamiya (the Muslim National League), whose pur-

pose was to prepare the people for widespread rebellion. The Haras

al-Istiqlal (Guardians of Independence) was a Sunni-Shia coalition

made up of ulama, teachers, civil servants, merchants, and military

ofﬁ cers. Thus, when the uprising came about Sunnis, Shiis, and some

Kurds, townsmen and farmers, tribesmen, army ofﬁ cers, and civilians

came together in a historic mass movement against British rule. In

Iraq, at least, the 1920 revolt has become the stuff of legend. It had as

its backbone the Shii mujtahids (clergy) of the holy cities of Najaf and

Karbala, especially Grand Ayatollah Mirza Muhammad Taqi Shirazi

(d. 1920), who inspired the tribes of the mid- and Lower Euphrates

with a fatwa (legal opinion), as a result of which Iraqi tribesmen rose

against the British, pitting their overwhelming numbers against the

military superiority of the Royal Air Force (RAF). It was not an equal

match. Many Iraqis were killed, and it is reported that it was in this

period that the ﬁ rst use of poison gas against tribesmen was approved

by the British command (Abdullah 2003, 129). Meanwhile, pockets of

ex-Ottoman ofﬁ cers, all of Iraqi origin, engaged the British at battles

such as that of Tel Aafar in northern Iraq. Finally, in an unprecedented

show of solidarity, Sunnis and Shiis prayed at each other’s mosques in

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BRITISH OCCUPATION AND THE IRAQI MONARCHY

Baghdad, and nationalist poetry spread like wildﬁ re in both the urban

and rural districts.

The uprising of 1920 cost the British an inordinate amount of money

(almost £40 million) and incurred heavy British and Indian casual-

ties. Partly as a result of Parliament’s disquiet at the level of fatalities

incurred, as well as Britain’s fraying alliances in Iraq itself, a quick

about-face became imperative. An appointed council of Iraqi notables

headed by the elderly shaykh Abdul-Rahman al-Gailani, the head of

the ashraf (descendants of the Prophet) and a respected Sunni religious

scholar, was hastily put together after intense consultations between

the British and select Iraqis. Surprisingly, the majority of the members

of the new provisional government were Sunni; in fact, as political

historian Charles Tripp notes, “one feature of the new state structures

which became immediately apparent was the absence of any Shi’i

appointees to senior administrative positions, save in the ‘atabat (holy

cities)” (Tripp 2000, 45).

In fact, the reliance of the British on the Sunni ex-Ottoman ofﬁ cers

and notable class to the detriment of the Shii majority in Iraq became

the pattern followed by Iraqi governments for 83 years. But this lop-

sided arrangement was not yet recognized as a deﬁ nitive blueprint for

Iraq in 1921, and the broad cohesiveness of Iraqi sects and ethnicities

continued to be manifest in a united political platform. For instance,

both Sunnis and Shiis called for an Arab Islamic state governed by a

monarch bound by a constitution. Eventually, they got their wish in

the person of emir Faisal bin al-Hussein (r. 1921–33), the second son

of Sharif Hussein bin Ali, leader of the Arab Revolt in 1916. At the

Cairo Conference in 1921, convened by the colonial secretary, Winston

Churchill (1874–1965), and attended by two Iraqi participants (Jaafar

al-Askari, the minister of defense, and Sasun Hasqail, the minister of

ﬁ nance), agreement was reached on offering the throne of Iraq to Faisal

bin al-Hussein. Formerly king of Syria but expelled from that country by

the French in 1921 (France had received a League of Nations mandate

over Syria and Lebanon), Faisal was seemingly the best choice for the

post. Scion of the House of the Prophet, active participant in the Arab

Revolt, and a man who had come to terms with the British presence in

the Middle East, he was also the candidate that most Iraqis allied with

British-controlled Iraq seemed to prefer. Although the single-question

referendum that legitimized him in power was obviously manipulated

(it was claimed that 96 percent of Iraqis approved of Faisal as king),

this did not stop the British juggernaut, and Faisal became king of Iraq

on August 23, 1921.