The Iraq War

by John Keegan

  Little wonder, therefore, that he was to find it difficult to establish the legitimacy of Hashemite authority over the old land between the two rivers. In the eyes of Iraqi nationalists he was too closely associated with the British; to Kurds and Shi’a he depended too heavily for domestic support on his comrades of the Arab Revolt, who were overwhelmingly Sunni and often former officers of the Ottoman army. Under the mandate constitution Iraq became notionally a democracy, with an elected parliament; but the franchise was indirect and the vote consistently manipulated both by the British and the royal government to assure a compliant majority. Manipulation ensured that the constituent assembly, forerunner of the national parliament, voted in 1922 to ratify an Anglo-Iraqi treaty giving Britain executive authority over the foreign and security policies of a nominally co-equal Iraqi kingdom.

  Britain’s desire to secure the passage of the treaty was greatly assisted by two extraneous factors, one of which was to persist in importance – apparently in perpetuity. The first was Turkish intervention in Iraqi affairs. The new Turkey, since the collapse of Ottomanism, was an ethnically exclusive Turkish state, but it retained territorial ambitions. They included that of incorporating northern Iraq’s oil-bearing regions, with their Kurdish population, into Turkish national territory. Britain was unwilling to see Iraqi territory ceded to a foreign power, even though its holdings in the Turkish Petroleum Company (soon to be the Iraq Petroleum Company) would ensure its access to the oil reserves. Iraqis of most communities recognized that acquiesence in the passage of the treaty offered the best means of blocking Turkish predation. The second factor was Kurdish rebellion. Seeing in Turkey’s intervention an opportunity to further their ambition for independence, some Kurds rose against the mandate administration, forcing the British first to stage a costly campaign of repression and then to install the chief Kurdish strongman as regional governor. The expedient did not endure. Shaikh Mahmud, the new governor, rapidly demonstrated that he intended to make himself Kurdish King, forcing the British to take military action in Kurdistan again, which resulted in Mahmud’s flight to Iran.

  Turkish aggression and Kurdish rebellion had the combined effect, paradoxically, of bringing about the settlement Britain sought. Because the southern Shi’a themselves were simultaneously refusing co-operation in the passage of the treaty, their religious chiefs judging that it threatened their privileges, both the King and the Sunni leaders were brought to conclude that acceptance of the treaty, repugnant as they found it, was a lesser evil. Without it they could not count on British support and without that support they risked losing the north and the south becoming a chronically dissident region. The King meanwhile announced important electoral concessions which granted the Shi’a notables a commanding position in the projected parliament. The result was that a constituent assembly was successfully convened in March 1924 which ratified the treaty and led swiftly to the election – by indirect and carefully controlled means – of a sovereign parliament later that year.

  The independent Iraqi government, nominal as its independence was, swiftly declared its position on two key points of policy. It sought to raise a conscripted national army and it pressed repeatedly for a declaration by the British of a date at which the mandate would be surrendered, allowing Iraq to become a full – and so fully independent – member of the League of Nations. In the first policy it was only partially successful. Conscription, which recalled the bad old days of Ottoman imperialism, was deeply unpopular with the Iraqi people; moreover, the British did not believe that the Iraqi treasury could afford the cost of a large army. The new Iraqi army which emerged was therefore neither to be a conscript force nor as large as the court, dominated as it was by ex-Ottoman officers, wished. Over the termination of the treaty the government was more successful. In 1929 a new British administration, formed by the Labour Party, more sympathetic to nationalist aspirations in the territories for which it held responsibility overseas than the Conservatives, promised independence by 1932. Its implementation was dependent on the Iraqis agreeing provisions acceptable to Britain. That condition was achieved thanks to the political skills of the new Iraqi prime minister, appointed in March 1930, Nuri al-Sa’id. Nuri, who was to dominate Iraq until the fall of the monarchy in 1958, was an archetype of the Arab leader in the late colonial era. A traditionalist, he was pro-Western for strictly realistic reasons, but sincerely patriotic. As an ex-Ottoman officer, but a member of the al-‘Ahd association of Arab nationalists, he had excellent credentials as a military leader but was also quickly able to demonstrate governmental capacity. His wider vision was of an Arab world dominated by states under Hashemite leadership; his domestic policy was for Iraq to be ruled by a military administration which held popular loyalties by wise distribution of its oil wealth.

  The British liked Nuri and he appeared to like them. Under his premiership it was therefore not difficult to negotiate a new Anglo-Iraqi treaty that would form the basis for emergence from mandate status. Its key provisions were that, while full responsibility for external defence and the maintenance of internal order should be vested in the Iraqi government, the British should be given rights of military transit through Iraq if necessary, while two bases, including the great air base at Habbaniyah, should remain in British hands. That presumed Britain’s right to maintain the Iraq Levies as a base protection force. The treaty was ratified, after Nuri had called a general election to endorse his policy, in November 1930. Predictably the Kurds objected, protesting that it did not meet the obligations allegedly undertaken by the British to protect their special status, but the rebellion was put down, with British help. In October 1932 Iraq was admitted to the League of Nations as a sovereign and independently governed state.

  Independent Iraq was destined, during the first twenty-six years of its existence, to be neither a democratic polity nor a truly autonomous state; the achievement of democracy, indeed, was to elude its people long beyond 1958. Domestically, Iraqi politics during the years of the Hashemite monarchy were to be the arena of élites, of which the urban Sunni grandees and landowners were to be the most active, grouped into parties which frequently re-formed and changed their names. The more successful parties, such as al-Ikha, also, however, included representatives of the better-educated and more prosperous Shi’a. The role of the parties was to preserve the élites’ privileges, particularly by the denial of all but the most modest land reform and by monopolizing access to paid government appointments. Behind the parties, at all times, stood the army, whose officers were cultivated by the court and who could assert their power at any time when regional or minority disorder threatened, as it frequently did in Kurdistan, the authority of the centre. Many of the officers were originally Sharifian, having risen to prominence under the Hashemites during the Arab Revolt. The most important group formed the Circle of Seven, an inner grouping of four the Golden Square. Nuri al-Sa’id did not belong but remained nonetheless a permanent and dominant political figure, frequently in power as Prime Minister and, even when not, the rock on which royal rule rested.

  Externally, Iraqi politics were constrained by the continuing fact of British power in the Middle East, which persisted even after the grant of independence to India in 1947 and the withdrawal from Palestine in 1948. The Royal Navy controlled the Gulf and Indian Ocean, while the British army maintained garrisons, directly or indirectly, in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Libya until the mid-fifties. During the Second World War the Middle East was base area for the largest of Britain’s overseas garrisons. As Nuri al-Sa’id recognized, British power had therefore to be accommodated at all times. He was content that it should be, since he regarded the British as most dependable guarantors of the power of the Hashemites, to which he was committed. Nuri was conscious of the growing power of Arab nationalism, particularly in Egypt and Syria, and he was himself a supporter of the idea of pan-Arabism; but he hoped that a unified Arab polity would emerge in a monarchical form under Hashemite leadership. He was also disturbed by the ris
e of Jewish power in Palestine and, after 1948, became an active opponent of Zionism, while fearing the effects that militant anti-Zionism would have on stable Arab societies. At heart he was an Iraqi patriot, of a moderate and pro-Western cast of mind. For all his undeniable political skills, his essentially traditionalist attitude would eventually doom him to defeat by younger Arabs possessing fiercely anti-Western, anti-Zionist, anti-capitalist beliefs.

  Economically Nuri was a modernizer who would seek, through the investment of Iraq’s growing oil revenues, to better the lot of the people and to improve the resources and efficiency of the state. He was not helped by the characters of the monarchs he had to serve, or by the monarchy’s erratic fortunes. Faisal, a charming and intelligent man, died in 1933. He was succeeded by Ghazi, whose vaguely pan-Arab and anti-British feelings attracted support from nationalists; he associated himself too closely with Sunni favourites, however, to foster national unity. His reign, like his father’s, was brief (1933–39), ended by a car crash. He was succeeded by his son, also Faisal, but, as he was only three years old at his accession, the monarchy became a regency, exercised by Prince Abd al-Ilah, brother of the infant King’s mother. Abd al-Ilah, who was to be Regent until 1953, shared Nuri’s pro-British outlook but unfortunately did not possess his political subtlety. His main interest lay in securing the future of the Hashemite dynasty, of which he saw the British as the best guarantors. That priority separated him from the Arab nationalist officers of the army – a force of increasing size, 41,000 by 1941 – whom he farther alienated by failing to disguise the social disdain he felt for them.

  That was bad politics. The officer corps, which had staged a minor coup d’état in 1936 to bring about a change of cabinet, was now the effective force in the country; no government could be formed without its approval and any government was obliged to promote the policies it favoured, pan-Arabism and, increasingly, friendship for the totalitarian régimes of Western Europe foremost. Matters came to a head in 1941. The Regent had attempted to reassert the principle of civilian control, with the object of strengthening the connection with Britain, by appointing his chief courtier, Rashid Ali al-Kailani, as Prime Minister, with Nuri as his Foreign Minister. The move was less well-judged than it appeared. Rashid Ali, like many Arab politicians of the period, admired Hitler and Mussolini and expected their victory. He also resented Britain’s preponderant role in Iraqi affairs, which the outbreak of the Second World War had emphasized. Britain demanded strict adherence to the Anglo-Iraqi treaty and, in particular, confirmation of its right to move troops through the country. By the end of 1940 Britain was also demanding Rashid Ali’s removal. He was determined not to resign and, during early 1941, set in train a series of events which led to the flight of the Regent and Nuri to Transjordan and to a military coup d’état. A new Regent was installed, Rashid Ali reappointed as Prime Minister and, when the British insisted on extracting permission to send troops into the country, a military confrontation staged outside the British base at Habbaniyah.

  A curious little campaign then ensued. While Britain organized an intervention, to be launched from India and Transjordan, the Habbaniyah garrison attacked the Iraqi forces deployed outside the base on 2 May. The attackers consisted largely of RAF aircraft, which bombed and strafed the Iraqi ground troops to great effect; they were supported by a battalion of the Iraq Levies and two companies of the King’s Own Royal Regiment. Startled by the strength of the British resistance, the Iraqis fell back on Baghdad. Meanwhile Rashid Ali had indicated to Germany that he would welcome assistance and some thirty German aircraft, staging through Vichy French Syria, arrived at Mosul. The appearance of Habforce, the column that had driven across the desert from Transjordan, consisting of mechanized units of British Cavalry and the Arab Legion, settled the issue. Rashid Ali and his supporters fled, the Germans withdrew. By June the Regent and Nuri had returned and a pro-British government was restored; in the interregnum, however, disgruntled nationalists had vented their anger at the British intervention on the Baghdad Jewish community, killing over 200. This farhud was the precursor of events which, in 1950, would cause almost all Iraq’s 100,000 Jews to leave for the new state of Israel, thus ending a presence of over two thousand years and one of the richest minority cultures to be found anywhere in the Middle East.

  The restoration of 1941 was a restoration not merely of the legitimate regency, but also of the primacy of Nuri al-Sa’id. With intermissions, he was to hold the premiership thenceforth until 1958, making Iraq, in outward appearance, one of the most stable states in the Middle East. Internal problems persisted, particularly those of Kurdish separatism and of Shi’a discontent, caused by the persistent denial to the Shi’ite majority of the political power their numbers demanded. Nuri had also to deal with the problem of a growingly important Communist movement, strongly supported by the Soviet Union, and with nationalist hostility to the establishment and consolidation of the Israeli state. He found means, however, to placate or diffuse internal dissent, to contain the Communists and to persuade the nationalists of his anti-Israeli credentials.

  His most substantive anti-Israeli gesture was the despatch of Iraqi troops to fight Israel during its war of independence (1948–49). In 1948 a contingent of 18,000 was sent to Transjordan (soon to be Jordan) to defend the annexed Palestinian West Bank. Its intervention was successful but Iraq was later accused by Egypt of operating too passively, acting merely as a defender of Jordanian territorial acquisitions and failing to mount an offensive which might have diverted Israel from its conquests of Galilee and the Negev. Nevertheless the Iraqi contingent was for a time the largest Arab force in Palestine, a commitment which invested Nuri with influence in the attempts to negotiate a postwar settlement. His solution was to recognize the existence of Israel in return for its surrender of much of the territory conquered during the war. It was rejected by all parties and the great powers as well, a reaction which provided him with the opportunity to bring the Iraqi troops home.

  Nuri’s principal initiative to limit the Communist political threat, and the influence of the Soviet Union, was his creation of the Baghdad Pact in February 1955. It came at the end of a disturbed period in domestic politics which had seen him often out of office, manipulating power from the sidelines rather than as head of government. In 1948 he had renegotiated the Anglo-Iraq Treaty of 1930 in what ought to have been a popular move; the Portsmouth Treaty was judged by many, however, still to concede too much to the old mandate power. During 1954, when premier once again, he was attracted by the example of Turkey and Pakistan, who had entered into a mutual assistance treaty. Nuri first succeeded in bringing Turkey to sign a similar agreement with Iraq, later extended to include Pakistan, Iran and Britain. The signing of the Baghdad Pact, besides creating a formidable anti-Soviet bloc in the region, also had the effect of cancelling out the domestic harm done by the Portsmouth Treaty, since by it Britain agreed at last to surrender its rights at Habbaniyah and other bases in Iraq without securing other concessions from Iraq.

  The signing of the Baghdad Pact was greeted with enthusiasm in the West; though the United States was not a signatory, it associated itself with Britain’s commitment to equip and train the Iraqi armed forces. Nuri, however, either failed to see or chose to ignore its negative effects at home. The Soviet Union, as a self-proclaimed anti-imperialist force in the world, was regarded as a friend and ally by most Arab nationalists, particularly the younger officers in most Arab armies and above all by the Free Officers who had overthrown the Egyptian monarchy in 1952. Because Nuri believed that his relationship with Iraq’s generals ensured his control of the army, he seemed indifferent to the growth of an undercover Free Officer movement in its junior ranks. Communist subversion was what worried him; and, from his resumption of the premiership in 1954 onwards, he conducted a campaign of repression against the Iraqi Communist Party, but also against all dissidents, wherever disorder or its threat was evident. He was also, meanwhile, attempting to invest Iraq’s growing
oil revenues, so as to raise the level of general prosperity, create work and increase material wealth.

  The trend of events, however, was against him. Nuri was now increasingly seen as a figure of the past. The Arab Revolt and the overthrow of Ottomanism no longer seemed the central events of modern Arab history, as they had done to the ageing generation of Sharifian officers who had ridden with Lawrence of Arabia. The younger generation looked to leaders untainted by association with the British and French, who had won their spurs in the war against Israel, even at the cost of defeat in the field, and who saw the Soviet Union as a better source of support for a united Arab nation than the old régimes of the West. Egypt’s Colonel Nasser was their beau idéal. He was outspokenly anti-Western, pragmatically pro-Soviet and a champion of Arab independence in every form. His nationalization of the Suez Canal won him adulation throughout the Arab world. When it provoked France and Britain to conspire with Israel in an attack on Egypt in November 1956, even Nuri aligned himself with Arab protest, breaking off relations with France and excluding Britain from meetings of the Baghdad Pact. However, he also took action against anti-Western street protesters in the major cities and displayed in other ways his continuing pro-Western stance.

  His opponents responded by forming a National Front in February 1957, combining the older domestic parties and the Communists with the new Ba’ath (Renaissance) Party, a secular and modernizing organization founded in Syria in the previous decade by the Arab Christian Michel Aflaq. The Front quickly established close connections with the Iraqi Free Officers movement, an undercover organization which modelled itself on the Egyptian Nasserists. Nuri again failed to detect or else ignored these developments, apparently believing that his management of Iraqi foreign policy during the Suez crisis had secured his domestic position. In June 1957 he retired from the premiership once more, though continuing to control the government from behind the scenes. He remained ostensibly outside politics until March 1958 when, following the union of Egypt and Syria in a United Arab Republic (UAR), he resumed the premiership, on this occasion as head of an Arab Union of Iraq and Jordan, hastily formed as a riposte to the creation of the UAR in the last days of the previous administration.