And now, we move to the Kingdom of Iraq.
The Kingdom of Iraq established in historical Mesopotamia, that area
between the two great rivers of the Euphrates and the Tigris.
But, these great rivers do not serve as the Nile
does in Egypt as an artery of very effective centralized government.
In Egypt, where everybody almost lives along the Nile, that
is not true in Iraq of the Euphrates and the Tigris.
And, there are mountains in the north, populated very much by the Kurds.
There's swampy region in the south populated predominantly by the Shi'ites.
So, this is a country which was much more difficult
to rule in a unified form than Egypt ever was.
The Shi'is in Iraq, under the Ottomans, were suspected of loyalty
to Shi'ites Persia and were never really regarded as loyal Ottoman subjects.
Never integrated into the state, and the Shi'is
themselves wanted no part of the Ottoman system.
They didn't send their children to Ottoman schools.
They didn't serve in the military or in
the bureaucracy and the Shi'is essentially lagged behind the
Sunnis to the North, who were more exposed and
more involved in the 19th century reforms and modernization.
The Shi'is were discriminated and underprivileged.
An underclass the remained uneducated, less economically developed, and living in
the underdeveloped south, the very far, distant perimeter of the Ottoman Empire.
But, Iraq was the birthplace of Shi'i, and the most holy places of Shi'i
are there in Iraq In Najif, in Karbala, and in Kadhimiya which is in Baghdad.
The influence of Shii men of religion is
especially powerful in the Shiite tradition, moreso than in Suni Islam.
And, the Hashemite arrangement In Iraq, which eventually failed,
as opposed to the Hashemite arrangement in Jordan which succeeded.
The Hashemite arrangement in Iraq, which failed,
was seemingly the most promising when it began.
Actually, the Hashemite arrangement in Trans-Jordan looked much more difficult
to implement, but [UNKNOWN] in Jordan Created Jordan from scratch.
It was much easier to create Jordan in the
image that Abdullah and the British desired than was possible
in Iraq with all the problems that it had
from the moment it was created as we will see.
In the case of Iraq, it was very much the opposite to the case in Trans Jordan.
From the very beginning, the Hashemites had
to deal with the most unwieldy existing situation.
The existing reality in Iraq, evntully destroyed
the Hashemites, who were overthrown in 1958.
Iraq was made up of three Ottoman Vilayets, three Ottoman provinces.
The Provinces of Basra, Baghdad, and Mosul.
And, it is these three that were lumped together to form the Kingdom of Iraq.
Mosul originally was supposed to be part of the French Mandate in Syria.
But, in order to obtain British agreement for the
French occupation of Lebanon and Syria, the French, as
we have seen, compromised in Palestine, they compromised in
Iraq too, and gave Mosul over from Syria to Iraq.
The population of Iraq, approximately 3 million in the early 1920's, was made
up from ninety percent of Muslims, with small minorities of Jews and Christians.
That looks, on the face of it, rather promising, but it wasn't really.
The Muslims were made up of Sunnis and Shis and it was the Shis who
were actually the majority, with a ratio of some seven to five more or less.
But of the Sunnis, half were Kurds and not Arabs.
So, you have a very complicated reality in Iraq.
A Shi'ite majority with a Sunni minority, and the Sunni minority divided into two.
Partly Arab, partly Kurdish.
While the Shi'ites were part of the Arab majority but, not Sunni.
Baghdad was the main city, the capital where the
population of 200,000 but, with a very large Jewish minority.
In fact, the Jews in Baghdad, 80,000 of them, were the largest ethnic group in
Baghdad, because the other 120,000 who were
the majority were divided between Sunni and Shia.
But, people in Iraq in the early 1920s
didn't define themselves, or identify themselves, as Iraqi.
Most people did not identify themselves as Iraqis but, rather
by their sect, by their ethnicity, or by their tribe.
Very few people thought of themselves as Iraqis.
But, the British created Arab Iraq in the name of Arabism which was not a
shared value for very many of the people who became part of this Arab state.
The Sunni Arabs, who are already about a quarter
of the population, did identify quite strongly with Arab nationalism.
But, the Shiite Arabs did not.
The Shiite Arabs generally saw Arab
nationalism as a Sunni device for supremacy.
And the Kurds, who were Sunnis, we're not Arabs and
certainly didn't share in the idea of an Arab state.
In 1920, from July to October, there was a revolt in Iraq.
And, there are those who tried to explain the revolt in terms of
notions borrowed from Arab nationalism as if this was an Arab nationalist revolt.
But in fact, it was in the main reaction
of the Shi'i tribes to the new reality in Iraq.
The Shi'i tribes rose in revolt,
because of their hostility to the British, deeply
encouraged by the men of religion, many of whom
were actually Persian in origin with no loyalty either
to the state of Iraq nor to Arab nationals.
And, as Elie Kedourie, the British Iraqi historian has put it,
in fomenting an anti-British rising in 1920, the Shi'ite divines no doubt
hoped to gain and establish ascendancy for their community in a
country where the Shi'ites were the majority, albeit hitherto a powerless one.
It is difficult to say whether the failure of the uprising or the
importation of Faisal and his men which followed it was to them more galling.
The Hashemites in Baghdad, at all events, spelt renewed Sunni dominance.
For them, for the Shiades that is that, the government in Baghdad that was now
imposed upon them, was a creature of
the British and an instrument of Sunni persecution.
Different from its ottoman predecessor only in that is was without benefit.
Of longtime legitimate possession, and that its rule did not
derive from conquest, but was bestowed upon it by the British.
So, said Elie Kedourie about Iraq.
But, that was not all.
Aside from Shiite disapproval of the new
order in Iraq, there was the Kurdish problem.
The Kurds were now in the uneasy situation of
becoming a minority in an Arab Iraq, whereas under
the Ottomans, they had been part of the ruling
majority which was Sunni Muslim, just as they were.
So, the Kurds were these unhappy new members of this Iraqi state in which they
were striving for at least autonomy and
if not, even secession from the state altogether.
As opposed to the Shiites, who did not wish to secede.
After all the Shiites wanted to dominate Iraq.
The Kurds were very much prone to secession.
But Iraq, despite the Kurdish problem, despite the Shiite majority,
Iraq was ruled under Sunni Arab predominance for decades.
Faisal, the Hashemite prince, was installed as the king of Iraq
in 1921 with a referendum that was carefully stage-managed by
the British to desired result of popular Iraqi approval.
And, the dominant political elite of Hashemite, Iraq was strongly similar.
Between 1921 and 1936, 71% of the ministerial posts were held by Sunnis
and only 24%, and mostly minor posts at that, were held by Shi's.
In 1928, among the 88 deputies elected to
the Parliament in Iraq, only 26 were Shias.
In 1946, only three of 80 senior officers of the
Iraqi military were Shias, and all the rest were Sunnis.
The British however were relatively liberal when
it came to the question of independence.
The British understood the Revolt of 1920.
To be an Arab nationalist revolt, meaning that they
must move quickly to accord in the Iraqis' political independence.
And indeed, in the treaty signed in 1922,
Britain devolved more responsibilities to the Iraqi government.
In a new treaty that was signed in
1930, which further restricted British powers, Iraq became independent.
And, Iraq was admitted into the League of Nations in 1932 and it
was the first Arab to be a member of the League of Nations.
But before his death, Iraq's first ruler King Faisal, who died in 1933.
Noted that in Iraq there is still no Iraqi people but, unimaginable masses
of human beings, devoid of any patriotic ideal, imbued with religious
traditions and absurdities, connected by no common tie, giving ear to evil, Prone
to anarchy, and perpetually ready to rise against any government whatsoever,
so said the first King of Iraq about his country.
[BLANK_AUDIO]
The British Historian, Elie Kedourie, who we have already mentioned, summarize the
history of Iraq as follows: From the very foundation then, of the Iraqi kingdom,
there was this nagging feeling that it was a make-believe kingdom, built on
false pretenses and kept going by British design, and for a British purpose.
The new Arab states that were created
in this fashion had, of course, questionable legitimacy.
And as a result, you had a reality where independence movements in
countries like Syria, Iraq, and Transjordan
were fighting for the independence of states.
When they did not really believe in the right
of these states to actually exist as independent entities.
And therefore, the great appeal of Arab unity,
and of all sorts of unity schemes, such as
those of the Hashemites, the Iraqi Hashemites, to
unite the fertile crescent, which was to unite Iraq
And Syria, with Jordan and with Palestine and
Lebanon in one big Arab country, where at long
last the Sunnis would be the majority and
overcome their problem of the Shi'ite majority in Iraq.
Abdalah had his own ideas of Greater Syria which meant
a union between Is Syria and Lebanon, and Transjordan and Palestine.
Which would of course have him as the King of Greater Syria sitting in Damascus.
And then of course, there were in later years
the Ba'ath party in Syria and the Ba'ath party
in Iraq and Abdel Nasser who emerged as the
President of Egypt, as we will see later on.
Who were great supporters, of pan-Arab unity.