4.4.3 The British Mandates The Kingdom of Iraq

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.