Aohell

When Britain Met Iraq

The British invaded the Middle East in WWI and took control from the Ottoman Empire. Sir Arnold Wilson, the British commissioner over Iraq, saw his position's mission was to rule the Iraqis and bring them the fruits of Western Civilization. Wilson rigged a few plebiscites to make it look like the Iraqis wanted a monarchy with British support and moved his civil servants in to run the place while he searched for a suitable Hashemite to put on the throne of Iraq. When the League of Nations bestowed a mandate for Iraq to the British, a rebellion broke out. It is significant to note that the Shia and Sunni put aside their millenium-old religious divisions to unite against the British. The casualties for the Iraqi Rebellion of 1920 were 10,000 Iraqi and 3,000 British dead. British use of air power proved helpful in limiting their casualties, and the British would rely on bomber fleets to keep its colonial/mandate populations in line in subsequent actions. Both military and civilian targets were subjected to bomber raids, nearly 20 years before the German Luftwaffe bombed out Guernica. On civilian attacks, the British employed delayed-action bombs to injure or kill civilians who returned to villages after the raids had ended. One British general requested poison gas be used to suppress the 1920 rebellion, but the British put the rebellion down before commanders back in England took up the issue of using poison gas. Colonial minister Winston Churchill applauded the use of bombers as the best means of keeping the peace in Britain's far-flung empire. (Army officers said using the bombers was unsporting, but their criticism came off only as so much sour grapes at being upstaged by the air force.) Although the bombers kept the people in line, they generated tremendous anger against the British.

The post-revolt government did not include Shias, which served to perpetuate the old Ottoman prejudice against that minority group. After the 1920 revolt, Wilson was replaced by Sir Percy Cox, who was more sympathetic to Arabs. He gave them an Arab king, even though the Hashemite King Faisal wasn't from Iraq and the Iraqis never had a tradition of monarchy. Neither Faisal nor Cox had the confidence of the people and tribal groups maintained low-level conflict against succeeding governments of all kinds up to the dawn of Saddam Hussein's de facto dictatorship beginning in 1971.

During the early 20's, Britain got the province of Mosul, dominated by Kurds, attached to its Iraq mandate. It was clear the British wanted the oil concessions from Mosul province, and struck a deal with the Iraqis which happened to be very beneficial for British business interests in the region. The Kurds were rather hoping for an independent nation, not being grafted on to the polyglot mess of Iraq. They proceeded to organize opposition to British rule and their militants joined in the procession of revolts spanning the next two decades.

There were the Ikhwan raids of 1921, the Kurdish Revolt of 1922, the Ikhwan Rebellion of 1927, the Kurdish Rebellions of 1930 and 1932... all of these primarily suppressed with British bomber squadrons. Iraq became an independent country in 1932, which gave further purpose to the sectarian and tribal violence: political power was now at stake. The British supported the monarchy with officers advising their military and RAF bombers stationed in the country.

In 1936, Iraq had its first military coup - the first ever in the Arab world - and the political leader of the coup was himself murdered by the army in 1937. It became clear Iraq could only be held together as a country through force. Unfortunately for the British-supported monarchy, a rapid succession of rulers left Iraq with progressively weaker kings, up to the ascension to the throne of the toddler Faisal II in 1939. The Prime Minister Raschid Ali launched a pro-Axis coup in April 1941, forcing the pro-British regent and politicians to flee the country. British bombers in Baghdad supported loyalist troops against the rebels, helping them to hold out in Baghdad until relieved by the 10th Indian Division moving up from Basra and the Transjordan Arab Legion coming into Iraq by way of a grueling cross-desert trek. The Raschid Ali uprising had been put down with British forces by 31 May 1941, and those forces would remain in Iraq beyond the duration of the war. This identified the monarchy with foreign support and most folks in Iraq felt it had to go. (It's ironic that the US-led Coalition actually considered putting a Hashemite monarch back in charge of Iraq, thinking he'd be able to bridge the gap between Shias and Sunnis in Iraq. Given that the last time such a gap was bridged resulted in 13,000 war dead, perhaps it's best they didn't go with reinstating the monarchy.)

The British suspended normal political activity during the war and only allowed parties to form starting in 1946. Some were so outspoken in their criticism of the government, the British banned the more extreme groups. In 1948, Iraq and Britain signed the Treaty of Portsmouth, which provided a role for Britain in determining defense policy on matters of mutual interest. This triggered an anti-British revolt in Iraq. This led the government to repudiate the treaty and thence to further divisions in the government itself, which the British sought to exploit to their advantage.

In the wake of the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, Iraq faced economic dislocation and budgetary woes. A broad-based middle class revolt in 1952 was brutally repressed, forcing opposition to the government underground and into more violent planning. In 1955, Nuri as Said, the PM of Iraq, announced his plans to join the Baghdad Pact, a British-led alliance to counter Nasser's ambitions in the region. The Anglo-French-Israeli attack on Egypt in 1956 didn't help Said's popularity numbers. In 1958, the monarchy proposed a union with Jordan, which totally isolated it from the people and forced the government to step up repressive measures.

The Iraqi Army Revolt of 1958, when General Abdul Karim Kassem killed the king, effectively ended British control of Iraq's government. Britain retained interests in the area, however, which led to one further conflict with Iraq. Iraq wanted to annex Kuwait when it became an independent nation in 1960, but British troops dispatched to the tiny kingdom frustrated Iraqi ambitions. After that, the Ba'athist revolution turned Iraq inward on its own problems, or focused on Iranian-sponsored Kurdish breakaway movements.

Nevertheless, the legacy of British-dominated rule of Iraq remains a bitter memory or history lesson for Iraqis. To give further illustration of how the Iraqis might feel about British troops in their country: imagine the reaction in Hanoi or Saigon were US forces to be part of an army that toppled the government and set about installing a regime of its own choosing. Even were it to happen in 2018, 45 years after the US last had combat troops propping up a regime there, feelings would still run high on the subject. Well, 2003 is 45 years after the last British forces left Iraq. They left 41 years after their "temporary" mission to the Yugoslavia of the Middle East began when Lt. Gen. Stanley Maude captured Baghdad in 1917, saying, "Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators."