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Iraq's history already
written
By K Gajendra
Singh
US chief administrator L Paul Bremer
unveiled Iraq's 25-member governing council in Baghdad
on Sunday. It now looks like the beginnings of the rule
by the British Governor Sir Percy Cox in the 1920s,
after the British had carved out three provinces of the
Ottoman empire after its collapse in World War I. After
a long national resistance, King Feisel II - of a
British-appointed dynasty - and his prime minister,
Nuri-as Said, were overthrown and killed in a 1958
military takeover.
The new council (1) replacing
Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath Party regime consists of 13
Shi'ite Arab members ( who form nearly 60 percent of
Iraq's 24 million population but who had for many years
been excluded by the Sunni elite), five Sunni Arabs,
five ethnic Sunni Kurds, who have lived in autonomous
north Iraq since 1991, one Turkoman and one Assyrian
Christian. The council includes three women and some
tribal leaders. But it is not yet clear whether the
council will have one leader, or some kind of a joint or
rotating leadership.
The council will have some
political muscle, such as the power to name ministers
and approve the 2004 budget, but the occupying powers,
the US-British Coalition Provisional Authority, which
the United Nations essentially was forced to recognize
through force majeure, will retain the ultimate
power in Iraq until a constitution is drafted, approved
and elections held.
Before the war, the US and
Britain made tall promises of almost instant democracy,
but Bremer, who arrived in May, rejected an earlier
proposal to hold a national conference to name an
interim government, saying that the country was not yet
ready. He instead proposed an advisory body, which upset
many politicians, especially exiles such as Chalabi, the
erstwhile blue-eyed boy of the US, who had been promised
an interim government. The deteriorating security
situation and an increasingly restive and sullen Iraqi
population, has brought about the present dispensation.
A positive note seems to be that some lessons
have been learnt by the US neo-conservatives, who still
rule Iraq from the Pentagon like Mongol warlords from
their ordu yurts ( army camps). This is the
advice given by UN special representative Sergio Vieira
de Mello, a former High Commissioner for Refugees, who
has all along insisted that it was essential that the
council had some "popular legitimacy" to give it
credibility among the Iraqi public. Perhaps only fuller
participation by the UN might save the situation from
getting completely out of hand - with a reported 10
attacks a day taking place against occupying troops.
During World War I, Britain promised freedom to
the Arabs and encouraged them under Hashemite ruler
Sharif Hussein in Mecca to revolt against the
Sultan-Caliph in Istanbul (and deputed spy T E Lawrence
to guide them ). But the war's end did not bring freedom
to the Arabs as promised because, at the same time, by
the 1916 secret Sykes-Picot agreement, the British and
French had arbitrarily divided the Sultan's Arab domains
and their warring populations of Shi'ites, Sunnis,
Alawite Muslims, Druse and Christians. The French took
most of greater Syria, dividing it into Syria and
Christian-dominated Lebanon. The British kept Palestine,
Iraq and the rest of Arabia.
Britain also denied
Kemal Ataturk's new Turkish republic the oil-rich
Kurdish areas of Mosul and Kirkuk, now in northern Iraq
. Turkey has never really relinquished its claim and
interest in regaining Kirkuk. The British had propped up
oil-rich Kuwait, traditionally ruled by Ottoman pashas,
in Basra to throttle Iraqi access to the Persian Gulf .
The 1917 Balfour Declaration had promised a homeland for
Jews in Palestine and European Jews had started
emigrating to Palestine. After World War II, the state
of Israel, carved out of British Palestine, was not
recognized by the Arabs and there have been three wars
between Israel and Arabs and two intifadas by a squeezed
and repressed Palestinian people.
After taking
over Iraq, the British debated whether to rule it
directly, as they did in India and as advocated by the
Colonial Office, or, as promised before the war to
Arabs, grant them freedom and rule indirectly. But
events in Syria forced the British hand. Early in 1920,
Emir Feisel established an Arab government in Damascus
and was proclaimed king of Syria, and a group of Iraqi
nationalists in Damascus then proclaimed his elder
brother, Emir Abdullah, king of Iraq. From Syria
nationalist activities and agitation spread first to
northern Iraq and then to the tribal areas of the middle
Euphrates. By the summer of 1920, the revolt had
extended everywhere except the big cities of Mosul,
Baghdad and Basra, where British forces were stationed.
The revolt was suppressed by force, in which Indian
troops played a role.
In July 1920, French
authorities, who had been given a mandate over Syria and
Lebanon, claimed Syria and chased out Feisel. To
reconcile the Iraqi masses and to meet the clamor in
London to get out of Mesopotamia, in 1921 Britain
offered the Iraqi throne to Feisel, with an Arab
government under British mandate. He accepted the offer
on condition that the Iraqi people agreed to it in a
plebiscite, and that the mandate was replaced by a
treaty of alliance. The British government accepted
this. A provisional Arab government declared Feisel king
of Iraq on July 11, 1921, provided that his "government
shall be constitutional, representative and democratic".
A plebiscite confirmed this proclamation, and Feisel was
formally crowned king on August 23, 1921.
The
next step was the signing of a treaty of alliance with
Great Britain and the drafting of a constitution. The
treaty was signed on October 10, 1922 and valid for 20
years, but it reproduced most of the provisions of the
mandate. Britain was to offer advice on foreign and
domestic affairs, such as military, judicial, and
financial matters (defined in separate and subsidiary
agreements) and prepare Iraq for membership in the
League of Nations "as soon as possible". But it was soon
apparent that the mandate was still in existence and
that complete independence had not been granted. There
was strong opposition to the treaty in the press and
among the people.
The period of the treaty was
then reduced to four years, but the constituent assembly
demanded complete independence when the treaty was put
before it for approval, but it was ratified on June 11,
1924 after Britain warned that the matter would be
referred to the League of Nations, dominated by European
colonizer nations.
The constituent assembly then
adopted the constitution, called the Organic Law, in
July 1924, with extensive powers for the king, and it
went into effect on March 21, 1925. It provided for a
constitutional monarchy, a parliamentary government and
a bicameral legislature. The control exercised by the
British treaties was seen by the Iraqi people and their
leaders as an impediment to their aspirations and
inimical to the economic development of Iraq. The
impossibility of government by the dual authority of the
mandate was called a "perplexing predicament"
(al-wad' ash-shadh). In 1929, Britain announced
that the mandate would be terminated in 1932 and a new
treaty of independence negotiated. A new government
headed by General Nuri as-Said negotiated for Iraq 's
independence.
The main objective of the
political parties was the termination of the mandate and
independence. It was achieved in 1932, but air bases for
British troops were granted near Basra and west of the
Euphrates, and Iraq was admitted to the League of
Nations.
While King Feisel was away in
Switzerland, there was an Assyrian uprising in 1933 in
which many hundreds were killed. The king died soon
after this of a heart attack and his young and
inexperienced son became King Ghazi. This led to a
period of palace intrigues, media wars and tribal
uprisings. A non-aggression pact, called the Sa'dabad
Pact, between Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Iraq, was
signed in 1937. In 1939, shortly before the outbreak of
World War II, King Ghazi was killed in a car accident,
and his son Feisel II ascended to the throne. As Feisel
was only four years old, his uncle, Emir Abdullah, was
appointed regent and he ruled for the next 14 years.
Shi'ite resistance
After the breakup
of the Ottoman empire, in which power had rested with
Sunni Arabs, Shi'ites in south Iraq welcomed the British
for having liberated them from the yoke of Sunni Ottoman
oppression. But by 1918 it was clear that the British
had not come to leave in a hurry. So, led by two
sheikhs, Mohammed Taqi Shirazi and Abul Hasan Isfahani,
the Shi'ites began their opposition. Fatwas were issued
against the appointment of the non-Muslim Sir Percy Cox
as the governor of Iraq. The whole Shi'ite south erupted
in a revolt when in 1920 it appeared that the British
mandate granted by the League of Nations would mean
their continued rule. It was subdued with great
difficulty and Shi'ites remained implacably opposed to
the British, even after they put King Feisel on the
throne with a timetable for independence.
In
1922, Shi'ite leaders issued fatwas against
participation in the elections. Following disturbances,
many clerics were expelled, although some leading ones
left on their own for Qum in Iran. However, the expected
revolt did not take place, but the major leaders were
only allowed to return in 1924.
After that
Shi'ite opposition became more and more muted, and only
when an anti-Shi'ite book was published or anti-Shi'ite
measures were taken by the government did unrest occur.
With more participation in politics by Shi'ites the role
of religion decreased and senior clerics became less
active. The cabinets always had one or two Shi'ite
members, with Salih Jabr and Sayyed Muhammed as Sadr
even becoming prime ministers. After the overthrow of
the monarchy in 1958, politics became more secular,
nationalistic and socialist.
When World War II
started, pro-British prime minister General Nuri was
persuaded from not declaring war against Germany. After
the fall of France and under the influence of pan-Arab
leaders, extremist Iraqi leaders wanted to free Syria
and Palestine. They also did not cooperate with the
British and did not allow British troops to land in
large numbers. When British contingents entered from the
Persian Gulf and Habbaniyah air base in April 1941 the
armed conflict that followed with Iraqi forces lasted
for a month, which the British eventually won. This
earned them the use of transportation and communication
facilities and a declaration of war on the Axis Powers
in January 1942. Many Iraqis were dismissed from the
armed forces, some were interned, and four were hanged.
Iraq's political system remained unstable, with
more than 50 cabinets and 10 general elections before
the abolition of the monarchy in 1958. It was a
tumultuous time, with politicians using even armed
forces as pressure against each other until finally they
took over in 1958 and abolished the monarchy.
Another new beginning
The 25-member
governing council's first action was announced by member
Mohammed Bahr al-Uloum, who declared April 9 as a new
national holiday, the day that Saddam's statue was
brought down in Firdaus square, led by exiled Iraqis
flown in a few days earlier with help from a US armed
troop carrier.
But tapes purporting to have been
made by Saddam keep appearing, nobody appears to know
whether he is alive or dead . Al-Uloum, a Shi'ite
cleric, said that the council would work to revive the
economy, improve security and restore public services.
It will also begin work on a new constitution.
The UN representative, Vieira de Mello, called
Sunday's meeting a first step in returning sovereignty
to the Iraqi people, but the people on the streets feel
that the council, handpicked and backed by America,
won't change anything as the US will prevail - just like
the British did all those years ago.
Notes
(1) The council
members are: Ahmed Chalabi, founder of the Iraqi
National Congress, Shi'ite; Abdelaziz al-Hakim, a leader
of the Supreme Assembly for the Islamic Revolution,
Shi'ite; Ibrahim Jafari, al-Da'wah Islamic Party,
Shi'ite, Nasir Chaderchi, National Democratic Party,
Sunni; Jalal Talabani, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan,
Sunni Kurd; Massoud Barzani, Kurdistan Democratic Party,
Sunni Kurd; Iyad Alawi, leader of the Iraqi National
Accord, Shi'ite; Ahmed al-Barak, human rights activist,
Shi'ite; Adnan Pachachi, former foreign minister, Sunni;
Aquila al-Hashimi, a female foreign affairs expert,
Shi'ite; Raja Habib al-Khuzaai, female maternity
hospital director in the south, Shi'ite; Hamid Majid
Moussa, Communist Party, Shi'ite; Mohammed Bahr
al-Uloum, cleric from Najaf, Shi'ite; Ghazi Mashal Ajil
al-Yawer, northern tribal chief, Sunni; Mohsen Abdel
Hamid, Iraqi Islamic Party, Sunni; Samir Shakir Mahmoud,
Sunni; Mahmoud Othman, Sunni Kurd; Salaheddine
Bahaaeddin, Kurdistan Islamic Union, Sunni Kurd;
Younadem Kana, Assyrian Christian; Mouwafak al-Rabii,
Shi'ite; Dara Noor Alzin, judge; Sondul Chapouk, a
woman, Turkoman; Wael Abdul Latif, Basra governor,
Shi'ite; Abdel-Karim Mahoud al-Mohammedawi, member of
the Iraqi political party Hezbollah, Shi'ite;
Abdel-Zahraa Othman Mohammed, al-Da'wah Party, Shi'ite.
K Gajendra Singh, Indian ambassador
(retired), served as ambassador to Turkey from August
1992 to April 1996. Prior to that, he served terms as
ambassador to Jordan, Romania and Senegal. He is
currently chairman of the Foundation for Indo-Turkic
Studies.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online
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