The Iraq War Read Online Free PDF Page A

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 importantgroup 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