The Iraq War Read Online Free PDF Page B

resistance, the Iraqis fell back on Baghdad. Meanwhile Rashid Ali had indicated to Germany that he would welcome assistance and some thirty German aircraft, staging through Vichy French Syria, arrived at Mosul. The appearance of Habforce, the column that had driven across the desert from Transjordan, consisting of mechanized units of British Cavalry and the Arab Legion, settled the issue. Rashid Ali and his supporters fled, the Germans withdrew. By June the Regent and Nuri had returned and a pro-British government was restored; in the interregnum, however, disgruntled nationalists had vented their anger at the British intervention on the Baghdad Jewish community, killing over 200. This
farhud
was the precursor of events which, in 1950, would cause almost all Iraq’s 100,000 Jews to leave for the new state of Israel, thus ending a presence of over two thousand years and one of the richest minority cultures to be found anywhere in the Middle East.
    The restoration of 1941 was a restoration not merely of the legitimate regency, but also of the primacy of Nuri al-Sa’id. With intermissions, he was to hold the premiership thenceforth until 1958, making Iraq, in outward appearance, one of the most stable states in the Middle East. Internal problems persisted, particularly those of Kurdish separatism and of Shi’a discontent, caused by the persistent denial to the Shi’ite majority of the political power their numbers demanded. Nuri had also to deal with the problem of a growingly important Communist movement, strongly supported by the Soviet Union, and with nationalist hostility tothe establishment and consolidation of the Israeli state. He found means, however, to placate or diffuse internal dissent, to contain the Communists and to persuade the nationalists of his anti-Israeli credentials.
    His most substantive anti-Israeli gesture was the despatch of Iraqi troops to fight Israel during its war of independence (1948–49). In 1948 a contingent of 18,000 was sent to Transjordan (soon to be Jordan) to defend the annexed Palestinian West Bank. Its intervention was successful but Iraq was later accused by Egypt of operating too passively, acting merely as a defender of Jordanian territorial acquisitions and failing to mount an offensive which might have diverted Israel from its conquests of Galilee and the Negev. Nevertheless the Iraqi contingent was for a time the largest Arab force in Palestine, a commitment which invested Nuri with influence in the attempts to negotiate a postwar settlement. His solution was to recognize the existence of Israel in return for its surrender of much of the territory conquered during the war. It was rejected by all parties and the great powers as well, a reaction which provided him with the opportunity to bring the Iraqi troops home.
    Nuri’s principal initiative to limit the Communist political threat, and the influence of the Soviet Union, was his creation of the Baghdad Pact in February 1955. It came at the end of a disturbed period in domestic politics which had seen him often out of office, manipulating power from the sidelines rather than as head of government. In 1948 he had renegotiated the Anglo-Iraq Treaty of 1930 in what ought to have been a popular move; the Portsmouth Treaty was judged by many, however, still to concede too much to the old mandate power. During 1954, when premier once again, he was attracted by the example of Turkey and Pakistan, who had entered into a mutual assistance treaty. Nuri first succeeded in bringing Turkey to sign a similar agreement with Iraq, later extended to include Pakistan, Iran and Britain. The signing of the Baghdad Pact, besides creating a formidable anti-Soviet bloc in the region, also had the effect of cancelling out the domestic harm done by the PortsmouthTreaty, since by it Britain agreed at last to surrender its rights at Habbaniyah and other bases in Iraq without securing other concessions from Iraq.
    The signing of the Baghdad Pact was