British Iraq

"Polk's discussion [spent extended periods of time in Iraq since 1947, has taught at Harvard and done policy planning for the State Department. In 1965, he founded the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Chicago, and he is widely regarded as one of the foremost scholars on the region. In a concise yet sweeping historical overview, he takes us from early hunter-gatherers through the Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Akkadian, Persian, Alexandrian, Parthian, Muslim, Genghis Khan, Ottoman, British, revolutionary-Ba'athist, and American dominations.] of British rule, directly from 1918 to 1933 and indirectly until 1958, is most relevant to the current situation. The British invasion in 1914 was based on bad intelligence and little knowledge of the region. Sound familiar?

The British expected the Iraqis to be grateful for their good administration, but "[t]he Iraqis did not want Britain to run their country," and a vast insurrection emerged against the 133,000 British troops (number sound familiar?).

The anti-guerrilla campaign eventually cost six times as much as the entire World War I campaign in the Middle East. When the ground war became a stalemate, the British used air power, as the United States is doing now. Its effectiveness was limited.

The revolt that eventually (inevitably?) emerged in 1920 horrified the British government: "This was no tribal revolt. It was a national war of independence. Tribesmen did much of the fighting, no doubt, but they were led by respected men of religion, both Sunni and Shias, doctors, teachers, merchants, journalists, and even those 'tame' Iraqis who were being trained to be government officials."

Interestingly, T.E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia"), who had actually spent time in the Middle East, understood the problems better than most of those deputed to solve them. In August 1920, he wrote a letter to the London Sunday Times: "The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiqués are belated, insincere, incomplete. … We are, today, not far from a disaster."

Lawrence compared British rule unfavorably with the despotic Ottoman regime: "Our government is worse than the old Turkish system. They kept fourteen thousand local conscripts embodied and killed an average of two hundred Arabs in maintaining peace. We keep ninety thousand men, with aeroplanes, armored cars, gunboats, and armored trains. We killed about ten thousand Arabs in this rising this summer. We cannot hope to maintain such an average: it is a poor country, sparsely populated." He also noted the unsustainable costs of the occupation.

The British replaced their first governor with a second one. Sound familiar? Then they decided to create a quasi-independent state under mandate from the League of Nations – and couldn't understand why many Iraqis distrusted their intentions: "As a sort of fig leaf to cover the nakedness of whatever Iraq was to be, the new civil commissioner, Sir Percy Cox, decided to set up a handpicked, provisional 'Council of State.' In a move that again was to presage American actions eighty-four years later, he appointed the Iraqi members."

The British decided to work through the Sunnis, as had the Turks, without thinking much about the consequences, rejecting offers from Shia clergy to negotiate a settlement: "Cumulatively, his [Cox's] early moves would alienate the Shia community both from the British government and, subsequently, from the Iraqi government. The trend it set in motion has had profound implications down to our times."

Looking for a leader, the British chose Faisal, from Mecca, whom the French had deposed as king of Syria, and who was little known in Iraq: "So just as the Americans in 2003 focused first on Ahmed Chalabi and then on Iyad al-Allawi, neither of whom had been in Iraq for decades, the British imported Faisal."

Then the British decided to have the Iraqis write a constitution. Sonorous phrases were borrowed from as far away as New Zealand, but when serious revolt emerged in the 1930s, it proved to be a scrap of paper. In practice, the British controlled who ruled by having indirect elections: "One of the reasons that Iraqis reacted so sharply against the American-controlled Iraq Provisional Authority of 2004 was that in it they – but not the American authorities who were ignorant of Iraqi history – heard an echo of this early British system." History's Burden in Iraq A review of William Polk's Understanding Iraq, Alan Block