The Report of the Iraq Inquiry

There was a fourth Ottoman province, running along the Arabian shore of the Persian

Gulf, with its small port of Kuwait.

4. In 1805 the East India Company appointed its first Resident in Baghdad: Claudius

James Rich, who was fluent in Arabic. A visiting Briton later wrote: “Mr Rich was

universally considered to be the most powerful man in Baghdad; and some even

questioned whether the Pasha himself would not shape his conduct according

to Mr Rich’s suggestions and advice rather than as his own council might wish.”

Mesopotamian tribesmen frequently appealed to the British Resident for support against

the Ottoman authorities.2

5. In 1861, with the support of the British Government, a British merchant shipping

company established the Euphrates and Tigris Steam Navigation Company. Most of

the river steamers on the Tigris were built in British yards. With the opening of the Suez

Canal in1869, Basra, and al-Faw at the mouth of the Gulf, became an important staging

post for British naval and mercantile traffic with India. The fort at al-Faw had been built

by local Ottoman officials, suspicious of British territorial ambitions in the Shatt al-Arab.3

By 1890, nine-tenths of the steamer tonnage using Basra for Indian Ocean trade

was British.

6. In 1899, to counter a planned German railway terminus and naval base in Basra, the

ruler of Kuwait promised Britain that he would cede none of Kuwait’s territory without

Britain’s agreement. When in 1902, Turkish forces advanced from Basra into Kuwait,

they were driven off by a British gunboat. In 1904 a British Resident arrived in Kuwait to

uphold Britain’s authority there.

7. In 1913 the British decided to separate Kuwait from the influence of the Ottoman

authorities in Basra, of which Kuwait was then an integral administrative part.

Under the Anglo-Ottoman Convention of July 1913, Kuwait became a separate

administrative district.

8. As German pressure for influence in Baghdad grew, a British irrigation engineer,

Sir William Willcocks, was appointed Consultant for Irrigation to the Ottoman

Government. As a result of Willcocks’ vision, the Hindiya Barrage was built on

the Euphrates, bringing 3,500,000 acres under year-round irrigation. Opened in

November 1913, it is still one of the engineering marvels of Iraq.

2 J.S. Buckingham, Travels in Mesopotamia, Volume 2, page 200, first published in 1928.

3 From 1985 to 1988 (during the Iran-Iraq War) the Iraqi port of al-Faw was occupied by Iran.

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