Annex 1 |
Iraq – 1583 to 1960
Sea
province of Hedjaz, now part of Saudi Arabia) looked to British
rule to secure the
unification
of Iraq. Nuri Said, a supporter of British influence, was to serve
seven times
as Prime
Minister of Iraq during the following thirty-five
years.
21.
Seeking
immediate independence, first the Baghdad Sunni, then the
southern
Shia, and
finally the Kurds in the north, attacked British garrisons
throughout Iraq. In
the spring
of 1920, a Revolutionary Council was established, dedicated to the
removal
of British
rule. Its President, Mohammad Hassan al-Maliki, was a poet who,
after being
imprisoned
by the British, was to become Minister of Education two years
later, in the
first Iraqi
National Government. (His grandson, Nouri al-Maliki, became Prime
Minister of
Iraq in
2006).
22.
On 26 May
1920, an anti-British rebellion broke out near Mosul, and rapidly
spread
south,
threatening Baghdad. Two days after the start of the rebellion,
Britain received,
at the San
Remo Conference, the League of Nations Mandate for Iraq. The
Mandate
pledged
Britain to create in Iraq “an independent nation subject to the
rendering of
administrative
advice and assistance by a mandatory until such time as she is able
to
stand
alone”.
23.
The Prime
Minister, David Lloyd George, hoped to end the rebellion in Iraq
by
immediately
setting up an Arab administration. The Cabinet insisted the
rebellion be
crushed
first. British military and air power was used to do this; in the
battle for Fallujah,
more than
ten thousand Iraqi and a thousand British and Indian soldiers were
killed.
24.
Starting at
the end of September 1920, and lasting for three and a half
months,
punitive
expeditions set out to all the centres of revolt, and whole
villages were burned
to the
ground. Throughout the winter of 1920-1, the last of the insurgents
were hunted
down in
punitive expeditions.
25.
The defeat of
the rebellion had a long legacy. In August 1920, Lieutenant
Colonel
Gerard
Leachman had been killed south of Fallujah in a confrontation with
the local
tribal
leader, Sheikh al-Dari. Eighty-five years later, a British
administrator in this same
area, Rory
Stewart wrote: “They still glorify the killing of Colonel Leachman
as a great
moment in
the anti-colonial struggle … His death was celebrated in Iraqi soap
operas,
and the
grandson of the man who killed him, Harith al-Dari, was a leading
figure in the
Sunni
opposition to occupation. Outside my office in Nasiriyah stood a
bronze statue of
Leachman
being shot in the back.”8
26.
In January
1921, Lloyd George appointed Winston Churchill as Secretary of
State
for the
Colonies, charged with “setting up a local government congenial to
the wishes
of the
masses of the people” in Iraq. That April, Churchill told the House
of Commons
it was
Britain’s intention “to install an Arab ruler in Iraq ... and to
create an Arab army
8
Stewart,
R. The Prince
of the Marshes. Pan
Macmillan, 2006.
225