Annex 1 |
Iraq – 1583 to 1960
they
penetrated even deeper into Iraq, killing Shia Marsh Arab shepherds
and their
children in
December.
46.
The RAF
continued its bombing raids. The Arabian tribes continued their
attacks.
In February
1928 their target was both Iraqi and Kuwaiti villages south and
south-west of
Basra. In
January 1929 another Nejd tribe crossed the border into Kuwait,
killing twenty
Iraqis.
Then a third Arabian tribe crossed into Kuwait, killing more than
seventy Iraqis
and
Kuwaitis.
47.
Only continued
bombing raids from RAF Shaibah near Basra drove the attackers
out
of
south-western Iraq. In January 1930, Ibn Saud agreed to financial
compensation to
the
Kuwaitis and Iraqis, and, with British encouragement, in April
1931, a “Treaty of Bon
Voisinage,
Friendship and Extradition” was signed in Mecca – the Iraqi Prime
Minister,
Nuri Said
signing for Iraq.10
48.
In 1930, two
years before the end of the Mandate, an all-Iraqi Government
was
formed,
with the Sunni politician, Nuri Said – who made determined efforts
to assuage
Sunni-Shia
and Kurdish tensions – as Prime Minister. Nuri Said also negotiated
a new
Anglo-Iraqi
Treaty establishing “perpetual peace and friendship between His
Britannic
Majesty and
His Majesty the King of Iraq” as well as “full and frank
consultation
between
them in all matters of foreign policy which may affect their common
interests”.
Article
Five of the Treaty authorised British forces to remain in Iraq
after it became
independent
in 1932. By the late 1930s these forces were restricted to two RAF
stations,
RAF Shaibah
near Basra, and RAF Habbaniya west of Baghdad.
49.
In November
1930, Nuri Said called a General Election to ratify the Treaty. He
was
successful,
but the Kurds objected that the Treaty did not meet the
undertakings they
believed
the British had given a decade earlier to protect their national
status, and once
more raised
the flag of revolt. For almost two years, RAF Habbaniya was a
staging post
for bombing
attacks on Kurdish rebels until they were defeated in April
1932.
50.
With the
ending of the British Mandate in 1932, Iraq entered the League of
Nations
as a
sovereign State. Britain had fulfilled its pledges and promises –
first made when the
British
Army entered Baghdad in March 1917 – to give the Iraqis control of
their country.
51.
Oil had been
discovered in Iraq in 1927. One of the first official acts of the
Iraqi
Government
after independence was to grant a seventy-five-year concession –
valid
until 2007
– to the British Oil Development Company, jointly owned by British
and
Italian investors.
10
In 1932 Ibn
Saud renamed his three provinces – Najd, al-Ahsa and the Hijaz – as
the Kingdom of
Saudi Arabia.
229