Annex 1 |
Iraq – 1583 to 1960
Nazi Germany
that had been severed by Nuri Said in 1939, and promised the
Germans
vital fuel
oil from the Mosul oilfields.
59.
In London, the
War Cabinet ordered a brigade of Indian infantry and extra
aircraft
to Iraq.
“We are not at war with Iraq”, Churchill told the House of Commons
on May 7.
“We are
dealing with a military dictator who attempted to subvert the
constitutional
Government,
and we intend to assist the Iraqis to get rid of him and get rid of
the military
dictatorship
at the earliest possible moment.”
60.
During the
second week of May 1941, the first of thirty German and Italian
aircraft
reached
Mosul. Flying on to Kirkuk, they took part in air operations
against the British
besieging
Fallujah, and carried out frequent bombing raids on RAF Habbaniya.
On
20 May,
the British captured Fallujah, and nine days later were in battle
with Rashid Ali
outside
Baghdad. Unaware of the small size of the force against him, Rashid
Ali fled
under cover
of darkness to Iran.
61.
The Mayor of
Baghdad, at the head of a Security Committee of leading
Iraqis,
approached
British forces outside Baghdad. An armistice was signed, and the
monarchy
restored.
On 9 October 1941, Nuri Said formed a government acceptable to the
British.
Iraqi
Ministers who had served under Rashid Ali were removed from all
influence, and
in some
cases deprived of citizenship and deported. At least seven hundred
Rashid Ali
supporters
and those with Axis sympathies were interned for the duration of
the war.
62.
The British
military presence in Iraq both before and after Rashid Ali’s revolt
was
based on
the terms of the 1930 Anglo-Iraqi Treaty. When the war ended in
1945, and
as British
forces prepared to leave Iraq, Britain’s Labour Government (whose
Prime
Minister,
Clement Attlee, had been wounded in Mesopotamia in 1917) asked
the
Government
of Iraq to sign a new military treaty, to give the British even
greater powers
than under
the 1930 Treaty, and to increase joint Iraqi and British military
planning and
cooperation.
63.
The new
Anglo-Iraqi Treaty was approved by the Iraqi Government and by
the
Regent. The
Prime Minister, Salih Jabr – Iraq’s first Shia Prime Minister – and
his
Foreign
Minister, accompanied by Nuri Said, went to Britain for the signing
ceremony,
held at
Portsmouth on 15 January 1948. The signatories were the Iraq
delegates and
the British
Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin.
64.
As soon as the
Treaty was signed there were mass demonstrations in
Baghdad
against it,
and against any continuing links with Britain. On 20 January 1948
the British
Consulate
at Kirkuk was attacked, and on the following day – six days after
the Anglo-
Iraqi
Treaty had been signed – the Regent announced that the Treaty did
not “realise
the
national aspirations of Iraq or consolidate the friendship between
the two countries”.
Salih Jabr
was replaced as Prime Minister by a leading Shia and former
President of
the Iraqi
Senate, Sayyid Muhammad al-Sadr, one of Britain’s adversaries of a
quarter
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