1914 – 1930 In November 1914, after the Ottoman Empire entered World War I (1914-1918) as an ally of Germany and Austria-Hungary, a British army division landed at Al Fāw, near Iraq’s southern tip, and quickly occupied Al Başrah. The main reason for the landing was Britain’s need to defend the Anglo-Persian Oil Company’s oil fields and refineries nearby in Iran. The British army gradually pushed northward against heavy Ottoman opposition, entering Baghdād in March 1917. The British and the Ottoman Turks signed an armistice agreement in October 1918, but the British army continued to move north until it captured Mosul in early November. With the capture of Mosul, Britain exerted its control over nearly all of Iraq.
Early in the war, in order to ensure the interest of the Arabs in a military uprising against the Ottoman Turks, the British government promised a group of Arab leaders that their people would receive independence if a revolt proved successful. In June 1916 an uprising occurred in Al Hejaz, led by Faisal al-Husein, later Faisal I, first king of Iraq. Under the leadership of British general Edmund Allenby and the tactical direction of British colonel T. E. Lawrence, the Arab and British forces achieved dramatic successes against the Ottoman army and succeeded in liberating much Arabian territory. After signing the armistice with the Ottoman government in 1918, the British and French governments issued a joint declaration stating their intention to assist in establishing independent Arab nations in the Arab areas formerly controlled by the Ottoman Empire.
At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, the Allies (the coalition of the victorious nations in World War I, including Britain and France) made Iraq (the territory encompassing the three former Ottoman vilayets of Mosul, Baghdād, and Al Başrah) a Class A mandate entrusted to Britain. Under the mandate system, a territory that had formerly been held by Germany or the Ottoman Empire was placed nominally under the supervision of the League of Nations, and the administration of the mandate was delegated to one of the victorious nations until the territory could govern itself. Class A mandates were expected to achieve independence in a few years. In April 1920 the Allied governments confirmed the creation of the British mandate in Iraq at a conference in San Remo, Italy. In July 1920, when the Iraqi Arabs learned of the decision, they began an armed uprising against the British, then still occupying Iraq. The British were forced to spend huge amounts of money to quell the revolt, and the government of Britain concluded that it would be expedient to terminate its mandate in Mesopotamia. The British civil commissioner, their top administrator in Iraq, thereupon drew up a plan for a provisional government of the new state of Iraq: It was to be a kingdom, with a government directed by a council of Arab ministers under the supervision of a British high commissioner. Faisal was invited to become the ruler of the new state. In August 1921 a plebiscite elected Faisal king of Iraq; he won 96 percent of the votes cast in the election.
The new king had to build a local power base in Iraq. He accomplished this task primarily by winning the support of Iraqi-born military officers who had served in the Ottoman army and of Sunni Arab business and religious leaders in Baghdād, Al Başrah, and Mosul. To win support in the Shia south, in the center-north among the Sunni Arab tribes, and among the Kurds, the king with British support gave tribal chieftains wide powers over their tribes, including judicial powers and responsibility for tax collection in their tribal domains. The Sunni Arab urban leaders and some Kurdish chieftains came to dominate the government and the army, while the Shia Arab chieftains and, to a lesser extent, the Sunni Arab chieftains came to dominate the parliament, enacting laws that benefited themselves. The lower classes had no say in the affairs of the state. They included poor peasants and, in the towns, a growing layer of Western-educated young men who were economically vulnerable and depended on the government for jobs. This latter group, known as the efendiyya, grew more and more restive. Both the ruling elite and the efendiyya embraced the ideas of the pan-Arab movement, which sought to join all the Arab lands into one powerful state. Pan-Arabism was seen as a way of uniting most of the diverse Iraqi population through a common Arab identity. The elite advocated achieving pan-Arabism through diplomacy with British consent, while the efendiyya developed a revolutionary and radically anti-British ideology.
The integrity of the newly established state was challenged by various groups with separatist aspirations, such as the Shias of the Euphrates River area and the Kurdish tribes of the north. These groups acted in conjunction with Turkish armed forces endeavoring to reclaim the lands in the Mosul area for Turkey. The British were thus forced to maintain an army in Iraq, and agitation against the British mandate continued. King Faisal I formally requested that the mandate under which Iraq was held be transformed into a treaty of alliance between the two nations. Although Britain did not end the mandate, in June 1922 a 20-year treaty of alliance and protection between Britain and Iraq was signed. The treaty required that the king heed British advice on all matters affecting British interests and that British officials serve in specific Iraqi government posts. In return, Britain provided military assistance and other aid to Iraq. The British also created an Iraqi national army, which became an indispensable tool of domestic control in the hands of the ruling elite.
In the spring of 1924 a constituent assembly was convened. It passed an organic law establishing the permanent form of the government of Iraq. The king was given great, but not absolute, power. He could dismiss parliament, call for new elections, and appoint the prime minister. Elections for the first Iraqi parliament were held in March 1925. In the same year a concession was granted to an internationally owned oil company to develop the oil reserves of the Baghdād and Mosul regions. In 1927 Faisal I requested that the British support Iraq’s application for admission to the League of Nations. The British refused to take such action at that time, but in June 1930 a new treaty of alliance between Britain and Iraq included a recommendation by Britain that Iraq be admitted to the League of Nations as a free and independent state in 1932. The recommendation was made that year, and the British mandate was formally terminated. In October 1932 Iraq joined the League of Nations as an independent sovereign state. Faisal I died in 1933 and was succeeded by his son, Ghazi, a radical pan-Arab and anti-British figure.
1930 – 1940 In 1931 the exploitation of the oil reserves in Iraq was further advanced by an agreement signed by the Iraqi government and the Iraq Petroleum Company, an internationally owned organization composed of Royal-Dutch Shell, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, French oil companies, and the Standard Oil companies of New York and New Jersey. The agreement granted the Iraq Petroleum Company the sole right to develop the oil fields of the Mosul region, in return for which the company guaranteed to pay the Iraqi government annual royalties. In 1934 the company opened an oil pipeline from Mosul to Tripoli, Lebanon, and a second one to Haifa, in what is now Israel, was completed in 1936.
In 1936 Iraq, under King Ghazi, moved toward a pan-Arab alliance with the other nations of the Arab world. A treaty of nonaggression, reaffirming a fundamental Arab kinship, was signed with the king of Saudi Arabia in the same year.
Iraq experienced its first military coup d’état in 1936, when the army overthrew the pan-Arab Sunni government. The coup opened the door to future military involvement in Iraqi politics. Its leaders included a Kurdish general and a Shia politician. The moderate coalition government they put in power was accepted by the king and remained in office until 1939. In April 1939 King Ghazi was killed in an automobile accident, leaving his three-year-old son, Faisal II, the titular king under a regency.
World War II In accordance with its treaty of alliance with Britain, Iraq broke off diplomatic relations with Germany early in September 1939, at the start of World War II (1939-1945). During the first few months of the war Iraq had a pro-British government under General Nuri as-Said as prime minister. In March 1940, however, Said was replaced by Rashid Ali al-Gailani, a radical nationalist, who embarked at once on a policy of noncooperation with the British. The British pressured the Iraqis to cooperate with them. This pressure precipitated a military revolt on April 30, 1941, and a new pro-German government headed by Gailani was formed. Alarmed at this development, the British landed troops at Al Başrah. Declaring this action a violation of the treaty between Britain and Iraq, Gailani mobilized the Iraqi army, and war between the two countries began in May. Later that month the government of Iraq conceded defeat. The armistice terms provided for the reestablishment of British control over Iraq’s transport, a provision of the 1930 treaty of alliance. Shortly afterward, a pro-British government headed by Said was formed.
1940 – 1950 In 1942 Iraq became an important supply center for British and United States forces operating in the Middle East and for the transshipment of arms to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). On January 17, 1943, Iraq declared war on Germany, the first independent Islamic state to do so. Meanwhile, Iraq’s continuing assistance to the Allied war effort made possible a stronger stand by Arab leaders on behalf of a federation of Arab states. After the war ended, Iraq joined with other Arab states in forming the Arab League, a regional association of sovereign states.
Throughout 1945 and 1946 the Kurdish tribes of northeastern Iraq were in a state of unrest—supported, it was believed, by the USSR. The British, fearing Soviet encroachment on the Iraqi oil fields, moved troops into Iraq. In 1947 Said began to advocate a new proposal for a federated Arab state. This time he suggested that Transjordan (present-day Jordan) and Iraq be united, and he began negotiations with the king of Transjordan regarding the effectuation of his proposal. In April 1947 a treaty of kinship and alliance was signed by the two kingdoms, providing for mutual military and diplomatic aid. Immediately following the declaration of independence by Israel in May 1948, the armies of Iraq and Transjordan invaded the new state. Throughout the rest of the year Iraqi armed forces continued to fight the Israelis, and the nation continued to work politically with the kingdom of Transjordan. In September Iraq joined Abdullah ibn Hussein, king of Transjordan, in denouncing the establishment of an Arab government in Palestine as being “tantamount to recognizing the partition of Palestine” into Jewish and Arab states, which Iraq had consistently opposed. With the general defeat of the Arab forces attacking Israel, however, the government of Iraq prepared to negotiate an armistice, represented by Transjordan. On May 11, 1949, a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Transjordan was signed, but Iraqi units continued to fight Israelis in an Arab-occupied area in north-central Palestine. Transjordanian troops replaced the Iraqi units in this area under the terms of the armistice agreement, signed on April 3, 1949.
1950 – 1960 Royalties paid to the government of Iraq by the Iraq Petroleum Company increased substantially under accords reached in 1950 and 1951. By the terms of an even more advantageous arrangement, concluded in February 1952, Iraq obtained 50 percent of the profits. In 1953 the 911-km (566-mi) Kirkūk-Bāniyās (Syria) pipeline of the Iraq Petroleum Company was formally opened.
The first parliamentary elections based on direct suffrage took place on January 17, 1953. A pro-Western, pan-Arab government was formed. King Faisal II formally assumed the throne on May 2, 1953, his 18th birthday.
In February 1955 Iraq concluded the Baghdād Pact, a mutual-security treaty with Turkey. Advancing plans to transform the alliance into a Middle Eastern defense system, the two countries urged the other Arab states, the United States, Britain, and Pakistan to adhere to the pact. Britain joined the alliance in April; Pakistan became a signatory in September and Iran in November. That month the five nations established the Middle East Treaty Organization (METO).
In July 1956 Jordan (as Transjordan had been renamed) accused Israel of deploying an invasion army near Jerusalem, whereupon Iraq moved forces to the Jordanian border. That same month, in response to Egypt’s nationalization of the Suez Canal, which Britain and France had controlled, the Iraqi government expressed unequivocal support of Egypt. In the ensuing Suez Crisis, Egypt was invaded by Israel, Britain, and France in October 1956. Within a week, however, the United Nations, at the urging of both the USSR and the United States, demanded a ceasefire, forcing Britain, France, and Israel to withdraw from the lands they had captured. In early November, Iraqi and Syrian troops occupied positions in Jordan in accordance with terms of a mutual-defense agreement.
In January 1957 Iraq endorsed the recently promulgated Eisenhower Doctrine. This doctrine stated that the United States would supply military assistance to any Middle Eastern government whose stability was threatened by Communist aggression. In February 1958, following a conference between Faisal II and Hussein I, king of Jordan, Iraq and Jordan were federated. The new union, later named the Arab Union of Jordan and Iraq, was established as a countermeasure to the United Arab Republic (UAR), a federation of Egypt and Syria formed in February of that year. The constitution of the newly formed federation was proclaimed simultaneously in Baghdād and Amman on March 19, and the document was ratified by the Iraqi parliament on May 12. Later that month Nuri as-Said, former prime minister of Iraq, was named premier of the Arab Union.
The UAR, bitterly antagonistic to the pro-Western Arab Union, issued repeated radio calls urging the people, police, and army of Iraq to overthrow their government. On July 14, 1958, in a sudden coup d’état led by the Iraqi general Abdul Karim Kassem, the country was proclaimed a republic. King Faisal II, the crown prince, and Said were among those killed in the uprising. On July 15 the new government announced the establishment of close relations with the UAR and the dissolution of the Arab Union. However, Kassem made attempts to gain the confidence of the West by maintaining the flow of oil.
In March 1959 Iraq withdrew from the Baghdād Pact, which was then renamed the Central Treaty Organization; in June 1959 Iraq withdrew from the sterling bloc (a group of countries whose currencies are tied to the British pound sterling).
1960 – 1970 Following the termination of the British protectorate over the emirate of Kuwait in June 1960, Iraq claimed the area, asserting that Kuwait had been part of the Iraqi state at the time of its formation. British forces entered Kuwait in July at the invitation of the Kuwaiti ruler, and the UN Security Council declined an Iraqi request to order their withdrawal.
Meanwhile, on the domestic front, the Iraqi government claimed in 1961 and 1962 that it had suppressed Kurdish revolts in northern Iraq. The Kurdish unrest persisted, however. The long conflict was temporarily settled in early 1970, when the government agreed to form a Kurdish autonomous region, and Kurdish ministers were added to the cabinet.
On February 8, 1963, Kassem was overthrown by a group of officers, most of them members of the Baath Party; he was assassinated the following day. Abdul Salam Arif became president, and relations with the Western world improved. In April 1966 Arif was killed in a helicopter crash and was succeeded by his brother, General Abdul Rahman Arif.
During the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War (1967), Iraqi troops and planes were sent to the Jordan-Israeli border. Iraq subsequently declared war on Israel and closed its oil pipeline supplying the Western nations, which it accused of siding with Israel. At the same time diplomatic relations with the United States were severed. In July 1968 Baath Party officers overthrew General Arif’s government. Major General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, a former prime minister, was appointed head the newly established Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), the country’s supreme executive, legislative, and judicial body.
1970 – 1980 In the following years Iraq maintained general hostility toward the West and friendship with the USSR. The positions of individual Arab countries with regard to Israel caused some friction between Iraq and its neighbors. In 1971 Iraq closed its border with Jordan and called for its expulsion from the Arab League because of Jordan’s efforts to crush the Palestinian guerrilla movement operating inside its borders.
From 1972 to 1975 Iraq fully nationalized the foreign oil companies operating in Iraq. The country enjoyed a massive increase in oil revenues starting in late 1973 when international petroleum prices began a steep rise. The discovery of major oil deposits in the vicinity of Baghdād was announced publicly in 1975.
Iraq aided Syria with troops and matériel during the Arab-Israeli War of 1973. Calling for continued military action against Israel, Iraq denounced the ceasefire that ended the 1973 conflict and opposed the interim agreements negotiated by Egypt and Syria with Israel in 1974 and 1975.
In early 1974 heavy fighting erupted in northern Iraq between government forces and Kurdish nationalists, who rejected as inadequate a new Kurdish autonomy law based on the 1970 agreement. The Kurds, led by Mustafa al-Barzani, received arms and other supplies from Iran. After Iraq agreed in early 1975 to make major concessions to Iran in settling their border disputes, Iran halted aid to the Kurds, and the revolt was dealt a severe blow. In July 1979 President Bakr was succeeded by General Saddam Hussein, a Sunni Muslim and fellow member of the Arab Baath Socialist Party.
In 1979 Islamic revolutionaries in Iran succeeded in overthrowing the country’s secular government and established an Islamic republic there. Tension between the Iraqi government and Iran’s new Islamic regime increased during that year, when unrest among Iranian Kurds spilled over into Iraq. Sunni-Shia religious animosities exacerbated the conflict.
IRAQ – IRAN war In September 1980 Iraq declared its 1975 agreement with Iran, which drew the border between the countries down the middle of the Shatt al Arab, null and void and claimed authority over the entire river. The quarrel flared into a full-scale war, the Iran-Iraq War. Iraq quickly overran a large part of the Arab-populated province of Khūzestān (Khuzistan) in Iran and destroyed the Ābādān refinery. In June 1981 a surprise air attack by Israel destroyed a nuclear reactor near Baghdād. The Israelis charged that the reactor was intended to develop nuclear weapons for use against them. In early 1982 Iran launched a counteroffensive, and by May it had reclaimed much of the territory conquered by Iraq in 1980. In the ensuing stalemate, each side inflicted heavy damage on the other and on Persian Gulf shipping. After a ceasefire with Iran came into effect in August 1988, the Iraqi government again moved to suppress the Kurdish insurgency. During the late 1980s the nation rebuilt its military machine, in part through bank credits and technology obtained from Western Europe and the United States.
The Gulf war In 1990 Iraq revived a long-standing territorial dispute with Kuwait, its ally during the war with Iran, claiming that overproduction of petroleum by Kuwait was injuring Iraq’s economy by depressing the price of crude oil. Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait on August 2 and rapidly took over the country. The UN Security Council issued a series of resolutions that condemned the occupation, imposed a broad trade embargo on Iraq, and demanded that Iraq withdraw unconditionally by January 15, 1991.
When Iraq failed to comply, a coalition led by the United States began intensive aerial bombardment of military and infrastructural targets in Iraq and Kuwait in January 1991. The ensuing Persian Gulf War proved disastrous for Iraq, which was forced out of Kuwait in about six weeks. Coalition forces invaded southern Iraq, and tens of thousands of Iraqis were killed. Many of the country’s armored vehicles and artillery pieces were destroyed, and its nuclear and chemical weapons facilities were severely damaged. In April, Iraq agreed to UN terms for a permanent ceasefire; coalition troops withdrew from southern Iraq as a UN peacekeeping force moved in to police the Iraq-Kuwait border. Meanwhile, Hussein used his remaining military forces to suppress rebellions by Shias in the south and Kurds in the north. Hundreds of thousands of Kurdish refugees fled to Turkey and Iran, and U.S., British, and French troops landed inside Iraq’s northern border to establish a Kurdish enclave with refugee camps to protect another 600,000 Kurds from Iraqi government reprisals. In addition, international forces set up “no-fly zones” in both northern and southern Iraq to ensure the safety of the Kurdish and Shia populations.
The UN trade embargo remained in place after the war. The Security Council laid out strict demands on Iraq for lifting the sanctions, including destruction of its chemical and biological weapons, cessation of nuclear weapons programs, and acceptance of international inspections to ensure that these conditions were met. Iraq resisted these demands, claiming that its withdrawal from Kuwait was sufficient compliance.
In June 1993 the United States launched a widely criticized cruise missile attack against Iraq in retaliation for a reported assassination plot against former U.S. president George Bush. In November 1994 Hussein signed a decree formally accepting Kuwait’s sovereignty, political independence, and territorial integrity. The decree effectively ended Iraq’s claim to Kuwait as a province of Iraq.
In 1994 Iraq continued its efforts to crush internal resistance with an economic embargo of the Kurdish-populated north and a military campaign against Shia rebels in the southern marshlands. The Shias were quickly crushed, but the crisis in the Kurdish region, which had long suffered from internal rivalries, was prolonged. Kurds had often disputed over land rights, and as their economic and political security deteriorated in the early 1990s, the conflicts became more extreme. In the mid-1990s clashes between the Patriotic Union of Kurdistān (PUK) and the Kurdistān Democratic Party (KDP) led to a state of civil war.
In August 1996 leaders of the KDP asked Hussein to intervene in the war. He sent at least 30,000 troops into the Kurdish enclave protected by international forces, capturing the PUK stronghold of Irbīl. The international forces decided to leave the enclave rather than intervene in the dispute between rival Kurdish factions. The KDP was quickly installed in power. The United States responded to Hussein’s incursion with two missile strikes against southern Iraq, but the following month Iraq again helped KDP fighters, this time taking the PUK stronghold of As Sulaymānīyah. By 1997 the KDP ruled most of northern Iraq. In September 1998 the PUK and KDP signed an agreement calling for the establishment of a joint regional government. Although implementation of the agreement proceeded more slowly than planned, it resulted in an end to the fighting between the two groups. Meanwhile, the economic crisis in Iraq continued to worsen in 1995 and 1996. Prices were high, food and medicine shortages were rampant, and the free-market (unofficial) exchange rate for the dinar was in severe decline. Although the sanctions continued, in April 1995 the UN Security Council voted unanimously to allow Iraq to sell limited amounts of oil to meet its urgent humanitarian needs. Iraq initially rejected the plan but then accepted it in 1996; it began to export oil at the end of that year. In 1998 the UN increased the amount of oil Iraq was allowed to sell, but Iraq was unable to take full advantage of this increase because its production capabilities had deteriorated under the sanctions.
Hussein’s interference with UN weapons inspectors nearly brought Iraq into another military crisis in early 1998. However, UN secretary general Kofi Annan negotiated an agreement that secured Iraq’s compliance and averted military strikes by the United States and its allies. In December of that year, in response to reports that Iraq was continuing to block inspections, the United States and Britain launched a four-day series of air strikes on Iraqi military and industrial targets. In response, Iraq declared that it would no longer comply with UN inspection teams, called for an end to the sanctions, and threatened to fire on aircraft patrolling the “no-fly zones.” Through 2001, Iraq continued to challenge the patrols, and British and U.S. planes struck Iraqi missile launch sites and other targets.
From Baghdad To New York 