Geoff Simons (Auth.) - Iraq - From Sumer To Saddam (1994, Palgrave Macmillan UK)
Geoff Simons (Auth.) - Iraq - From Sumer To Saddam (1994, Palgrave Macmillan UK)
Geoff Simons (Auth.) - Iraq - From Sumer To Saddam (1994, Palgrave Macmillan UK)
Foreword by
Tony Benn, MP
M
MACMILLAN
© Geoff Simons 1994
Foreword © Tony Benn, MP, 1994
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover Ist edition 1994 978-0-333-59377-6
Acknowledgements xii
Introduction xiii
v
vi Contents
3 The Arabs, Islam and the Caliphate 105
Arab Origins 105
Mohammad 108
The Framework of Islam 109
The Arab Conquest 111
Schism 113
The Umayyad Dynasty 116
The Abbasid Dynasty 120
Decline 122
Notes 347
Bibliography 376
Index 382
Foreword
The 1991 Gulf War was hailed by many people, including those who prided
themselves on their liberal outlook, as the fIrst example of the New World
Order made possible by the end of the Cold War.
We were told that the international community, using the United Nations
as its founders intended, would defeat and probably overthrow a brutal
dictator by means of weapons of clinical accuracy, deploying the minimum
force possible, and hence pave the way for democracy and a lasting settle-
ment of the problems of the Middle East.
It is now clear that what happened was very different from this offIcial
explanation of events.
The United Nations was actually taken over and used by the United
States to secure its strategic oil supplies at a time when the USSR was
disintegrating. The bombing was on a horrifIc and quite unnecessary scale
which inflicted untold suffering on the Iraqi civilian population both at
the time and subsequently.
A feudal king in Saudi Arabia was protected and the undemocratic
Al-Sabah family was re-installed in Kuwait; Saddam's harsh regime, ori-
ginally built up with enthusiastic Western help, was actually consolidated
in Iraq; and the double standards of the West, with respect to the Palestin-
ians, stand out more glaringly than ever.
When a superpower war machine gets going and the media puts itself at
the disposal of the political leaders and generals who are cranking it up, all
understanding is driven from the airwaves and the newspapers to ensure
public support for that war. So it was during that short and bloody conflict.
No-one was allowed to hear about the long history of Iraq or its civil-
isation, its relations with its neighbours or what happened when Britain
governed it. All parallels with other Western military interventions and
non-interventions were discouraged, as were comparisons with the conduct
of Israel or Turkey.
There was tight censorship of the war reports and then a deadly media
silence about the carnage caused by the bombing and the suffering that
followed, so that we were never permitted to hear of the many thousands
of civilian deaths for which we were collectively responsible.
That whole horrifIc story and the background which explains it has been
waiting to be told. Here Geoff Simons tells the Iraq story with scholarship,
clarity and great moral force, making this a book for the general reader as
ix
x Foreword
well as for the academic student of the Arab world and its relations with the
West.
TONY BENN
Preface
The 1990/91 Gulf crisis stimulated Western interest in Iraq and yielded a
number of books (most listed in the Bibliography). These volumes, almost
without exception, followed a common pattern: whilst often outlining the
circumstances of the crisis (sometimes giving historical background), there
was rarely any attempt to chart in detail many of the historical events that
would inevitably fuel future tensions in the region.
Nor, in my view, was adequate attention ever given to the United States,
a principal player in the crisis. It was increasingly recognised - who could
deny it? - that the US had aided Saddam in the Iran/Iraq war and after, that
Washington had given Saddam the 'wrong signals' prior to the invasion of
Kuwait, and that Washington had then worked hard to suborn the UN
Security Council. Even so, the ethical discourse was inadequate.
Hence this book was written to position the 'Iraq Question' in a broad
historical and ethical context. The ambitious breadth has inevitably entailed
the reluctant sacrifice of much detail. It seems to me none the less that there
is enough here to expand the moral universe of conventional discourse -
about both Iraq and broader political questions. We need to reaffirm the
principle that the protocols of international behaviour are properly sanc-
tioned by ethics, not by the perceived self-interest of this or that state, even
if a hegemonic power.
GEOFF SIMONS
xi
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Tony Benn MP for enthusiastically welcoming this book
and for writing the Foreword. His achievements are many and too rarely
noted. Above all, his example will always help to sustain the subversive
idea that the proper spirit of politics is morality, not the tawdry obsession
with an accountant's balance sheet.
I appreciate also the work and commitment of Christine Simons. Her
support through the writing and production of this book has been invalu-
able. She too believes that there is more to politics than money-grubbing
exploitation and the propaganda designed to protect it.
GEOFF SIMONS
xii
Introduction
When Iraq invaded Iran in 1980 - to begin a war that would last most of
the decade - the West was not too concerned. A nominal consensus to
prevent arms reaching both sides in the conflict was systematically violated
in various ways. In particular, the United States developed a manifest 'tilt'
towards Iraq which resulted in both covert and overt aid, a posture that
was to become highly controversial after the 1990/91 Gulf crisis.
Iraq had, in its aggression against a sovereign state, violated the United
Nations Charter. The West made no effort to activate the Security Council
in a violent response to the Iraqi invasion. There was no prospect of
launching missiles and bombers against Baghdad, no prospect of a US-
orchestrated coalition turning the Iraqi deserts into killing fields.
Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait - an act that grew directly out of the Irani
Iraq war - was however an entirely different matter. Soon Iraq was branded
a 'pariah nation', its leader a 'new Hitler'. The scene was set for a devastat-
ing but brief war, with hundreds of thousands of (mainly Iraqi) casualties,
vast regional ecological damage, immense harm to many Third-World
economies, and prodigious dissipation of treasure.
In Part I (Chapter 1) a description is given of the state of Iraq and Kuwait
in the immediate aftermath of the war: the fruits of comprehensive bomb-
ing, ground battles, massacre and torture. Then attention is given to some of
the (Western) lies and unanswered questions, the clues to hidden agendas,
the mounting evidence of double standards. A post-war chronology is
presented which ends with how the defeated Saddam consolidated his post-
war power while the victorious George Bush passed into history.
Part II (Chapters 2 to 7) gives a history of the region now known as Iraq.
It is difficult to comprehend the richness of this multifaceted historic cul-
ture; to grasp how tribes, peoples and nations clashed and cross-fertilised in
one of the principal crucibles of world civilisation. Irrigation specialists
from ancient Sumer, the architects and astronomers of Babylon, siege
engineers from China, the Abbasid scholars and law-givers, Alexander and
Kublai Khan, Tamerlane and Saladin - all left their indelible marks. From
the Code of Hammurabi to the polities of the Caliphate, the Ottomans and
the British Empire, systems of ethics and law, the impact of Judaism, Islam
and Christianity - all are touched upon, too briefly but enough to give a
flavour of the myriad cultures to which Mesopotamia (later Iraq) was
exposed.
xiii
xiv Introduction
The rise of Arab culture and its decline are charted (Chapter 3) with
attention to the life of Mohammad, the birth of Islam, and the Arab con-
quests. The dynasties of the Caliphate that came to influence much in the
enduring cultures of modern Syria and Iraq - and much in the historic pride
in the Arab nation - are described. Then the Mongol horde and fresh
sackings of Baghdad, as a prelude to the Ottoman conquest (Chapter 4) and
the impact of Western colonialism (Chapter 5) - both of which Arab nation-
alists would learn to confront with a resurgent self-confidence and growing
success.
Today, at a time when the West pretends to be concerned at the plight of
the Iraqi Kurds, it is useful to highlight the enduring Western hypocrisy. In
the 1920s the British used machine guns and bombs to suppress both the
northern Kurds and the southern marsh Arabs. Colonel Bousett, a medical
officer with the Royal Artillery, then noted in his diary that the burning
Arab villages made a 'wonderful sight at night'. Poison gas was a particu-
larly useful weapon (Winston Churchill: 'I am strongly in favour of using
poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes ... gases can be used which ...
spread a lively terror'). General Sir Aylmer Haldane suggested that gas was
particularly useful in the hilly country of the Kurds, whereas 'in the hot
plains ... the gas is more volatile' (see Lawrence James, Imperial Rear-
guard, 1988). (Today the Turkish regime continues to repress its own
Kurdish minority, a sustained policy that has involved torture, mass killings
and the forcible emptying of 1000 Kurdish villages; and which in June 1993
led Kurdish protesters to occupy government buildings in eighteen cities in
Germany, France and Switzerland. The Turkish suppression of its Kurds is
never denounced by Western governments. Turkey is a NATO member and
of crucial strategic importance.)
Iraq then moves from British-imposed monarchy to an independent
republic (Chapter 6), and thence into the era of Saddam, heir not only to
Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar, but also to political brutalities, Machi-
avellian plotting, and the naked consolidation of power. Saddam practised
torture, exterminated rivals, and gassed his countrymen. * At the same time
he stimulated pride in some sections of the Iraqi people, giving a boost to
Arab nationalism and anti-Zionism throughout the region. The West too
found reasons to support Saddam Hussein, perceiving that the Iranian
ayatollahs who had recently and roughly evicted the pro-West shah might
*Saddam immortalised Halabja by his gassing of the Kurds in 1988. In one important
account the Kurds died of Iranian- not Iraqi-delivered cyanide gas, with other doubts expressed
about Iraqi culpability (see Bennis and Moushabeck, eds, Beyond the Storm, p. 311). However,
here and elsewhere I have echoed the conventional Western account of Halabja as clear
evidence of Saddam's perfidy.
Introduction xv
be best tamed by the Iraqi despot. But Saddam then trod on sensitive US
toes by (briefly) deposing the Kuwaiti al-Sabahs (which was of no concern
to Washington) and taking command of Kuwaiti oil (which concerned
Washington greatly). The scene was set for war.
Chapter 8 describes how Washington gave a 'green light' to Saddam,
seemingly encouraging the invasion of Kuwait, before setting out to subvert
the United Nations so that Iraq could be 'legally' and unambiguously
crushed. A chronology of the war is given, ending in the 'turkey shoot'
massacres perpetrated by Christian forces in their new crusade against a
Muslim foe. The Kuwaiti and Iraqi deserts were turned into mass grave-
yards, while the West rejoiced at its self-proclaimed virtue and its much-
advertised prowess in the fine art of human slaughter.
There had been an orgy of killing, visited largely on hapless Iraqi
conscripts trapped in the desert far from home. We should remember this.
Saddam immortalised Halabja. Soon afterwards, the US-led forces immor-
talised the slaughters of Fallujah, Amiriya and Mitla Ridge. And remember
Milan Kundera who said (in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, p. 5):
'The struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against
forgetting'. The present book - in recording various historical themes and
details of recent events - is intended in part to jog the memory.
Part I
Iraq in the
New World Order
1 After the 1991 Gulf War
Let me also make clear that the United States has no quarrel with
the Iraqi people.
President George Bush, 1991
The prosecution of the 1991 Gulf War by the US-led coalition was intended
to serve a number of purposes. It was useful to demonstrate to the world that
any grave threat to American interests would not be tolerated, particularly
where these required the unimpeded supply of fuel to the world's most
energy-profligate nation. It was useful also to signal the new global power
structure, the 'New World Order' in which a post-Cold War United States
could operate without the bothersome constraint of another global super-
power. It was essential in these circumstances that Iraq be mercilessly
crushed. As the American academic and dissident Noam Chomsky pointed
out, the much weaker opponent 'must not merely be defeated but pulver-
ised if the central lesson of World Order is to be learned: we are the
masters and you shine our shoes' .1
There were other purposes: some obvious and some less so. The Amer-
icans did not disguise their delight at being able to experiment with a new
generation of high-technology weapons. It was helpful to be able to test
such devices on the flesh and fabric of a vulnerable state that was obligingly
bellicose and conveniently racially-different from the United States. An-
other factor, rarely discussed, concerned strategic matters of an altogether
different kind. Japan remains massively dependent on the huge oil tankers
that ply the routes from the Gulf: how prudent for the United States to
maintain a stranglehold on the crucial energy supply to a principal eco-
nomic competitor in the rapidly developing tripolar system of world
commerce. 2
It would be a mistake to believe that the primary purpose of the US-
initiated war on Iraq was the expulsion of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.
The expulsion was in fact no more than a means to various ends: it is plain
enough that the United States has no principled (as opposed to tactical)
objection to aggressions by sovereign states against others, and so the
reasons for the onslaught on Iraq must be sought elsewhere. The US did not
work to activate the United Nations in military opposition to the Israeli
invasions of Lebanon and other Arab lands; to the Indonesian invasion of
East Timor; or to the various South African invasions of Namibia, Angola
3
4 Iraq in the New World Order
and Mozambique. Indeed, there is evidence that it conspired, to varying
degrees, in such invasions; and, of course, the US itself has invaded many
sovereign states (notably Grenada and Panama in recent years). Moreover,
in order to protect the war on Iraq, the US sanctioned fresh contemporary or
subsequent aggressions: further Israeli incursions into Lebanon, the Syrian
onslaught on East Beirut, and the (post-Gulf War) Turkish invasion and
occupation of northern Iraq.
The war on Iraq, realistically viewed, was designed to protect US hege-
mony over oil (with the broad strategic aims that this implies), to educate
the world about post-Soviet political realities, to test new anti-personnel
and other weapons, and to justify the absurdly high levels of investment
in US military power. A further aim was to bolster the reputation of a US
president beset by the 'wimp factor' and the prospect of a presidential
election in 1992. No-one doubted that, whatever the Gulf War's other
useful effects, the reputation of President George Bush had been much
enhanced. Commentators queued up to proclaim the inevitability of Bush's
re-election in November 1992. Thus, in an observation that was typical
for the times, the respected journalist Mike Graham felt able to declaim:
'. . . after winning the war against Iraq and presiding over the death
throes of communism, Bush knows that he barely has to lift a finger to be
returned to power in next year's elections'.3 The little-known Arkansas
governor, Bill Clinton, could be discounted since there were already 'whis-
pers about secret affairs and illegitimate children ... he appears vulner-
able to the media inquisition that inevitably will occur if he runs'. In any
event, 'no matter who gets the [Democratic] nomination, he is unlikely to
become president ... '4
Efforts to improve the image of an unimpressive American president
must be judged less important than those designed to safeguard traditional
US interests. Individuals come and go, but attempts to sustain hegemonic
power must be maintained over decades. Iraq had tasted the fruits of US
strategic calculations.
Massacre
One of the most significant factors of the Gulf War was the speed with
which the US-led coalition was able to achieve air supremacy. Iraqi air
defences were systematically devastated, many of the targets being attacked
time and time again. Within a matter of days it became clear that Iraqi
After the 1991 Gulf War 5
aircraft were unlikely to engage allied planes and soon, with the speedy and
comprehensive destruction of the multilayered Iraqi anti-aircraft systems,
allied aircraft were able to range and bomb at will. What this meant in
human terms is hard for distant and comfortable observers to imagine.
Tens of thousands of hapless Iraqi conscripts, many of them from groups
known to be persecuted by Saddam Hussein, had no choice but to sit in
the wastes of Iraq and Kuwait until the bombs fell. Here they were forced
to suffer napalm, cluster bombs that shred human flesh, the air-fuel ex-
plosives (virtual mini atom bombs) that incinerate some and asphyxiate
others, and the carpets of 'earthquake' bombs laid down by B-52s - all
the obscene paraphernalia that in earlier days had killed perhaps three
million people in Korea, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.
The relatively brief war saw no first-hand journalistic accounts of the
scale of the slaughter: one of the key lessons that Washington had learned
from Vietnam was the tactical need to exclude journalists from the scenes
of horror.s After the war, accounts appeared in the press, but few of these
attempted to depict the numbers of the Iraqi casualties or the enormity of
what had been accomplished. At Basra, the journalist Karl Waldron picked
his way for 'perhaps 100 yards, trying to count the corpses, but it was a
hopeless task. There were not enough whole bodies left to count'.6 Most
of the slaughter was intentional, a matter of military planning; but some of
it was accidental, as when the marketplace of Fallujah was bombed. Abdullah,
the grandson of Terfeh Mehsan, is - we are told - a 'handsome but frail boy
of 12 ... Where his legs used to be, Abdullah has two little stumps, the skin
flayed with septic cuts'.7 Some of the accounts describe the destruction of
the convoys desperately attempting to flee from Kuwait; as, for example, on
the doomed road to Umm Qasr: '60 miles of carnage ... scores of soldiers
lie in and around the vehicles, mangled and bloated in the drifting desert
sands'.8 We were left in no doubt about the face of Iraq in March 1991:
At one spot, snarling wild dogs have reduced two corpses to bare ribs.
Giant carrion birds claw and pick at another; only a boot-clad foot and
eyeless skull are recognisable.
One flat-bed truck has nine bodies. Each man clutches the next. Their
hair and clothes are burned off, skin incinerated by heat so intense it
melted the windscreen on to the dashboard.
The six weeks of allied air raids had destroyed the bulk of the electrical
power stations that supplied hospitals, water pumping facilities, sewage
treatment plants and water purification facilities; in addition, these various
facilities had often been totally or partially destroyed by the bombing. A
consequence was that many parts of Iraq had to face a public health crisis
of vast proportions. In the immediate aftermath of the war the residents
of Baghdad, having had no electricity or running water since the onset of
the bombing in mid-January, had to rely for drinking water on the Tigris
river, now being fouled by gushing streams of raw sewage. Iraqi and
international health authorities predicted that unless sanctions on Iraq were
lifted the capital and other major cities would soon be facing outbreaks
of cholera, typhoid, hepatitis and polio. Dr Mohammad Ani, the Iraqi
director for immunisation and primary health care for the ministry of
health, commented: 'We are being killed indirectly.'22 The Rustumiya and
Sarafiya sewage treatment and water pumping stations had been attacked
with allied missiles and bombs, and nearby water treatment plants were
working at about one-quarter of capacity. Raymond Naimy, an official of
the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), commented that Baghdad's
water supply had been cut by 90--95 per cent, and a World Health Organ-
isation (WHO) delegation noted a fourfold increase in the number of chil-
dren being treated for diarrhoea. 23
In March 1991 Dr Roger Vivarie, of the Paris-based Medecins Sans
Frontieres, reported: 'The situation in Baghdad and in Falluja, 80km from
the capital, which was visited by our team, was already very difficult a week
ago. Hospitals, once among the most advanced and best equipped in the
region, now lack the most elementary working tools. There is no infrastruc-
ture, no running water, no food and no medicine. All sanitary infrastructures
have gone and not a single hospital is in a position to provide the most
elementary of services. '24 The UN special envoy, Martti Ahtisaari, reported
that Iraq was in a 'near apocalypse': Iraq was like a patient whose central
nervous system had been destroyed. Ahtisaari warned that since the coun-
try's energy systems had been so badly damaged by bombing, food aid
alone would not be sufficient to avert disaster. The UN sanctions committee
was urged to respond to the crisis by declaring that an 'urgent humanitarian
need' existed throughout Iraq. In his UN-sponsored report, Ahtisaari him-
self commented: 'Nothing we had seen or read had quite prepared us for
the particular form of devastation which has now befallen the country . . .
the recent conflict has wrought near-apocalyptic results upon the economic
infrastructure'. Moreover, 'sanctions decided upon by the Security Council
10 Iraq in the New World Order
... seriously affected the country's ability to feed its people'; all sources of
fuel and power and modern means of communication were now 'essentially
defunct', with the telephone system and the mail service destroyed; the
supply of food to private citizens had been reduced to 'a trickle'. There was
a real risk of widespread deaths through disease and perhaps starvation.
Ibrahim al-Nouri, the director of the Iraqi Red Crescent, was reporting on
cases of cholera and typhoid detected in several towns, and urging inter-
national aid organisations to send water purification chemicals to help
combat the diseases. Relief officials in Jordan were commenting that Iraqi
hospitals had been forced to halve rations for their patients.
In Basra and other cities women were forced to wash clothes and kitchen
utensils in water contaminated with raw sewage, with the incidence of
disease sharply increasing because of the shortage of food and the lack of
clean water for drinking. All but two of the city's filtration plants were
destroyed, and cholera and typhoid, not yet at epidemic proportions, were
increasing. Said al-Tamimi, a medical engineer, was quoted: 'A friend of
mine brought me a bucket of water from the mains supply in which was
swimming a little snake.' The death rate, particularly among children, was
rapidly increasing: the main bridges across the Tigris, the Euphrates and
the Shatt al-Arab had been destroyed, making it impossible to take children
to hospital where, in any case, virtually all normal services were impossible.
At the same time it was impossible to monitor with any accuracy the
incidence of the burgeoning cholera epidemic, since during the war and
the ensuing civil unrest most of the laboratory equipment used to measure
the disease had been destroyed.
In a damning article in The New York Times Zbigniew Brzezinski, the
former national security adviser to President Carter, shattered the US claim
that the war was fought with discrimination to minimise civilian casualties.
He emphasised that damage-toll 'raises the moral question of the propor-
tionality of the response' to Saddam Hussein's aggression against Kuwait.
The respected British journalist Peter Jenkins, commenting on the Brzezinski
report and other material, noted that the peace 'has turned into a nightmare,
the continuation of the war by other means'.25 Joost Hiltermann, Middle
East organiser for Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), commented: 'The
bombing was called surgical, but we're calling it neurosurgical: with ex-
traordinary accuracy the allied bombs took the brain out of the country's
ability to survive'; and PHR president Jack Geiger, having toured the region
of Basra, described the effect as: 'Bomb now, die later. You don't kill
people, you just cause the system to collapse.' The main themes of the
PHR report were familiar enough: malnutrition, diarrhoea and dehydration
among the children; dangerous drinking water; and a crippled economy. 26
After the 1991 Gulf War 11
In the same spirit a Harvard medical team visiting Iraq found that the death
rate of children under five was two to three times higher than before the
war. They estimated that over the coming year a further 170,000 children
would die because of the problems caused by the Gulf War: the massively
dislocated social infrastructure and the harshness of the enforced sanctions.
Now typhoid and cholera epidemics were flaring up throughout the coun-
try, with hospitals - lacking antibiotics, infant formula, medicines, band-
ages and other supplies - unable to treat malnourished children. One
Baghdad hospital reported 30-35 new cases of cholera a week during April
1991; and infectious typhoid patients were being discharged in all regions
because of a shortage of chloramphenicol, the drug needed for treatment.
Dr Megan Passey, the leader of the Harvard team, said that the report would
be presented to UN agencies, the US Congress and international relief
agencies. T1
In May 1991 Iraq declared it was desperate for access to its overseas
assets, now frozen by the US-dominated Security Council, in order to pay
for the next four months' food supply. Deals had been signed with Australia
and Canada for the import of 1.5 billion tons of wheat, half the country's
needs, but the orders were dependent on Iraq gaining access to its foreign
assets. It soon became clear that the United States, Britain and France were
in no mood to lift the sanctions on Iraq, while at the same time Washington
began pressing for a 50 per cent levy on all future Iraqi oil revenues. In June
the Soviet Union, backed by China and India in the Security Council, urged
some relaxation of the punitive sanctions on Iraq, if only to allow the
purchase of food and medicines. On 12 June Britain blocked an Iraqi move
for the unfreezing of currency printed in Britain for the purchase of food,
but the Security Council's sanctions committee agreed that thirty-one coun-
tries could release Iraqi assets to facilitate the purchase of food, medicines
and other essential supplies. At the same time it was clear that this measure
was insufficient to meet Iraq's growing humanitarian needs. Figures pro-
vided by the Iraqi health ministry suggested that many patients were dying
from infectious diarrhoeal diseases; death from such a cause was rare in
1990 but in the post-war period deaths were running at about thirty-two per
thousand admitted to hospital (in April and May 1991, 17,000 people were
admitted). At Baghdad's main hospital for infectious diseases the staff
acknowledged that they were treating many suspected cholera cases, as
well as typhoid and meningitis. 28
Dr Michael Viola, an American professor of medicine and microbiology
who visited Iraq along with two other New York physicians, reported on
the severe epidemic of several diseases, a situation now aggravated by
malnutrition ('You don't need statistics. It's everywhere'). The journalist
12 Iraq in the New World Order
Patrick Tyler, who visited dozens of paediatric and infectious-disease wards
across the country, encountered more than one hundred cases of marasmus,
a condition of progressive emaciation caused by advanced malnutrition:
'Typical symptoms are a gaunt skeletal look and distended stomach.
There were also many obvious cases of kwashiorkor, an advanced form of
protein deficiency in toddlers seldom seen outside drought-stricken areas
of Africa.' Dr Amera Ali, a physician at Ibn Baladi Hospital in Baghdad,
commented that if all the marasmus cases were admitted, 'the hospitals
would be full in one day'.29 In July 1991 the UN sanctions committee
rejected an Iraqi request that $1.5 billion-worth of oil be sold to buy food
and medicine.
By August, according to official Iraqi sources, more than 11,000 people
had died of starvation. The poor were at particular risk from malnutrition
and disease: there was no suggestion that the Ba'athist leadership, against
whom the sanctions were supposedly directed, was going hungry. Soon
Western aid donors were warning that unless international sanctions on
Iraq were eased the country could face malnutrition and disease on an
unprecedented scale. UN officials confirmed the fresh incidence of marasmus
and kwashiorkor, and reported infectious diseases such as typhoid, hepat-
itis, meningitis and gastroenteritis surging out of control. Washington and
London continued to block a relaxation of sanctions on the grounds that
the Iraqi authorities were refusing to co-operate with UN officials required
to inspect Iraq's surviving military facilities. In July a UN mission led by
Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan issued a report on 'humanitarian needs in
Iraq', compiled following 'observations and conclusions drawn from on-
the-spot evaluation'. The report declared that sanctions were having a
substantial effect on the living standards of the civilian population. Damage
to water treatment plants and the international block on the supply of
spare parts had cut off an estimated 2.5 million Iraqis from the government
system they relied upon before the war. The 14.5 million Iraqis continuing
to receive water via the pre-war system were now receiving less than a
quarter of the pre-war amounts, and this was of doubtful qUality. Raw
sewage continued to flow in city streets and into rivers used for washing and
drinking, resulting in unprecedented levels of infectious diseases, including
typhoid and cholera. The international blockade on spare parts meant that
medical, surgical, dental and laboratory equipment could not be maintained,
and that the electrical supply for most agricultural purposes was running at
about one third of the previous year's. The price levels of wheat and rice-
the two normal staple foods - remained at 45 and 22 times their pre-war
levels, with government rationing providing only about one third of the
typical family's food needs. Almost half of the nation's 900,000 telephone
After the 1991 Gulf War 13
lines had been damaged beyond repair, and all the international communi-
cations facilities had been destroyed.
The Sadruddin mission urged that Iraq be allowed to import $1 billion-
worth of spare parts and other materials to begin the restoration of the oil
industry; that immediate steps be taken to alleviate the priority needs
identified by the mission in the areas of food supply, medicine, water and
sanitation, power generation, telecommunications and the oil sector; that
food imports, to meet the minimum consumption requirements, be allowed;
that imports of fertilisers, pesticides, animal feed and drugs, machinery
and spare parts needed to repair the irrigation and drainage system be
allowed; and that imports should also be permitted for the repair of surgical,
dental and diagnostic equipment, for ambulances, for water pumping and
treatment facilities, for the sewage system, for electrical generation, for
the oil industry, and for telecommunications.
On 26 August 1991 Iraq reported that more than 14,000 children had
died because of the lack of drugs since the United Nations imposed the trade
embargo. A month later, publicity was given to the results of the study
carried out by the 87-member Harvard Study Team which investigated
some 6000 Iraqi households. The earlier enquiry carried out by the same
team found that the child mortality rate had doubled. Now it was found
that the death rate of under-fives had trebled and amounted to tens of
thousands. 30 Disease was rampant, with widespread epidemics of typhoid
and cholera. There was also a major increase in domestic violence, with
'the highest rate of war-related psychological trauma ever found in a post-
war study' Y At the same time the UN Secretary-General, Javier Perez de
Cuellar, was urging the Security Council to allow Iraq to sell increased
amounts of oil to provide revenue for humanitarian purchases.
In November 1991 there were reports of food riots in Baghdad and
other Iraqi cities, with particularly serious disorder in the Baghdad (Shia)
suburbs of Thawra and Khadhimaya. 32 Prices of some essential foods had
risen a hundredfold. Fifty kilogram bags of sugar and rice were now costing
500 dinars, equivalent to two months' salary for a professional. The Iraqi
government, faced with a partially collapsed currency, ordered the major
Rafidain Bank to accept currency known to be counterfeit. On 14 Novem-
ber the Iraqi agriculture minister, Abdul Wahab al-Sabagh, declared that
thousands more children and old people would starve unless UN sanctions
were lifted soon: '. . . only fifteen per cent of our people can afford to
buy food on the free market. The rest must accept hunger. That is the reality
of the embargo'. Iraq had been allowed to import 100,000 tonnes of grain
over the eight-month period since the end of the war, but the normal
national requirement was 200,000 tonnes a month: 'Today we have a great
14 Iraq in the New World Order
lack of food and medicines. We lack spare parts for agricultural machinery.
We lack fertilisers and pesticides as well as spares to get our power stations
and oil refineries working again. We are a country that lives in the
dark . . . we need pumps to bring the water to the fields and these require
electricity which we do not have.' At this time the United Nations was
expressing a willingness to allow Iraq to raise revenues to buy food and
other essential goods, provided that the UN was allowed to supervise food
distribution and secure reparations for the victims of the Iraqi aggression.
The British Overseas Development Minister, Lynda Chalker, announced
that further action might have to be taken against Saddam Hussein unless
he agreed to the UN terms for oil sales.
On 20 November 1991 the director of Oxfam, Frank Judd, having just
visited the region, called for a big international humanitarian effort to help
the millions of Iraqis suffering malnutrition and now facing a winter with-
out adequate food, medicines or housingY Now children with matchstick
limbs and distended bellies, 'like drought victims from Ethiopia', could
be seen in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities. A doctor in a Baghdad hos-
pital commented: 'It's a vicious circle. They get weaker and weaker from
lack of food. Then they are susceptible to disease because they have no
immunity, and that weakens them even more.' Britain had agreed a release
of £70 million-worth of Iraqi assets to buy the freedom of the businessman,
Ian Richter, but there was no control over how the money would be used:
it was unlikely that the plight of the needy would be alleviated, and in
any case President George Bush had asserted that the UN economic em-
bargo must remain in effect. Again there was no suggestion that the meas-
ures were hurting the Ba'athist leadership. Some 30 per cent of all Iraqi
children were now malnourished, with infant mortality trebled since the
GulfWar. 34
The situation in Iraq following the war was plain enough. The US-
dominated Security Council was insisting that de facto biological warfare
be waged against the impotent and traumatised Iraqi people, not against
the Ba'athist leadership who alone were culpable. By now the reports were
frequent and unambiguous: the UN sanctions - whatever the callous machi-
nations of Saddam Hussein - were bringing disease, malnutrition and
starvation to virtually an entire nation. Louise Cainkar, director of the
Chicago-based Database Project on Palestinian Human Rights, having spent
several weeks conducting fieldwork in Iraq, reported in detail on the
effects of the UN-imposed sanctions on Iraq.3S In Basra she encountered
'the same scene I was to see over and over again ... Iraqi women holding
thin, bloated and malnourished children . . .'. On 20 May 1991 President
Bush declared that the trade embargo would continue: 'We don't want to
After the 1991 Gulf War 15
lift these sanctions as long as Saddam Hussein is in power.' And in the same
spirit, the deputy national security adviser, Robert Gates, nominated by
Bush to head the CIA, stated that the Iraqis would 'pay the price while he
[Saddam Hussein] is in power'.36
Maintaining Sanctions
While few observers doubted the deteriorating plight of the ordinary Iraqi
people, and while Bush repeatedly emphasised that the option of further
military action against Iraq was still open, the punitive sanctions - including
a (de facto if not de jure) ban on imports of food and medicine - remained
in place. WHO and UNICEF had warned of the 'catastrophe' that would
beset Iraq if sanctions were not lifted, but Washington and London re-
mained largely oblivious to this concern. In May 1991 the White House
spokesman Marlin Fitzwater repeated the familiar refrain that •All possible
sanctions will be maintained until he [Saddam Hussein] is gone.' There was
plenty of evidence that sanctions were devastating the Iraqi people, but
no evidence that they were undermining the Ba'athist regime.
The deteriorating health of the Iraqi population became increasingly
obvious through the summer of 1991, though the US and Britain - as lead
players on the Security Council - seemed reluctant to agree any relaxation
in sanctions. These countries even went so far as to block Iraq's unilateral
efforts to export $1 billion-worth of oil to buy food and other essential
products, such as water purification tablets. A few states connived with Iraq
to break the UN-imposed sanctions, but Iraqi imports remained only a
fraction of pre-war levels. Jordan, for instance, was found to be trading with
Iraq in violation of UN stipulations, as shown by an Iraqi-Jordanian Joint
Committee documents, with minutes signed by Abdul Wahid al-Makhzumi,
adviser of the Central Bank or Iraq, and Dr Ibrahim Badran, under-secretary
of the Ministry of Industry and Trade for Jordan. 37 In July there were signs
that the US and Britain were prepared to allow Iraq to sell some oil for
humanitarian purposes, provided such activity could be closely monitored
and regulated to bring reparations to some of those who had suffered
because of the Iraqi aggression. There were signs also that the enduring US
hostility to Iraq, evidenced by threat of further military strikes, was now
being countered by other Security Council members unwilling to see further
conflict in the Gulf. On 29 July Maurice Gourdault Montagne, a spokesman
for the French government, urged the Security Council to ease the trade
embargo against Iraq. This pressure, combined with the entreaties of WHO
and UNICEF, had some effect: on 15 August 1991 the Security Council
authorised Baghdad to sell up to $1.6 billion-worth of oil to help pay for
16 Iraq in the New World Order
desperately needed food. The deal, under strict UN control, was seen as a
one-off humanitarian gesture. Other resolutions passed at the same time
fixed a ceiling of 30 per cent on the amount of annual Iraqi oil sales used
to pay reparations; and condemned Baghdad's failure to co-operate with
UN inspectors responsible for destroying Iraq's clandestine nuclear
weapons programme. 38 It was soon being pointed out that the UN con-
cession was totally inadequate, with even Secretary-General Perez de
Cuellar commenting that the restrictions on the permitted oil sale would
provide the Iraqis with 'substantially less than the minimum food import
requirements' .39 The Iraqi government, perhaps predictably, condemned
the half-hearted UN gesture as an interference with Iraqi sovereignty.
On 4 February 1992 the Iraqi ambassador to the UN, Abdul Amir al-
Anbari, declared that Iraq would not resume talks on possible oil sales:
'We decided that the talks were no longer useful or productive given the
conditions imposed by Security Council resolution 706, which renders
the production of Iraq oil a non-profitable enterprise and the Iraqi oil
non-marketable.' However, by the end of March, agreement had been
reached between the UN and the Iraqi authorities on the terms that would
govern the resumption of Iraqi oil sales. Such agreement came too late
to save many thousands of Iraqi deaths: a senior Iraqi health official, Abdul
Jabbar Abdul Abbas, reported that in the first four months of 1992 the UN
economic sanctions had caused nearly 41,000 deaths, including 14,000
child fatalities. And UN officials estimated that nearly five million
children in the Middle East would spend their formative years in deprived
circumstances as a result of the Gulf crisis. Thus Richard Reid, the UN
Children's Fund director for North Africa and the Middle East, commented
that: 'We can speak with alarming, grave assurance of a lost generation.'
On 3 September 1992 Britain ruled out any easing of sanctions on Iraq,
instead warning Iraq against any attempt to interfere with the aerial ex-
clusion zone over southern Iraq (see below). A few weeks later, the Harvard
research team published their estimate that 46,900 children under the age
of five died in Iraq between January and August 1991 as an indirect result
of the bombing, the civilian uprisings and the UN economic embargo.
Iraq, claiming purely humanitarian motives, made frequent requests for
an easing of sanctions. Thus in November 1992, for example, Tariq Aziz
visited New York to ask the UN to relax the current restrictions, but the
Security Council issued a statement saying that Iraq had only partially
complied with UN demands and so there could be no relaxation of sanc-
tions. It was now clear that the comprehensive embargo was drastically
affecting every aspect of Iraqi life. There were serious and worsening
shortages of food, medicines and the spare parts needed to repair the
After the 1991 Gulf War 17
Iraqi Terror
Kuwaitis suffered through the war and its aftermath, first persecuted through-
out the period of the Iraqi occupation and then hounded and tormented by
their own countrymen. To these sufferings were added the horrors of the
allied bombing - many of the selected targets were in Kuwait itself - and
the wanton destruction perpetrated by the fleeing Iraqi forces. Kuwait, like
much of Iraq, was a devastated land littered with the detritus of war:
unexploded mines and other ordnance, wrecked military and civilian
vehicles, fragments of radioactive shells, burning wells, massive pollution,
and the grim residue of human body parts and decaying corpses.
There was soon ample evidence of the brutalities inflicted by Iraqi troops
on their helpless Kuwaiti captives. These included, in the words of an
18 Iraq in the New World Order
Amnesty International (AI) report, 'the detention without trial of thousands
of civilians and military personnel . . . widespread torture . . . and the
extrajudicial execution of hundreds of unarmed civilians, including chil-
dren'. In addition there was widespread destruction of property and ex-
tensive looting, particularly of food, medicines and medical equipment.
By November 1990 Amnesty had received the names of more than 875
Kuwaitis said to be in custody, and official Kuwaiti sources estimated
that between 6000 and 7000 Kuwaiti military personnel had been taken
to Iraq. A memorandum issued by the Kuwaiti Red Crescent described
the daily attacks carried out by Iraqi soldiers:
Arrest and torture threatened every individual. Young men were shot
near their homes and in front of their families, and this method was used
to terrorise the people and to eliminate the young men on the pretext
that they worked in the resistance.
People were too frightened to remove bodies from the streets; but, despite
this, the morgues were soon full. Hospital refrigerators intended for food
were used to hold the accumulating number of corpses, and at the same time
many bodies were cast into mass graves. Some of the atrocity stories - for
example, the Iraqi theft of hospital incubators - were later identified as
black propaganda, but there can be little doubt that the bulk of the reports
of Iraqi brutalities were substantially true. In one graphic account the
respected Middle East journalist Robert Fisk describes how an entire
Kuwaiti family disappeared after Iraqi soldiers came knocking at the
door.40 This was only one of many families treated in such a fashion ('they
took 14 Kuwaiti families from Mishrif alone. No one has seen them
since'). Many other accounts have recorded the brutalities suffered by the
captive population at the hands of a cruel and increasingly demoralised
occupying force.
Kuwaiti Terror
The liberation of Kuwait did not herald peace for all Kuwaitis. Many of the
people living in Kuwait were foreigners with few civil or political rights in
the emirate. 41 The war had exacerbated tensions in the Kuwaiti community,
with some groups - especially the Palestinians - regarded with at best
suspicion, at worst hatred. The PLO, desperate for some sort of tactical
victory in the Middle East, had expressed support for the Iraqi invasion,
and many Kuwaitis assumed that the Palestinians in their midst would
have welcomed a victory by Saddam Hussein. The result was a further
round of human rights violations, with the Kuwaitis - many observers
would say understandably - playing the part of persecutors.
Many Palestinians who had fled to Jordan and elsewhere at the start of
hostilities were now struggling to return to their former jobs in Kuwait. At
the Kuwaiti embassy in Jordan many signed a 'book of congratulations' in
the hope that this gesture would guarantee their safe return, but the Kuwaiti
ambassador, Suleiman Alfassam, seemed less than enthusiastic about re-
storing jobs to all of the 400,000 Palestinians who had worked in pre-crisis
Kuwait: 'Why don't the Palestinians go to Iraq or to Libya? Gaddafi
has said he'll take them. In the old days we had hundreds of thousands
of Egyptians, Indians and Asians. With our new life, I don't think we need
the whole bunch back again.' And he added, 'Don't blame us if there are a
few reprisals.' In fact there was already the possibility of a civil war in
Kuwait between the Kuwaitis and the Palestinians. Kuwaiti and Saudi
soldiers were reported to be victimising the Palestinians as supposed
20 Iraq in the New World Order
POST-WAR CHRONOLOGY
In most Western propaganda the 1991 Gulf War had a tidy ending (though
the carefully cultivated depiction did not last long): the Iraqi forces had
been comprehensively routed, Saddam Hussein had been crushingly evicted
from the sovereign emirate of Kuwait, and the casualties had been 'merci-
fully light' (the Iraqi dead and injured were rarely included in the tallies).
Now it was the task of the United Nations to 'build the peace', a job which
somehow lacked the self-righteous energy and commitment that the US-led
war had enjoyed. Soon it would be found that the peace was a far from
tidy affair.
Once President Bush had declared a suspension of hostilities the Iraqi
ambassador to the United Nations, Abdul Amir al-Anbari, declared that
Iraq would co-operate over the return of allied prisoners and in other
ways. There were signs that the embargo on food and medicine to Iraq
would soon be lifted, though most other restrictions on the country would
be maintained while Saddam Hussein remained in power. At that time it
was also being suggested that Iraqi oil sales might be permitted as a way
of securing reparations for Kuwait and other injured parties. At the same
time, in late February 1991, the coalition allies began suggesting that the
Iraqi people should rise up and overthrow Saddam Hussein and his tyran-
nical regime. The peace would be easier on Iraq, declared Western po-
liticians, if Saddam were to go. On 28 February 1991, soon after the
cessation of military action, Prime Minister John Major told the House of
Commons that Iraq would remain an 'international pariah' while Saddam
Hussein remained in power. In the same spirit a spokesman for the Israeli
prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, continued to demand the overthrow of
Saddam Hussein, urging Iraqi commanders to demonstrate 'courage, desire
and ability' to bring him down.
On 1 March 1991 President Bush announced that allied commanders led
by General Norman Schwarzkopf would soon be meeting Iraqi military
leaders at a secret Kuwaiti location to agree the terms of a ceasefire.
After the 1991 Gulf War 25
Already, despite the hype that would soon follow, Bush was sensing that
the allied victory was only partial: after the Second World War there had
been a 'definite end' but now 'we have Saddam Hussein still there'. Again,
he commented that the US had no claims on Iraqi territory and did not
intend to target Saddam Hussein, but 'nobody can be absolved of re-
sponsibility under international law' - a remark that encouraged people to
contemplate the possibility that the Iraqi leader might be tried for war
crimes, if ever he could be brought before a suitable court. Speculation was
also encouraged about US intentions regarding the presence of American
troops in southern Iraq and the circumstances under which Bush would
resolve to restart hostilities: the US defence secretary, Dick Cheney, de-
clared that if Iraq were to take any military action 'probably what we would
do is open up the air campaign again'. There was growing talk also about
the prospects for a lasting peace in the Middle East. Despite all the Western
denials, Saddam Hussein had succeeded in establishing 'linkage' between
the Gulf crisis (now only partially resolved) and the lasting Arab-Israeli
dispute. Douglas Hurd and other Western politicians now seemed prepared
to agree that Israel's security should be guaranteed in return for an Israeli
withdrawal from occupied Arab lands.
In early March there were growing reports that Saddam was facing
revolts, encouraged by the West, in various parts of Iraq. The Iraqi regime
was losing control of the northern Kurdish provinces and the southern Shia
regions, while bedraggled soldiers returning from the front staged im-
promptu anti-Saddam demonstrations in Baghdad. A former Ba'athist
leader exiled in London commented: 'The situation is deteriorating very
quickly. The army is retreating in chaos and without real command. The
intelligence apparatus is still sustaining Saddam in Baghdad, but I expect
the situation will soon deteriorate there toO.'57 There were in fact many
signs that Saddam Hussein was losing control, not only in the far-flung
northern and southern reaches but in his Baghdad heartland itself. One
report suggested that 'all Ba'athists' were taking off their uniforms and
fleeing, and that there was general chaos and disruption. Effigies of the
Iraqi leader were being smashed on the streets and civilians felt able to
shout that 'Saddam is finished!' A spokesman for the Kurdish Democratic
Party (KDP) said: 'Our people are moving in the towns more easily than
before'; and noted that there had been fifty organised attacks against
Ba'athist leaders, with the Ba'athist headquarters in Kirkuk attacked with
grenades. Opposition Iraqi politicians began to believe that a new leader-
ship would emerge from the demoralised Iraqi army and that this new
faction would unite with Kurdish and Shia activists opposed to the regime.
26 Iraq in the New World Order
are many dead - maybe hundreds. The opposition control all the city
[Basra]. All offices of the Saddam party, police stations, security areas, are
all hit by the opposition.'s8 There were also signs that Iran was intervening
in the situation to aid the southern Shia rebels. On 7 March President
Rafsanjani, in an address to Saddam Hussein, urged him not to stain fur-
ther 'your bloodied hands by killing more innocent Iraqis. Yield to the
people's will and step down'. This declaration was accompanied by reports
that 'tens of thousands' of armed men had moved from Iran into Iraq,
raising the prospect of another Iran-Iraq war and an intensified Iraqi civil
conflict fomented by outside interests. It was significant that the Basra
rebels were loyal to the Shi'ite cleric Ayatollah Baqr al-Hakim, whose
father, Mahdi Hakim, had been executed by the Ba'athist regime. Now
there was speculation that a provisional government of 'Free Iraq' might
be formed in the territory occupied by the US forces. Kurdish rebels were
said to have seized control of the northern town of Sulaimaniya, while
the Basra rebels were fighting off an attack by Republican Guards and
clashes continued in the area of Baghdad. Ayatollah Hakim, referring to
the uprisings as a jihad (holy war), urged Saddam Hussein to quit power
and called on Iraqi army units to join the revolt and to ignore orders issued
'to the detriment of the nation'. A Sairi official in Beirut reported that
units of guerillas were now in Baghdad, 'working to assassinate Saddam
Hussein'. At the same time it was becoming increasingly clear that
Washington was reluctant to become involved in the uprisings throughout
Iraq. Thus a US military source commented on the American refusal to
give arms to Iraqis struggling to overthrow the regime: 'We're sticking
out of this. They're doing real fine all by themselves right now.'S9
On 11 March 1991, following meetings in Damascus, representatives of
nineteen political parties and movements - all opposed to Saddam Hussein
- met for a two-day conference in Beirut, in optimistic preparations for
assuming power in Baghdad. This was, however, a fragile union, split by
religious and political differences and incapable of producing a coherent
plan for the exploitation of the nationwide turmoil in Iraq. The Iraqi oppo-
sition failed to name any permanent leadership, failed to identify a useful
strategy, and failed to channel the energies of the disparate groups. Said
one of the Syrians, in manifest frustration, at the Beirut conference: 'You
have to do something concrete when there is an uprising. If you don't show
any practical reaction, it will be seen as a failure to help them. '60 Where
the delegates did agree was on the evident lack of US commitment to
the opposition cause. Said one delegate: 'What are the Americans up to?
The American army allowed the Republican Guard to pass down the road
to Basra to attack our fighters there. Why did they do that? I thought the
28 Iraq in the New World Order
body responsible for inspecting Iraq's nuclear facilities. The Agency re-
vealed that the Iraqi development programme had hit several problems and
that a much longer development period would have been required. It also
emerged that of the forty-four UN inspectors detained by Baghdad, only
three came from the IAEA, the rest seconded from the member states of
the UN Security Council; and that the inspectors, often American, had
more of an interest in communicating with Washington than in conveying
their findings to the various UN centres. By now there was further fighting
between Kurds and Iraqi troops, with reports of at least one massacre
by Kurds of sixty Iraqi prisoners and civilians. Of this the US State Depart-
ment spokeswoman, Margaret Tutwiler, felt obliged to say: 'We are deeply
distressed by this account, and will be talking to Kurdish opposition rep-
resentatives.' She added that Washington was also concerned about reports
of indiscriminate Iraqi shelling of Kurdish civilian areas. As many as
50,000 Kurds were now reported to be fleeing from their homes to escape
the renewed fighting. At the same time Saddam Hussein moved to intensify
the food and fuel blockade of the Kurdish regions as winter closed in. On
12 November the Kurdish leaders agreed to withdraw their guerrillas from
the northern towns if Iraq would lift the economic blockade: the main
thrust of the Kurdish revolt had been starved into submission.72 Still the
blockade persisted - an Iraqi blockade of Kurdistan within the UN blockade
of Iraq - and on 28 November KDP leader Barzani again went to Baghdad
in desperation to search for a negotiated settlement.
By now many of the Kurds were in an appalling predicament. Tens of
thousands of men, women and children were struggling to survive in moun-
tain camps beset by snow and freezing temperatures. In early December UN
officials were reporting some 200,000 Kurdish refugees fleeing Iraqi army
attacks in northern Iraq and straining relief efforts beyond their capacity.
The dreaded word 'arifal' on the lips of a refugee was quoted as an emotive
synonym for genocidal massacre. 73 Grim reports came from one Kurdish
region after another. In Sayed Sadiq, east of Sulaimaniya, 60,000 Kurds
were struggling to build a camp in the freezing rain; 8000 refugees were
driven to the town in the last week of November. In the province of Arbil
60,000 Kurds, clutching only what belongings they could carry, headed for
the mountains after Iraqi troops had ordered them to leave their villages.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) struggled
to organise relief for hundreds of thousands of displaced villagers forced
to survive in ramshackle tents in fields of mud and on the icy mountains.
According to one estimate, some 182,000 Kurds had 'disappeared'; and an
aid worker commented, noting the absence of clean water in the improvised
camps: 'Only the toughest of these kids can expect to survive the winter. '74
34 Iraq in the New World Order
Margaret Tutwiler commented: 'The United Nations people there on the
ground tell us they believe they can handle this situation. It is something
that is a concern to us, and something that we are obviously watching
closely.' The Kurds were increasingly forced to recognise the American
'do-nothing policy': they needed to know 'whether the US would like them
to sign an agreement with Baghdad, but the US refuses to express any
official opinion on the matter' .75 Few observers of the Kurdish plight
doubted that the UNHCR programme was too little, too late; and moreover
that the enduring UN sanctions on Iraq were hurting most of all the Iraqi
opponents of Saddam Hussein. 76
The Iraqi leader himself continued in characteristic fashion to use stick
and carrot, with stick predominant. In a move to reduce the tension between
the Ba'athist regime and the Kurds he sacked the long-serving health
minister, Abdel Salem Mohammad Saad, and replaced him with the Kurdish
labour and social affairs minister, Umeed Madhat Mubarak. At the same
time Saddam released 2300 prisoners, including four hundred Kurds, from
the Abu Ghraib Jalikjail, west of Baghdad, so fulfilling one of the Kurdish
conditions in the autonomy talks being held with the Iraqi leadership. In
December 1991, according to Iraqi opposition sources, eighty Iraqi officers
who had tried to stage a coup against Saddam Hussein were executed. The
officer, Mufleh al-Rawi, who exposed the coup plans was later decorated
by Saddam.
On 19 January 1992 details of a Saudi plan to topple the Iraqi leader were
published in The New York Times, and the US administration seemed split
over the merits of the scheme. The idea, scarcely original, was that trouble
should be fomented in northern and southern Iraq, forcing Saddam to use
troops stationed around Baghdad, whereupon they could be picked off by
air strikes. The US defence secretary Dick Cheney commented that 'If we
were engaged in such plans, obviously I couldn't talk about it'; but added
that in any case Saddam's days were numbered: 'He's in considerable
difficulty. His economy is a shambles. He doesn't control the north and
has only weak control of the south. He does not have a power base in Iraq
that allows him to survive long-term.' The CIA director, Robert Gates, had
recently emphasised the desirability of ridding the world of Saddam Hussein,
though President Bush himself continued to seem undecided about a course
of action. A week later, Iraqi dissidents produced an Iraqi army video
showing brutality against Shia captives. The interior minister, Ali Hassan
al-Majid, and another senior Iraqi, Mohammad Hamza al-Zubeidi, were
shown kicking and otherwise abusing the prisoners, all of whom were in
civilian dress. At one point Majid says: 'Let's execute one so the others will
confess'; then he says to one of the terrified captives: 'Where are your
After the 1991 Gulf War 35
friends? If you don't tell me I'll kill you right now. '77 Another report
highlighted the growing number of Kurdish casualties from some of the
twenty million Iraqi mines planted in Kurdistan in the 1980s. 78 By now the
Kurdish population was in an increasingly desperate plight, with thousands
of people facing starvation and the health and other support services near
to collapse.
The UK foreign secretary, Douglas Hurd, was now warning Iraq that
the blockade of Kurdistan must be halted or air strikes would follow. At
the same time the UN Security Council issued a statement declaring that if
Iraq refused to co-operate with UN weapons inspectors, 'serious con-
sequences' would arise, though no effort was made to explain what these
might be. It was also announced that the American CIA and the British
MI6 were spearheading an effort to topple Saddam Hussein. One American
source revealed that $25 million, much of the cash from Saudi Arabia,
would be spent over the next year to oust the Iraqi leader: 'This is on the
front burner for President Bush right now. He wants Saddam out before the
[presidential] elections in November. '79 In February 1992 CIA chief Robert
Gates met intelligence leaders in Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to discuss
the covert plans. Kurds from northern Iraq had been flown to Saudi Arabia
for training in communications, tactics and weapons. It was also reported
that the British government was forcing the pace. Said one Pentagon source:
'You Brits were really annoyed when we called a ceasefire so early. Now
you have been driving hard to finish the job in the way you wanted in
the first place.'so President Bush at that time decided that Saddam Hussein
was 'brutal and cruel', adding that 'the best thing that could happen
would be for him to go out of there so we could start new relations with
Iraq'. Bush continued to seek support for fresh bombing raids on Iraq but
seemed unable to secure either an international consensus or agreement
within the US administration.
Thomas Pickering, US ambassador to the United Nations, then predicted
to the Security Council that 'March [1992] will be the month of Iraq'.
Saddam, it was declared, was still refusing to co-operate with UN weapons
inspectors, and President Bush moreover was in evident electoral trouble
at home. In such circumstances he clearly relished the prospect of another
military confrontation. Now it seemed that he had the pretext, though
there had been many similar excuses in recent months. Rolf Ekeus, the
Swedish diplomat in charge of disarming Iraq, had reported to the Security
Council that he was up against a brick wall because of Iraqi intransigence:
Saddam would only agree to co-operate if the economic embargo were
lifted. Thomas Pickering dubbed the Iraqi posture 'totally unacceptable'.
On 9 March Tariq Aziz, now first deputy prime minister, flew with
36 Iraq in the New World Order
planned elections their villages would be shelled by artillery. And it was not
only Saddam who had an interest in frustrating the Kurdish moves towards
democracy: it was reported that warplanes from Turkey had bombed vil-
lages in Iraqi Kurdistan in a concerted effort to disrupt the proceedings (see
'The Turkish Factor' below).83 In the event it was the apparent delibility of
the imported 'indelible' ink - for marking voters' wrists - that forced the
Kurds to postpone their elections.
When the Kurds eventually went to the polls on 19 May 1992 - with a
heavy turnout among the 1.1 million eligible voters - they cannot have
imagined that a virtual dead heat between the leading contenders would
have resulted. Most voters indicated that they were supporting either Massoud
Barzani's Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) or Jalad Talabani's Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the KDP favouring renewed autonomy talks
with Saddam Hussein and the PUK rejecting any accommodations with the
current Iraqi regime. When the results were declared, all parties - the KDP,
the PUK and the smaller parties (Mahmud Osman's Socialists and Khaled
Osman's Islamic faction) - made charges that the others had practised
fraud, with multiple voting on a massive scale. An independent observer,
Michael Meadowcroft of the Electoral Reform Society, commented: 'We
have monitoring reports on more than half of the voting stations, and on
not a single one of them is there any suggestion of any intimidations of
voters whatsoever. Nor is there any suggestion that any kind of double or
multiple voting took place in any significant degree whatever.' At the same
time it was reported that, because of the paucity of polling stations, thou-
sands of would-be voters who had queued for hours were unable to vote
before the polls were closed. Barzani won the most votes (466,879-44.58
per cent, against Talabani's 44.33 per cent) but failed to secure the con-
clusive mandate for renewed talks with the Iraqi regime. However, the
holding of the election was perceived as giving the Kurds a new self-
confidence. Saddam Hussein had been unable to disrupt the elections (as
indeed had Turkey and Iran, both equally opposed to the development of
Kurdish autonomy). Saddam maintained what pressure he could on Iraqi
Kurdistan, and continued to confront the dissident Shias, the 'marsh Arabs',
in the south. 84
In early June the Bush administration proposed that $40 million should
be spent on covert aid in 1993 to oust Saddam Hussein. 'What we need,'
declared an organiser of the self-styled opposition Iraqi National Congress,
meeting in Vienna, 'is a plan to get rid of the pig [Saddam Hussein]. '85
Some days before the conference convened, a CIA report concluded that
Saddam was stronger now than he was a year ago; a senior US official
commented privately: 'We expect him to stay.' The US administration
38 Iraq in the New World Order
would continue to fund efforts to topple the Iraqi dictator, but with a feeling
of growing impotence. A prime mover of the Vienna meeting, Ahmed
Chalabi, revealed that Saddam had managed to outplay the Americans:
'He kept sending officers to Saudi Arabia, who told America they were
credible and were planning coups. Then he sent them directly to the Amer-
icans. They followed a lot of red herrings. '86 On Iraqi television Saddam,
ridiculing the idea of a coup, said to vice-president Izzat Douri amid
much laughter: 'I will make a coup and you will help me!' In July there
were reports of an actual coup bid, again defeated by Saddam.87 And
suggestions of US involvement were confirmed by an American official:
'There was a plot ... we were involved. '88
Again tensions were developing between Iraqi officials and UN arms
inspectors: on 5 July, with the Iraqis preventing UN access to a government
building, the UN team leader Karen Jansen said that the two sides were 'in
a stand-off. The Iraqi agriculture minister, Abdul Wahab al-Sabagh, de-
clared that Iraq would not authorise the search of a 'civilian ministry which
has nothing to do with the United Nations and its resolutions'; and he
accused the UN of being a tool of the United States, with the Bush admin-
istration 'using international terrorism' against Iraq. A few days later,
Saddam Hussein was denouncing the United Nations as 'an advertising
agency' for the United States, at the same time calling for the overthrow
of the rulers of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia: 'What is needed is a jihad to
purge the Arab nation of these treacherous leaders who have become a
shameful burden on our region.' Tension further increased when a UN
guard, a Fijian, was shot dead by an unknown gunman in northern Iraq.89
The Iraqi authorities then agreed that the disputed Agriculture Ministry in
Baghdad could be searched by 'impartia1' (that is, non-American) experts.
Yet again the prospect of a new Gulf war loomed. White House spokes-
man, Marlin Fitzwater, commented: 'We're serious about this. I won't
comment on military decisions but all options remain open.' The Bush
administration had secured the agreement of the British to participate in a
fresh air war against Iraq, and the Democratic presidential candidate Bill
Clinton had given his backing to the use of force. It was reported that the
new war against Iraq would begin with Cruise missile strikes as the first
stage of an escalating campaign. A US source declared: 'We are not talking
of a surgical strike here. It is to make the Iraqis realise that if they do not
comply, more is coming.' Said Bill Clinton: 'Let Saddam Hussein make no
mistake. Even during an election campaign, Americans are united on this
issue. If the UN decides to use force to ensure Iraqi compliance with the
ceasefire agreements, I will support American participation. "JO Bush, in-
creasingly unpopular in national opinion polls, faced a dilemma - not eased
After the 1991 Gulf War 39
by anti-Bush car bumper stickers seen around the US: 'Saddam Hussein
still has a job. Do you?' By now it was being suggested that air strikes
on Iraq could start within days, though Bush still seemed reluctant to
issue an ultimatum. 91 Talks at the UN had failed to resolve the crisis
over arms inspection, and Bush was now holding meetings with senior
military advisers. Secretary of State James Baker joined in by declaring to
Iraq that the US and its allies were 'very serious'; while the tenacious
British MP, Tam Dalyell, pressed for a recall of Parliament before British
troops were again committed to military conflict. (It was also revealed
at this time that Major Karen Jansen had the previous year consulted a
Maryland psychic in an extra-sensory search for Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction. 92 )
On 26 July 1992, under threat of further bombing attacks, the Iraqi
authorities agreed to let UN inspectors enter the Agriculture Ministry,
provided the inspectors were not from countries involved in the Gulf War.
The deal gave the UN access to the disputed building, but Saddam had
seemingly secured control over who should be in the inspection teams.
The West celebrated Saddam's 'climb down', while Iraq rejoiced with
equal enthusiasm at Saddam's 'victory over the UN'. The delay had
obviously allowed the Iraqis to remove any incriminating evidence from
the building in question, but Washington was keen to play down what was
increasingly being seen as a humiliation for the US. The US national
security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, commented: 'That doesn't end it. That
deals with the tip of the iceberg.' The Americans also tried to disguise
their minor tactical reverse by completing their preparations for seventeen
days of war games, involving 2000 marines, in Kuwait. On 28 July tens
of thousands of Iraqi demonstrators marched through Baghdad, chanting
'Bush, Bush, listen with care - we all love Saddam Hussein!' The American
bluff had been called. Bush ordered another carrier battle group into the
Gulf and sent a Patriot missile system to Kuwait, but it seemed that yet
again the prospect of further hostilities in the Gulf had been averted.
Whilst the UN-Iraqi dispute was developing, the position of the Kurds
continued to deteriorate. It increasingly appeared that the Kurds had been
'left in limbo' by the United Nations, with various relief agencies gradually
phasing out their operations. Aid workers had been terrorised by Iraqi
attacks, and the new UN-Iraqi deal had seemingly left the Kurds even
more exposed. 93 Now the US had agreed to talk to members of the Iraqi
opposition - James Baker granted an audience to a carefully selected group
of two Kurds, two Shia Arabs and two Sunni Arabs - but few observers
thought that anything useful would come out of the meeting (in one account
the unprecedented meeting did no more than reveal US 'desperation' to find
40 Iraq in the New World Order
any group that might topple Saddam). While these talks were in progress
it was reported, to no-one' s surprise, that nothing of interest had been found
in the Baghdad agriculture ministry; and that, more significantly, Washing-
ton was yet again gearing up for bombing strikes on Iraq.94 At the same time
the Iraqi forces seemed to be massing for a further onslaught on the Arabs
of the southern marshes. 95 The US continued with its war games in Kuwait
and, in the face of yet more Iraqi non-compliance in Baghdad, made further
threats, with Marlin Fitzwater again running through the familiar liturgy:
'No one should be of any apprehension that there are ways to seek a very
forceful compliance' (which presumably meant that Baghdad would be
bombed if it did not behave itself). Again the Iraqi authorities were digging
in their heels, this time refusing UN access to government ministries. The
Iraqi information minister, Hamed Youssef Hammadi, was adamant: 'We
reject categorically visits to the headquarters of ministries because the
aim . . . is to hurt Iraq's sovereignty and independence . . . As far as other
places, the inspection teams can visit any place in the country.' Again
the crisis was defused only when agreement was reached on the use of
non-American inspectors.
On 9 August 1992 the Iraqi authorities cut the telephone links to the holy
city of Najaf, and imposed a curfew, in an attempt to prevent thousands
of mourners turning out for the funeral of the Grand Ayatollah Abdel
Qassem al-Khoei, a renowned Shi'ite scholar. The authorities called for
three days of mourning, but the intended plans for a public funeral after the
brief family ceremony were cancelled after police visited the family home.
The death of al-Khoei occurred at a time of growing reports of renewed
attacks on the southern Shias, and as the main aid channels to the northern
Kurds were drying up, a year after the withdrawal of allied troops from
the region. The allies were now warning Saddam to stop the air attacks
on the Shias, with the implied threat of air strikes against Baghdad if the
warning were not heeded. Again, President Bush seemed uncertain how
to proceed. A new bombing strike on Iraq, far from being politically
advantageous as election day approached, would now reek of opportunism;
and the very charge of such politicking was clearly having a deterrent effect
on the White House. On 16 August Bush commented: 'From now on some
will accuse us of political opportunism for every move that I make. That's
unfortunate but it's not going to deter me from doing what is right, regard-
less of the political fall-out ... There will be no politics and I will do what
is right for the United States and in this case for the rest of the world.'
Said Pentagon spokesman Pete Williams: 'You can't let Iraq ... draw a
red line around buildings.' This was the start of the crucial Republican
convention in Houston. Many observers speculated that a bombing strike
After the 1991 Gulf War 41
that 'both Ankara and Tehran oppose a federated Kurdish state ... they feel
that regional countries should start having a say in the way things are
shaping up and that "outside influences" [the West] are a negative element
for the security and stability of the region.' At the same time the Turkish
high command was announcing that it had 20,000 troops in northern Iraq,
a blatant occupation of sovereign territory that the West pretended not
to notice.
Saudi Arabia alone was unenthusiastic about the proposed conference,
discerning a 'Turkish-Iranian-Syrian agreement to limit the intervention
of the Western states in Iraq' (the Saudis could be relied upon to protect
US hegemony in the region). Now the threat loomed of fresh tensions
between Iran and the West and even between Turkey and other members
of the NATO alliance. In 1975, in an earlier betrayal, the US decided to
abandon the Kurds. Now such Kurdish leaders as Massoud Barzani had
little doubt that the Western powers were running true to form. Winter was
again threatening post-war Kurdistan, Saddam was impeding UN aid ef-
forts, and stocks of fuel and food were critically low. lOS On 14 November
1992, Turkey, Syria and Iran held a meeting of foreign ministers in Ankara
to discuss how to prevent the creation of an independent Kurdish state
in northern Iraq. In particular they declared their intention to oppose the
development of a Kurdish parliament and the emergence of a federal Kurdish
state. At the same time it was clear that Turkey was reaching an accom-
modation with the Iraqi Kurds in order to oppose more radical Kurdish
factions: Turkish commanders had reached a pragmatic agreement with
Kurdish leaders Barzani and Talabani for a security zone to protect Turkey
from the Marxist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Thus, while opposing
the emergence of an independent Kurdish state, Ankara was giving tacit
recognition to the autonomy of the northern Iraqi Kurds. Various com-
mentators (for example, Yalcin Dogan in the Turkish national daily,
Milliyet) saw such moves as giving impetus to the emergence of a Kurdish
federal state.
By the end of November UN trucks were again struggling to reach some
of the 3.5 million people in Iraqi Kurdistan. At the same time foreign aid
workers were being intimidated in the north, a grenade had been tossed
into the offices used by one aid agency, and a UN representative had been
killed - possibly murdered - in a traffic accident. Demirel, in a visit to
London, declared to Prime Minister John Major that Iraq must not be
divided, that Turkish forces would remain in Cyprus, and that air sorties
over northern Iraq from Turkey might not be allowed to continue. This last
would mean that it would be even more difficult to convey aid to the Kurds
via the northern Turkish route. In one incident six UN trucks had been
46 Iraq in the New World Order
was the familiar formula, increasingly threadbare, that was being used to
prolong the international blockade against the entire Iraqi people. It seemed
increasingly no more than a vindictive Western policy, arguably illegal in
international law, which continued to consign vast numbers of ordinary
Iraqis to disease and death, and which did nothing to achieve the declared
aim of eroding the security of Saddam Hussein.
The irony of the broad political situation was manifest to all. Saddam
Hussein - in US terms comprehensively defeated in the Gulf War - was
succeeding in consolidating his power, while George Bush, the nominal
victor, seemed about to pass into history. The election success that a year
ago had appeared a foregone conclusion would soon elude the US president.
There were moreover fresh allegations being made that were helping
to erode the moral posture of the Western leaders.
THE SADDAMGATES
The United States was accustomed to providing arms and other support to
military dictators and despotic regimes around the world - principally as a
matter of policy in the Cold War but also in the service of other strategic
requirements. Weapons were supplied to the Iran of the ayatollahs with the
aim of securing the release of American hostages, an event that was signifi-
cant in the context of the Iran-Iraq war. 1I3 At the same time, because of the
US 'tilt' towards Iraq as a defender of the Gulf states against Islamic
fundamentalism, Washington was prepared to countenance both overt and
covert aid to Saddam Hussein over many years. Much of this activity was
widely known in the period leading up to the 1991 Gulf War (see Chapter
7), but it was only after the war that the extent of the earlier covert aid to
Saddam was exposed in the public domain. The controversy - 'Saddamgate'
(or 'Iraqgate') - continued through 1992 and may be judged partly re-
sponsible for Bush's election defeat.
Even before the start of the 1991 war the extent of US support for
Saddam was being publicised. It was now known that Saddam Hussein had
'the fruits of a secret six-year intelligence exchange with the United States
to draw on as he fights American forces, thanks to Ronald Reagan, William
Casey and aides'.114 Saddam had long received 'coaching from the CIA and
the State Department' in the assumption that Iraq could be drawn into a
useful relationship with the United States. Intelligence data was routed to
Baghdad via the American embassy in Amman, with King Hussein of
48 Iraq in the New World Order
Saudi Arabia during the Gulf War were financed in part by US money, with
the secret knowledge of US government and Italian bank officials. 120
In October, as various US government departments struggled to cover
their tracks, a bitter feud developed between the CIA and the Justice
Department over improper loans to Iraq - with each accusing the other 'of
withholding information from federal prosecutors.' 121 By now it seemed
that criminal indictments of senior Bush officials were increasingly likely.
A respected American columnist Jim Hoagland commented: 'The Iraq
cover-up is unravelling with stunning speed as the Bush administration
dissolves into warring clans more worried about staying out of jail than
promoting the re-election of President Bush.' The Justice Department had
announced that it was going to investigate itself, the FBI and the CIA over
the cover-up of the improper BNL loans to Iraq; and the FBI had announced
it would investigate the Justice Department. The Democrat Senator Bill
Bradley expressed a widespread view when he commented that the Bush
administration seemed to be 'unravelling', while many observers were
sensing that it would be impossible to keep the whole affair under wraps if
Bush were to lose the November election. 'The first thing a Clinton admin-
istration will do is throw open the executive-branch files on Iraq and Iran
and anything else they can think of,' said one administration official. 122
Britain, as befitted America's smaller partner in the Iraq affair, was able to
boast its own home-grown Saddamgate. Like its US equivalent, the British
Saddamgate ran back over time. * In 1984 Sir Geoffrey Howe, then foreign
secretary, issued ministerial guidelines on trade with the warring Iran and
Iraq. These involved - as John Major was to declare to Liberal Democrat
leader Paddy Ashdown in November 1992 - 'a ban on the export of lethal
equipment and on defence equipment that would significantly enhance the
capabilities of either side to prolong or exacerbate the conflict between
them'. The Howe guidelines, which most observers found unexceptional,
were not observed: between 1987 and August 1990 Britain, shadowing the
US's pro-Iraq posture, supplied Saddam with much of the equipment he
sought, including Matrix Churchill machine tools to make shells, Philips
Scientific technology to aid nuclear development and Plessey communica-
tions facilities - all secured with financial credits supplied by the generous
*In view of the US Saddamgate it seemed ironic that British firms were the largest
contingent of a US 'blacklist' of organisations supplying arms to Iraq.
After the 1991 Gulf War 51
British taxpayer. So it was that in the Gulf War the British forces were
obliged to face British-made (and US- and British-funded) armaments. This
politically embarrassing state of affairs soon pushed British ministers into
a wide-ranging and inept cover-up attempt, just as Bush administration
officials had responded with their own lies and evasions.
The pivotal trial - that of three former executives of Matrix Churchill -
was initiated in February 1991 by UK customs officials investigating viola-
tions of export controls. In April it was announced that the former defence
minister, Alan Clark, would be required to give evidence. It was also said
that Clark had given 'a nod and a wink' to British firms seeking government
approval for the export of armaments-making equipment to Iraq: 'Clark
strenuously denies the claim' .123 At that time UK customs investigators
also moved to arrest four more senior managers, including the chairman
of BSA Tools, and the chairman and commercial manager of Wickman
Machine Tool. (It was also reported that the Birmingham-based aerospace
company, Bimec Industries, which had supplied a 'metal treatment plant'
to an Iraqi armaments factory, had provided funds to the British Tory
Party.)124 With the Matrix Churchill trial in prospect, evidence of other
cases of UK support for Saddam's armaments development began to
emerge. It was revealed that Douglas Hogg, then a trade and enterprise
minister, had in 1989 approved a grant of £2 million to the Gateshead
factory of Flexible Manufacturing Technology (FMT), a firm building
specialised equipment to supply the Iraqi army with a mobile rocket-launch
system similar to the MRLS (Multiple Rocket Launcher System) used by
the allies during the Gulf War. 125 By now it seemed clear that the British
government was providing licences for the export of a wide range of
equipment that the Iraqis were using to build up their military potential.
In August 1991 it emerged that Britain had supplied Iraq with substantial
amounts of uranium suitable for the manufacture of nuclear weapons. The
trade and industry secretary, Peter Lilley, commented that only 'tiny amounts'
of uranium had gone to Iraq, but after press revelations that some eight
tonnes of depleted uranium had been exported to Iraq on Department of
Trade and Industry (DTI) licences between 1988 and 1990, with mustard
gas and nerve gas ingredients shipped to Iraq over the same period, Lilley
admitted that an error 'had crept into the memorandum supplied by his
department giving details of materials licensed for export to Iraq' .126 It also
emerged that UK Customs and Excise officers had destroyed detailed
records of British arms and chemicals exports to Iraq through the 1980s.
In October 1992, with the Matrix Churchill trial drawing to a dramatic
conclusion, Alan Clark now admitted that British exporters had been ad-
vised to stress the peaceful aspects of the machinery they wanted to export
52 Iraq in the New World Order
to Iraq, even though it was known that such machinery could also be used
for military purposes. Paul Henderson, the former managing director of
the company, testified that the DTI had condoned the sale to Iraq of
machine tools it knew could be used to manufacture armaments. * There
was also testimony that Mark Gutteridge, a former employee of Matrix
Churchill, had passed intelligence information to MI5, as indeed did
Paul Henderson. An MI5 officer, testifying from behind a screen, agreed
that there was no doubt from information supplied by Gutteridge that the
Matrix Churchill machine tools were to be used by Iraq for the production
of armaments. Alan Clark was now prepared to declare in court that the
guidelines restricting trade with Iraq were 'elastic . .. tiresome and intru-
sive'; and that Western interests were 'well served by Iran and Iraq fight-
ing each other'. Clark also testified that suggestions that nothing should
be said about the equipment's military uses was 'a matter of Whitehall
cosmetics to keep the record ambiguous'. And he also admitted, using a
phrase that came to symbolise the emerging character of the affair, that his
failure to make any reference to the possible military uses of the machine
tools was no more than being 'economical ... with the actualite'.
The situation now rapidly escalated. Alan Moses QC, for the prosecu-
tion, declared to Mr Justice Smedley that the evidence no longer sustained
the charges against the three former Matrix Churchill executives. In particu-
lar, the evidence of Alan Clark was 'inconsistent with his statements, both
in the written statement and in his interview with the officer of Customs
and Excise in 1992'. According to Henderson's solicitor, Irwin Mitchell,
the government's policy to breach the (UN and British) arms embargo on
Iraq was revealed in the 500 pages of secret papers disclosed to the defence
on the orders of Mr Justice Smedley - despite the strong resistance of
cabinet ministers, Kenneth Clarke, Michael Heseltine and Malcolm Rifkind,
together with Tristan Garel-Jones, minister of state at the Foreign Office.
The court heard that exports to Iraq were approved in private meetings
between ministers, including the then minister of state at the Foreign Office,
William Waldegrave (Irwin Mitchell: 'Much time was spent by civil ser-
vants, in compliance with ministerial wishes, to keep these developments
secret' .)127 The former Matrix Churchill executives were acquitted.
The government documents, coupled with the unambiguous House of
Commons statements made by ministers, showed official duplicity at the
*In February 1993 US government sources revealed that MI5 and MI6, as early as 1987,
were passing information to US intelligence that Matrix Churchill was selling arms-related
equipment to Iraq (The Guardian, London, 16 February 1993).
After the 1991 Gulf War 53
that the terms of reference of the Scott enquiry would allow a proper
investigation into the enormity of the case in hand - involving as it did a
former prime minister, the current prime minister, many current cabinet
ministers, the security services and many key officials in various govern-
ment departments. Robin Cook, Labour trade spokesman, voiced wide-
spread fears when he commented: 'What we see at the end of the day will
depend on negotiations with Lord Justice Scott and the government ... The
inquiry is staffed by the same treasury solicitors that advised those govern-
ment ministers not to disclose documents in the Matrix Churchill case.' The
holding of the enquiry had largely defused the issue. Lord Justice Scott
would take months to deliberate, and few observers believed that his final
report would condemn John Major, Baroness Thatcher and a whole raft of
senior government figures.
As the time approached for the start of the formal hearings before the
Scott Inquiry there were already signs of the difficult times ahead. In a case
that bore striking similarities to the Matrix Churchill affair, government
lawyers were refusing to release official documents which could overturn
the convictions of four former Ordtech executives, accused of selling
arms to Iraq (The Guardian, 22 April 1993). At the same time it emerged
that Ministry of Defence documents requested by the Scott Inquiry had
been destroyed or lost. * Defence Minister Jonathan Aitkin admitted that
some of the papers could not be found, but said in reply to a Parliamentary
Question that it would be 'inappropriate' to give further details. The tone
was set. The Scott Inquiry began its formal bearings on 4 May 1993, with
the final report anticipated by the end of the year.
resist the Options for Change reductions in air force spending planned by
the government. 140
It was also reported that the US navy was investigating allegations of
war crimes made against its own forces. An anonymous letter, written by a
sailor on the guided-missile frigate USS Nicholas, alleged that US forces
had opened fire on Iraqis trying to surrender, killing five Iraqis and wound-
ing others. Admiral Eugene Carroll, of the Washington think-tank, the
Centre for Defence Information, commented that the US military's record
in investigating its own breaches of international law is 'abysmal', and he
added: 'I would feel a lot more comfortable if we were talking to all the
people involved, rather than just our own side.' 141 Another report revealed
that American pilots flying combat missions in the Gulf were routinely
being given the sleeping drug Halcion, banned in Britain and known to
be associated with amnesia, paranoia attacks and violent behaviour. 142
Another highly contentious issue was the question of 'friendly fire'
deaths. It was reported that US tanks, artillery and other weapons managed
to destroy more than thirty American tanks, armoured personnel carriers
and other vehicles that in total carried more than 175 soldiers. It is signi-
ficant also that US forces succeeded in killing more Americans than did
the Iraqis; said one US army officer: 'Right now we estimate that more
than fifty per cent of the ground war casualties were from friendly fire.
It probably will go higher.' 143 Most American families of the victims of
friendly-fire incidents have not been informed of the circumstances of the
deaths. At the same time it was being reported that the US had performed
an almost flawless feat of arms. Thus Dick Cheney was telling Congress
that 'there are no confirmed reports of penetrations by Iraqi projectiles
of M I-A 1 Abrams tanks' - while Lisa Applegate had information about
the death of her husband on an Iraqi battlefield: 'His tank burned for
48 hours and they couldn't get him out until after the fire was out.'l44 In
fact Sergeant Applegate's tank was hit by a sabot round fired by another
US Abrams tank, some army experts reckoning that 'most of Applegate's
body was sucked through the three-inch hole by a vacuum' created as the
'Silver Bullet' [a two-foot steel dart tipped with depleted uranium] passed
through. Mrs Applegate said. 'The coffin didn't weigh anything.'14s
One of the most contentious cases of friendly-fire deaths concerned the
killing of nine British servicemen by US aircraft. An American report on
the incident was not made available to the relatives of the nine dead, and
from the start of British efforts to uncover the truth there was persistent
stalling on the part of the US authorities. Archie Hamilton, the British
minister of state for the armed forces, while obviously disinclined to make
a fuss, admitted that 'there were still many questions that remained
58 Iraq in the New World Order
There was ample time for the British embassy in Kuwait to warn BA
before the plane landed.
Passengers were told by Ministry of Defence personnel held captive with
them that the plane was 'talked down' by British military staff.
BA Flight 149 was the only one to land after the start of the invasion.
The dozen men believed to be soldiers had been booked in from
Hereford, the base of the Special Air Service.
A member of the Kuwaiti royal family, thought to have a military role,
was on the plane with his bodyguard. 153
The British Foreign Office refused in August 1992 - two years after the
incident - to comment on the circumstances surrounding BA149, apart
60 Iraq in the New World Order
from referring to earlier inconclusive ministerial statements. These state-
ments 'appear to contradict each other as well as evidence obtained' by
various journalistic investigations. 154
In March 1993 fresh evidence emerged to cast doubt on statements
made by Prime Minister John Major and Baroness Thatcher on the fate of
Flight 149 (The Independent on Sunday, 7 March 1993). Documents newly
obtained from US intelligence services under the Freedom of Information
Act confirmed that the British government knew about the Iraqi invasion
of Kuwait at least three hours before BA149 was due to land. It is hard
to avoid the conclusion that intelligence reports should have provided
ample time for the aircraft to be diverted. In June 1993 British Airways took
steps to ban the release of information about Flight BA149.
Other court cases in the UK have involved some of the eighty-eight
Iraqis, Palestinians and Yemenis interned by the Home Office at the start
of the Gulf War. The men were wrongly arrested, denied their legal rights,
and threatened with deportation. After several weeks of imprisonment the
deportation threats were lifted. The Home Office subsequently initiated 'a
top-level internal inquiry into what Whitehall is describing as the worst
intelligence debacle for years' .155
Turkey,* another coalition ally and NATO member, was pursuing its own
agenda of violence and repression - in circumstances that bore an alarming
resemblance to Saddam's war on his own minority ethnic groups. The
Turks had long been intent on repressing their own Kurdish minority (in
some areas the Turkish Kurds had been granted fewer rights than their
Iraqi counterparts), and one consequence of the Gulf War has been to give
the Turks a freer hand in repressing Kurdish culture, destroying Kurdish
villages and waging war - sometimes across the border into Iraq - against
the organised Kurdish resistance. In March 1991, following the ending of
*Turkey, as a strategic Western asset, affords a good example of how the US is prepared
to rewrite history in the interest of realpolitik objectives. In a sustained genocide that began on
24 April 1915 the Turkish army began the systematic massacre of hundreds of thousands of
Armenian Turks: men, women and children. When Hitler was planning his 'final solution' to
the Jewish Question he asked: 'Who remembers the Armenians nowT The United States does
not. When in 1990 Senator Robert Dole moved a resolution for US recognition of the 1915
massacre, Senator Robert Byrd urged caution: 'I say we ought to stop, look and listen before
we take a fateful step here to offend a friend, to offend an ally.' The resolution was defeated
by 51 votes to 48. Washington had decided that the Armenian massacre, cynically consigned
to oblivion by Adolf Hitler, had never happened.
After the 1991 Gulf War 61
the Gulf War (and true to a long Turkish tradition), the Turkish army was
firing on Kurdish nationalists in southern Turkey: two people were shot
dead and twenty were wounded by the Turkish security forces. Turkey - in
the interest of dismembering a bellicose Iraq - had shown some support
for Kurdish independence in Iraq, but conservative Turkish factions
reckoned that such a move would strengthen the dissident Kurds within
Turkey. There was already conservative hostility to the efforts of the
Turkish president, Turgut Ozal, to lift a Turkish law banning the Kurdish
language. There were already signs that the Turkish Kurds were being
emboldened by the partial political successes of their brothers across the
border in Iraq.IS6 Reports in April told of Turkish soldiers stealing blankets,
sheets and food from terrified Kurdish refugees in southern Turkey.
On 5 August 1991 Turkish F-4 and F-104 fighter-bombers flew ninety-
two sorties into northern Iraq to bomb Turkish Kurdish rebels. At the same
time a Turkish land invasion penetrated as deep as eleven miles into Iraqi
territory in an attack on guerrillas belonging to the Kurdistan Workers'
Party (PKK). It was also declared that Turkey intended to mount a per-
manent occupation of parts of northern Iraq - as a deep 'buffer zone' - to
prevent further infiltration of its territory. On 7 August the prime minister,
Mesut Yilmaz, said: 'We are declaring a 5-kilometer region along the
border a buffer zone. Everyone who steps into that area [without permis-
sion] will be fired upon.'IS7 Over the subsequent months there were further
Turkish raids on the Kurds in Iraq, some of the attacks being made on the
'safe havens' set up by the allies at the end of the Gulf War for the
protection of the Kurds. lss In one account no less than three thousand
Turkish troops invaded Iraq in an attempt to root out PKK guerrillas.
Estimates suggested that more than one hundred Kurdish civilians had
been killed by Turkish artillery fire.
The Kurdish resistance was still able to mount offensives against the
regular Turkish forces. On 25 October as many as 500 PKK guerrillas
mounted an attack on Turkish soldiers across the border, whereupon Turkey
immediately retaliated with F-104 planes and helicopter-borne troops
making raids on Kurdish positions. The Kurds had planned their raid to
coincide with the aftermath of Turkey's parliamentary elections, narrowly
won by the conservative Suleiman Demirel. The new government was
considering the idea of conciliation with the Kurds, but there were loud
public demands for an all-out war against the Kurdish minority. Again the
conflict threatened the involvement of other states in the region. Turkey's
ambassador in Damascus had already informed the Syrians that Turkey
might feel forced to attack Abdullah Ocalan's PKK camp in the Syrian-
controlled Bekaa Valley, and that if Turkey did not receive Syria's co-
operation, 'it would seek help from Israel'. There were also reports of
62 Iraq in the New World Order
'you don't exist', there would be a return to 'continuous war' (The Guard-
ian, 18 March 1993). Within weeks, the conflict had resumed.
At the end of the Gulf War it seemed unlikely that Saddam would survive.
The army appeared to be fragmented and demoralised, the infrastructure of
the country had been massively damaged, there were still tens of thousands
of US troops in southern Iraq, and the country remained under tight eco-
nomic blockade. The Ba'athist regime - now forced to confront widespread
riots and obvious disaffection in Baghdad - was facing unprecedented
threats. Much of a devastated Basra was in rebel hands and it appeared
unlikely that Saddam would be able to re-establish his control over the
northern Kurds. Western leaders, rejoicing at their evident military victory,
urged the Iraqi people to rise up and depose their brutal and discredited
leader. But it soon became apparent that Saddam, having made many
miscalculations over his invasion of Kuwait, had given thought to his post-
war survival. In particular, he had husbanded enough of the Republican
Guard to ensure his protection in a devastated and demoralised land.
Saddam began his efforts at post-war reconstruction with a cabinet
reshuffle. Tariq Aziz, the foreign minister who had shuttled round the world
in a vain attempt to prevent the war, was made deputy prime minister - to
some observers a meaningless post. Saddoun Hammadi, a Shia, was pro-
moted to the position of prime minister; and Taha Yassin Ramadan, a Kurd,
was elevated to the new post of vice-president. Some exiled opposition
figures claimed that Latif Jasim, the former information minister, had
disappeared without trace. Soon - as part of his 'carrot' theme - Saddam
was encouraging Iraqi journalists to write freely: 'Write what you like. If
you get it right, take the credit. If you get it wrong, I'll take the blame.'
There were in fact signs of a partial liberalisation, with Iraqi newspapers
carrying measured criticism of shortages and high prices. Saddam also
tried to bolster Iraqi morale by pretending that Iraq had won the war. Thus
on the eve of the first anniversary of the invasion of Kuwait he declared:
'We look at victory in its perspective as an historical duel, not as a fight
between one army and several others. You are victorious because you have
refused humiliation and repression . . . and clung to a state that will
strengthen the people and the [Arab] nation for ever. We don't have the
feeling that we were not victorious in the historical duel.' Then there were
more ministerial changes.
On 3 September 1991 Iraq's Revolution Command Council (RCC)
64 Iraq in the New World Order
issued a new law legalising opposition parties, though only the Ba'ath Party
was allowed to operate in the armed forces: 'The Ba'ath Party should be in
the armed forces to defend the revolution and prevent any military coup.'
The new law stipulated that a party could be founded by a minimum of
150 people aged at least 25, but that it could not be established on the
basis of race, regionalism, sectarianism or atheism. In a significant shift
of policy, religious parties - provided they were not sectarian - were now
allowed to operate; and party members receiving funds from abroad would
face life imprisonment (not, as formerly, the death penalty). At the same
time there was talk of mUltiparty elections being held by the end of the
year. However, Western-style democracy would not be allowed. In a
speech lasting several hours, delivered in September at a top-level meeting
of the Ba'ath Party, Saddam stated that anyone aspiring to Western values
'would not be allowed ... to take any post in leadership'. The Iraqi leader
was now giving every sign of consolidating his control over the regime,
though some of his own diplomats were deserting him: staff at various
Iraqi embassies defected and the Madrid embassy was closed down after
the last three diplomats disappeared to seek refuge somewhere in the
Gulf area.
Saddam now felt strong enough to pressure the British government into
releasing some Iraqi assets in exchange for freeing a British businessman.
On 23 November 1991 Ian Richter, jailed by the Iraqis for five years on
bribery charges, was celebrating his release after Britain had allowed
Iraq access to £70 million-worth of assets. There were signs of factional
squabbles in the Iraqi leadership - with at least one account of a gun-
battle involving Saddam's bodyguards - but it seemed clear that now
Saddam was 'in complete control of the country outside Kurdistan' .163 Syria
was now moving closer to Iraq, opposing UN Security Council threats of
fresh military action against Baghdad and growing increasingly suspicious
of American intentions to tum the Middle East into a US 'security zone'.
In March 1992 Damascus resumed its mail and parcel services to Baghdad,
and Syrian newspapers and television were instructed to end their verbal
attacks on Saddam Hussein. It was significant that Syria also declined
to celebrate the February anniversary of the liberation of Kuwait. American
efforts to intercept the North Korean ship carrying Scud missiles to Syria
had enraged the Ba'athist leadership in Damascus. In an address to the
Syrian parliament President Assad denied that the ship had been carrying
missiles but commented: 'We have missiles and will bring missiles accord-
ing to our needs.' Then he attacked US hypocrisy. Israel was being allowed
to produce 'all types of weapons, especially missiles' while Washington
was trying to prevent Arab states from doing the same: 'That is not inter-
After the 1991 Gulf War 65
national legitimacy. That is the law of the jungle. The law of wild
animals. '164
In May the senior UN aid official Robert Hauser, director of operations
for the World Food Programme, declared that there was now little mal-
nutrition in Iraq: 'The vast majority have adjusted to the government ration-
ing system. People eat less and throwaway less, but I have not seen
people as wasteful as in Iraq before the wars.' The rationing system was
equitable and well organised, with the overall situation in Iraq 'only one
per cent as serious as in Somalia or Sudan'. In June a classified intel-
ligence report, a National Intelligence Estimate presented to President Bush
and his chief aides, declared that Saddam Hussein was stronger than he
had been a year earlier. Some of the country's infrastructure had been
rebuilt by importing goods via Jordan, in violation of UN sanctions, and
hidden Iraqi reserves had been tapped. The report also stated that the
continued imposition of sanctions would cause the conditions for most
people in Iraq to worsen, so increasing the pressures on Saddam. A Bush
administration official commented: 'The main point is that Saddam is still
there and we expect him to stay. It used to be that people were saying that
the sanctions were making him weaker. They're not saying that any more.
He is clearly stronger than he was a year ago'; and in the same vein James
Lilley, assistant secretary of defence for international security affairs, de-
clared: 'As long as he's able to get enough stuff to buy off his cronies, the
Republican Guard, his chances of staying in power are pretty good. From
what I've seen recently, it doesn't look like he's going to fall any time
soon.' 165
Much of the problem, from the Washington perspective, was that Saddam
was succeeding in escaping the intended sanctions stranglehold. In July
CIA chief Robert Gates flew to Jordan to urge King Hussein to allow on-
the-spot inspections of lorries carrying the bulk of Iraq's trade with the rest
of the world. US intelligence sources were blaming Jordan for allowing
middlemen to supply Iraq with howitzers, steel cables and rods, tyres,
cement and other equipment that could be used for military purposes. The
Jordanian response was to insist that the Iraqi borders with Syria, Turkey
and Iran were equally permeable. In one substantial account a detailed
description was provided of how Barzan Tikriti, Saddam's half-brother,
was running a world-wide sanctions-busting operation from Switzerland,l66
and it was increasingly being recognised that Iraq was now selling millions
of gallons of oil in violation of UN sanctions and with the apparent com-
pliance of Turkey. 167
In August dozens of Iraqi businessmen were executed for profiteering
and hoarding basic commodities, whereupon Saddam was forced to send
66 Iraq in the New World Order
an envoy, Ahmed al-Zubeidi, to Amman to reassure terrified Iraqi traders.
On 12 August Saddam promised a crackdown on 'irresponsible government
officials' as part of a plan to help the economy: 'Measures taken by the
leadership to protect the interests of citizens and future measures that will
be taken in this respect aim at protecting all the sons of Iraq from the
devious people.' Said Saddam: '[the corrupt officials] will be dealt with the
same way we dealt with corrupt businessmen'. On 20 August a British
expatriate, Paul Ride, was jailed for seven years in Baghdad for allegedly
entering the country illegally; and a week later a second Briton, Michael
Wainwright, was facing similar charges in a Baghdad court. Wainwright
was sentenced to ten years in jail, a 'totally disproportionate' term that
provoked 'the strongest possible protest' from the UK Foreign Office.
Three Swedes, arrested for entering Iraq on 3 September, were each sen-
tenced to prison terms of three years.
On 18 September 1992 it was announced that Iraqi engineers and build-
ers, working round the clock, had succeeded in rebuilding Saddam's main
palace, the massive 'Home of the People' on the southern bank ofthe Tigris
River. The army newspaper al-Qadissiyah declared that the speedy re-
construction of the bombed palace was 'a loud reply to rancorous and
malevolent enemies'. Saddam was also spending vast sums on the con-
struction of a modern Babylon. Huge artificial mounds carry terraced
trees and flowers, in imitation of ancient Babylon's Hanging Gardens, with
palaces and recreation centres overshadowing the remains of the monu-
ments to Nebuchadnezzar's greatness. Placards decorating the entrances to
the ancient city proclaim: 'From Nebuchadnezzar to Saddam Hussein,
Babylon rises again'. Of Saddam' s plans to revive an international cultural
festival in the ruins of ancient Babylon, Hamed Youssef Hammadi, the
Iraqi minister of culture and information, has declared: 'The Babylon
festival will underline that the torch of life will not be extinguished no
matter how hard the enemies like Zionists and [their] agents try to stop the
march. This festival ... is a defiance ... of the forces of evil and conspiracy
against our country.'
There were now fresh UN moves to help the Kurds, Shias and other Iraqi
groups again facing a harsh winter, with Washington urging the use of
frozen Iraqi assets to pay for weapons inspections and humanitarian aid.
Iraq in turn threatened that it would not co-operate with the 'winter survival
programme' ifthe Security Council decided to go ahead with plans to seize
Iraqi assets. It also announced that it was seeking UN agreement to export
$4 billion-worth of oil to pay for humanitarian aid and to fund the imple-
mentation of UN resolutions against Iraq. Any attempt to seize the frozen
assets would be 'bank robbery, Texas-style' and 'an act of illegal confisca-
After the 1991 Gulf War 67
tion'. On 2 October 1992 the UN Security Council passed the planned
resolution (1~ with China abstaining) for the confiscation of frozen
Iraqi oil assets, an unprecedented UN initiative. Iraq had been able to use
some foreign funds to purchase humanitarian supplies exempt under the UN
sanctions. Now such a facility was blocked, with all the relevant funds
having to go through the US-controlled UN agencies. Washington had
succeeded in performing its Texas-style 'bank robbery' .
The Iraqis continued - in the teeth of sanctions, with their assets frozen
and with oil sales limited - to rebuild their country, to repair the massive
damage caused by forty-three consecutive days and nights of bombing. By
October 1992 Iraqi engineers had succeeded in repairing all but one of
the bridges in Baghdad, the 14-storey telephone exchange - bombed to a
concrete shell - had been restored, and the many gutted ministries had
been rebuilt. The main Baghdad power plant was working at 90 per cent
of its pre-war capacity and oil production was back to around 800,000
barrels a day (though overseas sales were still prohibited). The six-lane
highway from Baghdad to the Jordanian border - once littered with bomb
craters - was now again a smooth super-highway. Developments were
continuing on the 'Third River' project, a 350-mile canal that will tap
the Tigris-Euphrates basin to reclaim land. It was obvious that Saddam
Hussein was a key motivating factor in the reconstruction of Iraq. Those
around him have said: 'Saddam never, ever, gives up ... ' - a mentality
which, according to the journalist Marie Colvin, has proved 'crucial to
the rebuilding of Iraq. He went from the Mother of all Battles to the Mother
of all Reconstructions without missing a beat' .168
Ordinary Iraqis continued to face massive problems, not least the rep-
ression visited on dissident groups, but it would be wrong to doubt the
pride felt by many Iraqis in the speedy rebuilding of their country - in the
face of sanctions and continued Western hostility. (In some cases the
Western policy on Iraq worked to damage Western firms: for example, by
1993 the freezing of Iraqi assets was driving some thirty British companies
close to ruin.) On 18 October 1992 the head of UNICEF reached agreement
with senior officials in Baghdad on reviving aid to Iraq. Said the UN
official, James Grant: 'It is a programme for all of Iraq, including the three
northern governorates [areas controlled by the Kurds].' Two days later, to
the outrage of UN officials, the United States moved to block the humani-
tarian agreement, saying that it made too many concessions to Baghdad.
As the desperate Kurds in the mountains faced yet another cold winter,
Washington had again demonstrated the character of its political priorities.
At the end of October the strengthened opposition Iraqi National Con-
gress (INC) completed its conference in Salahuddin in northern Iraq. Now
68 Iraq in the New World Order
it was conceded that the INC had little organised support within most of
Iraq, though there was still hope of fresh Western support that might make
the difference. Saddam Hussein gave no sign that he was troubled by the
INC efforts in the north. He had survived - despite everything - and it
looked as if he would remain in power for the foreseeable future. The
rebuilding of Baghdad, while much of the rest of Iraq remained desolate,
was increasingly advertised as a propaganda success. For example, on
21 January 1993 there were celebrations in Baghdad to mark the reopening
of the Bilady baby milk factory, destroyed two years ago by US bombs
and missiles. The prime minister Mohammad Hamza al-Zubeidi presided
over the inauguration of the plant, while an anti-aircraft crew swivelled
their gun on a US-supplied Jeep and children from the Saddam Kinder-
garten chanted: 'With our spirits and our blood we will sacrifice ourselves
to you, 0 Saddam!>I69 At the same time there were frequent reports of the
rising tide of crime in Baghdad and elsewhere, of Basra still awash with
untreated sewage (a UNICEF water and sanitation officer, Kazim Hallal,
declaring that 'the people here are drinking sewage'), and the hospitals
still having to contend - in the teeth of a de facto UN embargo on medical
supplies - with epidemics of cholera, hepatitis and malaria. Dr Aladin
al-Fadhli, a hospital director, was quoted: 'It is a catastrophe for me as a
doctor to watch people die unnecessarily. It is not humanity for anyone
to do this. We feel that the war did not end with the bombing and shelling.
It is not finished.'
The US-inspired sanctions - in late-1993 running into a fourth year -
ensured that Saddam, well cushioned in Baghdad, would continue to pre-
side over a demoralised and suffering country racked by crime, destitution
and disease. 17o It was becoming increasingly clear that there was little
reason for continued sanctions. There was broad Iraqi compliance with UN
resolutions and no suggestion that Iraq was about to embark upon further
aggression. UN inspectors had commented, for example that Saddam's
nuclear intentions were no longer a threat, that the destruction of mustard
gas stockpiles was progressing well and that nerve gas stocks had been
destroyed (The Independent, 20 March 1993). On 19 March 1993 UN
experts arrived in Baghdad to remove Iraq's stockpiles of irradiated ura-
nium. In such circumstances of broad Iraqi co-operation with UN inspectors
it was hard to see why the Iraqi popUlation should continue to be punished
with sanctions. Any independent observer might have thought that the
Iraqi people had suffered enough, but there was more to come. A frustrated
George Bush, smarting under the fact that Saddam had outlived his term
in office, could not resist the temptation of launching a final punitive attack
After the 1991 Gulf War 69
on Iraq. A fresh military onslaught - some observers noted - would have
the additional consequence of locking president-elect Clinton into a vio-
lently anti-Saddam posture.
Since the end of the 1991 Gulf War George Bush had smarted in relative
impotence on the Iraq question. The dissident uprisings in the Kurdish
north of Iraq, in Basra, in the Shi'ite south - all verbally supported by the
Western coalition allies - had failed to dislodge Saddam Hussein. Nor
had the Iraqi army risen up to depose the tyrant. Bush had dramatically
personalised the Gulf conflict, and yet the demonised Iraqi leader was still
in place. What could be done?
There were few options. It would not have been possible to organise a
second coalition onslaught on Iraq: there were too few grounds for such
an attack and the Arab states that had reluctantly supported the original
coalition would not support a further US-inspired adventure. In the dying
weeks of his administration George Bush had no recourse but to invent
fresh Iraqi sins as a prelude to US air strikes on selected Iraqi targets. Of
course there would be further Iraqi civilian deaths but at least George Bush
would have relieved some of his personal frustrations by giving Saddam
a 'bloody nose' or a 'spanking'. The excuse for a fresh US military attack
was Iraqi 'violation' of the so-called 'no-fly zone' in southern Iraq. What
this meant in fact was that if Iraq chose to fly aircraft over certain parts
of its own land then US fighters, illegally violating Iraqi air space, would
shoot them down.
The no-fly zones had no legal status. There is no reference to the no-fly
zones - in either the north or the south of Iraq - in any UN resolutions. Only
one resolution - Resolution 688 (5 April 1991) - condemns (rightly) the
repression of the Iraqi people in many parts of Iraq, and 'demands' and
'insists' that Iraq undertake certain actions in this connection. But 688 was
passed under the humanitarian chapter (Chapter 1) of the UN Charter, not
under the chapter (Chapter 7) that allows for military action in the event
of non-compliance. Resolution 688 contains no clauses that specify what
action should follow in the event of Iraq's non-compliance with its various
requirements. If it were demonstrated - as it well could be - that the Iraqi
authorities had violated the terms of 688 then the proper course would be
a further Security Council resolution authorising action. The US, fearing
that they would not command the support of the Council in a resolution
70 Iraq in the New World Order
authorising further military action against Iraq, decided not to approach
the UN on the matter: George Bush liked the idea of unilateral military
action that could be taken promptly and without the bothersome need for
legal justification. And once a military action had been taken, other military
initiatives could follow.
On 27 December 1992 US fighters challenged two Iraqi aircraft flying
over southern Iraq. One of the US F-16 fighters fired air-to-air missiles
which brought down one of the Iraqi planes. Commentators were quick
to point out that the US action had no legal basis: thus the no-fly 'zone
was established unilaterally ... not by a separate resolution ... Thus the
US action in shooting down the Iraqi MiG appeared questionable in terms
of international law.' 171 President-elect Bill Clinton issued a statement
saying that he supported 'efforts to bring Iraq into compliance [with UN
resolutions],. At the same time the Iraqis denounced the act as 'flagrant
aggression', declaring that they would take 'suitable' action to respond
to 'this aggression over our national territory'. Nizar Hamdoon, the Iraqi
ambassador to the United Nations, denied that Iraq was seeking a new
military confrontation with the US and declared that Baghdad would not
be lodging a formal complaint to the UN. Soon Washington was expressing
its concern that there were Iraqi SAM ground-to-air missile batteries along
or below (the reports varied) the 32nd parallel that defined the border of
the illegally-defined no-fly zone in the south. Thus Marlin Fitzwater, White
House spokesman, declared: 'We're monitoring the missiles. We're very
concerned. We're still considering our options.' On 6 January 1993 Iraq
was given forty-eight hours to withdraw the missiles or face air strikes by
the US, Britain and France - an ultimatum that again encouraged comment
about the legality of the US-defined no-fly zones ('The zone has never
been officially approved by the UN').172 Two days later Iraq announced
that it had withdrawn the missile batteries to less threatening positions,
and US reconnaissance aircraft and spy satellites were working to check
whether Washington still had a pretext to launch military strikes against
Iraq. On 10 January American defence officials were admitting that the
Iraqi leader had complied with US orders.173 Soon Washington had con-
trived fresh grounds for a US-Iraq confrontation.
Saddam was now pressing ahead with his plan to drain the southern
marshes, a scheme that had agricultural implications and likely strategic
consequences for the beleaguered marsh Arabs. It was now being widely
reported that this 'Third River' project would drastically affect the liveli-
hood of the marsh dwellers - further evidence of Saddam's perfidy. What
was less often noted was that this development scheme was based on a 1951
report ('Control of the Rivers of Iraq') by Frank Haigh, a senior British
After the 1991 Gulf War 71
engineer formerly with the British Indian administration (see New Scientist,
17 April 1993). A principal purpose then, as now, was to capture the marsh
waters for irrigation. At the same time, Saddam was keen to suppress the
recalcitrant tribes in the marshes. An important report in The Observer
on 28 February 1993, by Middle-East correspondent Shyam Bhatia, re-
vealed 'the full barbarism of Saddam's onslaught' on the marsh Arabs.*
There were also reports of further Iraqi incursions into Kuwait, events
that seemingly were inflated out of all proportion by Western comment-
ators in the effort to justify a fresh allied military response. It was reported
that Iraqi troops or unarmed technicians (the reports varied) had ventured
into Kuwait to retrieve Iraqi material (including missiles and other
weapons) from warehouses near the border. In fact the newly (and illegally)
demarcated border between Kuwait and Iraq was not due to come into
force until 15 January and the Security Council had allowed Iraq, until
that date, to remove its equipment from the area, providing it received
prior clearance from the UN. 174 Thus what some US officials were trying
to inflate into a second invasion of Kuwait was no more than an Iraqi
failure to say 'please' before retrieving material, as agreed with the Security
Council, from what was still Iraqi territory.
On 10 January Iraq imposed its own no-fly zone, denying UN officials
permission to fly from Bahrain to Baghdad in protest at the continuing ban
on flights by Iraqi Airways. At the same time Washington was making fresh
charges that allied flights over southern Iraq were again being threatened
by SAM missile batteries (which most independent observers agreed were
obsolete systems lacking spare parts). Now the points were clocking up - a
fresh 'invasion' of Kuwait, clapped-out SAMs threatening allied aircraft
in Iraqi air space, further restrictions on UN inspectors. But did such
trivia amount to a justification for further bombing raids on Iraq, with the
inevitable civilian deaths that such a course would involve? Washington
thought so, and so did UK Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd: 'I don't think
anyone who is concerned with international law ... could argue that the
Iraqis can be allowed to get away with what they did.' On 13 January 1993
some 114 aircraft, including British Tornados, carried out air strikes on
southern Iraq. Use was made of French Mirages and at least thirty-five
aircraft, carrying 2000lb laser-guided bombs and Harm missiles, operating
from the USS Kitty Hawk in the northern waters of the Gulf. Early reports
said that civilians had been killed in a residential area of Basra. 175 Marlin
*In March 1993 there were reports that Washington was considering bombing the massive
earth dykes that were draining the waters of the Iraqi marshes (The Observer, London, 7 March
1993).
72 Iraq in the New World Order
Fitzwater, spokesman for George Bush, declared: 'We stand ready to take
additional forceful action with our coalition partners.' A USA Today/CNN/
Gallup poll found that 83 per cent of respondents approved of the bombing
of Iraq, with 59 per cent saying that the bombing should continue until
Saddam was toppled from power. A large majority (75 per cent) of those
favouring further bombing were not deterred by the possibility of 'substan-
tial US casualties'.
Now Washington was advancing a further ground for military attacks
on Iraq. Baghdad was instructed to close down six ramshackle police posts
in the UN-controlled demilitarised zone by midnight on 15 January - or
face military retaliation. George Bush was now scraping the barrel. The
six Iraqi positions had been in existence for a year, during which time
the US had orchestrated the redrawing of the KuwaitlIraq border in favour
of Kuwait, and the presence of the posts had seemingly caused Washington
no problems throughout the entire period. Suddenly the presence of a
few Iraqi policemen, in a few dilapidated offices that the US and Kuwaiti
authorities had known about for many months, were to be used as a further
pretext for American aggression. 176 When it was revealed by the White
House that the earlier bombing raids had missed at least half their
targets there was new speculation that there would be further air attacks
'to finish the job'. At the same time the first of some 1250 US troops were
arriving in Kuwait to protect the emirate from imaginary dangers. A partial
climb-down by Saddam on the question of flights by UN inspectors seemed
unlikely to prevent fresh US air attacks. Now it was being reported that
US generals were urging Bush to bomb Baghdad. 177
The Pentagon had admitted the poor performance of its planes in the
earlier bombing raids, when the bombs missed a third of their targets
altogether and only destroyed a few of those they hit. It was also announced
in the US that the British Tornados had missed half their targets, contradict-
ing British claims of their good performance. Said a UK Ministry of
Defence official: 'It's very, very silly to get into the game of numbers.'
With Washington and London smarting under such evident failures it
seemed unlikely that fresh air strikes would be long delayed.
On 17 January 1993 President Bush, supported by Britain and France,
fired some forty cruise missiles at a factory on the outskirts of Baghdad. It
was announced that the Tomahawk weapons had been launched from the
Gulf and the Red Sea to destroy the Zaafaraniyah 'nuclear fabricating
plant' which had already been the subject of UN weapons inspections. The
al-Rashid hotel in central Baghdad was also hit, resulting in the deaths of
two women receptionists and the wounding of thirty-one people. 178 Even
After the 1991 Gulf War 73
while the cruise missiles were hitting Baghdad the Iraqi police posts on
the border were being dismantled, according to UN officials. The little-
publicised fact also emerged that Kuwait itself had failed to comply with
UN requests to remove its own police posts in the disputed area.179 On
18 January there were further air strikes on southern Iraq to destroy the
targets missed in the earlier bombing raids.
The Bush finale had failed to impress many world leaders. The Arab
states remained significantly quiet and Russia demanded a meeting of the
Security Council and a clearer indication of allied objectives. A few more
innocent Iraqis had been killed and wounded, Saddam Hussein was yet
more securely ensconced in power, and George Bush found yet again
that personal spite was no substitute for useful policy. Again, the West
had demonstrated its hypocrisy and double standards, reacting dispro-
portionately to minor irritations. Now Baghdad was offering a 'ceasefire' -
though it was manifestly too weak to respond in military terms to Western
aggression - and hoping to cultivate fresh relationships with the new US
administration.
His policy toward Iraq before and after the Gulf War. For example, he
made a basic mistake in being so friendly toward Saddam Hussein,
extending agricultural credits that will never be paid, providing techno-
logy which Saddam used in his weapons programme, and sending
signals that must have given Saddam the impression that he had a good
chance to be able to invade Kuwait and get away with it - because of
the way we coddled him. That was the mistake. Then, as soon as the
war was over, out of fear that Iraq would break up, we let Saddam attack
the Kurds in the north and the Shi' ites in the south until the international
press and our allies forced us to get back in and try to change it. For
the first year after the war, we were not nearly as insistent as we are
now that the terms of the ceasefire resolutions be observed. ISO
Bill Clinton had won thirty-two states and Washington DC, taking 370
of the 538 electoral-college votes, the best performance by a Democrat
since Lyndon Johnson's landslide in 1964. Clinton had secured what
seemed a convincing victory. Viewed in other terms, he had won with
only 43 per cent of the popular vote on a 55 per cent turn-out, high by
recent standards. This meant that Bill Clinton had been elected president
of the United States with only 23.6 per cent of American men and wo-
men supporting him. It remained to be seen what foreign policies - includ-
ing those bearing on Saddam Hussein's Iraq - would be adopted by a new
American president supported by fewer than one in four American adults.
The signals coming from president-elect Clinton suggested that not
much would change. In a major interview Clinton appeared to be suggesting
that the Bush approach to Iraq would be maintained:
BEGINNINGS
The first settled communities of the Near and Middle East were established
during the 8th and 7th millennia BC. They typically relied upon cereal
cultivation and the range of developing technologies that went with it.
Mudbrick villages were built and rebuilt on geographically favoured
sites, producing prominent mounds that were well signalled in many re-
gionallanguages and dialects (for example, by tell in Arabic). The earliest
settled sites were not far from the original mountain homes of the wild
ancestors of wheat and barley, where rainfall was adequate or where
floodplain irrigation could be developed. The two most famous sites of
this type were Tell es-Sultan (Jericho) in the Jordan valley and Catal Huyuk
in the central plain of Turkey. Such sites, embryonic towns, were character-
istically defended by walls enclosing agglomerations of houses so tightly
packed that some could be entered only by the roof. Trade developed
between such settled communities, including those on the Mesopotamian
79
80 The History of Iraq
plains, and the way was prepared for the development of literate, techno-
logical and stable cultures.
The geography of the great Tigris-Euphrates Valley, the land of the so-
called 'Twin Rivers' at the heart of Mesopotamia, manifestly favoured the
emergence of civilised communities - as did, for similar environmental
reasons - the Nile Valley and the Indus Valley. The great river system of
the Tigris, the Euphrates and their tributaries made cultivation possible and
facilitated trade - and the associated cultural infusions - with all the most
important regions of the ancient world: Persia, India, Anatolia, the Levant
and, via the Mediterranean, Egypt and all the states of southern Europe.
As the settled communities became largely self-sufficient, through agricul-
ture and the raising of livestock, their populations increased and there was
a pressing need to expand into new lands. One region for fresh settlement
was the upper valley of the Tigris and Euphrates, an area where the rainfall
was adequate for cultivation. In the 6th millennium Be there were many
thriving settlements in this area, though much of the lower valley was still
sparsely populated, the home of scattered nomads and marsh dwellers.
Much of the Mesopotamian plain was too dry for successful cultivation
without irrigation, and by about 5000 Be farmers were building primitive
dykes and canals, just as elsewhere efforts were being made to drain the
wetlands.
Many of the early prehistoric settlements quickly disappeared, buried
below alluvial silt or submerged by fresh villages erected on their ruins.
The common need to maintain an effective irrigation system would have
led to a degree of social organisation and developing technology, features
that would have been stimulated by the ever increasing populations. The
most successful settlements grew into royal or sacred cities - such as Eridu,
Ur, Uruk, Nippur and Girsu on the central Mesopotamian plain. It is Eridu
that is often cited as providing the best evidence of cultural continuity from
the first peopling of the region through to later historic times. The inhabit-
ants of Eridu knew that Enki, god of wisdom and sweet waters, had taught
human beings the arts of writing and geometry. A succession of temples
was built, each raised above its predecessor and enshrining the new prin-
ciples of a developing architecture. One of the later temples was about
eighty feet long, with its mudbrick walls strengthened by buttresses, the
whole structure set upon a substantial platform, the first stage of the mighty
ziggurat. By about 4000 Be religious commitment was stimulating innov-
ations in architecture, imaginative mythology and social organisation.
The Sumerians, responsible for one of the first great explosions of
culture on the Mesopotamian plain, were wandering shepherds who came
to the region about 3500 Be. They came to dominate the whole of the
The Ancient Crucible 81
lower valley, though rarely venturing further north. Their language was
without known relatives, and their sculpture is too stylised to provide many
clues about their origins. Once they had invented writing they described
themselves as the 'black-headed people'. They shared the plain with settlers
from many different regions, resulting in tensions and conflicts as populations
grew and technology advanced. The early village settlements had devel-
oped into substantial towns and cities, laying the foundation for the
city states that would later emerge. The way was prepared for the organ-
isation of armies, equipped by technology and sanctified by religion. The
military clash of cultures was to become one of the principal features of
early Mesopotamian life, a further incentive for material invention and
religious devotion.
SUMER
The 'holy king' is Ibi-Sin, the deified monarch of Ur who ruled from 2029
to 2006 Be. The Elamite invaders from the east overran Sumer, sacked
the temple of Ishtar, and carried off the idol of the goddess. However, the
cult of Ishtar, the Sumerian Aphrodite, survived into Christian times.
The tablets have also helped researchers to define the sequence of
dynasties in ancient Sumeria. The royal inscriptions, treaties, administrative
accounts and word lists have aided scholars in their efforts to comprehend
the Sumerian King List that was compiled in the 2nd millennium. (The
Early Dynastic period is reckoned to run from around 3000 BC to the
accession of Sargon of Akkad in 2340 Be.) The celebrated List provides the
names of the early Sumerian kings, details of the length of their reigns, and
occasional notes on their most significant achievements. The List is deemed
'quite useless' for chronological purposes because the early reigns, like
some biblical lives, are absurdly long and some contemporary reigns are
given as succeeding one another.3 Here, like many later dynasties outside
Sumeria, there is assumed to be a divine right of kings; and, like the Old
Testament deluge, there is mention of a great Flood that 'swept over the
land'. Silt deposits have been found at the sites of Ur and other Sumerian
cities but there is no evidence of a single massive deluge that affected all
the land.
Sumerian culture was focused on the great cities, such as Eridu (in
modern times, Abu Shahrein), Ur (Makayyar), Uruk (Warka, the biblical
Erech), Larsa (Senkereh, the biblical Ellasar), Lagash (Shippurla), Nippur
(Niffer) and Nisin. The ancient cities are buried beneath the sand and
under the later urban developments that in modern times were given new
names. Ur, perhaps the most famous of the cities, came to be called by
the Arabs after the mighty ziggurat hill, Tell al Muqayyar, the Mound
of Pitch. This great urban site ('of the Chaldees') was supposedly the home
of Abraham, and so it has significance for both Semitic and non-Semitic
religions. 4 The mighty Ur of the 3rd millennium BC was built around the
mudbrick ziggurat dedicated to the moon-god Nanna and his wife Ningal.
86 The History of Iraq
The famous mound rose to some twenty-five metres in stepped terraces, and
the structure was surrounded by a dense crush of houses, shops and bazaars
- a town of more than 30,000 people.
Ur, like Tell es-Sultan and Catal Huyuk, was a walled city with apertures
in the perimeter for road and water-borne traffic. Two great canals ran
outside the walls, connecting Ur with the Euphrates and thence the Persian
Gulf. A third waterway ran from one of the canals to a placid harbour well
within the city walls, allowing Ur's artisans and farmers to trade effectively
with the outside world. Beyond the walls lay the vast system of irrigation
ditches, the ambitious agricultural development that sustained the wealth
of Ur and the other Sumerian cities. However, other tribes too were to be
impressed by such progress.
AKKAD
BABYLONIA
Mesopotamia. Babylon was to flourish for almost two thousand years from
about 2225 BC to its conquest by Alexander the Great in 331 Be. The
biblical scribes of the Old Testament reckoned that the Euphrates, on which
Babylon was sited, ran through the Garden of Eden.? The Greeks declared
that Babylon contained two of the Seven Wonders of the World, and
the Romans saw it as 'the greatest city the sun ever beheld'. The
outer defences of the city were ten miles in circumference, fifty feet
high, and fifty-five feet deep - and by the first century BC the walls were
all that survived. 8 According to the Greek historian Herodotus, born around
490 BC at the town of Halicamassus on the south-west coast of Asia Minor,
the vast city of Babylon lies in the form of a square 'with sides nearly
fourteen miles long and a circumference of some fifty-six miles, and in
addition to its enormous size it surpasses in splendour any city of the known
world'.9 A broad moat surrounded the city: as the moat was dug the
removed earth was formed into bricks, and then 'using hot bitumen for
mortar the workmen began by building parapets along each side of the
moat, and then went on to erect the actual wall'. Four-horse chariots could
tum on the tops of the walls, which carried a hundred bronze gates in
the full circumference.
At the start of the history of Babylon stands the great figure of Harnmurabi
(2123-2081 BC), a conqueror and law-giver through a reign of some forty-
three years. He was depicted on seals and inscriptions as a youth full of
fire and skill, a great warrior who crushes all his enemies, who marches
over mountains and never loses a battle. Under Hammurabi the tumultuous
states of the lower valley were forced into unity and disciplined by the
famous Code. The diorite cylinder carrying the engraved Code of
Hammurabi, conveyed from Babylon to Elam around 1100 BC, was un-
earthed at Susa in 1902 (it is now in the Louvre).
There is full acknowledgement of the role of the gods but the Code is
essentially a body of secular legislation. Enlightened laws accompany bar-
barous punishments, and the primitive Lex talionis and trial by ordeal are
set against complex judicial procedures that have a modem ring. In all
there are 285 laws arrayed systematically under the headings of Personal
Property, Real Estate, Trade and Business, the Family, Injuries, and La-
bour. The Code, from which the Mosaic Code borrows or with which it
shares a common source, is more enlightened than many judicial systems
that were to follow in the centuries ahead.
Hammurabi retained the principle of the Lex talionis ('an eye for an eye')
but he sought to reduce its impact. Misdemeanours that formerly attracted
mutilation or even death were now punished by fines, an advance that has
been interpreted as a great civilising influence. The Sumerians long before
The Ancient Crucible 89
had discovered the advantages of paying a wronged person compensation
instead of waiting for the aggrieved party to exact revenge, and Hammurabi
developed this idea into a penal sanction. It has been suggested that this
development encouraged the emergence of the entire fabric of law, with
all the associated apparatus of lawyers, solicitors, juries and the complex
fabric of jurisprudence in civilised societies.1O
The idea that justice should be tempered with mercy was a Babylonian
innovation, a vital contribution to the morality of law. But the idea was
expected to apply only in domestic situations: there was no thought that
one's enemies should be treated with compassion. This attitude accords
well with how Middle Eastern rulers were in general expected to slaughter
their opponents, even innocent non-combatants. Thus the Old Testament
Lord of Hosts urges his followers to 'go and smite Amalek, and utterly
destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and
woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass'. II However, in
urging a just approach to family morality Hammurabi laid the basis for a
moral general social compassion, a position that is well represented
(though often impotent) in the modem world. Here Hammurabi followed a
much earlier Sumerian code, the earliest known legal canon, that attributed
to Dr-Nammu who founded the Third Dynasty of Dr (2113-2096 BC), and
who included the stipulation that 'the orphan is not to be given over to
the rich, nor the widow to the powerful, nor the man of one shekel over
to him of one mina'. It is clear that there were compassionate law-givers
long before Hammurabi.
The Code bears importantly on aspects of marriage and women's rights
(innovations here are sometimes contrasted with much repressive legisla-
tion in later Christendom). The 136th clause, for example, declares that if
a man abandons his wife, leaving her without proper support, she is then
free to remarry without being involved in the complexities of the courts. In
the same spirit the 124th clause of the Code states: 'if a woman hates her
husband and refuses him his conjugal rights, her case shall be examined
in the district court. If she can prove she has kept herself chaste and has
no fault while her husband has been unfaithful and so has demeaned
her, she shall not be punished but may take her dowry and return to her
father's house.' (Though this still smacks of sexism it should be set against
a grossly anti-feminist Christianity happy for almost two millennia to
tolerate marital rape.)
Hammurabi concludes his Code with the words:
In my bosom I carried the people of the land of Sumer and Akkad ... in
my wisdom I restrained them, that the strong might not oppress
90 The History of Iraq
the weak, and that they should give justice to the orphan and the
widow ... Let any oppressed man, who has a cause, come before my
image as king of righteousness! ... In the days that are yet to come,
for all future time, may the king who is in the land observe the words
of righteousness which I have written upon my monument!
Today there is a sad irony behind such words, despite their noble ring.
Babylon did not endure 'for all future time': it was destroyed first by the
Assyrian king Sennacherib in 689 BC, rebuilt under the rule of
Nebuchadnezzar II, was conquered by the Persians under Cyrus the Great
in 538 BC, and was again subdued by Alexander in 331 Be. In the 3rd
century BC Babylon was largely overtaken by Seleucia as the commercial
centre of the region. The classical author Zosimus, alive during the reign
of Julian the Apostate, wrote that in AD 363 the remnants of Babylon had
been made into a royal game reserve for the Persian king Shapur I. The
grandest city of the ancient world had been allowed to decay.
Harnmurabi had aimed to lay the basis of a state that would endure
'for all future time', but the glory of the empire scarcely survived his death.
His son, Samsu-iluna (1749-1712 BC), faced fresh revolts in southern
Macedonia and new invasions from the north. The state of Babylonia
survived until 1595 BC when the capital was sacked by the Hittites, a
nomadic horse-breeding tribe of Indo-Europeans. Their warrior-chieftains
('kings') thought in basic military terms wherever the tribe settled: they
were quick to organise massive fortifications linked by subterranean
tunnels. It was inevitable also that they would absorb much of the culture
of the Babylonians, adopting, for example, their systems of writing and
the fabric of their law. When King Mursilis I led his Hittite warriors to
end the Harnmurabi dynasty it may have been expected that a new line
of rulers would be established. However, Mursilis was forced to withdraw
his army, and soon afterwards he was assassinated. Other tribes rushed to
fill the Mesopotamian vacuum, among them the Hurrians and the Kassites.
These tribes swarmed down from the eastern heights, skilled charioteers
eager to exploit a Babylonia mortally wounded by the brief Hittite conquest.
For four centuries after the collapse of Babylon the region was ruled by a
Kassite dynasty. The new conquerors adopted the Akkadian language, with
the use of Sumerian reserved for religion, law and learning. The temples
and palaces built by the Kassites at the new capital of Dur-Kurizalgu were
designed and constructed in traditional Babylonian style. Little is known
about the history of this period though the names of some of the self-styled
kings have survived: Nazi-nugash (1350-1345 BC), Nazi-marrutash (1323-
The Ancient Crucible 91
1298 BC) and Kashtiliash IV (1242-1235 BC). The Kassites ruled in-
conclusively for about six hundred years, and some centuries of confusion
followed their demise.
ASSYRIA
queen mother, providing a frail basis for the Greek myth of Semiramis, so
attractively depicted by Diodorus. Then a new king, Tiglath-Pileser III,
organised fresh armies to subdue Syria and Babylonia, after which he died
peacefully in bed. His successor, Sargon II (721-705 BC), took power via
a palace coup d'etat and then set about consolidating the conquest of
Babylonia.
The son of Sargon, Sennacherib (705-681 BC), put down the usual
revolts throughout the empire, but inconclusively attacked Jerusalem and
Egypt (the Egyptians attributed their success to field-mice who obligingly
devoured the quivers, bow-strings and shield-straps of the Assyrians at
Pelusium). Sennacherib is said to have sacked some eighty-nine cities and
and 820 villages, captured 7200 horses, 11,000 asses, 80,000 oxen, 800,000
sheep, and 208,000 prisoners. His conquests induced Byron to write:
Yet again Babylon was singled out for special attention. Sensing Babylon's
restlessness under Assyrian control Sennacherib sacked the city, slaughter-
ing all the inhabitants until mountains of corpses were piled high in the
streets. The palaces and temples were pillaged, the treasures looted and the
supposedly omnipotent gods destroyed or carried in triumph to Nineveh:
the great god Marduk became a menial servant to Ashur. Sennacherib then
set about rebuilding and expanding Nineveh, using the spoils of his con-
quests to fund ambitious civic schemes. He diverted rivers to protect the
city, reclaimed desert land, and was assassinated by his ambitious sons in
681 BC. Son Esarhaddon (681-669 BC) seized the throne and soon began
the task of rebuilding Babylon, so wantonly devastated by his father. Then
he annexed Egypt, rendering Assyria the undisputed master of a vast em-
pire; restored the captive gods to Babylon; and, in a remarkable gesture for
a semi-barbarous world, offered food and other resources to the famine-
stricken people of Elam. He perished on his way to suppress an Egyptian
revolt, and the control of Egypt was to last in all a mere fifteen years.
Ashurbanipal (669-626 BC), son of Esarhaddon, was the last of the great
Assyrian kings. In 648 BC he crushed a fresh rebellion in Babylon and
managed to retain control of the Elamites. But Ashurbanipal (the
Sardanapalus of the Greeks) had lost Egypt and there were signs that the
empire was beginning to fall apart. Despite this, it was inevitable that an
The Ancient Crucible 93
Assyrian king would glory in the triumphs that had been accomplished.
A scribe recorded Ashurbanipal's destruction of Elam where the royal
leaders were forced to drag Ashurbanipal' s chariot through the streets of
Nineveh. Then the head of the Elamite king was struck off and later brought
to Ashurbanipal as he banqueted with his queen in the palace gardens,
whereupon the head was raised on a pole in front of the guests, later to be
fixed over the gate of Nineveh to rot away. Dananu, the famous Elamite
general, was flayed alive and then bled like a lamb; his brother, perhaps
more fortunate, had his throat cut before his body was chopped into
pieces for distribution as souvenirs throughout the land. In the glow of
such a triumph the Assyrian empire had never seemed more secure, but
it was starting to disintegrate.
Ashurbanipal had performed as befitted an Assyrian king. He has func-
tioned as brave conqueror and wise statesman, and was proud of his know-
ledge of books and academic accomplishment:
Despite all this learning, real or imagined, Ashurbanipal was not able to lay
the basis of a durable state. In his old age he laments: 'I cannot do away with
the strife in my country and the dissensions in my family; disturbing
scandals oppress me always. Illness of mind and flesh bow me down; with
cries of woe I bring my days to an end. On the day of the city god, the day
of the festival, I am wretched; death is seizing hold upon me, and bears me
down .. .' This sad lament, contained on the last of Ashurbanipal's
inscribed tablets, represents more than the dismal thoughts of a man
forced to face his own mortality. There were broader issues at stake: Egypt
had freed itself from Assyrian control, and Babylon was preparing for a
further rebellion against the Assyrian dynasty, a revolt that would prove
the most decisive of them all. Assyria had been weakened, at least in part,
94 The History of Iraq
by its very successes. Countless destitute captives had been brought into the
empire: with a vast dissolute population at its heart, the Assyrian state lost
its national unity. The once impressive anny was increasingly reliant on
alien elements, and even the prodigious Assyrian resources were progres-
sively dissipated in endless wars.
In 626 BC Ashurbanipal died, though it is not known how}4 Fourteen
years later the Babylonian king Nabopolassar (625-604 BC), in league with
the Cyaxares-led Medean anny and a force of Scythians from the Caucasus,
launched an effective onslaught on the Assyrian cities of the north. Nineveh
was subdued as ruthlessly and effectively as the Assyrian monarchs had
once sacked Susa and Babylon. Nineveh was sacked in 612 BC, a com-
prehensive devastation recorded in the Old Testament Book of Nahum. ls
The city was completely destroyed, the people killed or enslaved, and the
palace that Ashurbanipal had so recently built was pillaged and then totally
demolished. When the archaeologists uncovered Kalakh, another of the
main Assyrian cities, its main fort was six feet deep in the ashes of the final
conflagration. Ivory inlays from the furniture stored there were found
among the ashes, the gold leaf stripped from the ivories, a few strands
around the nail heads signalling the violence of the city's last hours. In
one great cataclysm Assyria had collapsed, destined to have no further part
in history.
Nabopolassar ended the Assyrian control of Babylonia and created the
Chaldaean empire. When he died he bequeathed the liberated empire to
his son Nebuchadnezzar II, the villain of the Old Testament Book of Daniel.
In his inaugural address to the god Marduk he praised the deity for his
sublime appearance and then declared: 'At thy command, 0 merciful Marduk,
may the house that I have built endure forever, may I be satiated with its
splendour, attain old age therein, with abundant offspring, and receive
therein tribute of the kings of all regions, from all mankind.' He did much
to realise his great ambitions; as warrior, statesman and builder he has been
rated among Babylonian kings as second only to Hammurabi. He crushed
an Egyptian force that was conspiring with the Assyrians against him, and
brought Palestine (after the siege of Jerusalem in 586 BC) and Syria under
his control. Enjoying the protection of Nebuchadnezzar, Babylonian
merchants were again in charge of all the trade in the region.
He took tribute and raised taxes to spend on civic projects, as Hammurabi
had done. He built new temples and palaces, embellishing all new buildings
with frescos and sculptures; like Hammurabi, he remembered to keep the
priests well fed. Again Babylon had become the grandest metropolis in
the ancient world. The building bricks often carried brilliantly coloured
enamel tiles of blue, yellow or white, embellished with glazed relief shapes
The Ancient Crucible 95
of animals and human beings. Most of the bricks recovered from the
site of Babylon bear the words: 'I am Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon'. *
In the centre of the city a lofty ziggurat was raised, to a height of 650 feet,
and came to serve as the best candidate for the 'Tower of Babel' in Hebrew
legend (Babel does not mean confusion or babble, as the myth claims, but
the Gate of God). The great temple of Marduk was situated south of the
ziggurat, and this and other temples were joined by a spacious 'sacred way'
flanked by walls bearing brightly coloured lions to protect the sanctity of
the site. At the end of the 'sacred way' was erected the resplendent Ishtar
Gate, a double structure carrying tiles adorned with animals and flowers.
Close by were the Hanging Gardens, built by Nebuchadnezzar for one of
his wives, a Medean princess who pined for her native hills. Hydraulic
engines were used to carry water to all the tiers of the gardens. Seventy-five
feet above the ground, shaded by tall trees and surrounded by fragrant
flowers, the women of the royal harem were allowed to walk unveiled, far
from the common eye. But the glories of Nebuchadnezzar were not to last:
even before he died there were signs of dissolution and decay, even the
suggestion that he became insane.
Thus in the Book of Daniel, uncorroborated in this particular by any
other sources, we read:
finger to envious peoples beyond the gates. When Cyrus, at the head of a
disciplined Persian army, stood outside Babylon in 538 BC, the gates were
opened to him; and for two centuries Babylonia was ruled as part of the
Persian empire. Then Alexander the Great came to Mesopotamia, con-
quered Babylon in 331 BC, and soon afterwards died following a banquet
in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar - killed, some commentators have de-
cided, by alcoholism. Babylon survived the death of Alexander, though it
had sunk into a period of irreversible decline. In 50 BC the great Sicilian
historian Diodorus commented of Babylon: 'only a small part of the city is
now inhabited and most of the area within its walls is given over to
agriculture'; and in the same vein St Jerome (AD 345-420) wrote: 'The
whole area within the walls is a wilderness inhabited by all manner of wild
animals.' Perhaps ancient Babylon ended its days as nothing more than an
abandoned desolation.
THE JEWS
In about 1850 BC a man called Abram (later Abraham) left his home in
Ur - at the imagined prompting of God - and travelled to the land of
Canaan, today's Israel. He believed, as have many ambitious individuals
throughout history, that God had promised the land to him and his des-
cendants, a certain recipe for conflict in both the ancient and modem
worlds. (The situation is further exacerbated by the fact that Christians and
Moslems also see themselves as the children of Abraham.) The Israelites,
tribal descendants of Abraham, subsequently moved to Egypt in about
1700 BC where they were forced to endure a deteriorating condition that
by 1250 BC amounted to little more than slavery. In due course Moses,
again seemingly aided by a powerful god, helped the Israelites to escape
their bondage and to emerge as an independent people. For a while they
lived as nomads on the Sinai peninsula but later decided to travel to
what they dubbed the Promised Land, then occupied by the settled Ca-
naanites. Moses died before reaching Canaan and it was Joshua who in
about 1200 BC led the twelve tribes ofIsrael in a merciless war of conquest.
When a city was conquered it was entirely demolished: men, women,
children and animals were massacred and the city was reduced to rubble.
It is enough to cite one of the many Old Testament accounts. IS
Strife continued in the newly-won lands, partly because some of the
Israelites were too easily seduced by the prevailing pagan cults. A measure
of unity had been accomplished under David and Solomon but then
the religious divisions in the Holy Land were paralleled by political strife.
The Ancient Crucible 97
The northern tribes broke away to form the Kingdom of Israel which was
thereafter set against the smaller Kingdom of Judah in the south. This
schism inevitably weakened the Israelites and in 722 BC the Kingdom of
Israel was conquered by the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser III: the ten
northern tribes of Israel were carried off, forced to assimilate into the
Assyrian empire, and in consequence they disappeared from history. The
surviving Kingdom of Judah was appalled at this tragedy and took what
steps it could to avoid a similar fate.
For more than four hundred years Jerusalem had been the capital of the
Judean nation: David had ruled there and the descendants of Aaron had
served in its Temple. But in 589 BC the great king of Babylon,
Nebuchadnezzar launched a savage attack against the city, in part to counter
an alliance between certain Jewish elements and the Egyptians conspiring
against his rule. Most of the inhabitants of Judah were deported to Baby-
lonia, leaving behind only the sorry remnants of a once proud people:
thus began the Babylonian captivity. Nebuchadnezzar was content not to
annihilate the entire population of Judea. Realising that if he removed the
princes and priests the rest of the people would incline to keep the peace,
he left a proportion of the population undisturbed. He also appointed
Gedaliah, a member of one of the few surviving prominent families, to
rule Judea but this puppet leader was soon murdered by a patriotic des-
cendant of the House of David. This forced the men surrounding Gedaliah,
fearing Nebuchadnezzar's wrath, to flee to Egypt for sanctuary. Jeremiah
accompanied them, continuing through his old age to urge his people to
return to the worship of God and the observance of Mosaic traditions. The
Jewish calendar still commemorates the anniversary of Gedaliah' s murder,
the day following Rosh ha-Shanah, the day that marked the final collapse
of the first Hebrew Commonwealth. Thus the Jews themselves 'completed
what the Babylonians had begun'.19
The Jews in Babylon were divided about their future. The Babylonians,
true to their times, were merciless conquerors: typically, they slaughtered
or thrust into slavery the bulk of the populations in the lands they subdued.
But survivors brought to Babylonia were often permitted to build new lives
in their exile. As conquered peoples they remained second-class citizens
but they were sometimes assigned (heavily taxed) land or allowed to work
as traders in the cities. Some of the Jews brought to the mighty land of
Babylonia were seduced by the fresh opportunities that they found. It now
seemed clear that though 'the Judeans as a group seemed to have no future
at all'20 many individual Judeans were able to adjust to their new conditions.
In 538 BC Cyrus the Great of Persia defeated the Babylonian armies.
Babylon collapsed, Bel and Marduk were shown to be impotent, and the
98 The History of Iraq
Jewish exiles were free to return to their own land. However, not all the
Babylonian Jews were keen to return to Judea. Many now owned land or
were prosperous in trade, and what would they find when they returned? In
fact forty-two thousand Babylonian Jews decided to return, taking with
them all their possessions and funds donated by the Jews who decided not
to make the journey. After several months of arduous travel they rejoiced
when they reached the land of their fathers (the song in the Book of Psalms,
chapter 126, celebrates the return to Zion: 'Then was our mouth filled
with laughter, And our tongue with singing .. .'). But there were still many
problems to face: Judea, unsurprisingly enough, was now peopled by
other settlers, and the Babylonian Jews argued among themselves. More-
over, Persia did not welcome the idea of an independent Jewish state.
Internal divisions and the hostility of foreign neighbours impeded all efforts
to establish an independent Israel, a situation that persisted up to modem
times. With the Bar Kochba rebellion of AD 135 the Palestinian Jews
struggled to throw off the Roman yoke, with the dire result that the Pales-
tine community was thrust into poverty and obscurity. Emperor Hadrian
decided that if the Jews would not submit to Roman rule then Judaism
would have to be destroyed. Hence he prohibited the practice of the Jewish
religion, banned circumcision and Sabbath observance, made studying the
Torah a capital offence, and banned the use of the calendar for the celebra-
tion of Jewish holy days. In these circumstances the Jews who had remained
in Babylonia, seemingly less pious and less committed to the ideal of an
independent Jewish state, assumed a central place in the preservation of
Jewish culture.
The importance of Palestine had always been recognised. Thus a modem
Jewish historian comments:
THE PERSIANS
Persia began its rise to prominence in the 7th century Be, becoming by the
6th century the dominant power of the ancient Near Eastern world. Long
before that time there were tribes and peoples in the region competing for
power and influence and injecting important ingredients into the cultural
crucible. Perhaps the most important of these early regions was Elam,
situated in the territory of what today is Iran and dating as far back as the
4th millennium Be. Its capital was Susa and what we know of this town
and its people comes largely from extant Babylonian sources. The relevant
texts say little about the Persian interior in those early days, since the
Babylonians were mainly interested in the tribes that confronted them at
their borders: for example, the Elamites, the Kassites, the Lullubi and the
Guti. 25 The Elamites and the other tribes threatened the Mesopotamian
plains, and one of the Elamite inscriptions is in Sumerian, establishing that
they had significant contact with the Babylonians. Other inscriptions writ-
ten in the Elamite script have appeared alongside Akkadian texts. Elam
had developed a national identity and made regular forays into Babylonian
territory. Thus the Elamite king Puzur-Inshushinak. raised an army and
invaded Babylonia, reaching as far as Akkad and encouraging such tribes
as the Lullubi and the Guti to attempt similar ventures.
At their height the Elamites conquered much of Babylonia, their capital,
Susa, surviving through six thousand turbulent years of history, through all
the great empires of Babylonia, Egypt, Assyria, Persia, Greece and Rome
(as late as the fourteenth century AD Susa survived under the name of
Sushan). Susa was captured and sacked by Ashurbanipal in 646 Be and he
carried in his train a vast booty of treasure back to Nineveh. This was yet
another pendulum swing in the ancient turmoil of the Middle East. In
100 The History of Iraq
the 2nd millennium BC the Elamites had become masters of Babylon and
Uruk, only to be thrown back and forced to suffer the depredations and
humiliations that they had brought to others.
Around 1500 BC the Medes and Persians had migrated to the Iranian
plateau, and in the 7th century BC the first Persian dynasty was founded
by Achaemenes. The dynastic line was to include Cyrus the Great, who
founded the Persian Empire. Cyrus (550-529 BC) overthrew the Medean
king Astyages in 550 BC and conquered Lydia in 546 Be. Then he decided
to give his attention to Babylon. Herodotus described some aspects of
the campaign.26
The Babylonians had anticipated the Persian advance and launched the
first attack, but they were defeated and forced to retire inside the city
defences. Babylon then contained provisions for many years and there
seemed no alternative to a lengthy siege, but then Cyrus diverted water from
the Euphrates to enable Persian troops to wade through the newly shallow
river into the city. The Babylonians were taken by surprise: ' ... owing to
the great size of the city the outskirts were captured without the people
in the centre knowing anything about it; there was a festival going on, and
even while the city was falling they continued to dance and enjoy them-
selves, until hard facts brought them to their senses'. The last Babylonian
king Nabonidus (556-538 BC), who ruled with his son Belshazzar, had
been perceived to be weak, now increasingly preoccupied with worship
of the god Sin and with his 'archaeological' research into ancient monu-
ments. Babylon fell without much resistance, the royal citadel alone holding
out for a few days. Cyrus, with typical clemency, spared the king and
even joined the national mourning when Nabonidus died in 538 BC, the
following year.
Cyrus represented himself to the Babylonians more as a liberator than a
conqueror, but still the legitimate successor to the crown. He took the title
of 'king of Babylon, king of the land', and he returned to their rightful
temples all the statues of the gods that Nabonidus had conveyed into the
capital. At the next New Year Festival, Cyrus, following the custom of
the traditional Babylonian kings, took the hand of the god Bel and so
legitimised a new Babylonian dynasty. He also issued a decree freeing
the Jews from their Babylonian captivity, stipulating that a high Persian
official should accompany the Jews that decided to return to the Promised
Land, to ensure that his wishes were fulfilled. The Jewish exiles hailed
Cyrus as a liberator and sang songs of joy to celebrate the end of their
bondage. Their joy, as we have seen, was short-lived.
Cyrus remained well-regarded, and not only by the Jews, who called him
'the anointed of the Lord'; the Persians called him 'father', and the Hellenes
The Ancient Crucible 101
THE GREEKS
When Alexander the Great (Alexander III) inherited the throne from Philip
II, his murdered father, he took over an empire that had just succeeded in
subduing the states of mainland Greece. He then, aged about twenty, launched
a vigorous crusade to punish the Persians for Xerxes' invasion of Greece
some 150 years earlier. He encountered Darius first at Granicus in 334 BC
and defeated him; battle was again joined against the Persians in 333 BC,
this time in Syria (at Issus), and Alexander was again victorious; and Darius
was finally comprehensively defeated in 331 BC, forcing him to flee to
Bactria where he was assassinated in 330 Be. Now Alexander became
master of the entire Persian empire, including the great plains of Mesopo-
tamia. When he died in Babylon in 323 BC he was thirty-five years old.
Alexander's empire did not survive him: his surviving commanders were
ambitious to command nations rather than armies. There were serious
political divisions in the empire and these led to the Battle of Ipsus in
Phrygia, Asia Minor, in 301 Be. Here Antigonus I was killed by Lysimachus
and Seleucus, and the vast empire created by the Macedonian Alexander
was at an end. Three kingdoms emerged from the political confusion: a
Macedonian monarchy in Europe, a Ptolemaic monarchy in Egypt, and a
Seleucid monarchy in Asia. Seleucus had taken command of the calvary
formations of Persian nobles after the capture of Susa and he had converted
them into a disciplined body of several tens of thousands of warriors. As
satrap of Babylonia he finally inherited the bulk of the Achaemenian em-
pire, but without Egypt, Palestine, southern Syria and parts of Asia Minor.
102 The History of Iraq
The Hellenistic Seleucid dynasty (312--64 BC) ruled over the Iranian world,
Babylonia, Phoenicia and the cities of Asia Minor. Now the influence
of classical Greece, working through the Macedonians and the Seleucids,
was helping to shape the culture of Mesopotamia.
The Seleucids were now in a position to administer the vast areas of Asia
Minor conquered by Alexander the Great, but no sooner had they assumed
power than they experienced great problems in holding together the empire.
In Bactria - the region that today is northern Afghanistan and the southern
(erstwhile) USSR - the Seleucid rulers were confronted by the Persians. An
accommodation was reached and for a time the Greeks and Persians -
representing two entirely different social and political systems - accepted a
mutual understanding. Then the Parthians erupted on to the scene and
forced a separation between the Bactrian Greeks and the rest of the Seleucid
empire: in 256 BC Bactria became an independent state, but after little more
than a century was submerged by the first of a procession of conquerors.
In 247 Be Arsaces had founded the Parthian empire, which at its peak in
the 1st century BC embraced parts of Persia and extended from the Eu-
phrates to the Indus. Its decline was to begin with defeats by the Romans
in 39-38 Be. Parthia was taken over in AD 226 by Ardashir I, founder
of the Sassanid empire.
It took the Parthians over a century to recover substantial parts of Persia
from the Greeks and to consolidate their western frontiers on the Euphrates
(these western regions were to remain in the Persian orbit until the Arab
invasion). The Hellenic Seleucus II (246-226 BC) struggled to restore the
eastern parts of the empire and the Parthians were forced to retreat before
his army, but a revolt at Antioch forced Seleucus to return to Syria and the
Parthians rushed back to fill the vacuum. After the death of Seleucus there
were further territorial losses in Asia Minor. Between 160 and 140 BC the
Parthian leader Mithridates I forcibly annexed many lands - including large
parts of Babylon and Assyria - in the west and substantial territories in
the east. On the left bank of the Tigris the Parthians established a vast
military encampment that later developed into the Parthian capital of
Ctesiphon. When Mithridates died in 137 BC the Parthian empire stretched
from the Euphrates to Herat (in what today is north-west Afghanistan). On
the death of the later king, Mithridates II, the Parthian empire began its
period of decline.
The Parthians had succeeded in throwing back the Roman incursions
The Ancient Crucible 103
and for more than a century the Euphrates frontier remained secure. The
western Semites opposed to Rome - such as the Palestinian Jews, the Syrian
Nabateans and the desert Arabs - took heart at the Persian successes. Mark
Antony failed in 36 BC in a further attack on the Parthians, and Augustus
accepted thereafter the Euphrates frontier as a secure division between
the empires. However, in AD 114, at a time of Parthian weakness, Trajan
resolved to reduce Parthia to vassalage and to impose a puppet king. Having
annexed Armenia as a Roman province he advanced down the Euphrates
and the Tigris to take Seleucia and reach the Persian Gulf. He had captured
Ctesiphon, the Parthian capital, and made prisoner the daughter of King
Osroes. On his journey through Mesopotamia Trajan offered sacrifices in
the Babylonian palace where Alexander the Great had died, thus honouring
the great conqueror whom he sought to emulate. But his imperial successes
were not secure: the Parthians began a partisan war and he failed to take
the Parthian fortress of Hatra. Trajan died before he could return to Rome.
In AD 165 the Roman general Avidius Cassius again sacked Seleucia and
Ctesiphon, a feat repeated yet again by Septimius Severus in AD 198. And
yet again the conquest did not hold: the Roman forces were compelled
to evacuate the territory and Persia re-established its western frontiers on
the Euphrates.
THE SASSANIANS
The Sassanian dynasty, the last in Persia before the Arab conquest of
AD 651, began in AD 226 under Ardashir I and it was to experience
continual conflict with Rome in the west. There was also internal dissent:
Ardashir was forced to confront a coalition of factions ranged against him
- which he successfully overcame using bribery and force. His son Shapur
inherited a secure empire and was able to force Rome to cede substantial
parts of Mesopotamia to the Persians. Thereafter, following the death of
Shapur, the Sassanian empire grew weaker and gradually lost territory
to the Romans and other forces threatening the frontiers. The Arabs were
increasingly involved in Sassanian affairs, securing provinces within the
empire and offering help to various dynastic factions. Thus Vahram V (AD
421-38) was forced to seek help from the Arab prince of Hira, a small
vassal state to the west of the Euphrates; and Kavad, having invaded
Mesopotamia and forced a treaty with Byzantium (the eastern part of the
Roman empire), was obliged to seek help from the Arab leader Quteiba
to secure his rule. However, such tactics did little to secure the Sassanian
dynasty.
104 The History of Iraq
The Romans were yet again putting pressure on the western frontier
and even nature seemed to conspire against Chosroes II, one of the last
Sassanian kings: the Tigris flooded and transformed flourishing land into
swamps, causing part of the royal palace at Ctesiphon to collapse. Chosroes
refused to sign an agreement with the invading Byzantine emperor Heraclius
(610-41), even though his own generals were then campaigning against
him. He was killed by his own son who failed to impose order on the
contending factions within the empire. The country was engulfed by rival-
ries, with royal princes crowned, only to be assassinated a short time
later. Sometimes women - for example, Boran and Azarmedukht, the
daughters of Chosroes - were placed on the throne as prisoners of this
or that rival faction; and the great military leaders also tried to seize the
crown. The Sassanian state crumbled into a chaos of petty states, helpless
to resist the Arab conquest. The Persian commander Rustam was killed on
the field of battle at Qadisiyah in Mesopotamia and Ctesiphon was soon
captured, a vast amount of treasure falling into the hands of the Arabs. The
last of the Sassanian kings, the child Yazdgard, raised a fresh army but was
crushed by the Arabs on the plain of Nihawand. The empire had fallen,
yielding to the fanatical onslaught of the Bedouin. It was the start of the
Arab conquest, an irresistible wave of expansion fuelled by the passion
of a new religion.
3 The Arabs, Islam and
the Caliphate
The turbulence in ancient Mesopotamia lasted for four millennia: it gener-
ated massive cultural advances and all the misery and destitution (less
frequently noted) that are inevitably associated with the ravages of military
conquest. This dramatic historical phase may be regarded as drawing to a
close with the reverses suffered by Rome and Persia. Soon a new power
would burst forth, fuelled by fresh beliefs able to supplant, but not wholly
to extirpate, the prevailing religions of the region - pagan creeds, Zoroas-
trianism, Judaism and Christianity. Soon a nomadic nation would be ex-
ploding from Arabia to challenge Persia in the east and to extend as far
as Spanish Cordoba in the west.
ARAB ORIGINS
note, that the Arab mind is sometimes captivated by the seductive power
of rhetoric.
The poetic tradition helped to frame the character of the classical Arabic
language, from which the modern vernaculars derived; and helps also to
fuel the common awareness of Arab nationhood. The roots were established
in Arab prehistory but the developing culture would only come to maturity
via the power of a new creed and the dynamic of a new wave of conquest.
MOHAMMAD
Mohammad was born in or near the year AD 570. 9 His parents belonged
to the aristocratic Quraysh tribe of Mecca, a group that included traders
who had forged useful agreements with the pastoral tribes around Mecca
and in Syria and south-western Arabia. Mohammad's parents died early
and he was put in the care of a tribal wet nurse who looked after him in
the desert until he was six. Thereafter he came under the charge of an uncle
and a grandfather, later to be educated for a life in Meccan commerce.
When he was about twenty-five Mohammad married Khadija, a Quraysh
business woman fifteen years his senior. He helped her look after her
trading interests but despite such practical affairs he is said to have led a
mystical and solemn life. Held in high esteem, even at an early age,
Mohammad was called 'The Honest One'.
Little is known about Mohammad's life between the time of his marriage
and the visionary experiences that were to transform him and change the
world. Khadija, still involved with the camel trade, bore him two sons
(who both died in infancy) and four daughters. The marriage of his daughter
Fatima to Ali was of great importance, for Mohammad's descendants of
this line are specially revered, and the Shias regard the descendants of
Ali and Fatima as the true heirs to the Caliphate, with all the secular and
religious privileges that this implies.
When he was about forty years of age he experienced what believers
have regarded as contact with the supernatural, with the 'one true God'. In
one version of this Night of Power (or Destiny), Mohammad sees an angel
(perhaps Gabriel) in the shape of a man, calling him to become the messen-
ger of God. In another version he hears the angel telling him to recite certain
verses. At first he resists, and then a physical presence forces him to utter
sublime and ominous verses that convey the anger of an omnipotent God
resolved to punish mankind for the paganism of Arabia. Then Mohammad
felt a great upsurge of emotion and quickly fell into a trance. When he
The Arabs, Islam and the Caliphate 109
As soon as the tribes of the Arabian peninsula heard about the death of
Mohammad the rudimentary Muslim alliance began to fall apart: many
tribes renounced Islam and refused to pay the tax, a development known
in Arab history as the Apostasy (Ridda). Abu Bekr, the ageing caliph,
decided to use force to subdue the dissident tribes. The fighting dragged on
in some regions but within a year of the Prophet's death the Apostasy had
been suppressed; by the summer of 633 Arabia was at peace. Mohammad
had enjoined Muslims not to fight each other, and the peace was sustained
by the growing tribal acknowledgement of Muslim hegemony in the region.
It was this unprecedented peace in Arabia that was to serve as the secure
springboard for expansion into the lands beyond. The Arabs began their
dramatic expansion with a series of probing raids into Mesopotamia. In 633
the desert to the west of the head of the Persian Gulf was occupied by the
large Bedouin tribe of Beni Bekr ibn Wail, formerly loyal to the Arab
Lakhmid princes, satellites of the Persian state. Already the pattern was
clear: local tribes, fearing subjugation by the Arab onslaught, were quick
to offer alliances and to profess Islam.
In 639 the Arab general Muawiya became governor of Syria, the first
112 The History of Iraq
colony of the burgeoning Muslim empire. The native Aramaeans had long
been persecuted by the Roman occupying forces, the sedentary Monophysite
Christians and Jews being particularly repressed because of their stubborn
unwillingness to accept the demands of the Byzantine church. Many per-
ceived the Islamic conquest, showing as it did a surprising degree of
religious tolerance, as a liberation. The co-operation of the Syrian populace
with the Muslim conquerors has been seen as sealing the fate of Syria,
ensuring the total Arabisation and Islamisation of the country that have
endured to the present day.
Arab incursions in eastern Mesopotamia led to further confrontations
with the Persians, and in 637 a large Persian force was defeated at the battle
of Kadisiya. As in all their conquests the Arabs had relied upon the fanatical
energy of their javelin-throwing tribesmen on camels or horses. They would
rush forward, hurl their missiles and then retreat to an agreed line, soon
to repeat the procedure. When the enemy began to falter the Arabs would
then engage them in hand-to-hand combat, inspired as they were with
thoughts of a paradise reserved for fallen warriors. In such a fashion the
Muslim forces, giving all the appearance of a ragged cavalry, overcame
all opposition. Soon they had captured the Sassanid capital of Ctesiphon
on the Tigris, near to what was to be the site of Baghdad, the seat of the
Abbasid caliphs. Still the Persians tried to counter the Arab expansion into
Mesopotamia, launching various attacks on the central plain, but to no
useful effect. The Arabs repulsed all the Persian efforts, and Yazdgard,
the last of the Sassanid emperors, was killed in 651 as he fled before the
pursuing Bedouins. Now the Arabs were able to pour eastward from the
river Euphrates: soon they were in control of the whole of the Mesopota-
mian region, and Syria and Mesopotamia were then fused together into a
single province under an Arab governor.
The Apostasy had been suppressed, the whole of Arabia had been
won for Islam, and the conquest of Syria and Mesopotamia had laid the
basis for an expanding Arab empire. During the decade of Umar's rule
(634-44) the subjugation of Egypt and Syria was completed and the Sassanid
empire was overthrown. Umar had adopted the title Amir al Mu'minin,
Commander of the Faithful (amir signifying military command), foreshad-
owing the character of the later Umayyad dynasty. The Sassanid general
Rustam had been killed on the plain of Qadisiyah, near Hira, and the young
King Yazdgard, obliged at the age of twelve to confront the Arab invasion,
was forced to flee to the Zagros mountains before being slain by the
pursuing Muslims. In Ctesiphon the untutored desert Bedouins found
themselves in a treasure-house of riches: gold and silver, precious jewels
attd silks, priceless artefacts of all kinds. The Persian forces had been
The Arabs, Islam and the Caliphate 113
crushed but Vmar wisely ruled against any Arab incursions into the heart
of Persia itself: it was one thing to conquer Iraq, a Semitic province that
had never shown much loyalty to the Sassanids, quite another to battle
through mountainous terrain to subdue a large population that would have
no cause to welcome an Arab invasion. Vmar then arranged for the bulk
of the Arab forces to be focused in two cantonments in lower Iraq, the
camps at Basra and Kufa which would expand in a few years into large
towns.
The Arabs had established an effective dominion over Syria, Egypt and
Iraq but there was no prospect of assimilating Persia whose people, con-
scious of their own imperial past, resented the barbarous race of 'lizard-
eating Bedouins'.D The Persians adopted Islam, at first reluctantly (as
mawali, clients of the Arabs, with an inferior status), but later with a
growing cultural autonomy. One Persian Christian, a certain Abu Lu'lu'a,
taken as a slave to Medina, managed in 644 to stab the caliph Vmar six
times in the back. Vmar, aged fifty-two, took some hours to die: he had
enough time to rejoice that his assassin was not a Muslim, and to set up an
electoral college (shura), including Ali and Vthman, to select the next
caliph. The college also included Zubair ibn al Awwam, who had fought
in Egypt, Abdul Rahman ibn Auf, and Saad ibn abi Waqqas, the conqueror
of Iraq.
SCHISM
Soon after the death of Vmar cracks began to appear in the young Arab
empire. A new situation was developing, not merely because Islam had lost
a wise leader but also because the pace of Arab advance inevitably slowed.
It proved impossible to maintain the speed of the early conquests and in
the second decade problems emerged that would have taxed the capacities
of any leader. The newly-expanded Arab nation rushed towards a crisis
that would create permanent divisions in Islam and whose effects are
manifest in the modem world.
It was soon evident to the electoral college set up by Vmar that there
were only two serious candidates: Ali (ibn abi Talib) and Vthman (ibn
Affan), both of them members of the Quraysh. The two realistic candidates
came from different clans - the Beni Hashim (Ali) and the Beni Vmayya
(Vthman) - within the Quraysh tribe, and these were the groups that had
vied for supremacy before Islam: Mohammad himself had belonged to the
Beni Hashim and his principal opponent, Abu Sofian, to the Beni Vmayya.
This meant that a mere twelve years after the death of the Prophet the old
114 The History of Iraq
family rivalries were again coming to the fore. Twenty-two years earlier
Mohammad had journeyed to Medina to escape the hostility of the Meccans,
and in that period of new empire had supplanted the old hegemonies of
Rome and Persia. But already the insecurities in the new state were appar-
ent: 'Quraysh had built it and Quraysh were to destroy it' .14
The electoral college selected Uthman (644-56) as the third caliph. He
was handsome and wealthy, and about seventy years of age. Although of
high social standing, he was soon showing the weakness that would help
to end his rule. New popular risings broke out in Persia and continued for
about five years (644-9); here, as in other matters, Uthman had responded
with indecision and nepotism. He had made his own half-brother, Waleed
ibn Uqba, governor of Kufa and the military commander in northern
Persia (it was remembered that when Waleed's father, Uqba, had been
taken prisoner at Bedr and cried out, 'Who will take care of my little
children?' Mohammad had replied, 'Hell-fire'). Waleed, a drunkard, was
soon removed from his post and replaced by Saad ibn al Aasi, another
Umayyid, as was the newly-appointed governor of Basra, Abdulla ibn
Aamir. The revolts in Persia had been suppressed and Abdulla had captured
Balkh, Herat and Kabul, but such successes did little to quell the growing
dissent among the Arabs. Now it seemed clear that only an Umayyid could
hope to gain high office, even though it had been the Beni Umayya that
had originally opposed Mohammad and the establishment of Islam. The
Quraysh, given status because of Mohammad, had long been seen as a
natural aristocracy in the movement, but it was the sectional Umayya that
was operating as a clique over all Arabs. Uthman himself appeared to be
taking orders from the Umayya, a circumstance that alienated many of his
nominal followers. In 655 there was an armed revolt in the Kufa camp, and
Saad was forced to flee to Medina, soon to be followed by a mutinous army
supported by factions from Fustat and Basra. In June 656 a mob of soldiers
broke into Uthman's house in Medina and hacked him to death. The third
patriarchal caliph was dead.
The assassination ofUthman was a momentous event in early Islam. The
murder itself was dramatic enough. When the soldiers broke in they found
the old man sitting with a copy of the Koran in his lap. His wife struggled
to shield him, and had several fingers cut off for her pains. As the soldiers
thrust their swords into Uthman's body the blood of the caliph flowed
over the Koran, a nice metaphor on the state of Islam. It no longer seemed
that God was guiding the affairs of the Arab nation. At one fateful blow
the true nature of the Caliphate was exposed: it was no sacred office, no
divinely sanctioned head of a people chosen by Allah to conquer and rule
The Arabs, Islam and the Caliphate lIS
the world. Instead the Caliphate, like all other human institutions, was a
prize to be won by the sword. It was Muslims, not infidels, who had
murdered the caliph in the holiest city of Islam. The Arab nation had passed
through its brief dream, the unreflective state in which seemingly the whole
world had lain at the feet of the holy warriors. Now the Arabs were again
plunged into fratricidal strife, bloodshed and civil turmoil.
Ali, the first cousin of the Prophet and husband of his daughter Fatima,
seemed to be Uthman's natural successor. Five days after the assassination
he was approved as the fourth patriarchal caliph and the soldiers returned
to their garrisons. But Ali was opposed by the powerful Umayyads, includ-
ing Muawiya, and by Ayisha, Mohammad's widow. Ali had opposed
Uthman's election and he had been in Medina at the time of the assassina-
tion. Had he lifted a hand to prevent the catastrophe? Did he intend to
punish the assassins? Did he secretly welcome the death of the third caliph?
Muawiya, having failed to prevent the murder of his kinsman, now refused
to recognise Ali until the assassins were punished. But Ali refused to act
and Muawiya accused him of complicity in the murder. Ali had at best
shown a lack of resolution in the revolt against Uthman, and his inaction
had awakened suspicion. Now Ali, a man of about sixty years of age, found
himself increasingly beset by enemies, including Muawiya, the powerful
governor of Syria. The bloodstained shirt of Uthman and his wife's severed
fingers were smuggled out of Medina and conveyed to Damascus, there
to be exposed in the mosque to stimulate public outrage.
After fruitless talks and a battle in July 657, it was agreed that arbitra-
tion, on the basis of Koranic law, should be allowed to settle the issue
between Ali and Muawiya. Two umpires, one from each side, were selected
and the arbitration court met at Adhruh, an old Roman site near the ruins
of Petra. Amr was chosen to represent Muawiya, and Ali was forced to
select Abu Musa, an independent Kufan leader. Today the details of
the deliberations are obscure but it is thought that the court scrutinised the
record of Uthman, finally vindicating him sufficiently to condemn the
regicides. This implied, in view of Ali's failure to punish the assassins, that
his caliphate was invalid - a conclusion that would have satisfied Muawiya,
since he himself, at least overtly, was making no claims for the throne.
Ali, who had looked like being victorious in battle, was now defeated by
arbitration. He rejected the proposal of a shura to elect a new caliph, and in
consequence further alienated many of his supporters. Several thousand
of his followers deserted him and became known as Kharijites ('outgoers'
or 'secessionists'), claiming connections with the original Kharijites and
destined to have an influence through all the subsequent centuries of Islam.
116 The History of Iraq
Ali, increasingly insecure, lost the Hejaz to a local rebellion, and was
then forced to move against Kharijites who had established a base at
Nahrawan, beside one of the Tigris canals. In July 658, in a bloody con-
frontation, he crushed the dissenters; but in January 661, while entering
the mosque at Kufa, he was assassinated by a fanatical Kharijite. He was
the third caliph in seventeen years to be murdered. Now the way was
open for Muawiya.
The supporters of Ali, the Shia ('partisans of Ali'), made some efforts to
continue the struggle against Muawiya, and encouraged Ali's son, Hasan,
to make claims on the caliphate. But Muawiya had already had himself
declared caliph in Jerusalem and Hasan was soon persuaded to renounce
his claims in exchange for a substantial pension. The Shia built the town
of Najaf around Ali's supposed tomb at Kufa: the ShialSunni divide had
been consolidated and would continue to plague Islam up to modem times.
The Arab state, weary of internal strife, was now prepared to accept the
rule of the Umayyads: the confrontations were temporarily abated in cel-
ebration of the jama'a (the return to harmony and agreement). With the
death of Ali, the first important phase of the Arab nation came to an end:
that of the first four caliphs known to most Muslims as the Rashidun (the
'Rightly Guided Ones'), a generous appellation in view of the violence and
errors with which their names are associated.
Arabia had lost its political primacy for the Arab nation, though Mecca
and Medina retained their unique significance for all Muslims. Now the
centre of political power had shifted from Medina, via Kufa, to Damascus
in Syria. Muawiya was now set to rule for twenty years as Caliph of Islam.
He has been reckoned a successful monarch. His style was that of the
democratic Arab leader: he circulated freely in the streets without an escort,
winning over enemies and consolidating the loyalty of his friends. He is
said to have replied to bitter criticisms with calm conciliation, and through-
out the two decades of his power there was no rebellion against him, a
remarkable accomplishment for an Arab caliph. He was not averse to
bribery, as well as persuasion, to gain allies. When he was rebuked for
distributing gifts so widely he was apt to comment: 'War costs more!' Syria
was a reliable base for his rule but the turbulent province of Iraq often
presented problems and under Umayyad rule it was kept in order by a series
of ruthless governors.
The Arabs, Islam and the Caliphate 117
The towns of Kufa and Basra were often the sites of disaffection: the
civil strife had shattered once and for all the brief unity of the Arab nation,
and in any case the restless Bedouins were never content to stay placid
under civil government. Such troubles were well contained by the various
governors; in particular by Ziyad, who created a shurta, a carefully picked
bodyguard to control the streets. He also cultivated the friendship of the
sheikhs, the all-important tribal chiefs, and began deporting the most diffi-
cult clans to the far-off region of Khurasan where they were encouraged
to settle as military colonists, a robust force on the frontiers of the empire.
Muawiya had succeeded in impressing his people and in consolidating Arab
control of the provinces; in time-honoured fashion he embarked upon
various further military adventures to focus Arab energies.
Muawiya died in 680, and still no rules had been drawn up to control
the succession to the caliphate. He had worked with the shura, a council of
elders, often cajoled into implementing his wishes by pressure from the
wufud, tribal delegations whom he had bought or persuaded. He had re-
solved, without dispute from the shura, that his son Yazid would inherit the
throne but leading Muslims, doubtless aware of the rampant nepotism
throughout all the years of the caliphate, were not eager to assume a
hereditary entitlement to the caliphate. It is often noted that despite the clan
and tribal structure of Arab society there is an aversion to the hereditary
right of succession: merit, rather than birth, has often been depicted as
giving the best reason for accepting one leader against another.
In fact Yazid was in a weak position: there were many caliphs' sons
about, and Yazid was far from uniquely talented. He seemingly had a
frivolous disposition, preferring hunting to business and lacking all the
authority of his venerable father. Moreover, there were many enemies of the
house of Umayyad, and they now saw their chance. Ali's second son Husain
was the only surviving grandson of the Prophet, Hasan having died before
Muawiya (some said of poison); and Husain was regarded by the Shia as
the future caliph. His supporters compelled him to forsake his congenial
seclusion in Mecca and to enter the hazardous political fray. Husain was
seen as serious and pious, a suitable contrast to the frivolous Yazid. When
news that Husain, without an army, was journeying towards Kufa there was
general alarm in Damascus: there were memories of earlier strife and it
was not difficult to imagine what might happen again. While Husain was
still travelling across the desert Yazid appointed Ubaidulla, the son of
Ziyad, as governor of Kufa. The new governor could be relied upon: within
days he had executed all Husain's principal supporters in the town, and
when Husain's small convoy approached Kufa it was suddenly surrounded
118 The History of Iraq
by a cavalry force of four thousand. Husain gathered around him his band
of less than a hundred supporters, and resolved to fight to the death. The
Arab archers fired on the convoy for several hours, and one by one Husain's
men died around him. His ten-year-old nephew Kasim died in his arms;
two of his sons and six of his brothers also perished, until Husain himself,
now bleeding from several wounds, stood alone. The troops closed in and
struck him down with their swords. Most of the women and children,
cowering in the tents, were spared, but all the slain males were decapitated;
some seventy heads, including that of Husain, were carried in triumph
to Ubaidulla.
In November 683 Yazid died, and the scene was set for further political
chaos. Now Yazid's sickly son, Muawiya II, though only a child, was
proclaimed caliph but died a few months later, not long after Abdulla ibn
Zubair, son of the Zubair who had opposed Ali, made competing claims
for the caliphate. These were set aside and the defence of the Umayyad
dynasty now depended upon Marwan al-Hakam, a cousin of Muawiya and
Yazid. In 684 Marwan was proclaimed caliph in Damascus, but died a year
later, to be succeeded by his son Abdul Malik ibn Marwan. Such turmoil
had further weakened the Umayyad dynasty, and the position faced by
Abdul Malik seemed to be little short of hopeless. In Mecca Zubair made
fresh claims and established himself as a rival caliph; the Persian provinces
were in anarchy; and in turbulent Iraq the Shias and the Kharijites had
begun open rebellion.
Abdul Malik, supposedly a shrewd and competent politician, first con-
solidated what forces remained loyal to him, and then began a fresh in-
vasion of Iraq (which now was showing increasing allegiance to the
anti-caliph Abdulla). Abdul Malik took Kufa in December 691, killing the
brother of Abdulla ibn Zubair in the process. The loss of Iraq seriously
weakened the position of Zubair in Mecca, and in 692 Abdul Malik felt
strong enough to send an army to recapture the Holy City. Kufa had been
lost to the caliph, run by the rebel Mukhtar - who assured his followers
of the imminent coming of the Mahdi (the promised redeemer) - for
eighteen months; but in 687 Mukhtar and his principal lieutenants had
been killed, and now it was time to tackle Mecca. The siege lasted for a full
eight months. The famous Umayyad commander Hajjaj ibn Yusuf had
placed mangonels (wooden rock launchers) on the surrounding hills, and
Mecca was forced to suffer a constant bombardment. Eventually Abdulla
ibn Zubair, rapidly losing heart, consulted his mother, whereupon the woman,
a daughter of Abu Bekr, declared: 'If you are conscious of your right, you
will die like a hero!' So Abdulla ibn Zubair donned his armour on 3 October
692 and rushed out of the Meccan stronghold to face the Syrian army. He
The Arabs, Islam and the Caliphate 119
was first hit by a missile in the face, and then fell, sword in hand, riddled
by arrows. Mecca was taken and, as befitted the times, Abdulla's head was
duly presented to Abdul Malik in Damascus. Now that the caliph could
rule without a serious rival a second jama 'a, signalling peace and accord,
was declared.
Suleiman ibn Abdul Malik (715-17), the brother of Waleed, succeeded
him as caliph. His reign witnessed the second great Arab siege of Constan-
tinople, which lasted for two years and which was no more successful than
the first. The Byzantines employed 'Greek fire', apparently based on
naphtha, which could be ejected from nozzles and poured from the battle-
ments on unfortunate soldiers struggling to mount the walls. The Arabs
were further handicapped by a harsh winter (716-17), when thick snow
covered their lines for three months; and by an attack in the rear by the
Bulgars, persuaded to enter the fray by the Isaurian Emperor Leo. Suleiman
died in Damascus in 717 while the fighting outside Constantinople was still
in progress, and his successor, Caliph Umar ibn Abdul Azeez, sent instruc-
tions for the Arab armies to return to Syria. The new caliph also did all
he could to end the historic feud between the Beni Hashim and the Beni
Umayya, making fresh efforts to conciliate the various factions (for ex-
ample, when the Kharijites again rebelled in Iraq he invited them to send
delegates to Damascus to explain their grievances). But his efforts were
unsuccessful, a failure that was to contribute to the eclipse of the Umayyad
dynasty.
It was now becoming clear that a more effective leadership of the Arab
nation might be offered by another branch of the family of Mohammad, the
descendants of his uncle Abbas. Elements of this family branch and their
supporters created a political organisation with its centre at Kufa. They sent
as their emissary to distant Khurasan a man called Abu Muslim, who may
have derived from a Persian family. Umar had died after a brief reign, and
his successors - Yazid II and Hisham, another son of Abdul Malik - while
seeming to secure the empire were marking time before the establishment
of a new dynasty. The caliph Hisham died in 743 and the Umayyads began
their irreversible decline. Waleed II, the next caliph, was reputedly a drunk-
ard and blasphemer: he survived fifteen months only, and on 17 April 744
his head was paraded through Damascus on the point of a lance. His
successor, Yazid III, who had organised the revolt, died in October 744
after ruling for a mere six months. During this period, Abu Muslim had
been forming an army to challenge the Umayyad dynasty. From Khurasan
the army first marched to the west, engaging Umayyad forces in a number
of battles. The demoralised Umayyad forces were repeatedly defeated in
a series of confrontations in 749-50; and the last Umayyad caliph,
120 The History of Iraq
Marwan II, was chased into Egypt and there killed. In Kufa the new leader
of the Arab nation was proclaimed: Abdul Abbas, a descendant not of Ali
but of Mohammad's uncle, Abbas.
The Abbasids were quick to move their capital from Syria to Iraq, a
decision that was to involve the creation of Baghdad in 762. This meant that
now Muslim power was focused on the former Sassanid territories (south-
ern Iraq, Persia, Khurasan and the land that stretched into central Asia),
rather than on the eastern Mediterranean countries or the Hejaz; the Maghrib,
now more distant from the centre of Muslim power, became less important.
Persians were key players in the Abbasid dawla - to the point that some
early observers saw the cultural transformation in Islam as a victory for
Persian Aryans over Arab Semites. There was still a substantial Arab
presence in the movement but now Islam was more cosmopolitan. The Arab
tribes had been at the heart of the early imperial expansion, but now
Persians were streaming into the public service: a new class of officials,
merchants and landowners was evolving, with the ulama corresponding
'socially, though not religiously, to the priesthood of Christendom' .15 A
new office (Wazir or Vizier), with the authority of a vice-caliph, was
created and the caliph himself was encouraged to retreat, in the manner of
the old Sassanid shahs, into the heart of his palace, secure from the common
eye. The trend towards oriental despotism, already discernible under the
Ummayads, was accelerated under the Abbasids: the new caliphs 'seemed
to have inherited the sacred absolutism of the kings of Nineveh, Babylon
and Persia' .16 The official executioner stood by the throne and symbolised
the monarch's total power over his subjects, unprotected as they were by
any law or constitution. One of the first decisions of Abdul Abbas (749-54)
was to kill Abu Muslim and others who had helped the Abbasids to power:
there must be no threat to the crown. Some family members were appointed
as governors, as were others from Persian families newly converted to
Islam and with a tradition of involvement in state affairs. Some freed slaves
were appointed as officials.
The caliph Abdul Abbas, the first Abbasid Prince of the Faithful, died of
smallpox on 9 June 754 (he had already earned the nickname of Saffah, the
'shedder of blood'). He was succeeded by his brother Abu Jafar, who was
proclaimed caliph in Kufa with the title of al-Mansur (the Victorious).
Mansur's most celebrated act was the creation of Baghdad; according to al-
Tabari, Mansur had spent 'the sweetest and gentlest night on earth' at the
The Arabs, Islam and the Caliphate 121
to heal the divisions at the heart of Islam, and even the world-shaking Arab
conquest, though impacting dramatically on all future centuries, seemed
only to pile up the forces that in due course would tear apart the empire. The
Arabs, fuelled by a potent fanaticism, had exploded out of the desert
peninsula to confront ancient empires and sweep across many lands. The
sudden ascent of the Arab nation had happened with startling speed; its
decline, inevitable and irreversible, would take much longer.
DECLINE
The wild Arab Bedouin, fortified by a fresh millennial creed, had burst
out of the Arabian deserts, confronted vast empires and conquered half
the known world. In a few short decades the Arab armies had exploded
through Mesopotamia to occupy Persia, Armenia, Syria, Egypt, Libya,
Tunisia, Morocco and Spain. At its height the Arab conquest ran from
Samarkand and the Indian Punjab in the East to Lisbon and Toulouse in the
West, and Arabs sailed to occupy Cyprus, Crete, Sicily, Sardinia and
Corsica. By 750, little more than a century after the death of Mohammad,
at the time when the Abbasids were overthrowing the Ummayad dynasty,
the Islamic empire was the greatest civilisation west of China.
The empire, like all empires, could not last. With easy hindsight it is
possible to chart the emergence of tensions and dislocations through every
historical phase. The early family jealousies, the tribal rivalries, the per-
sonal ambitions, the competing ethnic claims in an expanding empire, the
many incompatible ingredients poured into the cultural melting-pot - all
contributed to the eventual disintegration and dissolution. Separate dynas-
ties gradually broke away from the central control of the caliphate: the
Safavids in eastern Persia (867-1495), the Samanids of eastern Khurasan
(819-1005), the Tulinids in Egypt (868-905), and the Aghlabids of Tunisia
(800-909). But the indelible Islamic influence continued to be felt in all
the territories of the erstwhile empire: the people and their rulers in the
once subject lands continued with their Muslim devotions, even during the
decay and final overthrow of the caliphate. A few areas broke away from
Muslim control or retained pockets of religious independence: notably
Spain, subject to a Christian reconquest, and various self-sufficient en-
claves of Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism elsewhere.
The Arab conquest had succeeded in spreading the frontiers of the Arab
nation, now spread over many national states and different political sys-
tems; and in conveying Islam to many races and peoples beyond Arabia.
The Arabs had begun the spread of Islam; they, with the Persians, had
dominated the latter phases of the caliphate. It would soon be the tum of
the Turks to impact on the Islamic world.
4 Seljuks, Mongols and
Ottomans
END OF THE ABBASIDS
The Abbasids had been the most glorious dynasty in the history of the
caliphate; but now, as they came increasingly under foreign sway, their
power was dissipated as the empire began to fragment. The Isma'ilians
(Ismailis or 'Seveners') had spread throughout the empire their message
that the son (Mohammad) of Ismail (the seventh descendant of Ali, the
Prophet's son-in-law) would return as the Mahdi. Secret cells were formed
to spread the word to all the oppressed classes of the Abbasid empire. In
consequence, the Isma'ilians were accused of supporting a communist
philosophy that included the common ownership of women. I The move-
ment was increasingly successful: in 901 the rulers of Yemen were won
over, and in 908 the Isma'ilians installed their own caliph in Tunisia, so
beginning the Fatimid dynasty (after Fatima, the Prophet's daughter and
wife of Ali). In 969 the Fatimids came to power in Egypt and founded
Cairo, where they established the al-Azhar University - to become one
of the great centres of Islamic learning. Baghdad, now in decline, was
briefly occupied by a Fatimid general in 1056. 2
In the ninth century the Abbasids had developed the practice of import-
ing foreign mercenaries to secure their rule. Such free men were supple-
mented by Turkish and Circassian slaves specially trained to protect the
caliph and his ministers. These guards, known as Mamluks (mamluk, 'owned'
= slaves), were held to be reliable since they lacked the family ties (and
resulting jealousies) that would threaten the dynasty. But as the Mamluks
became more powerful their arrogance grew: before long they were operat-
ing as a praetorian guard able to make and unmake kings. In 945 the leader
of the Baghdad Mamluks took the title Amir al-Umara ('Commander of
Commanders') to signify his unique role. Now the Abbasids were no more
than puppet rulers, destined to survive in name until abruptly crushed
by the Mongols in 1258, but lacking all scope for independent action
under their foreign masters .
Mamluk armies were periodically despatched from Baghdad to establish
a de facto Turkish control of neighbouring lands in the name of the Abbasid
dynasty. The Byzantine emperor Alexius I appealed in 1094 to Pope
126
Seljuks, Mongols and Ottomans 127
Urban II to send urgent military aid to block the Turkish advance. It was
the pope's response to this desperate appeal that precipitated the Crusades.
It was now abundantly clear that the Abbasid caliphs, still nominally in
control of the Baghdad regime, were no longer active players on the po-
litical scene. They continued to exist as mere 'shadow-caliphs', pathetic
imitations of the great Haroun and Mamum, until the time of the Mongol
onslaught. 3 But for two centuries it was the Turkish Amir al-Umara who
held the real reins of power in Baghdad - even to the point that one of the
interlopers joined his name to that of the caliph (al-Rahdi, 934-40) in
Muslim prayers. AI-Rahdi, eventually killed by the Turkish guard, was
regarded by Arab historians as 'the last of the real caliphs': the last to be
allowed to deliver the Friday prayer at the Baghdad mosque, the last to
be permitted to conduct matters of state. The demise of al-Rahdi saw the
death of the last vestiges of power and dignity in the office of caliph.4 Now
the Commander of Commanders (or 'Prince of Princes'), usually unable
to speak Arabic, was the de facto ruler of the Muslim state.
THE SEUUKS
ceeded in imposing law and order over much of Iraq and west Persia: he
encouraged agriculture, repaired roads and bridges, and rebuilt the cities
that had been ravaged by war. But when he died in 983 a fresh civil war
broke out. The Buwaihids fought one another throughout the land, plunder-
ing the countryside, and doing nothing to protect themselves from an
onslaught by another wave of conquerors.
The Ghuzz (sometimes referred to as the Oguz) were a tribe of Turks
who grazed their livestock on the steppes north of the Aral Sea: their
'principal occupation' was war. 6 In 1029 they burst into northern Khurasan
and began to plunder the land, killing all who tried to oppose them; but
when regular forces were sent against them they dispersed, continuing to
ravage the territory as marauding bands. In this fashion they continued
to migrate towards the west, raping and killing as they went, but vanishing
into the night when faced by organised armies. The chiefs of the Ghuzz
tribe belonged to the Seljuk family; with two brothers, Tughril Beg and
Daud, grandsons of Seljuk, at the head of the marauding bands. In time
the groups, bolstered by their predatory successes, became consolidated
in larger units and so achieved increasingly significant military victories.
In December 1055 the puppet caliph Quaim begged the Seljuks (who
were Sunni Muslims) to end the Shi'ite domination of Baghdad. In due
course Tughril Beg arrived on the east bank of the Tigris to find the
Buwaihid prince Malik al-Raheem confronting him on the west. When,
the next morning, a few bands of Ghuzz soldiers entered the city they were
attacked and driven out. Tughril Beg felt strong enough to demand that
the young Buwaihid prince report to him immediately to explain what
had happened. Malik al-Raheem was arrested and condemned to imprison-
ment in a Persian fortress; Quaim, having invited Tughril Beg in the first
place, now protested but was impotent. The Seljuks moved into the Bagh-
dad palaces, formerly occupied by the Abbasids and the Buwaihids, while
the soldiery scattered over the region to plunder, rape and kill.
In 1057 the caliph Quaim, draped in the Prophet's cloak, received
Tughril Beg in audience. The caliph had long since abandoned all preten-
sion to secular political power but appeared to have regained some reli-
gious prestige. Perhaps Tughril Beg, the untutored warrior from the steppes,
was impressed by the descendant of the Prophet's uncle. Tughril Beg died
in August 1063, without children and never having learned to read or
write. He was succeeded by his nephew Alp Arslan who was immediately
plunged into civil war by his brother Qutlumish, who claimed the crown:
the brief conflict ended in December 1063 with the death of Qutlumish,
whereupon his descendants later established an independent Seljuk sultan-
ate in Asia Minor.
Seljuks. Mongols and Ottomans 129
The new Seljuk ruler Alp Arslan was courageous and energetic but, like
his uncle, illiterate. With shrewd political insight he arranged marriages
between his sons and the daughter of Qara Khan of Trans-Oxania and the
daughter of the Sultan of Ghazna: in this way the three principal Turkish
dynasties of the time were united, so stabilising the political situation in
the East. Elsewhere the Seljuks were soon confronting the Byzantines, keen
to protect their frontiers against the new ruler of Baghdad. In a pitched
battle on 19 August 1071 at Malazkirt, north of Lake Van, the Byzantine
emperor Romanus Diogenes faced a vast Seljuk force of calvary. The
Byzantines were eventually shot to pieces by the galloping tribesmen, and
the Byzantine emperor was forced to kiss the ground before the barbarian
commander. Emperor Romanus was later released for a ransom of five
hundred thousand gold dinars: but when he returned to Constantinople,
shortly after a palace coup in favour of Michael VII Ducas, he was arrested
and then executed. Alp Arslan himself was killed in Persia on 25 November
1072: he had succeeded in refining the administration of the state, had
opposed corruption and shown compassion to the poor. His son, Malik
Shah, well-educated and interested in scholarship, brought the Seljuk em-
pire to the peak of its greatness. In 1087 the caliph Muqtadi, the grandson
of Quaim, married Malik Shah's daughter at a grand ceremony held in
Baghdad. In late 1092 Malik Shah returned from a hunting expedition
outside Baghdad complaining of a high fever. He never recovered: ten
days later, aged thirty-seven, he died. None of his four sons, all still
children, could impose order on the empire, and a fresh civil war was
stimulated by the competing factions.
The Seljuk leaders, as sultans, had assumed most of the powers of the
Muslim caliphs. Now it was the sultans, not the erstwhile Abbasids, who
were taking the important decisions on matters of administration and
military affairs. The caliphs retained certain religious responsibilities, al-
lowed to comment on matters of Muslim observance, Koranic exegesis, and
proper personal behaviour. But the Seljuks had extensively revised the
Perso-Islamic administrative framework, injecting Persian culture, and largely
eliminating the use of the Arabic language in most cultural and govern-
mental activities. Even where Arabs found themselves in areas with a great
Arab majority, they were administered by officials who knew no word
of Arabic. The Seljuks also had an interest in pressing religious orthodoxy
on the Muslim world: the caliphs enjoyed their reduced areas of religious
autonomy but the Seljuks were keen to abolish all Shi'ite influence in
religion, politics and military affairs. To this end the Shias were expelled
from their posts, and Muslim schools were reorganised to reflect the pre-
vailing orthodoxy. The proponents of Sufi mysticism were allowed to
130 The History of Iraq
advertise views regarded as consistent with the wishes of the new establish-
ment, and Sufi orders were encouraged all over the empire as a means
of countering the enduring influence of the Shi'ite polemicists.
The Seljuks had effectively brought to an end the great age of the Arab
nation. But the Seljuks too, like all the previous historic conquerors, had
no permanent hold on power. There were inevitable fractures in the
empire, competing factions and civil wars, and unexpected threats that
would soon burst over the frontiers. After the rule of Alp Arslan Malik the
long Seljuk decline began. The last great Seljuk ruler was the sultan Sancar,
son of Malik Shah who was soon to be faced with the Mongol hordes
exploding into the Middle East: with the death of Sancar in 1157 there was
little left to stand in their way. A new caliph, al-Nazir (1180-1225) had
risen in Baghdad and for a brief period re-established some of the authority
of the old caliphate: the last ties with the Seljuks were broken, and al-Nazir
managed to suppress Turkish dominance in some parts of Iraq and to
discourage the Ismaili Assassins from further terrorist attacks (in return
for recognition of their autonomy). He continued the Seljuk support for
the Sufi mystic orders and for Muslim orthodoxy. But with the death of
al-Nazir and the end of the Seljuks, the way was open to the Mongols.
The Seljuk supremacy had effectively come to an end in 1194, when
the caliph al-Nazir, a member of the Turkish dynasty of the Khwarizm
Shahs, defeated the ruling sultan in Baghdad. So ended yet another signi-
ficant phase in the history of the region, with the name of the Seljuks
remembered for many conquests and some cultural achievements. They are
also remembered not least because Salah el-Din (Saladin), the great libera-
tor of Jerusalem, the mighty conqueror of the Christian Crusaders, was
himself a Seljuk.
When the Crusades were launched in 1094 they were advertised as a holy
war (a Christian jihad) against Islam, but it was soon clear that a secondary
task was the determination to establish European control over the riches of
the Middle East and beyond. The Crusades lasted for two centuries and for
the most part comprised a struggle between the Christian Europeans and
the Muslim Seljuks. By the twelfth century the Turks had spread through
the region, establishing local sultans or ruling through proxies, such as the
Baghdad caliphs. The indigenous Arab populations had been largely squeezed
out of the centres of power, and now it was left to the Turks to defend the
Seljuks. Mongols and Ottomans 131
Fertile Crescent and Asia Minor. There had already been a number of
Christian successes against the Muslims: Toledo had been taken in 1085
at the start of the Christian reconquest of Spain; the Genoese took the Arab
base of Mahdia in Tunisia in 1087; and the Muslims were expelled from
Sicily in 1091. The papacy was pleased by these early victories: there was
no difficulty in reconciling the words of the Prince of Peace with the martial
exploits of the feudal armies. There was already alarm at the Turkish threat
to the Byzantines, and now circumstances were conspiring to encourage a
holy onslaught against the Muslim and all his works.
When the Byzantine emperor Alexius made urgent calls for military help
to block the advance of the Turks through Asia Minor, Pope Urban II
quickly saw how this frantic appeal could be exploited. At the Council of
Clermont in 1095 he demanded the launching of a military expedition - not
so much to aid the Byzantines as to evict the Muslims from Palestine, the
cradle of the Christian religion. The appeal was immensely successful. Its
first fruit was the People's Crusade, a vast rabble of men, women and
children that fought and looted its way to Constantinople. Some twenty
thousand Christian devotees were ferried across the Bosphorus, to be mas-
sacred on 21 October 1096 by the Turks near Nicomedia. At the same time
four great Christian lords were heeding Urban's message and forming their
own armies to confront the Muslim: substantial military contingents, built
out of tenants and feudatories, were headed by Godfrey de Bouillon, Duke
of Lorraine and of Lower Lotharingia (modern Belgium); Robert, Duke
of Normandy, the eldest son of William the Conqueror; Raymond de Saint
Gilles, Count of Toulouse and Marquis of Provence; and Bohemond,
Count of Apulia, of the Norman House of Hauteville.
At the beginning the forces were fired with much enthusiasm, stimulated
as much by Christian zeal as by the prospect of plunder and riches in the
East. A modern Lebanese writer comments on the character of the Christian
advance: '. . . the Franj* crossed the Bosporus and, despite a blazing
summer sun, advanced along the coast. Wherever they passed, they were
heard to proclaim that they had come to exterminate the Muslims, although
they were also seen to plunder many a Greek church on their way.'? The
promiscuous nature of the Christian onslaught soon became apparent: the
Franj 'passed through several villages, all of them Christian, and comman-
deered the harvests, which had just been gathered, mercilessly massacring
those peasants who tried to resist. Young children were even said to have
been burned alive.'8
The Crusaders established a series of feudal states along the Syrian coast
and in Palestine, aided in their efforts by divisions among the Seljuks and
by the seeming indifference to events shown by the Cairo Fatimids and the
Baghdad Seljuks. But despite their early successes the balance of power in
the region did not favour the Crusaders. It had seemed that the Christian
forces had swept all before them, leaving a legacy of hatred throughout
the Muslim world that would endure over the centuries. There had been
much needless slaughter, often in cold blood. The author of the celebrated
Gesta Francorum tells how in Jerusalem the Crusaders 'killed everyone
whether male or female' - even, the day after the main massacre, slaughter-
ing a group of Muslims who had been granted sanctuary.9 It was at this
time that the crusaders began equating Muslims with 'fiIth'lO - a racist
ploy still evident in the modem world. *
The Egyptian Fatimids were now becoming increasingly concerned at
the Frankish threat, and so decided to seek assistance from other Muslim
forces. Rival wazirs in Cairo approached Nuraddin and King Amalric of
Jerusalem with the request that they send military aid, Nuraddin sent Shirkuh
and his (Shirkuh's) nephew Saladin to Egypt; Shirkuh later reported that
Egypt was a country 'without men, and with a precarious and contemptible
government' .11 The caliph Adid accepted Shirkuh as a new wazir and when
*Racism has often stimulated repressive and imperialist impulses in Western society.
Thomas Jefferson, in common with many of his white friends, regarded blacks as hybrids
between white men and apes. In the US conquest of the Philippines, begun in 1898, 'goo-goo
hunts' were organised to exterminate the indigenous population, just as in America's later
Asiatic wars the enemy was variously depicted as 'monkey meat' (Admiral William F.
Halsey), 'Chinks', 'slopes', 'dinks' and 'gooks'. Nelson Mandela condemned the selective
Western response to the 'brown skinned' Iraqis, and Noam Chomsky noted that the world
campaign against Saddam was the 'world minus its darker faces' . In the US and Britain, Arabs
were harassed by the authorities for clearly racist reasons (see, for example, Mowahid Shah,
'The FBI and the civil rights of Arab-Americans', ADe Issues, 5, American-Arab Anti-
Discrimination Committee, Washington, DC; Patricia Wynn Davies, 'We gave refuge and then
locked them up', The Independent, London, I February 1991; Julie Flint, 'Quiet changes in the
rules bar Iraqis', The Observer, London, 3 March 1991). The day after the 1991 Gulf War
began, a man rang the offices of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee to say:
'I'm going to be down there in fifteen minutes with a high-powered rifle to shoot you A-rabs'
(this example and many others supplied by Jamal Kheiry of the Committee). A professor at
California State University, Sacramento, declared to his class: 'All you have to know about
Arabs is that they lie, cheat and start rumours.' The Anti-Discrimination Committee publishes
a 'hate crimes chronology' to record and publicise the numerous instances of harassment of
American-Arabs in the United States: telephone threats, rocks thrown through windows,
employment harassment, school harassment (children routinely depicted as 'sand niggers',
'camel jockeys', etc.), letter threats, vandalism, police harassment, assault, shootings, death
threats, arson, etc. Such circumstances, little advertised in the West, were an important element
in the cultural climate of the 1991 Gulf War and the subsequent enduring punishment of the
Iraqi people.
Seljuks, Mongols and Ottomans 133
he died suddenly in 1169 Saladin was appointed his successor. In 1171
Saladin felt strong enough to abolish the Fatimid caliphate and to declare
himself ruler of Egypt; and when, three years later, Nuraddin died, Saladin
took over Syria. He was now in a position to build up the necessary power
to drive out the Franks.
Saladin's brother Turanshah had conquered the Nubians; and Saladin
himself repulsed Franks, Assassins and Sicilian Normans in their massive
naval attack on Alexandria. The Byzantines were defeated at Myriocephalon
in Asia Minor by the Seljuks of Rum in 1176, and there were further
divisions among the European powers. Venice and Genoa were content to
trade in Egypt, a circumstance that led Saladin to boast that Franks were
selling him arms to use against Franks. Saladin was now in an increasingly
strong position: accepted by orthodox Muslims, he was in effective control
of the governments of Egypt, Syria and Iraq and now in a position to
challenge the Christian control of Jerusalem.
In 1187 Saladin crushed King Guy's army at Hattin and overran Pales-
tine in a few weeks, a decisive victory that horrified the European powers.
There were fresh sermons and fresh military preparations, but little was to
be accomplished. A new Crusade was launched, encouraged by Richard
the Lionheart of England, Philip II of France and the Byzantine emperor
Barbarossa, but this time there were few gains. Saladin had proved too
much for the Christian forces and the peace of Ramla in 1192 did no more
than consolidate the Muslim victories. It is recorded that Richard the
Lionheart, doubtless frustrated by his failures, had three thousand Muslim
captives massacred when negotiations with Saladin broke down. The Chris-
tian warriors then carefully examined the entrails of the corpses for swal-
lowed gold. 12 Richard then sailed for England, and in November 1192
Saladin made a grand state entry in Damascus. Now his empire included
substantial parts of North Africa, Syria, Kurdistan, Egypt and much of
Iraq, and there were signs that he had further ambitions: a contemporary
Arab historian, Ibn al-Athir, wrote that Saladin was considering widening
his empire to include the whole of Iraq and Persia. But a few months later,
on 3 March 1193, he died in Damascus.
The Crusades impacted on the Muslim world in many different ways.
At the most obvious level many Muslim states were drained of men and
material resources in a sometimes desperate effort to repel the Christian
invaders: such military demands have often distorted and crippled national
economies. And there is also a bitter legacy. It is nicely documented that
the historical Muslims were generally tolerant of Jews and Christians (the
dhimmis, the people of the two other monotheistic creeds), but the Crusades
helped to erode this traditional tolerance. There can be no doubt that the
134 The History of Iraq
MONGOL ONSLAUGHT
Soon the Muslim states were to experience the most devastating nomadic
onslaught of them all, one that almost engulfed Islam completely. We are in
Seljuks. Mongols and Ottomans 135
no doubt about the enormity of this invasion: for the Muslim world the
Mongols represented a 'disaster' ,16 a 'catastrophe' 17 and a 'scourge' .18 The
great chronicler Ibn al-Athir thus begins his account of the Tartar aggres-
sion into the lands of Islam:
For some years I continued averse from mentioning this event, deeming
it so horrible that I shrank from recording it ... To whom, indeed, can
it be easy to write the death-blow of Islam and the Muslims ... 0 would
that my mother had not born me, or that I had died and become a
forgotten thing ere this befell ... this thing involves the description of
the greatest catastrophe and the most dire calamity ... which befell all
men generally, and the Muslims in particular ... since God Almighty
created Adam . . . the most grievous calamity recorded was that
Nebuchadnezzar inflicted on the children of Israel by his slaughter of
them; and what was Jerusalem in comparison to the countries which
these accursed miscreants destroyed, each city of which was double the
size of Jerusalem? ... those whom they massacred in a single city
exceeded all the children of Israel ... these [Tartars] spared none,
slaying women and men and children, ripping open pregnant women
and killing unborn babes.... 19
This was the mission of Genghis Khan: to extend the Mongol empire to the
outermost limits, and to leave misery and desolation in his wake. He is said
to have declared: 'All cities must be razed, so that the world may once again
become a great steppe in which Mongol mothers will suckle free and
happy children. '20 This was the task: to abolish the hated cities and their
sedentary occupants, so that free Tartar* nomads would be able to range
without encumbrance across the whole of creation. In pursuing his quest
Genghis Khan rocked Islam to its foundations and succeeded in ex-
tinguishing the weakened caliphate once and for all.
Fresh divisions within the Muslim world were developing, dislocations
and enmities that would prevent any unified response to the Mongol threat.
Takash had become the Khwarizm shah in 1172, whereupon he occupied
Khurasan, crushed the Ghuzz, and in 1194 killed the last Seljuk sultan,
Tughril II. Khwarizmian power was now extending into western Persia,
threatening a confrontation with the Abbasid caliph, Nazir. Takash soon
showed his hostility to Nazir's efforts to consolidate Abbasid religious and
*These nomads were called Tatar by the Arabs and Persians. The European Tanar was an
attempt to connect them with Tartarus. following their hellish deeds and infernal cruelty.
136 The History of Iraq
political power: he demanded that Caliph Nazir recognise him as the Bagh-
dad sultan. Nazir refused and Takash died in 1200, leaving the Abbasids
and the Khwarizmians in a state of confrontation. Takash' s son Mohammad
(1200-20) extended the Khwarizmian control throughout Persia, and with
the caliph still refusing to donate the sultanate Mohammad resolved to
abolish the Abbasids. In 1217, at a time when Genghis Khan was contem-
plating fresh conquests, Mohammad declared Nazir deposed and marched
on Baghdad. But the winter checked his advance and there was disruption
among his own forces: his army was largely composed of disaffected
Turkish slaves, and the leading Muslim clerics were disturbed by his hostil-
ity to the caliphate. Then an event occurred that would precipitate the
earthquake throughout the Muslim world. A reckless governor at the
frontier post of Utrar arrested and then executed a caravan of merchants
whom he branded as spies: the merchants had come from the dominions
of Genghis Khan.
In February 1220 Genghis Khan and his Mongols, supported by troops
from subject Turkish states, crossed the laxartes and stormed the great cities
of Bukhara and Samarkand. The Khwarizmian shah Mohammad (Ala al
Deen Mohammad) quickly appreciated the growing danger, perceived the
strength of the forces ranged against him, and ordered his own armies to
avoid pitched battles. Many of the towns were well fortified and it was
assumed that a series of lengthy sieges would eventually weary the Mongol
invaders. But Genghis had brought with him a body of Chinese engineers,
and the Mongol siege tactics proved highly effective. The two great cities
fell and Mohammad fled to an island in the Caspian, to die in misery a few
weeks later. His son lalal aI-Din resolved to resist the Mongol invasion and
achieved some successes, on one occasion routing a Mongol detachment
sent to capture him, but then he was forced to flee, only just managing to
save his life by swimming across the Indus.
Whenever a city was taken by the Mongols the pattern was the same:
mangonels were used to bombard the walls, after which slaves were forced
to lead the assault. Then all the inhabitants were marshalled outside the
city walls, the women to be raped and thereafter all the people - men,
women and children - to be butchered. The town was then comprehensively
looted, before being burned to the ground. For a period of three years this
devastating policy was extended over a vast area of east Persia. The inhab-
itants of the region had developed a sophisticated civilisation over a period
of a thousand years before the Arab conquest in the seventh century, an
event that led to a merging of cultures to create a wealth of Perso-Arabic
innovations - in literature and science, in art and civil engineering. Now,
over a prodigious area, the gardens and irrigation systems, the libraries and
Seljuks, Mongols and Ottomans 137
floodwaters. Then the Mongol forces began mounting the shattered de-
fensive walls and Mustasim, now in despair, sent the Nestorian Patriarch
to Hulagu to offer a surrender. The Mongol khan ordered Mustasim to
come in person to his camp, with his family and all his retinue, and to
yield up all his treasure.
The caliph's army was instructed to assemble on the plain outside
Baghdad, where all were massacred. Then the inhabitants of the city were
told to assemble, when they too were shot and hacked to death, their corpses
piled in heaps. The Baghdad palaces, mosques and colleges were then given
over to the Mongol soldiery, to plunder at will and to slaughter any sur-
viving Muslims still struggling to hide in the rubble. It is estimated that
some eight hundred thousand men, women and children were killed over a
period of days in the streets and houses and on the plain outside the city.
Mustasim and his sons were taken to a village outside Baghdad, there to be
killed in cold blood. It is recorded that in view of the Mongol superstition
about shedding the blood of sovereign princes, they were first rolled in
carpets before being trampled under the hoofs of Moslem horses (in one
version of this account the caliph Mustasim was first sewn up in a sack;
in another account the caliph was strangled to death). In such a miserable
fashion the Abbasid caliphate was finally extinguished in 1258, and all
the glories of medieval Baghdad were reduced to ruins.
The entire Muslim world was horrified to learn of the destruction of
Baghdad, while the Christians of the East delighted in the sacking of the
great Muslim city - in the spirit of the 'Babylon is fallen!' declaration of
the New Testament Revelation (in the merciless destruction of Baghdad a
few Christians had been spared). Hulagu had marched off, heavily laden
with the Muslim treasures than had been accumulated over five centuries;
and soon his armies were in Syria. In January 1260 the Mongols overran
Aleppo and the ancient city was forced to suffer all the massacres, plunder
and devastation that had ravaged Baghdad. The Ayyubid kings of the
various Syrian cities were unable to stem the tide and soon Hulagu was at
the gates of Damascus. This great Muslim centre gave in without a fight.
Three Christian leaders - the Mongol commander Kitbuga, the King of
Armenia and the Frankish Count Bohemund of Antioch - rode in the
streets, forcing the Muslims to bow to the cross. Christian opinion was
divided (the neutral position of the Acre Franks helped the Muslims), but it
was easy to represent the Mongol campaign as an anti-Muslim crusade,
'a pendant to the Frankish expeditions'.
The Muslim world was then helped by a fortuitous event. In 1260
Hulagu received news that his brother, the khan Mangu, had died in China.
This meant that again the Mongol empire was faced with the prospect of
Seljuks, Mongols and Ottomans 139
conflict over the succession. Hulagu favoured his other brother Kublai, but
his cousin Berke - the Mongol commander of Russia, who had embraced
Islam and was horrified at Hulagu' s destruction of the Baghdad caliphate -
was supporting a separate claimant. Hulagu also felt threatened by his
cousin's supposed ambition to create an independent western Mongol em-
pire; and so he quickly moved the bulk of his army to the Caucasus, leaving
only a light force in Syria. The Mamluks, aware of these favourable devel-
opments, raised a Muslim army and advanced under the sultan Kutuz to
confront the Mongols, now led by Kitbuga, at Ain lalut ('Goliath's Spring')
near Nazareth. This was one of the world's historic battles: after furious
fighting in September 1260 Kitbuga was killed and the great sway that
the ancestors of Genghis Khan had held over the world was broken forever.
At last, after such dreadful carnage and destruction, the Mongol shadow
had been lifted.
The Mongols had destroyed a weakened caliphate that had still served
as a focus for Islam and Muslim identity: with the decay of the empire the
religious role of the caliphate took on a growing significance. The glory
days of the Umayyads and the early Abbasids had long since passed into
history, but the memory of those times has never faded from Muslim
culture. For more than seven hundred years, since 1258, there has been
no single focus within Islam for religious and political loyalty; though in
the modem world there is talk, from time to time, of reviving the caliphate
as a symbol of Muslim unity. And where would it be based: Cairo, Tripoli,
Baghdad, Damascus, Mecca, Medina, Riyadh, Teheran, Ankara, Jakarta?
The futility of the dream should not be allowed to obscure the importance
of the great phases of historic Islam.
OTTOMAN CONQUEST
The Ottomans were a fierce Turkish warrior tribe that originated in the
central and eastern Asian grasslands, the homelands also of the Scythians,
Huns and Mongols. Like the Mongols they were great horsemen, and their
skill with the bow gave them considerable military prowess. Many of the
tribes were a racial mixture, some resembling the Chinese in skin colour
and facial features, others the Caucasians of the southern steppe. In their
westward trek in the seventh century the Ottoman Turks began to penetrate
the borders of the Middle East, and within three hundred years they had
become the dominant force in what was later Soviet Central Asia. In contact
with the fringes of the Muslim empire some of the Ottomans adopted Islam
and the caliphs increasingly relied on Turkish Mamluks ('slaves') to con-
140 The History of Iraq
When Suleiman died in 1566 the empire soon began to decay under a
series of vicious and incompetent sultans. In 1619 Bekr (the Su Bashi), a
captain of the elite corps of Janissaries in Baghdad, staged a revolt and
made himself master of the city. An Ottoman army was quickly despatched
to re-establish order whereupon Bekr invited Shah Abbas I of Persia to
take over Baghdad. Alarmed at this development the sultan offered Bekr
the governorship of the city if he remained loyal to the empire, with the
result that when Abbas arrived at Baghdad Bekr tried to refuse him entry.
But then Bekr's son Mohammad betrayed him and opened the gates to
the Persian army. Thus Abbas took Baghdad on 12 January 1624 and set
about slaughtering all the Sunni inhabitants of the city; Bekr himself was
tortured to death. Abbas also killed, by boiling in oil, all the Janissaries who
had supported him, on the grounds that if they had betrayed the Ottomans
they could just as well betray him.22 The Persians then advanced through
the rest of Iraq, the Safavids pushing westwards into Anatolia, with only
the regions of Mosul and Basra remaining in Ottoman hands. Soon how-
ever, with the inevitable swing of the pendulum, the sultans would regain
control of Baghdad and the rest of Iraq.
There was an immense popular reaction in Istanbul to the fall of Iraq;
the sultan Murat IV was able to survive only by juggling the political
leadership, but his position was weakened. In 1625 the Ottomans again tried
to retake Baghdad, but while they were able to defeat the Safavid army and
lay siege to the city they were compelled to retire when Persian reinforce-
ments arrived. On 26 March 1626 the Ottoman siege of Baghdad was lifted,
but the sultan managed to retain northern Iraq, a suitable base for further
campaigns against the Persian masters of Baghdad. In November 1638
Murat, at the head of a great army, reached the Iraqi capital; the Safavids
put up a strong defence, lasting from 15 November to 25 December, but
then the Persian governor was forced to surrender and all the Persians in
the city were slaughtered. The Ottomans then sent troops over much of
Mesopotamia to suppress the Sunni Muslims, wherever they could be
found, and on 17 May 1639 a definitive peace was established between the
Safavids and the Ottomans, resulting in the drawing up of borders between
Iraq and Persia that have survived with little change up to modem times.
Now the Ottomans had secured their hold on Iraq and the unimpeded trade
routes to the Persian Gulf were restored. Murat returned to Istanbul and
died soon afterwards on 8 February 1640 - of gout, sciatica or excessive
drinking.23
There now began the long period of Ottoman decline, a process that was
to last for the greater part of three centuries. The empire had been at its
Seljuks, Mongols and Ottomans 143
height under Suleiman* but after his death there were few territorial gains
and the fragility of the Ottoman state became increasingly apparent. The
war with Venice (1645--64) exposed serious weaknesses in the empire; and
soon afterwards the Russo-Turkish war (1676-81) resulted in most of
the Turkish Ukraine being lost to Russia. The long slow decay had begun,
but it would take the First World War in the twentieth century to finally
extinguish the Ottoman empire.
OITOMAN DECLINE
Many factors contributed to the decline of the Ottoman state, not least the
encroachments of other powers, problems with the dynastic succession, and
the characteristic problems of administering a vast empire. The harem
system ensured that there would be sufficient contenders to guarantee the
survival of the dynasty, but this arrangement has also been seen as generat-
ing an embarrassment of riches: many factions competed for power and
the internal unity of the state was weakened. Sons contended with one
another for the throne and on occasion the ambitious offspring did not
wait for the death of the monarch. Thus Selim I (1512-20) overthrew his
own father, Beyazit II (1481-1512), a coup that created further dissensions
in the royal family. Once a man had been declared sultan he would con-
template the task of securing his power base: his brothers may be bought
off by being offered key government posts, or they may be murdered, an
abrupt means of removing opposition elements. In the fifteenth century
fratricide among the rulers of the Ottoman state was an acknowledged
part of realpolitik; and the practice also enjoyed theoretical acclaim. A
kanun issued by Fatih Mehmet not only allowed such an action but pro-
claimed the practice desirable as a means of avoiding civil strife.
It was later decided that the oldest son of the sultan would inherit the
throne - a device that seems obvious, if one needs a monarchy at all, to
modem observers. The sons of the reigning sultan were maintained on the
palace premises, each granted separate quarters called kafes ('cages') in the
harem sector of the royal establishment. Here the sons would employ both
black and white eunuchs to guard the women, a convention that seems to
have been imported from Mesopotamia. 24 This arrangement, ensuring that
*At his height Suleiman ruled all or part of Hungary. Yugoslavia. Albania. Greece. Bul-
garia, Rumania, the Ukraine. the Crimea, Turkey, Iran. Iraq. Syria, Lebanon, Jordan. Egypt,
Libya, Tunisia and Algeria.
144 The History of Iraq
the likely heirs to the throne were cloistered in their own secluded premises,
guaranteed that no sultan from the seventeenth century onwards would have
any knowledge of government affairs until he took the throne. Thus the
habitual contact with the women of the harem did little to prepare sultans
for affairs of state, and the harem itself came to play a significant role in
government matters, particularly in the appointment of state officials. 25 This
in tum led to a degree of corruption that infected government and had
adverse effects on the functioning of the military establishment. From the
seventeenth century onwards the sultans found themselves in charge of
vast undisciplined forces, far removed from the great ordered forces that
had originally secured the frontiers of the empire. With the growing corrup-
tion at the heart of the empire many of the distant regions became semi-
autonomous, paying tribute only when threatened by Turkish armies, and so
adding to the pressures on the state. At the same time the European nation-
states were growing in power and influence, by the end of the seventeenth
century presenting a multifaceted challenge to Ottoman security.
In Iraq the Ottomans relied on the pasha of Baghdad to maintain the
SUbjugation of the desert Arabs, an increasing disruptive faction through the
region. In 1694 the Arabs succeeded in capturing Basra, which was only
restored to the sultan after a Persian onslaught on the region. The desert
Arabs and the semi-nomadic Kurds were also raiding the caravan routes
between Aleppo and Baghdad, so further hampering Ottoman trade. The
governors of Sidon and Damascus still struggled to maintain the flow of
taxes to Istanbul, despite the growing resentment of the local tribes and
religious groups; some areas, such as Mount Lebanon, achieved virtual
autonomy within the empire. On many fronts, despite occasional advances,
the Ottomans were in retreat.
In 1704 Hasan Pasha Mustafa, the son of a calvary officer (Mustafa
Beg), was appointed governor of Baghdad; and for a period of nineteen
years he waged endless battles against the desert tribes, managing in such a
fashion to maintain the nominal power of the sultan. But in 1723 the Afghan
chief Mahmud Khan Ghilzai dethroned the last Safavid shah and pro-
claimed himself Shah of Persia, whereupon the sultan, hoping to benefit
from the resulting confusion, declared war on Persia. Hasan Pasha was
thereby despatched with his Baghdad army to invade Persia, but died in the
middle of the campaign. His son, Ahmad Pasha, continued with the military
expedition for a futile four years, after which peace was agreed on the basis
of the pre-war frontier. In January 1733 Mahmud's successor, Nadir Quli
Khan, invaded Iraq and lay siege to Baghdad, reducing the city to starvation
by July of the same year. The Ottomans, perceiving the catastrophe that
faced their Iraqi territories, despatched Topal Othman Pasha (known as
Seljuks, Mongols and Ottomans 145
Othman the Lame) to relieve Baghdad. By that time Othman was old and
crippled with wounds and had to be carried on a litter over the thousand
miles from Istanbul to Kirkuk. On the plain, north-east of Baghdad, Nadir
Quli Khan awaited the arrival of the old commander.
On the morning of 19 July 1733 Topal Othman mounted his horse for the
first time in the whole lengthy campaign, whereupon his French doctor,
Jean Nicodeme commented: 'I saw him riding along like a young man,
sword in hand, with animated countenance and sparkling eyes.' The battle
lasted for a full day. Fifty thousand Persian horsemen drove the Turkish
cavalry from the field and two thousand Kurdish infantry deserted the
Ottomans in the midst of the conflict. Othman called up Janissaries as
reinforcements and eventually the Persian infantry was overcome. Nadir
Quli Khan, who had had two horses shot from under him, fled back across
the frontier to Persia, and Baghdad was relieved. When the Turkish soldiers
entered the city they found that some hundred thousand people had died
of starvation. Nadir spent three months raising a fresh Persian army, while
Othman's desperate appeals to Istanbul yielded no reinforcements. On
26 October 1733 battle was again joined, Othman was shot dead on the
field, and virtually the entire Turkish army was exterminated; but this
time Baghdad was not taken. Nadir rushed home to quell risings in Persia,
and Ahmad Pasha was left free to govern Iraq until he died in 1747. Now
the Ottoman empire was weakened and in disarray, leaving Iraq to be
governed as a virtually autonomous province. When Ahmad Pasha died
the Sublime Porte struggled to re-establish Ottoman control over the region,
but four successive Istanbul nominees failed to establish their authority
over Baghdad, forcing the sultan to recognise Ahmad's son-in-law,
Suleiman Pasha, as the new governor.
This meant that what was a Mamluk ('slave') regime was set to rule Iraq
until 1831, at which time a terrible attack of bubonic plague devastated the
Baghdad population and reduced the city to impotence. In April 1831
between two and three thousand people were dying every day, while the
healthy fled the city; civil administration broke down, whole regiments
were killed off, robbers ranged the streets, communications collapsed, and
all food supplies were exhausted. 26 Then the Tigris burst its banks, flooding
the city, and reducing hundreds of houses to ruins. Mamluk culture had
been devastated: the diseased and depopulated city was now reduced to
rubble, the grand mosques and palaces destroyed, all the silks and satins,
the jewels and elaborate artefacts destroyed. In June an Ottoman army, led
by Ali Ridha Pasha, arrived outside the city and demanded that the Mamluk
ruler, Daud - who had managed to survive the chaos and destruction -
surrender himself to justice. However, Daud was pardoned by the sultan
146 The History of Iraq
and employed in high office until his death in 1851. Twelve pashas -
Mamluks and Turks - had ruled Iraq during the period 1750-1831, in which
the fortunes of the Ottoman state had continued to deteriorate.
At the same time a Muslim reform movement, founded by Mohammad
ibn Abd al-Wabia in the eighteenth century, had been gaining strength in
Central Arabia (Wahabism became the religion of the Saudi rulers and so
survived as an influential sect in modem Saudi Arabia). At the beginning
of the nineteenth century a fanatical Wahabist tribal chief, Mohammad ibn
Saud, swept northwards, plundering and killing throughout Iraq and
Syria. In 1802 the Wahabists had captured Mecca and Medina, and quickly
laid claim to the soul of Islam. The Ottoman sultan Mahmud II, perceiving
the Wahabist expansion as both a religious and a political threat, sent
Mohammad Ali to crush the uprising: the Wahabis were crushed after
fighting that began in 1812 and lasted for six years. However, Mohammad
Ali, having been content to function as a nominal feudatory of the Istanbul
Ottomans, now decided to rebel; his son Ibrahim Pasha took an army
through Syria to defeat the Turkish forces at Konia in Asia Minor. The
European powers then intervened to stop the fighting, though Mohammad
Ali had already succeeded in annexing Syria to Egypt. When fighting
resumed in 1840 Syria was lost but Mohammad Ali secured recognition as
the hereditary monarch of Egypt, now virtually independent of the Ottoman
state. Mohammad Ali, keen to employ specialist Europeans, had started
Egypt on the long path of westernisation, but Syria, Iraq and most of Saudi
Arabia were to remain under Ottoman control until the end of the First
World War.
It has been pointed out that the heart of the Ottoman state was able to
withstand for several centuries 'both external assault and internal sub-
version'; and that moreover the Ottomans 'displayed a comparable dur-
ability in the provinces' .27 In the nineteenth century the Empire was widely
perceived as the 'Sick Man of Europe' (long before this soubriquet was
transferred elsewhere); but the sickness was one that 'few other Islamic
states would have survived to endure' .28 It is certainly possible to argue
that the Ottomans, in their very longevity, offered unique gifts to Islamic
history, but it is unlikely that the survival of Islam depended on the Turks:
it would have survived anyway - in Iraq and elsewhere. It had survived
many imperialisms in the past, including the Christian imperialism of
the Crusaders. Soon Islam would be forced to face the Christian imperial-
ism of the twentieth century.
5 The Western Impact
I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am
strongly in favour of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes.
Winston Churchill
If the Kurds hadn't learned by our example to behave themselves
in a civilised way then we had to spank their bottoms. This was
done by bombs and guns.
Wing Commander Gale, 30 Squadron (RAF), Iraq
The Crusades were the first large-scale Western intervention into the Mus-
lim world. Their impact however on the centres of Islamic power was
limited: most of the great Muslim cities remained intact and the most
impressive Christian victories were in due course thrown into reverse. But
the Arabs - with a 'most lively feeling of their own history' - have never
forgotten the series of Western aggressions that came to an end more than
seven hundred years ago. The leaders of the Arab world still rejoice in the
successes of Saladin, still constantly refer to the recapture of Jerusalem
from the Christian interlopers, with modem Israel itself depicted as a new
crusader state. The Suez expedition of 1956 has been regarded as a Frankish
Crusade, akin to the aggression of 1191; and an Arab writer has pointed
out that the Turk, Mehmet Ali Agca, who on 13 May 1981 almost killed
the Pope, declared: 'I have decided to kill John Paul II, supreme commander
of the Crusades.' I We are reminded that the schism between the Arab East
and the West dates from the Crusades; and that this schism is 'deeply felt
by the Arabs, even today, as an act of rape'.2 The Crusades were the first
great Western onslaught on Muslims, but it was in the twentieth century
that the most comprehensive Western interventions were to take place -
with all the exploitation, miseries and humiliations that this implied.
Iraq under the Ottomans had remained one of the most backward regions
of the Turkish empire: it was poorly governed and underdeveloped, Otto-
man interests generally focused elsewhere. The appointed walis (gover-
nors) had problems trying to discipline the desert tribes and the settled
147
148 The History of Iraq
Kurdish communities in the north of the country. Some of the walis tried
to introduce reforms but to little effect. Thus the progressive Midhat Pasha,
who in 1869 began a three-year rule, introduced conscription among the
local population, built schools and hospitals, and took steps to improve
local administration. He also tried to dredge the Shatt aI-Arab waterway
(the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates), and encouraged steamers to
navigate the major rivers. But though the area remained backward the
Europeans were becoming increasingly aware of the region's potential
strategic and commercial importance.
Britain already controlled the Gulf and now saw Iraq as the gateway to
India, one of the acknowledged glories of the imperial network. Britain
helped to establish telegraph and postal services linking major Iraqi cities
with Istanbul, the Gulf and India; and increasingly came to regard central
and southern Mesopotamia as an obvious British sphere of interest. At the
same time France was casting an eye on Mosul in the north, Russia was
looking towards the Gulf, and imperial Germany had formed a disturbing
alliance with the Ottoman sultan. In 1865, following the death of Feisal
bin Turki, a violent contest for the Saudi succession erupted, encouraging
the Turks in an attempt to consolidate their power in the region. Britain
was alarmed at the prospect of a Turkish presence in the Gulf, and so
strengthened its links with Bahrain to counter both Turkish and Iranian
ambitions.
As early as 1798 Britain had despatched a permanent agent to Baghdad,
a modest response to Napoleon's supposed intention to march across Meso-
potamia to India. 3 Subsequently technology and political circumstance
conspired to increase British interest in the region. In 1836 the British
government decided to fund an expedition to explore the possibility of
using steamboats to navigate the Euphrates from its source in Syria to its
outlet on the Gulf; and by the 1850s the possibility of expanding railway
communications was being considered. Russian encroachments in Persia
represented a threat to British communications in the Middle East, and so a
plan for a Euphrates Valley railway to link the Mediterranean to the Gulf
stimulated much official thought. 4 This official interest acquired further
impetus when the 1857 Indian mutiny exposed the shortcomings in Anglo-
Indian communications and later when de Lesseps opened the Suez canal,
so threatening to give France a sea route to India. The importance of
protecting British India was never in doubt; it was to this defence that the
'whole British military and naval machine was heavily geared'.5 Lord
Curzon, Viceroy of India (1899-1905), asserted that 'as long as we rule
India we are the greatest Power in the world' .6 It was this focus on India-
The Western Impact 149
the declared need 'to safeguard all the routes leading to India'7 - that
concentrated British attention on Mesopotamia, apart from any additional
strategic or commercial benefits that Iraq might offer. Thus in 1871 a Select
Parliamentary Committee was established to explore again the possible
benefits to Britain of a Euphrates Valley railway. In fact, none of the
schemes materialised in the nineteenth century but the discussions did
succeed in convincing the British government that if it did not need to
develop the overland route by means of a railway then no other European
power should be allowed to control such a development. This conclusion
helped to determine British attitudes to a possible Russian railway project
and to a more concrete German proposal. In 1888 the Deutsche Bank gained
Turkish support for a development proposal; and in 1903 the German
financiers obtained a final Baghdad Railway Concession from the Ottoman
government, whereupon the British took steps to secure a degree of control
over the projected railway.
It is easy to see why Britain would want to protect the trade routes to
India. In 1904 India was the largest consumer of British goods 8 - and,
perhaps for this reason, a principal concern of the recently formed Commit-
tee of Imperial Defence. Between 1900 and 1902, ships totalling 478,000
tons called at Basra, and the vast majority of these flew the British flag.
India was second only to Persia as an importer of dates, hides and wool
from Mesopotamia; and Britain supplied sixty-five per cent of the Mesopo-
tamian market: most of this trade was cloth exported from Manchester.
Within Mesopotamia itself British merchants controlled much of the carry-
ing trade; for example, the Euphrates and Tigris Navigation Company,
established in 1859, remained a British family concern. The Company was
allowed by the Turkish government to run only two steamers in Mesopota-
mia, and it was forced to compete with the Oman Steamship Company
sponsored by the Turks. The East India Company had installed a repres-
entative at Basra as early as 1764 and opened an agency in Baghdad in
1783. The British Consul General at Baghdad maintained his own steamer,
the Comet, on the Tigris and in 1800 was protected by his own Sepoy
detachment, an official force that by 1904 had grown to a contingent of
more than forty cavalry and infantry.
British trading interests in Iraq developed throughout the nineteenth
century and there was much optimism that these would expand in the years
ahead. It was thought that conservation of the spring floods of the Tigris
and Euphrates would improve the grain, rice, cotton and date crops, with
technological investment expected to vastly increase crop quality and quan-
tity. It was assumed also that European capital investment would quickly
150 The History of Iraq
There had long been hints of the presence of oil in the Arabian peninsula
and beyond: travellers' tales and Arabic literature made reference to black
oily substances, and bitumen had been used over the centuries for various
purposes (the 'Greek fire' used by the Turks against Arab ships probably
had a petroleum base). Oil was discovered in Egypt in 1869, though it was
not until forty years later, in 1908, that the massive Masjid-i-Suleiman
(Temple of Solomon) well in Persia began to flow; thirty years after that
an even more fertile well was discovered in Kuwait. These and the many
other discoveries of oil in the region ensured that Kuwait, Persia, Iraq and
other states would long be the focus of imperial ambitions. The oil bounty
that should rightly have liberated the Arab peoples (and the Persians and
others) was destined to lead to their subjugation and humiliation. The oil-
rich nations of the Middle East have not yet escaped from the predatory
designs of powerful Western nations in a shrinking and energy-hungry
world.
In 1890 the French geologist Jacques de Morgan, a member of an
archaeological team in Persia, observed manifest oil seepages; ten years
later he decided to obtain financial backing to explore the matter further.
This led to a meeting with Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, sometime British
Ambassador to Persia - an encounter that, via further contacts, led to an
exclusive concession for a British company to search for oil in Persia. The
Russian Imperial government protested but the concession assigning rights
to the British firm was signed on 28 May 190 I, though the actual exploita-
tion company was not set up until 1903. On 26 May 1908, with the funds
almost exhausted and the firm now in a syndicate with the Scotland-based
Burmah Oil Company, oil in commercial quantity was found at Maidan-i-
Naftun; a year later, in April 1909, the Anglo-Persian Oil Company was
founded. One of Winston Churchill's first acts, when made First Lord of
the Admiralty in 1911, was to resurrect the Admiralty committee on oil to
ensure that British warships would not go short of fuel. Lord Fisher was
The Western Impact lSI
made head of the Royal Commission on Oil for the Navy, and a group of
experts was sent to Persia and the Gulf to assess future prospects in the
region. Britain had already perceived the strategic importance of Kuwait
and had taken steps to guarantee a lasting British influence. Thus on
23 January 1899 Sheikh Mubarak, the ruler of Kuwait, had been induced
to sign an agreement with Britain guaranteeing British protection in return
for an assurance that neither he nor his heirs would 'cede, sell, lease or
mortgage, or give for occupation or for any other purpose a portion of his
territory to the government of any other power without the previous consent
of Her Majesty's Government'.10 This meant that an agreement in perpetu-
ity had been made between Britain and successive rulers of Kuwait, despite
the ambiguous position of Kuwait in its relations to the Ottoman state.
Thus in the nineteenth century Britain saw the strategic and commercial
advantages of keeping Kuwait out of Iraqi control. This was to bear directly
on the oil question, and on many other matters, in the years ahead. It was
not long before Sheikh Mubarak confirmed the terms of the 1899 agree-
ment. British diplomats and oil experts were welcomed in Kuwait, and in
1913 he wrote to Sir Percy Fox, the British Political Representative in the
Gulf: 'We are agreeable to everything which you regard as advantageous
... we will associate with the Admiral one of our sons to be in his service,
to show the place of bitumen in Burgan and elsewhere and if in his view
there seems hope of obtaining oil therefrom we shall never give a con-
cession to anyone except a person appointed by the British government. 'II
The puppet status of Kuwait was clear.
The British government took a S I per cent shareholding in the Anglo-
Persian Oil Company, via a Parliamentary bill that received the Royal
Assent six days before the declaration of War; a further investment of
£3 million was made in 1919. Kuwait was set to playa key role in the
appreciation of British assets, 'and in affairs which would soon enmesh
much of the Arabian peninsula, the USA, Britain and Europe, and many of
the greatest commercial enterprises in the Western world, in a relationship
that to say the least of it was delicately poised' .12
The collapse of the Ottoman Empire created an immediate battlefield for
oil diplomacy among the victorious powers. Turkish possessions were
being carved up between Britain and France (see the Sykes-Picot Agree-
ment, below), and attention was focused on the possibility of vast oil
reserves in the regions of Mosul and Baghdad. The Armenian entrepreneur
Calouste Gulbenkian had founded the Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC)
in 1914, soon half owned by British Petroleum who had managed to secure
the Iranian concession. At the end of the war TPC was divided up, the
152 The History of Iraq
security forces was said to have a letter in his possession proving that the
American consul in Baghdad was funding Shi'ite rebels in Karbala. 16
The American government continued to maintain diplomatic pressure on
the British and in due course the Americans were offered shares in the
successor company to TPC. Iraq's oil industry was now monopolised by
the Iraq Petroleum Company (lPC), jointly owned by the Anglo-Persian
Oil Company (later BP), Royal Dutch Shell, an American group (eventually
New Jersey Standard Oil and Socony-Vacuum, later Mobil), the Compagnie
Fran~aise des Petroles (CFP), and Calouste Gulbenkian (still retaining
his five per cent share). Gulbenkian also managed to preserve a clause
whereby each partner agreed not to seek further concessions in the former
Ottoman Empire, a provision that ran against the Americans' 'open door'
policy but which guaranteed secure pickings to the US companies in IPC.
Now the door was slammed behind the IPC partners and 'the most remark-
able carve-up in oil history'l? (following a line drawn by Gulbenkian in
red pencil on the map)* had been accomplished (Gulbenkian: 'never was
the open door so hermetically sealed'). The Europeans and the Americans
had succeeded in parcelling out Arab resources - in particular, oil- among
themselves. The powers that had been victorious in the First World War
had little interest in the fact that 'the lands wrested from the Turks were, in
fact, Arab lands'.18 It was also conveniently forgotten that the Arabs had
fought on the side of the British and the French on the understanding that
Arab independence would be guaranteed after the war. A few Western
Arabists (Gertrude Bell, T. E. Lawrence and others) tried to highlight such
facts but their efforts were submerged by the realpolitik of the day.
The carve-up of Arab lands that followed the ending of the First World
War could not have happened in the way that it did without the final
collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Many of the factors that led to a division
of the spoils were already in place before the war. The pliant Sheikh
Mubarak in Kuwait had already consolidated his country as a British pup-
pet, and the British already controlled the Gulf and had extensive com-
mercial interests throughout Mesopotamia. Other powers - France, the
United States, Germany and Imperial Russia (soon to dissolve in revolu-
tion) - were casting covetous eyes on the region. The pace of technological
development and the new demands - not least for oil - that it generated,
coupled with the growing tensions between the European powers, had made
a fresh political cataclysm inevitable. A host of political players were being
sucked into a new vortex. Throughout the war years, as it became increas-
ingly clear that the Ottomans were doomed, the burgeoning patterns of
the post-war world began to emerge.
In the decades before the First World War Britain had tried to ensure that
no other European nation would become strong enough to dominate the
deteriorating Ottoman Empire, lest such a development threaten British
interests in India and beyond. A vast system of outposts had been estab-
lished to protect the sphere of British control between the Mediterranean
and India. Russia and France no longer seemed to pose a serious threat
to the British Empire, and Germany was emerging as the sole potential
danger to British interests. The Young Turks had formed an alliance with
the German Kaiser and there was growing German commercial and po-
litical penetration of the Ottoman state. Some efforts were undertaken by
the British and Germans, now both aware of the impending crisis, to resolve
their commercial conflicts in the territories of the Ottoman Empire; though
with hindsight it is easy to see the futility of such attempts. The Germans
appointed two British directors to the board of a company intending to
operate the Berlin-Baghdad railway; and Germany had no difficulty recog-
nising the manifest British supremacy in Kuwait, the Gulf and in the area
defined by the Anglo-Iranian oil concession. When hostilities broke out a
few weeks later the Middle East was effectively divided between four
influential factions: the Ottoman Empire, now in the German sphere of
influence; Egypt, nominally an Ottoman region but in reality a British
protectorate; the Gulf, including the coasts of Arabia, under British control;
and Iran, now split between Russian and British zones of influence. There
was growing westernisation in the region, a development that was already
impacting on Islam. Soon powerful Western states would be in conflict
with the Muslim Turks, a new confrontation between Christian and
Is- lamic forces.
It has been argued that much of the misunderstanding between the West
and the Middle East throughout the twentieth century can be traced back
'to Lord Kitchener's initiatives in the early years of the First World War' .19
Like most Westerners he was ignorant of the Muslim world; he was forced,
moreover, to rely upon inaccurate information supplied by his agents in
Cairo, Khartoum and elsewhere. He was soon proclaiming that when the
war was over it would be up to Britain to seize as much of the old Ottoman
Empire as possible. Kitchener was suspicious of the Turkish sultan, still
regarded by Sunni Muslims as the caliph, and was well prepared to believe
The Western Impact 155
people long envisaged as liberators, but who obstinately refused to play the
part. As may be imagined, they fought very badly. Our forces won battle
after battle till we came to think an Indian army better than a Turkish army. '
But this good fortune, from the British point of view, did not last. There
soon began 'our rash advance to Ctesiphon, where we met native Turkish
troops whose full heart was in the game, and were abruptly checked. We
fell back, dazed; and the long misery of Kut began.'28 Several thousand
British troops had occupied Basra, following the bombardment of the
Turkish fort at the mouth of the Shatt-al-Arab by the British gunboat,
the river sloop Odin. The early Turkish counterattacks were repulsed with
ease and the British force began the long advance towards Baghdad.
The British commanding officer, Sir John Nixon, encouraged the officer
in the field, Major-General Charles Vere Ferrers Townshend, to move along
the Tigris towards central Iraq; but the terrain was difficult and the force,
despite its early victories, was ill-equipped for such an advance. The troops
had to contend with a land of swamps and desert; and, in the absence of
mobile hospitals and adequate medical supplies, with debilitating flies and
mosquitos. At a time when Townshend's supplies were becoming seriously
depleted he encountered a well-equipped Turkish force. At Ctesiphon,
some twenty-five miles south-east of Baghdad, half the British force was
wiped out; and on 25 November 1915 Townshend, now hundreds of miles
from his Basra supply base, began his long retreat. He soon learned that
30,000 Turkish troops were being sent to reinforce the 13,000 that he had
confronted at Ctesiphon; his own poorly-equipped force now numbered
about 4500. After a hundred-mile retreat, during which Townshend lost a
thousand more men, he decided to make a stand at Kut el-Amara, a village
set in a loop of the Tigris. There followed a virtual siege of the miserable
British force, now compelled to endure a predicament that would last for
146 days until, on 26 April 1916, the War Office in London proposed to
Townshend that Captains Aubrey Herbert and T. E. Lawrence negotiate a
surrender on his behalf.
The Turks were eventually offered £2 million to let Townshend and
his men go free on parole. They rejected the offer, whereupon the British
force - by now diseased, starving and totally demoralised - destroyed their
guns and surrendered unconditionally. There had been attempts to relieve
the besieged troops (supplies parachuted to them had blown off-course and
the Turks had spread chains across the Tigris to stop riverboats laden
with supplies), but now the pathetic survivors of the once-ambitious force
had to rely on the mercy of the Turkish victors. Townshend was allowed
to travel to Istanbul where he was to live in luxury; his wretched soldiers
were sent on a long death march - 100 miles to Baghdad and a further 500
158 The History of Iraq
command the support of all Arabs. He ruled only in the Hejaz, a relatively
small area, although of immense religious significance. The imam of Yemen
remained pro-Turkish; various Arab sheikhs on the fringes of the Arabian
peninsula had treaty obligations to the British government; and ibn Saud
in the Arabian interior was a bitter rival to Hussein. Furthermore the Sharif
of Mecca had little direct contact with the Syrians or the Arabs of North
Africa; Jemal Pasha was able to declare in Damascus in January 1915 that
'the Turkish and Arab ideals do not conflict. They are brothers in their
strivings, and perhaps their efforts are complementary'. (Jemallater adopted
a policy of repression that included public executions in the centre squares
of Damascus and Beirut.) However, despite the weakness of Hussein's
position and his doubts about the British commitments on independence,
he seemingly felt that there was more to be gained by opposing the Otto-
mans than by seeking yet more clarification from McMahon and the
British government.
On 16 June 1916 Sharif Hussein raised the flag of the Arab Revolt and
quickly overcame the small Turkish garrison in Mecca. Hussein was now
committed to an Arab involvement in the war, in the hope of wider political
gains in the post-war world. But for a time there was no wider Arab
involvement; the Arab Revolt that Britain had encouraged as essential to
its war aims was confined to the Hejaz. On 2 November 1916 Sharif
Hussein's followers proclaimed him 'King of the Arab Countries', a title
that was rejected by Britain and France; in January 1917 they both agreed
to recognise him as King of the Hejaz. It was soon to emerge that Britain
and France were developing their own schemes for the shaping of the post-
war world, and these had little to say about Arab independence.
The Arab Revolt had contributed to the demise of the Ottoman Empire
and it had advertised - partly through the efforts of T. E. Lawrence - the
Arab thirst for independence in Arab lands. But many of the early hopes
behind the Revolt remained unrealised. At the purely military level Hussein's
expectations were not fulfilled by the event. The Arab Bureau had argued
that an uprising would immediately win support throughout the Muslim
and Arab worlds, and Hussein and Feisal had reported that they would be
joined by 100,000 Arab troops - which would have represented about a
third of the Ottoman army's fighting strength. It was also reported that
Hussein expected to be joined by no less than 250,000 troops, almost all
the combat troops in the Turkish army. None of this materialised. No Arab
units of the Ottoman forces, and no political or military leaders, defected
to the allies. Outside the Hejaz 'there was no visible support for the revolt
in any part of the Arabic-speaking world' .33 Hussein relied solely on a few
thousand tribesmen, massively supported by British funds. Half a century
The Western Impact 161
Britain, serving also the French interest, had been happy to seduce the
Arabs into supporting the allied cause; at the same time taking pains to
avoid any firm commitment on Arab independence. There had been the
suggestion - to Hussein and others - of Arab emancipation but without
the substance. There had been no treaties, no binding agreements, no
unambiguous promises that the Arabs could exploit in helping to shape
the post-war world. It was not hard to find Europeans who were proud of
having won the war without having incurred any embarrassing political
debts; and even during the war the shape of diplomatic things to come was
being made clear. Thus Gilbert Clayton, commenting on the McMahon
efforts, commented that 'Luckily we have been very careful indeed to
commit ourselves to nothing whatsoever';36 and Sir Edward Grey, the For-
eign Secretary, observed to Austen Chamberlain on the vexed question of
162 The History of Iraq
Arab independence that 'the whole thing was a castle in the air which would
never materialise' .37 At the same time McMahon himself seems to have
been concerned lest rising Arab aspirations turned out in fact to cause
problems for Britain. In the event both Britain and France were determined
not to be cheated of the fruits of the anticipated victory over the Ottoman
Empire.
The French government, well aware of the strength of the British pres-
ence in Mesopotamia and the Gulf, was already charting out its own
favoured spheres of influence. On lO December 1915 McMahon cabled
the Foreign Office to acquaint the British government with the diplomatic
efforts of Albert Defrance, the French representative in Cairo: ' ... i am
informed that he sent a few days ago for a leading Arab notable of Damas-
cus now in Egypt, and told him as follows: "You can tell all your friends
here from me, and I tell you this in my capacity as representative of the
French Government, that Syria shall never be part of an Arab Empire. Syria
will be under the protection of France and we shall shortly send an army to
occupy it. . .'" .38 If the British were to hang on to Iraq then France was to
have Syria. The suspicions of the British government regarding French
intentions were confirmed by the appointment of Fran~ois Georges Picot
as their representative (McMahon: ' ... Picot is a notorious fanatic on the
Syrian question and quite incapable of assisting any mutual settlement on
the reasonable commonsense grounds which the present situation requires'). 39
It was time for the British and French governments to agree their carve-up
of the post-war Middle East in the perceived interests of their two countries.
The Arabs of course would be left out of all the political horse-trading on
the future of their own lands.
George Clerk, a British Foreign Office official, proposed that it was
time for the two governments to negotiate and that the views of Sir Mark
Sykes, a Member of Parliament and Middle East expert, should be heard
(Sykes 'Was better informed about the state of Middle East politics than
anyone else in London';40 perhaps more importantly, as Clerk emphasised,
he was 'highly qualified to speak from the point of view of our interests').
Picot and Sykes met on 21 December and began the talks that would in
due course yield the agreement that would bear their names. For three days
at the beginning of January 1916 Sykes went to the French embassy to
negotiate, reporting at night to Kitchener and Lieutenant-General FitzGerald;
in this way a draft memorandum was hammered out that would form the
basis of the Anglo-French understanding on the division of spoils in the
post-war world. 41 France was to be given a Greater Lebanon and an exclu-
sive influence over the rest of Syria; a sphere of French influence would
also extend to Mosul, while Britain would retain the two Mesopotamian
The Western Impact 163
COLONIAL INTERREGNUM
At the end of the war the Arabs still had hopes for political independence.
There were suspicions about British and French intentions but the situation
in the Middle East seemed fluid. The Ottoman Empire had collapsed and a
centuries-long occupation of Arab lands was at an end; perhaps, after all,
Arab emancipation would emerge from the chaos and confusion of the
post-war world. In fact the European powers had carefully charted the
way ahead. Arab nationalists had rejoiced at the defeat of the Turkish
state but they were soon facing a fresh imperialism. In Syria there was
wild Arab rejoicing once it was clear that the country had been liberated.
Apart from the horrors of war there had been a plague of locusts that
had caused widespread famine; out of a total population of four million
between 300,000 and 500,000 people had died. But the terms of Sykes-
Picot were already being applied. The French had no intention of allowing
an Arab Syria to emerge from the ruins, and when the French objected to
the flying of Feisal' s flag over Beirut the British soon ordered its removal.
The French had soon assumed administrative control of the whole coastal
area from Tyre to Cilicia in Asia Minor. Towns in the Syrian interior were
controlled by Feisal but he was heavily dependent on British officers for
the task of administration, while an Anglo-Indian control had been con-
solidated throughout most of the allocated regions of Mesopotamia. Now
Britain was in a strong position to protect its widespread interests in the
Middle East.
The region saw the production of cotton for Lancashire factories, the
The Western Impact 165
production of oil in Iran and later in Iraq, the ongoing investment in Egypt
and Mesopotamia, and the development of markets for manufactured goods.
British strategic interests were protected also; its role as a Mediterranean
and a world power was consolidated, with focus on the sea-routes to India
and the Far East through the Suez Canal and on the development of air
routes across the Middle East. Military bases in the Mediterranean and the
Indian Ocean were strengthened, and airfields were established in Egypt,
Palestine, Iraq and the Gulf. What had originally been the Ottoman
province of Syria had now been divided up into four separate political
entities - Palestine, Lebanon, Transjordan and a much-reduced Syria - for
the advantage of Britain and France. Transjordan had not previously ex-
isted, 'even in the imagination of the Arabs' ,44 but had been created solely
to serve British colonial designs. It was usefully situated between the
Mediterranean ports of Palestine and the oil fields of British-controlled
Iraq. Moreover, it bordered the Arabian peninsula: if the Suez Canal should
become blocked Britain could pipe its oil across Transjordan to tankers
at the ports on the Mediterranean coast. The British sought to consolidate
their grip on Transjordan by installing Hussein's son Abdullah as king,
just as they installed Feisal as king of Iraq after he had been thrown out
of Syria by the French (see below). With Hussein now the monarch of
Hejaz, and his sons conveniently planted in Transjordan (later Jordan) and
Iraq, it seemed that Britain's control of the area - from the Nile Valley and
the Mediterranean to Iraq and the Gulf - was secure.
Britain had now consolidated its colonial grip on Iraq, a poorly devel-
oped area of deserts and swamps, with a population divided between the
Shi'ite and Sunni sects and riven by private blood feuds and sullen resent-
ment of any occupying powers. In the north lived another faction, seem-
ingly of much interest to European observers in the 1990s: 'Peasant and
townsman alike reciprocated the hatred of the 700,000 Kurds, half-Moslem,
half-animist, who glowered down on them from the mountain fastnesses
of the northeast' .45 At that time Baghdad depended for commercial and
administrative leadership - as it had done on occasions in the past - on its
literate Jewish minority. In the last Ottoman official yearbook for the vilayet
of Baghdad the Jews in the city were given as numbering 80,000 out of a
total population of 202,000; with the Sunnis, Shi'ites and Turks amounting
to 101,400 in toto. When Baghdad fell to the British in March 1917 the Jews
were the largest single group. When, in 1926, the Baghdad Chamber of
Commerce was established, five of the its fifteen-member administrative
council represented Jewish merchants; there were four Muslim representa-
tives, three British, one Persian and so on. There may have been serious
practical difficulties in arranging for Arab control of Baghdad, even if the
166 The History of Iraq
British colonial authorities had so wished. In fact the British cabinet was
prepared to tolerate the idea of a puppet Arab state 'to be administered in
the vilayet of Baghdad behind the Arab fa~ade as far as possible as an Arab
province by indigenous agency and in accordance with existing laws and
institutions' . But even this suggestion, issued by London on 29 March 1918,
was too much for Sir Percy Cox, now the civil high commissioner under
the Indian Army for occupied Mesopotamia. He warned in a curt note on
7 April that any suggestion of Arab rule would simply prolong the chaos
of the Turkish withdrawal, and declared that he would run the country
under tight military control, the only 'practical' approach. Cox later wrote:
'By the end of the war the people of Mesopotamia had come to accept the
fact of our occupation and were resigned to the prospect of a permanent
British administration; some, especially in Basrah and the neighbourhood,
even looked forward with satisfaction to a future in which they would be
able to pursue their commerce and agriculture with a strong central author-
ity to preserve peace and order.'46 When Cox went to Teheran in May 1918
to serve as British minister to Iran his responsibilities were delegated to
Lieutenant Colonel Arnold Wilson, a career officer now to serve as acting
civil commissioner.
Wilson, like Cox, was horrified at the idea of Arab self-government,
even condemning the proposal that puppet Hashemite monarchs - Abdullah
and his brother Zeid - be installed in 'Upper' and 'Lower' Mesopotamia.
However, Wilson did agree to hold a plebiscite to determine Arab opinion
- provided that his officers guarantee the result. He instructed them to
conduct the poll 'when opinion is favourable', to ensure that the 'right'
answers emerged from the most reliable sheikhs. This splendid effort to
ascertain the popular will yielded the unsurprising conclusion that the
people were keen to reject a Hejazi ruler in favour of the British, a result
that delighted Curzon and persuaded him that there was much to be said
for firm rule in Mesopotamia. A tight administration, along the proven
Indian lines, was introduced and strengthened: Indian civil servants worked
under senior British officials, with the very titles used by the bureaucracy in
New Delhi - political officer, revenue officer, judicial officer, civil com-
missioner - now introduced to Iraq. That was not all. The Iraqi people
suddenly found themselves subject to laws based on the Indian legal code
and obliged to handle the Indian currency based on the rupee.
Civil commissioner Wilson had as his assistant the celebrated Gertrude
Bell, a well-known writer about Arab countries. She too had been prepared
to rule out Arab self-determination, commenting that 'the people of Meso-
potamia, having witnessed the successful termination of the war, had taken
it for granted that the country would remain under British control and were
The Western Impact 167
in Syria had been totally undennined. The French had achieved a spurious
justification for their intended occupation of the whole of Syria, and the
British had received a sanction in so-called international law for their
occupation of Iraq. Few observers saw any difference in practice between
the assigned mandates and the the traditional colonial occupation of subject
peoples.
Installing a King
Feisal was now in an impossible position. He had long declared his wish to
rule in Syria but the French, having contrived their League sanction, were
making it clear that they intended to establish direct control over the whole
of the country. He had the option of resisting the French by force, and in fact
the young Arab officers under Feisal's command were soon launching
attacks on the French positions near the Lebanese border. However, the
French were in no mood to tolerate military opposition to the policies
thrashed out with the British over several years. On 14 July 1920 General
Gourand, the French commander in Beirut, issued an ultimatum to Feisal
to accept the mandate and the French occupation of Aleppo and other
major Syrian towns. Feisal, with no stomach for a military confrontation
with a European power, persuaded the General Congress to accept the
French demand; but even this acquiescence was not enough to prevent a
French attack. On 25 July French forces, including Senegalese and North
African troops from other French-controlled states, marched into Damas-
cus. The Syrian forces, backed by popular resistance, could do little against
modem guns, tanks and planes; and the French occupation was soon secure.
Feisal was then expelled from Syria and arrived in London at the end of
the year; the British were soon concocting a plan that could tum his defeat
to their advantage.
There had been some British debate about what to do with Iraq. There
was a broad consensus, fuelled by characteristic European condescension,
that the Iraqis were not fit to govern themselves; nor, it was assumed, would
they be able to do so in the foreseeable future. Some Arabists (Lawrence,
Bell, etc.) were prepared to support a measure of Arab independence but
this would be subject to British advice: any Arab rulers supported by the
British would remain puppets. The India Office, well accustomed to run-
ning a colonial administration, had no doubt that Iraq and the Arab regions
in the Gulf should be tightly controlled by British officials; most conven-
iently as appendages of the British-controlled Indian state. The policy,
implemented with little regard to local conditions, was destined to generate
rebellion.
The Western Impact 169
Winston Churchill, now Secretary of State for the Colonies, decided to
call a conference to resolve the Iraq question and other related matters.
Churchill had already learned, via Lawrence, of Feisal's views; and it was
already clear that Feisal would be amenable to British plans for the Middle
East. It seemed that he was prepared to abandon any claims to Syria and to
renounce also his father's claims to Palestine. Lawrence had commented
to Churchill's private secretary in mid-January 1921 that 'all questions of
pledges & promises, fulfilled or broken, are set aside': there was to be a
clean slate. It was clear that decisive action had to be taken to impose order
on the post-war Middle East. For example, Hussein was now in an escalat-
ing conflict with the emir of Riyadh, both British client rulers; and there
was the question of what to do with Feisal. In May 1920 a group of
Members of Parliament wrote to the Daily Express proposing a single
ministry for the direction of Middle Eastern affairs. Churchill's response to
the evident disorder was to call together 'practically all the experts and
authorities in the Middle East' - which, in the terms of the day, meant some
three dozen Englishmen, Gertrude Bell and two Arabs (both aides to Hussein).
This redoubtable collage, dubbed by Churchill the 'Forty Thieves', met in
Cairo in March 1921 to settle the Middle East problems in the interests
of Britain; care would be taken not to tread on French toes but little heed
would be given to the aspirations of the ·Arabs. Churchill went so far as to
say that the French attack on Syria 'conducted very largely by black African
troops' had been 'extremely painful to British opinion' but 'we have these
strong ties with the French and they have to prevail, and we were not able
to do anything to help the Arabs in the matter .. .'.
On 12 March 1921 the Cairo Conference was formally begun at the
Semiramis Hotel. Over the following period some forty or fifty sessions
were held, between which Colonial Secretary Churchill escaped to do some
sketching, ensconced before the Pyramids in close company with an ar-
moured car. The results of the conference were to a large extent entirely
predictable: the broad framework of European colonialism was to be pre-
served while at the same time both strengthened and rendered more eco-
nomically manageable. The French, as expected, were to keep Syria and
Lebanon, with the British retaining the mandate over Palestine with the
declared aim of reconciling indigenous Arab and immigrant Jewish de-
mands (an impossible task). For the first time, Mesopotamia was formally
renamed Iraq and given to Feisal - as compensation for his loss of Syria -
under British tutelage. What had been dubbed the 'vacant lot' between
Palestine, Syria and Iraq, now named Transjordan (or Trans-Jordan, later
Jordan) was generously donated to Feisal's brother Abdullah. Abdul Aziz
ibn Saud was left without interference in Nejd, though Sir Percy Cox
170 The History of Iraq
proposed that his British-supplied allowance might be raised to the same
level as Hussein's to mollify him for the British machinations with the
Hashemite rulers. Ibn Saud was contemptuous of the British plans, at the
same time being content to accept his pension: 'We have arrived at a state
where feet have assumed the position of heads', with the Sharif s sons no
more than 'silly little fools aping English wisdom'; at the same time he
observed that 'They have surrounded me with enemies ... the grey-haired
one in Mecca ... his son Abdullah in Transjordania, his other son Feisal
in al Iraq'.50
There were disagreements at the conference on whether the Kurdish area
in north-west Iraq should be absorbed into Hussein's new state, but it was
decided that the Kurds should continue as a separate entity under British
jurisdiction. Not much, it was thought, could be done to aid other groups
in the area, such as the Assyrian (or Nestorian) Christians driven from
their homes by the Turks. Churchill tried also to reduce the economic
burden on the British 'policing' of Iraq by shifting the military effort to an
airforce-based strategy: Arabs and Kurds would be bombed and strafed by
the Royal Air Force (RAF) if they did not behave themselves. It was also
thought helpful to invite Abdullah, not yet planted in Transjordan, to assist
in securing peace in the area. There was concern that Britain would not
be able to hold on to Transjordan without more troops being sent into the
area, and it would be difficult to cope with such an extra burden. Moreover,
there was fresh British alarm at the news that Abdullah, with thirty officers
and two hundred Bedouin, was on his way to attack Damascus, not at all
the sort of thing envisaged by the Cairo Conference. Few observers be-
lieved Abdullah's claim that he had arrived in Amman 'for a change of air
in order to regain his health after an attack of jaundice' .51 Churchill solved
the problem by buying off Abdullah: he was offered Transjordan if he
agreed to fall in line with British plans. He would run the area, initially for
a six-month trial period, under the control of a British political chief officer
and with a useful British financial subsidy. He would also agree to entertain
British air bases from which sorties could be launched to punish recalcitrant
tribes. The overall plan in Transjordan seemed to be working well, enough
to induce Churchill to write to Lord Curzon: 'Abdullah turned around
completely under our treatment of the Arab problem. I hope he won't get
his throat cut by his own followers. He is a most polished & agreeable
person.' The principal remaining task was to implement the agreed time-
table for the installing of Feisal in Iraq, if possible in circumstances that
suggested popular approval of the event.
The plan was for Feisal, amenable as always, to travel to Mecca and then
to despatch telegrams to leading (carefully selected) individuals in Iraq,
The Western Impact 171
declaring that he had been urged by his friends to come to Iraq and that
after discussions he had resolved to place himself at the disposal of the Iraqi
people (Lawrence to Feisal: 'Things have gone exactly as hoped. Please
start for Mecca at once by quickest possible route ... Say only you are
going to see your father, and on no account put anything in press'). In such
a fashion did colonial Britain manipulate its clients. The schemes did not
however always run smoothly. It was soon learned that Sayyid Talib, a
political notable in Basra, had agreed with Naqib, an elderly political leader
in Baghdad, the terms for a Naqib candidacy for control of Iraq. Now there
were signs that the carefully contrived candidacy of Feisal was to be
strongly opposed. Ibn Saud had been bought off with cash but there were
other problems facing the British scheme: not least that Sayyid Talib had
adopted the alarming slogan, 'Iraq for the Iraqis!'52 It was found moreover
that Talib was receiving 'a magnificent reception everywhere' .53
The British response to the threat posed by Talib's popularity was to
invite him to tea at the residence of Sir Percy Cox in Baghdad. As he was
leaving the Residency - Cox himself had not deigned to attend the tea party
- Talib was arrested on Cox's instructions, and later deported to Ceylon.
The day after the arrest Sir Percy Cox issued a communique declaring that
the action was necessary in order to preserve law and order. It was then
discovered that the arrest of Talib had not materially improved the popular-
ity of Feisal, though the British action had succeeded in defusing the
nationalist threat. There was persistent support for Iraqi control of Iraq,
and also suggestions for Iraq to become a republic, for the re-establishment
of rule by the Turks (who were at least Muslim), and for the continued
administration of Sir Percy Cox. Feisal sought advice in London and
then travelled at British expense to Basra, having learned while aboard ship
that Naqib's Council of Ministers in Baghdad had invited him to be a guest
of the nation. Britain pretended indifference, at the same time urging Feisal
to campaign so that the gloss of public acceptability could be maintained.
The Council unanimously adopted a resolution declaring Feisal the mon-
arch of Iraq, and on 18 August 1921 the Ministry of the Interior announced
Feisal's overwhelming victory in the contrived plebiscite. His coronation
was held a short time later.
The Ottoman serai, the fortress of government buildings dating to the
time of Midhat Pasha, was chosen for the royal event. The temperature was
high and the Tigris waters had fallen, allowing islets to surface briefly. The
purpose behind the pageant was to install a pliant Hashemite king, one
suitably sensitive to the proper interests of colonial Britain; but 'The king-
dom of Iraq, seen against a scale going back to Ur and Sumer, Babylon and
Assyria, would be as brief-lived as one of these summer islands. The
172 The History of Iraq
kingdom's summer was the forty years of British supremacy in the Middle
East'.54 There were some fifteen hundred spectators: including Sir Percy
Cox, his oriental secretary Gertrude Bell, Arab officials, Ottoman deserters,
bankers and traders, the various (Muslim, Christian and Jewish) clergies,
sheikhs, Kurds and others. And on the dais stood Feisal, 'the sensitive if
none too clever Feisal whom Colonel Lawrence had selected as the most
suitable leader for a British-promoted side show' .55 Then an Iraqi shouted a
declaration from Sir Percy Cox to the effect that some 96 per cent of the
Iraqi people had voted in the plebiscite to chose Feisal as their king. A new
flag was run up and the military band, lacking an Iraqi anthem, played 'God
Save the King'. On 26 August Gertrude Bell wrote home: 'We have had
a terrific week but we've got our King crowned.'
The frontiers that came to define the Middle East of the twentieth century
were drawn up by Britain and France with the (overt or covert) agreement
of some other states. * The cynical definition of such territorial boundaries
had inevitable consequences for ethnic rivalries, for spheres of sovereignty
and for the areas of Western influence that have so far persisted for nearly
eighty years. The creation of Israel in 1948 resulted in more boundary-
drawing by Western powers, yet another source of tension in a region long
troubled by outside interference.
The territorial definition of the Middle Eastern states has been a prime
source of conflict in the modern world. In particular, for our immediate
purposes, the frontiers of Kuwait and the associated status of Kuwait as an
independent country have encouraged dispute - not only between Iraq and
Kuwait, but also between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
The original settlement of Kuwait was founded around 1710 when a
group of Arabian Bedouins were driven by drought to find new pastures.
Among these wandering Arabs were the ancestors of the Al Sabah, the
current ruling family of Kuwait, and of the Al Khalifah, the ruling family
of Bahrain. The Persians occupied Basra from 1775 to 1779 and Kuwait
prospered throughout this period. Basra was then recovered by the Turks,
and Samuel Manesty of the East India Company moved his staff and factory
to Kuwait in April 1793 to escape the attention of the Ottomans (this event
has been adduced as evidence that Kuwait was then independent of Turkish
*In 1992 the UN Security Council, under direction from the United States and its Western
allies. redrew the Iraq/Kuwait frontiers in violation of UN resolutions.
The Western Impact 173
authority). Despite this independence there is still debate as to the extent
to which the Ottomans could impose their wishes in Kuwait. Turkish forces
from Baghdad marched through Kuwait in 1798 to attack the Wahabists in
Arabia, and there were no complaints from the Kuwaiti rulers. Similarly in
1871 the Kuwaiti Sheikh Abdullah II gave assistance to another Turkish
expedition marching through Kuwait to attack the Wahabist forces in Hasa.
When Abdullah died in 1892 the new Kuwaiti emir, Sheikh Mohammad,
was advised by Yusuf bin Abdullah al Ibrahim, an Iraqi in the pay of the
Turks. It seems clear that Yusuf was conspiring to oust the Sabahs and have
himself installed as Turkish governor in Kuwait; at this time the province of
Kuwait was in a state of lawless confusion. However, Sheikh Mohammad's
younger half-brother, Mubarak, spoke out against the slide into anarchy,
whereupon Mubarak was expelled into the desert to restore order if he
could, and Yusuf became Chief Wazir of the state. Mubarak resolved to
seize power, and one night in May 1896, with a small band of followers, he
rode into Kuwait town, shot Mohammad at point blank range and then
began a search for Yusuf. The Wazir was not to be found, having escaped
to Iraq the previous evening. One of Mubarak's first moves on taking
power was to declare Kuwait independent of Turkish control; he even went
so far as to impose a levy of five per cent on all imports, including those
from Turkish portS. 56 It seemed clear that the Sabahs 'were able to remain
virtually independent in return for a nominal acceptance of Turkish
suzerainty' .57 To protect this independence Mubarak sought the support
of the British who, after some hesitation, showed themselves willing to
enter into an agreement. In 1899 Germany had obtained a concession to
build a railway from Constantinople to Baghdad, and since it was obvious
that Kuwait would be a natural terminal for such a railway this was quite
enough to alarm the British. Mubarak was offered British protection in
return for the commitment that he would enter into no territorial deals
with any other government. The clear British involvement in an in perpetu-
ity agreement would have various consequences throughout the twentieth
century.
In December 1901 the Turkish sloop ZuhaJ arrived off Kuwait with an
ultimatum for Sheikh Mubarak; confident of British support he rejected it
and the ZuhaJ withdrew without further action. Then three British cruisers
arrived and landed troops to forestall an anticipated Turkish attack from
Basra; and in a subsequent action the British sloop Lapwing managed to
intercept a Turkish force at sea and capture one hundred and fifty armed
men. Neither the Turks nor disaffected Kuwaitis made any further efforts to
overthrow Mubarak. Subsequent agreements were enacted to strengthen
further the Kuwaiti-British links: in 1904 Mubarak agreed not to allow any
174 The History of Iraq
post offices other than ones appointed by India to operate in Kuwait; in July
1911 he agreed that sponge and pearl concessions would be granted only
with British consent; and in October 1913 he made the same pledge on the
granting of oil concessions. It now appeared that Kuwait was secure from
intervention from Iraq but it was not long before the small state had to
confront interference from another quarter.
In November 1915 the Ajman rebelled against ibn Saud and in the
subsequent conflict the Saudi forces were besieged at Hufuf, whereupon
Mubarak sent a Kuwaiti force to offer active assistance. The Kuwaitis,
under Mubarak's second son Salim and his grandson Ahmad al Jabir,
managed to raise the siege and rout the Ajman forces. Then the surviving
Ajman appealed to Sheikh Salim for sanctuary in Kuwait to escape the
wrath of ibn Saud. Salim agreed and was immediately accused by ibn Saud
of acting against Saudi interests, a new source of tension that might have
been well handled by Mubarak - but Mubarak had died and the news
reached Salim as he was marching home. Jabir, Mubarak's eldest son, ruled
for a year, during which time he ejected the Ajman from Kuwait and tried
to restore the earlier satisfactory relationship with ibn Saud. At the same
time further problems, scarcely anticipated, were developing with the
British.
In 1918 Britain had imposed a naval blockade on Kuwait to block
supplies reaching the Turks via the desert route; and in July Sheikh Salim,
Jabir's successor, was told that Kuwait would only be protected if it re-
frained from any actions prejudicial to British interests. Salim was now
expecting ibn Saud to urge the British to revise their view of Kuwait's
frontiers to the Saudi advantage. Salim then decided to build a fort near
Jabal Manifah to signal the southern limits of his territory, whereupon
ibn Saud immediately declared that the proposed site was on his land and
ordered a settlement to be built at Jariya Ilya, in an area claimed by Salim.
The Kuwaiti ruler then made a show of force near Jariya Ilya, an initiative
that invited a dawn attack by ibn Saud's fanatical Ikhwan warriors: the
Kuwaitis were almost entirely wiped out and many of their camels were
stolen. Salim ordered the building of a defensive wall around Kuwait
town, and both he and ibn Saud tried to justify their military postures to
the British government. Britain confirmed that it recognised the Kuwaiti
frontiers laid down in the 1913 AnglerTurkish agreement, a treaty that
favoured Kuwait against the claims of ibn Saud. In late 1920 there was
further conflict between Sheikh Salim and the Ikhwan, led by Feisal al-
Duwish. On 10 October 1920 Feisallaunched an attack on Jahra, which
Salim had to protect if Kuwait town was not to be the next to be attacked.
The gunfire could be heard in Kuwait, raising much anxiety, whereupon all
The Western Impact 175
the remaining able-bodied men rallied to defend the wall. On 11 October
several hundred men were sent by sea and by land to relieve Jahra, but
already the Ikhwan forces had been decimated: at a cost of two hundred
Kuwaiti men, there were already eight hundred enemy dead on the field,
with another five hundred Ikhwan later to die through their wounds. Feisal
al-Duwish then negotiated peace proposals, but no longer from a position
of strength. Shortly afterwards his forces moved out of Jahra, carrying their
spoils and burying men as they died on the march home. In Jahra itself
many corpses were disposed of in nearby wells.
The British had not intervened in the battle but had indicated that
they could not stand by and watch the destruction of Kuwait town. The RAF
had dropped copies of a communique over the Ikhwan camp and British
warships had arrived off the coast. In one view the Ikhwan attack on
Kuwait had not been ordered by ibn Saud, who was still massively sub-
sidised by Britain, and it seems that British officials accepted his denials of
responsibility. The ubiquitous Sir Percy Cox declared that the Subaihiyah
wells, now the site of an Ikhwan camp, should become an effective 'no
man's land' between the two sides, and an uneasy truce ensued. On
27 February 1921 Salim died, to be succeeded by Sheikh Ahmad al Jabir.
Ibn Saud at once made placatory noises, suggesting that there was no need
for a formal boundary between the two states. This declaration did not
satisfy Sir Percy Cox and in 1922 at the Uqair Conference he made efforts
to resolve the frontier problem. This conference 'was of paramount im-
portance to Kuwait and, indeed, to the whole of the Arabian peninsula' .58
Kuwait and Arabia had an obvious interest in the outcome, as did Feisal
in Iraq, now keen to establish his own boundaries and so gain formal
recognition by the League of Nations (it was becoming increasingly clear
that the Cairo conference had not finished the job). The Iraqi delegate Sabih
Beg indicated a region that ran close to the Saudi capital Riyadh, thus taking
in the northern half of Arabia; and he also proposed a boundary on the Red
Sea and the Gulf region as far as Qatif ('As God is my witness, this and
only this is the true boundary and cannot be disputed'). Ibn Saud countered
with a grandiose claim that took in much of Syria, a large slice of Iraq
and the whole of Kuwait. Sir Percy Cox soon lost patience with all this and
declared to ibn Saud that he would not tolerate 'these impossible arguments
and ridiculous claims'. He, Sir Percy Cox, would determine the frontiers.59
He drew a line on the map, denying part of ibn Saud's claim and giving
Sabih Beg three hundred miles less than he had demanded. Cox had repri-
manded ibn Saud, the Sultan of Nejd and the future King of Saudi Arabia,
as though he were a naughty child. A witness to these events, the military
attache Colonel Dickson, later remarked: 'I was astonished to see him being
176 The History of Iraq
reprimanded like a naughty schoolboy ... Ibn Saud almost broke down and
pathetically remarked that Sir Percy was his father and mother who made
him and raised him from nothing to the position he held, and that he would
surrender half his kingdom, nay the whole, if Sir Percy ordered.' But
Sir Percy was keen to placate the Saudi ruler, as Dickson observed: 'To
placate Ibn Saud, Sir Percy deprived Kuwait of nearly two-thirds of her
territory and gave it to Nejd.' Years later, Sheikh Ahmad commented to
Dickson that Britain had sacrificed a small nation to a greater power, and
that this had shaken his faith in Britain. H. St. J. B. Philby subsequently
wrote in a letter to the Dicksons, with regard to the territorial relationship
between Kuwait and Arabia:
the British government were contending 'that Kuwait was a small and
expendable state which could be sacrificed without too much concern if the
power struggles of the period demanded it'61 (my italics).
The border issue was one matter that came to influence Arab attitudes to
British interests in the area. Another was the evolving policy of the British
government on the question of maintaining order among the subject peoples
of the colonial lands.
Britain had occupied most of Iraq - even Mosul, formerly claimed by the
French. 62 But the British dominance in the area was not sufficient to keep
the peace; in 1920, after many signs that a disturbance was imminent, the
tribes rose in revolt. The indigenous people, many of them nomadic Bedouin,
were not keen to replace rule from Istanbul with rule from London. Many
of the officers in Feisal's army had been Iraqis who had witnessed the
French attack on Damascus and thereby become sensitised to the claims of
Arab nationalism. Now they had returned to Iraq, claiming that Britain had
betrayed its pledges on Arab independence and spreading dissent in Bagh-
dad and elsewhere. The British efforts to maintain tight administrative
control throughout the country further exacerbated the problems: the tribes
had managed to retain a large measure of independence over the centuries,
even under the Ottomans, and they were not keen to lose it now.
Britain had apparently been willing to tolerate a Feisal administration in
Damascus but now the British government, despite their plans to plant
Feisal in Iraq as a puppet, seemed intent on maintaining tight British control
throughout the country. It did not help that the British forces were thinly
spread, and expected to move speedily from one possible trouble spot to
another over an area of 170,000 square miles. The British were aware of
the possibility that returning Iraqi officers might stir up trouble and man-
aged to exclude some erstwhile Hejaz officers from Iraq, but many slipped
through the net and spread the word about Damascus proclamations
demanding Mesopotamian independence. Some of the Iraqi cities saw
incidents of violence, and the unrest spread through the tribes as far as
Kurdistan. Three British officers were murdered in Kurdistan in the sum-
mer of 1919 and the official sent out to take their place was killed a short
time later. Soon further killings were being reported - six British officers
were killed in one ten-day period - and further skirmishes encouraged the
idea that stem measures would have to be taken. Colonel Gerald Leachman,
celebrated for his travels and military feats in the eastern deserts, managed
178 The History of Iraq
to rescue a group of officers attacked by tribesmen, but two of his own
officials were carried off and later murdered. Leachman declared that the
only way to deal with the tribes was 'wholesale slaughter' .63
A full Arab revolt began in June 1920; Gertrude Bell, now shaken out
of her complacency, remarked that she was living through a nationalist
reign of terror. Military posts were overrun by the Arabs, British soldiers
were killed, and lines of communication were severed. In the holy city of
Karbala ajihad was proclaimed against the British. Leachman was shot in
the back by his Arab host, an event that stimulated much talk of 'Arab
treachery' and encouraged further efforts to resist British rule. By mid-
August 1920 the rebels felt strong enough to announce a provisional Arab
government. Increasingly, questions were being asked - many in The Times
- about the wisdom of British government policy: 'How much longer are
valuable lives to be sacrificed in the vain endeavour to impose upon the
Arab population an elaborate and expensive administration which they
never asked for and do not want?,64 The India government sent fresh troops
to restore order; the towns were quickly secured but the problems in the
rural areas proved more intractable. Over a period of months Britain
had lost 450 dead and some 1500 further casualties. The British garrisons
had often been taken by surprise at the ferocity of the Arab attacks. Thus
one of the early engagements occurred at Dair al-Zor on the north-western
frontier, when Jamal al-Midafi led a band of three hundred Arabs against
British frontier posts. In a typical engagement that 'set the pattern of
the emergent rebellion'65 the defenders were entirely wiped out; over a
period of weeks the isolated and undermanned Anglo-Indian garrisons
were overwhelmed.
The rebellion spread from one region to another. Soon the entire area
of the lower Euphrates was in revolt, with fresh uprisings breaking out
around Baghdad. On 13 August 1920 Diltawa fell to the Arabs (or was
liberated by them), to be followed by the capture of Baquba and Shahraban.
Nationalist guerrillas began infiltrating the Kirkuk region and by mid-
August the whole country, with the exception of the Tigris Valley in the
south and the heavily controlled urban centres, was in revolt. By February
1921 the revolt had been crushed; against the 2000 or so British casualties
between 8000 and 9000 rebels had been killed or wounded. The British
forces had been swelled by 25,000 Indian and 5000 British troops, sup-
ported by the Royal Air Force; and by early 1921 the Arab invaders of Kifri
and Khaniqin were pursued as demoralised outlaws. Punitive expeditions
were launched by land and by air against the tribes: whole villages were
destroyed by British artillery and suspected ringleaders were shot without
trial. By late March the provisional Arab government was no more. The
The Western Impact 179
entire operation had cost the British government around £40 million, more
than three times the total subsidies for the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman
occupation.
Winston Churchill, as Colonial Secretary, was sensitive to the costs of
policing the Empire; and was in consequence keen to exploit the potential
of modern technology. This strategy had particular relevance to operations
in Iraq. On 19 February 1920, before the start of the Arab uprising, Church-
ill (then Secretary of State for War and Air) wrote to Sir Hugh Trenchard,
the pioneer of air warfare. Would it be possible for Trenchard to take
control of Iraq? This would entail 'the provision of some kind of asphyxi-
ating bombs calculated to cause disablement of some kind but not death
... for use in preliminary operations against turbulent tribes'.66 Churchill
was in no doubt that gas could be profitably employed against the Kurds
and Iraqis (as well as against other peoples of the Empire): 'I do not
understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. I am strongly in favour
of using poison gas against uncivilised tribes.' Henry Wilson shared Church-
ill's enthusiasm for gas as an instrument of colonial control but the British
cabinet was reluctant to sanction the use of a weapon that had caused
such misery and revulsion in the First World War. Churchill himself was
keen to argue that gas, fired from ground-based guns or dropped from
aircraft, would cause only 'discomfort or illness but not death' to dis-
sident tribespeople; but his optimistic view of the effects of gas were
mistaken. It was likely that the suggested gas would permanently damage
eyesight and would 'kill children and sickly persons, more especially as the
people against whom we intend to use it have no medical knowledge with
which to supply antidotes'. Churchill remained unimpressed by such con-
siderations, arguing that the use of gas, a 'scientific expedient', should
not be prevented 'by the prejudices of those who do not think clearly'. In
the event, gas was used against the Iraqi rebels in 1920 with 'excellent
moral effect' ,67 though gas shells were not dropped from aircraft because
of practical difficulties.
Squadrons of the Royal Air Force had already been active in policing
Iraq and Kurdistan before the start of the Arab rebellion in 1920. Thus
Lieutenant-General Aylmer Haldane had praised the 'admirable work of
... the RAF under extremely arduous conditions'68 after British aircraft
had bombed the Kurds in the winter of 1919/20 and in the spring of 1920.
RAF squadrons were also used to protect the British line of communica-
tion between Baghdad and Mosul, and to bomb and strafe the Sufran tribe
in the Diwaniyah area. Today in 1993 there are still Iraqis and Kurds who
remember being bombed and machine-gunned by the RAF in the 1920s.69 A
Kurd from the Korak mountains of Kurdistan commented, seventy years
180 The History of Iraq
after the event: 'They were bombing here in the Kaniya Khoran .
Sometimes they raided three times a day.' Wing Commander Lewis, then of
30 Squadron (RAF), Iraq, recalls how quite often 'one would get a signal
that a certain Kurdish village had to be bombed ... ', the RAF pilots being
ordered to machine-gun any Kurds who looked hostile. In the same vein,
Squadron-Leader Kendal of 30 Squadron recalls that if the tribespeople
'were doing something they ought not to be doing then you shot them'.
Similarly, Wing-Commander Gale, also of 30 Squadron:
raiders who were challenging the power of ibn Saud in Arabia. Violet
Dickson, the widow of Colonel H. R. P. Dickson records how Britain
insisted that Kuwait must not help the rebels: ' ... Harold as Political Agent
was concerned at the possibility that they would cross into Kuwait to feed
their flocks and herds - as indeed they did during 1929, and again in
January 1930 ... Harold was told to warn the rebels that unless they
withdrew they would be bombed by the RAF from Iraq.'74 In July 1931 the
RAF flew demonstrations over Euphrates towns to intimidate the sup-
porters of an Iraqi general strike, and in 1931/32 British aircraft bombed
Sheikh Ahmad's Kurdish rebels in Barzan. The continued presence of the
Royal Air Force in the region, even after Iraq had secured its nominal
independence, was assumed to be a powerful deterrent to what Winston
Churchill was pleased to call 'uncivilised tribes'.
TOWARDS INDEPENDENCE
Most Westerners who bothered to contemplate the matter viewed the pros-
pect of Iraqi independence with a mixture of alarm and disdain. Was it
not obvious 'that the "wogs" would never succeed in managing their own
affairs'?75 Many would have agreed with Wing-Commander Gale (30 Squad-
ron, Iraq) when he talked about 'the gutter rats who were the Arabs - and
they were gutter rats' .76 And even Westerners disinclined to use such
invective have been ready enough to assume 'that the Arabs do not know
what is best for themselves and that only the West can take efficient
measures to deal with a critical situation ... it illustrates the unconscious
Western conviction that the peoples of the Middle East are incompetent
to handle their own affairs .. .'.77 The British government, doubtless to a
degree sharing such traditional colonial attitudes was, however, under grow-
ing economic pressure and mounting domestic criticism. What benefits
was Britain deriving from the occupation of Iraq? Could not British in-
fluence in the region be preserved in a less costly and less overt way? It was
time to take stock of government policy on Iraq and to maintain Western
control in other ways.
A constitutional assembly was convened in 1924, and in October a
twenty-year treaty of alliance was signed by Britain and Iraq. This Anglo-
Iraqi treaty was designed to safeguard British rights in Iraq, including
military bases. In March 1925 the first Iraqi parliamentary elections were
held, under British supervision, and Iraqi ministers became responsible for
a two-chamber parliament. Already, however, there were signs that the tide
was starting to move against the traditional colonial presence: it was only
184 The History of Iraq
under heavy British pressure that the Iraqi parliament was able to stave off
radical demands for complete independence. By the late 1920s Britain, now
growing weary of the colonial commitment, was ready to abandon the
mandate, assuming that British interests in the region could be protected.
But Arab nationalists were growing increasingly wary of the possibility of
British imperialism being maintained in other ways. In 1930 a further
Anglo-Iraqi treaty was concluded, one which this time was expected to last
for twenty-five years. The two countries agreed to consult with each other
to harmonise their foreign policies; and again Britain would be allowed to
retain air bases on Iraqi soil while providing a military mission to help
train the newly-constituted Iraqi army. Key British interests were preserved
but the 1930 treaty also specified certain restrictions on British power in
the region. In part the agreement was designed to lead to Iraqi independence
in 1932 and membership of the League of Nations in the same year. At
the same time the British mandate, a cover for covert colonialism, was
ended and Iraq joined the League in October under British sponsorship, a
ploy to maintain continuing influence over the rapidly evolving Iraqi ad-
ministration. In 1932 there were already signs that Iraq was aspiring to the
leadership of the Middle East, a putative ambition that was not unwelcome
to the British Foreign Office. If British influence in Iraq could be main-
tained then a strong Iraq would help to sustain the British presence in the
area. The Saadabad Pact - which in 1932 brought together Iran, Turkey and
Iraq - helped to reinforce Britain's presence in the Middle East.
Many of the old mandate responsibilities had now been jettisoned,
mainly because Britain was increasingly alarmed at the financial burden
(which by 1930 had been reduced to less than £500,000 per annum).78 The
1930 treaty safeguarded British oil interests, partly by the continuing sov-
ereign rights at two military bases (Habbaniyya, fifty miles from Baghdad;
and Shaiba, near Basra) and partly by the entitlement to use Iraqi facilities
in time of war. A constitution had been drawn up in 1924 to protect the
(British-supported) monarch, but various debilitating conventions were
written into this political framework. The upper chamber was appointed and
dismissed by the king, with elections to a lower chamber strictly controlled
by the government. Until constitutional amendments were introduced in
1943 the king could appoint the cabinet but not dismiss it, a provision that
encouraged political intrigue and frequent resorts to violence.
Feisal lived to see Iraqi independence and membership of the League,
but died the year after, in 1933. His son, Ghazi I, became king and lasted
until the onset ofthe Second World War; Ghazi supposedly had nationalist
inclinations but lacked authority and between the years 1936 and 1941 there
were seven political coups. Rule was autocratic: no independent political
The Western Impact 185
the loyalist army and police commanders' Y It seems that the British were
reluctant to put forces into the city because, in the words of one British
intelligence officer, this would have been 'lowering to the dignity of our
ally, the Regent, if he were seen to be supported on arrival by British
bayonets'.84 Thus, for appearances sake, the Baghdad Jews were forced to
suffer a pogrom, the climax of the period of severe persecution under
Rashid. The British triumph 'was somewhat marred .. .' .85
The pro-Nazi regime in Baghdad was at an end. The reinstated regent
appointed Nuri aI-Said as prime minister, and Iraq had fallen yet again
under British influence. But the British hegemony in the region, preserved
despite the burdens and the tribulations ofthe Second World War, was soon
to be shaken: fresh waves of Arab nationalism were about to break.
6 From Monarchy to
Republic
THE GROWTH OF NATIONALISM
190
From Monarchy to Republic 191
though Britain had every intention of maintaining its control in less costly
ways, and he saw recognition of Iraq by the League of Nations; a dubious
benefit in circumstances where the League (like today's United Nations)
was largely a tool of the great powers. Britain had protected most of its
regional interests by negotiating the 1930 Anglo-Iraqi treaty, an agreement
supported by some Iraqi nationalists but denounced by pan-Arabists as yet
another colonial ploy. Moreover, the French and British mandates over
Syria and Palestine were still intact, so stimulating the growth of nationalist
movements that were to have a powerful regional impact. In Iraq itself the
securing of independence had generated a new complex of political forces:
the army, still advised by the British, was increasingly assuming a political
role; socialists, communists and other radicals were urging a transition to
genuine independence; and pan-Arabist idealism was developing with a
fresh vigour. Syrian and Palestinian exiles in Iraq - including Haj Amin
al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem exiled by the British for his nation-
alist agitations, and the Syrian nationalists Shukri al-Quwatli and Jamil
Mardam - encouraged expectations of a radical transfonnation of the re-
gion. The pro-Gennan Rashid Ali, who had confronted the British in
1941, was later deemed responsible for the 'first revolution for Arab libera-
tion', though it was not made clear how he would have subsequently
resisted the blandishments of his Nazi paymasters. 2 In Damascus a commit-
tee was set up to support Iraqi nationalists and to further the cause of the
pan-Arabist movement. This body, set up by Michel Aflaq and Salah aI-Din
aI-Bitar, is now seen as the direct precursor to the Ba'ath Party, the pan-
Arabist faction that was later to acquire power in both Syria and Iraq (and
number Saddam Hussein among its most powerful members).
Feisal had also stimulated pan-Arabist awareness by appointing leading
ideologues, such as the Syrian Satia al-Husri, to the fledgling Iraqi civil
service. Husri arrived in Iraq in 1921, acted as a general adviser, became
one of the first Iraqi directors general of education, and later served as dean
of the Law College which educated many of Iraq's first generation of
modern politicians. The British deported Husri in 1941 as part of a general
purge following the Rashid confrontation. In this fashion Iraq demonstrated
its capacity to stimulate pan-Arabist sentiment, despite what may have
been seen as a 'communal mix' that 'did not lend itself to such a project'.3
Husri himself, influenced by traditional Gennan philosophy, believed that
nations were organic entities having an objective significance independent
of people's subjective feelings. The nation was the primary existential
focus, logically prior to statehood, geography and even religious identity:
Islam was not incompatible with Arabism, but there was an Arab identity
long before the birth of the Prophet. A principal task for Husri was to
192 The History of Iraq
The years of the Feisal monarchy saw great turbulence in Iraq, but the post-
Feisal monarchy witnessed even more violence and terror. The full period
of the British-imposed monarchy (1932-58) saw coups, assassinations and
public executions; dissident groups were persecuted and there were anti-
Jewish pogroms; uprising followed uprising until a group of 'Free Officers'
overthrew the monarchy. Some of the key events through this period are
shown in Table 6.1.
In the 1920s the British imported into Iraq 'Western-devised political
forms ... into a tribal society ethnically and theologically fragmented with
an urban crust of sophisticated largely Turkish educated leaders'.6 In 1924
the Organic Law constitution, allowing the king considerable political
powers, was introduced as a means of protecting both the newly-planted
monarchy and the enduring British presence. Two political parties (the Ahd
al-Iraqi and the Hara al-Istiqlal), created in Ottoman times to protect Arab
rights from erosion by the Turks, were now augmented by the arrival of
three other parties: the Watani (National) Party, the Shaab (People's) Party
and the Taqqadum (Progressive) Party. After the conclusion of the 1930
Anglo-Iraqi Treaty the parties regrouped, with Nuri al-Said reforming the
Ahd and members of the Shaab and Watani coming together to form the
anti-government Ikha al-Watani (National Brotherhood) Party, which ex-
pressed hostility to the treaty, declaring it a betrayal of Iraqi independence.
Once Iraq had gained its nominal independence in 1932 these parties, their
principal objective seemingly accomplished, withered away. The Iraqi Com-
munist Party (ICP), despite many setbacks, persisted but other parties
emerged only after the Second World War.
*Just as Britain trained officers of the Iraq Republican Guard and supplied military equip-
ment through the 1980s.
194 The History of Iraq
Table 6.1 Chronology of key events through the period of the
Iraqi monarchy (1921-1958)
and reigned with Abd al-Ilah, Ghazi's cousin, as regent. Abd al-Ilah was
incompetent, unpopular and staunchly pro-British: Britain could feel that
Iraq was safe in his hands. Many of the early supporters of the monarchy
were Arabs who had chosen a career in Ottoman service and who had
later joined the Arab group known as The Covenant; this body included
Nuri aI-Said, Jamal al-Midafi and the brothers Taha and Yasin al-Hashimi.
Some of the older notables in Iraqi society were slow to appreciate that
the Turkish system had gone for ever, and they were resentful of the young
ex-Ottoman officers who had come to Baghdad with Feisal.
Many of the conservative notables came from Sunni sayyid families, and
the political elite of Feisal' s Iraq came to have a strongly Sunni orientation.
Over the period 1921-36 seventy-one per cent of cabinet posts were occu-
pied by Sunnis and only twenty-four per cent by Shias (this Sunni dom-
inance of the political hierarchy was continued under Saddam). 8 In 1928
less than a third of the elected deputies were Shias, a reflection in part of
the suspicion with which they were regarded: in 1923, for example, they
had organised demonstrations with the aim of toppling the government.
The Shia involvement in government increased through the later years
of the monarchy and between 1947 and 1958 four Shia politicians managed
to become prime minister. Such men were however well prepared to tol-
erate the prevailing hierarchy: they functioned as individuals rather than
as representatives of the Shia population and they never challenged the
Sunni ascendancy. Between 1921 and 1958 eighty per cent of the five
major posts (premier, finance, interior, defence and foreign affairs) were
held by Sunnis; and the Sunni dominance was even greater at the provincial
level (in 1933 thirteen out of fourteen provincial governors, and 43 out
of 47 heads of districts, were Sunni).9
Throughout the period of the monarchy there were constant reshuffles of
existing ministers - so that the fifty-nine cabinets averaged only eight
months each. A basic caucus of 166 men were involved in these reshuffles,
some of the individuals holding many of the available posts over their
political careers. Nuri al-Said himself, to the evident satisfaction of the
British, held some 47 cabinet posts and other names are common: Vmar
Nadhari (21 posts), Tawfiq al-Suwaydi (19), Ali Mumtaz al-Daftari (18)
and Jamil al-Midafi (19).10 It has been argued that the frequent changes in
government were not a sign of political instability; every election was a
mere ritual tightly controlled by the government. II Iraqi politics was more
about personalities than about policies, though there were political differ-
ences about such issues as the relationship of Iraq to Britain, the status
of minorities and the role of education. Before Iraq achieved independence
in 1932 the principal political division focused on the extent to which
196 The History of Iraq
co-operation with Britain was acceptable; after 1932 the British connection
was still an issue but other matters emerged, not least the relationship
between the landowning elites and the mass of the population.
In education Husri had emphasised a language-based Arabism. His suc-
cessor in the 1930s, Mohammad Fadhil al-Jamali, was interested in the
generation of vocational skills but was keen also to use history teaching for
the inculcation of Iraqi patriotism. Sami Shawkat, who controlled the Iraqi
education system in the late 1930s tried to spread the idea that Iraq would
be the architect of the future unity of the Arab world. This was the ambi-
tious ground on which, decades later, Saddam Hussein, however fruitlessly,
would try to build. It was also the foundation that, throughout the Hashemite
years, various ambitious politicians would seek to exploit to personal ad-
vantage. There were many pecuniary fruits to be derived from a successful
political career: bribery was commonplace, as were speculation in land
and partnerships with commercial organisations (in the 1950s the Geylani
family were the Pepsi Cola agents for Iraq). None of these self-interested
developments seemed to change the basic structure of the Iraqi state: the
constitution imposed in 1924 under the watchful eye of the British govern-
ment remained unchanged for much of the Hashemite period.
In fact the first draft of the Iraqi constitution was written by the British
Colonial Office, using the Austrian constitution as a model. Feisal favoured
an alternative version based on the 1876 Ottoman constitution - since the
Turks were necessarily more sympathetic to the protection of Muslim
institutions. Various constitutional drafts shuttled between Baghdad and
London until an amalgam was agreed. The Iraqi constitutional assembly
convened in 1923 passed the electoral law, ratified the 1922 treaty with
Britain and approved the constitution. Nationalists perceived that the treaty
had been designed to favour Britain, and so mounted whatever opposition
they could: the treaty was approved only after intervention by the high
commissioner who threatened reprisals against anyone who voted to defeat
the treaty (when the vote was taken there were many abstentions). The final
constitutional document drew on the 1831 Belgian constitution and in-
corporated significant British and Ottoman adjustments. A constitutional
monarchy had been established but one in which the king was granted
extensive powers: he was allowed to promulgate all laws; to convene and
adjourn the legislature; to appoint parliamentary members; to act as com-
mander-in-chief; and to approve the appointment of the prime minister,
other cabinet members and all other government appointments. If for any
reason parliament was not sitting then the king was allowed to enact laws
through royal decree, though the laws so proclaimed required later parlia-
From Monarchy to Republic 197
mentary approval (scarcely an onerous condition since the king's parlia-
mentary placements could always be relied upon).
In the two-house legislature the king appointed all senators but the
deputies were elected. An effort was made to guarantee civil rights, with all
Iraqis declared equal before the law. Islam became the official state reli-
gion, and Arabic the official language. The Christian and Jewish communi-
ties were permitted to hold their own religious councils; and the official
Muslim legal system was built around both Sunni and Shi'ite courts. The
voting system - which in any case was not directly representative - did not
extend to female suffrage; and it was possible for Sunni notables, Shi'ite
religious leaders and the tribal sheikhs to rig the elections as they saw fit.
Behind the details of the written constitution there lay ample scope for the
preservation of the status quo, an arrangement manifestly to be desired by
Britain. Of the three principal influences on the government 'The authority
of the British civil servants representing London was the strongest' .12 The
other influences were the king, who in any case was a British placement,
and the nationalists, who endlessly sought means of reducing the British
influence. In one view it was only the skill of Feisal that succeeded in
moderating the various extremist elements and avoiding an insurrection.
Britain, having wrested control of Mosul from France, still faced oppo-
sition from Turks unwilling to accept their loss of hegemony in the region.
Kemal Ataturk, now heading a new Turkish government, was unwilling to
relinquish his claims to Mosul; and so Britain referred the matter to the
League of Nations, usefully dominated by the great powers. A commission
of enquiry appointed by the League predictably decided in favour of Brit-
ain, whereupon the issue was brought before the Permanent Court of Inter-
national Justice; this body, set up in part by the British, predictably agreed
with the commission findings. In December 1925 the League Council
awarded Mosul to British-controlled Iraq, with the condition that Britain
would guarantee protection for the Kurds (the indigenous minority in the
region) until 1950. * The dispute encouraged Britain to draw up a new treaty
with Iraq, not least to consolidate the international recognition that Mosul
was no longer within the sphere of Turkish control. The 1930 Anglo-Iraqi
treaty, negotiated under a British Labour government, became the basis for
Iraq's independence and admission to the League of Nations. The main
thrust of the treaty was a further explicit protection for British interests,
enshrined in a set of provisions that were bitterly opposed by the Iraqi
*A principal Turkish claim was that the Kurds were ethnically-related 'mountain Turks', an
ironic claim in view of the modem Turkish persecution of the Kurds.
198 The History of Iraq
The two recognised founders of the Ba'ath movement came from the al-
Maydan area of Damascus, the quarter known for its militant opposition in
the 1920s to the French occupation: Michel Aflaq had a Greek Orthodox
background, and Salah ai-Din ai-Bitar traced his descent to a long line
of Sunni notables. Thus it was a Christian and a Muslim, meeting in Paris
for the first time in 1929, who were to create the political movement
that would come to dominate Syria and Iraq in the modern world.
Aflaq and Bitar together founded the Arab Students Union in Paris, and
set about reading Marx, Nietzsche, Lenin, Gide, Tolstoy and others. There
is some suggestion that Aflaq may have been interested in the philosophic
vitalism proposed by the French thinker Henri Bergson, a doctrine that
has been used to celebrate the creative function of mass action. But he
never acknowledged being influenced by Western writers, even declaring
in one interview that he had not followed Western currents of thought
since the time of the onset of the Second World War. ls When the two men
returned to Damascus after their four-year sojourn in Paris they contributed
regular items for the weekly communist journal al-Taliah but did not
join the Syrian Communist Party: Aflaq denied any such connection but
never disguised his admiration for communist discipline and militancy.
Aflaq and Bitar had resolved to devote their full energies to politics: one
of their first political acts was to create the Syrian Committee to Aid
Iraq during the Rashid Ali episode, a body that was later seen as the
organisational precursor of the Syrian Ba'ath Party.
The Party was officially founded in 1947 by Aflaq, Bitar and lallal Said,
an intellectual with a landowning background. The principal inspiration
behind the Ba'ath philosophy was that of pan-Arabism: the individual Arab
states were regarded as 'regions' of the Arab nation, itself a permanent
entity in history. It was emphasised that it was not Islam, the Word of the
Prophet, that created the peoples of Arabia, North Africa and the Fertile
Crescent, providing them with the Arabic language and Arabic culture;
rather it was the Arab nation that generated Islam and all that flowed from
it. This suggests a secular focus: the central significance of Islam is ac-
knowledged but there were Arabs before there were Muslims - the Arab
states will be liberated when the moral power of the Arab nation is exerted;
Islam will contribute to this world-wide emancipation, but there will also
be other contributing elements. The perceived Arab decadence will be
overcome 'through a purifying and spiritual action, not religious but
moral' .19 The spiritual power will derive from the Arabist consciousness,
the awareness of being Arab; and this will achieve the liberation of the
From Monarchy to Republic 201
individual through social justice. It was declared, not without cause, that
the imperialist powers were responsible for the break-up of the Arab nation;
and that the overriding Ba'athist aim was the uniting of the various 're-
gions' of the Arab nation.
In its early years the Ba'athists supported various Hashemite schemes
for the uniting of Syria with Jordan or Iraq, then British puppet regimes.
The Ba'ath slogan 'One Hag, One Army, One King, One Arab World!' led
many of the movement's detractors, especially the French, to accuse the
Ba' ath of following a British agenda for the consolidation of the pro-British
Hashemite territories. Pan-Arabism continued as a discernible theme in all
subsequent Ba'athist groups and parties, though the aspiration became
diluted with time: in particular, a bitter rivalry developed between Syria
and Iraq for possession of the Ba'athist soul.
Both Aflaq and Bitar ran unsuccessfully for the Syrian parliament on
three occasions (1943, 1947 and 1949), after which Aflaq declared he
would never stand again. Bitar, very much the practical party organiser in
the 1940s and 1950s, managed to get elected in 1954 as a deputy for
Damascus and he subsequently held various ministerial posts. Aflaq served
as a minister for one three-month period but he had great standing as a
theorist of integrity, ascetic and incorruptible, well able to inspire the party
faithful. One writer has commented that the Ba'ath was 'Michel Aflaq writ
large' ,20 an acknowledgement of his enduring significance in the move-
ment. His first programmatic statement for the Arab Ba'ath movement
was issued on 24 July 1943. The five banner headlines clearly show Aflaq's
priorities at that time: 21
Aflaq uses the phrase al-ruh al-arabiyya ('Arab Spirit') to allow for the
possibility of hostility to the nation's enemies (an option that the Christian
'love' might be deemed to prohibit, despite the practical sanction for Holy
War). The 'Spirit' here denotes an energising historical force which, for
Hegel, resides in the state but which, for Aflaq, resides in the nation; it is the
risala khalida (the 'eternal message') of the nation. He proposes that Arab
202 The History of Iraq
nationalism is not an idea, a mere creed that would add yet one more Arab
sect to the ones that already exist. Arabs must forget such ideas and seek
to rediscover their original relationship with their original nature. Only in
this way can 'living Arab history' be used to reconstitute the eternal Arab
Spirit: the emphasis here is on culture rather than on politics. There is
emphasis also on the uniqueness of nations, the importance of conquering
degenerate society, and the use of the concept of 'eternity' in helping to
define the essence of the nation.
It is easy to portray Aflaq as an absolutist. In one interpretation the
nation 'is the sum of those who have the right kind of faith'; and the
objectivity of the nation is defined 'entirely subjectively, albeit in
the "feelings" of only one man: the Leader' .22 The state can have internal
and external enemies, and the moral order is absolute. The words of Sami
Shawkat, a precursor of Aflaq and a protege of Husri, are now rounded
out into a comprehensive doctrine, the detailed creed that helped to in-
form the declaration issued at the formal inauguration of the Syrian Ba'ath
Party in 1947. Here it is stated that 'all existing differences between the
members of the nation are superficial and false, and will be dissipated with
the awakening of the Arab soul'; 'Whoever has called for, or joined a racist
anti-Arab grouping, and all those who immigrated to the Arab homeland
for colonial purposes' are excluded from the Arab nation (Article 11);
political rights are restricted to those 'who have been faithful to the Arab
homeland and have separated from any sectarian grouping' (Article 20);
and the state is responsible for all freedoms and all intellectual work
(Article 41). At the same time the Ba'ath remains a socialist party: ' ... It
believes that the economic wealth of the fatherland belongs to the nation'
(Article 26); while at the same time being prepared to protect property
and inheritance, 'within the limits of the national interest' (Article 34),
as natural rights.
It is easy to see Aflaq' s thought as one of the shaping forces in the brutal
intolerance of modem Syria and Iraq. The pan-Arabist fervour was nurtured
in the colonial period; there was little in this historical phase to encourage
moderation or respect for foreign interlopers.
The Iraqi Ba'ath Party was founded in 1951 and by 1954 had attracted
some five hundred members. 23 By 1957 the Iraqi Ba'ath had joined the
National Front (which already included the Communists, the Istiqlal and the
National Democratic Party). This was a mixed bunch, preventing an easy
focus for political commitment. There was no 'indubitable focus of political
authority. No one person, force or institution dominated the scene'; and the
specific Ba'ath claim - '300 active members, 1200 organised helpers (ansar),
2000 organised supporters and 10,000 unorganised supporters'24 - would
From Monarchy to Republic 203
have been very difficult to verify. In July 1958 the Iraqi revolution swept
away the monarchy and drastically curtailed British influence. But the
revolution was made by army officers largely unconnected with formal
political groupings. The Ba'athists would have to wait for some years
before achieving power.
the Palestine Jews had allied themselves with Britain in the struggle against
Nazism. Such immigration was seen as 'a serious menace' to British inter-
ests, and as early as May 1942 when the death trains were rolling across
Europe Britain reaffirmed its policy of 'taking all practical steps to dis-
courage illegal immigration to Palestine' and of doing 'nothing what-ever
. . . to facilitate the arrival of Jewish refugees in Palestine'.28 In these
circumstances the repressive measures adopted by the Iraqi authorities
against the Jewish community were not unwelcome to British officials.
Steps were taken to reduce the number of Jews in many occupations,
with individuals either dismissed or forced to resign. An American report
prepared in 1945 highlighted efforts to reduce the number of Jewish civil
servants in Baghdad, and at the same time efforts were being made to
restrict Jewish trade: merchants in the export-import business failed to
receive the necessary enabling documentation and many were forced to join
with Muslim businessmen in order to stay in business. Restrictions were
placed on the number of Jews admitted to schools and institutions of
higher learning, and teachers who had arrived from Palestine were dis-
missed. The proportion of Jewish teachers in Jewish schools was reduced,
while Muslims were brought in to fill the vacant posts. In 1944-5 out of
sixty students admitted to the Royal Medical College only seven were
Jews, with the Law College only admitting nine Jews in the new class of
three hundred students.29
Fragile Baghdad administrations saw advantages in scapegoating the
Jewish community. It was often acknowledged that Jews had lived in Iraq
for centuries, though Zionism had now arrived to threaten Iraqi interests.
Thus Mohammad Fadhil al-Jamali, then Director-General of the Iraqi
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, testified in March 1946 that Jews had been
living in Iraq 'for thousands of years' as 'our brethren ... in perfect peace
and harmony . . .', but that political Zionism had come 'to poison the
atmosphere'; Iraqi Jews, he declared, felt 'embarrassed at what the Zionists
stand for and at the bitter relationship that exists between us and the Zionist
Jews'.3O The Anglo-American Committee of Enquiry received such testi-
mony and also statements from Jews, fearing reprisals for adverse com-
ment, declaring that all was well. But as the Committee was completing its
investigations there were fresh rumours of anti-Jewish riots, following the
publication of a Shi'itefatwa (religious edict) prohibiting the sale of land
to Jews throughout the Arab world. In addition the Iraqi authorities were
among the first to comply with a resolution of the Arab League Council
urging Arab governments to take further repressive measures against Zion-
ism. Travel restrictions were imposed on all but wealthy Jews, and at the
same time Nuri al-Said declared that the Jews in Muslim countries were
206 The History of Iraq
'hostages'. Jewish participation in demonstrations against the 'Portsmouth'
treaty being negotiated between London and Baghdad angered the pro-
British establishment which led to further anti-Jewish feeling.
Once the partition resolution on Palestine was published Iraqi 'volun-
teers' were despatched to protect the Palestinian Arabs; and the Chief Rabbi
Sassoon Kadouri was forced to issue a statement in Baghdad condemning
Zionism and declaring support for the Arabs in the Palestine dispute.
Pressure mounted for a military attack on Israel; demonstrators paraded
the slogan 'Death to the Jews!' through the streets of Baghdad; and on
27 April a synagogue was attacked and looted. On 15 May 1948 a contin-
gent of Iraqi troops moved into Palestine and martial law was declared
throughout Iraq. Censorship was tightened, military courts were estab-
lished, and a concentration camp was established in the southern desert
to hold dissidents. At the same time an article of the Iraqi Criminal Code
was modified so that 'Zionism' could be added to the list of proscribed
doctrines. Jewish civil servants were dismissed from their posts; even
Ibrahim el-Kabir, the Controller-General of the Iraqi Ministry of Finance,
was discharged on pension soon after arriving in Britain to negotiate a
new financial agreement. In July 1948 the Minister of Defence prohibited
Jewish-owned banks from dealing with foreign financial institutions,3l and
in October the Minister of Finance declared that all Iraqi Jews living abroad
must return to Iraq by a particular date or face the forfeiture of their
property. It is obvious that the anti-Jewish measures were designed in
part to secure revenue for the Iraqi state. Thus 'by the end of October a
total of £20,000,000 had been collected from the Jews in fines and by a rich
variety of means and excuses . . .'.32 In the immediate post-war years
Iraqi Jews in their thousands struggled to emigrate to Israel (one massive
airlift was dubbed 'Operation Ezra and Nehemiah'), though often forced
to sacrifice most of their property. The Iraqi government, not without
significant British support, had consolidated an anti-Jewish posture that
was to endure through all the subsequent decades.
The invasion of Palestine (Israel) by the Iraqi military forces in 1948 had
set the pattern for further interventions that would take place in the years
ahead. None of the interventions led to permanent Arab advances in the
region; nothing, it seemed, could be done to recapture the territories lost
to the Israelis in the various Arab-Israeli wars. In due course Egypt was
to negotiate the return of Sinai, lost in a later war, but all the military
endeavours of the Arabs seemed fruitless.
On 14 May 1948 an Iraqi expeditionary force moved into the West Bank
region and tried to bridge and ford the Jordan in the area of Gesher; but
when robust resistance was mounted by the settlers of Gesher and by units
From Monarchy to Republic 207
of the Golani Brigade the Iraqis were forced to withdraw, later deciding to
cross the river in an area already controlled by the Arabs. The Iraqi force
of an infantry brigade and an armoured battalion moved south to the Damya
and Allenby bridges and crossed the Jordan to Nablus. On 25 May, after
awaiting reinforcements, the force advanced from the hills of Samaria past
Tulkarem towards the Mediterranean - with the aim of cutting Israel in
two. The Jewish village of Geulim was taken, and on 28 May Iraqi spear-
heads reached Kfar Yona and Ein Vered, also bringing Kfar Javits under
attack. Then the Iraqi forces were brought to a halt, only six miles from the
Mediterranean, by the Jewish Alexandroni brigade which managed to re-
capture Geulim.
The Carmeli brigade, led by Colonel Mordechai Makleff, then mounted
an attack on the advanced Iraqi position. Iraqi resistance, supported by
aircraft, was strong, while the Israeli artillery could not reach the Iraqi
forces preparing for a counterattack. However, despite Israeli difficulties
the Carmeli force persisted and succeeded in recapturing the town of Jenin
on 3 June. The Iraqis soon brought up reinforcements and retook the town,
inflicting heavy losses on the retreating Israeli forces. On 4 June the
Alexandroni brigade managed to capture Kakun, north of the Natanya-
Tulkarem road, and repeated Iraqi counterattacks were successfully re-
pulsed. Many such encounters were inconclusive; areas were lost, retaken
and lost again. The eventual outcome, following considerable Israeli gains
throughout the whole of Palestine, was the complete withdrawal of Iraqi
and other Arab forces from the few areas still held. This pattern of Arab
defeat was to be repeated in all the later Arab-Israeli wars.
Iraqi forces, along with other Arab contingents, were involved in the
Sinai campaign of 1956, following the seizure of the Suez Canal by Pres-
ident Nasser of Egypt (see below). An Iraqi division moved to enter Jordan
as a prelude to an attack on Israel; but in the event this and other Arab
moves failed to deter the Israeli attack on Arab positions throughout the
region. Similarly, in the 1967 Six-Day War the Israeli Air Force destroyed
the bulk of Egypt's air power on the morning of 5 June, and then dealt with
the air forces of Jordan, Syria and Iraq, destroying vast numbers of aircraft
on the ground. Still the Arab air forces managed to mount offensive opera-
tions, though without much useful effect. Syrian aircraft attacked the oil
refineries at Haifa Bay and bombed an airfield at Megiddo; Jordanian
planes strafed the Kfar Sirkin airfield; and Iraqi aircraft bombed the Medi-
terranean town of Natanya. Such efforts merely encouraged the more
powerful Israeli Air Force to concentrate its attack on the vulnerable Arab
air forces. Soon substantial numbers of Iraqi aircraft had been destroyed;
the Jordanians lost twenty-two Hunter fighters, six transports and two
208 The History of Iraq
helicopters, virtually wiping out the entire air force; and the Syrians lost
thirty.-two MiG-21s, twenty-three MiG-15s and MiG-17s, and two Ilyushin
11-28 bombers, representing two-thirds of the air force's total strength.
By the end of the second day of the war the Arabs had lost 416 aircraft,
393 of which had been destroyed on the ground; a mere twenty-six Israeli
aircraft had been lost in action. Fifty-eight of the Arab aircraft lost were
downed in aerial dog-fightsY
The Six-Day War saw Iraqi forces moving into Jordan: in addition to
Jordan's 270 tanks and 150 artillery pieces there was an Iraqi force of an
armoured brigade and three infantry brigades. In the subsequent ground
battles between the Arab and Israeli forces the brigade promised by the
Syrians to President Nasser never materialised; and the Iraqis, though now
stationed in Jordan, did not enter the conflict. The Israelis completed their
conquest of the West Bank: King Hussein, dragged into war on a wave of
Arab hysteria, had now lost half his kingdom. Jordanian casualties were
reckoned at more than six thousand killed and missing; Israeli losses were
some 550 killed and 2500 wounded. 34
A war of attrition then developed through the 1960s as a prelude to the
1973 Yom Kippur War. In December 1968 the Iraqi expeditionary force in
Jordan began shelling Israeli towns, whereupon the Israelis responded with
artillery barrages of their own and an air attack on the Iraqi force, killing
eight troops, wounding fourteen, and inflicting considerable damage on
vehicles and other equipment. Between September 1968 and March 1969
there were some 534 hostile actions against Israel: 189 emanated from
Jordan, 123 from the Gaza Strip, 47 from the Suez Canal area, and 29 from
the West Bank. 35 The Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) also began
terrorist operations against Israeli interests abroad, starting with the hijack-
ing of an EI Al airliner to Algeria in July 1968. The PLO, in part funded by
Libya's Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, also helped train and supply terrorists
for operations in overseas countries. It is useful to remember, in this con-
text, the terms of the UN Security Council Resolution 242, passed on
22 November 1967. It declared that fulfilment of the principles of the
United Nations Charter required the creation of a just and lasting peace
in the Middle East, and that this required the implementation of both of
the following:
PRELUDE TO SUEZ
The British impact on Iraq was first to consolidate, and later to exacerbate,
the social divisions that were bound in due course to lead to political
upheaval. Thus, under the British, local notables were able 'to acquire vast
semifeudal estates and to reduce ''their'' tribesmen to the status of debt-
bonded serfs'. Rural areas became divorced from the rest of the national
economy, a development which 'tended to arrest the emergence of capitalist
relations of production in the countryside' and to generate ·severe dis-
tortions in the country's economic and political systems .. .'.31 By 1960
more than two-thirds of all cultivable land was divided into some 3400
estates, with a half of such land owned by about 2500 people (out of a
national population of around seven million). The position of the (often
absentee) landlords was strengthened under British rule, just as much of
the population was kept poverty-stricken; in 1957 the hulk of the rural
population of 3.8 million was landless. On occasions the peasants struggled
to rebel, but on the whole they were passive, inarticulate, resigned and
apathetic; in medical terms the Iraqi peasant was seen as 'a living patho-
logical specimen' .38 The real powers in the country, sustained by the armed
forces, were 'the monarchy and its entourage, the great landowners, the Iraq
Petroleum Company, and the British economic and military domination' .39
A mere two per cent of the landowners owned more than two-thirds of
all the useful land, with the sharecropper peasants massively exploited,
forced to provide up to two-thirds of their produce to the landlords. Under
the terms of a 1951 law unoccupied state lands were to have been given to
peasants who would then be aided with state grants, but in the subsequent
years little of the land had been distributed and inadequate irrigation schemes
ruined the soil (as at Dujaila). In 1952 unrest grew among the peasants
when they heard about the land reforms in Egypt, and soon thousands were
fleeing to the cities to escape rural destitution. Through the 1950s massive
slums spread around Baghdad, with the hovel inhabitants periodically
swamped by muddy overflows from the Tigris. One keen observer de-
scribed the prevailing conditions: 'There is much trachoma and dysentery,
but no bilharzia or malaria, because the water is too polluted for snails and
mosquitoes. The infant mortality is 250 per thousand. A woman has a 50:50
chance of raising a child to the age of ten. There are no social services
of any kind ... On the adjacent dumps dogs with rabies dig in the sewage,
and the slum-dwellers pack it for resale as garden manure. '40
This was the social framework that was congenial to British investors
and sustained by British arms; and to those Europeans and Americans with
a proper interest in wider political matters. In the 1950s such matters related
From Monarchy to Republic 211
to the strategic exigencies of the Cold War and to the troublesome ambi-
tions of local nationalist leaders, such as President Nasser in Egypt.
In early January 1953 the US Secretary of State Byroade and the British
Foreign Office reached agreement on the joint approach to be made to
President Neguib of Egypt on the related issues of the Suez Canal base,
Middle Eastern Defence, and Western economic and military support for
Egypt. This was all part of the US strategy for countering the Soviet threat
(real or imagined), but it did not always enjoy the unqualified support of
the British. In fact President Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles went cold
on the terms of the joint approach to Egypt, arguing that a settlement
between Britain and Egypt on Suez might be achieved without guaranteeing
Egypt's commitment to the Middle Eastern Defence Organisation.41 In May
Foster Dulles visited Neguib, Nasser and other Egyptian leaders in Cairo to
be told by Nasser that the US proposals for the defence of the Middle East
were the 'perpetuation of occupation'; and he added: 'I can't see myself
waking up one morning to find that the Soviet Union is our enemy ...
I would become the laughing stock of my people if I told them they now had
an entirely new enemy, thousands of miles away, and that they must forget
about the British enemy occupying their territory.'42 The Revolutionary
Command Council (RCC) of Egypt was encouraging guerrilla actions against
the British in the Canal Zone, and the British were contemplating military
action, including the reoccupation of Cairo and Alexandria. Such develop-
ments were hampering US plans to involve Egypt in an alliance for the
defence of the Middle East. Indeed Foster Dulles suggested that Turkey,
Pakistan, Iran and Iraq be organised in a 'Northern Tier' defence organisa-
tion, a comprehensive system that would overlap other defensive arrange-
ments and provide yet another bulwark against the possibility of Soviet
expansion. Turkey was already a NATO state; Pakistan had 'martial and
religious characteristics' that could be exploited; Iran could be an asset
provided the US could 'concentrate on changing the situation there'; and
Iraq, with its 'forward-looking' government, was the Arab country 'most
plainly concerned with the Soviet threat' .43
The Dulles scheme suited the ambitions of Nuri al-Said, interested as he
was in establishing Iraq as the leader of the Arab world. He was also
interested in replacing the 1930 Anglo-Iraqi treaty with arrangements that
were better suited to the rapidly changing conditions of the modem world:
even the staunchly pro-British Nuri was not wholly reliable. In January
1955 the Turkish prime minister Adnan Menderes visited Baghdad for
talks, and soon the US was urging Turkey to bring Iraq into the Turkish-
Pakistani Pact, yet another route for tying Iraq into a pro-NATO alliance.
Egypt remained a problem. The Muslim Brotherhood had tried to assassi-
212 The History of Iraq
nate Nasser, and he subsequently removed General Neguib from power.
There were no signs that President Nasser was eager to enter any manifestly
anti-Soviet defence arrangements; instead he emphasised that an Arab-
Israeli settlement was a precondition for any Egyptian military involvement
with the West.
Nuri aI-Said concluded his agreement with Turkey; after all Britain's
traditional opposition to Turkish access to Mesopotamia, Turkey was now
to be allowed to transport military equipment through Iraq. It seemed that
Britain was faced with a rapidly crumbling Middle East deployment: Nasser
was refusing to contemplate the presence of foreign troops in peacetime, so
undermining the British protection of the Suez Canal; and the 1930 Anglo-
Iraqi treaty was due to expire in 1957. Steps would have to be taken to
bolster the traditional British influence in the area. On 14 January 1955
the British foreign secretary Sir Anthony Eden, soon to be premier, wrote
to Nuri, applauding the Turkish-Iraqi announcement and implying that it
was time for a new Anglo-Iraqi agreement. A month later the British
Cabinet approved Eden's suggestion of negotiations for a new Anglo-Iraqi
treaty and, with little choice in the matter, acceded to the newly-hatched
Turkish-Iraqi Pact.
Britain's formal accession to the new Turkish-Iraqi agreement suc-
ceeded in converting the Pact into a broader arrangement, the Baghdad
Pact, developed from Dulles' 'Northern Tier' concept. Now the West had
succeeded in organising the required anti-Soviet alliance. The Baghdad
Pact included Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan, Iran and Britain; and the United States
soon became involved in its activities. Iraq and Britain encouraged Kuwait
to join the Pact but Sheikh Abdullah refused, knowing full well the instabil-
ity of Nuri's unpopular regime and having doubts about the value of a
union involving such disparate states. President Nasser was quick to con-
demn the Baghdad Pact, a position that was popular with many Iraqis 'as
much as with other Arabs' 44 Nuri, sharing John Foster Dulles' obsessive
anti-communist feelings, had taken Iraq into a Pact 'to which most Iraqis
were opposed' .45 The Times (London) noted that 'Since Nuri Sa'id returned
to office all political parties have been dissolved, including his own ... a
new press ordinance has reduced the number of newspapers . . . The
colleges and schools have been purged . . . The dismissed teachers and
students, and also the civil servants dismissed ... have been made liable
under an amendment to the army law for nine months' military service'.46
The Baghdad parliament, surrounded by troops and tanks to prevent any
disturbance, ratified the Baghdad Pact after ten minutes' discussion. The
Pact's 'Special Agreements' and 'Memoranda' were concealed from the
parliament because Nuri had no confidence that even his hand-picked
From Monarchy to Republic 213
deputies would accept them. Nuri, with British support, had ensured that
the democratic cause of anti-communism was well served.
Britain had been obliged to hand over its two air-bases to Iraq, though
British military assistance was promised in the event of an attack (presum-
ably by the Soviet Union). The day after the Baghdad Pact was agreed,
Eden succeeded Churchill as British premier. The United States continued
to maintain pressure for the rapid development of the new defence agree-
ment; and Nasser continued to condemn the Pact. The scene was set for a
new confrontation in the Middle East.
The Arab-Israeli dispute was now presenting difficulties to a Washing-
ton administration keen to support the Pact. Pro-Israeli lobbyists in the US
were nervous of an agreement that seemed to lock declared anti-Zionists
into a pro-Western defence arrangement: what, for example, would happen
in a dispute between Israel and Iraq? Such considerations made a US
accession to the Pact impossible, but Washington continued to support the
new agreement in less formal ways. At the same time it emerged that
Britain and the United States might be secretly planning an Arab-Israeli
settlement based on territorial concessions by Israel. 47 Following the secret
ALPHA talks regarding such a settlement, Washington agreed to join the
Baghdad Pact once an Arab-Israeli agreement had been concluded (a for-
lorn hope). The British would support the preliminary statement by Foster
Dulles, and the US would finance the provision of British Centurion tanks
to Iraq and offer military support to Britain in the event of fresh fighting in
the Middle East. However, events were now moving to outflank such
nice calculations.
On 22 August Israeli patrols crossed into Egypt and occupied positions
in the Gaza Strip, whereupon Nasser launched small-scale fedayeen raids
into Israel. David Ben-Gurion, only four weeks after agreeing to head a new
Israeli administration, managed to obtain cabinet approval for an attack on
Egyptian positions at Khan Yunis; thirty-six Egyptians were killed. After
it emerged that France was reportedly offering Mystere IV fighters to
Israel and that the US had no interest in servicing Nasser's defence needs,
Egypt agreed an arms deal with the Soviet bloc for submarines, 100 tanks,
MiG-IS fighters, 11-28 bombers and other aircraft; Soviet specialists would
set up the equipment in Cairo and train Egyptians in its use. An uneasy
stalemate between Egypt and Israel had developed, and for a time the
political focus shifted to Jordan. Here nationalist disturbances supported
by Egypt and Saudi Arabia were threatening the Hashemite throne of
King Hussein, long a British client. Jordan was, moreover, being pressured
by Britain to develop the Iraqi-Jordanian axis as a further defensive ar-
rangement that would not involve expanding the Baghdad Pact.
214 The History of Iraq
that there would be Saudi opposition to any scheme that might produce
'a Greater Iraq' and Israel would be nervous of Iraqi forces on its borders.
The British were by now growing increasingly concerned at Nasser's
evident drift to the political left. Harold Macmillan, then foreign secretary,
declared to Ambassador Makins in Washington: 'We are afraid that Nasser,
whether innocently or deliberately, is dangerously committed to the Com-
munists. Consequently, we believe it would be advantageous, in any event,
to overthrow him if possible. '52 A three-phase plan of operations was
proposed by George Young, the MI6 Deputy Director responsible for
Middle Eastern operations, and Nigel Clive, MI6's political officer. The
first phase would involve the overthrow of the Syrian government; if
necessary, relying on joint action with Iraq, Turkey and 'possibly' Israel.
Turkey would set about creating incidents on the Syrian border, while Iraq
would do the same using local tribes; at the same time the pro-Iraqi Partie
Populaire Syrienne would move into Syria from the Lebanon. In this way
'a firm pro-Iraqi government' could be induced to emerge as an 'extension
of Hashemite influence'. Then Britain would exploit splits in the Saudi
Royal Family to bring about the fall of King Saud; if the CIA did not
want to become involved the British might undertake joint action with
the Iraqis. Then, to counter the likely Egyptian response to such events,
specific measures would be taken against Nasser, including the possible
use of force to overthrow the Egyptian government. Washington was
not impressed with this multi-phase scheme, seeing various threats to its
own interests in Saudi Arabia.
When, on 26 July 1956, President Gamal Abdul Nasser declared that his
government was taking over the operation of the Suez Canal the CIA
stepped up its own plan, Operation STRAGGLE, for a coup in Syria. The
CIA had carefully bribed Syrian army officers to stage the coup; but these
men, assigned major roles in the operation, reported to Syria's intelligence
head, Colonel Sarraj, handed over their bribe money and named the CIA
officers involved. The American army attache Lieutenant Colonel Robert
Molloy, the CIA officer Francis Jeton (officially Vice-Consul at the US
Embassy) and the celebrated Howard Stone (with the title of Second
Secretary for Political Affairs) were branded personae non gratae and
expelled from Syria in August. The US State Department denounced Syrian
accusations of a coup attempt as 'complete fabrications' and immediately
expelled the Syrian ambassador and a Second Secretary from Washington.
President Eisenhower disingenuously commented in his memoirs that
'The entire action was shrouded in mystery' .53
President Nasser had taken over the running of the Suez Canal, thus
opening up a new phase in the politics of the Middle East. For wider reasons
From Monarchy to Republic 217
The Suez affair had already eroded Western confidence in the region and
now the consequences were spilling over into various states. In Lebanon
the conflict intensified between the Lebanese and Arab nationalists be-
longing to many disparate groups. This in tum encouraged an increased
involvement in the dispute by Syria, now part of the United Arab Republic
(UAR), keen to support the Arab nationalists against the pro-Western
President Camille Chamoun. This Lebanese leader, sensitive to the require-
ments of realpolitik, had exploited the powers of his Maronite presidency
to rig the elections in favour of his pro-Western supporters, a tactical
ploy that the Lebanese Muslims were powerless to resist. The West found
such arrangements congenial and may have encouraged Nuri al-Said of
Iraq to support Chamoun's democratic endeavours. If so, then the West
helped to tip Nuri's already corrupt regime over the edge and to extinguish
the pro-Western Iraqi monarchy.
In Iraq Brigadier Abdul Karim Kassem had formed an equivalent of
Egypt's 'Free Officers' organisation, and when Nuri made clear his inten-
tion to help Chamoun the Kassem faction staged a successful rebellion to
depose Nuri and King Feisal II. Now decades of careful political manipUla-
tion by the West were at an end. In the summer of 1958 Nuri had perceived
that if the Lebanese civil war resulted in a victory for the pro-Nasser Arabs
then Iraq would be isolated. He had already given Chamoun moral and
monetary support in May and June, and resolved in July to deploy an army
division to Jordan for possible use against Syria. At the same time he made
plans to travel with Feisal to Ankara to discuss the Nasser problem at a
routine meeting of the Baghdad Pact; Nuri was in no doubt that Adnan
Menderes, the Turkish premier, shared his hatred of communism.
218 The History of Iraq
failed, as The New York Times reported, 'to respect Western oil interests'.
On this occasion the US forces were not required to act; the massively
unpopular Chamoun was ditched by the United States, which then set about
building relations with General Chehab, the new Lebanese leader. At the
same time the US government was contemplating an invasion of Iraq: there
was 'strong consideration' among United States government leaders of
'military intervention to undo the coup in Iraq' .55 The US ambassador
Gallman received a communication from the State Department advising
him 'that Marines, starting to land in Lebanon might be used to aid loyal
Iraqi troops to counter-attack'; but it was soon admitted that 'no one could
be found in Iraq to collaborate with. Everybody was for the revolution'. 56
The reasons were not hard to discern: ninety per cent of Iraq was illiterate;
average life-span was twenty-six years; and there was almost universal
hatred of the Baghdad Pact. In 1959 Iraq withdrew from the Pact and it
was renamed the Central Treaty Organisation (CENTO).
There seems no doubt that the US and Britain would have invaded Iraq
in 1958 if there had been any reasonable hope of restoring the monarchy. 57
But it was now clear that Hashemite rule was at an end in Baghdad. The
Hashemite monarchy, with Western military aid, was managing to survive
in Jordan; but now Britain was no longer able to play 'an active and major
part in Arab politics' .58
Whatever the personal ambitions of Kassem and Arif, the Iraqi revolu-
tion was at least in part buoyed by a wave of popular unrest. One observer
noted that 'The hatred of Nuri and of the land-owning Arab Sheikhs and
Kurdish Aghas who made up his party was pathological'.59 On 18 June, a
month before the coup, some 4000 people had demonstrated in Diwaniyah,
and a three-hour battle had resulted in forty-three police deaths, with 120
wounded and the arrest of five hundred demonstrators. The Iraqi Com-
munist Party worked to mobilise the masses around the 'national demo-
cratic movements', but in the event the revolution was led by the army,
an inevitable circumstance in a highly militarised society where ordinary
people had few rights and few powers. On the afternoon of 14 July, as soon
as it became clear that the coup had been successful, martial law was
declared and tanks were stationed at key points in Baghdad. The new
Kassem regime then broadcast a radio statement:
The military had made the coup but the 'initiative and participation
of left and democratic opposition parties, organised in a National Front'
had transformed the event into 'something close to a popular revolu-
tion' .61 In the face of the possibility of a Western invasion, following the
American and British troop landings in Lebanon and Jordan, Nasser flew
to Moscow to secure Soviet protection for the new Iraqi regime. The UN
Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold, working through an Emergency
Session of the General Assembly, managed to defuse the crisis created by
the Anglo-American troop movements. He brought the Western and Arab
views together and in due course Britain and the United States agreed
to withdraw their forces.
The new Iraqi Republic was ruled by a military Revolutionary Council
headed by Kassem (now premier), and a cabinet of conservative National
Democratic Party (NDP) and middle-class independents. A range of social
and political policies were introduced that received wide support, particu-
larly since they reflected the demands of the pre-revolutionary independ-
ence movement, sensitive as it was to the residual British presence and
the pro-Western orientation of the Baghdad Pact. The new measures in-
cluded: withdrawal from the Baghdad Pact and the Sterling Area; the final
removal of British military bases; the building of diplomatic and trading
relations with socialist countries; land reform to improve the lot of the
peasants; negotiations with the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) for a greater
share of oil royalties; a housing programme for the slum-dwellers around
Baghdad; a freeing of all political prisoners; a new constitution; recognition
of trade unions, peasant unions and other popular bodies; a 15 per cent limit
on profits from consumer goods; reduced rents; and large cuts in the price
of food and other necessities. However, it was one thing to issue a radical
programme of reform, quite another to see its effective implementation.
One immediate test of the character of the Revolution was the question of
the new regime's attitude to the union of Egypt and Syria: if Iraq were to
join the United Arab Republic (UAR) then Nasserite policies would in-
evitably impact on the Iraqi RepUblic. In this dilemma lay the first clues
that the Revolution was not necessarily a pro-Nasser crusade.
In fact the new Iraqi regime came to represent a challenge to Nasser's
leadership of the Arab world, and even to the existence of the UAR. It was
clear to the Communists and other radicals in Iraq that subservience to
From Monarchy to Republic 221
Nasser would result in their persecution; they had supported the revolution
and were not eager to welcome what they saw as a new looming tyranny.
Kassem himself was not keen to acquiesce in subservience to Nasser, and
so he united with the Communists in opposing wahda (union). This meant
that now wahda was being adopted as a rallying cry against the left since
for many 'union with Egypt was the lesser evil' in the face of radical
social reform or a government that would contain Communists. 62 The new
Iraqi leadership was soon offering Syria, no longer challenged by the
Hashemite Iraqi-Jordanian axis, a chance to escape Egyptian influence by
joining a larger association of Arab states: the doctrine of pan-Arabism was
still a potent force but it inevitably took on a new flavour following fresh
political turmoil in the area. A joint Arab resolution at the United Nations
was taken as a UAR attempt to isolate the Iraqi regime and to shift UAR
attention towards the Saudi monarchy and the surviving Hashemites in
pro-British Jordan. But the Saudis and the Jordanian Hashemites were
not keen to welcome an anti-Iraqi alliance; Iraqi independence, they felt,
would represent insurance for their own.
Cairo, now seeing the Iraqi regime as a threat to its own dominance in
Syria, began attacking what it chose to regard as the 'communist menace'
in Iraq. The United States welcomed the Egyptian posture as a 'bulwark
against communism' , and on 22 December 1958 Mohamed Heikal, a Nasser
spokesman, wrote in al-Ahram that although the communists 'had fought
alongside the nationalists in violent struggles against imperialism, imperial-
ist agents and feudalists, this struggle is now finished or about to finish'.
On 23 December President Nasser declared that Arab communists were
enemies of Arab nationalism and Arab unity; and a week later mass arrests
of communists were undertaken throughout Syria and Egypt. Plans to
overthrow the Kassem regime were soon under way.
In March 1959 a pro-wahda revolt was staged in Mosul, inspired by the
Syrian and Iraqi Ba'ath factions with Egyptian support. The Ba'ath aim was
to bring Iraq into the UAR so that Syria and Iraq together could challenge
Nasser. The Egyptian supporters of the revolt had their own agenda. A pro-
Nasser Iraqi, Colonel al-Shawaf, led the revolt and it was only suppressed
with much bloodshed, an event that encouraged CIA Director Allen Dulles
to comment that the situation in Iraq was 'the most dangerous in the world
today' and that the communists were close to a 'complete takeover'. The
revolt was crushed by the Iraqi army which enjoyed the critical support of
Kurdish peasants and Arab workers in Mosul, forced to confront army
officers backed by rebel soldiers. The collapse of the confused Ba'ath
Nasserist revolt ended for the time being any Syrian ambitions of becoming
part of a wider Arab commonwealth; Syria had no choice but to remain
222 The History of Iraq
subservient to Egypt within the narrow UAR confines. At the same time
both Kassem and King Hussein were seeking to exploit the Palestine ques-
tion to their own advantage, both claiming to speak for Palestinian libera-
tion against the counter-claims of the pro-Nasser groups proposing that a
liberated Palestine would sit well in the UAR. Kassem argued for the
creation of an independent Palestinian Republic and proposed the building
of a Palestine Legion. And while Hussein was claiming exclusive Jordanian
sovereignty over Palestine, Nasser was taking steps to organise Palestinians
in Gaza and Syria into a Palestine National Union. By 1960 hostilities
between Jordan and the UAR had escalated to the point of sabotage and
assassinations.
In Iraq, despite the protestations of Allen Dulles, the ICP had no plans
to take power by force; in fact, the communists were happy to rely on
elections in which they expected to win many seats. There were further
riots in July 1959 when pro- and anti-government forces clashes in Kirkuk,
leading to thirty-one people killed and 130 injured. In September Kassem
had Said Qazzaz, the Minister of the Interior under Nuri ai-Said, executed
- partly to reassure leftist public opinion of his support. The Ba'athists
took this gesture as a sign that Kassem still wanted to maintain the support
of the communists, and in October a Ba' athist assassination attempt against
Kassem was carried out. One of the would-be assassins was a young
Saddam Hussein.
Kassem was by now more interested in suppressing the communists,
whom he perceived as a growing threat to his regime, than in honouring the
political promises of the Revolution. In 1960 more than 6000 trade union-
ists, many of them communists, were dismissed from their posts and the
government took charge of unions and professional organisations, after
systematic attacks on the homes and offices of democratic leaders. The
non-communist newspaper al-Istiglal (February 1961) saw this process
as violating the freedoms of the voters 'by blackmailing them in their
means of livelihood and hurling them into prisons and places of detention' .
Leftist newspapers were restricted and the licence of the troublesome
Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) , founded in 1945, was revoked. The
early hopes of the Revolution had all but evaporated.
The new-found hostility of the Iraqi regime to the ICP presented many
problems, not least because only the disciplined communist organisations
'could provide large numbers of staff well enough educated to fill the
offices that had been purged of their prerevolutionary personnel' .63 The ICP
had a wide popular base and extensive links with many front groups: such
as the Peace Partisans, the People's Resistance Movement, the Federation
of Peasants' Organisations, the Defence League for Women's Rights, the
From Monarchy to Republic 223
Democratic Youth Movement, the Students' Union and many others. The
extent of the communist involvement in post-revolutionary Iraqi society
gave the ICP a unique status, one that it was difficult for Kassem and his
supporters to erode without extensive repression.
Various coups were attempted against Kassem in the period between
1958 and 1963 (the Mosul revolt was only one such attempt). He had
managed to alienate various powerful factions, including the Ba'ath, but he
had also built some support among particular groups in society. He had
introduced an extended social welfare scheme which included increased
spending on health, education and housing, and this was accompanied by
price and rent controls. The gains were far short of the expectations in the
early heady days of the Revolution but under Kassem social welfare spend-
ing as a proportion of the budget doubled. 64 Gains were made in land
reform; in some of the provinces (for example, in Kut and Amara, where the
largest estates existed) the peasants were taking the law into their own
hands and seizing land from its nominal owners. Now land over certain
limits (250 hectares for irrigated land, and 500 hectares for rainfed land)
could be expropriated with compensation, and then distributed for cultiva-
tion in small lots (twelve hectares irrigated, and twenty-three hectares
rainfed). Peasants granted land became members of co-operatives. In fact,
the legal entitlements were only slowly implemented and the period of
the Kassem regime saw few substantial advances in land redistribution.
The consolidation of the revolutionary government stimulated further
Iraqi claims for the territory of Kuwait. In 1958 Kassem negotiated a £66
million loan from the Soviet Union to fund the building of a port at Umm
Qasr, close to Kuwait's northern border. A year later, in May 1959, what
some observers saw as an Iraqi 'plot' to infiltrate Kuwait was uncovered,
and two hundred Iraqis found camping in the desert were arrested by
Kuwaiti forces. Violet Dickson records how 'These poor folk, in their mat
and wood huts, were ordered to move ... Their new camp was a quagmire
... Now they were told again to move, lock, stock and barrel, into a wired-
in enclosure out at Asherij point ... in October 1961, I drove out ... to visit
them. The camp where they had been was bare ... nobody I spoke to knew
anything about them' .65 Later the Iraqis were tracked down near Daugha
(' ... it seemed to me that they were being very badly treated').
In June 1961 the Iraqi government ordered a build-up of troops on the
Kuwait border; and on 19 June, six days after Kuwait had signed a defence
agreement with Britain, Kassem called a press conference at which he
declared that since Kuwait was a part of Iraq he would demand every inch
of its territory. He denounced the new Anglo-Kuwaiti agreement as a
'specially dangerous blow' against the integrity and independence of Iraq,
224 The History of Iraq
and condemned equally the 'illegal 1899 agreement' between Kuwait and
Britain. General Kassem also warned the present ruler of Kuwait not to
transgress against the people of Kuwait, who were Iraqis, or he would be
dealt with as a 'mutineer'. 66 The next day, with the Kuwaiti government
declaring its determination to defend its territory, a memorandum was
issued in Baghdad asserting that 'Kuwait is part of Iraq' and going on to
declare: 'There is no doubt that Kuwait is part of Iraq. This fact is attested
by history and no good purpose is served by imperialism denying or dis-
torting it.' On the same day King Saud, he himself having been given vast
swathes of Kuwaiti land by Sir Percy Cox in 1922, expressed support for
'fraternal Kuwait'. The Arab League described the Iraqi claim as a 'sur-
prise', and the pro-Western Shah of Iran expressed his willingness to
exchange diplomatic missions with Kuwait. President Nasser 'joined other
leaders of Arab states in expressing cordial greetings to Kuwait. Iraq did
not seem to be overburdened with friends' .67 The Lord Privy Seal, Edward
Heath, emphasised Britain's obligation to support Kuwait, and the UAR
issued a statement repudiating the 'logic of annexation' among Arabs.
Soon British warships, despatched from Hong Kong and Singapore,
were heading for the Gulf. Saudi troops arrived in Kuwait and closed the
border with Iraq, while Iranian launches, carrying supplies to Kuwait, were
attacked by Iraqi patrol boats. On 1 July the British government declared:
'HM Government had informed a number of friendly governments in Mid-
dle East and elsewhere of its deep concern at the situation and expressed to
them the hope that they will use their moderating influence with the Iraq
government, so that Kuwait may continue her development as an independ-
ent Arab state among nations of the world. '68 On the same day The Times
(London) decided that Kassem did not intend to put pressure on Kuwait 'to
the point of military attack'. By 4 July Royal Marines from HMS Bulwark
had landed in Kuwait, and US ships were ready to evacuate American
personnel; there were further reports that additional British troops with
tanks and armoured vehicles were on their way or had already landed.
Prime Minister Harold Macmillan declared: 'The government earnestly
hopes that counsels of moderation will prevail in Baghdad. Our forces are
there purely for defensive purposes, in accordance with our treaty obliga-
tions. They will be withdrawn as soon as the ruler considers Kuwait is no
longer threatened.' Two days later the Iraqi forces on the border were
increased and British troops began laying mines in northern Kuwait. By
7 July there were 6000 British troops in Kuwait, with Britain putting before
the UN Security Council a resolution denouncing the Iraqi posture. The
Council, at a time when the USSR was still a permanent member was soon
deadlocked, and Kuwait suggested an Arab League force to replace the
From Monarchy to Republic 225
British presence. A week later, one third of the British force was leaving,
its mission accomplished. Kassem blustered that 'If Iraq had chosen to use
force, she could have taken Kuwait long ago' - but he took no action. David
Holden, the Sunday Times Middle East correspondent, noted that Kassem
'was scared off.69 The Iraqi leader had at least demonstrated 'that the game
of bLuff can cause a mighty stir in the region of the Gulf (my italics).70
In a few dramatic years General Abdul Karim Kassem had behaved
ruthlessly, working hard to suppress opposition from some quarters and to
buy off opposition from others. He had laid the basis, in some areas, for
genuine social reform; but had also succeeded in alienating many of his
own supporters - in Iraq and elsewhere in the Arab world. But however he
had proceeded he would have antagonised the West: he had abolished the
pro-British Hashemite monarchy and remained bitterly opposed to im-
perialism throughout all his political life. In attacking the ICP he had
alienated powerful factions that might have protected him from a coup, but
the Ba'athists in alliance with various pan-Arabist groups now saw no
impediment to a coup attempt against Kassem.
On 8 February 1963 Kassem was toppled in a coup led by Abdul Salaam
Arif, Kassem' s former collaborator, whom he had first purged and then
imprisoned. In 1958 Kassem had spared Arifs life; now Arif resolved on
the execution of Kassem. And again the shadow of Western complicity in
the overthrow of the Kassem regime was not hard to discern. A few days
before the coup Kassem had announced the formation of a national oil
company to exploit the oil areas he had expropriated in 1961 from foreign
companies (amounting to 99 per cent of their concessionary areas). On
4 February, four days before the coup, in an interview with Le Monde,
Kassem revealed that he had received a threatening note from the US State
Department. According to the Paris weekly L'Express: 'The Iraqi coup was
inspired by the CIA. The British government and Nasser himself ... were
aware of the putsch preparations. The French government was left out. '71
As thousands of Iraqis were massacred following the coup, Le Monde
reported from Washington: ' ... the present coup is not regarded as a
menace to US interests; on the contrary, it is regarded as a pro-Western
re-orientation in the Middle East'.72
The Kassem regime, the first republican government of Iraq, had been
crushed - probably with the assistance of the West - after a few short,
tumultuous years. Now the Iraqi Ba'ath Party, the Party of Saddam Hussein,
was in power. Saddam would have to wait many years before becoming
master of the Party; until that time he and his fellow Ba' athists would learn
to cope with threats and setbacks. In the brutal theatre of Iraqi politics
Saddam Hussein would learn a ruthless pragmatism.
226 The History of Iraq
President Kassem, it is said, had deluded himself into thinking that he could
not be overthrown. In fact an onslaught was launched against the Ministry
of Defence, which he had turned into a mini-fortress, and he died in the
attack on his headquarters73 (or he was executed afterward).74 The coup that
had brought the Ba'ath Party to power had been dubbed 'fascist'7s - and
there can be no doubt that it was supported by many of the opponents of
the (supposedly) leftist revolution of 1958. Kassem had been opposed by
disgruntled army officers and by erstwhile political collaborators (such
as Abdul Salaam Arif), purged soon after the Revolution. The plot against
Kassem also received the support of Kurdish groups, despite the fact that
the Ba'athist publication al-Ishtiraki (,The Socialist') had recently depicted
the Kurdish movement as a 'suspect colonialist movement', with the
Ba'athists criticising Kassem for not dealing harshly enough with the Kurds. 76
Kassem, while retaining support in some of the poorer sections of Iraqi
society, had alienated himself from many of the popular factions that
might have offered some protection to his regime. While he may have
thought that he had quelled opposition and secured the Revolution he had
in fact grown progressively more isolated.
A principal organiser of the coup was Ali Salih al-Sadi, the secretary of
the Ba'ath Party, who had built up contacts with other groups; in particular,
with the officer class waiting to exact revenge on Kassem for purging and
executing members of the military. The Ba'ath itself had several factions:
Sadi was regarded as a political radical, heading the wing that was strongest
among the civilian section of the movement and in the Ba'athist militia,
recruited from the Azamiyya area of Baghdad, a Ba'athist stronghold. A
more moderate faction, strong in the army, was opposed to the fervour
of the radicals and 'no more than lukewarm sympathisers with the aims of
the Party' .n Arif, as president of the National Council of the Revolutionary
Command (NCRC), headed the new regime; and Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr,
once (like Arif) a minister in the Kassem government, was now prime
minister. Of the eighteen NCRC members, sixteen were Ba'athists; and
the Ba'ath Party also held twelve of the twenty-one seats in the cabinet,
including the posts of prime minister, and the ministers of defence (Salih
Mahdi al-Amash) and the interior (Sadi). Tensions soon developed be-
tween Arif and other Council members: over how far to carry the fresh
wave of purges, over the degree of socialism that should be introduced
(many of the Ba'athists were committed socialists), and over the extent
to which Arab unity (especially with Egypt) was desirable.
From Monarchy to Republic 227
In the event, many of the revolutionary forces that had formerly strug-
gled against imperialism, the monarchy and the exploitation of the poor
were now subjected to harsh persecution. The Ba'ath Party itself later
acknowledged the severity of this repression. Thus in January 1974, at the
Eighth Regional Congress ofthe Ba' ath Party, the Political Report observed
that in the revolution of February 1963 'blood was shed freely' and that
'this time power must be taken over without such bloodletting as would
spoil the image and divert the course of the Revolution' .78 The brutality
that marked the coup was well reported at the time. 79 Concentration camps
and torture centres were set up, and the National Guard roamed the streets
making arrests, beating suspects, and carrying out arbitrary executions.
Batatu has highlighted the torture chambers in the Baghdad Qasr al-Nihayah
(Palace of the End), used for detention and interrogation since the end of
the monarchy.so Later mass graves were discovered where prisoners had
been buried alive. The main targets of the persecution were the leaders
of the trade unions and other leftist democratic bodies, such as the Iraqi
Women's League, the General Union of Students of the Iraqi Republic (the
GUSIR), and the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP). There is some evidence that
the American CIA was involved in the mass slaughter of the communists.
The Ba'athist leader Michel Aflaq had commented in an interview that
'Communist Parties will be banned and suppressed with the utmost severity
in any country where the Ba'ath Party comes to power' 8 I - and this was
clearly a posture to which the United States was not entirely unsympathetic.
Mohamed Heikal later commented on the authority of King Hussein of
Jordan that 'an American espionage service' (almost certainly the CIA) had
conveyed to the Iraqi Ba'ath Party the names and addresses of Iraqi com-
munists. 82 The Ba'athist National Guard, thus briefed by US spies, carried
out mass arrests and summary executions. The ICP later claimed that some
five thousand Party members had been killed, either resisting the fascist
coup or in the subsequent terror witch-hunts from house to house. Such
claims were confirmed by other sources. 83 Many ofthe killings were carried
out with the utmost brutality; for example, Husain Ahmed al-Rahdi, the first
secretary of the ICP, was tortured for fifteen days in the Qasr al-Nihayah
dungeons, before being crushed to death. The regime announced on
7 March 1963 that his 'execution' had taken place after a trial (that had
never taken place).
The brutalities of the Ba'athist regime aroused international protests.
Committees were set up to protect human rights in Iraq, including a British
group chaired by Lord Chorley, with the Labour MP William Griffiths as
its secretary and the novelist Ethel Mannin as treasurer; and including
228 The History of Iraq
committees set up in France and Italy. Iraqi workers struggled in impossible
circumstances to resist the Ba'athist takeover, as did the Kurdish people,
themselves now subjected to a programme of genocide. On 10 June 1963
the Ba'aths declared all-out war on the Kurds, with tanks and aircraft sent
to raze Kurdish villages and to kill hundreds of men, women and children.
The military governor of Northern Iraq issued an uncompromising state-
ment: 'We warn all inhabitants of villages in the provinces of Kirkuk,
Sulaimaniya and Arbil against sheltering any criminal or insurgent and
against helping them in any way whatsoever. We shall bomb and destroy
any village if firing comes from anywhere near it against the army, the
police, the National Guards or the loyal tribeS.'84 Despite such repression
the new regime was insecure: divisions within the ruling Council soon
tore the leadership apart and the new Ba'athist regime collapsed.
The regime had tried to consolidate its position by expanding the Na-
tional Guard; several thousand young men, tempted by the prospect of
sharing in Ba'athist power, were quickly enrolled, but they were no more
than - in the words of an Iraqi communist leader - 'adolescents befuddled
by jingoistic propaganda, declassed elements and all sorts of riffraff. The
Iraqi army soon came to regard the National Guard as a serious threat to
its own position. There were moreover international tensions that were
working to destabilise the young Ba' athist regime. The Syrian Ba' ath Party,
encouraged by the success of its Iraqi counterpart, launched a coup in
March 1963 against the parliamentary regime in Damascus, again with
the support of Nasserite army officers. With the Ba'ath movement (the-
oretically) committed to Arab unity, talks began in Cairo in April with a
view to expanding the scope of pan-Arabism. However, Nasser had been
forced to witness the collapse of the UAR when Syria seceded in 1961, and
he now had no interest in propping up a Ba'athist expansion that might
threaten his own position. The protracted talks served to discredit the
Ba'ath negotiators whom Cairo Radio depicted as inexperienced adoles-
cents manipulated by the sinister Michel Aflaq. Soon it was clear that such
discussions, far from expanding Ba'athist power, would serve only to
weaken the new Iraqi regime.
Throughout the summer of 1963 tensions grew in the Iraqi Ba'ath: the
National Guard continued to antagonise the army, and political differences
in the ruling Council were exacerbated in regard to both domestic and
international policies. The scene was set for the overthrow of yet another
Iraqi regime.
On 18 November 1963 the Iraqi army, including some disaffected Ba'ath
officers, launched a successful coup. As was the pattern, tanks were sta-
tioned at strategic points in Baghdad and suspected supporters of the regime
From Monarchy to Republic 229
were arrested. The headquarters of the National Guard were hit by rockets,
and the new Ba'athist leadership, only recently appointed, was rounded up.
All political parties were banned, fresh levels of press censorship were
imposed, and a new military regime began consolidating its power. The
discredited NCRC was abolished, and a National Revolutionary Council
(NRC) put in its place. The new council quickly assigned powers to the
flexible Abdul Salaam Arif, formerly president of the NCRC; and, trying
to emulate Nasser's rallying of mass support, Arif created a new Iraqi
Arab Socialist Union, which would contain all the previous political parties.
As part of its new socialist programme the Arif government nationalised
all banks, insurance, steel, cement, tobacco, food, tannery and construc-
tion companies. Such dramatic moves did little to solve the Kurdish
problem, to improve the ailing economy, or to resolve the continued divi-
sions between the Ba'athists and the pro- and anti-Nasserites. Ahmad
Hasan al-Bakr, the former Ba'athist premier, was assigned the rank of
ambassador at the ministry of Foreign Affairs; and the Nasserites, heartened
by the collapse of the former Ba'athist regime, made further efforts to
achieve unity with Egypt. Soon links were being proposed between the
prestigious Arab Socialist Union in Egypt and Arirs new Iraqi Arab Social-
ist Union. The jails remained full of political prisoners, many of them now
tortured at the hands of the Public Directorate for Security. On 29 April
1964 a Provisional Constitution was announced: it failed to end the State
of Emergency and stated that there would be a three-year transition period
before the return to normality. The prime minister assumed the powers of
the Military Governor General, the military courts became State Security
Courts, and the premier was also granted powers to suspend all civil laws.
A military regime, albeit one of a different complexion, was again con-
solidating its position. The Ba'ath's first attempt at government in Iraq
had lasted nine months.
In September 1965 the pro-Nasser premier Brigadier Abdul al-Razzaq
attempted a coup against President Arif, with the aim of seeking immediate
unity with Egypt; the attempt failed and Razzaq fled to Cairo to be granted
political asylum. It was now thought useful to have a civilian premier, and
on 21 September Abdul al-Rahman al-Bazzaz was appointed prime minis-
ter, despite his suspected links with reactionary supporters of the monarchy.
Bazzaz then attempted to move the Iraqi economy to the right, encouraged
joint ventures with foreign companies for the exploitation of raw materials
and making some efforts to dismantle the public sector. The hesitant steps
to distribute land to the peasants were abandoned, while massively in-
creased compensation was paid to the large landlords. Arif remained pres-
ident and commander-in-chief until he was killed in a helicopter crash
230 The History of Iraq
on 13 April 1966, whereupon, after a brief power struggle, his brother
Abdul aI-Rahman Arif became president, defeating the Iraqi nationalist
Uqaili. The emergence of the new Arif, altogether a less colourful figure
than his brother, encouraged Razzaq to attempt yet another coup, again
unsuccessfully. Bazzaz was dismissed as premier in August, to be followed
by a procession of military governments keen to co-operate with foreign
companies intent on securing economic advantage in Iraq. In March 1967
Arif himself became prime minister before handing over to Tahir Yahya,
but such moves did little to preserve the Arif regime: in Jul)' 1968 two
coups in rapid succession toppled Arif and again the Ba' athists were
in power, this time to stay.
On 17 July 1968 a coup was staged by General Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr,
supported by Michel Aflaq and Saddam Hussein. Arif was allowed to go
into exile, and the prime minister was put on trial. Within a month Bakr
had sacked his entire cabinet for its 'reactionary tendencies', appointed
himself prime minister and commander-in-chief, and selected a new cabinet
of Ba'athist radicals. In one view the new regime 'prepared itself for its
task of containing and defeating any attempt at popular revolt and true
democratic changes' .85 Now Bakr was ruling without a parliament, at the
same time stirring up feeling against Westerners, many of whom were
expelled from the country. Iraqis with Western wives were purged from
government service, and a number of former Iraqi cabinet ministers were
arrested as 'counter-revolutionary leaders'. Bazzaz was arrested and show
trials were held; following the most notorious of these, fourteen men - nine
of them Jews - were publicly executed and their bodies put on public
display. By August 1969 about fifty 'spies' and 'counter-revolutionaries'
had been executed, many of them Muslim Arabs, as a warning to opponents
of the regime. Ordinary citizens were encouraged to attend the public
executions: some 200,000 people attended the hanging of the fourteen
'counter-revolutionaries', with Bakr and other leaders making violent
anti-Zionist speeches against the backdrop of the corpses dangling from
the gallows.
The Ba'athists remained fiercely hostile to any attempt to introduce
political democracy. A new Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) im-
posed a total monopolisation of all media, and arbitrarily introduced laws
that facilitated an extension of state terror; ordinary people, mere suspects
who were often innocent victims, could be arrested, tortured and executed,
with no recourse to law and no chance to broadcast their plight in public.
Now the Iraqi leadership was partly 'Tikrit'; that is, many of the key
government posts were occupied by Bakr's relatives who, like him, came
From Monarchy to Republic 231
from the village of Tikrit. Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti, from a Tikrit peasant
family, was second-in-command of the Ba'ath Party, its assistant secretary
general and also vice-president of the Revolutionary Command Council.
Working closely with Bakr, Saddam now conspired to impose the Ba'ath
will on the other political factions of the RCC, and on the country as a
whole.
Efforts were made to project Ba'athist rule as the will of the people: the
concept of 'popular democracy' was advertised, a doctrine which in prac-
tice meant no more than one-party rule supported by a network of terrorist
organisations used to suppress all political opposition, including even mod-
erate dissent within the ranks of the Ba'athist Party itself. The 'National
Security' apparatus, working with such bodies as the Green Brassards, a
specially organised militia, imposed a system of state terror to discourage
any potential threats to the regime. Throughout 1969 and 1970 there were
frequent public executions:
For eight hours on the day of the hangings, the police virtually handed
over central Baghdad to the youths. Directed by Ba'th party commissars
they erected the gibbets in flower beds, patrolling the approach roads,
controlled the tens of thousands of watchers and chanted for more
executions. Each of the three soldiers among the executed had a bandage
on an ankle or wrist; the joints were so clearly misshapen that they
had clearly been broken. 86
The leaders of the 1958 Iraqi revolution knew well the importance of oil
to the national economy. One of the first statements ofthe National Council
of the Revolutionary Command (NCRC) on Baghdad radio was designed
to reassure foreign firms. 'The new movement will work to increase our
financial potential and guarantee that oil will continue to be exported.' The
foreign oil companies in Iraq would be allowed to continue their operations:
there were no thoughts yet of a socialist expropriation of foreign assets.
Soon however there were moves to restrict the unfettered freedoms of
foreign organisations in Iraq. In December 1961 the famous Law 80 limited
the concession rights of the Iraq Petroleum Company to the area it was
currently exploiting, reserving all rights in the rest of the country to the
Iraqi state. Two months earlier, talks between the Kassem government and
the IPC had broken down, and there was no doubt that the Company would
oppose the new Law. The IPC decided to restrict oil production in Iraq to
put pressure on the government through stagnant oil revenues, but 'Law 80
proved to be an irreversible step. Its popUlarity with the Iraqi people was
such that the Ba'ath did not dare to try to rescind it'.9J An interim compro-
mise encouraged IPC to increase production, with the result that 1963
revenues were more than ten per cent higher than those for the previous
year.
Iraqi oil resources had long been of interest to foreign companies. In
Ottoman days the Turkish Grand Vizier had promised the Turkish Petro-
leum Company - formed in 1914 by British, German and Dutch interests-
that it would be allowed to exploit Iraq's oil deposits. At the end of the First
World War, French interests acquired the German share, an arrangement
ratified in 1925 by the pro-British Iraqi government. Pressure from the US
State Department resulted in a 23.75 per cent share being allocated to an
American group. In 1929 the TPC became the IPC, and a final concession
was signed in 1931, just before the close of the British mandate. Iraqi
resentment of foreign control of a vital national asset grew, with 'the first
demands for nationalisation heard in the early 1950s' .92 Iraq remained
vulnerable to the policies of the foreign companies, and to external political
events. In 1956 the Suez crisis drastically affected Iraqi oil revenue: on
31 October the Canal was closed and the Syrian government, protest-
ing at the tripartite invasion of Egypt, stopped the flow of oil from Kirkuk
to the Mediterranean. Such events, coupled with the relatively low invest-
ment in the Iraqi economy, meant that successive Iraqi governments had
little room for manoeuvre in confrontation with foreign interests. The
From Monarchy to Republic 235
Kassem regime was the first to seek a reduction in the power of the oil
companies.
The government of Nuri aI-Said had been negotiating with the IPC, but
little headway had been made; the July revolution gave a new impetus to
Iraqi demands for increased revenue from the oil resource. Negotiations
continued in circumstances of growing tension, with frequent breaks and
resumptions, until in 1960 the confrontation was aggravated by the decision
of the Basra Petroleum Company (an IPC subsidiary) to stop production
at Rumeila as a protest against an increase in port dues. This was one of a
number of events that contributed to the passing of Law 80, a dramatic
move to cut back the power of the oil companies to exploit Iraqi resources.
However, the new law failed to address other contentious issues: the 50-50
profit-sharing arrangement, the exploitation of natural gas, and the Iraqi
demand for a 20 per cent share in IPC capital. Such matters, and foreign
efforts to achieve amendments to Law 80, were to remain in dispute for
the next eleven years. In February 1964 the Iraqi government created the
Iraq National Oil Company (INOC), now legally in charge of 'all phases
of the oil industry, including exploration and prospecting, production,
transportation, refining, storage and distribution of crude oil, oil products
and petrochemicals' .93 But it was one thing to enact laws authorising
INOC activities, quite another to ensure that such intentions were realised.
The IPC group continued to ignore the INOC provisions, just as it tried
to ignore what it regarded as the concession expropriations of 1961.
Following the 1958 revolution the new Iraqi regime had helped to radicalise
the Arab oil-producing states and to create OPEC (the Organisation of
Petroleum Exporting Countries) in 1960. Now the scene was set for a
further confrontation with the foreign companies.
In July 1967, during the regime of (the second) President Arif, the Iraqi
government enacted legislation to prohibit INOC from granting 'conces-
sions or the like' as a means of developing oil in any part of the country.
Then in 1969, as a way of outflanking the Western corporations, the Iraqis
turned to the Soviet Union as a route to the development of the promising
North Rumeila field; two agreements were concluded, one between Iraq
and the USSR and one between INOC and the Soviet Machine Export
Organisation. These deals outraged Western interests, causing IPC to threaten
to take legal action to prevent the selling of crude oil from North Rumeila,
and to reduce output from Kirkuk (and so to cut Iraqi revenue) in contraven-
tion of an earlier agreement. The Iraqi government responded on I June
1972 by nationalising the Iraq Petroleum Company, though at that time the
two subsidiaries - the Mosul Petroleum Company and the Basra Petroleum
236 The History of Iraq
Company - were not affected. In the event the IPC had no choice but to
accept this situation. It accepted the expropriation of the Kirkuk producing
area and surrendered the Mosul company, at the same time paying Iraq
$141 million of outstanding debts on the understanding that the Basra
company would retain its oil concession. Seven months later the Iraq
government nationalised BPC in protest at the support given by the Dutch
and US governments to Israel during the June 1973 Arab-Israeli war. Oil
from North Rumeila began to flow in April 1972.
Now Iraq had secured considerable economic advantages. The IPC might
have expected the unqualified support of the Dutch, British and US govern-
ments but it was acknowledged that there was 'some obvious validity in the
Iraqi claims against the IPC'94 and moreover there were rapidly changing
geopolitical conditions in the Middle East. These factors combined to
encourage Western governments to urge IPC to reach an accommodation
with Iraq. The Iraqi regime had at last won some freedom of manoeuvre: it
had untrammelled access to its own resources, it could make deals with
anyone it wished, and in particular it was now part of international arrange-
ments whereby the oil-producing nations had 'unilateral rights to take
whatever decisions they liked on ownership, production and price without
reference to the oil companies' .95 It is not difficult to see how such circum-
stances generated an abiding resentment in the Western countries that only
a short time before had been complacent hegemonic powers in the region.
In 1973, during the turmoil that followed the nationalisation of IPC,
Iraq's oil reserves were assessed at 31.5 billion barrels; with an estimate
in the early 1980s suggesting reserves of up to 35 billion barrels, on the
basis of new fields discovered in the late 1970s.96 The INOC estimated
Iraq's oil reserves in 1983 at 59 billion barrels, and then at 100 billion
barrels, after identifying further fields for development. 97 Such resources,
even if somewhat optimistically assessed, plus the nation's mineral wealth,
'the vast tracts of land to be reclaimed, the big rivers to be harnessed, and
above all the human resources' should facilitate national development 'to
benefit every member of an even bigger population' - all brought about
by 'the democratic and peace-loving government that the Iraqi people
sooner or later will give themselves' .98 Until that happy time Iraq was forced
to accept the political contribution of President Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti.
7 Into the Era of Saddam
In the fourteenth century the Mongol hordes of Tamerlane swept across
Mesopotamia, destroying cities and slaughtering entire populations. In 1394,
at the small town of Tikrit on the Tigris river, a hundred miles north of
Baghdad, the Mongols erected a memorial pyramid with the skulls of
their slaughtered victims. I The fortress of Tikrit - Edward Gibbon's 'im-
pregnable fortress of independent Arabs'2 - had fallen to the invaders,
but the reputation of the town lived on. Here it was that Saladin was born
in 1138. Here it was, some eight centuries later, that Saddam Hussein
was born.
Early Life
237
238 The History of Iraq
same but his stepfather had no wish to be deprived of a menial hand; it was
much better to have Saddam continue to steal farm livestock which could
then be resold. But this situation did not last; aged ten, Saddam arrived at
his uncle's house carrying a gun, though it is not known whether Ibrahim
had thrown him out or whether Saddam had simply run away. In any event,
his uncle Khairallah, a fervent Arab nationalist (and also a Nazi sympa-
thiser), enrolled Saddam in the local primary school.
There is no doubt that Khairallah, himself a schoolteacher at that time,
wielded considerable influence over Saddam. Khairallah had been cashiered
out of the Iraqi army for supporting the Rashid Ali coup in 1941, leaving
him with an abiding hatred of Britain and what he perceived as Western
imperialism. Saddam, inspired by photographs of Khairallah in army uni-
form, desperately wanted to become a soldier but by the time he was sixteen
it was clear that his poor school grades would keep him out of the prestig-
ious Baghdad Military Academy, an institution set up and run largely by
the British. Already Saddam was learning to be self-reliant in the brutal
environment of the streets, and subsequently his lack of a formal military
education came to seem less important than his natural toughness and -
noted by his official biographer - his love of guns. It is said that the young
Saddam was often mocked for being fatherless and that he took to carry-
ing an iron bar to protect himself against attack. S And according to exiled
Iraqi observers (perhaps not the most disinterested sources), Saddam used
to enjoy heating the bar and then using it to stab passing animals. Later,
against such testimony, Saddam was to reveal his love for his horse, com-
menting on the grim reality that 'a relationship between man and animal
can at times be more affectionate, intimate, and unselfish than relations
between two human beings'.6 When his horse died, Saddam is said to have
been so distraught that his hand became paralysed for more than a week. 7
In 1955 Saddam, then aged eighteen, followed his uncle to Baghdad and
enrolled at the Karkh high school. These were turbulent times and Saddam
was soon finding political intrigue more attractive than schoolwork. Nasser,
the great hero of Arab nationalism, was buying huge quantities of Soviet
arms; and events were already leading towards the nationalisation of the
Suez Canal and the consequent tripartite military attack on Egypt. In 1956
Saddam was involved in an abortive coup attempt against the pro-British
Iraqi monarchy; and the next year, aged twenty, he joined the Ba'athists. At
that time the Ba'ath Party had a mere 300 members and there were many
competing nationalist organisations. Iraq had recently joined the Baghdad
Pact, under prompting from Britain, and increasingly the Ba'athists were
encouraged to view Egypt as a rival state, a competitor for the soul of
pan-Arabi sm. In 1958 the non-Ba'athist nationalist faction led by General
Into the Era of Saddam 239
Abdul Karim Kassem managed to overthrow King Feisal II, and the Ba' athists
saw their chance for power. A hit team - of which Saddam Hussein was a
member - machine-gunned Kassem' s car in broad daylight (Saddam had
already murdered a pro-Kassem communist in Tikrit). The attack was a
failure, though keen hagiographers have made what they can of it.
In the official film, Aliyam Altawilah ('The Long Days'), made as a non-
fiction dramatisation to depict the heroic deeds of Saddam Hussein, the
attack on Kassem is shown as a failure - after all, Kassem had survived
the hit - but one which added greatly to the glory of Saddam. Here he was
portrayed as a bold and heroic figure, unflinching as a comrade uses a razor
blade to dig a bullet out of his leg. Saddam later commented to an Egyptian
journalist that he had instructed the director to make the film 'didactic,
truthful and historically accurate, as well as accessible to the majority of
viewers'. The journalist replied that the film 'certainly meets that criterion,
except for one scene - when your comrade cuts into your leg using a razor
blade to get the bullet out. The actor who was playing your part only
grimaces. I think he should scream in pain. It would be more realistic and
show people that you, as a human being, have physically suffered' . Saddam,
keen to advertise his heroic qualities, then commented: 'I didn't think it
was realistic either. I wanted the director to reshoot the scene because
I remember the day when it happened. I did not grimace or move an inch
until the bullet was out.'8
The biographies differ on the point. One suggests that Saddam fainted
for some minutes while the bullet was pulled out with a pair of scissors;
another that he was unconscious for only a few seconds; and another
testimony, from the doctor present at the time, reveals that there was no
bullet. 9 Other Ba'athists wounded in the attempted assassination of
Kassem, some seriously, have received little mention.
Saddam was then forced to flee. He disguised himself as a Bedouin
tribesman, swam the Tigris, stole a donkey, and journeyed across the desert
to Syria - where he may have expected a sympathetic welcome from fellow
Ba'athists. Soon however he left Damascus for Egypt, where he was ar-
rested twice in violent affrays (and threatened with deportation) and where
in 1961 he entered the Faculty of Law at Cairo University. At that time he
was given an allowance by the Arab Interest Bureau of the Egyptian
Mukhabarat and lived comfortably in the Nile-bank quarter of Dukkie.
Saddam failed to qualify in law from the University, but some years later
was awarded a degree at Baghdad University when he turned up with a
well-armed bodyguard to take the examination.1O Equipped in this fashion
with first one degree then a second, Saddam later felt himself well able
to comment on legislative and other legal matters.
240 The History of Iraq
In 1962, still in Cairo, he decided to marry his cousin, Sajida Talfah,
whom he had known since childhood. With surprising attention to custom
he contacted Ibrahim, asking him to approach Khairallah on his behalf to
ask for his daughter's hand. In the circumstances Khairallah had little
option but to give his consent and the marriage took place in Iraq in early
1963. In the wedding photograph Saddam, without a moustache, looks
happy and relaxed; there is little hint in this picture of the sinister and brutal
personality that was to emerge at the apex of Iraqi politics in the years
ahead. Saddam's first son, Udai, was born a year later.
The eventful year of 1963 had also seen the murder of Kassem: this time
the Ba' athists were successful. Saddam himself had been growing increas-
ingly restless in Cairo. His allowance was often delayed and he was watched
and sometimes harassed by the security services. Once, when Saddam was
detained, it was suggested that he was implicated in the murder of another
Iraqi political exile; and that he was maintaining politically unacceptable
links with foreign powers (even with the Americans). 11 Such circumstances
did little to encourage Saddam to remain in Cairo; and the death of Kassem
gave further incentive for a return to Baghdad. For several days there had
been battles in the streets of the Iraqi capital between Kassem and his
supporters, including the communists, and the Ba'athist militia, the Na-
tional Guard. One estimate suggests that between 1500 and 5000 people
were killed in three days of fighting, after which there followed house-to-
house searches for communists. 12 Sports clubs, cinemas, private houses
and an entire section of Kifah Street were requisitioned by the Ba'athists to
serve as prisons and local headquarters. Batatu, relying on official govern-
ment sources, has written: 'The Nationalist Guard's Bureau of Special
Investigation had alone killed 104 persons ... In the cellars of al-Nihayah
Palace, which the Bureau used as its headquarters, were found all sorts
of loathsome instruments of torture, including electric wires with pincers,
pointed iron stakes on which prisoners were made to sit, and a machine
which still bore traces of chopped off fingers. Small heaps of blooded
clothing were scattered about, and there were pools on the floor and stains
over the walls. '13 Saddam had nothing to do with these events, but they
were orchestrated by the political party in which he was to make his career:
there can be no doubt that he was never averse to the pragmatic use ofterror
to achieve political objectives.
When Saddam returned to Baghdad the newly-installed Ba'athists re-
garded him as an outsider. He had been too young, before his flight to Syria,
to build up an Iraqi power base, and his years in Cairo had kept him isolated
from political developments in Baghdad. The party leadership did not
recognise Saddam's membership, and even his earlier involvement in the
Into the Era of Saddam 241
Party Member
Saddam, helped by his Tikriti origins, did not have to wait long before being
accepted into the Ba'ath Party and beginning his speedy rise through the
ranks: already the Tikriti officers group included Herdan al-Tikriti, Mahdi
Amash, Adnan Khairallah (Saddam's brother-in-law) and the powerful
Ahmad al-Bakr. Bakr, one of the Party's most respected military leaders,
soon saw advantage in forming an alliance with Saddam; and it is suggested
that a marriage between Bakr's son and Sajida's sisters, and marriages
between Bakr's daughters and two of her brothers, further helped to propel
Saddam to power. Bakr was by now the Iraqi premier and Mahdi Amash
was serving as the defence minister; and when in 1965 Bakr became
secretary-general of the Party Saddam continued to cultivate his Tikriti
*Saddam Hussein has been rightly condemned for his use of torture. It should not be
assumed however that the various anti-Iraq states are innocent in this regard. There are copious
reports - from Amnesty Interoational and other bodies - exposing the use of torture in such
states as Syria, Turkey, Egypt, Israel and Saudi Arabia; and the US also has not been averse
to using torture to further its political objectives. For example, in the notorious US-orches-
trated Phoenix programme in Vietnam some 20,000 Vietnamese peasants were systematically
tortured and then killed. Thus an American military adviser, quoted by Noam Chomsky (The
Chomsky Reader, 1987, p. 281) stated that 'naturally we kill and torture many Vietcong'. It is
now generally acknowledged that the US has funded and trained torturers throughout Latin
America and elsewhere. Thus in her copiously researched Cry of the People (Penguin, 1980,
p. xxiii) Penny Lernoux comments: 'The other integral part of the story of the human rights
struggle in Latin America is the verified role of the US Defense Department, the CIA and
corporate industry ... on many occasions Catholic bishops and priests, including US citizens,
have been tortured or murdered by organisations funded or trained by the US government,
sometimes with the direct connivance of US agencies.' And she declares (p. 157): 'The
sickness that has engulfed Latin America, that endorses torture and assassination as routine
... was to a significant extent bred in the board-rooms and military institutes of the United
States.'
242 The History of Iraq
Early Repression
On 17 July 1968 the Ba'athists, with the inevitable army support, made
their successful coup. Four senior officers in the Arif regime had been
approached for help: Colonel Abdul al-Razzaz Nayif, the head of military
intelligence; Colonel Ibrahim Abdul aI-Rahman Daud, the commander of
the Republican Guard; Colonel Sadun Ghaydan, the commander of the
Republican Guard's armoured brigade; and Colonel Hammad Shihab, the
commander of the Baghdad garrison. Ghaydan was already sympathetic to
the Ba'ath cause, and Shihab's sympathies were reinforced by family
connections (he was one of Bakr's cousins); while the others - Nayif and
Daud - were prepared to look to their own advantage (Nayif asked for
the premiership, and Daud the Ministry of Defence, as the price for their
support). Saddam disliked the idea of pressure from army officers but
was quick to see the benefits of a tactical accommodation; he declared:
'I am aware that the two officers have been imposed on us and that they
want to stab the Party in the back in the service of some interest or other,
but we have no choice now. We should collaborate with them but see that
they are liquidated immediately during or after the revolution. And
I volunteer to carry out this task.' 16 The Party proceeded with the coup
d'etat, the Arif regime was toppled, and on its ruins was established the
second Iraqi Ba'athist government.
General Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr became president and commander-in-
chief, and remained secretary-general of the Party and chairman of its
244 The History of Iraq
Revolutionary Command Council. Saddam became deputy chainnan of the
Council, and was given control of all internal security matters; Saddam's
secret training schools had yielded hundreds of graduates for the security
services, including his half-brothers, Barzan, Sabawi and Wathban (Ali
Hassan ai-Majid, Saddam's cousin and another training-school graduate,
was to become involved in the suppression of the Kurds and the invasion
of Kuwait). President Arif had been calmly infonned by General Hardan
aI-Tikriti that 'you are no longer President. The Ba'ath has taken control
ofthe country. If you surrender peacefully, I can guarantee that your safety
will be assured'; and a few hours later Arif was flying to exile in England.
The troublesome Colonel Nayif was invited to Bakr's office after lunch
while Sadoun Shakir, one of Saddam's childhood friends from Tikrit, and
ten bodyguards blocked off the corridors from Nayifs men. It is said that
Saddam then started beating Nayif about the head with a revolver until he
broke down: 'I've got four children. Why are you doing this to me?'
Saddam replied: 'You and your children will be fine if you leave Iraq and
accept an ambassadorship.' After some talk, an honorary position as am-
bassador to Morocco was agreed, whereupon Saddam insisted on driving
Nayif to the airport, passing through army checkpoints manned by Nayif s
men: 'Just act nonnally. Don't forget: the pistol is inside my coat."7 Soon
after Nayif had been despatched to virtual exile, Saddam sent agents from
military security to keep him under surveillance; in July 1978 Saddam's
assassins shot him dead on a London street. Daud was instructed to head a
military mission in Jordan; in 1970 he was retired from his position and
forbidden from ever returning to Iraq. By the end of July 1968 the new
Bakr regime had consolidated its power throughout the country. The admin-
istration was purged and Bakr supporters put in key positions: Herdan
aI-Tikriti was made Minister of Defence, with Abdul ai-Karim aI-Shaykhli
the minister for Foreign Affairs. Saddam Hussein, as RCC deputy chair-
man, now held the second most important post in the ruling hierarchy.
It is easy to see why Bakr wanted Saddam as his deputy. The Tikriti
connection was important, Saddam had demonstrated his ruthless compe-
tence, and he was not tainted by excessive loyalty to the army faction (the
army was helpful in making a coup but disturbing to a civilian regime
hoping to retain power). Saddam had contributed little to the primary coup
that had brought Bakr to power but, using his command of the security
apparatus, he had enabled the Ba'athists to make their 'second revolution'
throughout the country, securing the regime and enabling the Party 'to rule
rather than merely reign' .18 Aged thirty-one, Saddam was now in a position
to consolidate his own hold on the Party apparatus, until the time when
he would be equipped to take over the Presidential Palace.
Into the Era of Saddam 245
The new regime had not been established on a wave of popular feeling.
The short-lived Ba'athist regime of 1963 was remembered with fear and
resentment, and the Iraqi people had no expectation that the new govern-
ment would do much to improve the quality of their lives. Of the new
leaders only Bakr was a national figure, Saddam himself well prepared for
the time being to operate quietly in the background. Even the Ba'athist
claim, probably exaggerated, of Party membership in 1968 standing at
around 5000 does not suggest that the regime had a strong popular base. 19
And it is also significant that by the late 1960s, despite the considerable
Shi'ite majority in Iraq, the Ba'ath had become a virtual Sunni party. It was
soon clear that the Bakr regime had only a small popular base and ruled
through minority factions, a situation maintained only by Saddam's control
of the state security apparatus. Now the Jihaz Haneen was the dominant
security organ, with Saddam Hussein the only person who could authorise
the issue of firearms to Party members. The character of the new regime
was soon plain for all to see.
On 9 October 1968, barely three months after the coup, the regime
claimed that it had uncovered a major Zionist spy network. Fifth columnists
and other 'enemies of the people' were denounced in vitriolic speeches
before stage-managed crowds of tens of thousands. On 5 January 1969
seventeen 'suspects' were put on trial.
In fact Saddam had carefully prepared a plot to label and eliminate men
he wanted purged. Two years earlier an Israeli agent killed in the Hotel
Shattura in Baghdad had been found in possession of an incriminating
notebook containing the names of leading Iraqis, including Sadun Ghaydan,
then the commander of the Presidential Guard's tank battalion, and Shafiq
al-Dragi, head of the Mukhabarat. When the notebook resurfaced in 1968
it included further names, those of men whom Saddam wanted eliminated
from the scene. Sadiq Jafer, a trusted member of the Jihaz Haneen, then
delivered deliberately incriminating letters, obvious 'plants', to the homes
of the targeted men, and immediately afterwards agents of the Mukhabarat
arrived to make the arrests. Another Jihaz Haneen member, Salah Omar
Ali al-Tikriti, was charged with the task of ensuring that the investiga-
tions reached the required conclusion.
On 27 January 1969 fourteen convicted 'spies', eleven of them Jewish,
were hanged in public, their bodies left dangling before hundreds of thou-
sands of spectators in Baghdad's Liberation Square. The public turned the
public executions into a national holiday with full radio and television
coverage. The Ba'ath Party helpfully organised the transport of some one
hundred thousand 'workers and peasants' from outside Baghdad so that
the appreciative masses could join in the festivities. President Bakr and his
246 The History of Iraq
deputy, Saddam Hussein, drove round Liberation Square in an open car,
members of Shabybabt AI-Ba'ath (a Ba'ath student group) lining the route,
as a happy prelude to the executions. Entire families picnicked in the
Square as the hangings began. The event lasted for a full twenty-four hours
while Bakr made anti-Zionist and anti-imperialist speeches with the corpses
dangling behind him. The Egyptian newspaper al-Ahram commented that
'The hanging of fourteen people in the public square is certainly not a
heartwarming sight, nor is it the occasion for organising a festival'. To the
limited international response Baghdad Radio retorted: 'We hanged spies,
but the Jews crucified Christ.' And Saddam Hussein later commented
that the men were hanged 'to teach the people a lesson'. Anyone thinking
of organising a coup should think again; this time the Ba'athists were here
to stay.
Saddam continued to purge dissident elements: Jews, Muslims, anyone
who might threaten Ba'athist power or his own position. Non-Ba'athists
were expelled from state institutions, 'plots' were suppressed, and Saddam
gradually tightened his hold on the state machinery. As his power increased,
so his reputation for brutality grew. Thus a Shi'ite survivor of Qasr al-
Nihayah has commented on how Saddam himself mercilessly killed one
of his victims: 'He came into the room, picked up Dukhail and dropped
him into a bath of acid. And then he watched while the body dissolved. '20
Opponents of Saddam may be well disposed to believe such an account,
which may well be true; or it may be black propaganda. Another tale,
against impossible to verify, shows Saddam in a different light. The Israeli
Nairn Tawina was jailed in the 1970s as a 'spy', but surprisingly released
one day by Saddam: 'Do not touch this man. He is a good man. I know him.
Let him go.' Years later, Tawina realised why he had been treated in
this manner: he remembered that Saddam had been the youth from whom
he had bought cigarettes on a Baghdad street comer many years before, and
whom he had often tipped generously. Saddam had remembered and so
saved Tawina from further torment in Qasr.21 This episode, albeit slender
evidence, has been taken to Hlustrate that Saddam is capable of gratitude;
and that he does not engage in purges for their own sake. We may conclude
that there is much more weighty evidence to indicate the character of the
Saddam-sustained regime.
A 'revolutionary court' was set up to deal with 'spies, agents, and
enemies of the people'. Here military officers with no legal training were
required to hear charges of 'conspiracy to overthrow the government' and
'espionage on behalf of the United States, Israel or Iran'. Key trials were
televised so that the Iraqi people could witness the forced confessions. Thus
Rashid Muslih, a former minister of the interior, publicly admitted that
Into the Era of Saddam 247
he had spied for the CIA, and was duly executed. Some who did not con-
fess - such as Abd aI-Rahman al-Bazzaz, former premier, and Abd al-Aziz
al-Uqayli, former minister of defence - were given long terms of imprison-
ment. 22 Samir aI-Khalil has provided (in a listing citing various sources)
details of 'purges of high-ranking officers, Ba' athist Old Guard and polit-
icians of ministerial or higher rank since July 17, 1968'.23 Here we find
men dismissed from office, imprisoned, exiled, tortured, assassinated and
executed; some three dozen men incarcerated after show trials, murdered in
prison, shot or stabbed to death, killed with their whole families. Saddam
boasted, with good reason, that 'with our Party methods, there is no chance
of anyone who disagrees with us to jump on a couple of tanks and over-
throw the government' .24 The military was now subservient to the Ba'athist
Party, the officer corps under constant surveillance by Saddam's security
services. Then Saddam set about consolidating his power in the civilian
areas of the state hierarchy.
Abdullah Sallum al-Samarrai, the Minister of Culture and Information,
was relieved of all his responsibilities in March 1970, and then despatched
to serve as Ambassador to India; Shafiq al-Kamali, another RCC member,
was expelled from the Council; and, after a confrontation with Saddam,
Salah Umar Ali was similarly sacked from the Council and relieved of all
his ministerial duties. On 28 September 1971 Ammash and Shaykhli were
fired, the latter sent out of harm's way to serve as UN Ambassador. Shaykhli
had long been an intimate friend of Saddam; together they had made the
early attack on Kassem, been exiled in Egypt, imprisoned by Arif, escaped,
and worked for the eventual success of the Party. Now it was obvious, if
anyone had doubted it, that no-one was safe from Saddam if he sensed a
threat to his position. In 1979 Adnan Hussein al-Hamdani, another intimate
associate of Saddam and an influential member of the RCC, was executed.
One of Saddam' s most significant moves in the early 1970s was against
the 'civilian' Abd al-Khaliq al-Samarrai, born in the same year as Saddam
and with considerable Party support; like Shaykhli he was seen as a possible
contender for the leadership of the Party.25 In July 1973 al-Samarrai was
sentenced to a term of imprisonment; six years later, following fresh allega-
tions against him, he was shot. The practical Saddam had thus eliminated
one of the leading theoreticians of the Party, and in this way secured not
only his own position but also the presidency of Bakr whom he still seemed
content to serve. But in June 1973 a fresh challenge was emerging to
confront the Bakr-Saddam leadership. Nadhim Kazzar, the brutal head of
the security services under Saddam, had long resented the Sunni leadership
of the Party and the privileged position of the Tikritis. On one occasion he
recklessly declared that he would 'wipe Tikrit off the map of Iraq' .26
248 The History of Iraq
When the Ba'ath came to power in 1968 the main policy strategy was to
modernise capitalism as a route to prosperity. Iraqi resources had long been
exploited by foreigners and it was assumed that progressive policies would
work to national advantage without the need for wholesale socialist meas-
ures. However, socialist doctrine remained popular in the country and
various accommodations were made with the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP)
internally and with the Soviet Union abroad. The intransigence of the
foreign-owned Iraqi Petroleum Company (IPC) led to its nationalisation by
Law 61 on 1 June 1972, though some members of the Ba'ath leadership
may well have wanted to avoid such a radical measure. The ICP continued
to criticise the undemocratic measures adopted by the Ba' ath leadership,
though at that time the wholesale purges that Saddam would initiate were
scarcely imagined. The National Action Charter, supported by the Ba'ath-
Into the Era of Saddam 251
Communist alliance and signed in July 1973 nominally guaranteed all
political and cultural democratic rights, including freedom of action for
political parties, the social and vocational organisations, the peasants' or-
ganisations, the workers' trade unions, as well as freedom of opinion and
belief, freedom of the press and other basic freedoms. The Charter also
stipulated an ending of the so-called 'transition period' (which had become
an artificial barrier to social and political progress), the 'preparation of
the draft of a permanent constitution', the 'elimination of the emergency
conditions and the establishment of constitutional organs and institutions,
legislative and executive' and the 'implementation of the formula of local
government and elected people's councils in all administrative units of the
Republic of Iraq'. There was also a stipulation for 'an Executive Regional
Authority in the Kurdish region ... ', a pious hope in view of the rapidly
deteriorating relationship between the Ba'athist government and the
Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP). There were frequent military con-
frontations from March 1974 to early 1975, with high casualties on both
sides and the Iraqi army resorting to the use of phosphorous shells. 30
In March 1975 the OPEC heads of state met in Algiers, and there the
Shah of Iran and Saddam Hussein (then still Bakr's deputy) reached an
agreement on the question of border demarcation. The Iraqi government
compromised on the Shatt aI-Arab waterway, now agreeing that the median
line should be recognised as the frontier. A deal was also agreed to 're-
establish security and reciprocal confidence along the length of the common
borders' and to put 'a final end to all infiltration of a subversive character
from either side'. This meant, according to one observer: ' ... an Iraqi
concession over the Shatt aI-Arab border problem ... in return for an
Iranian undertaking to close the Iranian border to the Kurdish insurgents
from Iraq and suspend military aid to them' Y In this way, the Iraqi govern-
ment had further weakened the Kurdish position, and it now felt confident
to claim supremacy over its nominal ICP partners. In violation of the
Charter the Ba' ath claimed to be the 'leading party' in the life of the 'whole
society', after which there was a rapid escalation of persecution of ICP
members. By early 1979, under the growing influence of Saddam Hussein
the concept of one-party rule was the main theme in statements from
Ba'athist leaders. Thus the Party newspaper al-Thawra declared on
10 January 1979 that equality 'of the political parties in the Patriotic Front
is out of the question ... and this means that any other ideologies, opinions
or practices, disguised as socialism, are impermissible'. Saddam com-
mented in February 1979 during a visit to Basra: 'All citizens are Ba' athists,
irrespective of their ethnic origins ... I am entirely confident ... that even
those who are not organised in other political parties feel the need to be
252 The History of Iraq
Ba'athists not only through sympathy and conviction but through their
desire to be organised in the Ba'ath Party.' Two months later the ICP was
acknowledging that the Patriotic Front coalition had been transformed into
'an instrument of the Ba'ath Party'; in June the ICP Central Committee
urged an end to the Ba'ath dictatorship and the creation of a democratic
system of government in Iraq. Later in 1979 communist partisans began
activities in support of the Iraqi Kurds.
The Ba'athist government, despite its nationalisation of the IPC and its
sensitivity to the popularity of socialism, continued to favour the develop-
ment of capitalist economic structures (and the emergence of a wealthy
capitalist bourgeoisie). In the mid-1970s the private economic sector
trebled in size, and there was a rapid growth in the number of private
middlemen (brokers, consultants, contractors and the like) and senior
bureaucrats in the state sector. By 1980, with massive social problems
demanding investment, there were some 700 multimillionaires, mostly
linked in some way to the Ba'ath Party and to its own version of 'socialism'.
In this way an enormous boost had been given to non-productive sectors
of the economy, while the multinational corporations from Japan and the
West continued to look for commercial opportunities in Iraq (diplomatic
relations had been severed with the US at the time of the 1967 Arab-Israeli
Six Day War but this had done nothing to restrict Iraqi-US trade). By the
late 1970s more than 90 per cent of industrial investment was committed
to national capitalist enterprises and foreign multinationals. The Ba'athist
leadership saw nothing in this situation to restrict the development of the
Iraqi economy or to limit Iraqi independence. A principal aim was to protect
Ba'athist power, even if this meant a clear betrayal of earlier egalitarian
commitments.
In 1980 Iraq's oil revenues reached $21.3 billion, an ample amount for
Saddam Hussein ('The Knight', 'The Leader with a Strategic Mind and
Precise Calculations') to strengthen the army and the other state security
organs. With predictable oil wealth for the years ahead there seemed little
need to begin a genuinely socialist development of the national economy.
There was, Saddam perceived, a need for organisational and other changes
to further consolidate his grip on power.
As soon as he became president, Saddam merged several ministries,
replacing eight ministers and creating new posts: one first deputy premier
and five deputy premiers. He moved various family members into key posts
(including one of the deputy premier positions and the post of minister of
the interior). As a tactical move various Kurds were appointed to senior
posts in the Party. Now Saddam and his Tikriti relatives controlled all the
key areas of government, though he contrived to disguise this fact by
Into the Era of Saddam 253
The Iraqi Penal Code specifies in all twenty-four activities that carry the
death penalty.
The strategy of the Iraqi Ba'ath is plain enough: social control is effect-
ively maintained through surveillance, purges, torture and execution; and
through the ubiquitous terror that such things engender in the population. 46
Nor can the Ba'ath's intended victims escape retribution by fleeing Iraq:
Saddam's 'long arm' is no respecter of national boundaries. There is al-
ready a lengthy catalogue of Saddam's victims murdered abroad. For ex-
ample, in January 1988 Said Mahdi aI-Hakim, the popular Shi'ite leader,
was shot dead in a hotel lobby in Khartoum while attending a Muslim
conference. In the same month, Abdullah Ali, an Iraqi businessman, was
murdered by poison in London; and the wife of an Iraqi dissident was
stabbed to death in Oslo. A week later, an Iraqi activist, Kassem Emin,
was found with his throat slit in Turkey.
It is interesting that despite Iraqi terror tactics in Britain the Foreign
Office and Whitehall seemed reluctant to take action. Thus the British
government 'appeared to be prepared to tum a blind eye to Iraq's terrorist
activities on British soil in order to maintain the status quo as far as relations
with Baghdad were concerned'.47 Saddam's invasion of Kuwait was to
change all this, but even when the Observer journalist Farzad Bazoft was
hanged in Baghdad, as late as March 1990, the British authorities seemed
strangely ambivalent (with stories about Bazoft's background in petty crime
appearing in various British newspapers). In February 1990 Iraqi opposition
groups in London wanted to hold a press conference and issue a document
signed by prominent Iraqi dissidents, warning the British public against
the possibility of Iraqi terrorist acts. The Foreign Office urged the oppos-
ition groups not to go ahead since they might damage Anglo-Iraqi relations.
Two months later, during the countdown to the invasion of Kuwait and
with mounting evidence of Iraqi terrorist acts in Britain and elsewhere,
Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd declared in the House of Commons that
it would not be appropriate to sever relations with Baghdad. At that time
the West still regarded Iraq as an important regional power with massive oil
reserves, a useful export market, and a bulwark against the Iranian threat. It
had long been known that Iraq was a terrorist state, at one time a host to
Into the Era of Saddam 259
and supporter of Abu Nidal,48 and still prepared to send assassins around
the world in pursuit of Saddam's enemies. But until its hand was forced in
August 1990 the West, as always, was sensitive most of all to realpolitik
requirements.
Under the Islamic law of the Ottomans women were not regarded as whole
human beings; as in modem Pakistan, a woman's word was reckoned to be
worth half that of a man. In the nineteenth century the Turks introduced
some reforms but their impact was patchy throughout the empire and any
benefits only accrued to upper-class urban women. As late as the 1920s the
Turks, now divested of Iraq, introduced a secular legal system that brought
benefits to women but other regions of the erstwhile empire were no longer
in a position to benefit from such change. The British now ran Iraq under
the terms of the mandate and were keen to minimise the extent of social
reform. Here the ancient Ottoman legal system was not abolished but
merely changed to a small degree, the aim being to avoid any cultural
reforms that might appear unpopular or disruptive. Thus in the case of
women murdered for having 'dishonoured' their families, one colonial
administrator saw the need for a compromise 'between the demands of
civilised and of savage tribal justice' .49 Elsewhere the colonial administra-
tors were keen to point out that 'The Mohammedan of Iraq is naturally
suspicious of any innovation connected with his womenfolk'.50 In 1931 the
British authorities in Iraq declared that education for girls would make them
'unfitted for tribal life .. .',51 though in due course girls were admitted
to government schools, following local demands.
Women were active in the 1920 revolt against the British occupation.
They variously collected donations, carried supplies to the rebels, created a
support group in Baghdad, and took a petition to the British authorities
demanding the release of Iraqi detainees and denouncing their ill-treatment
by the British forces. In the 1920s Iraqi women agitated for increased
educational opportunities, the dropping of the veil, and for recognition as
full citizens. The Women's Rising group, founded by Aswa Zahawi, began
publishing the journal Leila and demanding the right to education and
employment. Such activities led to the inevitable backlash, and with the
collapse of the 1920 rebellion the ambitious women's movement suffered
many reverses (it is useful to remember that at this time women were not yet
enfranchised in Britain). The 1930s saw an upsurge in female agitation, new
women's magazines (such as The Modern Woman and The Arab Woman)
appeared, and the authorities responded with further blocking manoeuvres:
260 The History of Iraq
until as late as 1943 licences were withheld from women's societies, unless
they were non-political charities. The Women's League Against Fascism
was founded after the abortive coup staged by Rashid Ali, and in the
immediate post-war world the possibility of female emancipation through
socialism gained a new impetus. Again, the backlash: women agitators were
arrested and imprisoned, journals were closed down, meetings were banned,
and the burgeoning literacy schools were abolished. In 1948 women took
part in demonstrations, supported strikes, and were shot dead in the streets
- a degree of turmoil that at times seemed to threaten the monarchy itself.
Women were arrested, imprisoned and tortured, but continued to maintain
a political presence in such organisations as the Iraqi Communist Party and
the National Democratic Party.
In 1952 Iraqi women founded the League for the Defence of Women's
Rights, designed to campaign for democracy, national liberation, children's
welfare and women's rights. The pro-British authorities refused to recog-
nise the League, and its members were harassed and arrested. After the
collapse of the monarchy the League was recognised on 29 December 1958
and held its first congress on International Women's Day, 8 March 1959.
When Naziha Dulaimi, the League's president, became Minister for
Municipalities in 1959 she was the first woman cabinet minister in the
Arab world. Membership of the League grew to around 42,000 but with
the growing authoritarianism of the Iraqi regime the League faced in-
creasing difficulties; by the mid-1960s, with growing harassment and phys-
ical assaults, the organisation found it hard to continue its activities and
before long most of the League's branches had closed down. Under the
Ba'ath many League members were arrested and tortured; three members
were condemned to be executed but were reprieved following interna-
tional protest. Today the Ba'ath permits only the well-controlled General
Federation of Iraqi Women (GFIW); membership of any other women's
organisation is a capital offence.
The main task of the GFIW - according to Law 139 promulgated by the
Revolutionary Command Council on 19 December 1972 - is to mobilise
Iraqi women 'in the battle of the Arab nation against imperialism, Zionism,
reactionism and backwardness', an aim that came before 'raising the level
of the Iraqi woman by all possible means'. Emphasis is given to the
importance of marriage, procreation and the family (what Aflaq saw as 'the
nation's basic cell'). GFIW booklets carry Saddam's picture on the first
page, but care is taken to avoid reference to any individual woman by name.
It is clear that the Federation, far from seeking the liberation of women,
is yet another device for the implementation and expansion of Ba'ath
ideology. At the GFIW's third conference, Saddam Hussein spelt out the
Into the Era of Saddam 261
priority: 'an enlightened mother who is educated and liberated can give the
country a generation of conscious and committed fighters' (presumably all
male}; woman should not seek 'bourgeois' emancipation but should find
liberation through 'commitment to the Revolution'; and elsewhere he urged
Iraqi women not to try to show that they can do anything that men can.52
Again the Ba'ath strategy is obvious: women are esteemed to the extent that
they serve an ideological purpose, but there are various constraints on
genuine female emancipation. Advances in employment and education
have been made, but the central Ba'ath intention is to protect the security of
the regime. In one view, the 'cooperation of the GFIW with the security
forces makes a mockery of their propaganda about women's liberation'. 53
By 1980, despite the Ba'athist emphasis on the family role of women,
there were significant identifiable advances in various industrial and pro-
fessional sectors: women accounted for 46 per cent of all teachers, 29 per
cent of physicians, 46 per cent of dentists, 70 per cent of pharmacists, 15 per
cent of accountants, 14 per cent of factory workers, and 16 per cent of
civil servants. It is claimed that in the prestigious Ministry of Oil 37 per
cent of the design staff and 30 per cent of the construction supervisors
were women. The participation of women in the non-agricultural labour
force is estimated to have risen from 7 per cent in 1968 to 19 per cent in
1980. 54 The relevant legislation specified equal pay and opportunity meas-
ures, positive discrimination for hiring in government departments, paid
maternity leave, childcare facilities at the workplace, and a reduced re-
tirement age for female workers. The GFIW, under close Ba'athist super-
vision, helps to ensure that the intentions behind the legislation are realised.
Today the Federation has a branch in each of the provinces of Iraq, with
some 265 subsectnns based in major towns, 755 centres that focus on
the larger villages and city quarters with more than 6000 people, and 1612
liaison committees that extend to all the remaining villages and city quar-
ters. 55 In 1978 amendments to the Code of Personal Status were introduced
to allow certain departures from the traditional aspects of the Islamic law
(sharia). These amendments allowed a judge to overrule a father's wishes
in the case of the early marriage of a daughter; and to severely curtail the
traditional framework of rights held by male kinship groups (uncles, cous-
ins, brothers and so on) over their women. Thus, with the advancement
of women in employment and erosion of patriarchal rights, a measure of
female emancipation was introduced in ways deemed consistent with the
protection of Ba'athist ideology.
Forced marriages have been abolished and the minimum age for mar-
riage has been raised - though it is still relatively easy for a man to gain a
divorce but virtually impossible for a woman. Polygamy is allowed with the
262 The History of Iraq
consent of the first wife, who in any case can be coerced into compliance in
various ways; though it has to be said that there is a discernible move away
from traditional Islamic practice (a fruit of the secular thread in Ba'athist
ideology). In 1977, in a further departure from traditional practice, a law
was enacted to regulate the entry of women into the armed forces, with
women subject to all military regulations, apart from 'what does not con-
form with her nature'. It became possible to appoint a woman an officer if
she had a university degree in a health-related field, a (Law 131) provision
that signalled women's dominant position in the health services. The same
pattern was discernible in the popular militia forces, which by 1982 had
enrolled some 40,000 women. Here, as in other areas where women have
made gains, a seemingly progressive development has to be set against the
broader constraints of a totalitarian society. It still has to be acknowledged
that the various Ba'athist reforms were 'considerably less radical than the
1956 Tunisian Code, for example, or the Shah's family reforms, to say
nothing of Ataturk's radical break with Islamic family law in 1926'.~6
Saddam himself adopted a purely expedient attitude to the advancement
of women in society: there was little of principle here, beyond the need
to secure the regime and to develop its influence as a regional power. Thus
he commented that: 'The unity of the family must be based on congruence
with the central principles of the policies and traditions of the Revolution in
its construction of the new society. Whenever there is a contradiction
between the unity of the family and these new principles, it must be
resolved in favour of the latter.' In short, women's advancement must
not be allowed to threaten the security of the state. Thus the Iraqi woman
must not be advanced in a way that might place her 'in a hostile attitude
to the Revolution'. 57
It further emerged that there was nothing secure in female gains in Iraq.
When the regime was under pressure in the immediate aftermath of the
Iran-Iraq war (see below), Saddam responded by retreating into age-old
patriarchal practices. In a move on 18 February 1990 the RCC decreed
that 'any Iraqi who, on grounds of adultery, purposely kills his mother,
daughter, sister, maternal or paternal aunt, maternal or paternal niece,
maternal or paternal female cousin, shall not be prosecuted' .58 The effect of
such a decree is absolute: any male is authorised to kill any female relative,
since no subsequent female testimony would be allowed to count in the
balance. The Ba'athist regime had improved the law in certain particulars
to free women from the traditional rigours of the sharia, but even such
advances had always to be set against the horrors of a totalitarian regime. 59
But now there was a further crippling constraint: as a ruthless social pallia-
Into the Era of Saddam 263
tive Saddam decided to plunge Iraqi family law back into the darkness
of medieval Islam.
The Kurds, of ancient origins, today occupy parts of Iraq, Iran, Syria,
Turkey, Lebanon and the (erstwhile) Soviet Union. They are a pastoral
nomadic people who - despite frequent historical and modem references to
'Kurdistan' - have never been an internationally-recognised nation or even
united under a single government. Of Indo-European stock, the Kurdish
people are probably the largest ethnic group never to have achieved national
statehood. David McDowall, author of the Minority Rights Group reporf'O
suggests a total of some sixteen million Kurds, though larger estimates have
been given. There are, for example, around 350,000 Kurds working in
Western Europe. The Kurdish people live in an area of about 250,000
square miles (640,000 sq. km). About 80 per cent of them are Sunni
Muslims, with the rest Shi'ite; and they have claimed kinship with the
ancient Medes, one of the founding races of the Persian empire. Their
language, which has many dialects, is related to Persian; though the Turks,
in the past interested in political advantage over a British-occupied Iraq,
have claimed that the Kurds, as 'mountain Turks', have ethnic roots in
Turkey (a claim that is rarely voiced today in the context of the Turkish-
Kurdish war - see Chapter 1). It has been emphasised that there is no
structural relationship between Kurdish and Arabic or between Kurdish and
Turkish (moreover, Semitic Arabic and Altaic Turkish belong to very
different linguistic families). All this tends to confinn that the Kurds are
a well-defined group, with distinct ethnic and linguistic origins.
At the end of the First World War, Kurdish nationalists throughout the
Kurdistan region, encouraged by Woodrow Wilson's famous Fourteen Points
(8 January 1918),* seized the opportunity to press their claims. However,
Britain's main interest lay in the creation of a pliant Iraqi state, a goal that
was assisted in no small measure by manifest divisions among the Kurds
themselves. In the summer of 1920 the Treaty of Sevres, to which Britain
and Turkey were both signatories, recognised the 'independent states' of
Annenia and Kurdistan, but this fonnal recognition was not destined to be
translated into reality. The Sevres tenns, according to which the Kurds
*The Twelfth Point declares that: 'the nationalities now under Turkish rule should ... be
assured ... an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development'.
264 The History of Iraq
Mahabad were also hanged, even though they had given themselves up
to the Iraqi authorities. Barzani and some of his closest followers now
decided that it was no longer safe for them to remain in Iraq; in June he
and six hundred men fled across Turkey and Iran, covering more than
two hundred miles over the mountains, to seek refuge in the Soviet Union.
There they remained until 1958.
An Iraqi branch of the Iranian KDP had been established in Mahabad
in 1946 by Barzani and Hamza Abdullah, an associate who later struggled
to establish a branch of the Party in Iraq, but who in consequence suc-
ceeded in creating an Iraqi KDP; so was formalised a permanent division
between the Iranian and Iraqi segments of the Kurdish political movement.
At this time there was still a branch of the Iranian KDP based at Sulaimaniya
and led by Ibrahim Ahmad. When Mahabad fell he joined the Iraqi KDP
(known in Iraq as the Hizb aI-Party), to be made general secretary in 1951.
Following the 1958 revolution Ahmad sent congratulations to the Free
Officers, and weeks later the new constitution declared that 'Arabs and
Kurds are partners in the Iraqi homeland and their national rights are
recognised within the Iraqi state'. In October, Ahmad went to Prague with
Iraqi passports for Barzani and three of his closest supporters. On 6 October
they returned to Iraq to a rapturous welcome from the Kurds and a cordial
greeting from Prime Minister Abdul Karim Kassem. But the new situation
did not deliver the anticipated fruits.
A struggle for power, centred around the question of whether to join the
UAR, soon developed in the young republic. On this topic the Kurds had
clear views: 'a union of Iraq with Egypt and Syria would scarcely have
helped Kurdish plans since the Kurds in post-revolutionary Syria did not
enjoy even the inadequate recognition of Kurdish linguistic, ethnic and
educational rights which had been afforded to the Kurds in pre-revolution-
ary Iraq' .63 Barzani still managed to give unqualified approval to the Kassem
regime, aided by the clear signs that Kassem was not intending to proceed
with any plans for union. Barzani then ousted Ahmad from the KDP
leadership; and in May 1959, in collaboration with the communists, the
KDP published a left-wing manifesto. However, Barzani - along with
Kassem - soon saw disadvantage in close links with the communists, and
in January 1960 the ICP, unlike the Kurdish Democratic Party, was refused
permission to register as a legal organisation. At the same time it was
emerging that Kassem's commitment to the Kurds was limited, a matter
of pragmatic convenience. The situation deteriorated, from the Kurdish
point of view, and the Kassem regime began harassing the Kurdish leader-
ship: Kurdish leaders were arrested in March 1961; the Kurdish newspapers
were banned; and the KDP was prohibited from holding its annual congress
Into the Era of Saddam 267
in July. And at a time when conflict was beginning between the Kurds and
the Kassem regime there were also tribal confrontations between different
Kurdish groups: what had seemed a route to Kurdish unity and independ-
ence was rapidly degenerating into factional conflict and state harassment.
The Kurds and the central government were in a virtual state of war in 1961,
a state of affairs that continued on and off until 1975.
At times, according in part to other demands on the Iraqi armed forces,
Iraqi aircraft bombed Kurdish villages indiscriminately (much as the British
had done some decades before). Barzani's army, the Pesh Merga ('those
who walk before death'), numbered around 50,000 men; and at the peak
of their success the Kurds controlled all the mountains in northern Iraq,
with Kurdish guerrillas striking as far afield as Mosul, Arbil and Kirkuk,
the main cities of Iraqi Kurdistan. Throughout this period various foreign
powers (Iran, Israel, the Soviet Union and the United States), seeing ad-
vantage in the situation, offered assistance to the Kurds. Casualties between
1960 and 1970 were estimated at 9000 military dead and 100,000 civilian
dead (though lower estimates have been given). The Kurds had struggled
for more than a decade, at great cost, and it was not clear that anything
had been accomplished. Then in March 1970 the Iraqi government offered
autonomy to the Kurds, and a new phase in Iraqi-Kurdish relations had
begun. Again, however, the promise did not yield reality.
On 11 March 1970, following three months of negotiations between
Barzani and the Iraqi government, a joint Manifesto was published that
recognised 'the legitimacy of the Kurdish nationality', promising Kurdish
language rights, Kurdish representation in government, Kurdish administra-
tion of the Kurdish region, and a new Kurdish province based on Dohuk
(the reforms went as far as those in the scheme announced on 29 June 1966
by Iraqi premier Abdul aI-Rahman al-Bazzaz, who was ejected from office
a few months later). Matters seemed to be moving in favour of Kurdish
independence, but yet again the paper promises would not materialise.
Soon the disadvantages of the Manifesto, from the Ba'ath perspective,
became obvious. A de facto recognition of Barzani and the KDP, as the sole
administrative authority in the Kurdish area, had been given; and it was
clear that this would entail a significant erosion of Iraqi authority in the
region. In these circumstances, the Ba' ath had no intention of implementing
the terms of the Manifesto, seeing it more as a delaying mechanism: the
heat could be taken out of the Kurdish question until the time came to recast
the Manifesto in terms more favourable to the Iraqi state. In fact, govern-
ment attitudes soon became manifest. Kurdish families were evicted from
their homes in some areas, particularly around Kirkuk, where the Iraqi
government wanted to alter the ethnic balance. Thus in September 1971, for
268 The History of Iraq
example, some 40,000 Kurds were expelled from the border region near
Khaniqin, and forced to settle in Iran, on the grounds that they were not
really Iraqis. In the same month the Iraqi government tried to assassinate
Barzani, following an attempt on the life of his son. More assassination
attempts were to be made in subsequent years.
The Iraqi decision to evict Kurds from particular areas was stimulated by
one of the Manifesto provisions: ' ... necessary steps shall be taken ... to
unify the governorates and administrative units populated by a Kurdish
majority as shown by the official census to be carried out ... '. This meant
that the Iraqi state had an interest in reducing the Kurdish population in
areas over which the government wanted to retain control. Barzani later
claimed to have recognised the Manifesto as an Iraqi delaying manoeuvre
('I said this was a ruse. I knew it even before I signed the agreement'), but
there had been little scope for negotiation or for controlling the pace of
implementation of the provisions. But Barzani, despite his seeming political
impotence, was still an irritation to Saddam. While Barzani was talking
with eight religious dignitaries, sent by Saddam to discuss the terms of the
Manifesto, two explosions rocked the room; two clerics were killed but
Barzani survived. His bodyguard opened fire, killing five sheikhs. It later
transpired that the clerics had been innocent couriers of bombs hidden in
their tape recorders; when the men tried to operate the machines the bombs
exploded. Barzani commented: 'Iraq is a police state run by Saddam Hussein
who is a power-obsessed megalomaniac. He eliminated Hardan and Amash;
he tried to eliminate me; he will eliminate Bakr.'64 If Saddam needed
further reason for suspicion, Barzani soon provided it.
Seeing the futility of his present political course, Barzani moved to
develop relations with Israel and with the Shah of Iran. More significantly,
he resolved also to establish connections with the United States, a move that
Washington was happy to welcome. In May 1972 President Richard Nixon
approved a CIA scheme to give Barzani $16 million over a three-year
period; this at a time when Saddam was seeking agreements with the Soviet
Union. And as if Barzani' s acceptance of CIA funding were not sufficient,
he then gave an interview to The Washington Post in the summer of 1973
in which his intentions were made quite clear. Once the Kirkuk oil fields
had been returned to their 'lawful owners', Barzani was prepared to hand
over the oil resource to the Americans: ' ... we are ready to do what goes
with American policy in this area if America will protect us from the wolves.
If support were strong enough, we could control the Kirkuk field and give
it to an American company to operate.'65 If Saddam wanted evidence that
the Kurds intended to donate Iraqi assets to the imperialist United States,
here it was. Barzani, it appeared, was prepared to dismember Iraq as a
Into the Era of Saddam 269
Kurds to further its own perceived interests in the region (as it continues to
do today), so Iraq and Syria - not to mention Tehran - are apt to see
the various Kurdish elements as tools that can aid national policy. Thus the
Syrians let Talabani loose in the Iran-Iraq war, inviting him to create
disruption in Iraqi Kurdistan and so weaken the Baghdad Ba' athists; just as
in 1984 the Iraqis offered Talabani a measure of autonomy in exchange for
continued opposition to the Barzanis and the KDP.
The Kurds, in their endless struggle for nationhood and independence,
have been systematically repressed and cynically manipulated by states
with little interest in minority rights. The persistent efforts of the Kurdish
people have yielded a shortlived republic (Mahabad) and many autonomy
agreements. In Iraq and the (erstwhile) Soviet Union they won concrete
advances, though today such progress is seen with easy hindsight to have
been insecure and unstable. States outside the region, especially the US,
have seen advantage in pressing Kurdish claims: Washington quickly warmed
to a Kurdish leader (Barzani) prepared to donate Iraqi oil resources to
American companies. Today it is not hard to imagine that US support for
the Kurds, to the extent that such support exists, derives at least in part
from American interest in Kirkuk oil.
IRAN-IRAQ WAR
Origins
In history there have been many conflicts between Persia and Mesopotamia;
that is, between Iran and Iraq. Competing empires, hungry for land, repeat-
edly clashed; there were endless disputes about borders, land, navigational
rights (in the Shatt al-Arab), sovereignty, and the recognition of minority
groups. Some minorities straddled recognised borders, creating fresh ten-
sions, and sometimes external powers - with their own agendas for exploi-
tation and conquest - burst into the region. What some writers, from the
comfortable familiarity of the twentieth century, have dubbed the 'first'
Gulf war was in fact only one of the many conflicts between the two
important states that shared a common border.
Migratory tribes always made it difficult to define fixed boundaries:
settled towns were nicely fixed on agreed maps, but wandering nomads
always ran the risk of violating this or that frontier agreed by sedentary
rulers. And further: nomads sometimes served the cynical interests of
national leaders. Look, there we have an ethnic presence, so there our writ
runs. And there was always the question of resources. A land traditionally
272 The History of Iraq
These were some of the events that helped to consolidate Iraqi resent-
ment of 'Western imperialism', and which pushed Baghdad into the arms
of the Russians. Baghdad responded to the Iranian encroachment by sever-
ing all diplomatic relations with Tehran and London, and by negotiating a
fifteen-year Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation with the Soviet Union.
Iraq and the USSR agreed to make contact in case of 'danger to the peace
of either party ... ', and to refrain from joining any alliance directed against
the other; moreover, they also agreed to 'continue to develop co-operation
in the strengthening of their defence capacity'. The move brought Iran
and the US even closer together, with President Nixon announcing in
May 1972 that the Shah would be permitted to purchase any non-nuclear
weapons, and that the US would help the Shah to instigate Kurdish rebel-
lion in Iraq. The stage was well set for a conflict between the pro-West
Iran, guardian of conservative values, and the pro-Soviet Iraq, keen to lead
republican Arab nationalism in the area.
In the short term, the Shah backed off from full-blooded support for
the Iraqi Kurds, as noted, since he feared a strengthening of his own
Kurdish dissidents. The agreement reached on 6 March 1975 between the
Shah and Saddam Hussein, both attending an OPEC meeting in Algiers,
pledged the signatories to define their river boundarie3 'according to the
thalweg line' and 'to end all infiltrations of a subversive nature' .69 A new
treaty on the Frontier and Neighbourly Relations was signed by Iran and
Iraq on 13 June and ratified three months later. Iraq's concessions on
the Shatt aI-Arab were matched by Iran relinquishing territory around the
villages of Zain al Qaws and Saif Saad. Iraq's weakness, following the
draining effects of the Kurdish insurgency (backed by Iran and the US) had
forced it to concede Iranian demands on the common waterway, but there
was no recipe in this for a stable peace. Indeed, it was already clear that
the Iraqi leadership was divided on the issue, and it was only a matter of
time before Baghdad would make counter-claims against Tehran.
The 1975 agreement meant that Iraq had again managed to subdue the
Kurds but that it 'had apparently lost an unfought war against Iran' .70 The
evident Iranian victory rankled with Saddam Hussein who had been respons-
ible for the 1975 negotiations. He had been forced to accept the 'bitter
reality' of the agreement, but this was only a temporary matter; there was
'no question of the Iraqi regime accepting in perpetuity an outcome deter-
mined by Iranianforce majeure' .71 In December 1980 Saddam commented
that Iraq had signed the agreement but 'under conditions we could not
control ... the Iranians used military force against us' .72 It was obvious that
the 1975 agreement, far from being a permanent settlement, was no more
than a truce in a long-running contest between Iraq and Iran for supremacy
274 The History of Iraq
in the Gulf region. The uneasy peace collapsed following the collapse of
the Shah's regime and the assumption by Saddam of supreme powers in
the Iraqi state. Where the Shah and the ailing Bakr may have wished to
preserve a peace, however fragile, the Ayatollah Khomeini and Saddam
Hussein had no interest in a compromise status quo.
Since 1965 Khomeini had been living in exile in Najaf where he was
closely associated with an Iraqi ayatollah, Baqir al-Sadr, who was keen to
establish an Islamic republic in Iraq. In September 1978 the Shah belatedly
demanded that Iraq expel Khomeini, whereupon he was exiled to Paris.
From the Shah's point of view, this was not a good move. Whereas
Khomeini's activities had been subject to surveillance and constraints in
Iraq, he now enjoyed much more freedom of movement: Paris was a much
better base than Najaf from which to launch a revolution against the Shah.
Nor did Khomeini's Paris exile serve Iraqi interests. Baghdad had placated
a Shah who was finding himself in an increasingly desperate situation,
but at the cost of antagonising a theocratic bigot who was soon to head a
powerful state on Iraq's borders. The uneasy peace that followed the 1975
agreement was soon to be shattered by the Iranian Revolution, a turbulent
event caused at least in part by the expulsion of Khomeini from Iraq; the
Shah had signed his own eviction order.
Khomeini came to power in Iran in February 1979 at the head of a
revolutionary Islamic movement. Soon appeals were flooding from Tehran
urging that Arab or state nationalism be abolished in Muslim lands in the
interest of the higher unity of Islam. In an interview published in a Tehran
newspaper, Khomeini declared: 'The Ummayad rule [661-750] was based
on Arabism, the principle of promoting Arabs over all other peoples, which
was an aim fundamentally opposed to Islam and its desire to abolish
nationality and unite all mankind in a single community, under the aegis
of a state indifferent to the matter of race and colour ... '. The Ummayads,
Khomeini claimed, were aiming 'to distort Islam completely by reviving
the Arabism of the pre-Islamic age of ignorance, and the same aim is still
pursued by the leaders of certain Arab countries who declare openly their
desire to revive the Arabism of the Ummayads'.73 There is no doubt that
by 'leaders of certain Arab countries', Khomeini had Saddam Hussein in
mind: in a Paris interview in late 1978 Khomeini gave as his enemies:
'First, the Shah; then the American Satan; then Saddam Hussein and his
infidel Ba'ath Party.'74
This theological offensive was not without effect on Saddam Hussein.
He declared that the Islamic Revolution, or any other revolution that pur-
ported to be Islamic, 'must be a friend of the Arab revolution'; he began
Into the Era of Saddam 275
praying with greater frequency, at both Sunni and Shi'ite shrines; he made
Imam Ali's birthday a national holiday; he resorted to the use of Islamic
symbols; and resolved to 'fight injustice with the swords of the Imams',
calling at the same time for 'a revival of heavenly values' .75 But there was
no way of preventing a deepening of tension between the Iranian ayatollahs
and the Iraqi Ba' athists, following the Khomeini revolution. Differences
between the Sunnis and the Shi'ites were exacerbated, and immediately
Khomeini took power the new regime in Tehran began inciting the Iraqi
Shi'ites to rise up against the Ba'ath government. Soon the Dawa, a Shi'ite
party under Iranian influence, was plotting against the Iraqi regime, spread-
ing pro-Iranian propaganda and organising a terrorist campaign. Saddam
responded by putting the Ayatollah al-Sadr under house arrest in Najaf;
Shi'ite riots followed in Baghdad, which were put down with great brutal-
ity. Then Saddam persuaded Bakr to resign and took over the presidency.
After consolidating his position he completed the fearful purge of the Party
and, in April 1980, had al-Sadr and his sister summarily hanged. Between
15,000 and 20,000 Shi'ites were expelled from Iraq, and hundreds more
were arrested, tortured and executed. Saddam was already demonstrating
that any threat to Iraq or to his own leadership would be met with the utmost
severity. In a matter of months, using all the power of the security services
that he had nurtured over the previous decade, he had secured his position.
In March 1980 the Iraqi authorities executed ninety-seven civilians
and military men, half of them members of Dawa, now a banned organisa-
tion. Dawa activists then began attacking police stations, Ba' ath Party
offices, and Popular Army recruiting centres. The repression of the Shi'ites
continued and then news leaked out concerning the secret hanging of
Ayatollah al-Sadr and his sister Bint al Huda on 8 April. An incensed
Khomeini, hearing of the death of one of his principal Iraqi supporters,
declared: 'The war that the Iraqi Ba'ath wants to ignite is a war against
Islam ... The people and army of Iraq must tum their backs on the Ba' ath
regime and overthrow it ... because this regime is attacking Iran, attacking
Islam and the Koran ... Iran today is the land of God's messenger; and its
revolution, government and laws are Islamic. '76 Now border skirmishes
between Iran and Iraq were happening at the rate of ten a month, and
leading Iranian dissidents were being given radio stations in Iraq to beam
anti-Khomeini propaganda into Iran. 77 Washington staged an armed rescue
attempt to retrieve the American hostages in Tehran, which failed dismally;
and a pro-Shah coup attempt on 24-25 May was routed by Khomeini
loyalists. A further coup attempt, staged by Shahpour Bakhtiar, the last
premier under the Shah, was easily repulsed; and a fortnight later, on
276 The History of Iraq
27 July 1980, the last Shah of Iran died of cancer in Cairo. It was obvious
to Saddam that he could not rely on Iranian monarchist generals or the
imperialist United States to topple the Khomeini regime.
It seemed a propitious time for Saddam to intervene. There were con-
stant reports of friction between the Iranian religious leaders and the then
president Hassan Bani-Sadr; the Iranian army, following massive purges,
was in disarray; arms had stopped flowing to Iran; and the country was
diplomatically isolated. The 'great Satan' was incensed at the overthrow
of its long-nurtured client and at the seizing of American hostages; and
Tehran's Moscow links had collapsed following the Soviet invasion of
Muslim Afghanistan. A friendless and chaotic Iran, starved of supplies and
military expertise, seemed an easy target. The question was not whether
Iraq should invade, but when.
By August 1980 Saddam Hussein had visited the rulers of Kuwait and
Saudi Arabia, who said nothing to deflate his ambitions. Egypt had been
suspended from the Arab League following the conclusion of the Egyptian
accord with Israel, and there seemed to be a vacancy at the head of the
Arab table. Saddam, now promised financial backing from Kuwait and
Saudi Arabia, conscious of the deep hostilities between Iran and the United
States, believed that he would be able to wage a brief and highly success-
ful campaign. He would be greeted as a liberator by Arabs in Iranian
territories and also by the Iranian Kurds struggling for recognition.
On 2 September 1980 Iraqi and Iranian troops clashed near Qasr-e
Shirin, and soon afterwards Iranian artillery began shelling the Iraqi towns
of Khanaqin and Mandali. On 6 September Iraq threatened to seize vast
swathes of Iranian land in the Zain al Qaws region, supposedly granted to
Iraq in the 1975 accord, if it was not ceded within a week. Iran responded
with increased artillery fire, and Iraqi troops moved to capture a number of
border posts. Saddam then claimed - in a televised speech to the National
Assembly on 17 September - full control of the Shatt al-Arab, and heavy
fighting broke out along the waterway. On 20 September Tehran called
up reserves, and two days later Saddam' s armies mounted a general offen-
sive. What observers were later to call the 'first' Gulf war had begun. It
would last for nearly a decade.
Abadan was besieged. Ahwaz, the provincial capital of Khuzistan, was also
under threat. By the end of October the Iraqi forces had penetrated 10-20
miles into Iranian territory along the whole front and occupied five Iranian
towns. Contrary to Saddam' s expectations, the Arabs in KhuzistanlArabistan
did not rise up to greet their Arab liberators but fled in panic from the
area. The early Iraqi victories suggested that Saddam would have an easy
triumph, but in fact he had made a number of miscalculations.
Saddam had blundered into Iran (as later he was to blunder into Kuwait).
Count Alexandre de Marenches, the then head of French intelligence, had
Saddam Hussein as one of his 'clients' (the Iraqis bought his villa near
Grasse for the Iraq ambassador to France). Marenche commented that
the war with Iran 'was born of a terrible misunderstanding'; Saddam,
surrounded by nervous sycophants, had been led to believe that 'there
would be a popular uprising to applaud the first Iraqi soldier who came
over the horizon'. 78
The Iraqi armies had inadequate leadership and seemingly lacked offen-
sive spirit (just as in the earlier conflicts with the Israelis they had proved
logistically impressive but inadequate in combat). At the end of 1980 the
major Iraqi offensive, launched after immense preparations, had stalled.
The Iranians managed to retain a small area of Khorramshahr and to hold
Abadan despite heavy Iraqi shelling. Early in 1981 the Iranians launched a
counterattack and drove back the Iraqi forces in several areas. Any Iraqi
dreams of a short war, of a speedy victory that would bring easy glory
and rich pickings, were at an end. Iraq had launched ten well-prepared
divisions against Iran, to be countered by the elements of only two Iranian
divisions and a mere 120 tanks at the frontier. Yet already the Iraqi effort
had run out of steam. Far from toppling the Khomeini regime, Saddam
had helped to consolidate it, to stimulate what the Iranian leadership was
able to depict as a blasphemous onslaught on Islam. Khomeini himself
denounced Saddam for 'fighting to destroy Islam'; Hashemi Rafsanjani
declared that the fact 'we are not making peace stems from the Koran and
the honour of Islam and ... preserving the blood of the martyrs'; and Prime
Minister Musavi commented that 'the power of faith can outmanoeuvre
a complicated war machine used by people bereft of sublime religion'. 79
Saddam was forced to seek explanations for the early and unexpected
reverses. He decided, according to one observer,so that the Iraqi forces
had been too widely dispersed, that the Iraqi reservists had been inexperi-
enced, that the Iranians - equipped with better intelligence and better
knowledge of the region - had fought more effectively than had been
anticipated, and that night attacks by the Iranians had made it difficult for
the Iraqi tanks to manoeuvre. It was clear that the Iraqi forces were over-
278 The History of Iraq
the Iranians moved into Iraqi territory the Soviet Union decided to resume
arms shipment to Saddam; Iraq was still a preferred option to a victorious
Iran led by the ayatollahs. Now both the US and the USSR were providing
support to Iraq, though Washington was not averse to aiding Iran to pre-
serve balanced levels of slaughter on both sides. And there were other
complications. Despite the US membership of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organisation (NATO), Turkey (also a NATO member) launched a military
attack on northern Iraq. The Turkish military dictatorship, seemingly har-
bouring ambitions to retake lost Ottoman land, launched 15,000 men (in-
cluding paratroops and special task forces), backed by 30,000 troops massed
along the border, into Iraqi land across the frontier.
It is interesting that this Turkish attack coincided with large-scale NATO
manoeuvres close to the Iraqi border, overseen by General G. C. Jones, US
Chief-of-Staff. In fact, it is suggested that the attack took place with the
agreement of the Iraqi government: Saddam would be free to prosecute the
war against Iran while NATO forces attacked the troublesome Iraqi Kurds.
It was clear that the temporary advantage to Saddam would result in the loss
of northern Iraq to a US-Turkish alliance, Iraqi oil again coming under the
control of Western interests. Thus one observer noted close US-Turkish
military planning and that 'the Turks want a free hand from Washington
to move back into Iraq (taking control of the oil fields around Kirkuk) in
the event that the Baghdad government of Saddam Hussein is toppled' .85
And there was also reference to the top secret CANNONBONE plan,
drafted in 1958 by the US Chief-of-Staff, for a US invasion of Iraq.86
What was called the 'tanker war' began in 1984. Iraq started attacking
Iranian tankers in the Gulf, and also began bombing the main Iranian oil
terminal at Kharg island, within easy reach of Iraqi aircraft. Iran responded
with attacks on Kuwaiti and other Gulf tankers deemed to be aiding the
Iraqi war effort. But both countries found ways round these attacks on
their oil facilities; Iraq continued to use the pipelines to the Red Sea and the
Mediterranean, and Iran moved its main oil facility to Larak Island in the
Straits of Hormuz. Iran used small, less vulnerable, tankers to convey oil
from Kharg and other oilfields to Larak where it would then be fed into
supertankers. By February 1985 Iranian oil production and export levels
had recovered, though Iraq continued to attack facilities on Kharg. One
commentator observed: ' ... Iraq's success in penetrating Kharg' s defences
loomed as a potential turning point in the war, in technical if not yet
political terms ... as the war entered its sixth year, the Gulf sector remained
its major flashpoint and the arena most capable of changing the overall
course of the conflict' .87 Iraq continued to attack Kharg, and also Larak and
Sirri Island, less vulnerable to Iraqi strikes. By 1987, according to the US
280 The History of Iraq
a research reactor able to produce weapons-grade fuel; at the same time the
Soviets demanded safeguards to prevent the production of nuclear weapons.
In the 1960s the Arif government had purchased a modest nuclear reactor
from the Soviet Union, and this formed the heart of the Thuwaitha nuclear
research centre. When Brezhnev and Kosygin met Saddam in April 1975
they seemed reluctant to provide nuclear technology much in advance of
the Thuwaitha beginnings, so again Saddam turned to France.
The French subsequently offered Saddam an Osiris research reactor and
an Isis scale model, both of which were able to generate quantities of bomb-
grade material. Both the systems were designed to operate on weapons-
grade uranium, and a one-year supply amounted to 72 kilograms, enough
for several Hiroshima-size atomic bombs. The reactor was at first called
Osirak, but the two systems were later dubbed Tammuz I and Tammuz II,
after the Sumerian com deity, lover of Ishtar (the Arabs' Athtar), who is
brought back from the underworld to symbolise the eternity of the harvest.
Saddam's intentions were clear. A few days after visiting the French
Cadarache reactor he declared in an interview with the Lebanese weekly,
Al Usbu ai-Arabi: 'The agreement with France is the first concrete step
towards the production of the Arab atomic weapon.' \03 While the French
were working on the Osirak reactors, Saddam was negotiating a ten-year
nuclear co-operation pact with Brazil, who agreed to provide Iraq with large
quantities of uranium, reactor technologies, equipment and training. Under
the terms of this agreement, nuclear physicists from Iraq and Brazil were
to 'exchange visits to research and development facilities'. The United
States has claimed that Iraq also signed nuclear deals with India and China,
though details have not been published. In 1978 the Italian nuclear body,
Soia Techint, a subsidiary of Fiat, agreed to sell nuclear laboratories and
other vital nuclear equipment to Iraq. According to Richard Wilson, direc-
tor of the physics department at Harvard University, the 'Italian Project'
was designed to facilitate the manufacture of a nuclear bomb.
When in April 1979 the French contractors had completed the manufac-
ture of the Osirak reactor cores, the French Atomic Energy Commission
(the CEA) made arrangements for them to be transported to the Mediterra-
nean port of La Seyn-sur-Mer, to await an Iraqi container ship. An Amer-
ican company, ORTEC (based at Oak Ridge, the home of the first US
atomic bomb plant), had supplied a critical germanium detector, and the US
company Hewlett-Packard had supplied computers. However, on the morn-
ing of 7 April there was an enormous explosion in the CNIM (Compagnie
des Constructions navales et industrielles de la Mediterranee) warehouse
where the nuclear equipment was stored. The reactor cores were completely
destroyed but there was little other damage. A revelation in the German
286 The History of Iraq
press a year later indicated that the attack (Operation Big Lift) had been
staged by a seven-man Israeli commando group working for Mossad. An
enraged Saddam Hussein demanded that the French replace the reactors,
and that they supply bomb-grade fuel. Eventually the French complied, the
reactor was built, transported to Iraq, and set to go critical on I July 1981.
The nuclear fuel had been installed, the cooling channel was prepared,
and suitable provisions had been made for plutonium production once the
reactor began operation. The Iraqis were negotiating with NUKEM in West
Germany for the supply of depleted uranium fuel pins, and Snia Techint
was completing the last of the on-site reprocessing and fuel manufacturing
laboratories. Iraqi agents had also concluded agreements with Niger, Brazil
and Portugal for the supply of natural uranium ('yellowcake') for use in
the Osirak system for the production of plutonium. In spring 1981 the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) carried out its regular six-
month inspection of the Thuwaitha plant, and publicly declared that all
was well. However, Robert Richter, one of the IAEA inspectors, suggested
that there were secret Thuwaitha facilities to which IAEA staff had not
been given access. Other officials stated that his fears were groundless and
he was subsequently fired from the Agency. Richter was not the only one
to have anxieties. The Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin decided on
drastic action; with the Israeli chief of staff, General Rafael Eitan, he began
planning a scheme (Operation Babylon) for the bombing of the Osirak
plant.
Begin authorised the building of a full-scale model of the Iraqi plant
so that Israeli pilots could practise bombing it (it was remarked how
closely the Osirak installation resembled Israel's own Dimona nuclear
plant, also supplied by the French). On 7 June 1981 the Osirak facility was
bombed by Israeli pilots flying F-16s and relying on American assistance. 104
The CIA supplied the Israelis with satellite reconnaissance photographs
that were vital to the success of the mission. The raid was skilfully planned.
When the Israeli pilots were in Jordanian airspace they conversed in
Saudi-accented Arabic and informed Jordanian air controllers that they
were a Saudi patrol gone astray; over Saudi Arabia they pretended to be
Jordanians.105 The first wave of F-16s punched a hole in the reactor dome,
after which a second wave of aircraft dropped 'dumb' (that is, not laser-
guided) bombs with enough accuracy to destroy the reactor core, its con-
taining walls, and the gantry crane. 106
The Israeli raid was almost universally condemned, with the new French
premier, Franc;ois Mitterrand, one of the first to protest. There were hun-
dreds of French workers, and other foreign nationals, at the Tammuz plant
when it was bombed; one Frenchman was killed. Mitterrand made a vague
Into the Era of Saddam 287
promise to rebuild the reactor, though few observers took his comments
seriously. Washington's support for the raid was undisguised, with Pres-
ident Jimmy Carter later happy to admit US support for this and other
controversial Israeli initiatives. 107 In July 1981 Saudi Arabia announced
that she would finance the rebuilding of the Iraqi reactor. lOS But nothing
came of this promise.
Both before and after the Osirak episode, Western support for Saddam
Hussein continued unabated in one form or another. In 1981 French arms
sales to Iraq were $2148 million; in 1982 $1925 million; and in 1983
$2000 million. Helicopters and Mirage F-l fighter-bombers were being
supplied, and France also agreed to lend Iraq five Super-Etendard aircraft
equipped to carry Exocet air-to-surface missiles (these last arrived in Iraq
in October 1983 and were returned to France two years later in accordance
with the terms of the loan). A Le Monde estimate suggests that France sold
Iraq arms to the value of $5.6 billion during the period of the 1980s Gulf
War, and negotiated a further $4.7 billion-worth of civilian and commercial
contracts.
In 1980 the US company General Electric received American approval
to supply engines for Italian warships destined for the Iraqi navy, and in
Baghdad a Lockheed sales team was negotiating the sale of helicopters
to Saddam Hussein. 109 In 1982 the Reagan administration decided to take
Iraq off the list of countries branded as supporters of terrorism, even though
it was well known that Saddam was providing refuge for Palestinian terror-
ists and committing other terrorist outrages. (In 1992, documents declassi-
fied under congressional pressure revealed that Iraqi's terrorist activities
were well known at a time when the Reagan administration was asserting
that there was no evidence to justify branding Iraq a terrorist state.)110 Full
diplomatic relations were restored between Iraq and the United States in
1984, so preparing the way for an escalation of arms sales. In October 1983
William Eagleton, the top US official in Baghdad, suggested that the US
should start supplying a wide range of equipment being denied to Iran:
'We can selectively lift restrictions on third-party transfers of US licensed
military equipment to Iraq.' This could be done, he suggested, 'through
Egypt' .111 The US also developed an arms interdiction plan (Operation
Staunch) to prevent arms reaching Iran. This was a 'final piece of the tilt
to Iraq' that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee noted in their 1984
report on US policy regarding the Iran-Iraq war.
In 1982 Washington had decided to clear the sale of 'civilian' transport
aircraft to Iraq, and in June 1983 the Reagan administration authorised the
supply to Iraq of sixty helicopters for 'agricultural use', machines that were
obviously capable of conversion for military use. At the same time Wash-
288 The History of Iraq
ington provided credit of $460 million for the Iraqi purchase of 147,000
tonnes of American rice. This was an important gesture to Baghdad, boost-
ing Iraqi morale at a time of economic hardship and signalling general US
support for Saddam. It was acknowledged in Washington that an Iraqi
defeat would be seen 'as a major blow to US interests'. In the autumn of
1983 a study by the US National Security Council reached this conclu-
sion,1I2 and Washington decided to formulate plans 'to shore up Iraq mor-
ally and materially'.1l3 In March 1984 George Shultz commented that
'We wouldn't want to see' an Iranian victory, and so 'we have been
deliberately working to improve our relationship with Iraq . . . We have
been co-operating with the Iraqis to a certain extent'}14 In January 1984
Washington branded Iran a terrorist nation, thus denying it access to US
products, including arms; and made it plain to various countries - Britain,
Israel, Italy, West Germany, Turkey, South Korea and others - that it
did not want the supply of arms to Iran to continue.
The US also passed on surveillance information about the Gulf, collected
by American-manned AWACs, to Riyadh - in full knowledge that the
Saudis were transferring such data to Baghdad. This meant that the US was
directly aiding the Iraqi management of the war, a fact later confirmed by
Saddam. 115 The Iran-Contra scandal revealed that the US had been provid-
ing some illegal assistance to Iran but the pro-Iraqi 'tilt' remained, and
survived the end of the war. In the summer of 1990, a few days before the
invasion of Kuwait, the US State Department was trying to convince Con-
gress to grant financial credits and other assistance to Iraq. And once the
1991 Gulf War was over, the extent of Westem support for Saddam through
the 1980s began to emerge. Many countries were involved, but the lead
players are those most vociferous in their current condemnation of the Iraqi
regime}16 In the two years before the invasion of Kuwait, the United
Kingdom was supplying Iraq with the Cymbeline mortar-locating radar,
spares for hovercraft and tanks, encryption equipment, and laser range-
finders; France was supplying missiles, artillery pieces and attack helicop-
ters; and the United States was supplying surveillance computers and avionics
spares for naval equipment. The much-vaunted Coalition forces (see Chap-
ter 8), in seeking to expel Saddam from Kuwait, were forced to contend
with a wide range of high-technology military equipment recently supplied
by the leading Coalition states to Saddam.
In May 1991 it emerged that Douglas Hogg, the UK trade and enterprise
minister at the time, had approved a regional grant of £2 million in 1989
that was used to equip Saddam Hussein's army with missiles.1I7 The grant
was made available to the Gateshead plant of Flexible Manufacturing
Technology (FMT), a former subsidiary of Vickers, the defence contractor.
Into the Era of Saddam 289
The firm was producing specialised equipment to supply the Iraqi army
with a mobile rocket-launch system similar to that used by the allies during
the 1991 Gulf War. In July 1991 evidence published by the Commons
Trade and Industry Committee revealed that Whitehall had licensed exports
of British nuclear and defence equipment to Iraq, in the months before the
invasion of Kuwait.I IS The products approved included plutonium, uranium
and thorium (used in nuclear reactors), zirconium (used for nuclear fuel
casing), armoured vehicles, jet engines, artillery fire-control systems, and
mortar-locating radar. The products were licensed for export between Janu-
ary 1987 and 5 August 1990, the date when the United Nations imposed
the complete trade embargo on Iraq. The Department of Trade and Industry
stated that guidelines on exports to Iraq, published in 1985, were intended
to 'prevent the export of lethal weapons or equipment that would signi-
ficantly enhance' Iraq's military capacity. The report also suggested that
Whitehall had ignored an early warning from a Tory MP that British
companies might be involved in the manufacture of the Iraqi 'supergun'.
Vital items for chemical warfare weaponry were cleared by the UK
government for export to Iraq up to December 1990, despite the widespread
knowledge that Saddam Hussein had used gases to kill the Kurdish popu-
lation of Halabja in 1988. The approved chemicals included more than
£200,000-worth of thiodiglycol and thionyl chloride, essential elements in
mustard and nerve gases; and their destination was the Iraqi State Enter-
prise for the Production of Pesticides (SEPP), well known as a manufacturer
of chemical weapons. A Commons select committee report revealed that
the decision to ban 'a further fifteen chemical weapon precursors' was
taken as late as December 1990, and that a further thirteen chemical-
weapons ingredients were only banned as late as June 1991. The provision
of some nuclear materials was banned only after the Iraqi invasion of
Kuwait on August 1990. 119 The chairman of the committee declared him-
self 'astounded' by the findings.
It was revealed also that a British firm, MCP UK Ltd, had been bolster-
ing Saddam's chemical warfare capability by supplying Iraq with nerve
gas antidotes. Thus in April 1989 the company sold nearly three tonnes
of Cantil and Piptal tablets, valued at £167,000, to Iraq's state drug com-
pany .120 The drugs can be used for medical purposes, but also to protect the
body from nerve gas. In September 1991 UK customs inspectors found
evidence to indicate that British companies were at the centre of Saddam's
nuclear weapons programme. Customs officers raided the Midlands offices
of Matrix Churchill and found parts and plans for nuclear centrifuges, vital
to the manufacture of nuclear weapons. 121 In fact British companies were
among dozens of Western firms named in documents seized in Baghdad by
290 The History of Iraq
The supply of arms to Iraq in recent years has been organised largely by
Western contractors with governments acting as enabling catalysts: since
1987, for reasons that had little to do with ethics, the Soviet Union was
more or less out of the picture. The enabling activities of politicians and
government officials, quite apart from matters of national policy, are often
less than disinterested. There are massive and complex links between
business, military production and procurement, and government policy in
all the major arms-supplier states. Corporate directors in the arms com-
292 The History of Iraq
panies have often spent time in the anned forces, and have diligently
cultivated their connections with the political establishment. And the same
circumstances surround Western companies that may not produce anns
equipment but which market goods and have obvious strategic significance.
We are not surprised to learn that James Baker and George Bush have
extensive oil interests; or that George Shultz before he became secretary of
state in 1982, worked for the California-based Bechtel group that in the
early-1980s won a $1 billion contract with Iraq to build an oil pipeline to
Aqaba. In 1984 Bechtel was negotiating with the governments of Iraq,
Jordan, Israel and the United States - 'to "create the necessary conditions,"
as the diplomats liked to say, to ensure the success of the pipeline project' .127
It was obvious that Iraq was ripe for development. Thus David Newton,
first the US charge d'affaires in Baghdad and in 1985 promoted to ambas-
sador, commented that 'We are working hard on getting business for US
companies'; and he recommended that American firms focus on high tech-
nology.128 The US Commerce Department set about organising trade fairs,
despatching businessmen to Iraq, and relaxing the licensing constraints.
In 1985 the US supplied $700,OOO-worth of high-technology equipment
to Iraq's French-built defence electronics facility, Saad 13; one $161,550
order was for high-speed capacitors, similar to the krytron triggers used in
nuclear weapons.129 When, on 15 August 1985, Iraqi aircraft successfully
attacked Kharg Island they were relying on French and American techno-
logy. The laser designator used in the ATLIS (Auto Tracking Laser Illumi-
nation System) pod was produced by Martin Marietta in the United States.
The US made many efforts to exploit the commercial potential of the
Iraqi market, with no attention paid to Saddam's abysmal human-rights
record. One of the most significant efforts to lubricate US-Iraqi relations
was the initiative taken by Marshall Wiley, from 1975 to 1977 a US official
in Baghdad and in 1979 elevated to US ambassador in Oman. In 1981
Wiley retired from the Foreign Service and joined Sidley and Austin, a
substantial lobbying law firm based in Washington. In May 1985 he created
the US-Iraq Business Forum, having secured the support of Westinghouse
and Mobil Oil as corporate sponsors. He commented that the Iraqis 'were
not at ease working with the US private sector because their experience
until then had been primarily with the central planning structures of Eastern
Europe. So I thought we needed an organisation to help to get to know
each other better. That's how I got the idea for the Forum' yo
The Forum came to represent a powerful pro-Iraq lobby (including such
companies as Exxon, Mobil, Occidental, Texaco, Bechtel, General Motors
and the defence contractors BMY, Bell Textron, Lockheed and United
Technologies Corporation). Charles Percy, formerly a chairman of the
Into the Era of Saddam 293
*Two fonner members of Kissinger Associates joined the Bush administration: Brent
Scowcroft, the national security adviser, and Lawrence Eagleburger, number two at the State
Department.
Into the Era of Saddam 295
expand trade with Iraq, led a group of US senators to visit Saddam Hussein
in Mosul. The aim was to safeguard American business interests, President
Bush having giving the trip his blessing (even going so far as to talk on
the telephone to Mosul to emphasise his support).
Would it, the Senators wondered, be business as usual? They went to
some trouble to reassure Saddam about American intentions, whatever
irresponsible American journalists might be saying. Senator Simpson de-
clared (in one version of the transcript): 'My advice is that you allow those
bastards to come here and see things for themselves.' But, whatever Saddam' s
thoughts about such advice, events now had their own momentum and
were rapidly moving towards a climax. Soon it would not at all be business
as usual.
Part III
Towards the
New World Order
8 War with the West
We have about 60% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its
population. Our world task in this position is to devise a pattern of
relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of
disparity. We should cease to talk about such vague and unreal
objectives as human rights, the raising of living standards and
democratisation.
US Policy Planning Staff, Washington
24 February 1948
If Kuwait grew carrots, we wouldn't give a damn.
Lawrence Korb
former US Assistant Defence Secretary
1990
I venture to say that if Kuwait produced bananas, instead of oil,
we would not have 400,000 American troops there today.
Congressman Stokes, Ohio
12 January 1991
COUNTDOWN
In the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq war, faced with a disrupted society and a
debt-ridden economy, Saddam Hussein strove to achieve a balance between
constructive reform and characteristic authoritarian control. As a way of
flushing out political opposition within the country, he offered an amnesty
to domestic dissidents; at the same time he invited political offenders
outside Iraq to return home. In late 1988 Saddam launched 'what seemed
an Iraqi perestroika'. I A new constitution was promised and also a range
of economic reforms that would relax the Ba'athist grip on the nation.
There was even the prospect of a new electoral law that would allow the
emergence of a multi-party system, and Information Minister Latif Jasim
commented that a free press was now a matter of 'paramount interest'.
Saddam also tried to build on what he declared as the Iraqi victory over
Iran, a supposed triumph that had - according to Saddam - established the
Iraqi leadership of the Arab world.
299
300 Towards the New World Order
Israeli proxy: ' ... Israel might embark on new stupidities ... as a result
of direct or tacit US encouragement'. Washington was 'not interested in
peace as it claims' .11
On 15 March 1990 the Observer journalist Farzad Bazoft, an Iranian
Kurd who had lived in Britain for fifteen years, was executed in the
notorious Abu Gharib prison in Baghdad as, according to the Iraqi au-
thorities, a 'British spy who works for Israel'. The West protested at
Saddam's brutality while the Western press at the same time leaked details
of Bazoft' s past to smear his reputation. Prime Minister Thatcher professed
herself 'horrified and taken aback' by the sentence of death on Bazoft
and the sentence of fifteen years in jail on his co-defendant Daphne Parish
(since released). William Waldegrave, Foreign Office minister of state,
issued a warning to Baghdad, and Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd re-
quested a meeting with Saddam, which was turned down. Baghdad com-
mented that Iraqi law 'provides for the death sentence on any spy ... The
fabricated clamour against us constitutes blatant interference in our internal
affairs'; and Saddam Hussein, on a visit to Riyadh, obtained King Fahd's
support for Iraq's right to invoke its laws against those who threatened its
security. Other Arab states, including Kuwait and Bahrain, also offered
support to Baghdad; and on 26 March the Arab League denounced 'inter-
ference in Iraq's internal affairs by Britain and other members of the
European Community'. Three months later Saddam commented again on
this affair: 'The US and Britain began to talk about ruthless Saddam with
no heart when a spy was executed to avoid a return to the time when
foreigners ran rampant in this country. We will not allow any foreigner to
steal intelligence.' 12
Various events - the Bazoft affair, the assassination of Gerald Bull
(helping in Iraq's 'Project Babylon' for the development of superguns) in a
way that was reminiscent of the murder of the Egyptian physicist Yahya
Mashad (in charge of Iraq's nuclear programme) in June 1980, and the
much publicised arrests at London's Heathrow airport of men trying to
smuggle the krytron triggers (for nuclear weapons) to Iraq - were conspir-
ing to suggest a deterioration in Iraqi-Western relations. In addition, the
Western media and some elements of the American political establishment
were criticising Iraq for its human rights record and political posture, even
though no word was being raised against Western allies with equally dismal
records. On 2 April Saddam Hussein gave a television broadcast in which
he compared the attention given by the Western media to the Bazoft affair
to its relative silence over the murder of Gerald Bull. The attempt to block
Iraq's acquisition of the high-speed krytrons was part of a 'western-Zionist
plot' to deprive Iraq of the means to defend itself and to facilitate an Israeli
304 Towards the New World Order
attack on Iraq. When Saddam declared that Iraq would use 'binary chemical
weapons' to attack 'the Zionist entity' if Israel, possessing atomic bombs,
dared to launch another military strike on Iraq, Washington branded the
speech 'inflammatory, outrageous and irresponsible'. Washington dragged
its feet for several weeks and then announced that further credits for
American grain would not be forthcoming to Baghdad (at the same time
various clandestine deals were being protected). On 21 May Washington
announced that it was suspending consideration of Iraq's request for a $500
million loan guarantee from the US Commodity Credit Corporation, a
decision that Baghdad took as further evidence of America's growing
hostility to Iraq.
Developments in Israel and the Occupied Territories further stimulated
Iraqi suspicions that Washington had no interest in Arab rights. On 20 May
seven innocent Palestinian workers were shot dead in Rishon LeZion by a
young Israeli; seven more Palestinians were killed in the resulting protests.
Further riots - in the Golan Heights and in the Israeli towns of Nazareth,
Lod, Haifa and Beersheba - resulted in eight more Palestinian deaths with
more than seven hundred injured. On 26 May fourteen of the fifteen mem-
bers of the UN Security Council supported a resolution to send a UN team
to the Occupied Territories, but Washington vetoed the move. In this
atmosphere Saddam declared on 28 May at a meeting of the Arab League
in Baghdad: 'It behoves us to declare clearly that if the Zionist entity attacks
... we will strike back powerfully. If it uses weapons of mass destruction
against our nation, we will use against it the weapons of mass destruction
in our possession.' And he also emphasised that Israel's 'aggression and
expansion at the Arabs' expense' would not have been possible without
America, 'the main source of the Zionist entity's aggressive military force,
and the main source of its financial resources'. Nobody, declared Saddam,
well aware of the US dependence on Arab energy reserves, 'has the right
to enjoy our resources and wealth at the same time he is fighting us and
opposing our scientific and technological progress.' 13 However, the threat
posed by the 'Zionist entity' would soon, despite Saddam's intentions,
recede into the background. The 'economic war' supposedly being waged
by Kuwait, supported by Saudi Arabia and the West, against Iraq - plus a
host of other Iraqi complaints and grievances - would soon come to
the fore.
IRAQ'S GRIEVANCES
, ... for every US dollar drop in the price of a barrel of oil, the Iraqi loss
amounted to $1 billion annually ... War is fought with soldiers and harm
is done by explosions, killing and coup attempts, but it is also done by
economic means sometimes. I say to those who do not mean to wage war
306 Towards the New WorLd Order
on Iraq, that this is in fact a kind of war against Iraq. Were it possible we
would have endured ... But I say that we have reached a point where
we can no longer withstand pressure.' 17
With a Kuwaiti quota of 1,037,000 barrels a day, its actual production was
estimated in oil industry reports as 1,700,000 barrels; with a new OPEC-
specified allocation of 1,093,000, Kuwait resolved to produce 1,350,000
barrels a day.20 The other OPEC members, including Iraq, were incensed at
the Kuwaiti attitude, and over the following months used argument and
threat in a vain attempt to bring ~uwait back in line. The overproduction
continued and in early 1990 the price dropped to below $18 for the first
time since the previous summer. Following further efforts by Saddam
Hussein to stabilise oil prices, the Kuwaiti oil minister declared that OPEC
quotas should be scrapped as soon as possible. Both Saddam and King
Hussein of Jordan continued to lobby other OPEC members, but to no
avail. Kuwait and the UAB continued to produce as they wished, to the
point that the price per barrel sank to $11 in June 1990. At this level, Iraqi
revenues were such that they could scarcely service current expenses,
much less repay foreign loans or fund the required national reconstruction.
In June Saddam sent a personal note to the Kuwaiti emir, noting that
Kuwait's excess output (then amounting to 600,000 barrels over the OPEC
allocation of 1.5 million barrels per day) was having a 'negative impact on
Iraq and OPEC's vital interests'; and he addressed a similar letter to the
ruler of the UAE.21
Kuwait had refused to compromise at the Baghdad summit in May, yet
even then the political drift was clear. To give the meeting maximum
weight Saddam had insisted that only heads of state attend the crucial talks;
of the leaders' colleagues Saddam remarked, 'They don't need to hear the
things we have to say.' At first he spoke of Israel but then developed his
criticism of the Gulf states, noting at the start that military equipment had
been delivered from Dubai to Iran during the Gulf war, and that 'one day the
reckoning will come'. Later he addressed the Kuwaiti emir, Jaber al-Sabah,
in a face-to-face confrontation: 'The quotas allocated by OPEC stipulated
that Kuwait should not exceed a daily production of 1.5 million barrels; in
actual fact, it has constantly extracted 2.1 million barrels a day. We are the
ones to suffer. We Iraqis want to return to the economic situation that
obtained in 1980, before the war against Iran. For the moment we urgently
need $10 billion, as well as the cancellation of the $30 billion worth of
debts to Kuwait, the Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia that we incurred
during the war. Indeed, brother Arabs, it has to be clearly understood that
we are today living through another conflict .. .'.22 In a belligerent tone
Saddam declared that 'War doesn't mean just tanks, artillery or ships. It
can take subtler and more insidious forms, such as the overproduction of
oil, economic damage and pressures to enslave a nation.' King Hussein
then commented that nothing must be done 'to harm the economy of Iraq'.
308 Towards the New World Order
Those present noted the indifference of Emir Jaber to the Iraqi demands, his
reply evincing 'something close to contempt for the Iraqi position .. .'.23
The subsequent communications through June did nothing to bring the
Kuwaitis and Iraqis closer together; the Iraqis were well used to reciproc-
ating the al-Sabahs' contempt by continuing to regard Kuwait as no more
than 'a state made out of an oil well'.
In a fresh move to resolve the deteriorating situation, Saddam proposed
a new OPEC meeting for the Arab Gulf members (Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, the
UAE and Saudi Arabia). King Fahd agreed to the proposal but then tried
to rally the Gulf leaders against the Iraqi suggestion for an increased price
of $25 a barrel. Here, as in other matters, Fahd was keen to perform as a
Western client; in particular, to safeguard American interests - much of the
multibillion-dollar investment of the Saudi royals (and that of the Kuwaiti
al-Sabahs) was in American real estate and financial institutions. On 9 July
1990 Iraqi intelligence intercepted a telephone conversation between King
Fahd and the Qatari emir, Sheikh Khalifa ibn Hamad al Thani; to Saddam
Hussein this seemed conclusive evidence that the two rulers were plotting
against Iraq. In the recorded conversation King Fahd commented that the
Iraqis 'have lost their temper ... And you know when someone loses his
temper his speech is unreasonable ... Before you meet with Iraq, all of us
must agree ... as Gulf ministers. Keep quiet even if the Iraqi minister says
something bad. These people, the Iraqis, have got themselves into a prob-
lem with Israel . . . They have given themselves the same problems as
Nasser, and he could not solve them .. .'. With regard to Saddam's
proposed summit meeting King Fahd declared: ' ... But don't think of
holding a summit if there's a chance of failure . . .'.24 The conversation at
least demonstrated that Fahd was unsympathetic to Saddam's belligerent
posture, that he was anxious about the power of Israel, and that he was
prepared to discuss with other Gulf states a way of countering Iraqi designs.
Another document, unknown to Saddam at that time, showed collabora-
tion between the Kuwaiti Security Department (SSD) and the US Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA). This memorandum (routinely declared by the
CIA to be a forgery) was issued by the SSD director-general, Brigadier
Fahd Ahmad al-Fahd, on 20 November 1989 to the interior minister Sheikh
Salem al-Salem al-Sabah to summarise agreements reached at a meeting
with CIA director William Webster at the CIA headquarters in Langley,
Virginia, on 14 November 1989. 25 Paragraph 2 of the memorandum stated:
'We agreed with the United States side that visits would be exchanged at
all levels between the State Security Department and the Central Intel-
ligence Agency, and that information would be exchanged about the arma-
ments and social and political structures of Iran and Iraq', with paragraph 5
War with the West 309
declaring: 'We agreed with the American side that it was important to take
advantage of the deteriorating economic situation in Iraq in order to put
pressure on that country's government to delineate our common border.'
The last paragraph of the memorandum refers to 'a special telephone' in
William Webster's office to allow the Kuwaitis speedy access to CIA
headquarters.
This document, if genuine, is an important piece of evidence suggesting
a US-Kuwaiti conspiracy against Iraq. The CIA statement, issued by spokes-
man Peter Earnest on 30 October 1990, claiming that the document was a
forgery, does in fact concede that the SSD deputy director paid a visit
to CIA director William Webster in November 1989, as the document
indicates.
On II July 1990 the oil ministers of Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE and
Saudi Arabia moved some way towards the Iraqi demand of $25 a barrel;
there was unanimous agreement on an OPEC production ceiling that would
help raise the barrel price to the $18 target set in November 1989. Two days
later the Kuwaiti oil minister unilaterally repudiated the agreement. At the
same time Kuwait was moving to improve its relations with Iran (still
hostile to Iraq) and Egypt was preparing for a visit from President Hafiz
Assad of Syria (Saddam's sworn Ba'athist rival). Saddam did not have to
be paranoid to believe that various countries were conspiring to damage
Iraqi interests. On 15 July Tariq Aziz, the Iraqi foreign minister, sent a letter
to Chadli Klibi, the Arab League secretary-general, in which he made
assorted complaints against the UAE and Kuwait. He claimed that the two
Gulf states were co-operating in 'an unjust policy aimed at harming ...
Iraq'. Their policies had caused a $1 billion annual drop in Iraqi oil rev-
enues; since 1980 Kuwait had been extracting oil from the 'Iraqi Rumeila
oilfield' (which extends into Kuwait), resulting in a loss to Iraq of $2.4
billion; through the Iran-Iraq war Iraq had lost $106 billion in oil revenue,
a decrease in exports that had benefited Kuwait and the UAE; and the
interest-free loans from Kuwait and the UAE to aid the Iraqi war effort
could not be regarded as debts ('How can these amounts be regarded as
Iraqi debts to its Arab brothers when Iraq made sacrifices that are many
times more than these debts in terms of Iraqi resources during the grind-
ing war and offered rivers of blood of its youth in defence of the [Arab]
nation's soil, dignity, honour and wealth').26 On 17 July, in a televised
speech, Saddam Hussein issued a warning to Arab states that were conspir-
ing with the US to damage Iraq: •At the behest of the US, certain Arab states
had deliberately overproduced oil in defiance of the will of the OPEC
majority. As a result ... Iraq had been losing $14 bn a year.'27 The United
States, as the sole superpower, wanted a flow of cheap oil; in consequence,
310 Towards the New World Order
There can be little doubt that the territorial dispute has been exacerbated
over the years by the original decision of Sir Percy Cox to make Iraq a
virtually landlocked country. Basra, serving as Iraq's main port, is situated
just below the confluence of the Tigris and the Euphrates and is linked to
the Gulf by the much-disputed Shatt ai-Arab. Iraq has repeatedly requested
that Kuwait allow it to lease the two islands of Warbah and Bubiyan that
overlook the approaches to Umm Qasr, one ofIraq's two ports on the Gulf.
Kuwait rejected requests made in 1975, 1980 and 1989, decisions that Iraq
inevitably viewed as unfriendly. If Iraq had managed to secure access to
Warbah and Bubiyan its dependence on the Shatt ai-Arab would have been
reduced, and this in turn would have defused some of the Iran-Iraq tensions.
In summary it is possible to identify a number of grievances deeply felt
by Iraq against Kuwait during the increasingly tense period prior to the
onset of the Gulf War. In Iraq's view: economic war was being waged by
Kuwait and other Gulf states, with the encouragement of Washington,
against Iraq; Kuwait, originally part of the Ottoman vilayet of Basra, was
now properly regarded as part of Iraq; Kuwait had systematically en-
croached on Iraqi territory over a period, and deliberately stolen Iraqi oil
from the Rumeila oil field; Kuwait, despite Iraq's horrendous losses in
the Iran-Iraq war, was refusing to write off Iraqi debts incurred in the
defence of the Arab nation; Kuwait, in refusing to negotiate over Warbah
and Bubiyan, was insensitive to Iraq's deep-water needs; and in general
Kuwait, in its arrogant and uncompromising attitude to negotiations, seemed
more interested in following the hidden agenda of its Western backers
than in seeking harmonious relations with its neighbours.
A listing of Iraqi grievances is not intended to argue for the legitimacy
of the subsequent Iraqi actions. Iraq had clear obligations under the UN
Charter (which other nations disregard when they feel like it), under its
membership of the Arab League, and following the 1963 Iraqi recognition
of Kuwaiti independence. It is however useful to remember the Iraqi griev-
ances, submerged as they usually are under the predictable tide of Western
propaganda. And it should also be remembered that Saddam Hussein had
little reason to believe that the United States, despite some unsympathetic
words and acts, would take action following an Iraqi move against Kuwait:
this American 'green light' deserves to be considered.
There were many ways in which the US government and other US institu-
tions aided and abetted Saddam Hussein in the run-up to the invasion of
Kuwait. The major (but little advertised) trade association, the US-Iraq
312 Towards the New World Order
Business Forum (see Chapter 7), numbered many leading American com-
panies among its members, and enjoyed considerable influence in the
Washington political establishment. US businessmen, interested only in
commercial advantage, had no concern with Saddam's human rights record
or with the threat he might pose to neighbouring states. It has been pointed
out that Henry Kissinger, for example, was one American businessman
among many who sought to benefit from the Iraq connection, for years
after Saddam's abuse of human rights was known. After the Iraqi invasion
of Kuwait, Kissinger proclaimed that Saddam should be deposed because
he 'used poison gas against his own dissident population', but this had not
prevented Kissinger's consulting firm 'from continuing to do business in
Baghdad for years after Iraq's chemical warfare capability had been unleased
against Iraqi minorities (and Iranian soldiers) ... Hussein was coddled by
government officialdom at the urging of his US business partners'.32 Ac-
knowledged Kissinger clients include a number of companies that have
won large contracts in Iraq: Volvo, whose chairman, Pehr Gyllenhammer,
sits on the board of Kissinger Associates; Hunt Oil, which sent an executive
on the 'blue ribbon' trade delegation to Baghdad in 1989; Fiat, with a
subsidiary that has sold weapons to Iraq; Coca-Cola; and the Yugoslav
construction company Energoprojekt. Another Kissinger client, Britain's
Midland Bank, has also been involved in Iraqi business deals. Henry
Kissinger is not the only Western businessman who, content to profit from
the Iraqi regime for many years, was forced to perform an ungainly volte
face following Saddam's inconvenient misjudgements.
The support of US business interests over many years for Saddam
Hussein is well documented, part of the general Western support for the
Iraqi regime. What is clear also is the extent to which US commentators
encouraged Saddam to adopt an aggressive oil pricing policy. In fact, not
long before the invasion of Kuwait, Saddam was being urged to take steps
to increase his oil revenues. He even commissioned a study from the
Washington Centre for Strategic and International Studies, a prestigious
foundation with links to Iraq. In a significant article, the Centre's energy
security programme director Henry Schuler gave an insight into the secret
commissioned study by arguing that the oil exporters were 'leaving money
on the table' .33 The solution, according to Schuler, was for the Arab oil
exporters to adopt a more aggressive oil price policy - a recommendation
that Saddam Hussein was working hard to implement. At the same time
there were a number of diplomatic and political initiatives that further
seemed to emphasise America's indifference to (or even sympathy with)
Saddam's burgeoning designs.
On 12 April 1990 Saddam met with five US senators: Robert Dole, Alan
War with the West 313
Simpson, Howard Metzenbaum, James McClure and Frank Murkowski
(see also Chapter 7); the US ambassador, soon to be famous for her own
'green light' to Saddam, was also present. No-one reading the various
transcripts of this meeting can doubt the general placatory tone. The US
senators even criticised the American press in their attempts to propitiate
Saddam, emphasising that there was a difference between the attitudes of
the US government and those of journalists. Senator Dole pointed out
that a commentator on 'Voice of America' who had not been given author-
ity to talk about the Iraqi government had been removed from his job;
and furthermore, 'Please allow me to say that only twelve hours earlier
President Bush had assured me that he wants better relations, and that
the US government wants better relations with Iraq . . . I assume that
President Bush will oppose sanctions, and he might veto them, unless
something provocative were to happen ... ' . It was clear, if further evidence
were needed, that Iraq's war on Iran, its human rights record, and its
increasingly bellicose efforts to impose its will on the Gulf region were
not judged to be sufficiently 'provocative'. Ambassador Glaspie then
chipped in to affirm that she was certain 'that this is the policy of the US'
(that is, that President Bush saw nothing about Iraq that would impede the
development of good relations).
Senator Simpson then remarked that the visit had been encouraged by
the American president (Bush: 'Go there. I want you there ... If you are
criticised because of your visit to Iraq, I will defend you and speak on
your behalf). And Simpson suggested that Saddam's difficulties (that is.
his resentment at being criticised in the West) lay with the Western media
('. . . it is a haughty and pampered press; they all consider themselves
political geniuses ... they are very cynical .. .') and not with the American
government. Senator Howard Metzenbaum (,I am a Jew and a staunch
supporter of Israel') then decided to pay Saddam a compliment: ' ... I have
been sitting here and listening to you for about an hour, and I am now
aware that you are a strong and intelligent man and that you want peace
. . . if . . . you were to focus on the value of the peace that we greatly
need to achieve in the Middle East then there would not be a leader to
compare with you in the Middle East ... '.
A fortnight later, on 26 April, the US assistant secretary of state John
Kelly testified before a House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on US-Iraq
relations. He noted Saddam' s growing military power in the region and
expressed regret at the hanging of the Observer journalist Farzad Bazoft.
But such details were no reason for a change in US policies on Iraq. He
reiterated the US government's opposition to economic sanctions and even
appeared to praise Saddam Hussein for 'talking about a new constitution
314 Towards the New World Order
Senator Kasten: You mentioned the fact that in last year's appropriations
bill Iraq had been removed from the list of terrorist states. Therefore,
Iraq is now eligible for Ex-im Bank loans and a couple of other
trade-related programs. Do you believe that we should add Iraq back
onto that list of terrorist countries?
Secretary Baker: Well, Senator Kasten, I think we have to take a look at
that ... It is a little bit premature of me on May 1 to sit here and
make that determination just as we sit here .. .
Senator Kasten: ... There is some legislation ... that goes significantly
beyond that, involving agricultural credits and of other programs.
Secretary Baker: That is the CCC [Commodity Credit Corporation, used
to finance the purchase of agricultural products] program I am talking
about ... we ought to at least be conscious of the fact that if we take
that action with respect to CCC or other economic measures ... that
in all probability our allies will be very quick to move in there and
pick up our market share. 35
Iraqi dictator ... no questions are being asked of the National Security
Agency about why it failed to spot the huge transfer of dollars'.36
On 24 July 1990 two Iraqi armoured divisions moved from their bases to
take up positions on the Kuwaiti border. Later the same day the US State
Department spokeswoman, Margaret Tutwiler, asked whether the US had
any military plans to defend Kuwait, replied: 'We do not have any defence
treaties with Kuwait, and there are no special defence or security commit-
ments to Kuwait.'37 The next day Saddam Hussein summoned US Ambas-
sador April Glaspie to his office in what was to be the last official contact
between Baghdad and the United States before the invasion of Kuwait.
Even at this late stage, with an obviously deteriorating situation in the
Gulf, Glaspie still made efforts to placate Saddam Hussein. 38 She em-
phasised that President Bush had rejected the idea of trade sanctions
against Iraq, to which Saddam replied: 'There is nothing left for us to
buy from America except wheat. Every time we want to buy something,
they say it is forbidden. I am afraid that one day you will say, "You are
going to make gunpowder out of wheat".' Glaspie was quick to reassure
the Iraqi leader: 'I have a direct instruction from the President to seek
better relations with Iraq.' And she emphasised that a formal apology had
been offered to Iraq for a critical article that had been published by the
American Information Agency: 'I saw the Diane Sawyer programme on
ABC ... what happened in that programme was cheap and unjust ... this
is a real picture of what happens in the American media - even to American
politicians themselves. These are the methods that the Western media
employ. I am pleased that you add your voice to the diplomats that stand
up to the media. . . .' Later Glaspie added that 'President Bush is an
intelligent man. He is not going to declare an economic war against Iraq
. . .'; and then the ambassador produced the much-quoted comment that
was perhaps the biggest 'green light' of all:
The point was emphasised: 'I was in the American Embassy in Kuwait
during the late 1960s. The instruction we had during that period was that we
should express no opinion on this issue and that the issue was not associated
with America. James Baker has directed our official spokesman to em-
phasise this instruction ... when we see the Iraqi point of view that the
316 Towards the New World Order
measures taken by the UAE and Kuwait are, in the final analysis, tanta-
mount to military aggression against Iraq, then it is reasonable for me to
be concerned .. .'. In short, the US ambassador to Baghdad was here
telling Saddam Hussein that he had a legitimate case against Kuwait and
that the matter was no business of the United States.
On 27 July the CIA provided the American government with satellite
photographs showing increasing concentrations of Iraqi men and equipment
on the Kuwaiti border. Washington issued a warning to Kuwait, Egypt and
Saudi Arabia, all of whom - in agreement with the US State Department
and the National Security Council - dismissed the idea of an imminent
Iraqi invasion, preferring to talk instead of 'Iraqi blackmail'. The intel-
ligence information continued to accumulate, much of it collected by the
spy satellites of the National Security Agency (NSA). On 28 July Saddam
invited Yasser Arafat to visit Kuwait to tell the emir that 'if he gives me
the $10 billion I'm asking in return for the use of the Rumeila oil wells
on the border, I'll reduce my troops'. The next day Arafat reached Kuwait
City to be told by the emir: 'I don't want to discuss that. In forty-eight hours
I'm going to Jeddah for a summit with Iraq. Let's talk instead about the
problem of all those Soviet Jews emigrating to Israel.' The PLO leader
again tried to raise Saddam's demand but the emir cut him short. By this
time the CIA was able to assess the scale of the Iraqi forces massed on
the border: 100,000 soldiers including troops of the elite Republican
Guard, 300 tanks and 300 pieces of heavy artillery. 39
The next day, 31 July, the US assistant secretary of state John Kelly
entered the Rayburn Building on Capitol Hill to testify before the Middle
East subcommittee of the House of Representatives. The aim was to clarify
the attitude of the Bush administration to the escalating crisis in the Gulf.
Again it is useful to consider the tone and apparent implication of the
ensuing dialogue:
At the time Assistant Secretary Kelly was declaring that the US had no
commitment to help Kuwait in the event of an Iraqi invasion, Kuwaiti and
Iraqi officials were preparing for high-level talks in Jeddah. 41 Hours before
the meeting, the emir of Kuwait declared he would not be attending, a
decision that Saddam took as a slap in the face. The Iraqi leader, smarting
under this 'deadly insult', announced that he too would not be taking part
in the talks; instead he would send Izzat Ibrahim, his number 2 in the
Ba'ath leadership. In this atmosphere the talks were bound to fail.
The Kuwaiti team included the Crown Prince Saad, sent as the emir's
deputy; the Iraqi delegation included Deputy Prime Minister Saddoun
Hammadi, Izzat Ibrahim and Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan aI-Majid, soon
to be appointed governor of Kuwait. The negotiations lasted for about an
hour and a half on the evening of 31 July. Izzat Ibrahim recited a prepared
speech listing Iraqi complaints against Kuwait, whereupon the Crown Prince
Saad refuted the grievances one by one. After some desultory talk King
Fahd declared that he would pay a disputed $1 billion to Iraq, 'with no
318 Towards the New WorLd Order
strings attached'. The Iraqis thanked him, after which Fahd retired, leaving
the Kuwaitis and Iraqis together. Soon they were in angry confrontation,
with Ibrahim making unambiguous threats: 'We know perfectly well how
to get the money we need from you and the Saudis.' Saad countered
angrily, denouncing the Iraqi threats and reminding Ibrahim that 'Kuwait
has very powerful friends. We too have allies. You'll be forced to pay
back all the money you owe us'. Soon afterwards, the two delegations
parted in total discord.
On 1 August, unable to agree a joint communique, the Kuwaiti and Iraqi
negotiators left Jeddah for home. Chadli Klibi, the Arab League Secretary-
General, learning of the collapse of the talks, then contacted Sheikh Sabah,
the Kuwaiti foreign minister, and Emir Abdullah in Saudi Arabia. Both
suggested that the next round of talks, scheduled for 4 August in Baghdad,
would be more successful (Abdullah: 'Our Iraqi friends were tough, the
Kuwaitis too. But it's just the beginning. Let's wait until Baghdad'). US
Secretary of State James Baker was in Irkursk, in the heart of Siberia, for
talks with the Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze.
At 2 a.m. (local time) on 2 August 1990 the Iraqi military began its
invasion of Kuwait. Two divisions of the Republican Guard, including
armoured brigades, quickly advanced from the frontier to Kuwait City; by
11 a.m. most of the capitai's key buildings were in Iraqi hands. The Kuwaiti
emir, Sheikh Jaber Ahmad al-Sabah, tipped off an hour before the invasion,
fled to Saudi Arabia where he set up a provisional government in exile.
President Bush moved to ban all but humanitarian trade with Iraq and to
freeze $30 billion-worth of Iraqi and Kuwaiti assets in the United States;
Britain and France followed suit. The UN Security Council passed Resolu-
tion 660 (in a 14-0 vote, with Yemen abstaining), the first of more than a
dozen against Iraq. This initial resolution, passed on the day of the Iraqi
invasion:
gium, Italy and the Netherlands took steps to freeze all Iraqi and Kuwaiti
assets, and the Soviet Union and the United States issued a joint declaration
calling on the world to end arms shipments to Iraq. President Bush, in a
revealing observation, commented that 'the integrity of Saudi Arabia' was
one of America's 'vital interests', and warned that 'further [Iraqi] ex-
pansion would be even more unacceptable'. Two days later, Bush declared
that the United States would not accept the accomplishment of a puppet
government in Kuwait; and when reporters asked him how he might prevent
it he replied, 'Just wait, watch, and learn.' Already there were signs that
the US was contemplating military intervention. The countdown to the
Gulf War had begun.
The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait set in train a host of events that were to have
consequences for the entire world. In particular, the United States - pos-
sibly in early August 1990 already working to a hidden agenda - began to
orchestrate the 'world consensus' (which in fact was no consensus at all)
that was to result in the military devastation of the Iraqi nation. In the hours
following the invasion it seemed that the US had not yet decided how to
react. It did appear that the Bush administration, despite the 'green light',
had been taken by surprise. Only later did the reason emerge: the US had
perhaps anticipated Iraqi military action, but only to secure disputed ter-
ritory and to give Saddam a more convenient access to the Gulf. It was April
Glaspie herself who let the cat out of the bag. Interviewed by The New York
Times in September 1990, she commented: 'Obviously, I didn't think -
and nobody else did - that the Iraqis were going to take all of Kuwait. '42
Did the US administration envisage that Saddam would take only a part
of Kuwait? Would that have been acceptable if such an Iraqi move had left
US oil interests intact? It seemed that the US, as well as Saddam, had
grossly miscalculated - but now, with Saddam gaining little support from
the world community, President Bush had the chance to tum the affair to
political advantage. His reputation had long been bedevilled by the 'wimp
factor', despite various military initiatives, including the slaughter of sev-
eral thousand civilians in Panama. Now Bush had a fresh chance to estab-
lish his macho credentials: 'A Third World leader had thrown down a
challenge to a president who needed to prove himself. '43
Soon Bush was working to stimulate anti-Iraq feeling: amongst Arab
states that would have preferred a more cautious approach, and in the wider
world community. In a call to President Mubarak, Bush declared that the
320 Towards the New World Order
clear act of aggression 'cannot be accepted', and that he was going to accept
Saddam's challenge. He emphasised that the invasion was a direct threat to
US interests and that he was being urged to act by Congress, government
departments and public opinion. Bush complained that the Arab world had
not yet voiced any clear condemnation, a lapse that he clearly intended to
remedy at the first opportunity. Even King Fahd - now gravely threatened,
according to the emerging American line - had not yet requested US
assistance. Bush had himself taken the trouble to contact Fahd, and been
horrified at the king's reluctance to demand an American response. The
conservative Saudi Arabia, with at that time no real quarrel with Iraq, was
being frantically pressured into joining the burgeoning anti-Saddam cru-
sade. If, declared Bush, the Arabs were not keen to look after their interests
or to call upon friendly assistance they would have no-one to blame but
themselves. Moreover, if the United States did not receive requests for
assistance it would have no option but to act alone. King Hussein of Jordan
urged the US president to delay any military initiative since an Arab
solution to the crisis would be preferable, whereupon an irritated Bush
replied: 'All right, have your forty-eight hours, but if you Arabs don't make
up your mind I don't know who will make it up for you. '44 At the same time
Bush was having to work hard to secure a Saudi 'request' for military
protection. Fahd's natural instinct was to handle the situation with maxi-
mum caution; he had no wish to jeopardise the Washington connection
but was deeply anxious that a massively overt show of support might
destabilise the deeply traditional Saudi regime. It was also clear that some
members of the Saudi royal family perceived that Fahd thought that it
was Kuwaiti inflexibility that had provoked the Iraqi invasion. 4s Such a
thought would cut no ice with an increasingly persistent President Bush,
and gradually Fahd's resistance was worn down. Bush telephoned him
repeatedly, insisting that Saddam had ambitions beyond Kuwait (a one-liner
hypothesis for which there was no evidence), and all but demanding a Saudi
'request' for American protection. At last, following this persistent pres-
sure, Fahd relented and agreed that US Defence Secretary Dick Cheney
could visit Riyadh for talks. Fahd, against his instincts, had stepped onto
the slippery slope; the US aim of building an anti-Iraq 'consensus' had
achieved its first victory. Soon a weary King Fahd would be 'requesting'
American military protection.
The US then hit upon the idea of disguising the Saudi request in a more
general call for assistance. The chief of staff John Sununu had perceived
Fahd's problem: 'By God, the man needs a cover, an Arab or Islamic
cover.' This suggested that it would be easier for Fahd to make his request
if it were couched in general terms as a call to all the foreign friends of
War with the West 321
*Such events also serve to expose one of the key purposes behind the US-dominated supply
of economic aid: recipient states are rendered immensely vulnerable to bribery - in terms of
debt cancellation - when Washington decides to pursue wider strategic objectives.
322 Towards the New World Order
Council veto - a substantial World Bank loan was authorised. Once it was
clear that China would not veto Resolution 678 the Chinese foreign minister
Qian Qichen flew to Washington to discuss a suitable reward; a few days
later, the World Bank deposited a further $114 million in Peking. The
Chinese scholar Liu Binyan commented: 'Since August ... Beijing has
skilfully manipulated the Iraqi crisis to its advantage and rescued itself
from being the pariah of the world. '61
The votes of the non-permanent members of the Security Council were
also crucial to the United States if the necessary majority was to be achieved.
Again the US approach was characteristic: a calculated mix of bribery and
threat, directed against some of the poorest members of the world com-
munity. Ethiopia was offered an investment deal, with Zaire promised
military aid and debt forgiveness. By now, Washington's obsession was so
all-consuming that it even tried to bring the long-castigated Cuba on board,
despite all the grim history of US-sponsored terrorist attacks on the Cuban
economy and the thirty-year-long economic and diplomatic blockade of
the island. On 28 November 1990 a meeting took place between US
Secretary of State James Baker and the Cuban foreign minister Isidoro
Malmierca at an East Side hotel in Manhattan, the first encounter at this
level between the US and Cuba for more than thirty years. Cuba, long
resolved to survive without American-style generosity, would not be bought.
It voted against Resolution 678, as did Yemen. Minutes after Yemen had
registered its negative vote, a senior American diplomat told the Yemeni
ambassador: 'That was the most expensive "no" vote you ever cast.' Within
days the US had stopped its $70 million aid programme to Yemen, one
of the poorest countries of the world. The World Bank and the IMF moved
to hamper further Yemeni loans, and some 800,000 Yemeni workers were
abruptly expelled from Saudi Arabia. It is estimated that the Yemeni 'no'
vote - an entirely legitimate sovereign decision under the UN Charter - cost
the impoverished Yemen about $1 billion, bringing massive additional
suffering to its people.62 Zimbabwe, initially hostile to Resolution 678,
eventually voted in favour after suggestions to the foreign minister that a
projected IMF loan would be blocked; just as the US ambassador in Quito
warned Ecuador of the 'devastating economic consequences' that would
follow a 'no' vote. The famine-stricken Sudan, rash enough to voice sup-
port for Iraq, was denied a shipment of food. 63
By dint of threats, bribery and reliance on supine acquiescence the
United States had managed to fabricate a bogus consensus. At one level this
meant that a pliant Security Council - no longer subject to the possibility of
a confident Soviet veto - could be relied upon to serve US strategic inter-
ests. Washington, hostile to the UN for most of its history, had not devel-
War with the West 325
oped a new respect for the international organisation: the Bush administra-
tion simply perceived the advantage in pursuing US goals under a legalistic
'flag of convenience'. At another level the fabricated consensus - to be
bolstered by the Congress vote - meant that the United States, the one
surviving nuclear superpower, was free to wage war against a Third-World
country. The legalistic UN camouflage for the American action was not
essential - the US would have acted anyway - but it was helpful. Now it
was possible to talk of 'UN authorisation', 'UN forces' and 'UN demands'.
At the same time there was much talk of the 'allies', of the 'Coalition'. The
scene was set. The world did not have to wait long for the performance
to begin.
GEORGE BUSH
No-one doubts that President George Bush was a principal player in the
Gulf War. But was he the virtuous leader, courageously standing against
evil, as he would want us to believe? Or is there another interpretation, more
in accord with recent American history and more true to George Bush's
record and performance? In fact it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that
President Bush, while keen to make moral pronouncements at every tum,
embodied above all the gross hypocrisy that has characterised the posture
of the United States in the global politics of the modem world.
Noam Chomsky, MIT linguistics professor and dissident writer, has
reminded us that at the time of the Gulf War George Bush was the one head
of state who stood condemned by the World Court for 'the unlawful use
of force'. Bush contemptuously dismissed the Court's demand for the
payment of reparations to Nicaragua, while eager to demand reparations
from Iraq.64 In 1975 Bush had become head of the CIA, just in time to
support the Indonesian extermination of a third of the population of East
Timor. He supported Israel's invasion of the Lebanon, and then opposed
UN Resolution 425 demanding an immediate Israeli withdrawal from the
territory it had occupied. Under Bush's leadership the CIA launched a
massive destabilisation campaign against the democratically-elected leader
of Jamaica, Michael Manley; and there is evidence that he knew about, but
failed to prevent, the assassination of Orlando Letelier, a former minister
in Allende's socialist Chile, in Washington. Bush agreed a flood of milit-
ary aid into Guatemala, despite proof provided by Amnesty International
of 'a government co-ordinated campaign of terror' against its own people.
When four American nuns were raped and murdered in El Salvador in 1980,
Bush backed UN ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick who declared that the
326 Towards the New World Order
nuns 'were not just nuns. The nuns were political activists . . .'. After
typically rigged elections in the Philippines, Bush flew to congratulate the
dictator President Ferdinand Marcos, commenting: 'We love your adher-
ence to democratic principles and to the democratic process. '65 In December
1989 Bush launched the invasion of Panama, violating the UN Charter and
other international agreements,66 and killing - according to some estimates
- up to seven thousand people. Bush then installed Guillermo Endara as
president, a man now known to be involved in drug trafficking and money
laundering.
In a series of speeches between August 1990 and February 1991, Pres-
ident Bush repeatedly accused Iraq of human rights abuses and violations
of international law, and castigated Saddam as 'Hitler revisited'. * Bush
frequently cited damning material that he had known about for years
but about which he had been silent while the US was supplying Saddam
with cash credits, armaments and other equipment. He also had a 'near
obsession'67 with a single Amnesty International report describing Iraqi
atrocities in Kuwait. Now - having long ignored the stack of human-rights
reports about such friendly countries as Turkey, Syria, Egypt, Israel and
Saudi Arabia - Bush was cynically exploiting Amnesty for propaganda
purposes. In January 1991 Bush despatched a message to more than 450
college and university newspapers, which included the words: 'Listen to
what Amnesty International has documented . . . There is no horror that
could make this a more obvious conflict of good v. evil .. .'.68 He did
not refer to what Amnesty had often reported about other states, many of
them US allies.
Amnesty's Executive Director John Healey reacted with anger to George
Bush's manipulation of Amnesty material for purposes of political
propaganda:
I hope the administration will soon learn that Amnesty members and
other student activists can not be misled by opportunistic manipUlation
of the international human rights movement . . . We can teach our
political leaders that people's human rights are not convenient issues for
rhetorical arsenals. 69
*The propaganda depiction of Saddam as a new Hitler is ironic in view of the substantial US
support offered to historical Nazism. Thus such US companies as lIT, Standard Oil and Ford
helped to equip Hitler during the Second World War (Charles Higham, Trading with the
Enemy, 1983); ' ... the CIA was willing to finance and protect not simply former Nazi and
Gestapo men but even senior officers of Adolf Eichmann's SS section Amt IV B 4, the central
administrative apparatus of the Holocaust' (Christopher Simpson, Blowback, America's Re-
cruitmentoJNazis and Its Effects on the Cold War, 1988, p. 245); and Hitler's praise for Henry
Ford (Mein Kampf, Hutchinson, p. 583) was symbolic of the aid and support that the Nazi
despot could rely on from certain powerful American sources.
War with the West 327
The situation was plain to see. George Bush, with an abysmal human
rights record of his own, was eager to point the finger at the 'new Hitler',
Saddam Hussein; eager to exploit any propaganda tool to castigate the
Iraqi leader for behaviour which Bush himself had tacitly supported a short
time before, and which in any case continued to characterise a host of
undemocratic authoritarian states that were current friends of the United
States. With this gross hypocrisy, in the tattered garb of an adulterated
morality, George Bush began preparations for a further devastating war. *
*There are domestic matters also that should be considered in assessing George Bush's
character and performance: for example, the Savings and Loans (S and L) scandal that has cost
the American taxpayer more than $500 billion. In this connection the investigative journalist
Peter Brewton (in The Mafia, CIA & George Bush, 1992) has referred to Bush's 'complicity,
non-reaction and denial', describing Bush as a wealthy businessman 'with symbiotic relation-
ships to the Mafia and the CIA'.
328 Towards the New World Order
Japan, because of the time difference, was the first major state to hear
the full details of the invasion; the US was going to bed. A few days later,
after much agitation in the world community, President Bush appeared
on national television to declare: 'In the life of a nation we're called upon
to declare who we are and what we believe. Sometimes these choices are
not easy. But today, as President, I ask for your support in a decision
I've made to stand up for what's right and condemn what's wrong, all in
the cause of peace ... The mission of our troops is wholly defensive ...
They will not initiate hostilities ... '. At a press conference on the same day,
Bush repeated that the aim of the US military presence was not to drive the
Iraqis out of Kuwait. 75 The task of badgering King Fahd into 'requesting'
US protection had been accomplished, despite Fahd's initial refusal to
War with the West 331
There were now suggestions, reported in The New York Times, that US-led
offensive operations would begin on 15 October.85 This possibility had
angered General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, not because he was opposed in
principle to the offensive option but because he felt that the massive US
forces in Saudi Arabia were not yet ready. On 10 October Marine Major
General Robert B. Johnston, Schwarzkopf s chief of staff, met with General
Colin Powell, Secretary of Defence Dick Cheney and others at the Pentagon
to discuss the details of the planned offensive. Even at this early stage it was
obvious that the hype surrounding the 'defensive' Desert Shield was delib-
erate cover for an altogether different agenda: Iraq - and, where necessary,
Kuwait - would be massively bombed as a lengthy prelude to the final
ground assault. At this time, while the details of the offensive option were
being picked over, Secretary of State James Baker was suggesting that the
mandatory sanctions on Iraq were 'tightening with increasing severity' and
that they might work, so avoiding recourse to the military option. On
15 October Bush accused Saddam Hussein of war crimes; and, in line with
334 Towards the New World Order
Margaret Thatcher's suggestion for a UN resolution that would call for the
eventual trial of Iraqi leaders, he commented: 'Hitler revisited. But remem-
ber, when Hitler's war ended, there were the Nuremberg trialS.'86 It was also
emerging at this time that the US administration had actively encouraged
Saddarn 'to pursue an aggressive policy of higher oil prices' before the
invasion of Kuwait. 87
On 24 October Yevgeni Primakov, Gorbachev's envoy, had his second
meeting with Saddarn (his first, on 5 October, had left Primakov 'not
pessimistic' about a political solution). By now, deserters were swelling the
growing anti-war chorus throughout the United States,88 and Democrats in
the US Congress were declaring themselves 'emphatically opposed to any
military action'. 89 On 31 October, before any UN authorisation had been
given, Bush secretly decided that the air campaign against Iraq would
begin in mid-January 1991, to befollowed by a large-scale land offensive.90
He also decided that a UN mandate would be helpful window-dressing. In
early November Bush made public his offensive intentions, and James
Baker began the arm-twisting in the UN to secure the mandatory 'force'
resolution. Primakov reported in mid-November that he had seen 'an evo-
lution' of Saddarn's position between their two meetings: Saddarn, he
observed, no longer had any interest in defending his take-over of Kuwait,
being more concerned that the West had decided to destroy his regime,
whatever action he took. 91 On 20 November a New York Times-CBS poll
revealed that 51 per cent felt that Bush had not given adequate reasons for
his deployment of more than 400,000 US troops in the Gulf; with 62 per
cent reckoning that 'protecting oil supplies' was an inadequate reason for
going to war. The approval rating for Bush had now fallen to 50 per cent.
On 22 November, during his much-hyped Thanksgiving visit to Saudi
Arabia, Bush asked the emir of Kuwait: 'When do you want us to go to
war?' Emir Jabel al-Sabah replied: 'This minute, before this hour.' Bush
responded by saying 'we are going to fight quite soon ... '; Saddarn had
made the confrontation 'a question of him or me ... The future of my
presidency and my place in history depends (sic) on the outcome'.92
Secretary of State James Baker had by now successfully completed one
of his primary tasks; that of ensuring, by dint of various bribes and threats
(see The Fabrication of Consensus, above), that the useful 'force' resolu-
tion would be agreed in the UN Security Council. On 29 November 1990
the vote was taken on this crucial Resolution 678, the broadest UN authori-
sation for war since 1950 (in the case of Korea).93 The resolution was passed
12 to 2 (Cuba and Yemen), with China abstaining: a predictable outcome
following James Baker's creative diplomacy. Resolution 678 made refer-
ence to the earlier resolutions; in particular, to Resolution 660, the original
War with the West 335
demand for the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait. It also authorised
Member States, 'unless Iraq on or before 15 January 1991' fully imple-
mented Resolution 660 (and all subsequent resolutions), 'to use all neces-
sary means' to uphold all the relevant resolutions (my italics).
The authorisation of 'all necessary means' has generally been taken as
synonymous with authorisation for force, a sanction for the military op-
tion. 94 In fact this interpretation can be questioned. It relies on the impres-
sion that 'all' logically entails every option, without giving due attention
to the qualifying weight of the adjective 'necessary'. Who was to decide
what was necessary? The resolution, despite the requirement that the
Security Council 'remain seized of the matter', made no stipulation as to
how 'necessary means' would be determined on 16 January 1991, at the
expiry of the deadline. Was every Security Council member to make a
unilateral estimation? The United Nations itself was in no position to make
such an estimation since no relevant protocols had been articulated; and
moreover the Military Staff Committee specified in Article 47 had not
been established, a manifest violation of the Charter. Nor was there any
reference to judgements that might be made by the UN sanctions commit-
tee, charged with the task of monitoring the impact of earlier mandatory
resolutions intended to compel an Iraqi withdrawal.
These are not minor considerations, but ones directly relevant to the
legality of the US-sponsored war against Iraq. It is significant that various
Arab experts - including Adnan Pachacchi, Iraqi ambassador to the UN in
the 1960s - have argued that the legal basis of Resolution 678 was un-
sound. 95 But perhaps most significant are the clear signs that even James
Baker himself, having negotiated the wording of 678, was not happy that
'all necessary means' was synonymous with 'force'. Thus, in his negotia-
tions with Soviet foreign minister Shevardnadze, Baker 'backed offhis own
phrase. It was too indefinite . . .', though he later 'gave in'.96 (my italics)
The situation at the end of November 1990 was that Bush had accom-
plished all the UN window-dressing he was likely to get. The unsound
Resolution 678, in any event secured through threat and bribery, could now
be hyped as UN authorisation for a superpower to wage unlimited war on a
Third-World nation. There was little attention given in the Western media
to the words that appear in the preamble to the UN Charter: 'We, the peoples
of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the
scourge of war . .. '.
planners were well aware that the hot weather was approaching, and that it
would be useful to end the war before the start of the holy month of
Ramadan on March 17. General Schwarzkopf, according to Pentagon sources,
was planning for a mid-February offensive dubbed internally 'the Valen-
tine's Day massacre'.117 On 5 February Israel launched fresh bombing
raids in Lebanon.
In Iraq the devastation continued, with the whole country 'bombed back
to last century' ."8 Wave after wave of bombing strikes had destroyed
virtually every power station in the country; every public telecommunica-
tions building had been destroyed; scores of refineries had gone up in
flames; the sewage system had been massively damaged, and even the few
pumps that were still functional had no electricity. Direct civilian deaths
because of the bombing continuing to mount, with the first evidence emerg-
ing of deaths through malnutrition, razed hospitals and disease epidemics.
Some bombing strikes on civilians received publicity; most did not. A
bombing attack on a bridge in Nasiriyeh on 4 February killed forty-seven
civilians and wounded a further 102, with many people tossed into the
Euphrates when the bridge exploded and carried downstream. 119 On
13 January four hundred civilians - men, women and children - were burnt
to death when US planes bombed the Amiriya shelter in Baghdad. 120
On 15 February a statement issued by the Iraqi Revolutionary Command
Council (RCC) indicated that Iraq was willing to withdraw from Kuwait.
President Bush used the 'unacceptable old conditions' in the statement as a
reason for dismissing the offer as a 'cruel hoax' (British Prime Minister
John Major echoed the US response by dubbing the Iraqi statement a 'bogus
sham').121 The RCC had declared: 'In order to achieve a dignified and
acceptable political settlement, Iraq has decided to accept the UN security
council resolution No 660 of 1990, including the clause related to an Iraqi
withdrawal'; in rejecting the offer Bush commented: ' ... there's another
way for the bloodshed to stop, and that is for the Iraqi military and the
Iraqi people to take matters into their own hands, to force Saddam to
step aside'.122 The goalposts had been moved and now there seemed
nothing to prevent the US-led land offensive.
On 18 February Tariq Aziz arrived in Moscow to discuss with President
Gorbachev the Iraqi proposal for withdrawal. At the same time there were
a number of skirmishes on the Iraq border; in one of these a US Apache
helicopter accidentally fired missiles at two American armoured vehicles,
killing two US soldiers and wounding six (this brought to ten the number of
US soldiers killed by 'friendly fire', out of the total of fourteen killed in
combat at that stage). In his brief talks with Tariq Aziz, Gorbachev saw
what Bush had dismissed as 'a cruel hoax' as 'an important beginning
342 Towards the New World Order
towards peace'; and the Soviet president went further, being prepared to
express 'cautious optimism' about Iraqi flexibility. 123 Now Bush was reject-
ing Soviet support for the Iraqi peace initiative, declaring that there would
be 'no concessions and no negotiations'; Perez de Cuellar, UN Secretary-
General, threw his weight behind the Soviet efforts, but to no avail. It was
clear that Washington was well prepared to override other permanent
members of the Security Council and the Secretary-General himself in
order to prosecute the planned land offensive. The White House spokes-
man, Marlin Fitzwater, commented that 'We are assuming that the war
will have to be prosecuted to the end,' adding that the US was 'in no way
bound' by any deal between Iraq and the Soviet Union.
On 22 February the Soviet Union announced that Saddam Hussein had
accepted the fresh Soviet terms for an ending of the Gulf War. This came as
'a stunning blow' for the United States, and in a subsequent telephone
conversation Bush raised his 'serious concerns' with Gorbachev. l24 He then
publicly overrode the Soviet and Iraqi peace proposals and issued a blunt
warning for Saddam Hussein to start withdrawing from Kuwait by noon
(1700 GMT) on 23 February or face a massive land invasion. No-one
can have expected Saddam to heed the unvarnished US threat, and the
RCC issued a predictable statement: 'We conftrm that Iraq wants peace
and is working to seriously support the Soviet initiative and facilitate its
success, but not out of fear of Bush's threat.' Iraqi troops now began ftring
Kuwaiti oil wells, in addition to those already set alight by allied bombing.
There was nothing now to stop the largest land invasion since the Second
World War.
Minutes before the US-specifted deadline for the withdrawal of Iraqi forces
from Kuwait, a Scud missile, the thirty-sixth of the war, was launched
against Israel. Then, on 23 February 1991, President Bush gave the order
for an all-out war to expel the Iraqis. Washington had decided that the
American public and the wider world community would not be told the
character of the war that would be waged by a technological superpower
against the hapless Iraqi conscripts in the desert. What the journalist and
publisher John R. MacArthur called 'Operation Desert Muzzle' meant that
'The American public got only the military view of this war for the most
part ... ' .12S The American public would not be told the true nature of the
weapons used, the scale of the American-led slaughter, or the extent to
which the United States had violated the Geneva Protocols and other provi-
War with the West 343
sions of international law. Powerful military forces, clear victors in the
field, often display a purblind indifference to the civilising constraints of
ethics and law; the US intended to be victorious.
Within hours, hundreds of allied tanks, supported by virtually unchal-
lenged air power, had swept north into Iraq to arc round towards the
surviving Iraqi forces in Kuwait. By the night of the 24 February, reports
suggested that allied contingents were already in the suburbs of Kuwait
City. A US pilot commented, after a bombing mission over Kuwait, 'It
looks like what hell would look like down there. The country is on fire. '126
On 25 February an announcement on Baghdad Radio stated that Iraqi troops
had been ordered to leave Kuwait, a statement that was treated with con-
tempt by the allied command. While battles were raging in the desert a Scud
missile hit a US Army reserve barracks in Khobar City, near Ohahran,
killing at least twelve soldiers - with a further forty still unaccounted for -
and injuring twenty-five more. By now hundreds of thousands of allied
troops were sweeping north, destroying hundreds of Iraqi tanks and taking
tens of thousands of prisoners. On the morning of 27 February allied tanks
began moving into Kuwait City. As the demoralised Iraqi forces struggled
to escape from Kuwait there were reports of random killings of Kuwaitis
and the burning of some two hundred buildings, including the main hotels,
the parliament building and government offices. The Kuwaiti resistance
reported that fleeing Iraqis were leaving most of their equipment behind,
and that as many as 3000 had surrendered to them. The CBS TV journalist,
Bob McKeown, one of the first into the liberated Kuwait City, confirmed
stories of executions, rape and torture during the last few days of the Iraqi
occupation: 'Everyone has a story to tell about a friend or relative who
had been killed.' A Kuwaiti woman said to him: 'If you come to Kuwait,
you will say this is not Kuwait at all. Kuwait, it's not Kuwait any more.'
On 27 February a Pentagon official was reported as saying that the war
'could be over within hours'. General Schwarzkopf reported that allied
forces had 'rendered completely ineffective over 29 Iraqi divisions' and that
there were 'very, very large numbers' of Iraqi dead - though then, as later,
he refused to say (even approximately) how many. Tariq Aziz then con-
veyed a letter to the United Nations, in which Iraq agreed to meet most of
the allied demands; White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater commented
that this 'is still a conditional offer and falls far short of what's necessary'.
The Security Council issued a statement insisting that Iraq agree to observe
all the twelve resolutions imposed since the invasion of Kuwait. Soon
afterwards, on the morning of 28 February, President Bush announced that
the US and its allies would end combat operations if Iraq laid down its arms.
344 Towards the New World Order
On television, Bush declared: 'I am pleased to announce that at midnight
tonight, Eastern Standard Time (0500 GMT, 28 February), exactly 100
hours since ground operations commenced and six weeks since the start of
Operation Desert Storm, all United States and coalition forces will suspend
offensive combat operations ... This war is now behind us. Ahead of us
is the task of achieving a potentially historic peace' in the Middle East.
The 1991 Gulf War was over.
The character of the war, like the character of the Iraqi atrocities in Kuwait,
was plain for all who chose to look: despite all the censorship, all the
news manipulation, all the propaganda, what the United States and its allies
had perpetrated soon became clear.
The bombing missions over Iraq were a 'turkey shoot ... It's almost like
you flipped on the light in the kitchen at night and the cockroaches start
scurrying, and we're killing them.' 127 Long before the end of the war the
Iraqi Red Crescent, quoted by former US attorney gener~l Ramsey Clark,
estimated Iraqi civilian deaths at between 6000 and 7000 (Clark himself
described the bombed-out Basra as 'a human and civilian tragedy ...
staggering in its expanse'). The weapons used were sufficiently modem to
achieve their purpose. The laser-guided bombs, much less than 10 per cent
of the total tonnage dropped, were accompanied by the B-52 deliveries,
massive waves of saturation bombing able to layout 'carpets' of total
destruction in village, town and desert; by the Rockeye cluster bombs, each
containing 247 'anti-personnel' grenades that individually explode into
2000 high-velocity razor-sharp fragments (a device that 'shreds people');
by fuel-air explosives (FAEs), dropped to create massive fireballs over
Iraqi positions. 128
A high-tech video, taken at night and shown in a briefing given by the
US XVIII Airborne Corps, showed Iraqi soldiers shot to pieces in the dark,
some blown apart by cannon shells. 129 The Iraqi soldiers, reported John
Balzar of The Los Angeles Times, were 'like ghostly sheep, flushed from a
pen ... bewildered and terrified, jarred from sleep and fleeing their bunkers
under a hell storm of fire. One by one they were cut down by attackers they
couldn't see or understand. Some were literally blown to bits by bursts of
30mm exploding cannon. One man dropped, writhed on the ground and
struggled to his feet. Another burst tore him apart ... '. One of the US pilots,
Ron Balak, commented: ' ... When I got back I sat there on the wing and
I was laughing ... I was probably laughing at myself ... sneaking up there
and blowing this up and blowing that up. A guy came up to me and we were
War with the West 345
slapping each other on the back ... and then he said, "By God, I thought we
had shot into a damn farm. It looked like somebody had opened the sheep
pen." , Chief Warrant Officer Brian Walker was looking forward to more
action: ' ... there is nothing that can take them out like an Apache. It will
be a duck hunt' .130
Most of the US-led slaughter of Iraqi conscripts by the tens of thousands
received no publicity: film shot by the US Army has not been released, and
journalists were routinely excluded from most of the killing fields. Two
of the massive Iraqi retreats from Kuwait, difficult to disguise because of
their scale, received some graphic attention in the Western media. Allied
aircraft had arrived as columns of desperate men, carrying their loot from
a ransacked Kuwait, queued in military and civilian vehicles to escape
back home. The (mostly) American aircraft waited their tum to attack the
fleeing Iraqi convoy with cluster bombs, rockets and anti-tank missiles. By
the morning of 28 February a section of the Jahra-Basra road at Mitla
ridge 'had been turned into a gigantic scrap-yard, with some 2000 military
and civilian vehicles destroyed, some charred, some exploded, some re-
duced to heaps of tangled metal, with dead bodies and their severed limbs
scattered allover, some corpses petrified in their vehicles, and others
incinerated, with their faces reduced to grinning teeth' .131 The Mitla mas-
sacre of retreating Iraqis was not the only such event in the closing hours
of the Gulf War. A similar rout and slaughter occurred on the Jahra-Umm
Qasr highway, a coastal road running though the desert. Here too were the
masses of destroyed vehicles, the scattered loot, and the charred and bloated
corpses. Dogs 'snarled around the corpse of one soldier. They had eaten
most of his flesh . . . the dogs had eaten the legs from the inside out, and
the epidermis lay in collapsed and hairy folds, like leg-shaped blankets,
with feet attached . . .'. J32 The American journalist Bob Dogrin wrote of
'scores of soldiers' lying 'in and around the vehicles, mangled and bloated
in the drifting desert sands ... '. He accompanied Major Bob Nugent, a US
army intelligence officer, who commented: 'Even in Vietnam, I didn't see
anything like this.' 133
The retreating Iraqi forces, in total disarray and desperation, were re-
morselessly attacked over a period of more than forty hours, a 'concentra-
tion of killing ... unequalled since Hiroshima ... ' .134 The attacking US
aircraft participating in the massive slaughter were so numerous that planes
had to be diverted to avoid mid-air collisions. Tony Clifton of Newsweek
reported: '. . . the great red flames and then these weird little contorted
figures ... Next morning we went up to see what we'd done ... there were
bodies allover the place . . . I remember at one point looking down at the
346 Towards the New World Order
car track and I was up to my ankles in blood. The tracks were filled with
blood and there were very white-faced men going round saying, "Jesus. Did
we really do this?" '135
In General Schwarzkopfs own account, an Iraqi representative, Ahmad,
at the cease-fire talks asked him why Iraq had been invaded 'after we had
withdrawn from Kuwait and announced it on the television and radio'.
Schwarzkopf refused to comment, saying only, 'I think we will leave it
to history.' And Ahmad replied: 'I have just mentioned it for history.'136
The American casualties in the 1991 Gulf War were 137 killed in action
(many from 'friendly fire') and seven missing in action. Estimates of the
Iraqi casualties range from 50,000 to 300,000 dead, with countless more
wounded and traumatised. General Schwarzkopf ordered thousands of
Iraqi corpses to be bulldozed into mass graves in the desert - in scenes that
must have resembled the disposal of bodies in the Nazi death camps - with
no attempt to conduct the body counts and to make the other provisions
for the dead specified in the Geneva Protocols. The number of the Iraqi
dead and dying - conscripts, professional soldiers, civilians; men, women
and children - continued to mount long after the ceasefire, as a bewildered
and powerless people struggled to survive in a country that had been
comprehensively devastated and which was now being denied the necessi-
ties of life. The ordinary people of Iraq, long helpless in the grip of a tyrant,
had now been well inducted into the US-defined New World Order.
On 1 March 1991 President Bush declared (on the Middle East): 'There
is a better climate now . . . we are going to try to lead.' Then he added,
referring to the Arab countries, 'the US wants to be their friend'. J37 In June
1993 the Iraqi justice minister, Shabib al-Maliki, told the UN Human Rights
Conference that the continuing sanctions against Iraq, demanded by the US,
were a violation of human rights: 'The people of Iraq suffer today from
shortages of food, medicine and medical requirements . . . the blockade is
causing thousands oflives to be lost.'138 In September 1993 the Iraqi health
minister, Umeed Mubarak:, said that more than 300,000 people had died
because of sanctions, with 4000 children under five dying every month. 139
The Iraqi claims were supported by the findings of the UN-linked Food and
Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP). A
joint F AOIWFP report stated that sanctions had caused 'persistent depriva-
tion, chronic hunger, endemic undernutrition, massive unemployment and
widespread human suffering'; noted many pre-famine indicators; and de-
clared that 'a grave humanitarian tragedy is unfolding'. 140
Notes
Chapter 1: After the 1991 Gulf War
I. Noam Chomsky, 'The weak shall inherit nothing', The Guardian, London,
25 March 1991.
2. In the early 1990s there were many signs of escalating commercial tensions
between the United States and Japan. In 1992 there were growing threats of
a trade war between the US and Europe. With the Cold War over, the leading
commercial players of the world were increasingly able to revert to their
traditional practices of economic confrontation.
3. Mike Graham, 'Bush finds comic relief in a ragbag of rivals', The Sunday
Times, London, 8 September 1991.
4. Ibid. Virtually alone among the journalistic pundits, Andrew Stephen (The
Observer, London, 8 September 1991), while opining that Bill Clinton 'has
probably had too many girlfriends for comfort', reckoned that the 1992
election would be 'much closer, much more exciting, than everyone else
seems to think' .
5. A detailed account of how journalists were restricted in their efforts to cover
the Gulf War is given by John R. MacArthur, Second Front, Censorship and
Propaganda in the Gulf War, Hill & Wang, New York, 1992.
6. Karl Waldron, 'Splintered remnants of a rout', The Independent, London,
4 March 1991.
7. Ed Vulliamy, 'Limbs and lives blasted away by allied bombs', The Guardian,
London, 5 March 1991.
8. Bob Dogrin, 'Desert claims death convoy', The Guardian, London, II March
1991.
9. Ibid. See also the account by Michael Kelly, 'Carnage on a forgotten road',
The Guardian, London, II April 1991.
10. Christopher Bellamy, 'Arithmetic of death in wake of Gulf conflict', The
Independent, London, 20 March 1991.
II. Richard Norton-Taylor, 'Allies tot up Iraqi losses', The Guardian, London,
I March 1991.
12. Simon Jones, 'US demographer sacked for exposing Iraqi civilian deaths',
The Independent, London, 23 April 1992.
13. Robert Lifton, 'Last refuge of a hi-tech nation', The Guardian, London,
12 March 1991.
14. Ibid.
15. Patrick Sloyan, 'Iraqi troops buried alive say American officers', The Guard-
ian, London, 13 September 1991.
16. Nick Cohen, 'Radioactive waste left in Gulf by allies', The Independent on
Sunday, London, 10 November 1991; Nick Cohen and Tom Wilkie, 'Gulf
teams not told of risk from uranium', The Independent on Sunday, London,
10 November 1991.
17. Patrick Cockburn, 'Pentagon revises its Gulf war scorecard', The Independ-
ent, London, 14 April 1992.
347
348 Notes to Chapter 1
18. Barton Gellman, 'Study questions famed accuracy of US weapons', The
Guardian, London, II April 1992.
19. The Washington Post, 18 March 1991.
20. Richard Norton-Taylor, 'Gulf war allies had nuclear option, claims officer',
The Guardian, London, 28 September 1991.
21. Mohamed Heikal, Illusions of Triumph. An Arab View of the Gulf War,
HarperCollins, London, 1992, p. 289.
22. Lee Hockstader, 'Health crisis looms in Baghdad', The Guardian, London,
5 March 1991.
23. Ibid.
24. Safa Haeri, 'Food and medicines "crucial" to save Iraq', The Independent,
London, 26 March 1991.
25. Peter Jenkins, 'War continues by other means', The Independent, London,
24 April 1991.
26. Ed Vulliamy, 'Doctors find Iraq is slowly dying', The Guardian, London,
16 April 1991.
27. Susan Okie, 'Child death rate doubles in aftermath of Gulf conflict', The
Guardian, London, 23 May 1991.
28. Patrick Tyler, 'Trade ban starves Iraqis', The Guardian, London, 25 June
1991.
29. Ibid.
30. Sara Helm, 'Child deaths "have trebled" since Gulf war', The Independent,
London, 20 September 1991.
31. Ibid.
32. Helga Graham, 'Starving Iraqis riot as food crisis deepens', The Observer,
London, 3 November 1991.
33. Sara Helm, 'Oxfam urges action to end Iraqi hardship', The Independent,
London, 21 November 1991.
34. Marie Colvin, 'Saddam thrives as babies starve', The Sunday Times, 1 De-
cember 1991.
35. Louise Cainkar, 'Desert sin: a post-war journey through Iraq', in Phyllis
Bennis and Michel Moushabeck (eds), Beyond the Storm. A Gulf Crisis
Reader, Canongate, London, 1992, pp. 335-55.
36. Patrick E. Tyler, 'Bush links ending of trading ban to Hussein exit', The New
York Times, 21 May 1991.
37. Helga Graham, 'King Hussein bursts sanctions to rebuild Saddam's power',
The Observer, London, 23 June 1991.
38. Trevor Rowe, 'UN allows Iraqi sale of oil to buy food', The Independent,
London, 16 August 1991; Mark Tran, 'UN permits sale of $1.6bn of Iraqi
oil', The Guardian, 16 August 1991.
39. Tony Smythe, 'Oil revenues won't feed Iraq' (letter), The Independent,
London, 19 August 1980; Leonard Doyle, 'Iraq oil exports "insufficient
to prevent famine" " The Independent, London, 7 September 1991.
40. Robert Fisk, 'Families vanish in tragedy without end', The Independent,
London, 8 March 1991.
41. The character of the Kuwaiti regime had long been apparent. In 1986 the Emir
abolished the embryonic democratic system and continued to rule by personal
decree. Germaine Greer exposed the 'slave-owners of Kuwait', noting that
the Emir is a kinsman of the Kuwaiti princesses, Sheika Faria al-Sabah and
Notes to Chapter J 349
Sheika Samiya, who in Britain subjected their imported slave Laxmi Swami
to daily whippings and other torture (The Independent Magazine, London,
13 October 1990). The systematic abuse of human rights in Kuwait was well
known: 'Now and then the Kuwait Times reported spectacular cases of
servants thrown from roof-tops, burnt or blinded or battered to death; the
systematic abuse they endured was unworthy of remark' (ibid.). Laxmi Swami
was deliberately starved; if she tried to reach food from a dustbin through a
barred window she was beaten 'sometimes with a broomstick or horse-whip,
sometimes with a knotted electric flex' (The Independent, London, 8 Febru-
ary 1991). The UK Home Office issues visitors' visas to such slaves and
denies them the right to work for any other employer. This has meant that
over the last fifteen years some 40,000 slaves - owned by Kuwaiti royalty
and other rich Arabs - have passed through Britain with no hope of escape
or release.
42. Matthew Engel, 'Tensions between Kuwaitis and Palestinians sour peace',
The Guardian, London, 6 March 1991.
43. Paul Taylor, 'Gun law of avenging Kuwaitis', The Independent, London,
20 March 1991.
44. Robert Block, Torture of Palestinians "supported by military" " The Inde-
pendent, London, 21 March 1991.
45. Kathy Evans, 'An emirate unfit for Palestinians', The Guardian, London,
13 March 1991.
46. Ian Glover-James, 'Iraqis live in fear as Kuwaitis take revenge', The Sunday
Times, London, 24 March 1991.
47. John Kifner, 'US warns Kuwait to end Arab reprisals', The Guardian, Lon-
don, 4 April 1991 ; Kathy Evans, 'Watchdogs on trial of Kuwaiti abuses', The
Guardian, London, 9 April 1991.
48. Shyam Bhatia, 'Rapists run amok in Kuwait', The Observer, London,
14 April 1991.
49. Khaled Ghaleb, 'We toiled for them; now they curse us', The Independent,
London, 17 April 1991.
50. Shyam Bhatia, 'Kuwaitis pave the way for public hangings', The Observer,
London, 21 April 1991; Andrew Alderson, 'Rough justice at Kuwait's war-
crime trials', The Sunday Times, London, 21 April 1991.
51. Michael Simmons, 'Amnesty asks emir to help end torture', The Guardian,
London, 19 April 1991.
52. Robert Fisk, 'Kuwait's royal torturers', The Independent, London, 27 April
1991.
53. John Cassidy, 'Death verdicts fuel anger at Kuwait's chaos', The Sunday
Times, London, 16 June 1991; Michael Simmons, 'Rights groups outraged by
Kuwait trials', The Guardian, London, 18 June 1991; Kathy Evans, 'Kuwait
moves trials to civilian courts', The Guardian, London, 26 June 1991.
54. 'Asian maids flee Kuwaiti terror', The Sunday Times, London, 3 May 1992.
55. Liz Thurgood, 'Kuwait "condones" assaults on maids', The Guardian, Lon-
don, 15 April 1992.
56. Kathy Evans, 'Deportations raise fresh questions on Kuwait army,' The
Guardian, London, 20 January 1993.
57. Julie Flint, 'Iraq in open revolt', The Observer, London, 3 March 1991.
350 Notes to Chapter 1
58. David Beresford, Alfonso Rojo and Kathy Evans, 'Iraq rebels appeal for
allied help', The Guardian, London, 4 March 1991.
59. Christopher Bellamy, Annika Savill and Safa Haeri, 'Kurdish guerrillas at-
tack army HQ', The Independent, London, 6 March 1991.
60. Martin Woollacott, 'Fragile union to oust a tyrant', The Guardian, London,
II March 1991.
61. Robert Fisk, 'Iraq opposition groups question US intentions', The Independ-
ent, London, II March 1991; Raymond Whitaker, 'US military defends its
stand-off role as Baghdad tames rebels' , The Independent, London, 13 March
1991.
62. Hella Pick, 'Britain and US part over Iraqi rebels', The Guardian, London,
13 March 1991.
63. Hugh Pope, John Lichfield, Safa Haeri and John Bullock, 'Washington
dithers as Iraqi rebels claim more victims', The Independent on Sunday,
London, 24 March 1991; Rupert Cornwell, 'Washington trapped by awkward
options', The Independent, London, 26 March 1991; Martin Walker, 'US
fights shy of joining in Iraq civil war', The Guardian, London, 28 March
1991; Rupert Cornwell, 'US resolved not to be pulled into Iraq', The Inde-
pendent, London, I April 1991.
64. Andrew Stephen, 'George casts morals away', The Observer, London,
7 April 1991.
65. Ibid.
66. Robert Fisk, The Independent, London, 30 May 1991; 31 May 1991; 3 June
1991.
67. Hugh Pope, 'Kurds agonise over pact with Saddam', The Independent, Lon-
don, 26 June 1991.
68. Paul Rogers and Tony Mason, 'Target behind the target', The Guardian,
London, 13 July 1991.
69. Ibid.
70. Rupert Cornwell, 'Conflicting US signals on threats to Saddam', The Inde-
pendent, London, 21 September 1991.
71. Martin Walker, 'Iraqi move leaves Bush flummoxed', The Guardian, Lon-
don, 25 September 1991.
72. Kurt Schork, 'Kurds to pull their troops out of cities', The Independent,
London, 13 November 1991.
73. David Hirst, 'Kurds trapped between Iraqi army terror and the winter's
approaching fury', The Guardian, London, 7 December 1991; Kurt Schork,
'Kurds seek safety from snow and Saddam's troops', The Independent,
London, 7 December 1991.
74. Hirst, 7 December 1991, op. cit.
75. David Hirst, 'Fearful time-bomb waiting to explode inside Iraq', The Guard-
ian, London, 10 December 1991.
76. David Hirst, 'Kurds stuck in the UN mud', The Guardian, London,
II December 1991.
77. Patrick Cockburn, 'Images of terror from the marshlands of Iraq', The Inde-
pendent, London, 31 January 1992.
78. Patrick Cockburn, 'Kurds reap an endless harvest of Iraqi mines', The Inde-
pendent on Sunday, London, 2 February 1992.
Notes to Chapter 1 351
79. James Adams, 'MI6 joins CIA in secret war to topple Saddam', The Sunday
Times, London, 9 February 1992.
80. Ibid.
81. Julie Flint, 'Iraq: US mobilises bombers', The Observer, London, 15 March
1992.
82. Patrick Cockburn, 'Saddam whips up a happy birthday for the President', The
Independent, London, 29 April 1992.
83. Hugh Pope and Patrick Cockburn, 'Ink problem forces Iraqi Kurds to post-
pone their big day', The Independent on Sunday, London, 17 May 1992.
84. Andrew Hogg, 'Marsh Arabs endure revenge of Saddam', The Sunday Times,
London, 31 May 1992.
85. Julie Flint, ' "Kill the pig Saddam" is enemies' master plan', The Observer,
London, 21 June 1992.
86. Ibid.
87. Julie Flint, 'Unrest spreads in Iraq as Saddam defeats "coup bid" " The
Observer, London, 5 July 1992.
88. Patrick Tyler, 'Saddam "purging officer corps" after coup plot', The Guard-
ian, London, 7 July 1992.
89. Leonard Doyle, 'UN guard killed as Saddam calls for a holy war', The
Independent, London, 18 July 1992.
90. Martin Walker, 'Allies ready for new air war in Gulf, The Guardian, Lon-
don, 24 July 1992.
91. Martin Walker, Simon Tisdall and Mark Tran, 'Iraq war could start in days',
The Guardian, 25 July 1992; Leonard Doyle and David Usborne, 'Baghdad
ready to climb down', The Independent, London, 25 July 1992.
92. Patrick Cockburn, 'Brinkmanship in Baghdad', The Independent on Sunday,
London, 26 July 1992.
93. Hugh Pope, 'Aid workers terrorised by Iraqi attacks', The Independent,
London, 17 July 1992; Chris Stephen, 'UN-Iraq deal leaves Kurds exposed',
The Guardian, London, 28 July 1992.
94. Christopher Bellamy, 'US and Iraq gear up for new conflict', The Independ-
ent, London, 31 July 1992.
95. Ibid.; Leonard Doyle, 'Iraq "trying to wipe out Marsh Arabs" " The Inde-
pendent, London, I August 1992.
96. Simon Tisdall and Martin Walker, 'President poised to bomb Iraq', The
Guardian, London, 17 August 1992; Patrick E. Tyler, 'US officials assert
that allies will seek showdown with Iraq', International Herald Tribune,
17 August 1992; Colin Brown and Patrick Cockburn, 'Allies prepare for
air war against Iraq', The Independent, London, 18 August 1992.
97. Ian Brodie, 'Bush keeps silent on no-fly zone', The Daily Telegraph, London,
20 August 1992.
98. Leonard Doyle, 'UN was bypassed over "no-fly" zone', The Independent,
London, 19 August 1992.
99. Robin Oakley and Michael Binyon, 'Hurd rejects legal doubts on Iraq force',
The Times, London, 20 August 1992; Marc Weller, 'Intervention plans lack
specific UN sanctions', The Times, London, 20 August 1992.
100. Patrick Cockburn and Donald Macintyre, 'Bush plans air strikes on Bagh-
dad', The Independent on Sunday, London, 23 August 1992; Patrick Cockburn,
352 Notes to Chapter 1
'A secret war to save the President's skin', The Independent on Sunday,
London, 23 August 1992.
101. Christopher Bellamy, 'All quiet as allied jets patrol skies over Iraq', The
Independent, London, 29 August 1992.
102. The Washington Post, 29 August 1992.
103. Marie Colvin, 'Saddam digs in for a phoney war', The Sunday Times,
London, 30 August 1992.
104. 'Pilots see no signs of Iraqi attack on south', The Guardian, London,
5 September 1992; 'British pilots unable to confirm Iraqi attacks on marsh
Shi'ites', The Guardian, London, 12 September 1992.
105. International Herald Tribune, 18 September 1992.
106. Julie Flint, 'Saddarn killing Shias "daily" " The Observer, 4 October 1992.
107. Phil Davison, 'Saddam tightens noose on hungry Kurds', The Independent on
Sunday, London, 20 September 1992; Hella Pick, 'UN report warns that
Kurds could starve this winter', The Guardian, London, 28 September 1992.
108. David Hirst, 'A land out on a limb,' The Guardian, London, 13 November
1992.
109. Pam O'Toole and Clare Pointon, 'UN lorries bombed in northern Iraq,' The
Guardian, London, I December 1992.
110. Annika Savill, 'Kurds fear for Saddam poised to strike,' The Independent,
London, 16 January 1993; John Sweeney, 'Saddam's secret war on Kurds,'
The Observer, London, 24 January 1993.
Ill. David Hirst, 'Saddam edges closer to the lonely bridge that brings life to
the Kurds', The Guardian, London, 28 January 1993; 'Kurds build their
state in the shadow of Saddam', 12 February 1993; 'A twilight of blood and
fear in Iraq', 13 February 1993.
112. John Sweeney, 'Violent birth of unwanted nation', The Observer, London,
31 January 1993.
113. 'Irangate' cannot be explored here. For an outline of this controversy in the
run-up to the 1992 presidential election, see 'New Iran-Contra revelations
pose threat to Bush', The Independent, London, 25 September 1992; Peter
Hounam, 'Iran weapons scandal closes in on Bush', The Sunday Times,
London, 4 October 1992; Martin Walker, 'Evidence ties Bush to Iran deal',
The Guardian, London, 31 October 1992.
114. Jim Hoagland, 'US gave Baghdad military secrets in war against Iran', The
Guardian, London, 8 February 1992.
115. Ibid.
116. Stuart Auerbach, 'US sold high-tech devices to Saddarn day before invasion',
The Guardian, London, 3 December 1991.
117. Simon Tisdall, 'Saddamgate and Mr Bush', The Guardian, London, 2-3 May
1992.
118. 'Saddamgate edges closer to Bush as enquiry claims agricultural loans were
used for military purchases', The Guardian, London, 10 July 1992; Elaine
Sciolino, 'House panel urges special counsel for Iraq enquiry', The New York
Times, 10 July 1992.
119. Elaine Sciolino, 'US was aware the Iraqis were buying technology', The New
York Times, 22 July 1992.
120. Simon Tisdall, 'Dollars helped to pay for Iraq's Gulf war Scuds', The Guard-
ian, London, 17 September 1992.
Notes to Chapter 1 353
121. Mark Tran, 'Saddamgate crisis knocks Bush team', The Guardian, London,
12 October 1992; Rupert Cornwell, 'Iraqgate feud breaks into open', The
Independent, London, 12 October 1992.
122. John Lichfield, 'Dog eats dog as Iraqgate dispute grows', The Independent,
London, 19 October 1992.
123. 'M15 "knew of British arms trade with Iraq" " The Sunday Times, London,
14 April 1991.
124. John Merritt, 'Scud firm's cash gifts to bolster Tory Cause', The Observer,
London, 14 April 1991.
125. 'Minister gave £2m grant to Iraqi war rocket firm', The Sunday Times,
London, 26 May 1991.
126. Tom Wilkie, 'Lilley admits error over Iraq exports', The Independent, Lon-
don, 9 August 1991.
127. Anthony Bevins and Charles Oulton, 'Cabinet broke Iraq arms ban', The
Independent, London, 10 November 1992.
128. For example, Chris Cowley, Guns, Lies and Spies, Harnish Hamilton, Lon-
don, 1992; David Leigh, Betrayed, The Real Story of Matrix Churchill,
Bloomsbury, London, !993; John Sweeney, Trading with the Enemy, Brit-
ain's Arming of Iraq, Pan Books, London, 1993.
129. Richard Norton-Taylor, Trial that blew away a web of deceit,' The Guard-
ian, London, to November 1992.
130. Richard Norton-Taylor, 'Ridley tried to shield £1 billion Iraq deals', The
Guardian, London, 11 November 1992; Philip Johnston, ' "Smoking gun"
aimed at Major over Iraq arms', The Daily Telegraph, London, 11 November
1992.
131. Steve Boggan, 'Company may be linked to nuclear triggers plot', The Inde-
pendent, London, 11 November 1992; Steve Boggan, 'Iraqis used UK parts
in nuclear programme', The Independent, London, 12 November 1992; Chris
Blackhirst, 'Intelligence agencies "used BCCI to fund arms sales" " The
Independent, London, 12 November 1992.
132. John Sweeney, Peter Beaumont and Paul Routledge, 'Major: nobody told
me', The Observer, London, 15 November 1992.
133. In one such listing (The Sunday Times, London, 15 November 1992) it was
recorded that Clark, Trefgarne, Waldegrave and Ridley 'knew of arms ex-
ports [to Iraq]'; that Thatcher, Lilley, Mellor and Sainsbury 'denied arming
Iraq'; and that Heseltine, Clarke, Rifkind and Garel-Jones 'signed gagging
orders' to prevent the details coming to light.
134. Nicholas Timmins, 'Court documents "prove that Major misled Commons" , ,
The Independent, London, 17 November 1992; Peter Beaumont, John McGhie,
Jane Renton and Sarah Whitebloom, 'Major "knew of Iraqi arms deal fears" "
The Observer, London, 22 November 1992.
135. Peter Beaumont and Alan George, 'Iraq "got nuclear parts from UK" " The
Observer, London, 27 December 1992.
136. John Sweeney, 'Proof of UK aid for Saddam's poison', The Observer,
London, 7 February 1992; The Guardian, London, 23 June 1993.
137. Simon Tisdall, 'Pentagon "covered up" loss of US plane in Gulf, The
Guardian, London, 16 September 1992.
138. Leonard Doyle, 'Iraqi baby atrocity is revealed as myth', The Independent
354 Notes to Chapter 1
on Sunday, London, 12 January 1992; Dana Priest, '''Baby massacre" never
happened', The Guardian, London, 8 February 1992.
139. Edward Lucas, 'US reveals gremlins in Gulf war machine', The Independent,
London, 18 July 1991.
140. Alex Renton, 'RAF was fighting war on two fronts in Gulf campaign', The
Independent, London, 24 May 1991.
141. Edward Lucas, 'US navy looks into war crime allegation', The Independent,
London, 13 June 1991.
142. Liz Hunt, 'Gulf war pilots used drug banned in UK', The Independent on
Sunday, London, 17 May 1992.
143. Patrick Sloyan, 'US covers up deaths by "friendly fire" " The Guardian,
London, 12 August 1992.
144. Ibid.
145. Patrick Sloyan, 'The Silver Bullet in Desert Storm', The Guardian, London,
16 May 1992.
146. Jason Bennetto, 'Code word may hold key to British deaths', The Independ-
ent, London, 23 November 1992.
147. Paul Myers and Martin Walker, 'American pilots who fired on British col-
umn "flouted war procedures"', The Guardian, London, 12 May 1992.
148. Michael Fleet and Ben Fenton, '''Friendly fire" was unlawful killing, says
inquest jury', The Daily Telegraph, London, 19 May 1992; Clare Dyer,
, "Friendly fire" verdict fails to ease grief', The Guardian, London, 19 May
1992.
149. Kathy Marks, 'Bush fails to satisfy Gulf war families', The Independent,
London, 8 June 1992.
150. General Sir Peter de la Billiere, Storm Command, HarperCollins, London,
1992.
151. General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, It Doesn't Take a Hero, Bantam, London,
1992.
152. Andrew Marshall, 'The strange flight of BA 149', The Independent on
Sunday, London, 2 August 1992.
153. Mike Jempson and Andrew Marshall, 'Was BA 149 a Trojan horse?', The
Independent on Sunday, London, 9 August 1992.
154. Mick Jempson and Andrew Marshall, 'Fighters over Kuwait as BA 149 flew
in', The Independent, London, 30 August 1992.
155. Donald Macintyre and Nick Cohen, 'Ml5 on carpet over Gulf detainees
blunder', The Independent on Sunday, London, 8 September 1991.
156. Hugh Pope, 'Turkey's Kurds scent freedom', The Independent, London,
26 March 1991.
157. 'Turkish jets hit Kurds in Iraq', The Independent, London, 8 August 1991;
Jonathan Rugman, 'Ataturk vision blinded by hatred of Kurds', The Ob-
server, London, II August 1991.
158. Jonathan Rugman, 'Kurds bombed by Turkey in "safe haven"', The Guard-
ian, London, 12 October 1991.
159. David Sharrock, 'A weekend of brutality in Turkey's Kurdish war', The
Guardian. London, 21 April 1992.
160. Hugh Pope, 'Ankara hardens line as Kurdish rebellion grows bloodier',
The Independent, London, 10 September 1992.
Notes to Chapter J 355
161. David Hirst, 'Kurds reluctantly tum on northern kin', The Guardian, London,
24 October 1992.
162. Hugh Pope, 'Turks plan to set up "security zone" in Iraq', The Independent,
London, 6 November 1992.
163. Patrick Cockburn, 'Splits in the ruling clan spell trouble for Saddam', The
Independent, London, 30 November 1991.
164. Robert Fisk, 'Syria softens stance on Iraq to end honeymoon with US', The
Independent, London, 13 March 1992.
165. Elaine Sciolino, 'US report shows Saddam rebuilding power in Iraq', The
Guardian, London, 17 June 1992.
166. Julie Flint, 'The billion-dollar monster who is shoring up Saddam', The
Observer, London, 26 July 1992.
167. Chris Stephen, 'UN loophole lets through Iraqi oil', The Guardian, London,
3 August 1992.
168. Marie Colvin, 'Critics are silenced as Saddam rebuilds Iraq', The Sunday
Times, London, 4 October 1992.
169. Charles Richards, 'Iraqis receive milk of Saddam's kindness', The Independ-
ent, London, 22 January 1993.
170. Marie Colvin, 'Iraq's lost legions become the thieves of Baghdad', The
Sunday Times, London, 31 January 1993; Charles Richards, 'Iraq plagued by
wave of violent crime', The Independent, London, I January 1993; Ian Katz,
'A life of darkness in Iraq's shattered and war-weary gateway to the Gulf,
The Guardian, London, 6 February 1993.
171. Simon Tisdall, 'Iraq MiG shot down by US jet', The Guardian, London,
28 December 1992.
172. David Usborne, 'Allies gave Iraq 24-hour ultimatum', The Independent,
London, 7 January 1993.
173. James Adams, 'US tells Iraq: no more "cheat and retreat"', The Sunday
Times, London, 10 January 1993.
174. Simon Tisdall, 'Iraqi's grab Kuwait missiles', The Guardian, London,
11 January 1993; David Usborne and Charles Richards, 'Border raids by Iraq
fuel anger in US', The Independent, London, 12 January 1993; Hella Pick,
'Iraq pushes UN to limits', The Guardian, London, 12 January 1993.
175. David Usborne, Robert Fisk and Christopher Bellamy, 'Allies give Iraq a
"spanking" " The Independent, London, 14 January 1993.
176. Robert Fisk, 'Showdown threat to Saddam', The Independent, London,
15 January 1993.
177. Patrick Brogan, 'Generals urge Bush to bomb Baghdad', The Observer,
London, 17 January 1993.
178. Simon Tisdall, 'Missiles hit "nuclear factory" " The Guardian, London,
18 January 1993.
179. Robert Fisk, 'Iraqis remove police posts', The Independent, London,
18 January 1993.
180. President-elect Bill Clinton, interviewed by Trude Feldman for The New York
Times, reprinted in The Guardian, London, 4 November 1992.
181. Interview with Thomas Friedman, 'The Clinton inexperience', The Guard-
ian, London, 15 January 1993.
182. Simon Tisdall, 'Clinton "will not waver on Iraq" " The Guardian, London,
19 January 1993.
356 Notes to Chapter 2
183. Charles Richards and David Usborne, 'Iraq woos Clinton as US aircraft
attack', The Independent, London, 22 January 1993; Martin Walker and Ian
Katz, 'Clinton's US strikes Iraq', The Guardian, London, 22 January 1993.
184. Mark Tran and Ian Katz, 'US admits bombing Iraq by mistake', The Guard-
ian, London, 25 January 1993.
185. Martin Walker, 'US to stand firm on Iraqi sanctions', The Independent,
London, 30 March 1993.
186. David Brown, 'Iraq has the oil price over a barrel', The Independent, London,
5 April 1993.
187. Simon Tisdall, 'US threatens Iraq after attack on jets', The Guardian, Lon-
don, 10 April 1993.
188. 'Bomb kills child', The Observer, London, 18 April 1993.
189. James Adams, 'US planning action over Iraqi plot to kill Bush', The Sunday
Times, London, 9 May 1993; Colin Smith, 'US: Saddam bid to murder Bush
is "act of war" " The Observer, London, 9 May 1993.
190. 'Mystery over Bush plot', The Guardian, London, 17 May 1993.
191. Shyam Bhatia, 'Lost in Kuwait with the Crazy Gang', The Observer, London,
4 July 1993.
192. The New York Times, editorial, 28 June 1993.
193. David Usborne, 'Allies in new Saddam alert', The Independent, London,
1 July 1993.
194. Annika Savill, 'UN back-pedals on Baghdad sanctions report', The Inde-
pendent, London, 24 June 1993.
1. Amin Maalouf, The Crusades through Arab Eyes, Al Saqi Books, London,
1984.
2. Ibid., p. 266.
3. H. L. Hoskins, British Routes to India, London, 1966, p. 64.
4. Ibid., ch. 17.
5. M. and T. Zinkin, Britain and India, Requiem for Empire, London, 1966,
p.64.
6. G. N. Curzon, 31 March 1903, quoted in D. Judd, Balfour and the British
Empire. A Study in Imperial Evolution 1874-1932, London, 1968, p. 231.
7. D. E. Lee, Great Britain and the Cyprus Convention Policy of 1878, Harvard,
1934, chs 1-3.
360 Notes to Chapter 5
116. Timmerman, op. cit., pp. 420-3, reproduces a Mednews (Middle East De-
fence News) listing of arms sales to Iraq, 1970--90.
117. 'Minister gave £2m grant to Iraqi war rocket firm', The Sunday Times,
London, 26 May 1991.
118. Richard Norton-Taylor, 'Iraq arms deals "given all clear" " The Guardian,
London, 27 July 1991.
119. John Merritt, 'Fury over poison for Iraq', The Observer, London, 28 July
1991; Stephen Castle and Stephen Ward, 'Fury over sales to Saddam', The
Independent on Sunday, London, 28 July 1991; Tom Wilkie and Alex Renton,
'UK's nuclear exports to Iraq', The Independent, London, 27 July 1991;
'Britain shipped 8.6 tonnes of uranium to Iraq', The Sunday Times, London,
4 August 1991.
120. John McGhie, 'UK firm sold Iraq drugs to shield nerve gas troops', The
Observer, London, II August 1991.
121. David Leppard and Nicholas Rufford, 'British bomb parts found', The Sun-
day Times, London, 29 September 1991.
122. David Hellier and Rosie Waterhouse, 'British role in supergun "known in
1989"', The Independent, London, 14 March 1992.
123. Quoted by Hellier and Waterhouse, op. cit.
124. Simon Tisdall, 'Saddam "was built up" with US billions', The Guardian,
London, 22 May 1992.
125. Richard Norton-Taylor, 'Action against BCCI "delayed to avoid upsetting
Gulf allies" " The Guardian, London, 1 August 1991.
126. Jonathan Cofino, 'US delayed inquiry into Iraq frauds', The Daily Telegraph,
London, 21 March 1992.
127. Timmerman, op. cit., p. 177.
128. Interview with Baghdad, February 1985; see also Kenneth Timmerman, 'US
resumption of ties with Iraq prompting a boom in exchanges', Atlanta Jour-
nal-Constitution, 17 February 1985; cited by Timmerman, op. cit., pp. 211,
410.
129. Timmerman (1992), op. cit., p. 211.
130. Quoted by Timmerman (1992), op. cit., p. 219. He also lists (p. 424) the
seventy-six Forum members, all leading US companies, as of July 1990.
131. Timmerman (1992), op. cit., p. 241.
132. Timmerman (1992), op. cit., p. 307.
133. 'British exports to Iraq', Mednews, 2 September 1991.
I. Dilip Hiro, Desert Shield to Desert Storm, Paladin, London, 1992, p. 55.
2. Foreign Broadcast Information Service, 28 March 1989.
3. Adel Darwish and Gregory Alexander, Unholy Babylon, Victor Gollancz,
London, 1991, pp. 238-9.
4. Ibid., p. 164.
5. The Guardian, London, 14 March 1990.
6. Quoted by Hiro, op. cit., p. 61.
7. Darwish and Alexander, op. cit., p. 242.
Notes to Chapter 8 371
8. The Times, London, 7 December 1989; The Guardian, London, 18 December
1989.
9. The Middle East, December 1989, p. 30.
10. Quoted by Hiro, op. cit., p. 64.
II. Jordanian Television, Amman, 24 February 1990; cited by Hiro, op. cit.,
p.65.
12. Wall Street Journal, 28 June 1990.
13. Baghdad Radio, 28 May 1990; cited by Hiro, op. cit., pp. 77-8.
14. Mohamed Heikal, Illusions of Triumph, HarperCollins, London, 1992,
p. 135.
15. Bishara A. Bahbah, 'The crisis in the Gulf - why Iraq invaded Kuwait', in
Phyllis Bennis and Michel Moushabeck (eds), Beyond the Storm, Canongate,
London, 1992,p. 52.
16. Heikal, op. cit., p. 137.
17. Baghdad Radio, 18 June 1990; cited by Hiro, op. cit., pp. 83-4.
18. J. Bulloch and H. Morris, Saddam's War, Faber & Faber, London, 1991,
p. 175; Danial Yergin, Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power,
Simon and Schuster, London, 1991, pp. 749-50.
19. Heikal, op. cit., pp. 138-9.
20. Ibid.
21. Foreign Broadcast Information Service, 28 June 1990; The New York Times,
28 June 1990.
22. Pierre Salinger and Eric Laurent, Secret Dossier, The Hidden Agenda Behind
the Gulf War, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1991, pp. 32-3.
23. Ibid., p. 33.
24. The transcript is cited in Bulloch and Morris, op. cit., pp. 143-6.
25. The Iraqis, claiming to have discovered the document at SSD headquarters,
placed it before the UN Secretary-General on 24 October 1990.
26. Baghdad Radio, 18 July 1990; cited by Hiro, op. cit., pp. 88-9.
27. Hiro,op. cit., p. 89.
28. The Guardian, London, 19 July 1990.
29. Quoted by Bahbah, op. cit., p. 51.
30. Heikal,op. cit., pp. 141-2.
31. Ibid.
32. Joe Conason, 'The Iraq lobby: Kissinger, the Business Forum & Co', in
Micah L. Sifry and Christopher Cerf (eds), The Gulf War Reader, Times
Books, Random House, New York, 1991, pp. 79-84.
33. Henry Schuler, The oil exporters are leaving money on the table', Arab Oil
and Gas Journal, I March 1990.
34. James Ridgeway (ed. and Introduction), The March to War, Four Walls Eight
Windows, New York, 1991, p. 28.
35. Transcript of House Subcommittee Hearing on US-Iraqi Relations, in James
Ridgeway,op. cit., pp. 47-9.
36. William Satire, The New York Times, 25 May 1990.
37. Ridgeway, op. cit., p. 30.
38. Transcripts of this important encounter are reproduced in various publica-
tions: e.g. Sifry and Cerf, op. cit., pp. 122-33; Ridgeway, op. cit., pp. 50-3;
Hiro, op. cit., pp. 92-4; Salinger and Laurent, op. cit., pp. 48-63. The
372 Notes to Chapter 8
controversial contribution of Ambassador April Glaspie was much discussed
after the ending of the Gulf War. In the last of the pre-election debates,
televised on 19 October 1992, Ross Perot claimed that the US administration,
via Glaspie, had intimated to Saddam Hussein that he would be allowed to
take northern Kuwait. Perot made great play over the fact that relevant
written instructions to Glaspie have not been released by the State
Department.
39. Salinger and Laurent, op. cit., p. 68.
40. Ibid., pp. 68-9; Ridgeway, op. cit., pp. 57-8.
41. Salinger and Laurent, op. cit., pp. 70-4.
42. See also International Herald Tribune, 20 September 1990.
43. Heikal,op. cit., p. 201.
44. Ibid., p. 205.
45. Ibid., p. 215.
46. US News and World Report, 19 December 1990; The Nation, 7 December
1990.
47. BBC Short Wave Broadcasts Summary, 10 December 1990; cited by John
Pilger, Distant Voices, Vintage, London, 1992, pp. 138-9.
48. Middle East International, 12 October 1990.
49. BBC Short Wave Broadcasts Summary and Middle East International;
Turkish press review, 22 July 1991; cited by Pilger, op. cit., p. 139.
50. David Hirst, The Guardian, London, 14 September 1990.
51. The Nation, 24 December 1991.
52. Hiro, op. cit., p. 187.
53. See Geoff Simons, Libya, The Struggle for Survival, Macmillan, London,
1993, ch. I.
54. Salinger and Laurent, op. cit., p. 196.
55. Ibid.
56. Ibid., p. 197.
57. The Washington Post, 15 December 1990; International Herald Tribune,
7 December 1990.
58. The New York Times, 2 December 1990.
59. Heika1, op. cit., p. 237.
60. It is sometimes argued that an abstention by a permanent member of the UN
Security Council counts as a de jure veto since it fails to deliver the 'concur-
ring votes of the permanent members' stipulated in Article 27(3) of the UN
Charter. This interpretation is supported by the French version of the relevant
text: 'Les decisions du Conseil de Securite sur toutes autres questions sont
prises par un vote affirmatif de neuf de ses membres dans lequel sont com-
prises les voix de tous les membres permanents'. However, the practice of
not regarding abstentions as vetoes has been recognised as lawful by the
International Court of Justice (in the Namibia case, IC] Reports, 1971, pp. 16,
22). This matter invites discussion. What is the value of UN Charter stipula-
tions if political circumstances can override their explicit provisions?
61. Carl Zaisser, US Bribery and Arm-Twisting of Security Council Members
during the November 29 Vote on the Resolution Allowing the use of Force
in Ousting Iraq from Kuwait, 1991; cited by Pilger, op. cit., p. 141.
62. The New York Times, 2 December 1990.
63. Pilger, op. cit., p. 142.
Notes to Chapter 8 373
64. Noam Chomsky, 'The weak shalJ inherit nothing', The Guardian, London,
25 March 1991.
65. Raymond Bonner, Waltzing With a Dictator, Macmillan, London, 1987,
pp.245-6.
66. John Weeks and Phil Gunson, Panama, Made in the USA, Latin American
Bureau, London, 1991, Appendix I, 'Violation of International Law',
pp. 1\3-18.
67. Naseer Aruri, 'Human rights and the Gulf crisis: the verbal strategy of
George Bush', in Phyllis Bennis and Michel Moushabeck (eds), Beyond the
Storm, A Gulf Crisis Reader, Canongate, Edinburgh, 1992, p. 314.
68. George Bush, Iraqi Leader Threatens Values Worth Fighting For, January
1991; cited by Aruri, op. cit., p. 314.
69. John G. Healey, Amnesty International USA Response to President Bush's
Letter to Campus Newspapers, 15 January 1991.
70. Congressional Record, 12 January 1991, S375.
71. Ibid., H287-288.
72. Hiro,op. cit., p. 103.
73. Salinger and Laurent, op. cit., p. 84.
74. For detailed descriptions of the chronology, from different perspectives, see
Hiro, op. cit.: Heikal, op. cit.; Salinger and Laurent, op. cit.; Bob Woodward,
The Commanders, Simon and Schuster, London, 1991.
75. Woodward,op. cit., p. 277.
76. The New York Times, 4 March 1991; see also Hiro, op. cit., pp. 119-20.
77. Heikal, op. cit., pp. 246-7; see also John R. MacArthur, Second Front,
Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War, Hill and Wang, New York,
1992.
78. Heikal, op. cit., pp. 248-9.
79. Ibid., p. 250.
80. Woodward, op. cit., pp. 287-8.
81. Ibid., p. 289.
82. Simon TisdalJ, 'Americans urge Bush to be cautious', The Guardian, Lon-
don, 23 August 1990.
83. Marie Colvin, Richard Ellis, Roy Isacowitz and John Cassidy. 'Slaughter
on the Mount'. The Sunday Times, London, 14 October 1990, pp. 16-17.
84. Hiro, op. cit., p. 211.
85. Woodward, op. cit.• p. 303.
86. Leonard Doyle, 'Bush accuses Saddam of atrocities', The Independent, Lon-
don, 16 October 1990.
87. Helga Graham, 'US oil plot fuelJed Saddam', The Observer, London,
21 October 1990.
88. Sam Kiley, 'Deserters swelJ anti-war chorus across the US', The Sunday
Times, London. 28 October 1990.
89. Sarah Helm, 'Warning to Bush as anti-war sentiment in Congress grows',
The Independent, London, 29 October 1990.
90. The Washington Post, 2 December 1990; The New York Times, 4 March
1991.
91. Interview with Yevgeni Primakov, The New York Times, 16 November 1990.
92. Heikal, op. cit., p. 275.
93. Even the legitimacy of that vote was suspect because of the absence of the
374 Notes to Chapter 8
Soviet Union from the Security Council when the vote was taken; see also
note 60, above.
94. See, for example, Woodward, op. cit., p. 333; Hiro, op. cit., p. 264; Heikal,
op. cit., p. 276.
95. Heikal,op. cit., pp. 276-7.
96. Woodward, op. cit., p. 334.
97. Jasper Becker, 'Survivor's stories from a looted city', The Guardian, Lon-
don, 15 December 1990.
98. Helga Graham, 'Blockade chokes Iraq as US loses patience', The Observer,
London, 30 December 1990.
99. Patrick Cockburn, 'Baghdad divided on hope of averting Gulf war', The
Independent, London, 9 January 1991.
100. Peter Pringle, 'Anxiety behind Baker's calm', The Independent, London,
9 January 1991.
101. Leonard Doyle, The man with an eleventh-hour mission', The Independent,
London, 12 January 1991.
102. John Cassidy, Marie Colvin and Ian Glover-James, 'Congress votes for war
in Gulf, The Sunday Times, London, 13 January 1991.
103. Andrew Stephen, 'Congress votes for war', The Observer, London, 13 Janu-
ary 1991.
104. Annika Savill, 'Iraq crisis stifles US action on Baltic', The Independent,
London, 14 January 1991.
105. Patrick Cockburn, Annika Savill, Peter Pringle and Leonard Doyle, 'Allies
poised for onslaught', The Independent, London, 16 January 1991.
106. Heikal, op. cit., p. 295.
107. The Guardian, London, 18 January 1991.
108. Martin Walker and David Fairhall, 'Iraqi missiles strike Israel', The Guard-
ian, London, 18 January 1991.
109. Hiro, op. cit., pp. 324-5.
110. Michael Sheridan, Peter Pringle and Leonard Doyle, 'US urges Israeli con-
straint', The Independent, London, 19 January 1991.
III. David Rose and Colin Smith, 'Land troops in first border skirmishes', The
Observer, London, 20 January 1991.
112. David Fairhall, David Beresford and Martin Walker, 'Patriots perform as
dictator warns of reserve firepower', The Guardian, London, 21 January
1991.
113. Peter Pringle, Colin Hughes, Will Bennett, John Pienaar and Colin Brown,
'Fury at Saddam threat of PoW "human shield" " The Independent, London,
22 January 1991.
114. Martin Walker and Hella Pick, 'British and American aims including finish-
ing Saddam', The Guardian, London, 23 January 1991.
115. Patrick Cockburn, Tomahawks on Baghdad claim civilian victims', The
Independent, London, 2 February 1991.
116. Heikal, op. cit., p. 296.
117. Martin Walker, 'US seeks early ground war', The Guardian, London,
6 February 1991.
118. Bernd Debusmann, 'Crippled Iraq bombed back to last century', The Ob-
server, London, 10 February 1991.
Notes to Chapter 8 375
119. Patrick Cockburn, 'Allied raid on bridge kills 47 civilians', The Independent,
London, 8 February 1991.
120. Martin Walker, Simon Tisdall and David Fairhall, '''Hundreds killed" in
bunker', The Guardian, London, 14 February 1991; Christopher Bellamy,
Edward Lucas and Leonard Doyle, 'Shelter "a military target" " The Inde-
pendent, London, 14 February 1991.
121. John Lichfield, Sarah Helm, Harvey Morris and Anthony Bevins, 'US dis-
misses Iraqi offer to quit as sham', The Independent, London, 16 February
1991.
122. Martin Walker, Simon Tisdall, Jane Rosen, David Fairhall and Hella Pick,
'Bush rejects peace "hoax"', The Guardian, London, 16 February 1991.
123. Peter Pringle, Christopher Bellamy, Leonard Doyle and Sarah Helm, 'Last
chance to avert land war', The Independent, London, 18 February 1991.
124. John Lichfield, Edward Lucas and Peter Pringle, 'Saddam accepts Soviet
plan for withdrawal from Kuwait', The Independent, London, 22 February
1991.
125. Molly Moore, Pentagon correspondent, quoted by John R. MacArthur,
op. cit., p. 159.
126. John Lichfield, Edward Lucas, Christopher Bellamy, Patrick Cockburn, Will
Bennett and John Pienaar, 'Allies drive deep into Iraq to cut off Saddam's
army', The Independent, London, 25 February 1991.
127. Colonel Richard White, US pilot, quoted in The Independent, London,
6 February 1991.
128. The Washington Post, 16 and 17 February 1991.
129. Reuter pool report, 'Apache pilots in ground attack shooting gallery', The
Independent, London, 25 February 1991.
130. Ibid.
131. Hiro, op. cit., p. 389.
132. Michael Kelly, 'Carnage on a forgotten road', The Guardian, London,
II April 1991.
133. Los Angeles Times, 10 March 1991.
134. New Statesman and Society, London, 21 June 1991, p. 23.
135. BBC2 television 'Late Show', 8 June 1991.
136. General H. Norman Schwarzkopf with Peter Petre, It Doesn't Take a Hero,
Bantam Press, London, 1992, p. 488.
137. Martin Walker, Simon Tisdall and Paul Webster, 'Hurd says Saddam must
go', The Guardian, London, 2 March 1991.
138. 'Iraq complains about sanctions', The Independent, London, 23 June 1993.
139. 'Iraq faces health crisis', The Guardian, London, 13 September 1993.
140. Special Alert, FAOIWFP Crop and Food Supply Assessment Mission to Iraq,
Number 237, July 1993.
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Timmerman, Kenneth R., The Death Lobby, How the West Armed Iraq (London:
Fourth Estate, 1992).
Townshend, Charles Vere Ferres, My Campaign (New York: lames A. McCann,
1920).
Warriner, Doreen, Land Reform and Development in the Middle East. A Study of
Egypt. Syria and Iraq (London: 1987).
Wellard,lames, By the Waters of Babylon (London: Hutchinson, 1972).
Wilson,leremy, Lawrence of Arabia (London: Heinemann, 1989).
Winstone, H. V. F. and Freeth, Zahra, Kuwait. Prospect and Reality (London:
George Allen & Unwin, 1972).
Winter, H.l.l., Eastern Science (London: lohn Murray, 1952).
Wittek, R., The Rise of the Ottoman Empire (London: 1971).
Woodward, Bob, Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA 1981-1987 (London: Simon and
Schuster, 1987).
Woolley, Leonard, Excavations at Ur (London: Ernest Benn, 1963).
Yapp, M. E., The Making of the Modem Middle East 1798-1923 (London: 1987).
Yapp, M. E., The Near East Since the First World War (London: Longman, 1991).
Index
Aaron 97 see also Habbinayya air base
Abadan 277, 278, 281 Shaiba air base
Abbas I (Persia) 142 aircraft 8, 32, 36,45, 56, 61, 71, 72,
Abbas, Abdul Jabbar Abdul 16 187,207,208,263,278,280,
Abbas, uncle of Mohammad 119 284,286,287,288,293,301,
Abbasid dynasty 112, 120-5, 126, 321-2,328,338,339,340,344-5
127, 136, 138, 139, 140 Aitkin, Jonathan 55
ABC television 315,331 Ajman 174
Abdul Abbas 120 Akkad, Akkadians 79,83,85,86-7,
Abdul IIIah 186 89,99
Abdullah, Emir 318 Albright, Madeleine 76
Abdullah, Sheikh 173,212 Aleppo 138, 141, 144, 168, 188
Abdullah, son of Sharif of Alexander the Great 88,90,96, 101,
Mecca 155, 165, 166, 167, 169, 103
170 Alexandria 211, 321
Abraham (Abram) 85, 96, 105 Alexandroni brigade 207
Abraham, Trevor 53 Alexius 126-7, l31
Abu Dhabi 332 Alfassam, Suleiman 19
Abu Gharib prison 303 Algeria 42,338,339
Abu Muslim 119, 120 Algiers 284
Abu Nidal 259, 291 Algiers agreement, Iran-Iraq 269
Abu Nuwas 121 Ali, Abdullah 258
Achaemenes 100 Ali, husband of Fatima 108, 110,
Acre 163 Ill, 113, 115, 1I6, 1I8, 126
Aden 159 Ali, Mohammad 146
Adid 132 Ali, Mohammad (Zanj) 124
Afghanistan 102, 276 Ali, Salah Umar 247
Aflaq, Michel 191,200,201-2,227, Ali ibn abi Talib
228,230,242,248,260 see Ali, husband of Fatima
Agade see Akkad Ali Ridha Pasha 145
Agent Orange 8 Aliyam Altawilah ('The Long
Aghlabid dynasty 125 Days') 239
Ahab 105 Allen, George 214
al-Ahali 198-9 Allen, Peter 53
Ahd aI-Iraqi Party 193 Allende, Salvador 325
Ahmad, Iraqi negotiator (1991) 346 AIlied-Turkish Peace Conference
Ahmad Pasha 144, 145 (1922) 182
Ahmad, Sheikh 264 Alp Arslan 128-9, 130
Ahtisaari, Martti 9 ALPHA talks 213
Ahrar (Liberal) Party 199 al-Amash, Salih Mahdi 226,241,
Ahwaz 277 268
aid (UN) 45, 46, 67 American Civil Liberties Union
air bases 184, 220 (ACLU) 6
382
Index 383
American Information Agency 315 Arab Legion 214
Amin 121, 122 Arab nation 200-1, 202, 311
Amiriya shelter massacre xv, 341 see also pan-Arabism
Amman 214, 302, 338-9 Arab Revolt 160, 161
Amn aI-Amm (State Internal Arabs 103, 104, 144, 147, 153, 155,
Security) 256 156, 158-9, 161, 162, 183,200,
Amn aI-Hizb (Party Security) 257 20~
Amn aI-Khass (Presidential Affairs clan system 106-7
Department) 256-7 conquest 111-13, 123, 136
Amnesty International (AI) 18,22, decline 122-5
56,76,257,326-7 language 107-8
Amorites maths and science 122-3
see Amurru medicine 123
Amurru 86 origins 105-8
see also Canaan, Canaanites schism 113-16, 122
Anatolia 80, 142, 158 Arab Socialist Union (Egypt) 229
aI-Anbari, Abdul Amir 24 Arab Students Union 200
Andropov, Yuri 256 Arafat, Yasser 316
'anfal' 33 Arbela 91
Angleton, James 214 Arbil 28, 30, 33, 46, 265, 267
Anglo-Iraqi Treaty (1924) 183 see also Arbela
Anglo-Iraqi Treaty (1930) 184, 191, Ardashir 102, 103
193, 197-8,211,212,264 Arens, Moshe 339
Anglo-Kuwaiti agreement (1899) 224 Argov, Shlomo 256
Anglo-Kuwaiti agreement (1961) 223 Aribi
Anglo-Persian Oil Company 150, see Arab
151, 153 Arif, Abdul ai-Rahman 230, 235,
Anglo-Turkish agreement (1913) 174 242,243,244
Angola 3 Arif, Abdul Salaam 218,219,225,
Ani, Mohammad 9 226,229-30
Antigonus 101 Armenia 125,263
Aoun, General 322 Armenians, ancient 91
Apostasy, the III, 112 Armenians, massacre of 60
Applegate, Lisa 57 arms shipments to Iraq 284, 285-90,
Aqaba 278,292,293 314,326
d' Aquiles, Raymund 134 see also business support for Saddam
Arab (Aribi, Arabu) 105, 106 Saddamgates
Arab Bureau 160 arrests, wrongful 60
Arab Co-operation Council Arthur, G. G. 216
(ACC) 300,301,302 Ashdown, Paddy 50
Arabia 106 Ashur 91,92
see also Saudi Arabia Ashurbanipal 91,92-3,94,99-100,
Arab-Israeli dispute 25, 213 254
see also Arab-Israeli War (1973) Aslyages 100
Six-Day War (1967) Assad, Hafiz 64, 270, 309, 322
Arab-Israeli War (1973) 209,236 assassination plot (alleged) against
see also Six-Day War (1967) Bush 76
Arab League 31,224-5,276,303, assassination plots against
304,309,310,311,318 Saddam 27,34,35,37-8
384 Index
Assassins 130, 133 Babylon festival 66
see also Isma'i1ians Bactria 10 1, 102
assets, frozen II, 46-7, 64, 66-7, badouns 23
318 Badran, Ibrahim 15
Assyria, Assyrians 79,83,87,89, Baghdad 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 25, 27,
91-6,99,102,171 28,32-3,34,36,39,40,42,67,
'Assyrians' (Nestorians) massacre 68,72,73, 112, 120-1, 122, 123,
of 198 124, 128, 129, 130, 136, 137-8,
Aswan Dam 215 140, 141, 142, 144, 145, 148,
Ataturk, Mustafa Kemal 181, 197 149, 151, 153, 157, 158, 159,
al-Athir, Ibn 133, 135 163,165-6,171,173,178,179,
ai-Attar, Leila 76 181, 186, 187, 188, 195, 199,
Auchinleck, Field-Marshal 186 204,206,210,218,219,226,
Augustus 103 228,237,238,240,245,248,
AI-Auja 237 258, 259, 269, 281, 284, 287,
Australia 11 288,289,292,300,317,336,
Austria 141 338,340,341
Auto Tracking Laser Illumination Baghdad Chamber of Commerce 165
System (ATLIS) 292 Baghdad Military Academy 238
A vebury, Lord 62 Baghdad Pact 212-13,214,217,219,
A vidius Cassius 103 220,284
al-Awadi, Abdul Rahman 20 Baghdad Railway Concession 149
Ayisha, a wife of Mohammad 115 Baghdad Trade Fair 293
Azarmedukht 104 Baghdad University 239
Azerbaijan 141 Bahrmn 87,148,172,300,303,328
Aziz, Tariq 8, 16,35-6,42,46,63, Baker, James 8,39,48,49,292,314,
281,306,309,310,336-7,341, 318,322,324,333,334,335,336
343 Bakhtiar, Shahpour 275
al-Azzawi, Khalil 256 al-Bakr, Ahmad Hasan 226,229-31,
232,241,242,243-4,245-6,247,
Ba'ath-Communist alliance 250-1 248,249,250,251,268,274
Ba'athism 31,201 Bakr Sidqi 185, 198, 199
emergence of 200--3 Balak, Ron 344-5
nature of 200--3 Balfour, Arthur 163
see also Ba'ath Party Balfour Declaration 163-4, 167
Iraqi Ba'ath Party Balzar, John 344
Syrian Ba'ath Party Banca Nazionale del Lavoro 48,49,
Ba'athist regime, Iraqi 12, 15, 25, 50,290-1,293,314
34,63,244-5,251-2,269 Bandung Conference 220
see also Iraqi Ba'ath Party Bani-Sadr, Hassan 276
Ba'ath Party (pan-Arabist) 64, 191, Bank of Credit and Commerce
270 International (BCCI) 54, 290
see also Ba'athist regime al-Barazanchi, Ali Hussein 232
Iraqi Ba'athist Party Barbarossa 133
Syrian Ba'athist Party Bar Kochba rebellion 98
Babel (newspaper) 36, 73 Barrak, Fadel 255
Babylon, Babylonians 66, 79, 83, 84, Barzani, Idris 270
87-91,92,93,94-6,97-9,100, Barzani, Massoud 29, 30, 33, 37, 45,
101, 102, 120, 171 270
Index 385
Barzani, Mustafa 232, 264, 265--6, Bohemond, Count of Apulia 131
267,268,269,270,271 Bohemund of Antioch 138
Barzinji, Mahmud 264 Bolasi, Singala 23
Basra 10, 14, 26, 27, 28, 63, 68, 71, Bolsheviks 181
117,124,140,141,142,144, Boran 104
149,156,157,159,163,171, de Bouillon, Godfrey 131
172, 176, 186,251,278,281, boundaries, defining 43, 72, 159,
301,310,311,344 172-7, 271, 272
Basra Petroleum Company 235--6 Bradley, Bill 50
Basra Port Authority 233 Brazil 285, 286
al-Battani 123 Brezhnev, Leonid 285
Bazoft,Farzad 258,294,303,313 bribery, US 321-5
al-Bazzaz, Abdul ai-Rahman 229, Britain II, 15, 16,31,59, 64, 70, 72,
230, 247, 267 76, 148, 149, 150-1, 152, 153,
BBC World Service 317 154-5, 159, 160, 162, 163, 167,
Bechtel group 292, 293 168,172,174,176,178,181,
Bedouin ('Badawiyin') 106, 107, 182, 183-4, 190, 191, 195, 196,
III, 117, 123, 125, 141, 161, 197,203,211,212,213,215,
170, 172, 177, 239 219, 224, 238, 256, 258, 263,
Beersheba 304 272,280,281,284,288,303,
Begin, Manachem 209,286 318,323,339-40
Beirut 164,218,322 support for Saddam 50-5
see also Lebanon British Aerospace 301
Beirut conference 27 British Airways 59--60
Bekr, Abu 109, 110, 118 British Army Equipment Exhibition
Bekr, Su Bashi 142 (BAEE) 294
Belgium 182, 280, 318-19 Brooke,Jack 49
Bel (god) 97, 100 Brzezinski, Zbigniew 10, 323
Bell, Gertrude 153, 166-7, 168, 169, BSA Tools 51
172,178,180-1 Bubiyan Island 311
Bell Textron 292, 293 Bugnon, Fran~ois 339
Belshazzar 100 Bukhara 136
Ben-Gurion, David 213 Bull, Gerald 303
Beni Hashim 113, 119 see also 'supergun'
Beni Umayya 113, 114, 119 Bullman, Hans 52
Bergson, Henri 200 Bunche, Ralph 204
Berke 139 Burleigh, A. Peter 293
Berlin-Baghdad railway 154 Burmah Oil Company 150
Beyazit II 143 Burton, Richard 121
Bhatia, Shyam 71 Bush, George 4, 14-15,24-5,30,31,
Bilady milk factory 68 32,34,35,38-9,40,41,42-3,
de la Billiere, Peter 58 56,68-9,70,72,73,75,290,
Bimec Industries 51 292,314,315,318,319-20,321,
Binyan, Liu 324 322,325-7,330,331,334,335,
biological warfare 14 336,337,338,339,340,341,
ai-Bitar, Salah ai-Din 191,200,201, 342, 343-4, 346
242 approval rating 334, 339
von Blomberg, Axel 188 betrayal of Kurds 28-9
BMY company 292 bombing pretexts 69-72
386 Index
Bush, George - continued US (1991 war) 8,346
pressures Fahd 320--1 US (post-I991 war) 7-8
propitiates Saddam 313,314-15 see also child casualties
rejects peace talks 341, 342 disease
supports repression 325-6 epidemics
supports Saddam 48-9, 294-5 executions
uses propaganda 326-7 rape
Business Forum, US-Iraq 292-4, torture
311-12 Catal Huyuk 81, 86
business support for Saddam 291-5 ceasefire 24, 26, 28
see also arms shipments to Saddam Central Bank of Iraq 291, 293
Saddamgates Central Intelligence Agency
Buwaih, Abu Shujaa 127 (CIA) 15,34,35,37,48,50,65,
Buwaih, Ahmad ibn 127 214,216,221,225,227,241,
Buwaihids 127-8 247,256,268,269,286,308-9,
Byrd, Robert 60 316,325,326
Byroade, Henry 211 Central Treaty Organisation
Byzantines 119, 123, 126, 131, 133, (CENTO) 219
134, 140 see also Baghdad Pact
Centre for Defence Information 57
Cainkar, Louise 14 Centre for Strategic and International
Cairo 211,228,239,240,275,300, Studies 312
332 Centre on Violence and Human
Cairo Conference (1921) 175 Survival 7
Cairo University 239 Cetin, Hikmet 75
Caliphate, the 114-15, 139 Ceylon 171
see also Abbasid dynasty Chalabi, Ahmed 38
Umayyad dynasty Chaldees 85
Cambodia 5 see also Ur
Cambyses n 10 1 Chalker, Lynda 14
Camp David Agreement (1979) 209 Chamberlain, Austen 161
Canaan, Canaanites 83,96 Chamoun, Camille 217,218,219
Canada 11,321 Charles Percy & Associates 292-3
CANNONBONE plan 279 Chehab, General 219
Cardoen, Carlos 54 chemical contamination 8
Carmeli brigade 207 chemical weapons ingredients,
Carmichael, Brian 58 supplied to Saddam 289
'carpet bombing' 5,338,344 Cheney, Dirk 25, 32, 34, 57, 58,
Carroll, Eugene 57 316,320,321,323,338
Carter, Jimmy 207,287 child casualties 6, 11, 12, 13, 14, 16,
Casey, William 47-8 18,46,76,257,282
Casualties Chile 325
British (1 Q20s) 178 China 11,26, 137, 140,285,301,
Iranian (Iran-Iraq war) 281-2,283 323-4,334
Iraqi (1920s) 178 Chirac, Jacques 284
Iraqi (Iran-Iraq war) 281-2,283 Chomsky, Noam 3,241,325
Iraq (1991 war) 5-8,343,344-6 Chorley, Lord 227
Iraqi (post-1991 war) 9-13,35,71, Chosroes 104
72-3, 75-6, 346 Christianity 125, 130--1
Index 387
see also Nestorian Christians Congress (US) 334, 336, 337
Churchill, Winston 150, 169, 170, conscripts, Iraqi 5, 6
179, 183, 187-8,213 'consensus', fabrication of 319-25
cities, Sumerian 80, 82, 85 Constantinople 119, 129, 140, 173
Clark, Alan 51-2,53,294 see also Istanbul
Clark, Ramsey 344 constitutions
Clarke, Kenneth 52 Belgian 196
Clayton, Gilbert 155, 161 Iraqi 184, 193, 196-7,229,232
Clemenceau, Georges 167 Ottoman 196
Clerk, George 162 Cook, Robin 54, 55
Clifton, Tony 345 Cornwallis, Sir Kinahan 186, 188,
Clinton, Bill 4, 38, 50, 69, 70, 73-6 265
cluster bombs 5, 75, 76, 344, 345 Corsica 125
Coalition (1991 war) 288,325,333, coups d'etat 198-9,218-19,223,
337,339,344 225,228,231,238,243
Coca-Cola 312 Cox, Sir Percy 151, 158, 166, 169-
Code of Hammurabi 88-90 70, 171, 172, 175-6, 182,224,
Code of Personal Status 261 31O,311
Cohen, William 332 credits, financial 50-1,74,287-8,
Colby, Bainbridge 152 291,304,314,326
Cold War 211, 217, 284, 291 Crete 125
colonialism, European 164-84 Crusades 127, 130-4, 147
see also Sykes-Picot Agreement Ctesiphon 103, 104, 112, 121, 157
Colvin, Marie 67 Cuba 26,324,334
Commerce Department (US) 48, 292, cuneiform 83-4
293 currency, counterfeit 13
Committee to Stop the War in the Curzon, Lord 148, 152, 158-9, 166,
Gulf 6 170, 181
Commodity Credit Corporation Customs and Excise (UK) 51
(CCC) 304,314 Cyprus 45, 125,214
communism, communists 126, 200, Cyrus the Great 90, 96, 97, 100
216, 217, 222, 227, 228, 232,
240,250-1,252,265,266 al-Daftari, Ali Mumtaz 195
see also Bolsheviks Dahuk 28
Communist Party of the Dair al-Zar 178
Soviet Union (CPSU) Dalyell, Tam 39, 54
Iraqi Communist Party Damascus 117, 118, 119, 133, 138,
Communist Party of the Soviet Union 144, 160, 162, 167, 168, 170,
(CPSU) 232 177,190,200,201,228,239,322
see also Bolsheviks Dananu 93
communism Daniel, Book of 94, 95
Compagnie des Constructions navales Daponte, Beth Osborne 6
et industrielles de la Mediterrant!e Darius 101
(CNIM) 285 Database Project on Palestinian
Compagnie Fran~aise des Petroles Human Rights 14
(CFP) 153 David, Ibrahim 243, 244
concentration camps 227 Daud (Mamluk) 145-6
concessions, oil 235, 236 David 96
see also Law 80 Davies, Ray 338
388 Index
Dawa organisation 275 al-Duwish, Feisal 174
death penalty, Iraqi 257-8 dynasties, Sumerian 85
see also executions
deaths, accidental 56 Eagleburger, Lawrence 290, 294
see also friendly-fire deaths Eagleston, William 287
Defence Department (US) 76,241 Earnest, Peter 309
Defence League for Women's 'earthquake' bombs
Rights 222 see 'carpet bombing'
Defrance, Albert 162 East India Company 172
Demirel, Suleiman 44,45,61 East Timor 3, 325
Democratic Youth Movement 223 Ecuador 324
Department of Trade and Industry Eden, Sir Anthony 212,213
(DTI) 51,289,294 edubba 84
depleted uranium ammunition 7-8, Egypt 35,42, 80, 87, 91, 92, 93, 96,
57 97, 99, 101, 120, 124, 125, 126,
deserters, American 334 132, 133, 137, 140, 146, 150,
Deutsche Bank 149 154, 155, 162, 165, 203, 206,
Dhahran 339, 343 207,209, 210, 211, 213, 214,
dhimmis 133 215,220,226,229,233,234,
Dickson, Harold 175-6, 183 238,256,266,276,300,309,
Dickson, Violet 183, 223 316,321,326
Dihuk 30 see also Alexandria
Diltawa 178 Cairo
Dimona nuclear plant 286 Mubarak, Hosni
aI-Din, Jalal 136 Nasser, Gamal Abdul
Diodorus 92, 96 Sadat, Anwar
Diogenes, Romanus 129 Suez
disease 210, 341 Eisenhower, Dwight D. 211,215,216
see also epidemics Eisenhower Doctrine 218
disinformation campaigns 76 Ekeus, Rolf 35
see also propaganda Elam, Elamites 85,88,92,93,99, 100
Dogan, Yalcin 45 elections
Dogrin, Bob 345 Iraqi 64, 183
Dole, Robert 60,294,312-13,336 Kurdish 36-7
Douri, Izzat 38 presidential (US) 35, 38-9, 40, 41,
al-Dowla, Adhud 127 42-3,50
al-Dragi, Shafiq 245 Electoral Reform Society 37
Dresden 6 Eliasson, Jan 46
drugs, lack of 11, 13, 17 EI Salvador 325-6
see also infrastructure, Iraqi, Emir of Kuwait
destruction of see al-Sabah, Jaber
Dugan, Michael J. 332 Endara, Guillermo 326
Dujaila 210 see also Panama
Dulaimi, Naziha 260 Energoprojekt 312
Dulles, Allen 214, 222 Enki (god) 80
Dulles, John Foster 211,212,213, Enver Pasha 181
214,215 Epic of Gilgamesh 84
aI-Duri, Ibrahim 248 epidemics 9, 10, II, 12, 341
Dur-Kurizalgu 90 see also disease
Index 389
equipment failures 56 Feisal II 185,194-5,214,217,218,
Eridu 80,85 239,310
Esarhaddon 92 Feisal bin Turki 148
d'Estaing, Valery Giscard 284 Feldman, Trude 73
Estikhbarat (Military Fiat 285
Intelligence) 256 First World War 146, 153-4, 179,
Ethiopia 324 188, 234, 263
ethnic cleansing 23 Fisher, Lord 150
Euphrates 80,86,88, 100, 102, 103, Fisk, Robert 19
112, 121, 140, 148, 149, 178, Fitzgerald, Lieutenant-General 162
192,311 Fitzwater, Marlin 15, 38,40, 70,
Euphrates and Tigris Navigation 71-2,342,343
Company 149 Flexible Manufacturing Technology
Euphrates Valley railway 148, 149 (FMT) 51
European Community 300, 303, 322 Flight BAI49 58-60
Evans, Rowland 42 flood, great 84, 85
executions Flynn, Paul 6
by Iraqis 18-19,34,44,65-6, Food and Agriculture Organisation
231,245-6,247,248,250,272, (FAO) 346
303 Fortune 500 companies 294
by Kuwaitis 20-1, 22 Fourteen Points 263
Export Credit Guarantee Department see also Wilson, Woodrow
(ECGD) 54 France 11,41-2,59,70,72, 76, 148,
exposes 55-60 151,152,153,154,155,160,
Exxon 292 162, 163, 167, 168, 172, 181,
182, 186, 190, 197,213,228,
277,280,284,285,287,288,
al-Fadhli, Aladin 68 294,318,323,337,338
al Fahd, Ahmad 308 Franks (Franj) 131, 133, 134
Fahd, King 300,301,303,308, Freedom of Information Act 60
317-18,320,321,330-1,332 'Free Officers' 193,217,266
Fallujah massacre 5,9, 187, 188 French Atomic Energy Commission
farming, ancient 81, 82 (CEA) 285
see also irrigation friendly-fire deaths 57-8,341,346
al-Fatat, Misr 204 see also deaths, accidental
Fatih Mehmet 143 fuel air explosives (FAEs) 5,6,344
Fatima, daughter of Mohammad 108,
115
Fatimid dynasty 126, 132, 133 Gabriel, Archangel 108, 109
al-Fattah, Abd 198-9 Gaddafi, Muammar 208
al-Faysalwe, Saud 323 Galen 122
Federal Bureau of Investigation Garden of Eden 88
(FBI) 50 Garel-Jones, Tristan 52
Federation of Peasants' Gates, Robert 15,34,35,48,65
Organisations 222 Gaza Strip 208, 212, 222
Feisal, (later) King 160, 164, 165, GCHQ 290
167-8, 169, 170-1, 172, 177, 181, Gedaliah 97
184, 190--1, 192, 193, 194, 195, Geiger, Jack to
197,310 General Electric 287
390 Index
General Federation of Iraqi Women demonstrations against 338
(GFIW) 260-1 US polls against 334, 336
General Motors 292, 293 Guti 99
General Union of Students of the Iraqi Gutteridge, Mark 52
Republic (GUSIR) 223, 227 Gyllenhammer, Pehr 312
Geneva Protocols 17,282,339,342,
346 Habbaniyya air base 184, 187, 188,
Genghis Khan 135, 136, 137, 139, 214,338
140 Hadad, Mohammad 199
Germany 148, 154, 173, 182, 185, Hadrian 98
186,284,286,288,318,338 Haganah 203
Gesta Francorum 132 Haifa 163, 304, 339
Geylani family 196 Haigh, Frank 70-1
Ghaleb, Khaled 21-2 Hajjaj ibn Yusuf 118
Ghaydan,Sadun 243,245,248 al-Hakim, Ayatollah Baqr 27
Ghazi I 184-5, 194,310 Hakim, Mahdi 27, 258
Ghuzz (Oguz) 128, 135 al-Hakim, Said Muhsin 248
Gilgamesh, King 84 Hala, daughter of Saddam 254
Girsu 80 Halabja massacre xiv, 282, 289, 290,
Glaspie, April 313,315-16,319,331 291,293,312
Glubb, John Bagot 214 Halcion (drug) 57
Gnehm, Edward 21 Hallal, Kazim 68
Golan Heights 209,304 Hamadan 137
Golani Brigade 207 Hamdoon, Nizar 70
'Golden Square' 186 Hamilton, Archie 57
Gonzales, Henry 48,49,290 Hamilton, Representative 316-17
Gorbachev, Mikhail 323,333,341-2 Hammadi, Hamed Youssef 40, 66,
graves, mass 7, 8, 346 75, 76
Gray, Boyden 48, 49 Hammadi, Saddoun 63, 294, 302
Greater Tunb Island 272 Hammarskjold, Dag 220
'Greek fire' 119, 150 Hammurabi 88-90, 94, 254
Greeks, ancient 88,99, 100--2 Harnza, Abdullah 266
Green Brassards 231 Hanging Gardens (Babylon) 66, 95
'green light', American 311-17,319 Hara al-Istiglal Party 193, 199
Grenada 4 harem system 143, 144
Grey, Sir Edward 155, 161-2 Haroun
grievances, Iraqi 304-11 see aI-Rashid, Haroun
Griffiths, William 227 Harris, Arthur 180
Group of Seven (G7) nations 31 Hart, Liddell 156
Guatemala 325 Harvard medical team 11, 13, 16
Guderian, Heinz 187 Harvard University 285
Gulbenkian, Calouste 151, 153 Hasa 173
Gulf Co-operation Council Hasan, Ali's first son 116, 117
(GCC) 300 Hasan Pasha Mustafa 144
Gulf War (1980-1988) al-Hashimi, Taha 186, 195
see Iran-Iraq War al-Hashimi, Yasin 195
Gulf War (1991) 4-5,6,7,24,39, Hassan, Ibrahim 237,238,240
51,56-8,63,327-46 Hassan, King 321
chronology 327-46 Hatfield, Mark 327
Index 391