Britain's Post-WWI Role in Iraq Recalled [History of Irak]

LONDON - Bombing, invasion and regime change by a superpower — Iraq has seen it all before in its recent history.

For 40 years after World War I, Britain tried to control Iraq, pioneering aerial bombing as a way of enforcing its power. One British general urged using poison gas.

Now, as Washington and London warn that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) must be removed and talk of building democracy in Iraq, U.S. and British troops may soon be retracing routes followed during one of the darker episodes of British colonial history.

Britain took over Iraq during World War I, chasing out the Turks, who occupied the region for centuries. British officials divided up the collapsed Turkish empire, creating several new nations, including Iraq.

The British commander who captured Baghdad in 1917, Lt. Gen. Stanley Maude, told the people his troops had come to free them.

"Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators," he said in a proclamation.

It was not an easy victory. A British army had been surrounded and forced to surrender in 1916 at Kut on the Tigris River, south of Baghdad. Of 10,000 British and Indian soldiers taken captive, some 4,000 died in terrible conditions in Turkish prison camps.

Wanting to hold on to the region for its oil and strategic position on the route to India, the jewel of the British Empire, London sent officials to run Iraq as an outpost of their vast dominion. It ignored criticism from the United States, which opposed colonialism.

The Arabs, who had helped the British fight the Turks, did not want to change one set of foreign rulers for another. In 1920, anti-British riots turned into a bloody revolt.

Faced with threats in many colonies, British commanders came up with "air control" — using the newly developed warplane to bomb opponents and avoid expensive and bloody ground engagements. Critics dubbed it "empire on the cheap."

Iraq became a testing ground for the new imperial big stick. British Bristol and Wapiti bombers hammered rebel tribesmen, destroying their villages. The British commander, Gen. Sir Aylmer Haldane, demanded London send poison gas, but the Iraqis were defeated before any action was taken.

Delayed action bombs were used on Iraqi villages to catch residents who returned after bombing raids.

British officials, including Winston Churchill, then the colonial minister, hailed air control as the perfect method of policing the empire.

Some British commanders denounced the new techniques as unsporting. Administrators said the army was just upset at being upstaged by the air force, whose officers it considered socially inferior.

"Much needless cruelty is necessarily inflicted, which in many cases will not cower the tribesmen, but implant in them undying hatred and a desire for revenge. The policy weakens the tribesman's faith in British fair play," wrote Col. Francis Humphries, a critic of bombing.

London was convinced the bombing had pacified Iraq. The British military presence was cut from 23 battalions in 1923 to two in 1928.

Air Marshall Sir John Salmon, in a lecture on the merits of air control in Iraq, said it transformed the country. "A heterogeneous collection of wild and inarticulate tribes has emerged in an ordered system of representative government by the vote," he said after the revolt was crushed.

A pro-British Arab monarch from the Sunni Muslim minority was imposed on the Shia Muslim majority, and Iraq became independent in 1932. British officials stayed to advise the king along with squadrons of British air force bombers to quell internal opposition.

Britain again invaded Iraq during World War II, when a pro-German regime seized power in 1941. British air force units, based in Iraq, bombed the Iraqi forces until British troops occupied Baghdad. Some 3,000 Iraqi troops were killed in the fighting.

London sought to retain influence in Iraq, but the monarchy was ousted in 1958, ushering in a series of coups that culminated with Saddam Hussein coming to power.

Thus ended what historians have described as Britain's "moment in the Middle East."

Don't know if you saw this.
'When Will Americans Come?'
Here in northern Iraq, they're getting impatient for freedom.

BY ASLA AYDINTASBAS
Wednesday, March 5, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST

IRBIL, Northern Iraq--It is hard to imagine another place where Americans are more popular these days. "We like the son of 'Haji Bush,' because he will fight Saddam for us," a young Kurdish driver tells me plain and simple. Others--young and old, Kurdish or Turkmen, shopkeepers and politicians--echo similar sentiments about ending the reign of brutality in Baghdad.

Iraqis inside government-controlled areas have quietly nicknamed President Bush "Abu Abdallah," an endearing name, or "Abu Jinan"--a pun on "Father of Jenna"--meaning "Father of Paradises." A well-known religious leader at the central mosque in the regional capital, Suleimaniyah, says "I welcome even the Jew Sharon if he can liberate us from Saddam." In fact, just about the only people who oppose a war on the Iraqi dictator here seem to be the Western journalists who have flocked to the Irbil Towers Hotel to await its arrival. Why are the Iraqi voices still so distant for the chattering classes in the West?

Iraqis once exiled in various corners of the world met here last week to launch their long-awaited opposition conference. Much of the media has focused on whether or not Zalmay Khalilzad, the U.S. envoy, would make it to the event. But that almost seems irrelevant. With or without American participation, the Iraqis here say they are ready to reclaim their country in the final war of liberation.
This is not simple rhetoric. After all, these people were effectively fighting Saddam Hussein and designing a democratic transition long before Washington warmed to the idea. The roughly seven million Iraqis who live outside the regime's control--in exile, or in the Kurdish safe havens in the north--have developed strong democratic traditions which they now want to transplant inside the country. In the smoke-filled meeting rooms, conferences and workshops in London, Washington or northern liberated Iraq, they have been discussing Iraq's new constitution, the "de-Baathification" of its institutions, truth and reconciliation, and disarmament. One exile admits that they are looking at Germany's de-Nazification, and even at the Federalist papers.

"Despite what many in the West say, the Iraqis are largely in agreement about the fundamental issues of transitional democracy," says Kanan Makiya, the Brandeis University professor and Iraqi author. "Sure, there are still some who rely on the army and see change as a top-down process, perhaps a coup that maintains the repressive institutions of the regime, rather than the rebuilding. But these people are not here and in any case constitute a minority at this point."

Along with Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi, Mr. Makiya is one of the architects of the transitional period. Here in the northern part of the country where he has been living for a month, it is amusing to watch the Cambridge intellectual interact with Shiite clerics, resistance fighters, and tribal leaders. But everyone has a unique role within the resistance and Mr. Makiya's moral authority, and Mr. Chalabi's leadership skills, are apparent to a passing observer.

An exuberant force exudes from the Iraqis braving for the final push. At the main conference hall in the Kurdish town of Selahaddin, where the opposition meeting is taking place, all talk is of post-Saddam life. "I am dreaming of Baghdad," a giant of a man, a former member of the elite Republican Guard who joined the opposition in 1993, tells me. The other day, there was a homecoming party for resistance fighters who are secretly returning from Detroit, London, and the Netherlands for the final day of reckoning. Every little scene--old friends embracing; a debate about the national anthem of free Iraq; the arrival of a secret envoy from a large tribe in the government-controlled areas--is strangely touching. The mountain air is brisk with confidence.

The mood of the street is not too different. Outside Baghdad's reach, the two self-governing Kurdish enclaves here have established relatively free societies. There is all you cannot find in Baghdad--freedom from Iraqi intelligence, satellite TV, Internet cafes, cell phones and a lively media environment. Yet so long as Saddam remains in power, the experiment here will remain vulnerable. There will also be no justice done for the millions killed or scarred by Saddam's aggression. The images of antiwar demonstrations across Europe could not look more meaningless in this context. The other night, a young hotel employee asked me emphatically: "Why do people in Europe want Saddam?" It was not a rhetorical question.

To understand the level of devastation caused by Baghdad, one need only walk in any major city in the U.S.-patrolled enclave in Northern Iraq. Every conversation beyond a few pleasantries ultimately unearths the story of a lost brother, or son, or relatives killed in one of the regime's many purges--or a brush with death during a chemical attack. The level of violence once unleashed here, and currently endured by many Iraqis in government areas, is surreal by Western standards. The Anfal campaign of 1988-89 alone claimed more than 100,000 lives in a year of organized ethnic cleansing.
Last week in Suleimaniyah, the former headquarters of the Iraqi secret police reopened as a museum dedicated to human rights. There, a Kurdish woman in her 30s whispered that she does not want Americans to liberate Baghdad. She was the only one to say so in my two weeks here. "My father was taken away in 1988 with all other men and we are still hoping that one day he might come. If Americans kill Saddam and father does not come back at the end, we will have no hope to keep going."

But of hope and healing, there is also plenty. I visited a Turkmen family, forced to leave its ancestral hometown of Kirkuk in 1991 as part of Iraq's "Nationality Correction" campaign, ethnically cleansing the city of Turks and Kurds. The couple and their nine kids live in a shack with a plastic sheet for a roof. "We are hoping to go back to our home very soon," the father told me defiantly. Once well-off, the family has secured their property deeds with relatives who managed to escape deportation by either agreeing to be registered as Arabs or having sons enter the Baath Party.

The steadfastness and yearning for freedom here may not make its way into the news stories, but it will ultimately reshape this nation. Policy makers in Washington should stop worrying about every little detail that might go wrong in the war or post-Saddam period; for it is abundantly clear to anyone here on the ground that Saddam's house will be dismantled by Saddam's citizens, and army, and bureaucrats, and scientists. In fact, during my time here, free Iraqis in the north and the occasional visitors from the yet-to-be-liberated parts kept asking the same question, "When are the Americans coming?" Really, when will they come?

Ms. Aydintasbas, a writer for the Turkish daily Sabah, is an adjunct fellow at the Western Policy Center in Washington.

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