The Mesopotamian Disaster

The Middle East has been a region of culture, learning, and civilization since the beginning of history. It has served as the land where three major religions came to be, it was also the cradle of civilization. Mesopotamia in particular, was once an extremely fertile area due to periodic flooding of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. The land of Abraham, it is still one of the most highly sought after areas in the world due to its religious value, and of course its extremely valuable oil. The British discovered oil in Iran in 1908, this forever changed the fate of the Middle East . For the rest of the twentieth century, Mesopotamia, now called Iraq, became a juicy location for Western countries. Iraq is now responsible for exporting 142 million barrels of oil per day, and is ranked eleventh in oil exports . This makes the area known as Iraq a valuable economic asset for any country. Iraq is located between Syria and Iran, north of Saudi Arabia, and it also borders the Persian Gulf. Since 2200 BCE, the area of Mesopotamia has been plagued with violence and invasion. Much of Mesopotamia consisted of small city-states, which struggled not only for power but also for survival. The area was also home to the once powerful Babylonian Empire, which ruled the area between the rivers from around 2112 until about 2004 BCE. The Assyrians, another great early civilization also ruled Mesopotamia somewhere from 1170 BCE, until about 612 BCE . These early civilizations melded with other cultures, including the early Hebrews. In fact, the first Diaspora was due to the conquering of Israel by the Assyrians. These early conflicts in the area where nothing compared to what began after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, at the close of World War I. It all started in 1908 when the British discovered oil in southern Iran. The British looked at the Persian Gulf as the gateway to their colony of India, and the oil that was there just added to the appeal of the region. The British Navy needed the oil, and Winston Churchill, after becoming First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911, proclaimed that oil was “to be of paramount importance for the supremacy of the imperial Navy” . This early interest in the region led to the British controlling it after World I, with the creation of the Mesopotamian Mandate by the League of Nations in 1919 when the Ottoman Empire was divided amongst European powers. The American government organized a commission to report and to give insight in the region, led by Dr. Henry Churchill King and Charles R. Crane, because of President Woodrow Wilson’s discontent with the diplomacy of the European powers. However, the commission’s findings were for the most part overlooked, although they could have proved successful for the European rule in the mandates . The British rule of the area until the early 1930’s was marked with brutality towards those living in the area, the British response to the rebellion in Iraq in 1922, and the imperialist rule are all factors that contribute to the situation that the United States finds itself in today.

After World War I, Colonel Arnold Wilson was placed in Iraq as the temporary administrator of the province. Gertrude Bell, a well-known writer about Arab countries, was his assistant in the area. The two clashed with opposing views on how the colony should have been run. Bell pushed for a protectorate rule, however Wilson wanted a direct rule. It was not until 1918 that they were able to find middle ground and come up with a plan to stabilize the country until it was able to rule itself. The Muslim people of Iraq were outraged from the beginning. The grand Mujtahid of Karbala, Imam Shirazi, joined by his son Mirza Muhammad Riza issued a fatwa which stated that is was against Sharia law for Muslims to be ruled by non-Muslims. The pair then called for a Jihad against the British occupiers. The British rule in Mesopotamia was more of the “old-fashioned” colonial rule, unlike the rule that the King-Crane commission had suggested. The King-Crane commission said that it was best to “form a sacred trust” with the people of Mesopotamia . The commission also set down guidelines, which it believed were the best for the borders of Mesopotamia, which did include the Assyrians and Kurds of Kurdistan in the north, as well as Basra in the south. Going back to the split of Islam between the Sunnis and Shi’ites, it should have dawned on the colonial Europeans that governing two different factions of a religion might be a difficult task. Even during the mandate, Wilson recognized the fact that the nearly two million Shi’ite Muslims would not accept the rule of a Sunni government. However, he stated, “no form of Government has yet been envisaged, which does not involve Sunni domination.” This is still what the British decided, and this is how Saddam Hussein came into power. Another flaw of the British was they sped into creating a nation of Iraq. In a country that had never known a true government, and at the time was seventy-five percent tribal, a central regime was not something that they really wanted. However, they also promised to create an independent government, and they did nothing about it for over three years . This had created quite a dilemma; the people living in Iraq were not nationalistic and yet they did not want to be ruled by an outside entity. Therefore, the British were faced with the task of creating a strong Muslim government in order to control the tribal factions. This just led to a growing unpopularity of the British occupation, very similar to what we see in Iraq today. There was even an insurgency; the Russians conspired with the Afghans to create revolt in Iraq. This meant that there were British casualties, in the spring of 1920 six British officers were killed in a span of ten days, by the time the tribal revolts were put down the British had amassed about 2000 casualties and 450 deaths . However, Lawrence of Arabia reported that British had killed “about ten thousand Arabs” . Now the British had a real problem: A country that would not be controlled by non-Muslims, a country that would not be controlled by a national government, and a country that was breaking into tribal revolts. The way they put down the revolting Mesopotamians was quite effective, and one of the largest sources of anti-imperialist sentiment in the region today.

Tribal uprisings and other revolts were very common in Mesopotamia under the British control. These uprisings had an effect not only on the popularity of the occupation in England, but also on the rising British casualties. An August 7th 1920 publication of the times asked, “how much longer are valuable lives to be sacrificed in the vain endeavour to impose upon the Arab population an elaborate and expensive

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