[NYTr] Following Churchill’s Folly in Iraq

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

MidWeek via Info Clearing House - Aug 24, 2007
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18250.htm

Following Churchill’s Folly In Iraq

By Don Chapman

“When Iraq becomes strong enough in our opinion to stand alone, we
shall be in a position to state that our task has been fulfilled, and
that Iraq is an independent sovereign state. But this cannot be said
while we are forced year after year to spend very large sums of money
on helping the Iraqi government to defend itself and maintain order.”

Sound familiar? Perhaps like something you’ve heard from a
stay-the-course advocate, circa 2004-7? Nope, it’s Winston Churchill,
writing in 1922 as head of Britain’s Colonial Office. At the time,
Prince Feisal - whom Churchill had appointed king of the nascent nation
of Iraq, whose borders Churchill had drawn up the previous year - was
balking at the protectorate agreement the British wanted. To rule a
land and people with whom he was largely unfamiliar, Feisal, a native
of the Arabian Peninsula and not the land between the Tigris and
Euphrates, and who had spent much of his life in Turkish
Constantinople, needed legitimacy - and as much independence from the
British as he could get.

Which is much the same problem that the American-supported government
and army of Iraq are having today.

That, and the above quote, are just two among endless parallels between
the British experience in Iraq and the American experience 80-plus
years later - as reported in Churchill’s Folly, by historian
Christopher Catherwood (2004, Carroll & Graf). It wasn’t written yet
when the Bush administration invaded Iraq in 2003, but the information
was there for the learning if anyone in the White House had cared to
pursue it. E-mail subject: Things To Avoid in Iraq! For this book,
Catherwood relies heavily on the archived letters and memos written by
the remarkably prolific Churchill.

Abrief bit of background that is necessary to understand the current
situation: The Ottoman Empire based in modern-day Turkey ruled from
1299 until 1920, at its peak controlling three continents. Already with
their empire in decline, the Ottomans sided with Germany in World War
I, and in its defeated aftermath saw remnants of the empire subdivided,
with Western nations given “mandates” by the League of Nations to
govern various areas. The United States was given present-day Armenia,
but the isolationist administration of President Woodrow Wilson - the
U.S. was not even a member of the League of Nations - chose not to get
involved. The French got what today is Syria and Lebanon, and the Brits
got what is now Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, among other real estate.
A map of the region before Churchill convened what he called his “40
Thieves” in Cairo in April 1921 to draw up new national boundaries
shows not countries, but tribal areas - the Ibn Saud clan ruling the
Nejd on the Arabian Peninsula and the rival Hussein clan ruling the
neighboring Hejaz along the Red Sea, to name the largest two. They
often skirmished, and the Sauds also had their eyes on what would
become Kuwait.

Note: The Husseins, also known as Hashemites and unrelated to Saddam,
are descended from the prophet Mohammed and held the position of Sharif
of Mecca. They are key characters in the film Lawrence of Arabia and
the book about the Arab Revolt against the Ottomans on which it is
based, Seven Pillars of Wisdom - although Catherwood says the
historical details of both are quite wrong and based largely on the
fantasies of T.E. Lawrence. Nevertheless, Churchill dragged the old
desert soldier out of retirement, and Lawrence became one of those “40
Thieves,” and much responsible for Churchill agreeing to put Hussein’s
son Feisal on the new Iraqi throne (after he tried usurping the new
throne in Syria until the French kicked him out). Feisal’s brother
Abdullah would become king of the new country of Jordan.

Call it arrogance, perhaps: Churchill had never actually visited what
was then called Mesopotamia when he arbitrarily drew up the borders for
a new land called Iraq, doing so in Egypt, although he did visit
Jerusalem.

And while Catherwood writes that Churchill was well aware of Sunni-Shia
differences in the region, he ignored them as well as tribal
boundaries. Thus Churchill, the classic colonialist, brought a Sunni
from outside Iraq to rule a country that was two-thirds Shia.

As for the Kurds in the north, they were Sunni but not Arabic. The “40
Thieves” discussed creating a separate Kurdish nation, but failed to do
so - Kurdish homelands were split between Iraq, Turkey, Iran and Syria
- to the continuing detriment of the Kurdish people.

In short: Three nations - for Shia, Sunni and Kurds - could have been
created at a time when Arab nationalism was rising, and such an idea
might have been popular. Or the Brits could have simply let those
tribal lands revert to their traditional ways. But that is not the way
of empires, and today the Iraqis - and Americans - are paying for it.

Oil was not yet an issue for the Brits - Iraqi oil was still just
speculation in 1922 - but they had their own economic self-interest
here. As Colonial secretary, Churchill was interested in Iraq because
it would save several days in the time it took to send troops and goods
from England to India, then the UK’s prize colony. And Churchill,
Catherwood shows again and again, was chiefly interested in saving the
British Empire money - call it empire on the cheap.

Thus it was that troop levels were always an issue, with British
generals saying that far more troops were necessary to stabilize Iraq
than Churchill and politicians in London wanted to hear. Ask retired
Gen. Eric Shinseki if that sounds familiar.

Feisal would turn out to be a terrible choice for reasons greater than
his religion. He was simply not a good ruler, his administration
disorganized at best. That said, as Catherwood points out, the British
presence that lasted until 1932 never allowed Feisal any true
legitimacy in the eyes of the Iraqi people. Who’s in charge here? He
died in 1933, succeeded by the young playboy King Ghazi.

Churchill’s formula created inherent instability in Iraq - in the
nation’s first 37 years, there were 58 different governments! The
bloody Baathist overthrow of 1958 ended the Hashemite monarchy, and
especially after Saddam Hussein seized power in 1979 would show that
only an iron-fisted dictator could hold a country of such disparate
parts together.

So what might this history mean for America and Iraq?

The greatest problem, it seems to me, is that Iraq was never a nation
of ideals, or dreams, or unified core beliefs or ethnicity. Today,
Catherwood points out, the people of Iraq still identify themselves
more by tribal and religious affiliation than as patriotic Iraqis. They
may cheer the Iraqi soccer team, because they love soccer and it’s the
only team they have, but they don’t get all chickenskin when they hear
their national anthem.

And the concept of democracy does not resonate; they are content with a
system that offers security, and a religion that provides answers for
life’s vagaries.

It seems unlikely to the point of impossibility that the Shia majority,
dominated by a Sunni minority going back to the Ottomans and then by a
Western-appointed monarchy followed by a military dictatorship, will
ever give up the dominance they now and newly enjoy. Share power? Ha!

It seems equally unlikely that the long-dominant Sunnis would allow
themselves to become a persecuted minority, or that the Kurds of Iraq,
with a strong regional government now in place and lots of oil
underfoot, would be willing to be dominated by Arabs of either Muslim
stripe. And why share?

And it seems there is no essential reason for these very different
people to find a unifying cause other than oil profits. But that would
involve sharing, and that’s a problem.

Whether it was the British in 1921 or Americans today, Western powers
have dictated what Iraq is and what Iraqi policy should be. The stated
Bush agenda to establish democracy in Iraq is a lovely idea, but so is
money growing on trees. For Iraqis, democracy is not a golden ideal,
but just another Western concept being forced upon them by violent
means.

Even if some kind of democracy prevails in Iraq, says Catherwood,
expect it to act rather as Feisal did with the Brits who put him in
power: ungrateful. There was never a pro-British government under the
Hashemite monarchy, and there is not likely to be a pro-American
government that follows our exit.

Whether U.S. troops leave Iraq tomorrow or next year or even beyond
that, it’s highly unlikely that ancient tribal and religious identities
will be superseded by national pride.

As Catherwood points out, whether it was artificially configured
Yugoslavia or the French creation of Lebanon, nations drawn up by
outside forces are never successful for very long. The U.S. invasion of
Iraq and the bloody chaos it set loose seems to bear out that
historical verity.

Yes, Iraqi oil is our economic self-interest, and a very serious one,
but this should give Americans even more reason to find other ways to
power our cars, homes and businesses, and our nation.

Bottom line: I can’t see any way that America can get out of Iraq
without the serious involvement and cooperation of the Arabic Sunni
Saudis, the Persian Shia Iranians and the Sunni Turks - a treaty
between those traditional regional rivals allowing Sunni, Shia and
Kurdish home-lands in the former Iraq would be a good start, and would
provide a sort of buffer among those powers.

And I can’t see a way out of Iraq without finally letting the people of
the region redraw their own borders. They’ve been subject to outside
dominance since 1299 - a mere 708 years. They could hardly do any worse
than Western meddlers have done.

Will there be bloodshed as they sort it out? To answer with a double
question: Is there unconscionable bloodshed happening in Iraq now? And
how else do you propose to stop it?