ANGLO–IRAQI TREATIES

Four treaties between Britain and Iraq, signed in 1922, 1926, 1930, and 1948.

As a result of the dispositions between the victorious allies after World War I, Iraq became a mandated state of the newly formed League of Nations; in April 1920, under the terms of the Treaty of San Remo, Britain was awarded the mandate for Iraq. By the end of 1920, Britain had decided to set up an Iraqi monarchy and had selected Faisal, the third son of Husayn ibn Ali, the Sharif of Mecca, as king. In the summer of 1921, before Faisal's coronation on 23 August, Sir Percy Cox, the high commissioner in Baghdad, suggested that the mandate might be made more palatable if its terms were to be embodied in a treaty between Britain and Iraq. This was the genesis of the treaty of 1922.

A long period of bargaining followed, during which the British were intent on having their powers fully defined, and Faisal tried to convince them of the importance of his not being made to appear too blatant a British puppet. The treaty itself covered such matters as the framing of a constitution, the number and duties of British officials employed in Iraq, British supervision of the judicial system, Iraqi diplomatic representation abroad, equality of access to Iraq for all foreign states, and agreements governing the financial and military arrangements between the two states. Iraq was eventually to take responsibility to defend itself against external aggression; at the same time, British imperial interests in and around Iraq had to be secured.

What all this implied was a change in the form without any change in the substance; Britain would, ultimately, force the government of Iraq to comply with the terms, and the treaty was widely unpopular in Iraq. The opposition was so persistent that its leaders had to be arrested, and the prime minister eventually was coerced into signing the treaty, since Faisal had taken ill with appendicitis a few days before his signature was due. A protocol to the treaty was negotiated in 1923, reducing its operative period from twenty years to four years after the signature of the peace treaty with Turkey. Even so, ratification by the Chamber of Deputies in June 1924 was quite problematic; a bare quorum was obtained, with only 37 out of 59 deputies present (out of a chamber of 110) voting in favor.

The treaty of 1926 was less contentious, since its main function was to take account of the new circumstances that had come into being with the "final" settlement of the Turco–Iraqi frontier. Apart from guaranteeing a measure of local administration and Kurdish linguistic rights for the population of the area (mostly honored in the breach), this treaty extended the provisions of the 1922 treaty for twenty-five years, unless Iraq was admitted to the League of Nations before the end of that period.

The remaining six years of the mandate formed a period of general cooperation with Britain, in sharp contrast to the conflicts of earlier years. At the time of the first reconsideration of the treaty in 1927, it was suggested that Iraq should be considered for league membership in 1928; negotiations dragged on until September 1929 when the matter was dropped on the understanding that unreserved British support would be given for an application for 1932.

The Anglo–Iraqi Treaty of 1930 was concluded much more rapidly than its predecessors, largely because this time there was no real opposition. Apart from stipulations about the precedence to be given to the British representative, the employment of British officials, and the employment of a British military mission, the treaty declared that "responsibility for the maintenance of internal order rests with the King of Iraq," while Britain was bound to go to the aid of her ally in the event of invasion from outside. Air bases were to be maintained rent-free in Iraq for the (British) Royal Air Force, and the treaty was to last until 1957, twenty-five years from Iraq's entry into the league in 1932.

It was not until the late 1940s that Iraqi opposition became sufficiently articulate or organized to oppose continued British control and influence. In 1946 and 1947, the British government expressed interest in extending the 1930 treaty under the guise of revising it. On the Iraqi side, the negotiations were masterminded by Nuri al-Saʿid and the regent, Abd al-Ilah, but actually carried out by the Shiʿite prime minister, Salih Jabr. Jabr and his colleagues spent late December 1947 and the first part of January 1948 in Britain working on a new Anglo–Iraqi treaty, the text of which was released on 15 January; it turned out to be almost identical with the treaty of 1930 and was rejected out of hand by crowds in the streets of Baghdad—so vehemently, in fact, that the regent was forced to disavow it. Relations between Britain and Iraq remained governed by the treaty of 1930 until 1958, when it was repudiated by the revolutionary government.

see also abd al-ilah ibn ali; cox, percy; faisal i ibn hussein; jabr, salih.

Peter Sluglett