In ancient times the
land area now known as modern Iraq was almost equivalent to
Mesopotamia,
the land between the two rivers Tigris and Euphrates (in Arabic,
the Dijla and Furat, respectively), the Mesopotamian plain was called
the Fertile Crescent. This region is known as the Cradle of
Civilization; was the birthplace of the varied civilizations that
moved us from prehistory to history. An advanced civilization
flourished in this region long before that of Egypt, Greece, and Rome,
for it was here in about 4000BC that the Sumerian culture flourished
. The civilized life that emerged at Sumer was shaped by two
conflicting factors: the unpredictability of the Tigris and Euphrates
rivers, which at any time could unleash devastating floods that wiped
out entire peoples, and the extreme richness of the river valleys,
caused by centuries-old deposits of soil. Thus, while the river
valleys of southern Mesopotamia attracted migrations of neighboring
peoples and made possible, for the first time in history, the growing
of surplus food, the volatility of the rivers necessitated a form of
collective management to protect the marshy, low-lying land from
flooding. As surplus production increased and as collective management
became more advanced, a process of urbanization evolved and Sumerian
civilization took root. The people of the Tigris and the Euphrates
basin, the ancient Sumerians, using the fertile land and the abundant
water supply of the area, developed sophisticated irrigation systems
and created what was probably the first cereal agriculture as well as
the earliest writing, cuneiform - a way of arranging impression
stamped on clay by the wedge-like section of chopped-off reed stylus
into wet clay. Through writing, the Sumerians were able to pass on
complex agricultural techniques to successive generations; this led to
marked improvements in agricultural production.
Writing evolved to keep track of property.
Clay envelopes marked with the owner's rolled seal were used to hold
tokens for goods, the tokens within recording a specific transaction.
Later on, the envelope and tokens were discarded and symbols scratched
into clay recorded transactions such as 2 bunches of wheat or 7 cows.
As writing evolved, pictures gave way to lines pressed into clay with
a wedge tip; this allowed a scribe to make many different types of
strokes without changing his grip. By 3,000 BC, the script evolved
into a full syllabic alphabet. The commerce of the times is recorded
in great depth. Double entry accounting practices were found to be a
part of the records. This remarkable innovation has been used to this
day, as a standard for record keeping. It was the custom for all to
pay for what they needed at a fair price. Royalty was not exception.
The king may have had an edge on getting a "better deal", but it
wasn't the law as it was in Egypt where the Pharaoh was the "living
god" and as such, owned all things. It seems that everyone had the
right to bargain fairly for his or her goods. Unlike their Egyptian
neighbors, these people were believers in private property, and the
kings were very much answerable to the citizens. In Egypt, all things,
including the people and property, were owned by the pharaoh.
Sumerians invented the wheel and the first plow in 3700 BC. Sumerians
developed a math system based on the numeral 60, which is the basis of
time in the modern world. Sumerian society was "Matriarchal" and women
had a highly respected place in society. Banking originated in
Mesopotamia (Babylonia) out of the activities of temples and palaces,
which provided safe places for the storage of valuables. Initially
deposits of grain were accepted and later other goods including
cattle, agricultural implements, and precious metals. Another
important Sumerian legacy was the recording of literature. Poetry and
epic literature were produced. The most famous Sumerian epic and the
one that has survived in the most nearly complete form is the epic of
Gilgamesh. The story of Gilgamesh, who actually was king of the
city-state of
Uruk in approximately 2700 BC, is a moving story of the ruler's deep
sorrow at the death of his friend Enkidu, and of his consequent search
for immortality. Other central themes of the story are a devastating
flood and the tenuous nature of man's existence, and ended by meeting
a wise and ancient man who had survived a great flood by building an
ark.
Land was cultivated for the first time, early
calendars were used and the first written alphabet was invented here.
Its bountiful land, fresh waters, and varying climate contributed to
the creation of deep-rooted civilization that had fostered humanity
from its affluent fountain since thousand of years. Sumerian states
were believed to be under the rule of a local god or goddess, and a
bureaucratic system of the priesthood arose to oversee the ritualistic
and complex religion. High Priests represented the gods on earth, one
of their jobs being to discern the divine will. A favorite method of
divination was reading sheep or goat entrails. The priests ruled from
their
ziggurats, high rising temples of sunbaked brick with outside
staircases leading to the shrine on top. The Sumerian gods personified
local elements and natural forces. The Sumerians worshiped anu, the
supreme god of heaven, Enlil, god of water, and Ea, god of magic and
creator of man. The Sumerians held the belief that a sacred ritual
marriage between the ruler and Inanna, goddess of love and fertility
brought rich harvests.
Eventually, the Sumerians would have to
battle another peoples, the Akkadians, who migrated up from the
Arabian Peninsula. The Akkadians were a Semitic people, that is, they
spoke a language drawn from a family of languages called Semitic
languages; a Semitic languages include Hebrew, Arabic, Assyrian, and
Babylonian (the term "Semite" is a modern designation taken from the
Hebrew Scriptures; Shem was a son of Noah and the nations descended
from Shem are the Semites). When the two peoples clashed, the
Sumerians gradually lost control over the city-states they had so
brilliantly created and fell under the hegemony of the Akkadian
kingdom, which was based in Akkad (Sumerian Agade). This great capital
of the largest empire humans had ever seen up until that point that
was later to become Babylon, which was the commercial and cultural
center of the Middle East for almost two thousand years.
In 2340 BC, the great Akkadian military
leader,
Sargon, conquered Sumer and built an Akkadian empire stretching over
most of the Sumerian city-states and extending as far away as Lebanon.
Sargon based his empire in the city of Akkad, which became the basis
of the name of his people.
But Sargon's ambitious empire lasted for only
a blink of an eye in the long time spans of Mesopotamian history. In
2125 BC, the Sumerian city of Ur in southern Mesopotamia rose up in
revolt, and the Akkadian empire fell before a renewal of Sumerian
city-states.
Mesopotamia is the suspected spot known as
the "Garden of Eden."
Ur of the Chaldees, and that's where Abraham came from, (that's just
north of the traditional site of the Garden of Eden, about twenty-five
miles northeast of Eridu, at present Mughair), was a great and famous
Sumerian city, dating from this time. Predating the Babylonian by
about 2,000 years, was Noah, who lived in Fara, 100 miles southeast of
Babylon (from Bab-ili, meaning "Gate of God"). The early Assyrians,
some of the earliest people there, were known to be warriors, so the
first wars were fought there, and the land has been full of wars ever
since. The Assyrians were in the northern part of Mesopotamia and the
Babylonians more in the middle and southern part.
Hammurabi
After the collapse of
the Sumerian civilization, the people were reunited in 1700BC by King
Hammurabi of Babylon (1792-1750 BC), and the country flourished under
the name of Babylonia. Babylonian rule encompassed a huge area
covering most of the Tigris-Euphrates river valley from Sumer and the
Arabian Gulf (Persian Gulf). He extended his empire northward through
the Tigris and Euphrates River valleys and westward to the coast of
the Mediterranean Sea. After consolidating his gains under a central
government at Babylon, he devoted his energies to protecting his
frontiers and fostering the internal prosperity of the Empire.
Hammurabi's dynasty, otherwise referred to as the First Dynasty of
Babylon, ruled for about 200 years, until 1530 BC. Under the reign of
this dynasty, Babylonia entered into a period of extreme prosperity
and relative peace. Throughout his long reign he personally supervised
navigation, irrigation, agriculture, tax collection, and the erection
of many temples and other buildings. Although he was a successful
military leader and administrator, Hammurabi is primarily remembered
for his codification of the laws governing Babylonian life. Under
Hammurabi the two cultures which compose Mesopotamian civilization
[the Assyrians and the Babylonians] achieve complete and harmonious
fusion.
Hammurabi Code
Hammurabi was a king
and a great lawgiver of the Old Babylonian (Amorite) Dynasty. His law
code was produced in the second year of his reign. Many new legal
concepts were introduced by the Babylonians, and many have been
adopted by other civilizations. These concepts include: Legal
protection should be provided to lower classes; The state is the
authority responsible for enforcing the law; Social justice should be
guaranteed; The punishment should fit the crime. Hammurabi Code,
("An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.") is still quoted today
attests to its importance, is a collection of the laws and edicts of
the Babylonian king Hammurabi, and is considered the earliest legal
comprehensive code known in history. A copy of the code is engraved on
a block of black diorite nearly 2.4 m (8 ft) high. A team of French
archaeologists at Susa, Iraq, formerly ancient Elam unearthed this
block, during the winter of 1901-2. The block, broken in three pieces,
has been restored and is now in the Louvre Museum in Paris.
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
On Hammurabi's death,
however, a tribe known as the Cassites (Kassites) began to attack
Babylonia as early as the period when Hammurabi's son ruled the
empire. Over the centuries, Babylonia was weakened by the Cassites.
Finally, around 1530 BC (given in some sources as 1570 or 1595 BC), a
Cassite Dynasty was set up in Babylonia.
The Mitanni, another culture, were meanwhile
building their own powerful empire. They were having a "considerable,
if temporary importance"--they were very powerful but were around for
only about 150 years. Still, the Mitanni were one of the major empires
of this area in this time period, and they came to almost completely
control and subjugate the Assyrians (who were located directly to the
east of Mitanni and to the northwest of Cassite Babylonia).
The Assyrians, after they finally broke free
of the Mitanni (who were having political troubles of their own), were
the next major power to assert themselves on Babylonia. After
defeating and virtually annexing Mitanni, the Assyrians, reasserted
themselves on Babylonia. They weakened Babylonia so much that the
Cassite Dynasty fell from power; the Assyrians virtually came to
control Babylonia, until revolts in turn deposed them and set up a new
dynasty, known as the Second Dynasty of Isin. Nebuchadnezzar the
First, of this Dynasty, added a good deal of land to Babylonia and
eventually came to attack Assyria. the land was under Assyrian rule
for about two centuries. The Assyrian culture showed a dramatic
growth in science and mathematics, among the great mathematical
inventions of the Assyrians was the division of the circle into 360
degrees and were among the first to invent longitude and latitude in
geographical navigation. They also developed a sophisticated medical
science, which greatly influenced medical science as far away as
Greece.
In the 6th century BC (586 B.C.),
Nebuchadnezzar conquered Judea (Judah), destroyed Jerusalem; Solomon's
Temple was also destroyed; Nebuchadnezzar carried away an estimated
15,000 captives, and sent most of its population into exile in
Babylonia. It was not until the reign of Naboplashar (625-605 BC) of
the Neo-Babylonian dynasty that the Mesopotamian civilization reached
its ultimate distinction. His son, Nebuchadnezzar II (604-562 BC) is
credited for building the legendary Hanging Gardens, one of the seven
wonders of the ancient world. It is said that the Gardens were built
by Nebuchadnezzar to please his wife or concubine, Amyitis, who had
been "brought up in Media and had a passion for mountain
surroundings". He did this because his wife had lived in the mountains
and she was homesick on the flat plains of Babylon. He planted a large
amount of brightly colored tropical plants on the roof of the palace.
The gardens were completed around 600 BC. The Hanging Gardens were
built on top of stone arches 23 meters above ground and watered from
the Euphrates by a complicated mechanical system. It was
Nebuchadnezzar II who restored Mesopotamia to its former Babylonian
glory and made Babylon the most famous city of the ancient world.
The Hanging Gardens on the east bank of the River Euphrates, about
50-km south of Baghdad, Iraq, used to be considered as one of the
Seven Wonders of the World. "Has plants cultivated above ground level,
and the roots of the trees are embedded in an upper terrace rather
than in the earth. The whole mass is supported on stone columns...
Streams of water emerging from elevated sources flow down sloping
channels... These waters irrigate the whole garden saturating the
roots of plants and keeping the whole area moist. Hence the grass is
permanently green and the leaves of trees grow firmly attached to
supple branches... This is a work of art of royal luxury and its most
striking feature is that the labor of cultivation is suspended above
the heads of the spectators."
In 626 BC, the Chaldeans helped Nabopolassar
to take power in Babylonia. At that time, Assyria was under
considerable pressure from an Iranian people, the Medes (from Media).
Nabo-polassar allied Babylonia with the Medes. Assyria could not
withstand this added pressure, and in 612 BC, Nineveh, the capital of
Assyria, fell. The entire city, once a great capital of a great
empire, was burned and sacked.
The Arab conquest and the coming
of Islam
Various invaders
conquered the land after Nebuchadnezzar's death, including Cyrus the
Great in 539BC and
Alexander the Great in 331BC, who died there in 323 BC, Babylon
declined after the founding of Seleucia, the New Greek capital. In the
second century BC, it became part of the Persian Empire, remaining
thus until the 7th century AD, when Arab Muslims captured it. In
634AD, an army of 18,000 Arab Muslims, under the leadership of Khalid
ibn al Walied, reached the perimeter of the Euphrates delta. Although
the occupying Persian force was vastly superior in techniques and
numbers, its soldiers were exhausted from their unremitting campaigns
against the Byzantines. The Sassanid troops fought ineffectually,
lacking sufficient reinforcement to do more.
The first battle of the Muslims campaign
became known as Dhat Al-Salasil (the battle of the Chains) because
Persian soldiers were reputedly chained together so that they could
not flee. Muslims offered the inhabitants of Iraq an ultimatum:
"Accept the faith and you are safe; otherwise pay tribute. If you
refuse to do either, you have only yourself to blame. A people is
already upon you, loving death as you love life". Most of the Iraqi
tribes were Christian at the time of the Islamic conquest. They
decided to pay the "jizya", the tax required of non-Muslims
living in Muslim-ruled areas, and not further disturbed. The Persian
rallied briefly under their hero, Rustum, and attacked the Muslims at
Al-Hirah, west of the Euphrates. There, the Muslims soundly defeated
them. The next year, in 635AD, the Muslims defeated the Persians at
the Battle of Buwayb. Finally, in May 636AD at Al-Qadisiyah, a village
south of Baghdad on the Euphrates, Rustum was killed. The Persians,
who outnumbered the Muslims six to one, were decisively beaten. From
Al Qadisiyah the Muslims pushed on to the Sassanid capital at
Ctesiphon (Madain). Because the Muslim warriors were fighting a
Jihad (Jihad fi Sabeel lillah), they were regulated by religious
law that strictly prohibited rape and the killing of women, children,
religious leaders, or anyone who had not actually engaged in warfare.
Further, the Muslim warriors had come to conquer and settle a land
under Islamic law. It was not in their economic interest to destroy or
pillage unnecessarily and indiscriminately. The second caliph Omar Ben
Al-Khattab (634-44 AD) ordered the founding of two garrisoned cities
to protect the newly conquered territory: Kufah, named as the capital
of Iraq, and later the capital of Imam Ali, and the founding of Basrah,
which was also to be a port.
The Muslims continued the Sassanid office of
the divan (Arabic form diwan). Essentially an institution to
control income and expenditure through record keeping and the
centralization of administration, the divan would be used henceforth
throughout the lands of the Islamic conquest. Arabic replaced Persian
as the official language and it slowly filtered into common language
usage. Iraqis intermarried with Arabs and converted to Islam.
Empires - The Abbasid Caliphate
In 750AD, Abo al Abbas
was established in Baghdad as the first caliph of the Abbasid dynasty.
The Abbacies, whose line was called "the blessed dynasty" by it
supporters, presented themselves to the people as divine-right rulers
who would initiate a new era of justice and prosperity. Their
political policies were, however, remarkably similar to those of the
Umayyads. And in 762AD, the capital city of Baghdad was founded. In
the eighth century, the Abbasid caliphate established its capital at
Baghdad, which became an important commercial, cultural, and a famous
center of learning in the Middle Ages, and was regarded in the tenth
century, the intellectual center of the world. As capital of the
caliphate, Baghdad was also to become the cultural capital of the
Islamic world. Baghdad became a center of power in the world, where
Arab and Persian cultures mingled to produce a blaze of philosophical,
scientific, and literary glory. This era is remembered throughout the
Arab world, and by the Iraqis in particular, as the pinnacle of the
Islamic past.
It was the second Abbasid caliph, Abu Jafar
Al-Mansur (754-75 AD), who was known to be an excellent orator,
knowledgeable in language and an excellent administrator, who decided
to build a new capital, surrounded by round walls, near the site of
the Sassanid village of Baghdad. Within fifty years the population
outgrew the city walls as people thronged to the capital to become
part of the Abbacies' enormous bureaucracy or to engage in trade.
Baghdad became a vast emporium of trade linking Asia and the
Mediterranean. By the reign of Mansur's grandson, Harun ar Rashid
(786-806 AD), Baghdad was second in size only to Constantinople.
Baghdad was able to feed its enormous population and to export large
quantities of grain because the political administration had realized
the importance of controlling the flows of the Tigris and the
Euphrates rivers. The Abbacies reconstructed the city's canals, dikes,
and reservoirs, and drained the swamps around Baghdad, freeing the
city of malaria. Harun ar Rashid, the caliph of the Arabian nights,
actively supported intellectual pursuits, but the great flowering of
Arabic culture that is credited to the Abbacies reached its apogee
during the reign of his son, al-Ma`mun (813-833 AD).
By the 9th century, al-Ma`mun was the caliph
who was largely responsible for cultural expansion. The caliph al-Ma`mun
was responsible for the translation of Greek works into Arabic. He
founded in Baghdad "bait al-hikma" the Academy of Wisdom, which took
over from the Persian University of Jundaisapur and soon became an
active scientific center. The Academy's large library was enriched by
the translations that had been undertaken. Scholars of all races and
religions were invited to work there. They were concerned with
preserving a universal heritage, which was not specifically Moslem and
was Arabic only in language. Its first director Hunayn ibn Ishaq
translated the complete medical and philosophical works of Galen, the
physics of Aristotle, and the Greek Old Testament, before his death in
873. Hunayn's many students completed the translation of Plato,
Hippocrates, Ptolemy, Euclid, and Pythagoras into Arabic, and made
great original discoveries in mathematics, particularly in integral
calculus and spherical astronomy.
The most notable mathematician of the period,
Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khawarizmi (680-750 AD), discovered
algebraic equations, and some credit him with the invention of zero.
Al-Khawarizmi wrote ten math textbooks, which have survived. His "Kitab
hisab al'adad al-hindi" was an arithmetic textbook, which introduced
Hindu numbers to the Arab world. Now generally known as Arabic
numbers. Mediaeval Christian Europeans were not keen on the
Hindu-Arabic numbers and declared them the work of Satan! His major
work is entitled "Kitab al-jabr w'al-muqabalah" (restoration and
balancing) whose title gives us the word Algebra. Courtesy of an
Arabic book collector in Muslim Spain and the adventurer El Cid, the
books were translated into Latin, and hit renaissance Italy like
tactical nuclear culture shock. They couldn't speak Arabic, of course,
so his name came out as "Algorismus". His name (misspelled again!) has
gone into mathematics and computerspeak as Algorithm; for a
step by step process for performing computations.
The study of medicine also progressed
rapidly, and a number of hospitals were soon established in Baghdad,
including a teaching hospital.
Baghdad had grown to be almost one million
people and part of the predominately
Muslim Empire of Abu Jafar al-Mansur born 95H (716 AD). His empire
stretched from western China to northern Africa. In the 13th century,
during the reign of the 37th Abbasid caliph, Mustansir Billah, al-Madrasa
al-Mustansiriyah (Mustansiriyah School) was built, this was once a
highly esteemed university. A new
Abbasid Palace was also built in the same era and in the same
architectural style as the Mustansiriyah School, the palace overlooks
the Tigris.
The first truly Arab philosopher, al-Kindi,
worked to reconcile the ideas of neo-Platonism with Islamic
revelation. He was one of the thinkers called the Mu`tazilites, who
sought to employ reason in preference to tradition in interpreting
scripture and formulating theology. Al-Ma`mun favoured this group,
removing from office any judge or religious scholar who did not
profess the new doctrines. One traditionalist who refused to recant
was Ahmed ibn Hanbal, the fourth of the chief Sunni jurists.
The polarization which occurred between these
two factions was extremely unfortunate for Islam, because both points
of view were - and are - necessary for the Muslim community to be
whole. The Mu`tazilites ultimately lost the power struggle after the
death of al-Ma`mun, and consequently their sympathizers down to the
present day have lacked a voice and legitimacy within the Islamic
discourse. The Hanbalites went on to become the ideological
forerunners of the present regime of Saudi Arabia.
After the reign of al-Ma`mun the Abbasid
caliphate was increasingly weakened by internal strife, and eventually
fell under the control of the Persians and then the Turks. During the
reign of the last independent caliph al-Muqtadir (r. 908-932), a
number of very notable men died in Baghdad. There was the outstanding
scientist and physician al-Razi, who compiled a thorough medical
encyclopedia from Sanskrit, Greek, and Aramaic sources synthesized
with his own clinical insights.
One cannot leave the subject of Baghdad and
its learning without speaking of Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali, a professor at
the Madrasa al-Nizamiya, Baghdad's first great school of religious law
founded in 1067. Al-Ghazzali abandoned his post to become a wandering
mystic, then wrote many deeply original religious books synthesizing
the mystical and orthodox points of view. Muslims still regard him as
their greatest reformer. The centre of intellectual life was by then
shifting from Baghdad to the new city of Cairo (where the Fatimid
dynasty had won all of North Africa away from the Abbasids in 969),
and to Cordoba and Toledo in Spain, where all of the amazing
achievements of Muslim scientists and thinkers would pass into the
heritage of Europe.
The Mongol Invasion & The Ottoman
Period
In the early years of
the thirteenth century, a powerful Mongol leader named Temujin brought
together a majority of the Mongol tribes, whome were nomadic people,
and led them on a devastating sweep through China. At about this time,
he changed his name to
Chinggis (Genghis) Khan, meaning "World Conqueror." In 1219 he turned
his force of 700,000 west and quickly devastated Bokhara, Samarkand
(in Uzbekistan), Balkh (in Afghanistan), Merv capital of the great
Seljuk Empire (in Turkmenistan), and Neyshabur (in present-day Iran),
where he slaughtered every living thing. Before his death in 1227,
Chinnggis Khan, pillaging and burning cities along the way, had
reached western Azarbaijan in Iran. After Chinggis's death, the area
enjoyed a brief respite that ended with the arrival of Hulagu Khan
(1217-65), Chinggis's grandson. The Mongols under the leadership of
Hulagu, the Mongol ruler, from the far east swept west and gained
control of the land, he marched on Baghdad with two hundred thousand
Tartars. al-Musta`sim Billah's army and the people of Baghdad jointly
faced them, but it was not in their power to stop this torrent of
calamity. The result was that the Tartars entered Baghdad on the day
of `Ashura' in AD1258 carrying with them bloodshed and ruin. They
remained busy in killing for forty days. Rivers of blood flowed in the
streets and all the alleys were filled with dead bodies. Hundred of
thousands of people were put to the sword while al-Musta`sim Billah,
the last Abbasid caliph, was murdered, trampled to death under foot.
The Mongol (Tartar) left the countryside the way they left many other
countryside's, totally ruined. While in Baghdad, Hulagu deliberately
destroyed what remained of Iraq's canal headworks. The material and
artistic production of centuries was swept away. Iraq became a
neglected frontier province ruled from the Mongol capital of Tabriz in
Iran.
After the death in 1335 of the last great
Mongol khan, Abu Said (also known as Bahadur the Brave), a period of
political confusion ensued in Iraq until a local petty dynasty, the
Jalayirids, seized power. The Jalayirids ruled until the beginning of
the fifteenth century. Jalayirid rule was abruptly checked by the
rising power of a Mongol, Tamerlane (or Timur the Lame, 1336-1405),
who had been atabeg of the reigning prince of the capital Samarkand
(Uzbekistan). In 1401 he sacked Baghdad and massacred many of its
inhabitants. Tamerlane killed thousands of Iraqis and devastated
hundreds of towns.
In Iraq, political chaos, severe economic
depression, and social disintegration followed in the wake of the
Mongol invasions. Baghdad, long a center of trade, rapidly lost its
commercial importance. Basrah, which had been a key transit point for
seaborne commerce, was circumvented after the Portuguese discovered a
shorter route around the Cape of Good Hope. In agriculture, Iraq's
once-extensive irrigation system fell into disrepair, creating swamps
and marshes at the edge of the delta and dry, uncultivated steppes
farther out. The rapid deterioration of settled agriculture led to the
growth of tribally based pastoral nomadism. By the end of the Mongol
period, the focus of Iraqi history had shifted from the urbanbased
Abbasid culture to the tribes of the river valleys, where it would
remain until well into the twentieth century.
From the sixteenth to the twentieth
centuries, the course of Iraqi history was affected by the continuing
conflicts between the Safavid Empire in Iran and the Ottoman Turks.
The Safavids, who were the first to declare Shi'a Islam the official
religion of Iran, sought to control Iraq both because of the Shi'a
holy places at An Najaf and Karbala and because Baghdad, the seat of
the old Abbasid Empire, had great symbolic value. The Ottomans,
fearing that Shi'a Islam would spread to Anatolia (Asia Minor), sought
to maintain Iraq as a Sunni-controlled buffer state. In 1509 the
Safavids, led by Ismail Shah (1502-24), conquered Iraq, thereby
initiating a series of protracted battles with the Ottomans. In 1514
Sultan Selim the Grim attacked Ismail's forces and in 1535 the
Ottomans, led by Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent (1520-66), conquered
Baghdad from the Safavids. The Safavids reconquered Baghdad in 1623
under the leadership of Shah Abbas (1587-1629), but they were expelled
in 1638 after a series of brilliant military maneuvers by the dynamic
Ottoman sultan,
Murad IV, and became part of the
Ottoman Empire. It had become a frontier outpost of the Ottoman
Empire. The Ottomans conquered much of eastern Europe and nearly the
whole of the Arab world, only Morocco and Mauritania in the West and
Yemen, Hadramaut and parts of the Arabian peninsula remaining beyond
their control. The Ottomans brought the Arab Middle East under strong
central rule.
By the seventeenth century, the frequent
conflicts with the Safavids had sapped the strength of the Ottoman
Empire and had weakened its control over its provinces. Between 1625
and 1668, and from 1694 to 1701, local sheikhs ruled Al Basrah and the
marshlands, home of the Madan (Marsh Arabs). The powerful sheikhs
basically ignored the Ottoman governor of Baghdad.
The cycle of tribal warfare and of
deteriorating urban life that began in the thirteenth century with the
Mongol invasions was temporarily reversed with the reemergence of the
Mamluks. In the early eighteenth century, the Mamluks began asserting
authority apart from the Ottomans. Extending their rule first over
Basrah, the Mamluks eventually controlled the Tigris and Euphrates
river valleys from the Arabian (Persian) Gulf to the foothills of
Kurdistan. For the most part, the Mamluks were able administrators,
and their rule was marked by political stability and by economic
revival. The greatest of the Mamluk leaders, Suleyman the II
(1780-1802), made great strides in imposing the rule of law. The last
Mamluk leader, Daud (1816-31), initiated important modernization
programs that included clearing canals, establishing industries,
training a 20,000-man army, and starting a printing press.
The Mamluk period ended in 1831, when a
severe flood and plague devastated Baghdad, enabling the Ottoman
sultan, Mahmud II, to reassert Ottoman sovereignty over Iraq. Ottoman
rule was unstable; Baghdad, for example, had more than ten governors
between 1831 and 1869. In 1869, however, the Ottomans regained
authority when the reform-minded Midhat Pasha was appointed governor
of Baghdad. Midhat immediately set out to modernize Iraq on the
Western model. The primary objectives of Midhat's reforms, called the
tanzimat, were to reorganize the army, to create codes of
criminal and commercial law, to secularize the school system, and to
improve provincial administration. He created provincial
representative assemblies to assist the governor, and he set up
elected municipal councils in the major cities. In 1858 TAPU land law
(named after the initials of the government office issuing it) was
introduced. The new land reform replaced the feudal system of land
holdings and tax farms with legally sanctioned property rights. The
emergence of private property, and the tying of Iraq to the world
capitalist market severely altered Iraq's social structure. Tribal
shaikhs traditionally had provided both spiritual leadership and
tribal security. Land reform and increasing links with the West
transformed many shaikhs into profit-seeking landlords, whose
tribesmen became impoverished sharecroppers.
In 1908 a new ruling clique, the Young Turks
(Turkia Al-Fata), took power in Istanbul. The Young Turks aimed at
making the Ottoman Empire a unified nation-state based on Western
models. They stressed secular politics and patriotism over the
pan-Islamic ideology preached by
Sultan Abd al Hamid.
Most important to the history of Iraq, the
Young Turks aggressively pursued a "Turkification" policy that
alienated the nascent Iraqi intelligentsia and set in motion a
fledgling Arab nationalist movement. Encouraged by the Young Turks'
Revolution of 1908, nationalists in Iraq stepped up their political
activity.
Iraqi nationalists met in Cairo with the Ottoman Decentralization
Party, and some Iraqis joined the Young Arab Society, which moved to
Beirut in 1913. Because of its greater exposure to Westerners who
encouraged the nationalists, Basrah became the center from which Iraqi
nationalists began to demand a measure of autonomy. After nearly 400
years under Ottoman rule, Iraq was ill prepared to form a
nation-state. The Ottomans had failed to control Iraq's rebellious
tribal domains, and even in the cities their authority was tenuous.
The Ottomans' inability to provide security led to the growth of
autonomous, self- contained communities. As a result, Iraq entered the
twentieth century beset by a complex web of social conflicts that
seriously impeded the process of building a modern state.
The final Ottoman legacy in Iraq is related
to the policies of the Young Turks and to the creation of a small but
vocal Iraqi intelligentsia. Faced with the rapidly encroaching West,
the Young Turks attempted to centralize the empire by imposing upon it
the Turkish language and culture and by clamping down on newly won
political freedoms. These Turkification policies alienated many of the
Ottoman-trained intellectuals who had originally aligned themselves
with the Young Turks in the hope of obtaining greater Arab autonomy.
Turkish rule continued unchecked, and with
very little development, until the end of the 19th century, on the
collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the First World War.
British influence
During the First World
War, which broke out in 1914, Turkey became a German ally along with
Austria in a global conflict against Britain and France. Just before
that time Arab independence movements were picking momentum. Arab
leaders in many parts of the Arab world -including the Hashemite
family of Hussein ibn-Ali promised to aid Britain by revolting against
the Ottoman Turks. Arab cooperation came about when Britain agreed to
recognize Arab independence after the war. The Ottoman empire
collapsed when British forces invaded Mesopotamia in 1917 and occupied
Baghdad. An armistice was signed with Turkey in 1918.
Arab leaders expected to work out the details
of Arab independence. But in 1920 the international League of Nations
assigned pieces of the Ottoman empire to the victors, putting
Mesopotamia under a British administration. This arrangement, called a
mandate, meant that Britain would establish a responsible Arab
government in the territory according to a league-approved timetable.
The failure of the British to fulfill their promises of independence
encouraged
Arab nationalism. Now the country became a British Mandate - due, in
no small part, to the British interest in Iraqi oil fields, and
because they wanted to build a transcontinental railroad from Europe,
across Turkey, and down through Iraq to Kuwait on the Persian Gulf.
This railroad would allow a direct trade route with India without
having to skirt Africa. Local unrest (Thawrah), however, resulted in
an Iraqi uprising in 1920, and after costly attempts to quell this,
the British government decided to draw up a new plan for the state of
Iraq.
The British government had laid out the
institutional framework for Iraqi government and politics; the Iraqi
political system suffered from a severe legitimacy crisis; Britain
imposed a Hashimite (also seen as Hashemite) monarchy, defined the
territorial limits of Iraq with little correspondence to natural
frontiers or traditional tribal and ethnic settlements, and influenced
the writing of a constitution and the structure of parliament. The
British also supported narrowly based groups--such as the tribal
shaykhs--over the growing, urban-based nationalist movement, and
resorted to military force when British interests were threatened, as
in the 1941 Rashid Ali Al-Gaylani coup.
Iraq was to be a kingdom, under the rule of
Emir Faisal ibn Hussain, brother of the new ruler of neighboring
Jordan, Abdallah, a member of the Hashemite family, and although the
monarch was elected and proclaimed King by plebiscite in 1921, full
independence was not achieved until 1932, when the British Mandate was
officially terminated. In 1927, discovery of huge oil fields near
Karkuk brought many improvements to Iraq. The Iraqis granted oil
rights to the Iraqi Petroleum Company -a British dominated,
multinational firm.
Iraq joined the League of Nations in the
October of that year, and was officially recognized as an independent
sovereign state. On Faisal's death in 1933, he was succeeded by his
son,
King Ghazi I. In March 1945, Iraq became a founding member of the
League of Arab States (Arab League), which included Egypt, Transjordan,
Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen. And in December 1945, Iraq
joined the United Nations (UN).
The growing state
In 1936 King Ghazi I
formed an alliance with other Arab nations, known as the Pan-Arab
movement. This was, in effect, a non-aggression treaty, and promising
kinship between Arab countries. Also in 1936 Iraq experienced its
first military coup d'etat--the first coup d'etat in the modern Arab
world, led by General Bakr Sidqi. The Sidqi coup (29th of October,
1936) marked a major turning point in Iraqi history; it made a crucial
breach in the constitution, and it opened the door to further military
involvement in politics. Ghazi sanctioned Sulayman's government (Hikmat
Sulayman was one of the agents of the coup along with General Bakr
Sidqi) even though it had achieved power unconstitutionally,
overthrowing Yasin al-Hashimi's government, killing Ja'afar al-Askari
its Minister of Defense. Eventually, Sidqi's excesses alienated both
his civilian and his military supporters, and he was murdered by a
military group in August 1937.
In 1938 King Ghazi decided to attempt to
realize his ambition of annexing Kuwait, part of his dream to lead the
Fertile Crescent movement [King Ghazi announced from Qasr al-Zohour
radio station that he was looking forward to the day when Syria,
Palestine, and Kuwait were united to Iraq]. With a combination of
propaganda (Qasr al-Zohour radio station), and military intimidation,
he began to foment dissent in Kuwait, exploiting the aspirations of
sections of the Kuwaiti middle class, which sought greater
participation in government. But, at a critical moment, when Iraqi
troops had massed near Kuwait's northern border, Ghazi's obsession
with fast motor cars proved his undoing. The king drove his car into a
lamppost and died instantly on the 3rd of April 1939.
King Ghazi was succeeded by his
three-year-old son,
Faisal II, under a regency. Ghazi's first cousin,
Amir Abd al Ilah, was made regent. Faisal, the cousin of Jordan's late
King Hussein bin Talal, did not assume the throne formally until his
eighteenth birthday, in
May 1953. Whereas Faisal and Ghazi had been strong Arab nationalists
and had opposed the British-supported tribal shaykhs, Abd al Ilah and
Nuri as-Said were Iraqi nationalists who relied on the tribal shaykhs
as a counterforce against the growing urban nationalist movement. By
the end of the 1930s,
Pan-Arabism had become a powerful ideological force in the Iraqi
military, especially among younger officers who hailed from the
northern provinces and who had suffered economically from the
partition of the Ottoman Empire. The British role in quelling the
Palestine revolt of 1936 to 1939 further intensified anti-British
sentiments in the military and led a group of disgruntled officers to
form the Free Officers' Movement, which aimed at overthrowing the
monarchy.
During the earlier part of World War II,
Iraq's government was strongly pro-British, however, the Iraqi
nationalist, and ardent Anglophobe Rashid Ali Al-Gaylani succeeded
Nuri as-Said as prime minister. The new prime minister sought close
ties with Nazi Germany in hope to release Iraq from British
domination. Rashid Ali proposed restrictions on British troops
movements in Iraq. Abd al Ilah and Nuri as-Said both were proponents
of close cooperation with Britain. They opposed Rashid Ali's policies
and pressed him to resign. In response, the army surrounded The Royal
palace in Baghdad on April 1,1941. The regent and his entourage
escaped to Habbaniyah, from there to Basrah and thence to Amman in
Transjordan. Rashid Ali and four generals dubbed the "Golden Square",
led a military coup, on April 3, 1941, that ousted Nuri as-Said and
the regent; and announced that the temporarily absent regent was
deposed.
Backed by the German embassy in Baghdad
headed by Dr F. Grobba, which generously supplied money, books and
films, the sentiments against the Jews were fuelled. There were
demonstrations against the British and Jews by hoodlums and students
who had taken to the streets.
Shortly after seizing power in 1941, Rashid
Ali Al-Gaylani appointed an ultranationalist civilian cabinet, which
gave only conditional consent to British requests in April 1941 for
troop landings in Iraq. The British quickly retaliated by landing
forces at Basrah on April 19, justifying this second occupation of
Iraq by citing Rashid Ali's violation of the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of
1930. Many Iraqis regarded the move as an attempt to restore British
rule. Iraqi troops were then concentrated around the British air base
at Habbaniyah, west of Baghdad; and on May 2 the British commander
there opened hostilities, lest the Iraqis should attack first. Having
won the upper hand at Habbaniyah and been reinforced from Palestine,
the British troops from the air base marched on Baghdad. The ensuing
war between Britain and Iraq lasted less than a month, as the British
steadily advanced, and on May 30th Rashid Ali Al-Gaylani and his
government fled the country.
On the same day an evil conspiracy carried
out by Yunis Al Sabawi, head of Nazi groups, who declared himself
governor of central southern Iraq. He ordered Jews through Hakham
Sasson Khedouri, to remain in their homes from Saturday, May 31 until
Monday, June 2 ?Shabu'oth. with the intention of slaughtering the Jews
that weekend using the Nazi youth organizations he was heading.
However, miraculously, Sabawi was deported to the Iranian border that
same day. On May 31,1941 it was announced that the Regent with his
entourage would be returning to Baghdad next day. The Farhud
took place Sunday and Monday, June 1st and 2nd 1941, the two days of
Shabu'oth. The word Farhud denotes the breakdown of law and
order, where life and property are in peril.
June 1, '41, the first day of Shabu'oth: A
delegation of Jews went to the airport to welcome the Regent. On their
way back they were attacked on Al Khurr Bridge by soldiers and
civilians. One Jew was killed, and many injured who were taken to the
hospital. Terror continued until 10 p.m.
June 2,1941: at 5 p.m., curfew was declared
and anyone who showed himself in the streets was shot on the spot.
Official Iraqi reports mention 187 killed in both days of the Farhud.
During those difficult times, many Iraqi Moslems opened their homes
and fed and protected the Jews.
Rashid Ali Al-Gaylani and his government fled
to Iran on his way to Germany, as a guest of the Fuehrer, he spent the
remainder of the war broadcasting to the Arab world and planning to
regain power when German pincers from Egypt and the Caucasus finally
met at the Persian Gulf. He survived the war and escaped to Saudi
Arabia where he was granted asylum, returning to Iraq after the 1958
revolution. A new, pro-British government was established. Abd al Ilah
was reinstated as regent; Nuri became prime minister; and the British
military presence remained to uphold them. In the following year Iraq
became an important Middle Eastern supply centre for American and
British forces, particularly with regard to the trans-shipment of arms
to the USSR.
Coups, wars & instability
War with Israel
followed in 1948, in which Iraqi forces were allied with those of
Transjordan, in accordance with a treaty signed by the two countries
during the previous year. Fighting continued until the signing of a
cease-fire agreement in May 1949. The war also had a negative impact
on the Iraqi economy. The government allocated 40 percent of available
funds for the army and for Palestinian refugees. Oil royalties paid to
Iraq were halved when the pipeline to Haifa was cut off in 1948. The
war and the hanging of a Jewish businessman led, moreover, to the
departure of most of Iraq's prosperous Jewish community. Although
emigration was prohibited, many Jews made their way to Israel during
this period with the aid of an underground movement. In 1950 the Iraqi
parliament finally legalized emigration to Israel, and between May
1950 and August 1951, the Jewish Agency and the Israeli government
succeeded in airlifting approximately 110,000 Jews to Israel in
Operations Ezra and Nehemiah; about 120,000 Iraqi Jews emigrated to
Israel between 1948 and 1952.
In the mid-1950s, the monarchy was embroiled
in a series of foreign policy blunders that ultimately contributed to
its overthrow. Following a 1949 military coup in Syria that brought to
power Adib Shishakli, a military strongman who opposed union with
Iraq, a split developed between Abd al Ilah, who had called for a
Syrian-Iraqi union, and Nuri as-Said, who opposed the union plan.
Although Shishakli was overthrown with Iraqi help in 1954, the union
plan never came to fruition. Instead, the schism between Nuri as-Said
and the regent widened. Sensing the regime's weakness, the opposition
intensified its antiregime activity.
The monarchy's major foreign policy mistake
occurred in 1955, when Nuri as-Said announced that Iraq was joining a
British supported mutual defense pact with Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey.
The Baghdad Pact constituted a direct challenge to Egyptian president
Gamal Abdel Nasser. In response, Nasser launched a vituperative media
campaign that challenged the legitimacy of the Iraqi monarchy and
called on the officer corps to overthrow it. The 1956
British-French-Israeli attack on Sinai further alienated Nuri as-Said's
regime from the growing ranks of the opposition. In February 1958 King
Hussein of Jordan and Abd al Ilah proposed a union of Hashimite
monarchies to counter the recently formed Egyptian-Syrian union.
Opening its doors for any Arab state to join if they wish ... Nuri
as-Said concentrated on the participation of Kuwait as a third country
in the proposed Arab-Hashimite Union, Shaikh Abdullah Al-Salim, ruler
of Kuwait, was invited to Baghdad to discuss Kuwait liberation from
the British protection, and on the subject of tri-unity. Britain
opposed declaring Kuwait independent at that time. At this point, the
monarchy found itself completely isolated. Nuri as-Said was able to
contain the rising discontent only by resorting to even greater
oppression and to tighter control over the political process.
Inspired by the example of Gamal Abdel Nasser
in Egypt, the Hashimite monarchy was overthrown on July 14, 1958, in a
swift, predawn coup executed by officers of the Nineteenth Brigade
known as "Free Officers", under the leadership of
Brigadier Abdul-Karim Qassem (known as "il-Za`im") and Colonel Abdul
Salam Arif. King Faisal II and Abd al Ilah were executed in al-Rihab
Palace, and displaying the bodies in public, hanging them by their
feet outside the palace; as were many others in the royal family. Nuri
as-Said escaped capture for one day after attempting to escape
disguised as a veiled woman, but was then caught and put to death, his
body tied to the back of a car and dragged through the streets until
there was nothing left but half a leg. Iraq was proclaimed a republic,
and the Arab Union was dissolved. Iraq's activity in the Baghdad Pact
ceased.
Later the same year, on two occasions, Aref
attempted to assassinate the new Prime Minister, Qassem, but failed.
In 1959, the Mosul garrison, disillusioned
with the new government, organized a revolt against Qassem. The revolt
was ruthlessly suppressed, with the massacre of many hundreds of
disaffected Arab nationalists and Ba'athists.
Later in 1959, another assassination attempt
against Qassem, this time organized by the Ba'ath Party, failed.
Amongst the unsuccessful assassination squad was the young Saddam
Hussein.
Qassem ended Iraq's membership in the Baghdad
Pact (later reconstituted as the Central Treaty Organization- CENTO)
in 1959. Qassem remained in power for more than four years. The
Nasserites and the Baathists both wished to join the UAR (United Arab
Republic - Egypt), a means to control the communists, but Qassem, not
wishing to be overshadowed by Nasser, allied himself with the left and
refused their demands. This served to alienate himself from his
strongest supporters.
In 1961, Kuwait gained its independence from
Britain.
Abdul-Karim Qassem immediately claimed sovereignty over it, claim to
the Amirate as originally part of the Ottoman province of Basrah.
Britain reacted strongly to this threat to its ex-protectorate,
dispatching a brigade to the country to deter Iraq. Qassem backed
down, and in October 1963, Iraq recognised the sovereignty and borders
of Kuwait.
A period of considerable instability
followed, with one military coup swiftly succeeding another, and
leaders came and went throughout the 60s and early 70s.
Qassem was assassinated in February 1963, when Ba'ath Arab Socialist
Party members took power; under the leadership of Gen. Ahmed Hasan al-Bakr
as prime minister and Col. Abdul Salam Arif as president. Nine months
later, President
Abdul Salam Mohammad Arif led a successful coup against the Ba'athists,
ousting the Ba'ath government. In April 13 1966 President Abdul Salam
Arif dies in a helicopter crash! and is followed by his brother
Gen. Abdul Rahman Arif. Following the Six Day War of 1967, the Ba'ath
Party felt strong enough. The Ba'athists overthrow Arif and regained
power on 17th of July 1968 coup.
Ahmed Hasan al-Bakr became president and chairman of the Revolutionary
Command Council (RCC) following the Ba'athists return to power.
Iraq's general policy during these years was
one of Arab National. Iraq was on the head of the other Arab troops
during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, and in the liberation war of 1973,
gave material aid to Syria. Iraq was heavily opposed to the
cease-fire, which ended the conflict.
Relations with Iran were fast deteriorating
in the early 70s. Iranian arms supplies to the Kurd leader,
Mustafa al-Barzani, now fueled the ongoing Kurdish situation, which
had first emerged in a 1961 Kurdish rebellion. Problems were
compounded by border disputes with Iran, but these were partially
settled in 1975, In Algiers on March 6, 1975, Saddam Hussein signed an
agreement with the Shah (Algiers Agreement), that recognized the
thalweg as the boundary in the Shatt el-Arab, legalized the Shah's
abrogation of the 1937 treaty in 1969, and dropped all Iraqi claims to
Khuzestan and to the islands at the foot of the Gulf. In return, the
Shah agreed to prevent subversive elements from crossing the border,
whereupon Iran withdrew aid from the Kurdish revolt and effectively
halted it.
By the end of 1977, the Kurdish people had
been granted greater autonomy and Kurdish was recognized as an
official language. Politically, Iraq seemed to be stabilizing, and the
oil boom of the late 70s contributed dramatically to an upsurge in the
economy.
Saddam Hussein & the invasion of
Kuwait
In July 1979 the
president, Ahmed Hasan Al-Bakr, was replaced by
Saddam Hussein, his vice president, chosen successor, and the true
ruler of Iraq. Saddam then assumed both of the vacated offices and
purged political rivals in order to assure his position. Once more the
political situation flared into hostilities with Iran. On September
17, 1980 Saddam declares the Iraqi/Iranian borders agreement (Algiers
Agreement) null and void, claiming the whole of
Shatt el-Arab back to Iraq. The Iran-Iraq War, which began 5 days
later on September 22, 1980, lasted for eight years and had a
crippling effect on the economy of both countries; in which after
eight years of war no territory had been gained by either side but an
estimated one million lives had been lost. In July 1988, Iran accepted
the terms of
UN Resolution 598, and the cease-fire came into force on 20th August
1988. Before Iraq had a chance to recover economically, it was once
more plunged into war, this time with its invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
The invasion was the result of a
long-standing territorial dispute. Iraq accused Kuwait of violating
the Iraqi border to secure oil resources, (on July 17, 1990 Saddam
Hussein accused Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates of flooding the
world oil market. In addition, he singled out Kuwait for the
production of oil from a disputed supply, the Rumaila oil field), and
demanded that its debt repayments should be waived. Direct
negotiations were begun in July 1990, but they were destined soon to
fail; along with reassurance from the United States making a claim
that they would not get involved (the famous meeting of
Saddam Hussein with April Glaspie, the United States Ambassador to
Iraq, on the 25th of July, 1990). This was
the go ahead that Hussein needed. Arab mediators convinced Iraq and
Kuwait to negotiate their differences in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, on
August 1, 1990, but that session resulted only in charges and
countercharges. A second session was scheduled to take place in
Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, but Iraq invaded Kuwait the next day.
Iraqi troops overran the country shortly after midnight on 2nd August
1990. The U.S. fell short on its claim to not get involved and
instantly declared interest in keeping Saudi Arabia safe. The United
Nations Security Council and the Arab League immediately condemned the
Iraqi invasion. Four days later, the Security Council imposed an
economic embargo on Iraq that prohibited nearly all trade with Iraq.
Iraq responded to the sanctions by annexing Kuwait as the 19th
Province of Iraq on August 8, prompting the exiled Sabah family to
call for a stronger international response. Over the ensuing months,
the United Nations Security Council passed a series of
resolutions condemned the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait, implementing
total mandatory economic sanctions against Iraq. Other countries
subsequently provided support for "Operation Desert Shield". In
November 1990, the UN Security Council adopted
Resolution 678, permitting member states to use all necessary means,
authorizing military action against the Iraqi forces occupying Kuwait,
and demanded a complete withdrawal by 15th of January 1991.
When Saddam Hussein failed to comply with
this demand, the Gulf War (Operation "Desert Storm") ensued on the
17th of January 1991 (3 a.m. Iraq time), with
allied troops of 28 countries, led by the US launching an aerial
bombardment on Baghdad. The war, which proved disastrous for Iraq,
lasted only six weeks, one hundred and forty thousand tons of firearms
had showered down on the country, the equivalent of 7 Hiroshima bombs.
Probably as many as 100,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed and tens of
thousands of civilians. Allied air raids destroyed roads, bridges,
factories, and oil industry facilities (shutting down the national
refining and distribution system)' and disrupted electric, telephone,
and water service. Conference centers and shopping and residential
areas were hit. Hundreds of Iraqis were killed in the attack on the
Al-Amiriyah bomb shelter. Diseases spread through contaminated
drinking water because water purification and sewage treatment
facilities could not operate without electricity. A cease-fire was
announced by the US on 28th February 1991. UN terms for a permanent
cease-fire were agreed by Iraq in April of that year, and strict
conditions were imposed, demanding the disclosure and destruction of
all stockpiles of weapons.
A few days after the war had ended, popular
insurrections broke out in southern Iraq and in Kurdistan in the
north, where rebels took control of most of the region's towns. The
United States (President George Bush) again fell short of its
commitments in protecting the uprising, let the people exposed. Units
of the Republican Guard that had survived the conflict acted with
extreme brutality and gained the upper hand in the Basrah, Najaf and
Karbala regions. In the southern cities, rebels killed Baathist
officials, members of the security service and other supporters of the
regime.
Meanwhile, in Kurdistan, Iraqi helicopters
and troops regained control of the cities taken by the rebels and
there was a mass exodus of Kurds, fearing a repeat of the 1988
chemical attacks, to the Turkish and Iranian borders. By the end of
April there were 2.5 million refugees. In late April 1991, it was
announced that there had been an agreement to implement the Kurdish
peace plan of 1970; however, again, negotiations were stalled on the
delineation of the borders of the Kurdish autonomous region with the
Kurds insisting on the inclusion of Karkuk.
The United States, in an attempt to prevent
the genocide of the Marsh Arabs in southern Iraq and the Kurds to the
north, declared
air exclusion zones north of the 36th parallel and south of the 32nd
parallel. The Clinton administration judged an alleged attempted
assassination of former President George Bush while in Kuwait to be
worthy of a military response on 27 June 1993. The Iraqi Intelligence
Headquarters in Baghdad was targeted by 23 Tomahawk cruise missiles,
launched from US warships in the Red Sea and Arabian Gulf. Three
missiles were declared to have missed the target, causing some
collateral damage to nearby residential housing and eight civilian
deaths.
A military conflict was brewing between two
Kurdish rival parties. Kurds had often disputed over land rights, and
as their economic and political security deteriorated in the early
1990s, the conflicts became more extreme.
In May 1994 supporters of the Patriotic Union
of Kurdistan (PUK) clashed with supporters of the Kurdistan Democratic
Party (KDP), leaving 300 people dead. Over the next two years the PUK
and KDP fought several more times, eventually devolving into a state
of civil war. In August 1996, leaders of the KDP asked Saddam Hussein
to intervene in the war. Hussein sent about 30,000 troops into the
US-protected Kurdish region, capturing the PUK stronghold of Irbىl.
The KDP was immediately installed in power. The United States
responded with two missile strikes against southern Iraq, but in early
September Iraq again helped KDP fighters, this time taking the PUK
stronghold of As-Sulaymanىyah.
In October 1994, Iraq moved some Republican
Guard units towards Kuwait, an act that provoked a large-scale US
troop deployment to the Gulf to deter any Iraqi attack. The move was
interpreted as a sign of Saddam's frustration with the continuation of
UN sanctions, but afterwards he took a more moderate line, agreeing to
recognize the existence and borders of Kuwait. In the months that
followed his position appeared to become more precarious as
dissatisfaction with his rule spread in the army and among the tribes
and clans at the core of his regime. In June clashes broke out with
the Dulaimi tribe, which supplied many of his senior officers after
one of them was said to have been secretly executed by the regime.
These culminated in the brutal suppression of demonstrations in the
town of Ramadi by troops under the control of Saddam son, Uday, and in
a subsequent attack on Abu Grein prison by a dissident military unit
dominated by members of the Dulaym tribe.
In May 1995 Saddam sacked his half-brother,
Wathban, as Interior Minister and in July demoted his notorious and
powerful Defense Minister, Ali Hassan al- Majid, known popularly as
`Chemical Ali' because of his role in gassing operations in Kurdistan.
These personnel changes were the result of the growth in power of his
two sons, Udai and Qusai, who were given effective vice-presidential
authority in May 1995. They have been able to remove most of Saddam's
loyal followers and it is clear that Saddam feels more secure
protected by his immediate family members. In August Major General
Hussein Kamil Hassan al-Majid, his Minister of Military Industries and
a key henchman, defected to Jordan, together with his wife (one of
Saddam's daughters) and his brother, Saddam, who was married to
another of the president's daughters, and called for the overthrow of
the regime. In response, Saddam promised full co-operation with the UN
commission disarming Iraq
(UNSCOM) in order to pre-empt any revelations that the defector could
make.
The weakening of the internal position of the
regime occurred at a time when the external opposition forces were as
weak as ever, too divided among themselves to take any effective
action. At the same time, France and Russia have pushed for an easing
of sanctions. US determination to keep up the pressure on Iraq has
prevailed however. In any case, the apparent weakening of the regime
was illusory, not least when the two defectors returned home and were
killed, apparently by other clan members, in an awful warning to other
potential defectors. In fact, during 1996, the regime's grip on power
seemed to have significantly strengthened despite its inability to end
the UN sanctions against it.
In September 2002 President Bush urged the
United Nations to encourage Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to comply
with U.N. resolutions or "actions will be unavoidable." Bush said that
Saddam has repeatedly violated 16 U.N. Security Council resolutions,
which include a call for Iraq to "disarm its chemical, biological and
nuclear weapons programs". Iraqi officials rejected Bush's assertions.
