The Kingdom of Iraq under British Administration, or Mandatory Iraq (), was created in 1921 after the 1920 Iraqi Revolt against the proposed British Mandate of Mesopotamia and was enacted via the 1922 Anglo-Iraqi Treaty and a 1924 undertaking by the United Kingdom to the League of Nations to fulfil the role as mandatory power.Wright, Quincy. "The Government of Iraq". The American Political Science Review, vol. 20, no. 4, 1926, pp. 743–769. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1945423. Accessed 21 January 2020
Faisal ibn Husayn, who had been proclaimed King of Syria by the Syrian National Congress in Damascus in March 1920, was ejected by the French in July of the same year. Faisal was then granted by the British the territory of Iraq to rule it as a kingdom, with the British Royal Air Force (RAF) retaining certain military control, but , the territory remained under British administration until 1932.Ethnicity, State Formation, and Conscription in Postcolonial Iraq: The Case of the Yazidi Kurds of Jabal Sinjar. JSTOR
The civil government of postwar Iraq was headed originally by High Commissioner Sir Percy Cox, and his deputy, Colonel Arnold Wilson. British reprisals after the capture and killing of a British officer in Najaf failed to restore order. The British occupiers faced the growing strength of the nationalists, who continued to resist against the British authority. British administration had yet to be established in northern Iraq.
Although often thought to have been invented by the British after the First World War, Iraq had long existed as a distinct region under the Ottoman Empire, encompassing the provinces of Mosul, Baghdad and Basra and officially referred to as the 'Iraq Region'.
History Background Contrary to the common belief that Iraq was invented by the British after the First World War, the region had long existed as a coherent administrative entity under the Ottoman Empire. As early as the 16th century, the Baghdad Eyalet encompassed districts such as Kerne in the south, Kasr-ı Şirin in the east, İmadiye and Zâho in the north and Ane and Deyrü Rahbe in the west and formed a territorial configuration that closely resembles the later borders of Mandatory Iraq. By the 17th century, the territory had been reorganised into four Ottoman eyalets: those of Baghdad, Basra, Mosul and Shahrizor. By the mid-19th century, Ottoman Iraq was divided into the three vilayets of Mosul, Baghdad, and Basra, which were frequently treated collectively in official Ottoman documents as the Iraq Region (Hıtta-i Irakiyye).
In 1850, a request to establish a provincial council (meclis-i kebîr) in Shahrizor was denied by the Sublime Porte, which noted that Shahrizor, although a separate province, was considered part of the Iraq Region and could therefore not establish a provincial council before the capital, Baghdad. In 1879, Mosul Governor Feyzi Pasha referred to the Mosul vilayet’s inclusion in the Hıtta-i Irakiyye in a telegram seeking tax relief, which indicated that the term was used in practice to describe a unified administrative space. That sense of territorial cohesion extended into imperial economic planning: a 1902 Ottoman railway concession contract described the project as intended "for the purpose of increasing the prosperity, development, wealth, and trade of Imperial Anatolia and of Iraq" (Turkish: Anadolu-yı Şâhâne ile hatta: Irak’ın tezyîd-i ma‘mûriyet ve terakkî-i servet ve ticâreti zımnında). The document listed Baghdad, Mosul and Basra among the Iraqi cities through which the railway would pass, which reflected Iraq's intended integration into the Ottoman imperial economy.
Early unrest
Three important anticolonial secret societies had been formed in Iraq during 1918 and 1919. The League of the Islamic Awakening () was organized at Najaf. The Muslim National League () was formed with the objects of organising and mobilising the population for major resistance. In February 1919, in Baghdad, a coalition of Shia merchants, Sunni teachers, civil servants, Sunni and Shia ulama, and Iraqi officers formed the Guardians of Independence (). The Guardians of Independence had member groups in Karbala, Najaf, Kut and Hillah.
The Grand Mujtahid of Karbala, Imam Shirazi, and his son, Mirza Muhammad Riza, began to organise the insurgent effort. Shirazi then issued a ruling, calling for a resistance against the British. By July 1920, Mosul was in rebellion against British rule, and the armed resistance moved south down the Euphrates River valley. The southern tribes, who cherished their long-held political autonomy, needed little inducement to join in the fray, but they did not cooperate in an organised effort against the British, which limited the effect of the revolt.
The 1920 Iraqi Revolt was a watershed event in contemporary Iraqi history. For the first time, Sunnis and Shias tribes and cities were brought together in a common effort. In the opinion of Hanna Batatu, the author of a seminal work on Iraq, the building of a nation-state in Iraq depended upon two major factors: the integration of Shias and Sunnis into the new body politic and the successful resolution of the age-old conflicts between the tribes and the riverine cities and among the tribes themselves over the food-producing flatlands of the Tigris and the Euphrates. The Iraqi Revolt brought those groups together, if only briefly, which constituted an important first step in the long and arduous process of forging a nation-state out of Iraq's conflict-ridden social structure. The Iraq Levies, a military force under British command, participated in the Kirkuk Massacre of 1924 of Kurds, Arabs and Turkomen. (See Simele Massacres of 1933)
On 1 October 1922, the Royal Air Force (RAF) elements stationed in Iraq were reorganised into the RAF Iraq Command, which came about partially as a result of the 1920 revolt. Thw new command was designed primarily to suppress any threats to the Hashemite monarchy. Air control was considered by the British government as a more cost-effective method of controlling large areas of territory than land forces, an idea that was heavily promoted by the RAF officer Hugh Trenchard. During the 1920s andthe 19 30s, the RAF Iraq Command participated in the suppression of numerous protests and revolts against the Hashemite monarchy.Overseas commands: Iraq, India and the Far East, section "RAF Iraq." In: Air of authority: A history of RAF organization . Retrieved 2015-06-20.Hazelton, Fran 1989. "Iraq to 1963" in CARDRI, "Saddam’s Iraq: Revolution or Reaction?" London 1989. p3 The British historian Elie Kedourie noted that "the North [of Iraq] as a whole had to be coerced [into submission] by the Royal Air Force." When the Kurdish leader Sheikh Mahmud launched an armed rebellion, the British used the newly-established Iraqi army to suppress the revolt, but that proved ineffective. The British then resorted to deploying the RAF, which suppressed the revolt. Meanwhile, rebellions by the Shia in the South of Iraqwere also suppressed by the RAF.
Coronation of Faisal At the Cairo Conference of March 1921, the British set the parameters for Iraqi political life that were to continue until the 1958 Revolution. They chose as the first King of Iraq Hashemite, Faisal ibn Husayn, son of Sherif Hussein ibn Ali, a former Sharif of Mecca; they established an Iraqi army thought they kept Iraq Levies under direct British command; and they proposed a new treaty. To confirm Faisal as Iraq's first monarch, a plebiscite was carefully arranged that had a return of 96 percent in his favour. The British saw in Faisal a leader who possessed sufficient nationalist and Islamic credentials to have broad appeal but also was vulnerable enough to remain dependent on their support.
Faisal traced his descent from the family of Muhammad. His ancestors held political authority in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina since the 10th century. The British believed that those credentials would satisfy traditional Arab standards of political legitimacy and thought that he would be accepted by the growing Iraqi nationalist movement because of his role in the 1916 Arab Revolt against the Turks, his achievements as a leader of the Iraq emancipation movement and his general leadership qualities. Faisal was instated as the Kingof Iraq after the Naquib of Baghdad was disqualified as being too old (aged 80), and Sayid Talib (a prominent Iraqi from the province of Basra) was deported on trumped up-charges by the British. The voting was far from a reflection of the true feelings of the Iraqi people. Nevertheless, Faisal was considered the most effective choice for the throne by the British government.
The final major decision taken at the Cairo Conference related to the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1922. Faisal was under pressure from the nationalists and the anti-British mujtahids of Najaf and Karbala to limit both British influence in Iraq and the duration of the treaty. Recognizing that the monarchy depended on British support— and wishing to avoid a repetition of his experience in Syria, where the French had removed him, Faisal maintained a moderate approach in dealing with the British. The treaty, which had been originally set as a 20-year engagement but later reduced to four years, was ratified in June 1924 and stated that the King would heed British advice on all matters affecting British interests and on fiscal policy as long as Iraq had a balance of payments deficit with the British and that British officials would be appointed to specified posts in 18 departments to act as advisers and inspectors. A subsequent financial agreement, which significantly increased the financial burden on Iraq, required Iraq to pay half the cost of supporting British resident officials, among other expenses. British obligations under the new treaty included providing various kinds of aid, notably military assistance, and proposing Iraq for membership in the League of Nations at the earliest moment. In effect, the treaty ensured that Iraq would remain politically and economically dependent on the British. While unable to prevent the passing of the treaty, Faisal clearly felt that the British had gone back on their promises to him.
The British decision at the Cairo Conference to establish an indigenous Iraqi army was significant. In Iraq, as in most of the developing world, the military establishment was the best-organised institution in an otherwise-weak political system. Iraq's body politic crumbled under immense political and economic pressure throughout the monarchic period, but the military gained increasing power and influence, and because the officers in the new army were necessarily Sunnis who had served under the Ottomans, and the lower ranks were filled predominantly by Shia tribal elements, the Sunni dominance in the military was preserved.
Later years The Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1930 provided for a "close alliance" for "full and frank consultations between the two countries in all matters of foreign policy" and for mutual assistance in case of war. Iraq granted the British the use of air bases near Basra and at Habbaniyah and the right to move troops across the country. The treaty, of 25 years' duration, was to come into force upon Iraq's admission to the League of Nations.