CHAPTER 6
Overview
I
raq is one of the many Middle Eastern countries artificially created by European
colonial powers in the years after World War I. Because of its history, ethnic com-
position, oil reserves, and strategic location, Iraq has been one of the most troubled,
and troublesome, of the region’s neocolonial creations. From its ancient origins to its
central role in major conflicts during the last three decades, Iraq’s influence on the
world has far exceeded its population and land mass. As the British discovered in the
1920s and the Americans have learned in the early 2000s, it can be a quagmire for
outside powers.
Mesopotamia—the lush “cradle of civilization” between the Tigris and Euphrates
rivers in southern and central Iraq—formed the seat of some of the great civilizations
of ancient times, including those of the Sumerians and the Amorites, the latter of
whom built the great capital of Babylon on the Euphrates. The Abbasids, the first Arab
dynasty, ruled from Baghdad for five hundred years beginning in 750 A.D. In the six-
teenth century, all of present-day Iraq fell under the control of the Turkish Ottoman
Empire.
Iraq’s entry onto the world stage as a separate country began in World War I,
when Britain gradually invaded and took over the three Ottoman provinces of Basra,
Baghdad, and Mosul as part of a broader campaign of pressure against the Ottomans,
who had sided with Germany in the war. The British also sought to protect trade
routes with India, the crown jewel of their empire. Arabs hoped that after the war,
Iraq would become part of an independent Arab state, but the British already had
decided to hold on to that territory as part of the secret Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916
with France for dividing up much of the Middle East. In 1919 the British created Iraq
by combining the three formerly autonomous provinces—Basra in the south, Bagh-
dad in the center, and Mosul in the north.
Iraq’s Shiite and Sunni Muslims joined in a brief but bloody revolt against the
British during the summer of 1920 after it became clear that London would rule Iraq
under a League of Nations mandate rather than grant it independence. Although the
revolt failed, it was an important event in the country’s history because it marked the417