first time that Shiites and Sunnis of differing backgrounds and tribal loyalties cooper-
ated in any kind of organized way in Iraq. In response to this revolt, the British cre-
ated a provisional government that gave limited authority to local representatives—
most of them Sunnis—under overall British supervision. This step marked the
beginning of a trend in which the minority Sunnis would hold power at the expense
of the majority Shiites and the other large minority, the Kurds of northern Iraq. This
pattern would continue until the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, when the United
States would hand progressively greater authority to local Shiite leaders.
The British in 1921 selected Faisal ibn Hussein as the country’s first king. The
son of Sharif Hussein, then-leader of the Hijaz (which would later become part of
Saudi Arabia), Faisal had portrayed himself as representing Arabs during the postwar
peace conference in Paris and had served briefly in 1920 as king of Syria before being
removed by France. Faisal was not an Iraqi—and apparently had never even been there
before he became king of it—but he was an Arab the British could trust and could
use to put an Arab face on the British government in Baghdad. In an effort to give
legitimacy to Faisal’s rule, the British arranged for a plebiscite that produced a 96 per-
cent vote in favor of the new king. A subsequent election resulted in the creation of
a Constituent Assembly with only modest powers. Despite the elections and the strong
backing of the British, Faisal never was able to establish himself as a legitimate ruler
in the eyes of many Iraqis, nor would his son, Ghazi, who succeeded to the throne in
1933 when Faisal died unexpectedly. Ghazi died six years later in an automobile acci-
dent, a new phenomenon in the Middle East.
Under a treaty signed in 1930, Iraq formally became a sovereign state in 1932
and was admitted to the League of Nations. The country remained, however, under
British influence. A series of governments in Baghdad proved unable to quell conflicts
among the numerous ethnic and tribal groups that the British had forced together in
the Iraqi nation-state.
In 1936 the first of several military coups took place, this one carried out by army
officers opposed to British influence in Iraq. This coup lead to a string of unstable
governments, one of which tried to align Iraq with the Axis powers at the outset of
World War II, provoking another British intervention in 1941. In 1955 the govern-
ment signed a British-engineered mutual defense agreement, the Baghdad Pact, with
Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey, marking another turning point in Iraqi history. The pri-
mary reason for the agreement was to establish a regional counterbalance to Egypt’s
Gamal Abdel Nasser, who was provoking British ire by threatening Britain’s control
of the Suez Canal and by claiming to be the leader of a pan-Arab movement. A con-
tingent of Iraqi army officers opposed to the Baghdad Pact and calling themselves the
Free Officers staged a coup on July 14, 1958, that overthrew the monarchy as well as
the government. The conspirators killed King Faisal II, the young grandson of King
Faisal, withdrew from the Baghdad Pact, and established a military dictatorship under
Brig. Gen. Abd al-Karim al-Qasim.
Qasim’s regime lasted slightly less than five years before being overthrown on
February 9, 1963, in a coup sponsored by members of the Baath Party, a pan-Arab
socialist party founded in Syria. This new regime was then ousted in another coup
nine months later, but the Baath Party returned to power in July 1968. Saddam Hus-
sein, a Baath Party political operative, quickly rose to become number two in the
party hierarchy and thus in the government. Eleven years later, in July 1979, Hus-
418 IRAQ AND THE GULF WARS