1 00:00:05,480 --> 00:00:10,850 Welcome, everyone. It's wonderful that so many people have joined us from near and far. 2 00:00:10,850 --> 00:00:16,490 My name is Dr. Move and we Lloyd and I'm an independent historian and media consultant. 3 00:00:16,490 --> 00:00:26,620 I worked with Paul Collins, curator at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, to develop the exhibition, Owning the Past from Mesopotamia to Iraq. 4 00:00:26,620 --> 00:00:33,390 This free exhibition uses the Ashmolean archaeological collection from what was Mesopotamia. 5 00:00:33,390 --> 00:00:38,220 To explore the relationship between heritage and identity, 6 00:00:38,220 --> 00:00:43,530 it focuses on the creation of Iraq and the role that the British and particularly figures from Oxford itself, 7 00:00:43,530 --> 00:00:52,440 played during the period at the end of the First World War. The exhibition will be on display until the middle of August, and we expect the Ashmolean, 8 00:00:52,440 --> 00:00:58,170 which is currently closed to reopen as the lockdown in the U.K. ease's. 9 00:00:58,170 --> 00:01:05,880 In the meantime, an introductory film is being made about the development of the exhibition and in particular the role played by our two 10 00:01:05,880 --> 00:01:14,610 page community ambassadors who are vital in linking us to people from the Middle East diaspora now living in Oxford. 11 00:01:14,610 --> 00:01:25,490 The voices of these local people are central to the exhibition and the exhibition text is presented in Arabic as well as English through art. 12 00:01:25,490 --> 00:01:31,640 I'm delighted to introduce today's panel will explore the troubled history of Anglo Iraqi relations. 13 00:01:31,640 --> 00:01:37,180 Starting with Professor Eugene Rogan, who was a key adviser for the exhibition. 14 00:01:37,180 --> 00:01:42,100 Professor Rogan is director of the Middle East Centre at St. Anthony's College, Oxford, 15 00:01:42,100 --> 00:01:49,080 and author of The Fall of the Ottomans, The Great Wall in the Middle East, 1914 to 1920. 16 00:01:49,080 --> 00:01:55,240 Our next speaker is Charles Tripp, professor of politics, with reference to the Middle East and North Africa. 17 00:01:55,240 --> 00:02:02,370 So as part of the University of London. He's author of the very well known history of Iraq. 18 00:02:02,370 --> 00:02:07,170 And finally, joining us from the United States is Professor Dina Courey. 19 00:02:07,170 --> 00:02:15,600 She's professor of history and international affairs at George Washington University and author of Iraq in Wartime Soldiering, 20 00:02:15,600 --> 00:02:22,700 Martyrdom and Remembrance. After the three presentations, there will be time for questions and discussion. 21 00:02:22,700 --> 00:02:28,060 But first, Professor Ragan is going to take us back to the start of the century of conflict. 22 00:02:28,060 --> 00:02:32,970 Thank you. We thank you so much for such a warm introduction. 23 00:02:32,970 --> 00:02:35,840 And welcome, everyone. It's a pleasure to have you with us. 24 00:02:35,840 --> 00:02:39,870 And to celebrate the partnership between the Middle East centre and the Ashmolean Museum in 25 00:02:39,870 --> 00:02:46,260 bringing about this review of a century that has defined Iraqi as much as British history. 26 00:02:46,260 --> 00:02:51,280 On the 5th of November 1914, Britain declared war on the Ottoman Empire. 27 00:02:51,280 --> 00:02:55,870 The very next day, British units of the Indian Expeditionary Force entered the shop. 28 00:02:55,870 --> 00:03:05,220 A lot of that waterway that separates Iran from Iraq and fired on the Ottoman forts guarding the entrance at the Foul Peninsula. 29 00:03:05,220 --> 00:03:13,230 As far as I know, that was the first hostile action taken by the British military against the Ottoman Empire in the First World War. 30 00:03:13,230 --> 00:03:19,740 Course it wouldn't to the last. And it wasn't that the British were already gunning to occupy Iraq. 31 00:03:19,740 --> 00:03:26,480 In fact, their interests at that stage in the war were limited to Abbadon Island, 32 00:03:26,480 --> 00:03:36,210 the terminal of the Iranian oil operation, and the source of refining and of storage of Avaaz oil. 33 00:03:36,210 --> 00:03:45,260 So really, the objective was just to secure an essential oil field at the start of a war which was going to be increasingly fed by oil. 34 00:03:45,260 --> 00:03:51,590 British forces come under attack and trying to hold Abbadon by the Ottomans and realise to secure their position. 35 00:03:51,590 --> 00:03:55,340 They need to advance into a hinterland that takes them soon to Basra. 36 00:03:55,340 --> 00:04:01,770 They occupy the city of Basra as early as the twenty third of November against relatively light autumn in opposition. 37 00:04:01,770 --> 00:04:08,660 And at that point, Sir Percy Cox, a man who'd be very instrumental in Anglo Iraqi relations, 38 00:04:08,660 --> 00:04:18,560 issued a proclamation to the residents of Baghdad in which he promised no remnant of Turkish administration now remains in this region. 39 00:04:18,560 --> 00:04:26,690 In place there of the British flag has been established under which you will enjoy the benefits of liberty and justice, 40 00:04:26,690 --> 00:04:31,570 both in regard to your religious and your secular affairs. 41 00:04:31,570 --> 00:04:33,400 It sounded like imperial conquest. 42 00:04:33,400 --> 00:04:41,390 But I assure you at this point, Britain actually had no territorial interests in Iraq, let alone the Ottoman Empire. 43 00:04:41,390 --> 00:04:48,650 British policy up until this point had always been to preserve the Ottoman Empire as a weak buffer state separating strong powers like Russia, 44 00:04:48,650 --> 00:04:56,160 Germany, as well as keeping French ambitions for territorial expansion of their empire at bay. 45 00:04:56,160 --> 00:05:01,600 So in the course of the First World War, this would be one thing that would change. 46 00:05:01,600 --> 00:05:09,010 It's not until March, April of 1915, that we really get to see how limited Britain's interests were. 47 00:05:09,010 --> 00:05:14,070 We're on the eve of the Dardanelles campaign. The three Entente allies, Russia, 48 00:05:14,070 --> 00:05:20,460 France and Britain meet to agree that territorial carve up of the Ottoman Empire in the event of a 49 00:05:20,460 --> 00:05:26,250 quick and successful campaign to force the Straits and seise the Ottoman capital of Constantinople. 50 00:05:26,250 --> 00:05:29,220 For that reason, it's called the Constantinople agreement. 51 00:05:29,220 --> 00:05:36,960 The Russians were the first out of the blocks and they claimed Constantinople the Straits as their war prises for beating the Ottomans. 52 00:05:36,960 --> 00:05:43,650 The French were no less certain of what they wanted, and they claims to Syria and solicitor. 53 00:05:43,650 --> 00:05:47,740 Still a lot ill-Defined territories, but clearly ambitious. 54 00:05:47,740 --> 00:05:53,910 And at that point, Britain said to its allies that they would just reserved the right to claim territory of equal strategic 55 00:05:53,910 --> 00:05:59,690 importance as and when they worked out what would be in the best interests of their British Empire. 56 00:05:59,690 --> 00:06:05,660 Being Britain, they did the next typical thing, which is to convene a commission. 57 00:06:05,660 --> 00:06:11,900 They found a Mandarin Sir Maurice de Bunson charged with the task of finding out what 58 00:06:11,900 --> 00:06:17,230 territories in the Ottoman Empire would actually be to the advantage of the British Empire. 59 00:06:17,230 --> 00:06:20,900 And in the course of the deliberations that a Bunson committee identified the 60 00:06:20,900 --> 00:06:25,220 Persian Gulf region as the area of greatest importance to the British Empire, 61 00:06:25,220 --> 00:06:31,510 given its proximity to India. With British forces already in Basra. 62 00:06:31,510 --> 00:06:40,100 The De Bunson committee argued that it made sense for Basra to be added to what was now a British lake in the Persian Gulf. 63 00:06:40,100 --> 00:06:49,400 The Arab territories from Oman through the crucial states, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait, all tied by treaty relation to Britain. 64 00:06:49,400 --> 00:06:55,200 Securing Buster now gave them the head of the Persian Gulf in a way which was strategically valuable to them. 65 00:06:55,200 --> 00:07:03,500 And then the committee went on to reason that you couldn't really hold Basra province against a hostile force in Baghdad, say, Russia or France. 66 00:07:03,500 --> 00:07:12,350 So you wanted plus for reinforced with Baghdad and then to really secure Mesopotamia, you wanted Mosul. 67 00:07:12,350 --> 00:07:21,920 And as they write in the demands and committee report and oil again makes it commercially desirable for us to carry our control on to Mosul. 68 00:07:21,920 --> 00:07:31,300 So we have the first articulation and of course, the 1915 of British territorial interests in Audibert domains and the focus Mesopotamia. 69 00:07:31,300 --> 00:07:38,650 This is reinforced, of course, by the Mesopotamia campaign conducted by the British in Iraq in the course of the First World War. 70 00:07:38,650 --> 00:07:42,710 And the British enjoyed very rapid success at the beginning of the conflict, 71 00:07:42,710 --> 00:07:50,150 moving up the Tigris to occupy Amara by the 3rd of June 1915 and up the Euphrates to occupy not Syria. 72 00:07:50,150 --> 00:07:55,520 By July of the same year, these swift British victories were brought to a halt. 73 00:07:55,520 --> 00:08:02,900 In November of 1915, when in some ways to compensate for the failings of the Dardanelles, 74 00:08:02,900 --> 00:08:11,960 the British made a bid on Baghdad that was brought to a quick halt in November of 1915 at the Battle of Selman Pack. 75 00:08:11,960 --> 00:08:19,850 General Townsend and his army were driven into retreat. They fell back on a bend of the river and cut Amara, where for one hundred and forty days, 76 00:08:19,850 --> 00:08:28,730 Townshend and his army withstood determined siege from the Ottoman authorities and were ultimately starved to total surrender. 77 00:08:28,730 --> 00:08:34,010 On the 24th of April of nineteen sixteen. 78 00:08:34,010 --> 00:08:39,230 At that point, Townshend gave his unconditional surrender and over 13000 generals, 79 00:08:39,230 --> 00:08:45,200 officers and men of the Anglo Indian Army fell into the hands of the Ottoman forces, 80 00:08:45,200 --> 00:08:51,900 the largest victory the Ottoman Empire enjoyed in the whole of the First World War. 81 00:08:51,900 --> 00:09:01,440 It didn't end for the Ottoman Empire as well as it had in Kuwait, and British forces in Mesopotamia regrouped, 82 00:09:01,440 --> 00:09:08,730 resumed conquest, took Baghdad by the 11th of March 1917 and ultimately to secure Mosul. 83 00:09:08,730 --> 00:09:13,800 The British broke international law by fighting 10 days beyond the signing of their armistice, 84 00:09:13,800 --> 00:09:20,330 with the Ottoman Empire entering the city of Mosul on the 10th of November 1918. 85 00:09:20,330 --> 00:09:26,000 So by the end of World War One, all three provinces of Iraq were under British rule in 1918, 86 00:09:26,000 --> 00:09:32,330 unlike 1914, Britain openly sought to add that territory to its imperial possessions. 87 00:09:32,330 --> 00:09:36,200 It had negotiated that outcome with the Sharifs of Mecca and the Hussein McMann 88 00:09:36,200 --> 00:09:40,670 correspondence and with their allies France in the CITES Pekoe agreement. 89 00:09:40,670 --> 00:09:47,230 But the Iraqis themselves had not been consulted, and they never gave their consent. 90 00:09:47,230 --> 00:09:53,770 Britain and France wilfully misled the Arab peoples about their intentions when in November of 1918, 91 00:09:53,770 --> 00:10:02,170 they issued a joint declaration promising, and I quote, the complete and definite emancipation of the peoples so long oppressed by 92 00:10:02,170 --> 00:10:07,480 the Turks and the establishment of national governments and administrations, 93 00:10:07,480 --> 00:10:13,890 deriving their authority from the initiative and free choice of the indigent populations. 94 00:10:13,890 --> 00:10:20,920 When in April 1920, the Iraqis learnt that instead of their own government, they would come under British mandate. 95 00:10:20,920 --> 00:10:27,090 They rose in revolt from the end of June to the end of October 1920. 96 00:10:27,090 --> 00:10:32,630 For four months, the Iraqi revolution of 1920 challenged British rule. 97 00:10:32,630 --> 00:10:41,130 Britain responded with great force. They raised their troop numbers from 60000 to over 100000 soldiers in Iraq. 98 00:10:41,130 --> 00:10:48,080 They deployed scorched earth tactics that left by British count eight thousand four hundred fifty Iraqis dead. 99 00:10:48,080 --> 00:10:55,670 Iraqi counts go much higher. But we will have a more accurate figure bringing to an end the First World War 100 00:10:55,670 --> 00:11:00,830 experience at a very inauspicious start to the British mandate for that history. 101 00:11:00,830 --> 00:11:06,020 I will now pass the floor to my colleague, Charles Tripp. Charles, over to you, Eugene. 102 00:11:06,020 --> 00:11:10,880 Thank you very much indeed. And welcome to all of you who tuned in. 103 00:11:10,880 --> 00:11:19,370 I'm going to talk about Iraq under the British mandate and then under the informal British rule until the revolution of 1958. 104 00:11:19,370 --> 00:11:25,970 And I suppose what one wants to bring out is the fact that something that Eugene has already talked about, 105 00:11:25,970 --> 00:11:31,790 which is effectively that the British had a instrumental view of Iraq. 106 00:11:31,790 --> 00:11:38,270 In other words, Iraq was to be a means to an end, and the end was the service of the British Empire. 107 00:11:38,270 --> 00:11:42,560 So for the British in Iraq, there were three priorities. 108 00:11:42,560 --> 00:11:49,130 One was by territory to secure its imperial communications with India and the empire to the east. 109 00:11:49,130 --> 00:11:55,910 The second was the social fabric and state order of Iraq itself to ensure stability in Iraq by whatever means, 110 00:11:55,910 --> 00:12:04,520 giving no opportunity for others to intervene. And thirdly, there were the resources to ensure privileged access to oil. 111 00:12:04,520 --> 00:12:10,310 These three priorities you can see throughout the period of 1921 to 1958. 112 00:12:10,310 --> 00:12:17,130 First of all, the fact of the League of Nations granting the mandate of Iraq to Great Britain in 1920, 113 00:12:17,130 --> 00:12:22,630 in 1921, Britain founding the Iraqi state and the Iraqi monarchy, 114 00:12:22,630 --> 00:12:34,330 1927, a largely British company discovering oil in major quantities near Kirkuk and eventually forming the Iraq Petroleum Company, 115 00:12:34,330 --> 00:12:43,880 a British dominated company, in 1929. In 1932, a grant of limited independence to Iraq from Great Britain. 116 00:12:43,880 --> 00:12:47,270 But again, the limitations became apparent in 1941, 117 00:12:47,270 --> 00:12:57,140 when an independent Iraq took a different direction than Britain wanted and Britain reinvaded Iraq and militarily reoccupied the country in 1941. 118 00:12:57,140 --> 00:13:04,940 And even after the Second World War, Britain trying to tie Iraq for several decades to its own particular interests. 119 00:13:04,940 --> 00:13:09,980 In nineteen forty eight, the British tried to get the Iraqis to sign, which they did sign. 120 00:13:09,980 --> 00:13:17,600 The governments sign the Portsmouth's treaty, which would have tied Iraq to Britain for another 30 years. 121 00:13:17,600 --> 00:13:23,720 There was such a rebellion in Iraq itself, the Westberg, as it's called, that the Iraqi government backed out. 122 00:13:23,720 --> 00:13:34,160 But again, in 1955, Great Britain tying Iraq to its Cold War strategy in the Baghdad pact that was formed in 1955. 123 00:13:34,160 --> 00:13:42,200 So throughout this, there is this clear notion that Iraq should serve a purpose and the purpose should be British. 124 00:13:42,200 --> 00:13:48,710 Often this was dressed up with loftier ideals, not always hypocritical, but always in need of Iraqi allies. 125 00:13:48,710 --> 00:13:54,230 And it had important consequences for Iraq and for the Iraqis and for the kind 126 00:13:54,230 --> 00:13:59,120 of state that emerged not simply as territorial boundaries were defined, 127 00:13:59,120 --> 00:14:04,100 but also the boundaries between the Iraqi state and the Iraqi people in all its diversity. 128 00:14:04,100 --> 00:14:08,660 And I would argue this produced a very distinctive kind of state under the mandate, 129 00:14:08,660 --> 00:14:13,370 leaving a legacy that the Iraqis felt long after the British had departed. 130 00:14:13,370 --> 00:14:20,720 So there are three aspects of that state that I just want to highlight which will help to make my argument. 131 00:14:20,720 --> 00:14:27,170 The first is the notion of oligarchy, a state ruled unrepresented socially through oligarchic rule. 132 00:14:27,170 --> 00:14:33,380 Second, a political economy of that state based upon land ownership first and then on oil. 133 00:14:33,380 --> 00:14:37,640 And thirdly, the politicisation of the Iraqi armed forces. 134 00:14:37,640 --> 00:14:42,770 So in the first case, the British, of course, needed to try and make the state work, 135 00:14:42,770 --> 00:14:48,830 which meant, of course, looking for those Iraqis who shared British views of order and power. 136 00:14:48,830 --> 00:14:53,190 And in the early years, this privily two kinds of Iraqi. 137 00:14:53,190 --> 00:15:00,260 The first with the ex Ottoman officials drawn mainly from Abrego, Turkey, largely Sunni sections of society. 138 00:15:00,260 --> 00:15:02,090 And the second were the tribal sheiks. 139 00:15:02,090 --> 00:15:08,690 That is the local notables through whom the British Empire had exercised power across its territories, across the world. 140 00:15:08,690 --> 00:15:15,560 And in fact, it got enshrined in Iraq in a particularly notorious measure, the tribal disputes regulation, 141 00:15:15,560 --> 00:15:22,880 which effectively gave the tribal sheiks completely separate jurisdiction until it was ended in the revolution of 1958. 142 00:15:22,880 --> 00:15:32,390 So the state became under British rule or British guidance as a vehicle for power, privilege and wealth of those who were in. 143 00:15:32,390 --> 00:15:36,090 That is the state servants', the army officers, the Hashemite court. 144 00:15:36,090 --> 00:15:43,900 The new men of this new order, as well as the co-opted tribal sheiks both and uncertainty. 145 00:15:43,900 --> 00:15:50,380 But just as it was a vehicle for power, for some, it was also used as a mechanism for excluding others. 146 00:15:50,380 --> 00:15:54,910 Those who did not seem to be trustworthy to the British or to its allies. 147 00:15:54,910 --> 00:16:01,660 First of all, they were the Kurds who were regarded as troublesome and unruly and difficult to place within a modern state. 148 00:16:01,660 --> 00:16:07,330 And in 1931, 32, on the eve of independence, the British and Noorie side, 149 00:16:07,330 --> 00:16:16,720 the Iraqi prime minister cooked up an outrageous report to the League of Nations claiming that Kurdish rights would be guaranteed after independence, 150 00:16:16,720 --> 00:16:23,830 which, of course, they weren't. The second group that the British tended to and some of its allies tended to look upon with great 151 00:16:23,830 --> 00:16:29,950 suspicion were the Shia community leaders and their clerics who were regarded as far too close to Iran, 152 00:16:29,950 --> 00:16:39,430 obscurantist, fanatical and so on. But equally as it came clear during the course of the mandate and after, the British were also very wary, 153 00:16:39,430 --> 00:16:45,280 as were their allies of democratic and radical social reformers in Iraq itself. 154 00:16:45,280 --> 00:16:55,120 So there's a very characteristic comment by a British official in the 1920s who says in exasperation this Iraq has become a nation of lawyers. 155 00:16:55,120 --> 00:16:57,060 In other words, what the British really dislike. 156 00:16:57,060 --> 00:17:02,710 That the Iraqis should stand up for their rights has, quite understandably, the Iraqis tended to do so. 157 00:17:02,710 --> 00:17:09,430 In short, if they weren't recognised by the British and their successors as useful for your own state projects, 158 00:17:09,430 --> 00:17:16,030 then you were marginalised, written out of the dominant narrative of Iraqi state formation. 159 00:17:16,030 --> 00:17:22,300 And of course, all this was cemented by the emerging political economy of landownership and that eventually of oil that the 160 00:17:22,300 --> 00:17:30,700 British used and their allies used to enshrine and to substantiate that hold over Iraqi society and state. 161 00:17:30,700 --> 00:17:38,860 In Britain, there were different ideas about the ideal patterns of land ownership. Some favoured romanticised sheikhs as great semi-final landlords. 162 00:17:38,860 --> 00:17:42,700 Others favoured small, middling landholding peasantry. 163 00:17:42,700 --> 00:17:47,100 Both systems, in fact, were in place in Iraq and different parts of the country under British rule. 164 00:17:47,100 --> 00:17:55,750 But the balance of power clearly lay with the large landowners. They were seen as protectors of the status quo, a force for stability. 165 00:17:55,750 --> 00:17:56,380 And of course, 166 00:17:56,380 --> 00:18:05,440 it was a way a land became a way of binding these social leaders to the state and giving the state enormous patronage over the countryside. 167 00:18:05,440 --> 00:18:11,770 It produced very notoriously in 1933, the law of the rights and duties of the cultivators. 168 00:18:11,770 --> 00:18:14,680 Rather, euphemism is actually more about the duties of the cultivators. 169 00:18:14,680 --> 00:18:23,050 In other words, it's abrade, the peasants from Emara, who lived in virtually serfdom and feudal conditions from even leaving their land, 170 00:18:23,050 --> 00:18:32,530 which of course they took no notice of and fled to create the slums in southeastern Baghdad when oil came into the equation, particularly after 1945. 171 00:18:32,530 --> 00:18:38,980 It was used in much the same way. Mainly it profited the Iraq Petroleum Company, largely British owned company. 172 00:18:38,980 --> 00:18:42,670 But of course, it also benefited the ruling oligarchy of Iraq itself. 173 00:18:42,670 --> 00:18:49,960 And the privileges were passed on to its allies in the name of development, namely through the Iraq Development Board, 174 00:18:49,960 --> 00:18:57,370 which tended to favour those who were in a good position politically with the elite. 175 00:18:57,370 --> 00:19:06,160 But the third and disturbing feature of the state that was emerging was the politicised armed forces of Iraq. 176 00:19:06,160 --> 00:19:10,930 The British decided that the Iraqi armed forces were going to be used to build the state and in fact, 177 00:19:10,930 --> 00:19:13,540 the Iraqi armed forces were the first foundation of the state. 178 00:19:13,540 --> 00:19:22,390 They were set up in January 1921, before the monarchy, before the parliament, before virtually all the apparatus of the state itself. 179 00:19:22,390 --> 00:19:27,640 They were used and intended to be used to extend the reach of central government, 180 00:19:27,640 --> 00:19:33,490 to suppress rural revolts, to enforce revenue collection, and to disarm the tribes. 181 00:19:33,490 --> 00:19:42,400 When the British initiated the Iraqi army, it commanded something like twenty thousand rifles. 182 00:19:42,400 --> 00:19:47,310 The Iraqi army itself, there were some like 200000 rifles in the countryside at large. 183 00:19:47,310 --> 00:19:53,080 So you can see the balance of power was, in the British view, deeply disturbing. 184 00:19:53,080 --> 00:19:57,610 And of course, the Iraqi army helped to alter that balance of power, helped by the British, 185 00:19:57,610 --> 00:20:02,320 by the Royal Air Force between central government and provincial Iraq. 186 00:20:02,320 --> 00:20:13,060 Initially, the officers employed in setting up the Iraqi army were those who had been part of the Arab revolt or they were out of work, 187 00:20:13,060 --> 00:20:16,630 officers of the old Ottoman army, some of whom had been active, in fact, 188 00:20:16,630 --> 00:20:23,350 in the 1920 revolution, but who had since been co-opted into serving the new state. 189 00:20:23,350 --> 00:20:29,800 Inevitably, therefore, it favoured those sections of society from which the Ottoman Empire had drawn its officers, 190 00:20:29,800 --> 00:20:34,900 largely provincial Sunnis, that is Arab, Turkish and Kurdish. 191 00:20:34,900 --> 00:20:43,660 The British saw the Iraqi army largely as a small in turning internal police force to ensure internal order and to build the state. 192 00:20:43,660 --> 00:20:55,330 Not to go on foreign adventures. And in fact, for the first decade or more, two decades of its existence, it was a purely internal forces. 193 00:20:55,330 --> 00:21:03,640 And one can see its gradual politicisation emerging out of this internal role as a policing force. 194 00:21:03,640 --> 00:21:06,880 It became eventually a political actor in its own right. 195 00:21:06,880 --> 00:21:13,720 And you see that in nineteen thirty one to thirty three, with the suppression of the Kurdish Barazani revolt in 1933, 196 00:21:13,720 --> 00:21:23,040 with the massacre of the Syrians in 1935, with the suppression of the Yazidi revolt and with the tribal revolts of the middle Euphrates. 197 00:21:23,040 --> 00:21:37,330 And in 1936, the first of six military coup d'etat took place whereby Iraqi army officers determined who should govern from Baghdad until 1941. 198 00:21:37,330 --> 00:21:41,410 And that's what provoked the British military intervention of that year. 199 00:21:41,410 --> 00:21:50,500 And finally, of course, in 1958, when the military officers overthrew the monarchy and initiated the Iraqi revolution of 1958. 200 00:21:50,500 --> 00:21:59,980 So I suppose to sum it up, one could argue and I would argue strongly that these are three features of the state, the oligarchy, 201 00:21:59,980 --> 00:22:10,120 the political economy of land and oil, and then the politicised armed forces, which formed a baneful legacy of the British in Iraq. 202 00:22:10,120 --> 00:22:15,730 And in many ways, what the British had built up in Iraq was what I call a dual state. 203 00:22:15,730 --> 00:22:24,280 That is, it had set up institutions of the public state, the monarchy, the parliament, the judiciary, the ministries of finance and so forth. 204 00:22:24,280 --> 00:22:30,160 But behind them, it had also set up networks of association, patronage and violence, 205 00:22:30,160 --> 00:22:37,200 what I call a shadow state, which was used by the British and by its allies to retain control. 206 00:22:37,200 --> 00:22:44,070 The legacy of this, I would argue, remained long after the British control or influence had ended in Iraq. 207 00:22:44,070 --> 00:22:49,780 And now I'm happy to hand over to Dina Houri, who takes the story further. 208 00:22:49,780 --> 00:22:56,940 Thank you, Charles. Thank you, Eugene. It's a pleasure to join you at this event that's hosted by the Middle East centre at sea. 209 00:22:56,940 --> 00:23:06,910 Anthonys, I'm tusked today with making some brief comments on the U.S. involvement in the 1991 Gulf War. 210 00:23:06,910 --> 00:23:14,680 The U.N. sanctioned embargo and the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. 211 00:23:14,680 --> 00:23:24,130 It's a tall order to cover this this period, particularly because it is still part of our lived experience. 212 00:23:24,130 --> 00:23:30,880 And for the Iraqi Iraqis amongst our audience. 213 00:23:30,880 --> 00:23:36,880 You, your families and your friends have been affected by the wars and have had endless 214 00:23:36,880 --> 00:23:42,610 discussions and have been active in the politics revolving around these wars. 215 00:23:42,610 --> 00:23:46,900 And you've had a very rich experience. The process. 216 00:23:46,900 --> 00:23:58,090 What I'd like to do today is set the set, the special place that these wars against Iraq and I consider the embargo as a war really by other means, 217 00:23:58,090 --> 00:24:07,300 have occupied an international order that emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. 218 00:24:07,300 --> 00:24:14,740 And the first point I'd like to make is that the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990 219 00:24:14,740 --> 00:24:20,980 provided the opportunity for the United States to refashion its role in the world. 220 00:24:20,980 --> 00:24:33,940 And what the Bush administration described it to, to define the contours of the new world order as the dominant military and economic power, 221 00:24:33,940 --> 00:24:37,180 the United States, with its junior allies amongst them. 222 00:24:37,180 --> 00:24:40,600 Britain, of course, would lead this order. 223 00:24:40,600 --> 00:24:50,600 It embraced a policy that sought to bring democratic reform and an economic liberalisation of state run economies. 224 00:24:50,600 --> 00:24:52,760 When it intervene militarily, 225 00:24:52,760 --> 00:25:03,500 it sought to deploy its military power in a manner that avoided the political costs of the loss of life that had happened in the Vietnam War. 226 00:25:03,500 --> 00:25:14,840 It used new military technologies and established strategic military bases in areas that had hitherto been close to Western powers. 227 00:25:14,840 --> 00:25:27,260 And Iraq, unfortunately, became the test case for the implementation of these polity policies over for over the following twenty five years or so. 228 00:25:27,260 --> 00:25:31,430 So the first is that what is really the second Gulf War, 229 00:25:31,430 --> 00:25:40,340 the 1991 Gulf War was the first war that tested the international system in the post-Cold War era. 230 00:25:40,340 --> 00:25:47,510 And the reaction of the international community to the 1990 invasion of Kuwait was swift. 231 00:25:47,510 --> 00:25:58,220 Seeing the invasion as a threat to its interests in the region and to the global flow of oil, the United States led the international response. 232 00:25:58,220 --> 00:26:12,050 So starting in August, on August 2nd, the day of the invasion and extending until the official start of the war on January 17th, 1991, 233 00:26:12,050 --> 00:26:19,970 the U.N. Security Council issued twelve resolutions that set the stage for military action 234 00:26:19,970 --> 00:26:27,550 against Iraq and shape the post-war settlement that was imposed on the defeated regime. 235 00:26:27,550 --> 00:26:36,170 You are perhaps familiar with the story of the war. He had what bears highlighting are issue aspects of the war. 236 00:26:36,170 --> 00:26:45,680 First, the large coalition of states that the United States built, including 28 included 28 members. 237 00:26:45,680 --> 00:26:50,240 Amongst them, three Arab states, Egypt, Morocco and Syria. 238 00:26:50,240 --> 00:26:54,590 And the major European, Western and Western European powers. 239 00:26:54,590 --> 00:27:00,620 It was clear that the U.S. administration had a vision of a new world order in which it was the 240 00:27:00,620 --> 00:27:07,460 dominant military power that could intervene to rectify a threat to the international order. 241 00:27:07,460 --> 00:27:17,410 But that dominance was to be sanctioned by multilateral agreements and by the international community represented by the United Nations. 242 00:27:17,410 --> 00:27:24,950 And so the 1991 Gulf War was the first such concrete illustration of how this new system would work. 243 00:27:24,950 --> 00:27:37,460 Over next the next decade. And the system, of course, evaporated with after after September 11 and after the Iraq war, then the 2003 war. 244 00:27:37,460 --> 00:27:45,380 Now, the second aspect of the war that those of your of us who watched it happen on television would 245 00:27:45,380 --> 00:27:52,610 I'd like to highlight is the sheer destructiveness of it over a remarkably short period of time. 246 00:27:52,610 --> 00:27:58,520 The war started on January 17th and effectively ended on February 24th. 247 00:27:58,520 --> 00:28:09,080 So despite the deployment of some 400000 troops, the U.S. military command to minimise American troop casualties used our airpower, 248 00:28:09,080 --> 00:28:15,290 as the British had done in 1920, to destroy the infrastructure of Iraqi cities. 249 00:28:15,290 --> 00:28:16,380 Visiting fire, 250 00:28:16,380 --> 00:28:29,690 more destruction in a few days than eight years of war with Iran had had caused Iraqis talk about these days in really apocalyptic terms. 251 00:28:29,690 --> 00:28:37,220 The war was also the first war in which American and international viewers were able to view the bombing 252 00:28:37,220 --> 00:28:45,350 and destruction from their home television sets simultaneously as the bombing was taking place. 253 00:28:45,350 --> 00:28:52,430 The unbury aspects of the destruction that parent blood lessness of it all remains a singular feature of the 254 00:28:52,430 --> 00:29:00,230 new deployment of military technologies that would characterise US military dominance and intervention. 255 00:29:00,230 --> 00:29:08,180 It represented a politically acceptable antidote to the kind of war that the Americans had experienced in Vietnam. 256 00:29:08,180 --> 00:29:17,180 It repaired the American public and its policy establishment for future interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. 257 00:29:17,180 --> 00:29:20,120 The view from Iraq was, of course, quite different. 258 00:29:20,120 --> 00:29:29,990 The destruction caused by the war, the massive rebellion of its population against the Fed's catastrophic policies of politics, 259 00:29:29,990 --> 00:29:36,050 of the baths, the repression that followed the uprising in the south and north. 260 00:29:36,050 --> 00:29:43,100 The effective loss of sovereignty over economic, its economy and its territory. 261 00:29:43,100 --> 00:29:47,660 All of these were the consequences of the 1991 war. 262 00:29:47,660 --> 00:29:52,070 So the invasion of 2003 destroyed the Iraqi state. 263 00:29:52,070 --> 00:30:02,060 But the process had begun actually in the 1990s. The second point I want to make has to do with the United Nations and the new post, 264 00:30:02,060 --> 00:30:09,620 particularly that all of the United Nations in the new post Cold War era, the 1991 Gulf War, 265 00:30:09,620 --> 00:30:19,130 transformed the nature and role of the United Nations as an international body whose mandate was to mediate conflict through diplomacy, 266 00:30:19,130 --> 00:30:29,180 mitigate the effects of humanitarian crises, and ensure that biologic a logical survival of the global population. 267 00:30:29,180 --> 00:30:39,290 Instead, it's sanctioned intent to enforce and manage the most comprehensive embargo ever imposed on one man, one of its members. 268 00:30:39,290 --> 00:30:45,860 Joe Gordon has has called the embargo an invisible war against Iraq. 269 00:30:45,860 --> 00:30:52,490 The Security Council, that effective decision making executive body of the United Nations, 270 00:30:52,490 --> 00:31:02,600 came to be dominated in the 1990s by the foreign policy interests of the United States in a particularly ironic twist. 271 00:31:02,600 --> 00:31:09,560 The various humanitarian agencies within the United Nations found themselves working to mitigate 272 00:31:09,560 --> 00:31:16,970 the catastrophic impact of the decisions about the embargo taken by its Security Council. 273 00:31:16,970 --> 00:31:25,830 And so there are agencies working to mitigate the decisions of the executive body of the United Nation. 274 00:31:25,830 --> 00:31:31,440 And the United Nations policy on Iraq, in particular on the Iraqi embargo, 275 00:31:31,440 --> 00:31:36,480 entered a pattern attributable damage to the mission and legitimacy of the United 276 00:31:36,480 --> 00:31:43,500 Nations and eroded its role as a legitimate mediator of international conflict, 277 00:31:43,500 --> 00:31:48,350 at least outside the Middle East, because it's stolen in Palestine. 278 00:31:48,350 --> 00:31:57,390 Israel is quite another matter. So the impact of the embargo on Iraqi society is well documented in a word. 279 00:31:57,390 --> 00:32:04,800 It was devastating. Malnutrition, inflation. Shortage of medical supplies. 280 00:32:04,800 --> 00:32:07,870 Unemployment decline and bleated literacy rate. 281 00:32:07,870 --> 00:32:18,330 And in the long, a long list of human costs that continue to reverberate in Iraqi society to the present. 282 00:32:18,330 --> 00:32:27,150 I conclude with a final point point on the 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq, the U.S. invasion, 283 00:32:27,150 --> 00:32:37,320 occupation and establishment of a post Baathist Iraq marked the effective application of the U.S. vision for a new world order. 284 00:32:37,320 --> 00:32:46,640 It's dreamscape, if you wish. It was also it also marked the disastrous end of that vision, 285 00:32:46,640 --> 00:32:56,750 the U.S. invasion and occupation brought a specific kind of democracy to Iraq based on the apportionment of office along confessional lines. 286 00:32:56,750 --> 00:33:05,880 The privatisation of the resources and of the resources of the state and the establishment of a free market. 287 00:33:05,880 --> 00:33:15,290 You are familiars with the results of these policies, sectarian politics, the militarisation of every aspect of life in Iraq, 288 00:33:15,290 --> 00:33:20,330 civil war and ethnic separation, corruption at every level of government. 289 00:33:20,330 --> 00:33:27,080 The rise of ISIS and the erosion of a national lella narrative that would unify all Iraqis. 290 00:33:27,080 --> 00:33:38,180 Clearly, the neoliberal vision of a democratic and free market system that had that was imposed by the occupation had been an utter failure. 291 00:33:38,180 --> 00:33:43,370 And the U.S. has washed its hands effectively from the whole project. 292 00:33:43,370 --> 00:33:55,900 And, you know, unlike the [INAUDIBLE] cot report that was issued by the British government to start 2016, that has been really No. 293 00:33:55,900 --> 00:34:07,560 The assessment or on the impact of the war and on the invert or any sort of verdict on why what went wrong. 294 00:34:07,560 --> 00:34:11,830 The Iraqis are left to pick up the pieces. 295 00:34:11,830 --> 00:34:21,670 I want to conclude by pointing actually to promising developments that have been taking place in Iraq in the past three or four years. 296 00:34:21,670 --> 00:34:26,260 I think there's a new generation of Iraqis, the children, not of Baathist [INAUDIBLE], 297 00:34:26,260 --> 00:34:37,030 but of the two thousands who are now asking insistently at great cost to themselves for a new politics that moves beyond sectarianism. 298 00:34:37,030 --> 00:34:47,080 They are demanding a responsible state capable of distributing public goods equitably and a nation that is inclusive and democratic. 299 00:34:47,080 --> 00:34:58,210 It's not clear how successful they will be in the short term, but they have at least begun the work of reconstructing, I think, an alternative future. 300 00:34:58,210 --> 00:35:02,150 And I think I'll conclude with that. Dina, thank you so much. 301 00:35:02,150 --> 00:35:04,490 And Charles, again, thank you so much. 302 00:35:04,490 --> 00:35:14,370 I feel that the audience has really had the benefit of your scholarship and the years that you have spent and studying a country that, 303 00:35:14,370 --> 00:35:19,310 you know, the century of domination has been the subject of tonight's conversation. 304 00:35:19,310 --> 00:35:23,930 I would like to invite our audience to join us with their questions. 305 00:35:23,930 --> 00:35:29,570 If you go to the Q and A bar at the bottom of your screen, you can enter a question. 306 00:35:29,570 --> 00:35:35,720 If you give your name, then I'll assume you want your name read out loud if you'd rather ask the question privately. 307 00:35:35,720 --> 00:35:40,080 You can just market as anonymous and then we'll respect your anonymity. 308 00:35:40,080 --> 00:35:49,150 It's OK. I have first question here from Mohammed Tofiq Ali, who would like to know if. 309 00:35:49,150 --> 00:35:52,960 Well, you're asking about Iraq, Syria and Yemen. 310 00:35:52,960 --> 00:36:01,760 For the interest of tonight's audience, I might focus the question just on Iraq and say, ah, is Iraq fragile, failing or a failed state? 311 00:36:01,760 --> 00:36:07,650 So could I put the question after a century of war and domination? 312 00:36:07,650 --> 00:36:18,280 Dana, Charles. Would you agree with the claim that Iraq is on its path to becoming either a fragile or a failed state? 313 00:36:18,280 --> 00:36:22,150 So do you want us to go in which order a ship? 314 00:36:22,150 --> 00:36:28,020 Why don't we start with Charles? I'm happy to go off to challenge. 315 00:36:28,020 --> 00:36:29,550 Well, thank you, Dana. 316 00:36:29,550 --> 00:36:38,640 Well, briefly, all states are fragile and clearly many of the things that Dana was talking about increased the fragility of the Iraqi state. 317 00:36:38,640 --> 00:36:49,410 But, of course, all states are also resilient in the sense that what is emerging and what emerged from what seemed to be chaos, civil war is a. 318 00:36:49,410 --> 00:36:56,490 A pattern of order and a pattern of privilege and sometimes a ruthlessly directed set of power relations, 319 00:36:56,490 --> 00:37:05,070 which is reconstructing the Iraqi state, reconstructing it in a way that some clearly and the younger generation find deeply troubling. 320 00:37:05,070 --> 00:37:09,750 But for others, there's been a very wealth bestowing possibility. 321 00:37:09,750 --> 00:37:13,350 So I think one has to be wary about the notion of failed states. 322 00:37:13,350 --> 00:37:19,620 I do not agree with that idea. I think that states transform themselves and are transformed. 323 00:37:19,620 --> 00:37:27,600 And what you've seen in Iraq certainly over the last few years has been the transformation of the Iraqi state. 324 00:37:27,600 --> 00:37:35,840 But it remains fragile. But more importantly, many of much of its population, their condition remains fragile as well. 325 00:37:35,840 --> 00:37:45,830 I think I would echo Charles caution against talking about failed states or failing states, 326 00:37:45,830 --> 00:37:54,680 because the assumption is that there's an ideal state and and somehow states fail that ideal. 327 00:37:54,680 --> 00:37:58,460 My understanding of what's happening in Iraq, 328 00:37:58,460 --> 00:38:08,030 what has been happening over the 90s and in the post 19 nine post invasion is the 329 00:38:08,030 --> 00:38:19,100 there is a fragmentation of a unified and centralised state that it has become a DE. 330 00:38:19,100 --> 00:38:30,530 What stands for the state has become a contested terrain between different forces within Iraqi society. 331 00:38:30,530 --> 00:38:46,520 But it functions differently than it used to function in under, let's say, the in the 1970s, over or in the 1980s. 332 00:38:46,520 --> 00:38:54,450 Certainly the institutions of the Iraqi state are transforming themselves, but it's still a state. 333 00:38:54,450 --> 00:38:59,930 It's. And so what emerges out of this is going to be interesting. 334 00:38:59,930 --> 00:39:06,410 I mean, there are going to be winners and losers as as always and such thing in such conflicts. 335 00:39:06,410 --> 00:39:13,370 But what I'm finding quite interesting in particularly in these uprisings and these protests 336 00:39:13,370 --> 00:39:21,200 that are taking place in Iraq is and they're taking place in primarily Shiite areas. 337 00:39:21,200 --> 00:39:23,690 Is that is. 338 00:39:23,690 --> 00:39:35,410 The conception of state that is being called for conflate state with nation with something that the Iraqis have been dealing with for some some time. 339 00:39:35,410 --> 00:39:44,510 And. But there is no clear definition of what the state that there are that these protests are asking for. 340 00:39:44,510 --> 00:39:55,660 These protesters are asking for I think it remains to be worked out between the different parties at the present. 341 00:39:55,660 --> 00:40:01,930 Thank you both very much. Let's move on, we have a question from an anonymous participant who wants to know if there's any evidence on 342 00:40:01,930 --> 00:40:09,290 the potential impact of highly publicised Western bombing atrocities during the 1991 war, 343 00:40:09,290 --> 00:40:15,580 fuelling the rise in support for Islamic extremism in Iraq or further afield. 344 00:40:15,580 --> 00:40:19,750 I think on this one, I'm going to start with you, Dina, and then Charles. 345 00:40:19,750 --> 00:40:23,900 Feel free to add in a questionnaire response if you would like to weigh in. 346 00:40:23,900 --> 00:40:32,560 Eugene, could you repeat the question, because I'm I it yeah, it's you know, I just want to make sure I get the question. 347 00:40:32,560 --> 00:40:42,680 Yeah. The question really is asking about evidence that there is any link between the bombing atrocities during the 1991 war. 348 00:40:42,680 --> 00:40:44,690 So the way in which the war was conducted. 349 00:40:44,690 --> 00:40:54,560 Ninety one in terms of the violence used Motlop pass or what not fuelling the rise in support for Islamic extremist terror groups. 350 00:40:54,560 --> 00:40:58,530 I mean, you could say more generally the way the war was conducted. 351 00:40:58,530 --> 00:41:06,880 Ninety one perhaps provoking. Terrorists responses. 352 00:41:06,880 --> 00:41:25,240 I think it's certainly the bombings in and the conduct of the war in 1991 led to radicalisation of of of various Islamist groups. 353 00:41:25,240 --> 00:41:37,150 And for the you the the you know, the conflation of anti imperialism with with Islamic radicalism, 354 00:41:37,150 --> 00:41:44,080 i.e., Islamic radicalism develops as a discourse of empty imperialism. 355 00:41:44,080 --> 00:41:49,900 And I can't actually perhaps Charles can can speak to this with more authority, 356 00:41:49,900 --> 00:42:02,710 because I find that within Iraq itself, these these bombings actually led to internal policies of Islamization. 357 00:42:02,710 --> 00:42:06,550 And by the regime itself. 358 00:42:06,550 --> 00:42:14,260 But also the the emergence of radical radical radicalism within Shilluk politics 359 00:42:14,260 --> 00:42:19,570 that were not actually tied tragically with the with the bombings themselves, 360 00:42:19,570 --> 00:42:24,930 but tied to the suppression of the intifada 1991. 361 00:42:24,930 --> 00:42:30,150 I'm going to pause it there, Charles, and actually go on to another question, if I may, because I've got one that's right up your alley. 362 00:42:30,150 --> 00:42:35,880 This is from Nicholas Bird. Charles, do you have ideas on how institutions such as schools, 363 00:42:35,880 --> 00:42:44,190 museums and public spaces can better represent a more realistic history of Iraqi people and their experiences due to imperialism, 364 00:42:44,190 --> 00:42:50,100 rather than continue to present and engage people with one that reinforces the imperialistic ideology? 365 00:42:50,100 --> 00:42:59,940 She's interested in how we engage the public with yours and Dina's knowledge and Iraqi experience. 366 00:42:59,940 --> 00:43:03,600 I tread carefully here because I haven't actually seen the exhibition at the Ashmolean, 367 00:43:03,600 --> 00:43:08,220 so I don't know how they present it, but I think in general terms, 368 00:43:08,220 --> 00:43:13,470 it's putting the experience of other places, 369 00:43:13,470 --> 00:43:22,020 cultures and peoples in a context and context is not simply about artefacts, but is about the context of power itself. 370 00:43:22,020 --> 00:43:26,910 How did the artefacts get there? Who discovered them? Who rediscovered them? 371 00:43:26,910 --> 00:43:29,370 Who interpreted them? Who expropriated them? 372 00:43:29,370 --> 00:43:38,910 So I think it's the it's always important to present that within a properly political context and historical political context. 373 00:43:38,910 --> 00:43:43,230 So I think some institutions are better at doing that than others. 374 00:43:43,230 --> 00:43:50,460 And certainly one might argue that in the last 10 or 15 years, the awareness of the need to do that has been far more sharp. 375 00:43:50,460 --> 00:43:54,330 And I think well taken in many institutions in this country and elsewhere. 376 00:43:54,330 --> 00:43:59,010 So I think that it's certainly an important part of the story. 377 00:43:59,010 --> 00:44:07,650 You don't just present things as if they were miraculously arrived without human agency by explaining human agency. 378 00:44:07,650 --> 00:44:17,260 You explain how they got there and who did it, but also where they came from and what they meant to the communities in the country itself. 379 00:44:17,260 --> 00:44:21,180 Do you know I've got the next question for you. This is coming from Dr. Salah Tweeny. 380 00:44:21,180 --> 00:44:32,300 And was Sun City a university? He wants to know, can Britain do anything about Iraq without the consent of the United States of America? 381 00:44:32,300 --> 00:44:41,960 That's a good question to ask. My, my, my, my response would be exactly. 382 00:44:41,960 --> 00:44:56,180 It depends what that anything is. I if if if the question is a question of military action, I think neither British the British government, 383 00:44:56,180 --> 00:45:01,100 as I'm assuming the British government is not interested in anything of that sort. 384 00:45:01,100 --> 00:45:12,320 But in terms of other forms of relationship, whether we're talking about trade relations or aid or any other or culture. 385 00:45:12,320 --> 00:45:24,830 This, this, this, it can do I think it is doing so that's I think my my answer to you, too. 386 00:45:24,830 --> 00:45:34,100 But it's certainly a military action. I don't think the British government is interested in it at the moment or could have done anything without them, 387 00:45:34,100 --> 00:45:40,930 without Dalkey of the U.S. government. And here, I'd like to follow up with a question from Ahmed from Thorne. 388 00:45:40,930 --> 00:45:44,560 And this I'd like to put to Charles first and then Dina weigh in after. 389 00:45:44,560 --> 00:45:52,510 But really, what emerges from our discussions today is about the will to dominate Iraq, British and then American. 390 00:45:52,510 --> 00:45:59,410 So what is the thought? Asks, Could the lecturer's give us a brief comparison between British and American policy in Iraq? 391 00:45:59,410 --> 00:46:04,360 And who wants to build a real state? Who really is that it for state building or is it all about domination? 392 00:46:04,360 --> 00:46:08,750 Charles, take a first stab at that one and then I'll come back to you, Dina. 393 00:46:08,750 --> 00:46:12,710 Well, certainly in the period that I was talking about under the mandate and beyond. 394 00:46:12,710 --> 00:46:16,310 But one could argue more recently, the two projects are connected. 395 00:46:16,310 --> 00:46:23,840 That the British certainly believe that the state was the best way of securing their interests, 396 00:46:23,840 --> 00:46:28,910 a state that was friendly, allied and producing the kinds of things that they wanted it to do. 397 00:46:28,910 --> 00:46:32,210 So I think the two projects are not separate. 398 00:46:32,210 --> 00:46:42,080 There is a sense in which the domination was B through a recognised form of institution, which was the state form in building the state. 399 00:46:42,080 --> 00:46:50,840 As I argued, they built all kinds of aspects into it, which were to have some pretty dire consequences for the Iraqis themselves. 400 00:46:50,840 --> 00:46:59,880 But by then, the British had left. And that clearly there's a similar parallel with what happened after 2003. 401 00:46:59,880 --> 00:47:09,060 Dena. I would actually say that the you know, since the you know, 402 00:47:09,060 --> 00:47:16,210 the create the the expansion of empires in the late 19th and early 20th century and certainly with the League of Nations, 403 00:47:16,210 --> 00:47:22,630 the question of occupation was always built around the concept of state building as well. 404 00:47:22,630 --> 00:47:28,240 So as Charles has said, they're feeling inseparable in the American case. 405 00:47:28,240 --> 00:47:40,250 What was very distinctive about the American attempt to build a state in Iraq was that there then Yunus of an enterprise for them, 406 00:47:40,250 --> 00:47:56,440 i.e. they had they did not come to the enterprise with their the long imperial experience of Britain in building states of a certain kind that that. 407 00:47:56,440 --> 00:48:04,270 And so they came to it. It is at least in in 2003 first. 408 00:48:04,270 --> 00:48:17,500 First of all, from a totally ideological perception perspective, based on the idea of American exceptionalism, i.e., this is an American vision. 409 00:48:17,500 --> 00:48:26,980 It is a good vision. It is for the best of the best of Iraq and the interests of Iraqis and so on. 410 00:48:26,980 --> 00:48:38,550 So in that respect, the ideological basis undergirding the state building enterprise in Iraq were less. 411 00:48:38,550 --> 00:48:52,430 It came out of less experience, but a really ideological belief in the exceptional abilities of the state and the vision of the United States. 412 00:48:52,430 --> 00:48:58,060 Thank you, Peter. Thank you very much. I'm going to combine two questions here because they are touching on similar points. 413 00:48:58,060 --> 00:49:04,360 So the higher cliff wants to bring us up to current affairs and wants to know if there's any political, 414 00:49:04,360 --> 00:49:11,260 diplomatic way to give assistance to the young people protesting against corruption and armed groups as they're 415 00:49:11,260 --> 00:49:15,890 being targeted by different armed groups on a daily basis in front of the British and American embassy. 416 00:49:15,890 --> 00:49:23,980 So I guess by extension, is there anything Britain or America could be doing to assist demonstrators in their legitimate demands? 417 00:49:23,980 --> 00:49:30,910 And Elaine Giles on top of that, wants to know what would it take to rebuild trust between Iraq and the U.K.? 418 00:49:30,910 --> 00:49:38,330 And perhaps there's a link between those two. So, Charles, if you get us started there. 419 00:49:38,330 --> 00:49:43,670 Well, a rather disappointing reply to the first part, which is not a lot, in other words, 420 00:49:43,670 --> 00:49:53,660 that kind of state that has allowed the emergence of the have to chabi the popular mobilisation forces to become effectively 421 00:49:53,660 --> 00:50:01,130 instruments of those in power is the kind of state that the British and the Americans helped to establish in 2003. 422 00:50:01,130 --> 00:50:05,380 And for the British or the Americans now to say, no, no, we don't want that kind of state total. 423 00:50:05,380 --> 00:50:10,760 We want another swing state altogether. There's no way they have no purchase. 424 00:50:10,760 --> 00:50:14,150 There are too many now entrenched interests to prevent that from happening. 425 00:50:14,150 --> 00:50:25,040 And so, unfortunately, the young people very bravely protesting and who are being attacked often by the very instruments of that state are helpless, 426 00:50:25,040 --> 00:50:32,210 as in terms of what the British can do. The British can wring their hands, but I don't think they can provide much material assistance. 427 00:50:32,210 --> 00:50:37,520 And ironically, they might even have a word or two with the prime minister of Iraq. 428 00:50:37,520 --> 00:50:42,920 But he himself gets very fed up with the power of some of these organisations. 429 00:50:42,920 --> 00:50:48,680 But, of course, is unable to even if I'm willing to suppress them. 430 00:50:48,680 --> 00:50:53,420 So he might agree with the British or the Americans that, yes, yes, it's terrible that the force is being used, 431 00:50:53,420 --> 00:50:56,780 but frankly, they have very little power to do anything about them. 432 00:50:56,780 --> 00:51:09,230 So you could argue that as with the state set up under the mandate, the unforeseen consequences of that live with the Iraqis for a long time to come. 433 00:51:09,230 --> 00:51:15,380 So, sadly, the state set up in 2003 with exactly the point that Dana was making before, 434 00:51:15,380 --> 00:51:26,810 with very little sense of the texture and the dynamics of Iraqi society itself, has created its own dynamics and its own interests and its own logic. 435 00:51:26,810 --> 00:51:32,030 And that is now playing out quite violently in many parts of Iraq. 436 00:51:32,030 --> 00:51:41,560 Dina, any reflections? The only thing I would add to this is that the United States government could exert pressure. 437 00:51:41,560 --> 00:51:54,880 But the ultimate interests of the government is our jets geo strategic and and not human rights interests. 438 00:51:54,880 --> 00:52:01,000 You know, and I think it's it can do very little beyond beyond, you know, 439 00:52:01,000 --> 00:52:08,290 tell the Iraqi government that they should cut down on this kind of suppression 440 00:52:08,290 --> 00:52:18,290 of the protests given given its larger interests in Iraq and the region. 441 00:52:18,290 --> 00:52:24,700 Charles, here's a question for you. Adrian Petch notes that he was at school with King Faysal. 442 00:52:24,700 --> 00:52:28,540 And asks if he'd been tougher like his cousin Hussein of Jordan, would things have been different? 443 00:52:28,540 --> 00:52:33,880 Did the monarchy have any influence at all? Over to Charles? 444 00:52:33,880 --> 00:52:37,030 Yes, Face Faisal has often been portrayed as rather a tragic figure, 445 00:52:37,030 --> 00:52:42,190 which in many ways he was, because by the time he became king, he became king officially. 446 00:52:42,190 --> 00:52:49,570 But by time he reached his majority. The path of Iraqi politics was already set and there was no way in which he could control it. 447 00:52:49,570 --> 00:52:59,530 So sadly, although he was respected and in many ways, as I understand it, very much liked figure, 448 00:52:59,530 --> 00:53:08,680 he had far more ruthless members of his family and of the Iraqi political elite who had already pursued their own course. 449 00:53:08,680 --> 00:53:18,130 And that course was what played itself out in 1950s with the suppression of protests, with the hanging of communists, 450 00:53:18,130 --> 00:53:23,900 with the destruction of the Iraqi trade unions, with the politicisation of the armed forces. 451 00:53:23,900 --> 00:53:28,390 However, none of this could the young King Faisal have any control at all. 452 00:53:28,390 --> 00:53:34,000 So he was, in a sense, a tragic figure, a figure who may have had personal qualities, 453 00:53:34,000 --> 00:53:41,570 but was put in a position where he was effectively doomed by those who had built the state around him. 454 00:53:41,570 --> 00:53:46,650 Do you know I got two questions that I'm going to combine for you. The first is from Frank De, 455 00:53:46,650 --> 00:53:55,080 who wants to know how the Americans managed to invade Iraq in 2003 without understanding there are suddenly and she in the country. 456 00:53:55,080 --> 00:53:56,220 And from Jane's story, 457 00:53:56,220 --> 00:54:06,690 who wants to know how far was the US led invasion in 2003 influenced by Bush Junior's response to his father's failed attempt in 1990 91? 458 00:54:06,690 --> 00:54:15,300 So let's come back to the basics of what drove and what was the ignorance of the 2003 invasion. 459 00:54:15,300 --> 00:54:20,660 I think the second question is my quick is very quick has a quick answer. 460 00:54:20,660 --> 00:54:34,020 Yes. Yes. And and if you've watched Saturday Night Live or any of the shows during the invasion that were on I mean there I mean, more seriously. 461 00:54:34,020 --> 00:54:50,370 Certainly that it was a clear sense amongst the group of advisers that worked with the younger Bush that the 1991 settlement remained incomplete. 462 00:54:50,370 --> 00:55:04,830 And that and the and that is the imperative to complete the project of 1990, once at the fathers project of 1991, 463 00:55:04,830 --> 00:55:11,040 because most of their advisors basically around the younger Bush were very, 464 00:55:11,040 --> 00:55:22,200 very important in it in setting Iraq policy during war, first with the 1990 war one war for the second question. 465 00:55:22,200 --> 00:55:33,390 In fact, the Shia the Sunni Shia divide has had been widely known to be American Americans when they 466 00:55:33,390 --> 00:55:43,200 went in and figures within the Iraqi opposition had highlighted actually these differences 467 00:55:43,200 --> 00:55:51,930 encouraged the U.S. administration to work with Shia opposition groups centred in Iran and 468 00:55:51,930 --> 00:55:58,950 encourage as well a belief on the part of the Americans that chiasm is inherently more, 469 00:55:58,950 --> 00:56:08,970 more, more open to democratic, to the democratic politics than cynicism. 470 00:56:08,970 --> 00:56:22,440 So the debate, I mean, and the knowledge of the Shia Sunni divide within within Iraq was was I mean, it was common amongst the establishment. 471 00:56:22,440 --> 00:56:32,370 Less less common is the complexity of these divisions within Iraqi society and the layering 472 00:56:32,370 --> 00:56:40,260 of these identities with several other identities and with the complexity between each. 473 00:56:40,260 --> 00:56:49,890 I mean, it was a version of it discourse or the view of Iraqi society embraced by 474 00:56:49,890 --> 00:56:58,070 opposition groups outside Iraq that had been active in anti Baathist politics. 475 00:56:58,070 --> 00:57:11,970 And and oh. So it it's actually was not based on a real knowledge of the complexity of allegiances in in Iraq. 476 00:57:11,970 --> 00:57:15,400 Bushin lend to me. Thank you, Dina. 477 00:57:15,400 --> 00:57:20,910 We are coming to the end of our hour and the questions continue to pile in. 478 00:57:20,910 --> 00:57:27,360 We've had a fantastic turnout tonight. And so I'm not surprised that I'm getting more questions that we'll have time to answer. 479 00:57:27,360 --> 00:57:34,860 I would like to give the honour of the last question to what our students, Tom Coyne, who puts the question to Charles Tripp. 480 00:57:34,860 --> 00:57:41,910 He says, You mentioned that Britain submitted a bogus report to the League of Nations guaranteeing the rights of the Kurds. 481 00:57:41,910 --> 00:57:46,770 Should Iraq become independent? What were the motivations in doing so? 482 00:57:46,770 --> 00:57:52,290 Was this an order to admit Iraq to the league as quickly as possible? Or were there other factors at play? 483 00:57:52,290 --> 00:57:56,620 So putting on your. Professorial historians Hatch. 484 00:57:56,620 --> 00:58:03,060 Charles. You say I have half a minute to which reply is denied. 485 00:58:03,060 --> 00:58:10,180 The point is that everyone knew that the proposal that Iraq should become independent was going 486 00:58:10,180 --> 00:58:15,680 to be put towards the League of Nations in 1932 to be done on a regular basis to be considered. 487 00:58:15,680 --> 00:58:21,660 And the British were quite happy to contemplate that idea of what they thought of as an independent Iraq. 488 00:58:21,660 --> 00:58:30,090 Also evident to the Kurdish parties and groups was that Iraq was going to be a state dominated by Baghdad and 489 00:58:30,090 --> 00:58:35,940 by basically elites who had no love for the Kurdish people or indeed for the rights of the Kurdish people. 490 00:58:35,940 --> 00:58:44,340 And so they had been petitioning the League of Nations since 1930 to not grant independence to Iraq unless there were 491 00:58:44,340 --> 00:58:53,070 sufficient guarantees of the rights of the Kurdish people to a degree of autonomy within the new independent state of Iraq. 492 00:58:53,070 --> 00:59:01,890 And because the British were aware of this and realised that it might mess up their proposal in Geneva. 493 00:59:01,890 --> 00:59:11,790 And so they concocted with no side a fictitious effectively report on the condition of human rights and rights of the Kurdish people in Iraq, 494 00:59:11,790 --> 00:59:16,260 as well as with lots of pledges of how the new Iraqi government and state would, 495 00:59:16,260 --> 00:59:22,740 of course, guarantee rights of autonomy and self-government in the Kurdish region. 496 00:59:22,740 --> 00:59:34,440 Whether this was sufficient to persuade, but it certainly had an effect in Geneva and the League of Nations then granted independence to Iraq in 1932. 497 00:59:34,440 --> 00:59:41,440 Thereafter, nothing more was heard of the pledges made by no outside. 498 00:59:41,440 --> 00:59:45,520 Charles, it couldn't have been done better or more briefly. Thank you very much. 499 00:59:45,520 --> 00:59:52,060 I will now need to bring our session to a close. I've had a number of questions asking whether this session will be posted. 500 00:59:52,060 --> 00:59:56,470 And I assure you we'll get back to everyone who registered if it is. 501 00:59:56,470 --> 01:00:04,650 And I would like to extend warm thanks on behalf of both the Ashmolean Museum and the Middle East centre to our guests tonight. 502 01:00:04,650 --> 01:00:10,060 Dana Hurry joined us from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. 503 01:00:10,060 --> 01:00:19,750 Charles Tripp, who joined us from London in sharing the depth of the knowledge and experience in the study of modern Iraq. 504 01:00:19,750 --> 01:00:24,130 I think you guys have been an amazing audience and the questions have been truly fantastic. 505 01:00:24,130 --> 01:00:28,590 So thank you for weighing in and making the session work as well as you did. 506 01:00:28,590 --> 01:00:45,988 And I wish you all the very good evening from Oxford to bid you good night.