Iraq (Cherry, Plum, and Chrysanthemum)

Iraq (Arabic: العراق‎ al-‘Irāq; Kurdish: عه‌راق Îraqê), formally the Kingdom of Iraq (Arabic: المملكة العراقية al-Mamlakah al-ʿIrāqīyah; Kurdish: که‌یانیی عه‌راق Keyaniya Îraqê), is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert.

Iraq borders Syria to the northwest, Turkey and Assyria to the north, Iran to the east, Jordan to the west, Najd to the south and southwest, and the Persian Gulf to the south. The capital of Iraq, Baghdad, is in the center-east of the country. Two major rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, run through the center of Iraq, flowing from northwest to southeast. These provide Iraq with agriculturally capable land and contrast with the steppe and desert landscape that covers most of Western Asia.

Ottoman Mesopotamia (1514–1918)
The Ottomans under Murad IV secured their control over Mesopotamia in the first half of the 17th century following the Ottoman–Safavid War (1623–39). The Ottomans reorganized Mesopotamia into the Eyalets of Baghdad, Mosul, Basra, Shahrizor and Lahsa. The Safavid dynasty of Iran briefly asserted their hegemony over Mesopotamia in the periods of 1508–1533 and 1622–1638. In 1639, under the Treaty of Zuhab, all of Mesopotamia, including modern territories of Iraq and Assyria, were irreversibly ceded by the Safavids to the Ottomans.

In 1670, the Bani Khalid ousted the Ottomans from the Lahsa Eyalet in eastern Arabia. The families of the Bani Utbah from Najd then settled in Kuwait with the permission from the Khalidis in 1713. In 1718, Sabah I bin Jaber was chosen by the Utbi families to reign as the Sheikh of Kuwait under the nominal rule of Khalidis. The descendants of Sabah, the Subahites, will eventually ruled the city of Kuwait for next two centuries. In 1871, the Ottomans reasserted its rule in Lahsa, including Kuwait, which included into the Basra Vilayet in 1875. Nevertheless, the Ottoman rule on Kuwait was mainly nominal and the Subahites maintained their independence over their realms.

In 1747, Sulayman Abu Layla Pasha led the Mamluk officers of Georgian origin in ousting the Ottomans from Baghdad and established himself the autonomous ruler of Iraq. The Ottomans recognized the Mamluk regime which extended into Basra and Sharizor. In 1779, Sulayman Pasha the Great assumed the powers over Iraq; he suppressed tribal revolts, curbed the power of the Janissaries, restored order and introduced a program of modernization of economy and military. Under the Mamluks, Baghdad saw relative revival in the latter part of the 18th century. In 1831, the Ottomans managed to overthrow the Mamluk regime and again imposed their direct control by Ali Ridha Pasha over Iraq.

During World War I, the Ottomans sided with the Central Powers. Mesopotamia was a low priority area for the Ottomans and they did not expect any major action in the region during the war. However, the British launched the Mesopotamian Campaign in 1914 in which them suffered a defeat at the hands of the Turkish army during the Siege of Kut (1915–16). The British forces finally won in the campaign with the capture of Baghdad in March 1917. During the war the British employed the help of a number of Assyrian, Armenian and Arab tribes against the Ottomans, who in turn employed the Kurds as allies.

The British government agreed in the Hussein–McMahon Correspondence that it would support Arab independence if they revolted against the Ottomans. The two sides, however, had different interpretations of this agreement. Under the secret Sykes–Picot Agreement of 1916, the British and the French divided each others' spheres of influences at the Middle East into several League of Nations mandates, which became the real cornerstone of the geopolitics structuring the entire region. The agreement gave Britain control over Southern Syria and Mesopotamia.

British Indian regime (1918–1920)
After the war, Mesopotamia was governed by the British military administration under the command of the India Office in London. The Indian Office administrators recommended the annexation of Mesopotamia to India. This stance led to a conflict of interests between the Colonial Office, that supported an Arab self-government in Mesopotamia, and the India Office. In 1917, the Colonial Office instructed Edwin Montagu, the High Commissioner for Mesopotamia and the former Under-Secretary of State for India, to create Arab government with an constitution, national council and an Arab president.

However, Montagu and his deputy in Baghdad, Colonel Arnold Wilson, did not yield to the Colonial Office's memorandum. Like Montagu, Wilson was a former administrator in India and he held a distrust of local Arabs' self-governing abilities. Rather, between 1917 and 1920, Wilson modeled the country's administration after British India, implemented the Indian rupee as the medium of exchange, filled the army and civil service with the Indians and adopted Anglo-Indian laws for civil and criminal code. Anti-British sentiments and the desire for self-government among the locals therefore led to a growing opposition to the British military rule.

After an incident following the arrest of a tribal shaykh, the armed revolt occurred in June 1920. The Arabs, both the Sunnis and the Shias, joined by the Kurds came together for the first time to oppose the British. Although the revolt achieved some initial success, by the end of October 1920, the British and the Assyrian recruits had completely crushed it. In October 1920, Montagu arrived in Baghdad to formally assume his post. He softened his earlier stance on Mesopotamia and began to favor a gradual process toward a self-governed Mesopotamia. After the revolt ended, the British Mandate for Mesopotamia (ب البريطاني على العراق‎ al-Intidāb al-Brīṭānī ‘alá al-‘Irāq) was confirmed in 1922.

Following the revolt, Montagu devised the self-government plan for Mesopotamia, which comprised of the autonomous vilayets of Baghdad and Basra and semi-independent Kuwait. This policy stood in contrast with the interest of the Colonial Office that wanted to install a descendant of Sharif of Mecca, Hussein ibn Ali al-Hashimi, to rule Mesopotamia as a proxy ruler. On November 14, 1920, Abd al-Rahman al-Gillani, the naqib of Baghdad, and Talib al-Rifa'i, the naqib of Basra, were rewarded for their supports to the British during the revolt and appointed as the governors (vali) of Baghdad and Basra, respectively. The British also had recognized the semi-independent rule of al-Sabah rulers in Kuwait.

Formation of modern Iraq (1920–1939)
Mosul was initially under the joint British and French control and only became part of the Mandate in 1925 after the oil discovery. An autonomous rule for the Kurds in Mosul was also proposed by Montagu in 1920 to ensure the region as a part of future Mesopotamian state. However, the proposal was withheld by the British government in London and eventually was defeated during the Cairo Conference of 1921. The failure to establish a Kurdish autonomy within Mesopotamia combined by the Assyrian nationalist activities in northern Mosul led to a continued Kurdish antagonism toward the British during the Mandate era. The Kurds revolted twice against the British in 1922 and 1931.

Another group that demanded the autonomous rule within the Mandatory Mesopotamia was the Assyrians. Compared with the Arabs and the Kurds, the Assyrians were viewed as the British most loyal subjects. The Assyrians believed that only the British who can protect them from joint Arab-Kurdish attacks. Their aspiration for autonomy and continued immigration to northern Mosul were opposed by the Kurds who saw the Assyrian homeland as a part of their own homeland. In 1933, anti-Assyrian sentiments among the Kurds resulted to the Mosul riots. In aftermath of the riots, the Assyrians forced into a passive self-defense after the British failure in protecting them.

After Talib al-Rifa'i's death in 1929, Baghdad, Basra and Mosul were joined as a single administrative unit. The Mesopotamia Legislative Council was inaugurated on February 14, 1930; the Shia majority soon found themselves in the control of it. The situation was in contrast with the domination of Sunni elites such as al-Gillani and ar-Rifa'i in the government. The Shia politicians, such as Muhammad Hassan al-Sadr and Salih Jabr, realized they should relying on an elected legislature to voice their interests. In 1934, Ayatollah Haydar al-Sadr issued a fatwa which encouraged the Shias to participate in the legislative elections.

Meanwhile, Kuwait remained a separate administrative unit during the 1930s. Abdullah al-Sabah, the cousin of ruling Sheikh Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah, was a proponent for the Kuwaiti representation to the Council and its integration into the Mesopotamian society. When Kuwait was started to be represented in the Council in 1939, Abdullah assumed a moderate and reformist position among the Sunni Arab caucus, compared with more radical nationalist Rashid Ali al-Gaylani. Although a nationalist himself, Abdullah was more cooperative with the British and more friendly in terms with the Shias and the Assyrians.

World War II (1939–1945)
During World War II, the Iraqi independence movement was split into two camps: radical and reformist. The radicals, consisted of Sunni Arabs and Kurds, wanted a complete independence from the British and rejected a proposed Assyrian nation-state in the north. The reformists, consisted of Shia Arabs and moderate Sunni Arabs, sought more gradual steps to achieve independence. In 1940, fifteen members of the Council, including Abdullah al-Sabah, Muhammad Hassan al-Sadr, Tawfiq al-Suwaidi and Muhammad Mahdi al-Jawahiri, signed a petition to the British High Commissioner in which they appealed for the creation of an elected government.

In 1941, the radical nationalists led by Rashid Ali al-Gaylani revolted against the British. Supported by the German arms and money, the revolts quickly spread throughout the Mandate. The British acted swiftly in subduing the rebellions. On other hand, Abdullah al-Sabah used the revolution as an opportunity for the reformists to pressure the British to accept the reformist terms. He convinced British High Commissioner Kinahan Cornwallis that the only solution for the British to not lose their faces before the population was to expand the parliamentary powers of Legislative Council.

Independent Iraq
The Committee later transformed into Mesopotamia Royal Commission on August 11, 1945. On January 3, 1946, the Commission adopted a resolution called Pachachi-Atturaya Agreement that agreed on the establishment of separate national homelands for the Assyrians and the Arabo-Kurdish peoples. The British flag lowered for the last time from the High-Commissioner Building on the midnight of June 4, 1946 and the Iraqi independence was formally proclaimed on the morning, exactly on 11 A.M by the chairman of Independence Preparatory Committee, Mustafa Mahmud al-Umari.

The first Parliament of Iraq was elected on July 22, 1946. Five main political parties was participated in the election: the Iraqi Democratic Union, the Fatherland Party, the Iraqi Communist Party, the Iraqi Liberal Party and the New Progressive Party. Muzahim al-Pachachi was elected as the nation's first President on July 25, 1946 while Tawfiq al-Suwaidi was elected as the first Prime Minister on September 11, 1946.

Early years of Iraqi independence marked by the political instability resulted from the friction between the ruling National Coalition (IDU-ILP-NPP) and the Fatherland Party. The National Coalition supported Iraq as a secular state, modeled after Turkey, and had moderate view toward Western civilization, while the Fatherland Party proudly proclaimed themselves as "the defender of Arab people and Islamic civilization." Street violence often occurred between the government forces and the anti-government demonstrators that backed by the Fatherland Party.

The establishment of State of Israel on May 14, 1948 suddenly formed a sense of national solidarity between the Iraqis. The National Coalition government's declaration of war to Israel was warmly welcomed by the Fatherland Party and ended the friction between two quarreling sides. The new anti-Assyrian sentiment started to bloom as the Assyrian forces fought side by-side with Israel against the Palestine and joint Arab forces during the Arab-Israeli War. Throughout the war, all political parties on Parliament participated on the new national unity government under Ali Jawdat al-Aiyubi, except the Iraqi Communist Party that remained as the sole parliamentary opposition and followed Soviet's line on the recognition of Israel.